A Pedigree to Die For

by Laurien Berenson

  “Jack?” I called, poking my head inside. “Are you home?”

  Apparently not. My heart was beating so fast I was surprised I could still think clearly. Group judging was going on. The Shalimar bitch had won the variety and qualified for the Non-Sporting group. That had to be where Jack had gone.

  The choice was now or never. I opted for now.

  “Come on, Davey,” I said, sprinting toward the grooming tent. “Quick. I’ll race you.”

  That did the trick, and we reached Aunt Peg in no time. I hopped Davey up onto the top of her crate. “What group is in?”

  Aunt Peg looked up from wrapping Lulu’s ears. “Non-Sporting.”

  “How long have they been judging?”

  “I think it just started. The judge is going over the Dalmatian.”

  Davey attended to, I turned to have a look. Jack Berglund was standing second in line. He couldn’t leave the ring until the judging was over. That gave me at least fifteen minutes.

  “Will you watch Davey?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’ll tell you later. Just don’t let him out of your sight, okay?”

  I didn’t wait to hear her reply because I was already running back in the other direction. I’ve never been one for gratuitous bravery, but what choice did I have? I’d found Beau only to discover that I needed proof to get him back. If Jack Berglund’s motor home might offer up anything in the way of evidence, I was going to find it.

  I looked both ways, then opened the door and slipped inside. I was ready for anything; except, as it turned out, the actual reality.

  Inside, the motor home was perfectly ordinary in every way. A row of empty crates lined one wall and a narrow bed and a built-in set of drawers filled the other. The whole space was uncommonly neat; there wasn’t a leash or brush out of place. Obviously Jack wasn’t the sort of man who left anything, much less incriminating evidence, lying around.

  I opened the drawers in turn and found only a selection of grooming supplies and several changes of clothing. The countertops were mostly empty; the cupboards above them held some canned food and a bag of dry kibble. Suddenly my wonderful opportunity wasn’t looking nearly so opportune.

  On one end of the counter, several books were stacked in a tidy pile. I’d passed them by the first time, but now I went back for a closer look. That’s when I discovered that the one on the bottom wasn’t a book at all, but rather a photo album. I held it up to the small bit of light that filtered in through the windows and flipped through the pages.

  Not surprisingly it held show pictures, no different than any of the dozens I’d seen before. Jack had written the name of each Poodle across the top of his picture. I was skimming through them quickly when I saw the name Shalimar Solitaire.

  Ranger’s dam. That alone was enough to make me pause; but a closer look revealed nothing of consequence. Solitaire was a small, nondescript brown bitch, presumably shown winning her first and only points shortly before her death. It was just a show picture, the same as any other.

  I heard the quiet click behind me, but in the time the sound took to register it was already too late. I dropped the album onto the counter, but there wasn’t time to close it. Then Jack was there in the doorway, his voice loud and angry. “What the hell do you think you’re doing in here?” he demanded.

  Good question.

  Twenty-nine

  Too bad I didn’t have a good answer.

  I turned around slowly, and as I did so the light, shining through the open doorway, revealed to Jack who his visitor was. “Oh it’s you,” he said, sounding considerably less angry, but still pretty curious. Perhaps there was a way to salvage the situation after all.

  “Hi,” I said brightly as though the fact that he’d found me poking around inside his motor home was nothing unusual. “I thought of a couple more questions I wanted to ask you. I hope you don’t mind if I waited in here.”

  “I guess not.” Jack climbed up the steps and closed the door behind him. “I’m free now. Ask away.”

  Ask what? The only question I had was how I was going to get Aunt Peg’s dog away from him, and that wasn’t a suitable topic of conversation. Instead I began to babble. “I was wondering about your puppies. I told a friend of mine how cute your puppies were, and she said she might be interested if you had any available . . .”

  Jack was looking around the interior of the motor home, and I realized suddenly that he was just as unsure of the situation as I was. Disaster hadn’t been averted, only postponed.

  Of course the first thing he noticed was the open photo album on the counter. As I edged past him toward the door, Jack moved in for a closer look. Something he saw there was cause for alarm because even in the half light, I could see his tan pale.

  It was, I decided, a very good time to leave. “I’ve got your number,” I said. “I’ll have her give you a call.”

  Jack turned and caught my arm. His grip wasn’t painful, but it was tight enough to get its message across. “Who are you really?”

  I tried for a surprised laugh which ended up sounding slightly hysterical. “You know who I am, Jack.”

  “I doubt that.” The strength of his grip grew. “Let me tell you something,” he said. As if I had a choice. “Every once in a while a truly exceptional dog comes along, one that can do a great deal of good for the breed—if he survives to produce. It’s happened before that such a dog is cut down in his prime. It could happen again.”

  He was holding tightly enough that he must have felt me shudder. Then suddenly his fingers were gone and I was free to go. I scrambled out of the motor home before he had a chance to change his mind.

  Back at the grooming tent, Davey and Aunt Peg were eating chocolate ice cream cones and awaiting my arrival. “We have to talk,” I said grimly to Aunt Peg. “But not here. I’m going to take Davey to a friend’s house. I’ll met you back at your place, okay?”

  One look at the expression on my face and Aunt Peg knew not to ask any questions. She delivered Davey into my arms, and we drove straight from the show to Joey Brickman’s house. I cited emergency and Alice, bless her, promptly asked him to stay the night. Then it was back to Aunt Peg’s.

  She’d arrived home before me but not by much. We went out to the grooming room in the kennel, where she used her big hair dryer to blow the hair spray out of Lulu’s coat while I told her what had happened in Berglund’s trailer.

  “I don’t have even the slightest idea what it was that set him off,” I said at the end. “One minute I thought I’d be able to bluff my way through. The next, he saw the open album and was furious.”

  “Obviously something about the pictures you saw upset him,” Peg said, brushing through a tangle. “Describe them to me.”

  “There’s nothing to describe. They looked just like everyone else’s pictures. I was just flipping through quickly. The only name I even recognized was Shalimar Solitaire, Ranger’s dam.”

  “Tell me about her picture.” Aunt Peg redirected the flow of hair, and Lulu, lying quietly on the table, shifted sides. “What did she look like?”

  “Not particularly pretty. Lots of coat, and not much leg. Nice-enough head, but terribly light eyes. In the picture, they looked almost yellow.”

  “Yellow eyes?” Peg looked up. “What color was she?”

  “Brown. Could that be important?”

  “I don’t know,” Aunt Peg said thoughtfully. “But it’s the only new fact we’ve learned. Let me think about it. I’m almost done here. Why don’t you go up to the house and start some tea? I’ll be along in a minute.”

  Her one minute turned into ten, but in that time I’d made both tea and instant coffee, and managed to find a box of Mint Milano cookies she’d squirreled away in the back of the cabinet. She came in the back door, sat down at the table, and took up where we left off.

  “Tell me again about those puppies you saw. What color were they?”

  “Black. I told you that before.”

  “A
ll of them?”

  My mouth was filled with cookie. I settled for a nod.

  “How about the bitch? Did you get a chance to look at her?”

  “Only for a moment. She was brown like Solitaire. But you told me yourself that the different colors could produce one another—”

  “That’s it!” Aunt Peg cried.

  “That’s what?”

  “That’s what Jack didn’t want you to see. Black Poodles can produce all the other colors, if the correct recessive gene is carried. If Ranger’s dam was brown, then he would have to carry the brown gene. Bred to a brown bitch, that litter you saw—if it was Ranger’s—should have been mixed, some black, some brown. You’re working on statistical averages, of course, but in a litter of ten not to find a single brown puppy coming from those two parents? That’s highly unlikely.”

  “Jack told me himself that a number of his Poodles carried for brown.”

  “His do,” Aunt Peg said emphatically. “But mine don’t. Jack might have guessed that, but he wouldn’t have known for sure. Once he had Beau, however, he had to be certain. That’s probably why he bred the dog to a brown bitch right off the bat.”

  “He told me that Solitaire had only been shown once at a very small show. There weren’t many people there to see her, and even those who did probably wouldn’t remember.”

  Aunt Peg nodded. “If Jack let it be known that Solitaire was a black bitch, who would have been able to contradict him?”

  “Nobody but me,” I said slowly. “He must have forgotten that the picture was there. No wonder he was so upset.”

  Aunt Peg stood. “It’s time to call the police. Frankly I’d hoped to have more evidence than this to offer, but if we don’t get Beau away from there soon, it may be too late.”

  She dialed the state police emergency number, then cocked the receiver away from her ear so that I could listen in. After a minute or two, I’d heard enough. The officer who answered had no concept of dominant and recessive genes and no desire to learn about them over the phone. He did not view the situation as an emergency and was not at all pleased by what he saw as Aunt Peg’s abuse of the special number. If she wished to come down and make a complaint in person, the sergeant would be happy to listen; but no immediate action could be promised until the police were fully cognizant of the situation.

  “You don’t understand,” said Aunt Peg. “Two men have died because of this dog.”

  That got his attention, but only briefly. Uncle Max’s death wasn’t listed as a homicide; Randall Tarnower’s had taken place in another state. Once again the officer reiterated that Aunt Peg would need to come down in person.

  “That moron has all the brainpower of a shoe horn!” she said, fuming, as she hung up the phone. “Now I have to go down there and explain everything all over again.”

  Already I was on my feet and dumping our dishes in the sink. “We don’t have time for that. Jack has got to realize that the dog is the link that ties him here the night that Max was killed. If I were him, I’d get rid of Beau first thing.”

  “What choice do we have? We need to have the police with us, or what’s the use? Jack would have every right to turn us away at the door. And especially after the threats he made to you, we can’t afford to force his hand.”

  “We’ll split up,” I said. “You go see the police. I’m heading up to Shalimar.”

  “No.” Aunt Peg was firm. “I don’t like that idea at all.”

  “You said it yourself just a minute ago. We don’t have a choice. I’m going, and that’s that. So hurry, okay?”

  She considered for a minute, then finally nodded. “We’ll be right behind you.”

  If I’d known how wrong she’d prove to be, I would have been very worried indeed. But I had every faith in truth, justice, and the American way, and was fully convinced that the police would come roaring to the rescue as soon as they understood the facts. They’d be fifteen minutes behind me. Twenty, tops.

  I managed the trip in just over an hour, which meant that I broke the speed limit all the way. That was more than enough time to think about what I was going to do. As I saw it, the trick was to avoid a confrontation. I’d simply slip in quietly and keep an eye on things to make sure that Jack didn’t do anything clever before the police could get there.

  It was dusk when I arrived and getting darker by the minute, which suited my purposes perfectly. I drove past the Shalimar gateposts and left the Volvo parked by the side of the road ten yards farther on. Two long minutes at a rapid jog left me utterly winded, but within viewing distance of the huge stone house and kennel beyond.

  Breathing heavily, I leaned against a tree at the top of the driveway and studied my approach. A small light glowed softly above the front door, but other than that the front of the house was unlit. The kennel and the pool house were both completely dark. Beau could be in any one of those three places. I would have had the dog inside with me, but since I’d never seen any Poodles in Jack’s house, I guessed he was more likely to choose the kennel.

  Stealthily I crept around the side of the house. A light was on in the library window, and as I drew near I could hear someone talking. I dropped to my hands and knees on the soft turf and covered the remaining distance at a crawl. From beneath the sill of the open window, Jack’s voice was clear. He seemed to be speaking on the telephone.

  “What do you mean you haven’t left yet?” he was saying furiously. “I expected you to be here by now.” He listened briefly, then said, “Do you think I care if it’s your anniversary? The woman’s been here twice already; who knows who she’s filed a report with? I don’t think anything could happen this quickly, but just to be on the safe side I want the dog moved. Tonight. No, I can’t bring him to you. If there are questions to be answered, I want to be here. How would it look if I weren’t?”

  I’d heard enough to realize that just keeping an eye on things wasn’t going to be good enough. If Jack succeeded in getting Beau away from us a second time, he’d make sure we never found the dog again. Whoever he’d been speaking to might arrive in five minutes or in half an hour. I couldn’t take the chance that he might beat the police. I had to find Beau first and get him out of there before it was too late.

  Still on my hands and knees, and giving thanks to Berglund’s gardeners every inch of the way, I continued around the house until I was clear of the windows. Then I pulled myself up into a low crouch and dashed across the darkened yard.

  I reached the pool house and flattened into the shadow of its walls, waiting for the outcry I was half sure would follow. My heart was beating loudly enough to feel like a tangible presence on the still night; but as the moments passed and no one charged out of the house in outraged pursuit, it slowly settled and I was able to get on with the job at hand.

  Cautiously I pushed my face up against the nearest window. It was too dark inside the pool house to make out anything, much less the shadowy presence of a black dog. The door was on the side of the building that faced the house, but there were two windows in back. The first held firm, but the second grated open grudgingly, making far more noise than was prudent under the circumstances.

  Immediately I stopped tugging, settling for a crack merely an inch wide. It was enough for what I needed to do. I knelt down and applied my lips to the opening, then softly called Beau’s name. There was no welcoming bark, no answering whine. No one was home.

  So much for simple solutions, and on to round two.

  The kennel—my next conquest—presented a whole new set of problems. Chief among them was how to get into the building without setting off the inevitable noisy chorus. And then secondly, once inside, how to determine quickly and in the dark which of the dozen or so black Standard Poodles housed there might be Beau.

  Aunt Peg, I thought, I hope you’re hurrying.

  From the pool house it was only a matter of yards to the bushes beside the kennel. I raced across the dark expanse, then stopped to listen. So far, all was quiet. Sneaking like a thief,
I made my way around the building to the side farthest from the house, then stooped down and groped around until I found a large flat rock. I reached back and lobbed it upward in a high, soaring arc. The rock flew over the runs and landed on the roof of the kennel with a satisfyingly loud thud.

  The response was instantaneous. Immediately the night was filled with the clamor of a dozen outraged, awakened Poodles. It was all I’d hoped for and more. I leaned back against the darkened building to await Berglund’s reaction.

  It didn’t take long. At once the kennel lit up like a torch. Floodlights illuminated all four sides of the building and spread out over the lawn beyond, illuminating with equal clarity just how stupid I’d been. I’d expected Jack to march out and have a quick look around with a flashlight. Instead, he had the whole place covered like Fort Knox.

  Before there was time to say much more than, “Oh damn!” Jack appeared at the back door. Maybe he’d be satisfied to look around the yard from there, I prayed.

  He wasn’t.

  When he pushed the screen door open, I jumped back behind the cover of the kennel and sprinted with all the speed that panic could induce. Thirty feet of open lawn ended at a belt of woods that separated his house from the next. Scrambling for the nearest cover, I lost the sleeve of my shirt to a bush full of thorns as I dove headfirst into a prickly nest of pine needles and twigs.

  I got myself turned around and peered out through the bushes, waiting for Jack to come storming around the side of the kennel. He never did. Instead he’d gone inside, and I was able to follow his progress though the building by the lights that switched on and off in the various rooms.

  All my instincts told me to stay put, forget the dog, and never venture out again; and for a full five minutes, I listened. By that time I was cold and damp, and both legs had gone to sleep. Movement of any sort had begun to feel inviting. Staying just inside the strip of trees, I crept along the ground until I was able to see the front of the kennel.