by Susan Conant
The wine in my mouth began to burn my tongue. “Your stomach must be feeling better,” I said.
“Could’ve happened to anyone.” He vigorously forked the chicken thighs. “Spoor’ll do that to you, you know. It’s physical. You can’t help it. You know, I was thinking about that today, you know, trying not to put my foot in it, and suddenly it comes to me that Rita’s idea of how you clear out the old system … Well, it struck me …”
“Rita didn’t mean … She didn’t even mean the tracking course. She meant, uh, relaxation, deep breathing, that kind of thing. Your job is stressful, Kevin. That’s all she meant. I mean, take today.”
“I’m all right,” he insisted, flipping the chicken black side up.
“No one says you aren’t! The point is that you can’t do what you do without feeling the strain. That’s all. Rita wasn’t blaming you.”
Once the chicken thighs had an ebony crust on both sides, Kevin dished out equal portions for himself and for me. With the dogs following his every move, he picked up both plates, lumbered to the table, and added the final fillip: He stuck one massive thumb over the top of the Gallo jug, raised and tipped it, and dashed liberal splashes of wine over the half-raw chicken and cremated onions.
A huge grin filled the most Irish-looking face in Cambridge. If red hair can smile, Kevin’s did. “Frog food. Coq au vin,” he declared proudly as he sank to his seat. Kevin’s accent is quite good. His high school French teacher was a woman from Paris. I wished that she’d taught home ec. Kevin lifted his fork, held it poised, and gallantly commanded: “Après vous.”
Rowdy and Kimi eyed me hopefully. Kimi will steal toast right out of the toaster—if you aren’t vigilant, she’ll take half-chewed food out of your mouth—and Rowdy’s not much better. Some pretext to get up and leave my plate unguarded? Damn the splintery chicken bones. You do know about that, don’t you? Chicken bones can puncture a dog’s intestines. And undercooked—yuck, let’s face it—uncooked chicken? Swarming with salmonella. I dug in. Better me than my dogs. Dog saliva splattered to the floor. Kevin and I discussed the murder of Diane Sweet.
“She was a very hard worker,” Kevin said. “The idea was that the husband, John, did the business part, and Diane did the dogs and helped the customers. But the long and the short of it is—this isn’t what John Sweet’ll tell you, but it’s not hard to figure out—is that she’s good at everything, and he’s good for nothing. The fact of it is, what he did, when you come down to it, was he lived off his wife, and now all’s he does is ask when we’ll be out of there so’s he can open the shop up again. Guys like that make me sick.” Kevin took a forkful of onion cinders, chewed pensively, and, studying my face, said, “Now, Holly, I want you to tell me the honest-to-God’s truth. Is this the best chicken you ever ate?”
“Amazing.” Time to change the subject. “Kevin, look. If Diane Sweet was working hard—”
“Eight A.M. every day, before the place was open, nights, weekends. Open seven days a week, and she worked eight. She stayed there after it was closed, paid the bills, cleaned up, washed the dogs—”
“Well, you better believe the puppies need a bath when they get there.” You may have observed that I have a slight tendency to preach about the evils of pet shops. I’d always gone easy on Kevin, though. No matter how emphatically I’d damned the puppy mill industry, not the puppies, Kevin would somehow have felt that I was bad-mouthing Trapper, his late and very deeply lamented dog, who’d come from a pet shop. “Pet shop dogs come from puppy mills,” I said. “The puppies come from mass breeding operations, and then they’re sold to brokers, who are the people who make the big money in this, and they’re shipped all over the country.”
He ate some chicken and said dismissively, “Yeah, yeah, like on that Connie Chung thing, but not Puppy Luv.”
Connie Chung’s exposé of the puppy mill industry, “The Price the Puppy Pays,” was on TV a couple of years ago. The only thing wrong with the program was the title. The ones who really pay the price are the stud dogs and the brood bitches. The puppies get out.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “Puppy Luv’s no different. Yeah, maybe now and then they buy from a few local people, but that’s the exception. If you saw Connie Chung, you already know that.”
He speared a piece of chicken and pointed his fork at me. “You’re wrong.”
“I hate to tell you, but I’m not. Look, the thing is that the dogs aren’t responsible. I’m not blaming them. And there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with them. It’s a matter of probabilities. If you buy from a pet shop, the odds are against you. With Trapper, you lucked out. But the fact is—”
“Naw, it’s not that,” Kevin said. “Puppy Luv gets them from here.”
“If here is Logan Airport,” I said.
“Naw. That’s what Diane Sweet was doing last night. She was getting a delivery from a local guy. The guy brought the puppies, and he left, and she never got to wash them. This is a local guy.”
I’m hard to convince. “Well, then, it was a local distributor,” I said, “someone who picked them up at the airport and took a cut of the profits. Just because she didn’t go to the airport herself …” I’d been cutting big pieces of chicken and swallowing them whole, un-chewed and thus untasted, or that was the idea. A raw lump seemed to stick in my throat.
“Like I said, Holly, local dogs.”
“Did you see their papers?” I rested my fork on my plate and drank some wine. “Kevin, are those puppies all right? You know, a lot of the time—”
“Here we go again,” he said. “Like I told you, the puppies were all over, and the whole place is the worst mess you ever saw. The material evidence is … it’s the lab’s mess now, and it’s going to take weeks. But it’s all under control, and the dogs are all right. And do me a favor and don’t ask if your malamute’s there, okay? It’s there, and it’s not going anywhere, at least not until our guys have finished.”
“Did I—?”
“You didn’t have to,” he said. “Aren’t you going to finish that?”
A lone chicken thigh remained on my plate. “I’m getting pretty full.” I faked a martyred smile. “And you didn’t give yourself very much.” Before he could object, I stabbed the thigh and transferred it to his plate. “Kevin, uh, Diane Sweet was strangled?”
“Manual strangulation. But now it looks like it was a definite second choice. You know these, uh, what do you call ‘em, dog beds. Big pillows, wrapped in plastic, like that dry cleaner’s stuff, and it looks like what happened was that the perp grabbed one of them and held it over her face and started to smother her. One of these, uh, dog beds is missing the plastic, and the M.E. says there’s traces of this, uh, plastic film in her mouth. And a piece of it got caught on one of her earrings.”
“But …?”
“Too slow, and he got tired of waiting. Or she fought harder than he counted on. This was a young, healthy woman. She dug in her fingernails. There’s plastic under them and on her face and around the head.”
“But, Kevin, wouldn’t it be harder to strangle her? Without the dog bed over her face, she’d be able to see. It just seems … I don’t know. Without something over her face, wouldn’t she sort of have more leverage?”
“Yeah, but she’d been fighting him off. She couldn’t have had much strength left. It was an awful way to go. Pretty woman, hard worker. It’s a damn shame. She never should’ve been there all alone. This good-for-nothing husband never should’ve let her do that.” Kevin gnawed thoughtfully and added, “Unless …”
Rita maintains that what keeps Kevin single is his relationship with his mother. She’s wrong. The truth is that he fears for his life.
I knew what Kevin was going to say. I beat him to it. “Well, I was wondering about the husband. Except …”
“Yeah, the goose that laid the golden egg,” Kevin said. “But if you ask him, John Sweet, he was the head honcho, and all’s his wife did was the scut work, is what it boils down to.”
&n
bsp; “Did the Sweets, uh, not get along? Did they fight?”
“Not so’s the employees and the neighbors noticed, not the ones we talked to so far. Sounds more like they both went their separate ways, and his separate way was staying home watching TV and letting his wife support him, and her separate way was running the pet shop, working all the time so’s he could—”
I’d had about all I could take. “Kevin, I know … Look, Kevin, nobody should have to die like that, and I’m really sorry, but no matter how hard Diane Sweet worked, she was in a very dirty business. It’s like what your mother’s always saying: Satan finds work for idle hands to do. That’s whose work Diane Sweet really did, you know. Plenty of people make a good living selling pet supplies and food, and doing grooming. Diane Sweet didn’t have to sell puppies.”
“If you’d’ve seen—”
“If I’d seen her body, I’d probably feel sorrier for her, okay, but I still wouldn’t think that running Puppy Luv was a good thing to do. Kevin, in Kansas—”
“I’m going to say it again. The puppies they got there didn’t come from Kansas, and they didn’t come from the airport.”
“Then where did they come from? Kevin, if what we’re talking about is Kansas in Massachusetts, I want you to tell me where. In a way, you know, this is my business. I am a dog writer. Maybe there’s something I can—”
“Not on your life,” he said. “Some of these people … Well, they’re not nice people.”
“You see? They aren’t nice people, and Diane Sweet was one of them. Kevin, compared with the dogs on the average puppy farm, this chicken we just ate had a beautiful life.” I looked down at my blackened plate of greasy bones. “And,” I added, “if that’s happening around here … Hey, Kevin, are you, uh, assuming that if it wasn’t the husband, then, uh, what happened was that she basically interrupted a burglary? Not interrupted, but that someone broke in, and she was there? Because, Kevin, Puppy Luv is a storefront. It has big windows. A burglar would’ve had to be pretty stupid to think the place was empty. Wouldn’t a burglar look in the front before he broke in through the back?”
“The theory is she was out back where they do the grooming. There’s a cubbyhole of an office there and a stock room, bunch of little rooms in the back.”
“Maybe,” I agreed, “but think about the people she must’ve dealt with. In terms of buying the puppies, you said it yourself. They’re not nice people. Also … I tried to tell you this morning. Kevin, with Trapper, you lucked out, but—if you don’t believe me, ask Steve, if you want—Diane Sweet sold a lot of dogs that ended up getting sick and costing people a ton of money. And breaking their hearts, too. It could’ve been someone who bought a dog from Puppy Luv and had some kind of nightmare experience, someone who really hated Diane Sweet. Anybody would’ve had the sense to make it look like a robbery. The point is, Kevin, that running a pet shop isn’t like running a bakery or something. It isn’t neutral. Dogs get hurt, puppies get hurt, and the people who buy the puppies get hurt. And on the other end, the brokers make a whole lot of money, which means … Well, I’m not sure how, but I guess it means they’ve got a lot to lose. Anyway, there was money and pain on both sides. And Diane Sweet was right in the middle.”
“ ‘Caught in the middle,’ ” Kevin intoned dramatically. He carried our plates to the sink and put the bones down the garbage disposal.
“Laugh if you want, but it’s true. Except the ones who usually get caught in the middle are the dogs. Diane Sweet was an exception.”
Kevin squirted a stream of generic liquid detergent into the sink. Suds billowed. “I hate to be the one to tell you, Holly, but you’re a dog snob. You ever owned a mutt in your life?”
“That is not fair! Kevin, I take pains … I don’t even use the word mutt.”
He grunted.
“I’ve never owned an Akita,” I said. “Or an English setter or a Keeshond. I’ve never owned a Border collie. Yet. There are hundreds of—”
“Liar,” he said.
“Okay! I like purebred dogs. I like goldens and malamutes and Border collies and a hundred other breeds. I like … maybe this will sound stupid, but I like who they are. And, yeah, I like the way they look, how beautiful they are. But that just makes me a dog person. Or one kind of dog person. It doesn’t make me a snob. And for your information, dog people are the least snobby people in the world.” About people, anyway. About dogs? Well, that’s complicated, but don’t judge us too harshly. I mean, has there ever been a truly classless society?
Kevin looked up from the sink, but he said nothing.
Silence is evidently an effective interrogation technique. I blundered on. “I could own a mixed breed.”
“Big of you.”
“It’s not like that! And besides, one of the things about pet shops is that what they’re selling is dog snobbery, if you want to call it that, only they’re ripping people off, because when most people see the signs for AKC puppies, they think they’re getting show dogs. I saw an ad somewhere that said ‘AKC certified puppies,’ for God’s sake, which is just bullshit, because all the AKC certifies is pedigrees, not dogs. And if you see the pedigree of a pet shop dog, well, if you know about dogs, all it looks like is the pedigree of a puppy mill dog. And people are paying a lot more at these goddamned pet shops than they’d pay a good breeder. Look, I’ve got a pedigree here that’ll … Let me show you.”
I went to my study, dug out the copy I’d made of Missy’s pedigree, put it on the table, and made Kevin leave the dishes and look at it. You too, of course.
“What this is, is a family tree,” I told him, “only you read it from left to right. It’s the ancestors of Princess Melissa Sievers.” I put a finger on Missy’s registered name. “She’s a malamute.”
“Geez, no kidding,” Kevin said.
“Yeah, no kidding,” I said. “She came from Puppy Luv. Now just look at the top half, above her name. That part’s her sire’s side. Yukon Duke. Her father. Okay? And above and to the right of his name is his sire, Sir Snowy the Fourth. And below and to the right is his dam, his mother, Stupid Little Sally. Classic puppy mill names. Especially that one. Obviously. Poor … anyway, the bottom half of the pedigree is her mother’s side, Icekist Sissy, and on her side, these are all famous kennel names. Famous, uh, if you know anything about malamutes. Anyway, for Puppy Luv’s prices, you ought to get the bottom half of this pedigree, but what you get is the top half, in other words, a puppy mill dog.”
You do know how to read a pedigree, don’t you? Start at the top right. Oh, and remember that the AKC is a dog registry, not a spelling checker. Anyway, start at the top right. Sir Snowy II and S and S Queen of the Artic—yeah, Artic. These people can’t even spell—produced Sir Snowy III, who was bred to a bitch named LJS Artie Lady (Caesar the Great ex JJs Molly). Got it now? Yes, indeed, Sir Snowy IV and Stupid Little Sally had the same sire, Sir Snowy III. And the breeding of Caesar the Great to LJS Artie Lady? Well, look for yourself.
Well, when Kevin absorbed that part, his exhausted face showed the only color I’d seen there that day. “This has got to be some kind of a mistake,” he said with cold moral outrage.
* * *
Sir Snowy II
Sir Snowy III
S And S Queen of the Artic
Sir Snowy IV
Caesar The Great
LJS Artic Lady
JJs Molly
Yukon Duke
Sir Snowy II
Sir Snowy III
S And S Queen of the Artic
Stupid Little Sally
Caesar The Great
LJS’ Queenie
LJS Artie Lady
Princess Melissa Sievers
Ch. Malsong Needa Hug
Ch. Icebound Peak Experience, CD
Ch. Icebound Follow Your Bliss
Ch. Icekist He’ll Have To Go
Kotzebue Kearsage of Beaufort
Beaufort Kotzebue Belle
Ch. Happy Daze of Kaktovik
Icekist
Sissy
Kaltag Sitka’s Kaktovik
Ch. Kotzebue Kaltag of Kaktovik
Kaktovik Pandora of Kaltag
Ch. Icekist Family Tradition
Beaufort’s Bering Bounder
Ch. Icekist Honky Tonk Angel
Ch. Icekist You Win Again
* * *
“If it’s any comfort to you, puppy mills are notorious for lousy records,” I assured him. “The dam’s pedigree is accurate. Those are reputable breeders.”
I filled Kevin in on a little background. Ch. Icebound Peak Experience, C.D., was owned by a psychiatrist and his wife, but maybe that’s obvious, and if you know anything about malamutes, I don’t have to mention that Ch. Happy Daze of Kaktovik was bred by Helen Drummond, whose dogs all have names like Hurricane Drummer, Halcyon Diamond, that kind of thing. The Kaktovik dogs are pure Kotzebue, the line of mals that originated at the Chinook Kennels in the nineteen thirties, and, if you’re a historian of the breed, you’ll realize that the names of two of the Beaufort dogs, Kearsage and Belle, pay homage to two dogs killed in Antarctica on the Bird expeditions. Pandora is another thirties sled dog name, of course.
“Kaktovik Pandora of Kaltag was never shown,” I told Kevin, “but she contributed a lot to the breed.” I explained how. In detail.
Just as I was about to launch into a fascinating, if somewhat lengthy, description of Lois Metzler’s foundation bitch, Kevin interrupted me by pointing to Missy’s paternal line. “These two,” he said. “These LJS ones.”
“Yeah,” I said. “If there are any genetic problems there …”
“Six toes,” Kevin said.
“I’ve never heard of … but, yeah, that’s the idea. On the maternal side, it isn’t just that these people show their dogs … I mean, that’s part of it, but the really important thing is that these breeders know their pedigrees back to Adam and Eve, and they understand genetics, and they screen. But with these puppy mill dogs, there could be anything, hereditary blindness, you name it, which is why this bitch, Missy, shouldn’t be used in breeding. The breeder, Walter Simms, whoever he is, is obviously some guy in Missouri or somewhere who doesn’t know OFA from CIA …”