When I joined them in the dining room, Frank was pouring the coffee while Aunt Peg got straight to business. She began with her realization—hours after she’d discovered Uncle Max—that Beau, their valuable stud dog, was missing.
“I don’t see why you’re assuming the dog was stolen,” Frank broke in. “With all the confusion that morning, he probably just wandered away. Dogs do like to roam, you know.”
The glare Aunt Peg sent his way held all the warmth of granite in winter. “My dear boy, Poodles do not roam, and Beau did not wander away.”
I caught Frank’s eye and shrugged. He grinned in return, a toothless grimace that questioned the sanity of older relations.
Aunt Peg frowned sternly. “Unfortunately, the authorities were no more excited about Beau’s disappearance than you two seem to be. Even the FBI said that they couldn’t step in until there was some evidence that the dog had been transported across state lines.”
I choked on a sip of coffee. “The FBI? Aunt Peg, you didn’t really call them, did you?”
“Of course. I’ve called everybody. And now it appears that I am going to get no more understanding from my own relatives than I did from total strangers.”
The line was intended to produce guilt, and it fulfilled its function admirably. At least I had the good grace to blush. Frank merely settled back in his chair, resigned to hearing her out.
“Suppose you tell us why you think somebody took the dog,” he said.
“For starters, the door to his pen was wide open. Beau is smart, but he could hardly have managed that by himself. ”
“Uncle Max was in the kennel,” I pointed out. “Maybe he opened it.”
“Maybe, but it’s highly unlikely. We had three bitches in full season at the time. Nobody in their right mind would stir up that kind of mayhem. Which brings me to my next question—what would Max have been doing out in the kennel in the middle of the night anyway?”
“Sleepwalking?” Frank suggested. I kicked him, hard, under the table.
“Hardly,” Aunt Peg said dryly. “He was dressed at the time. Obviously, he’d never been to bed at all.”
“Isn’t that unusual?” I asked.
“Not for Max.” Unexpectedly, Aunt Peg smiled. “He used to stay up to all hours, reading or working in his office. It overlooks the kennel, you know. Still, I’m sure he wouldn’t have gone out there unless he had a good reason.”
“Granted, there are a few unanswered questions,” said Frank. “But do you really think it’s possible that someone would have broken into your kennel and fought with Uncle Max, all because of a dog?”
“Anything’s possible,” Aunt Peg said crisply. “When someone wants something badly enough.”
“But why . . . ?”
The look Aunt Peg bounced back and forth between us made it perfectly clear that any relatives of hers should definitely be quicker on the uptake. “Maybe it will be easier to understand if I explain that Beau is not just an ordinary dog. In fact, far from it. He was a knockout as a puppy, and even better as an adult. He finished with four straight majors and had a Best In Show before he was two. This past winter when Max and I retired him to stud, we had more requests than we could possibly handle.”
“Even so,” said Frank. “He is only a dog. What’s the most he could be worth?”
Aunt Peg looked pointedly down her nose. “I’ve had offers in excess of twenty thousand dollars.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Not at all. Beau commands a stud fee of five hundred dollars. In the last year, he’s serviced a dozen bitches and I turned away twice as many as I approved.”
I whistled softly under my breath. “I never knew you were making that kind of money from those Poodles.”
“You never needed to know. Why should you? But surely you can see that there are people who might be interested in acquiring the dog.”
Intrigued by the possibilities, I found myself leaning forward in my chair. Even though I knew the only reason Aunt Peg had come to me was because I’d been able to produce Frank, I still couldn’t help being interested. “But purebred dogs have papers, don’t they? As long as Beau is still registered in your name, what possible use could he be to someone else?”
“Indeed, they do have papers. And the American Kennel Club keeps track of such things very carefully. But what you need to understand is that a stud dog’s value is determined by the quality of the puppies he produces. Who he is, his show record, and even his pedigree become secondary considerations when a dog is producing well. Beau’s thief would need only to set him up at stud under some other Poodle’s name and wait for the puppies to prove themselves. In time, with his progeny out and winning, breeders would send droves of bitches to the nominal sire, who would become quite famous for producing nicely without anyone ever realizing that it was Beau doing all the work.”
“Tell me—” I began, but my brother cut me off.
“I’m sorry your dog is gone, Aunt Peg,” he said. “But I’m afraid I don’t see what you expect me to do about it.”
He wasn’t asking for guidance, I realized, but rather stating his intention—not surprisingly—to remain uninvolved. A quick glance at Aunt Peg revealed that she was having none of it.
“Perhaps if you’d have the decency to listen until I’ve finished speaking, you’d find out.”
I winced at her tone. She was going about things all wrong. Frank was temperamental, like a fine racehorse in training. Cajole, and he’d give you anything. Demand, and you lost it all. The moment I saw him stiffen in his seat, I knew which way things had gone.
He began with a patronizing smile and from there, things only got worse. “Look, Aunt Peg, I know you’re going through a difficult time right now. You’re upset, maybe even a little confused, and certainly in no shape to be getting yourself all worked up. Why don’t you just forget about the dog? After all, you’ve got plenty of others to take his place.”
Aunt Peg’s expression froze. “My shape, as you call it, is not what’s at issue here. I may be in mourning, but I am not incapacitated. Besides, has it ever occurred to you that at this particular point in my life, I might welcome something to be worked up over?”
I tried to get between them, but it was no use. Aunt Peg was on a tear.
“You’re right I’m upset. I miss Max terribly. I miss him every minute of every day. But sitting at home on my butt, sipping tea, doesn’t help that one bit. My husband’s gone, and nothing I can do will bring him back, but I sure as hell can try to find our dog!”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Your meaning,” Aunt Peg snapped, rising to her feet. “was perfectly clear.”
We followed her to the front hall, where she accepted her sweater without another word. Ignoring Frank’s attempt to help her on with it, she tossed the cardigan over her shoulders and let herself out. Suddenly the house seemed surprisingly empty.
“Really, Frank,” I said reproachfully as we returned to the dining room and cleared the table together. “Don’t you think you could have tried a little harder to be understanding?”
“Oh no you don’t. You’re not going to lay this one on me. All I did was tell Aunt Peg the truth, which is a good deal more than you seemed willing to do.”
“What do you mean?”
“Come on, Mel. Don’t tell me you actually believed all that stuff she said?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”
“A dozen bitches, five hundred dollars a shot? She had to have been exaggerating. If there’s one thing Aunt Peg can do, it’s tell a good story.”
“Well,” I admitted, “twenty thousand dollars does sound kind of high for a dog.”
“Kind of? Give me a break. She probably pulled that number right out of thin air. Take my word for it; Aunt Peg is feeling lonely right now and she’s looking for some attention.”
“So? What’s the matter with that? Of course Aunt Peg is feeling lonely, and if she wants some attention, I think she ought to hav
e it.”
“If you want to humor her, that’s your business. Sympathy is one thing, but I don’t see any reason why we should let her take us for a ride. Don’t forget, she and Uncle Max have had some pretty wild ideas in the past. As far as I can tell, this stolen dog business is just more of the same. The police didn’t buy her story, so she came to us. Don’t you think that if there really was something to it, they’d have investigated?”
“I suppose . . .”
“Believe me, that dog will probably wander home all by himself. Maybe he’s already there, waiting for her right now.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Sure,” said Frank. “Anything’s possible. Listen, much as I’d like to stay and talk, I’ve got to be on my way.” He bent down and kissed me quickly on the cheek. “How about lending me a little spare cash, do you mind?”
I should have known the request was coming. It almost always did. When our parents were still alive, he’d gone to them. Now that they were gone, he came to me. Twenty-six years old and still my little brother had yet to discover a direction in life. His usual lack of income notwithstanding, he went through money like a Rockefeller.
“I don’t have a little spare cash,” I said irritably. “I just found out this morning that my summer job fell through. This late, it’s going to be impossible to find anything else.”
Frank shrugged. “Think of all the money you’ll save in child care. And speaking of which, don’t try to tell me that the kid’s father isn’t coughing up a pretty penny for his support. So how bad off can you be?”
Bad enough, as it turned out. Three years earlier at the time of my divorce, I’d been liberated enough to spurn alimony payments, although I had, for Davey’s benefit, accepted child support. That was before I’d measured my worth on the open market and discovered that a master’s degree in education was barely enough to keep food on the table and a roof over our heads at the same time. It was also before my dear, departed ex had folded his tents in the middle of the night and moved on, leaving no forwarding address. None of which, I reflected, was anything that Frank needed to know.
“Aw, come on, Mel.” Frank fixed me with a beguiling smile. The one I always fell for, dammit. “You can swing it. Besides, this is only a loan. You know I’ll pay you back, just as soon as my ship comes in.”
“Your ship got torpedoed in the South Pacific,” I muttered, but already I was digging around in my purse for my wallet. “Here,” I said, handing over a couple of ten dollar bills. “It’s the best I can do.”
“Thanks.” Money in hand, Frank was gone like a shot.
Typical, I thought. I left the dishes in the sink and went upstairs to check on Davey. He was sleeping soundly, as usual, the tattered remnants of his favorite stuffed cat clutched beneath his chin. I pulled his door shut until only a crack of light fell across the foot of the bed, then continued on to my own room next door.
Though Bob had been gone from my life for three years, the bedroom had hardly changed at all since the day he’d left. At the time, I’d been determined to purge myself of everything that reminded me of him. It had come as quite a shock to realize that nothing in the room would. I wondered now, as I had then, if perhaps when I’d furnished the room, I’d known subconsciously that his stay there would be temporary.
The rug was burgundy, the walls cream. The curtains and the pillows on the brass, queen-sized bed were a striped combination of the two. There were no ruffles, no skirted dressing table with an assortment of perfumes. I’ve never been a frilly sort of person. Functional is more my style. Looking around the room, it showed.
On the night table beside the bed was a cut-glass bud vase, a wedding present from someone whose name I’ve long since forgotten. It was filled with a handful of daisies Davey had found in the backyard earlier that week. They were drooping now, stems beginning to curl and turn brown. I plucked them out on the way to the bathroom and left them in the trash.
What a way to begin summer vacation.
Three
The next morning I overslept, which meant that by the time I got down to the kitchen, Davey had already made his own breakfast. Though the top on the cookie jar had a suspicious tilt, he was sitting innocently at the kitchen table next to a tall box of Cheerios. With a practiced eye, I took in the scene and reached out to rescue the cereal bowl he had turned upside down to use as a drum.
“Look,” said Davey, his mouth open wide so that I could see the last spoonful of Cheerios still being chewed.
“Good work. Now swallow, and you can go watch ‘Sesame Street.’ ”
By ten o’clock, I had scrubbed the kitchen floor, balanced my checkbook, and fired off an angry letter to my state representative protesting budget cutbacks in worthwhile programs. Now what? I wondered, sitting down at the kitchen table with a cup of strong black coffee. If every day that summer was going to be as long as this one, I was going to go quietly crazy.
Without even thinking about what I was doing, I pulled the phone across the counter and dialed. Aunt Peg answered on the first ring.
“Hi, it’s Melanie. Any news?”
“Nothing,” Aunt Peg said flatly. She sounded worlds away from the hopeful, determined woman who had visited the night before.
“What are you going to do next?”
“Why do you want to know?”
Aunt Peg might be down, but she definitely wasn’t beaten. All at once, I knew how I was going to spend my day. “I was just thinking that maybe it might help if I came over and we talked things out.”
“Spare me.”
“Spare you what?”
“The last thing I need is a condolence call from a pitying relative.”
“Good, because that’s the last thing you’re going to get. I’m going to have to bring Davey.” This last was added as a warning. Aunt Peg had been considerably less tolerant of her nephew’s visits since the time he’d taken careful aim, then beaned one of her Poodles with a toy truck. On such short notice, however, baby-sitters were impossible to come by and we both knew it.
“I’ll manage,” Aunt Peg said dryly. With enthusiasm like that, it was no wonder we didn’t visit more often.
Twenty minutes later, when we pulled in her driveway, I was still coaching Davey on the rules of acceptable behavior. He was nodding meekly, a sure sign that there was trouble afoot.
The first time I’d seen Aunt Peg’s house as a child, I’d found it breathtaking and now, years later, in all the glory of late spring, it was no less so. Huge leafy elms, planted a century before, flanked the long driveway that led, not to the mansion one might have expected from such an approach, but rather to a rambling, ivy-covered farmhouse, once the hub of a working farm. Much of the land had since been sold off, but the house had settled into its surroundings with such charm and dignity that it radiated a sense of rightness that always made me feel immediately at home.
Our arrival was heralded by a chorus of canine voices that grew and swelled in number until a command from inside the house silenced the noise as suddenly as it had begun. Then Aunt Peg opened the door and the Poodles came thundering out like a small herd of buffalo. These were not the dainty little balls of fluff you see in circuses and on greeting cards. Aunt Peg’s Poodles were of the Standard variety, which meant they were the kings and queens of the breed. None stood smaller than waist high, with capped heads and plumed tails that added to their stature. Davey was quickly enveloped by the group, but the sound of his delighted giggles assured me he was doing fine.
“Oh for Pete’s sake,” said Aunt Peg. “Let them get in the door first, would you?”
I thought for a moment that she was talking to Davey and me, but the Poodles knew better. They fell back enough to allow us to move and formed an escort as we came inside. Aunt Peg was carrying an armload of dirty laundry. “Bedding,” she said, shutting the door firmly behind us. “I’ve got a litter of puppies in the guest room.”
We followed her down to the basement, retrieving stray towel
s as they dropped, like leaves, from the bundle. Aunt Peg threw the lot in the washing machine and turned it on. Then she grasped Davey’s arms and hoisted him, like another load of laundry, up on top of the dryer. “How’s my boy?”
“Fine.” Davey sat very still as he pondered the rules I’d imposed on his behavior. Nothing if not smart, he soon came up with a solution. “Can I go outside?”
He smiled with visible relief when permission was granted and he was free to leave. I hopped him down off the machine, and he disappeared out the door.
“Tell me something,” I said to Aunt Peg as we went back upstairs. The inevitable honor guard of Poodles was still milling in attendance. “When we came in right now, the dogs made an awful racket. If there was an intruder in your kennel the night Max died, wouldn’t they have barked?”
Aunt Peg’s eyes narrowed. “I can see you don’t believe that Beau was stolen either. Just like that brother of yours, humoring me like I was some sort of a doddering old fool. If that’s why you came, you can leave right now. I’ll not be anybody’s charity case.”
Her anger was justified, if misdirected. But I’d been paying the penance for my brother’s sins for too many years to take offense now. “If I wanted to humor you, I wouldn’t be asking questions, now would I?” I said mildly.
Aunt Peg thought about that for a moment. Apparently I’d passed inspection because when she spoke, she continued on as though nothing at all had happened. “There’s no doubt that the dogs must have barked at the thief.” She led the way into the living room, where we sat down in the two, thickly cushioned chairs that flanked the fireplace.
A Pedigree to Die For Page 2