by Susan Conant
“I hunt around,” Lois said, “but, of course, half of the stuff I see, I won’t buy. The malamutes look like Siberians or God knows what else. Coffee?”
I accepted the offer and took a seat at the table, which had a couple of places cleared for eating, but seemed mainly to serve as Lois’s desk. Stacks of typed pages, newsletters, premiums lists for shows, and issues of dog magazines covered most of the surface.
“That’s my contract right there,” Lois said as she filled two mugs from a miraculously dog-free coffee maker. As I’ve mentioned, Lois grew up in Nashville, and you could hear her hometown in her speech, especially in the soft way she said contract. “You can see for yourself. If they decide to sell the dog, I’ve got first refusal. They need my permission to transfer ownership, and they need it to breed. It’s a standard contract.”
I glanced at it. Among other things, if the pup had a serious illness at the time of purchase or if the pup developed hip dysplasia within two years, you got a new dog or your money back. Standard? Yes, for an ethical breeder. According to any standard pet shop contract, of course, under absolutely no circumstances do you ever get your money back.
Lois gave me my coffee. I will not describe the containers from which I spooned sugar and poured heavy cream. Suffice it to say they both had tails. “The one that’s involved is from He’ll Have to Go and Family Tradition,” I said.
“Jim and Hank,” said Lois, heaving herself into a seat. “Funny name for a bitch, but, yeah, that’s the one. I’ve been on this since yesterday morning. I’ve been too busy to do the follow-ups I should’ve been doing all along, so I’ve been getting caught up. But I’ll tell you, this is a heavy price to pay for being busy, if you ask me.” A thin layer of moisture coated Lois’s blunt face. Her skin and eyes were tinged with gray.
“So you’ve already tracked down …?”
“Well, I started with the summer before last, a year and a half ago, because I always screen my buyers, always, but that was the time I might’ve got taken, because I had a lot of dogs at the time, and I bred three litters that summer.” Her little eyes scanned my face. “And if what you’re thinking is that three litters is too many, you’re wrong, because I’ll tell you, those dogs are doing very, very well.”
Lois went on to tell me about three dogs who’d already finished—finished their breed championships—and some others who had their first majors—major wins—and so forth and so on. The record was impressive, especially for such young dogs, all under two years old. I kept nodding and murmuring approval, but all the while I was thinking of Icekist Sissy. Ending up as a brood bitch in a puppy mill is no one’s idea of “doing very, very well.”
Before long, I got tired of listening. Also, of course, I was impatient to hear what Lois had discovered. “About Icekist Sissy,” I said. “What did you find out?”
“Yuppie couple,” she said. “They called. Ames, their name was. I told them to come see the puppies, and they did, and they seemed, I don’t know, okay. They both did some computer stuff, so they were gone all day, but they had a fenced yard. And besides that, they’d already put up a kennel. So they sounded all right.”
Lots of breeders, including Betty Burley, who’s supercareful about buyers, share that strong bias in favor of any potential puppy buyer whose yard is fenced. I’m not so sure. What does a fenced yard really guarantee except the presence of a handy place to neglect the dog?
“They didn’t know anything,” Lois added, meaning, of course, anything about malamutes, “but they seemed all right. So I sold them a bitch from the third litter. And they signed a contract.”
“And then?”
“And what I know now—I talked to him yesterday—is that they both lost their jobs, cutbacks, first her, then him. They were living in Acton, but the only job he could find was in Hartford, Connecticut, so they had to move, and they rented an apartment. And that’s when they sold the puppy.”
“Without calling you?”
“Well, according to him, they tried, and they couldn’t reach me, but you can take that with a grain of salt. They put the contract in a file drawer and forgot about it, if you ask me, even though this was only maybe two months after they bought the puppy. So, anyway, they put an ad in one of these little freebie papers, and they sold her.”
“To a guy named Walter Simms,” I said confidently.
Lois corrected me. “Rinehart. Joe Rinehart.”
“Oh,” I said. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
“He’s supposed to live in Burlington—Massachusetts, not Vermont—and I must’ve called twenty times, but all I get’s an answering machine.”
Burlington is yet another jewel on Greater Boston’s now-tarnished high-tech necklace, namely, Route 128.
“Did you get an address?”
“I’ve got it here somewhere,” Lois said. While she shuffled through a pile of puppy contracts, notes, and bills, I fumed. Burlington was about a half hour from Lois’s house. What was she doing just sitting here? Selling puppies, I thought.
“Here it is,” Lois said, handing me a slip of paper.
Beneath the face of a happy-looking malamute, Lois had scrawled the name Joe Rinehart, a phone number, and an address: 84 Sherwood Lane, Burlington.
She reached for a white Trimline phone that sat on top of a stack of Malamute Quarterlys on the table. “I’ll give him another try now.” She dialed, listened, and handed me the phone. A recorded male voice gave the number Lois had dialed. It went on to issue an unfriendly invitation to leave a message. Lois took the phone from me and hung up. “I keep leaving messages,” she said.
“So let’s go! Let’s just drive over there. You know, it’s possible that this is a different bitch, isn’t it? Lois, we could get there, and this one could be fine. You aren’t a hundred percent positive that this is the one, are you?”
“Ninety-nine,” Lois said, but her face was expressionless, and she made no move to get up. “I’m prepared to buy her back, you know. I’ve reconciled myself to that. And I have to keep reminding myself, I’m not the first person this has happened to.”
“Then let’s go!” I said again. “People don’t always answer their phones. Sometimes they just leave their machines on because they don’t feel like talking. Lois, someone could be there! I mean, for all we know …”
She shifted in her seat. I looked at her, but she avoided my gaze. “I can’t now,” she said. “I’ve got someone coming.”
“To look at a puppy,” I said coldly.
“Yes, as a matter of fact. These happen to be exceptional litters. I’ve had a lot of interest. These people are … Well, it’s a show home, and I’ve got to …”
I reached into my shoulder bag, pulled out Missy’s pedigree, slapped it on the table, pointed to the top half of the page, and ordered Lois to look at it. “This bitch of yours is only a year and a half old, and she’s probably been bred at least twice by now. The chances are very good that she’s sick and half starved, and you better believe that even if she’s in okay physical shape, she’s a mess otherwise, because no one’s spoken a kind word to her since she landed in this hellhole, wherever it is.”
“I’m prepared to buy her back.” Lois’s voice and gaze were strong. Fat, thin, brawny, scrawny, old, young, whatever, anyone with Alaskan malamutes has a tough streak. “You’re not a breeder, Holly. You don’t understand. I’ll pay twice the purchase price. I’ll pay more if I have to. This is one of the worst things that could happen to any breeder.”
That’s when I lost my temper. I stood up, glared, and yelled, “Lois, you are not the one this has really happened to! The one who’s really suffering is this poor half-grown puppy, Sissy, and if you gave a damn about her, you’d leave a note for these puppy buyers and come with me right now.”
She curled her lips inward, ran her tongue over them, and said mulishly, “I can’t.”
“In that case,” I said, “maybe we better get something straight. If I find this bitch,
you will take her back?”
As you may or may not understand, my question was an insult. In effect, I’d asked her whether she was an ethical breeder, and in asking, I’d suggested that the answer might be no.
Lois certainly got the point. Her little eyes blazed. “I already told you, I’ll buy her back.”
“And if I show up here with her?”
Lois looked down at the pedigree. I followed her eyes as they moved over the dogs’ names. Then, with no warning, she thrust out her fat right hand, grabbed the paper, crumpled it, and hurled it to the floor. Neither of us spoke. In the background, the radio played a Dolly Parton song. Sweat beaded on Lois’s blunt nose.
“Look, Holly, you’re trying to do the right thing, but you said it yourself. After where she’s been? You don’t know what she’s picked up there. Brucellosis, parvo, parasites—it could be anything. I just can’t have a sick dog carrying something in here. One litter out there’s only five weeks.” Lois was absolutely right. A five-week-old puppy is horribly vulnerable to infection. But she killed my sympathy. “Besides, I’m full up. I’ve got these two litters on the ground, and I did a repeat breeding of Jim and Hank, and she’s due in a week. I’d like to take this bitch, but how can I, even if she’s healthy? I don’t have room.”
Any breeder with no room to take back a single dog has no business breeding another litter, never mind two or three. Lois looked up and read my face.
“Holly, like I said, you’re not a breeder. You don’t understand. I can’t have her here, but I will buy her back. I’ll take responsibility for her. I’ll pay whatever I have to, and I’ll pay the vet bills and whatever it costs to board her. You’ve got my word on that.”
Fair enough? More than fair. The dog, the vet bills, the boarding? Not cheap.
“Actually,” I said, “I understand completely.”
And I did. I finally understood that whether or not Lois gave a damn about her bitch, she’d pay anything whatsoever to buy back her own good name.
19
Every good book on competitive dog obedience warns you to avoid numerous handler errors that will cost you points and may even make you and your dog fail to qualify. Handler errors? You give a voice command and a hand signal when the rules for an exercise permit either one but not both. If your dog lags, he’s thereby losing himself points, but if you slow your own pace to match his, you’re committing a handler error, and any decent judge will dock you points for it. Some handler errors are deliberate, of course; you decide to lose points instead of failing outright. Most are inadvertent. One accidental handler error that even the kindest or most inattentive judge can’t overlook consists of failing to get the dog into the ring at all because you got hopelessly lost on the way to the trial. The cure? A good map and a detailed local atlas.
According to the map of Burlington in my Universal Atlas of Metropolitan Boston and Eastern Massachusetts, which I consulted before pulling out of Lois Metzler’s driveway, Sherwood and Locksley lanes were dead-end streets that ran off Nottingham Road. Now, I’m not naive. In other words, as I entered Joe Rinehart’s neighborhood, I didn’t actually expect to be accosted by an evil sheriff or a band of merry men, but I’ll admit that I did envision something of a theme tract of pseudo-thatched-roof cottages and fieldstone mini-castles set amidst tall greenery at least somewhat suggestive of a forest. Even before I turned onto Sherwood, though, it was obvious that there had been profound confusion about just what movie was supposed to be shot on this set. These oddly assorted haciendas, glass-and-cedar lodges, New England colonials, Mediterranean villas, Victorian bijou mansions, and plain old big pretentious houses had a few things in common, though. Every single one had a triple garage, and they all looked as if they’d contain opulent bathrooms and ghastly lamps.
The white neo-Georgian house at 84 Sherwood Lane came as a relief in the sense that the movie was unmistakable. The tall white columns were angular instead of round, and there weren’t any oaks, of course, but the only other thing missing was a soft-sculpture Scarlett O’Hara fanning herself on the porch. I pulled into the mile-wide driveway, killed the engine, looked in the rearview mirror, and addressed the dogs. “Behave yourselves, guys, because we’re in a very exclusive neighborhood.”
Even before I got out of the car, I guessed that no one was home. A couple of plastic-bagged daily newspapers lay on the wet brown lawn. Every curtain was closed. Every blind was drawn. I didn’t hear a sound until I got to the front door, pushed the bell, and thus caused a set of chimes to inflict on my innocent ears a blessedly muffled version of—believe it or not—“That’s Amore.” Movie confusion, right? The Italian palace down the street probably got “Dixie” by mistake.
I made my way around Tara to the backyard, but found no sign of a dog—no kennel, no tie-out stake, not even a telltale pile on the grass. I went up a short flight of steps to a small, open porch that sheltered the back door of the house. On the floor lay a big sisal mat that depicted neither a dog nor anything else. The back doorbell produced a muted, tuneless ring of the chimes. A slip of white paper sticking out of a sheet-metal milk box by the door turned out to be a bill from the dairy. The box contained exactly what the bill said it did, namely, two one-quart bottles of homogenized milk and a one-pint carton of half-and-half. The name on the bill was Joseph Rinehart. I concluded that I had the right address and that Rinehart’s dairy wasn’t bilking him. Samantha Spade. The date on the bill was yesterday’s. With the professional writer’s mistrust of the printed word, I lifted out one of the bottles, eased off the silver cap, and plunged in my finger. Before my hand reached my mouth, I smelled the off odor, and, instead of licking my finger, I wiped it on my jeans.
Then I went back to the Bronco and drove home to Cambridge. Oh, I made one stop on the way. Emma’s Pizza, Huron Ave. Blame Rinehart’s chimes. The song running through my head had finally reached my stomach.
My answering machine had two messages, one from Gloria Loss, the other from my father. Both said they would call back. When Rowdy and Kimi had gobbled down their dog-show samples of all-natural lamb and rice, they eyed the rapidly accumulating pile of pizza crusts on my plate. I untied the dogs and took a handful of pizza crust. What I had in mind was a quick play-training session to work on speeding up their downs, but before I’d said a word or given a signal, Rowdy’s legs went out from under him, and about a second afterward, Kimi hit the floor, too. Great. They’d both mastered a whole new obedience exercise: the notorious Drop on Pizza.
The phone rang. Gloria was elated. “I decided I’d just show up there, not call, just show up, and—”
“You didn’t have directions,” I said sourly.
She was breathless with excitement. “I just went out there, and I thought I’d ask at a gas station or something, but I didn’t even need to. I saw the sign, and I just walked in, and the most amazing thing happened. It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”
“Oh,” I said.
“You know how there’s this sort of front room? In the front, there’s like a little shop. And the puppies are in the back.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I just sort of walked in, and there wasn’t anyone there, and then I heard people’s voices in the back, so I went there. And you won’t believe it.”
“Try me,” I said.
“This guy?”
“Ronald?”
“Yes. He was … I guess he was supposed to be cleaning out the kennels, only I guess, while he was, they started having a fight.”
“He and Janice Coakley?”
“Yes. And you won’t believe it.”
“I might,” I said, “given the opportunity.”
“The second I walked in, the exact second, he had this sort of little shovel in his hand, and it was, uh, full. And Mrs. Coakley … I guess she’d just said something to him? And he just hauled off and threw it at her!”
“The shovel?”
“No! The, uh, the … everything that was in it!”
Gloria finally found the lost word. “Pooh! He threw this gigantic shovelful of dog pooh at her.” Gloria caught her breath and added, “And he didn’t miss, either.”
“Janice Coakley must have been a little provoked,” I said.
“Provoked! I thought she was going to kill him. All I could think of was this woman that was murdered at Puppy Luv, and I thought, wow, there’s going to be a whole series of murders in pet shops, and here I am—”
“But she didn’t.” I stopped. “Or … My God, she didn’t, did she?”
“No, of course not. What she did was … It was just like a movie. She pointed her finger at him and yelled, ‘Ronald, you’re fired!’ It was totally amazing.”
“I can imagine,” I said.
“So then, honestly, it was incredible. He just left. He walked out. Just like that. And so I helped her get cleaned up, and she hired me.”
“Just like that?”
“Not exactly. It took a while. She was sort of upset.” Gloria’s voice dropped. “She was crying. It was sort of awful. And then a couple of the puppies threw up, and that’s basically how I got the job.”
“How?”
“I asked her if she wanted me to clean up, you know, after the puppies.”
“And she just hired you? Just like that?”
“Sort of. I’m, uh, kind of on probation. I’m temporary. But it was really amazing.”
Lucky, yes. Amazing? Not really. Just the work of the great semantic palindrome. You know what a palindrome is, don’t you? The same thing spelled backward and forward. Madam, I’m Adam. And semantic is meaning, right? So a semantic palindrome means the same thing both ways. Anyway, the truly amazing thing is that, so far as I know, in the entire English language, there’s only one example. Yes, you got it. Divine intervention.
After I’d reminded Gloria of her tasks at Your Local Breeder, I called Buck, who always comes through when I really need him, which is to say, whenever I’m desperate for help that has anything to do with a dog. Icekist Sissy’s story started as I’d expected. The breeder was, of course, Lois Metzler, and the first owners were Mark and Linda Ames, Lois’s yuppie couple. Sissy’s ownership had been transferred to Joseph Rinehart. The surprise was that he still owned her.