In Dog We Trust

by Beth Kendrick

“You’ve had a lot going on. I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

  “We’ll practice this morning.” Jocelyn glanced one more time at the papers before shoving them into a kitchen drawer. “I can’t obsess over these anymore. I have to be productive today, starting with about fourteen loads of laundry.”

  “I’ll help you with that if you’ll come help me later.” Bree smiled brightly. “Deal?”

  “Depends. What do you need help with?”

  “Apparently, a bunch of renters had a spaghetti fight on their last night at the cottage on McMillan Road.”

  Jocelyn winced. “With or without red sauce?”

  “With red sauce and meatballs.”

  “Ugh.”

  “I know.” Bree scrunched up her nose. “So, you in?”

  “For the girl who brings me crisis doughnuts at eight o’clock in the morning after a stakeout? You know I’m in.”

  * * *

  • • •

  “We finally made it, buddy.” Jocelyn reached into the backseat and gave Curtis an ear scratch. “Better late than never.”

  Curtis, who had been whining and leaving nose prints all over the car windows since they departed Black Dog Bay more than two hours ago, started wagging his mighty tail. Jocelyn could feel the reverberation all the way through the driver’s seat.

  She texted Lois, the show handler, to announce their arrival and arrange a meeting place. Her phone chimed almost immediately with Lois’s response: FINALLY. Meet me at door 5. Right now.

  “Hmph.” Jocelyn gathered up Curtis’s leash and a duffel bag full of supplies. “I don’t think I care for her tone.”

  Curtis leaned his full weight against the car door as if this might somehow hasten his exit.

  “I’m going as fast as I can.” She opened the door and Curtis practically barrel-rolled into the parking lot. “Dude, you need to dial it down before showtime. Pretend you’re a professional.”

  But Curtis wasn’t in a “professional” kind of mood. Goofy, charming, exuberant, yes. He pranced through the parking lot, stopping to greet every dog and person within radius of the leash, as though he were campaigning for mayor.

  “Save it for after the competition.” Jocelyn tugged on the leash. “Your handler is getting antsy.”

  Sure enough, Lois was pacing and muttering under the placard for door five. Curtis was thrilled to see her. He reared up on his hind legs, planted his front paws on the handler’s shoulders, and gave her a shameless, slobbery dog kiss right on the lips.

  “Off.” Lois redirected him to a sitting position with a single hand signal.

  “Sorry we’re late.” Jocelyn had started sweating from the stress and the pace. “I had to wait for the vet to come check on the puppies, and then Curtis needed like four potty breaks. Next time, I’ll cut off his water supply an hour before we leave.”

  “You’re late.” Lois appeared to have gotten even more short-tempered and sharp-featured since the reading of Mr. Allardyce’s will. “His ring time is in less than an hour, and he still needs to be groomed.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jocelyn repeated. “I brought all his stuff. If there’s anything I can do to help . . .”

  “You’ve done enough. Mr. Allardyce would never have allowed this.” Lois snatched the duffel bag and charged off with Curtis at her side.

  Jocelyn tried to ignore the burn of shame settling into her chest. She distracted herself by admiring the huge variety of dogs: Great Danes and greyhounds, beagles and borzois, collies and Catahoula leopard dogs. The show took place in a huge, open convention center, portioned into individual competition rings with glorified baby gates. At first, all the dogs of each breed looked alike to her untrained eye, but upon closer inspection, she could see differences in the slope of a spine or the width of an ear.

  There were a dozen poodles all strutting their stuff in a circle, and a group of collies in the next ring. Two rings over, basenjis marched around the judge with military precision and a palpable sense of competition.

  Then there were the Labradors.

  In the midst of all this purebred preening and swanning, the Labs were relegated to a corner ring because they simply could not contain their exuberance. Puppies and seniors alike bounced around, trying to befriend one another while their trainers struggled to keep them on task. The judge received countless licks while checking teeth.

  Fifty minutes later, Curtis took the ring. His groomer had managed to work miracles, and the slightly scruffy black dog had been transformed into a sleek and regal show specimen. As he trotted into the competition, his eyes were shining, his coat was glossy, and his teeth were pearly white.

  Lois, on the other hand, appeared a bit bedraggled. Her hair had started to come loose from the bun at the nape of her neck, and she had drops of what appeared to be drool on her light gray suit jacket. She held the end of the braided leather lead so tightly that her knuckles were white, and Jocelyn shuddered to imagine what shenanigans Curtis had been up to backstage.

  The judge made his entrance, a ruddy-faced man in a tweed suit and red bow tie, and the Labs settled down as much as it was possible for Labs to settle down. One by one, the dogs stacked, striking a pose and allowing the judge to inspect their bone structure and musculature. Then each dog took a turn loping to the edge of the ring and back to show off his or her stride.

  Curtis focused completely on Lois during their initial stack and stride. Jocelyn let out a sigh of relief, convinced that the class clown had finally decided to get serious. Then Lois pivoted and commanded Curtis to stack again. Curtis looked up at Lois with a playful canine grin, lunged up, planted his front paws on her shoulders, and gave her a “hug.”

  The crowd erupted into cheers and laughter. Even the judge cracked a smile. This was all Curtis needed to encourage him to do it again.

  Delighted with his dead-last finish, Curtis took an unauthorized victory lap to soak up a final round of applause from the audience.

  Lois stormed out of the ring and slapped Curtis’s lead into Jocelyn’s palm. “What have you been doing to this dog?”

  “Nothing!”

  “That’s certainly obvious.”

  Jocelyn glanced down at Curtis, who all but winked back. “He was just fooling around. He loves attention.”

  “That’s the problem. He was fooling around when he should have been working. Have you been training him at all?”

  “We fit it in when we can, but Hester just had her puppies and I’ve been so busy with work and dealing with the move—”

  “You should be running him through basic obedience commands every day.”

  “But—”

  “You should be running them all through the basic commands every day.”

  “Okay, but here’s the thing: I’m not a dog trainer.”

  Lois smirked. “I’m aware. Believe me, I’m aware.”

  “I’ve read a few books and watched a few YouTube videos, but I have no idea what a good stack looks like.”

  “Then figure it out,” Lois snapped. “These dogs are your only job now.”

  Jocelyn’s patience finally ran out. “You don’t get to tell me what to do. I never did one single training session with Curtis the whole time I worked for Mr. Allardyce. That’s not my job. My job is to love them and take them outside and make sure they have a happy, healthy life.”

  Lois’s expression settled into grim lines. “Mr. Allardyce entrusted these dogs to you. Along with a great deal of money.”

  “Right. So maybe it was more important to him that they be well loved rather than perfectly trained.”

  “Mr. Allardyce liked to win. I’m Curtis’s handler; it’s my responsibility to make sure he continues to win.” Lois threw up her hands. “I have no idea what Mr. Allardyce was thinking. He wanted champions. He wanted dogs that could carry on a legacy. You can’t even get them to a show on tim
e.”

  Jocelyn blinked. “Are you calling me an unfit parent?”

  “Yes, if today is any indication.”

  Jocelyn turned on her heel. “Let’s go, Curtis.”

  “You can walk away, but this is going to follow you,” Lois called after her. “Everybody who’s anybody in the dog world saw what happened today. It was a disgrace.”

  Jocelyn turned back around, spreading her hands in bewilderment. “What’s the big deal, really? He had an off day. All dogs have off days.”

  “He was unprepared and unprofessional. He deserves better than the likes of you.”

  Jocelyn regarded Curtis, who was gazing up at her with mischief in his sparkling brown eyes. “He looks pretty happy to me.”

  “You don’t know him like I do. I’m his handler.” Lois fumed.

  “Yeah, well, I’m his owner,” Jocelyn retorted.

  “You’re his guardian. Big difference.” Lois folded her arms. “An owner can’t be replaced. A guardian can.”

  chapter 22

  “Hmm.” Murray Tumboldt, Esquire, adjusted his reading glasses and continued to pore over the documents on the polished mahogany desk. “Hmmm.” He paused to turn a page. “Hmmm.”

  Jocelyn fidgeted in the tall wingback chair, her anxiety mounting by the moment. “Hmmm good or hmmm bad?”

  The lawyer looked up at her and folded his hands. “What sort of relationship do you have with this man?”

  “Liam?” Jocelyn blinked. “Well, I . . . We delivered a litter of puppies together. Had an impromptu stakeout. And we may have kissed once. We were supposed to be going on a date, but obviously that’s off now.”

  His expression remained totally neutral. “Are you on speaking terms with him?”

  “Yes. Although I doubt he’d want to hear what I’d have to say right now.”

  “As an attorney, let me give you some advice about attorneys: We’re expensive. We’re argumentative. We tend to drag legal matters out for much longer than you think they should take.”

  “So . . . you’re saying I should settle this with a fistfight behind the Whinery on Saturday night?”

  The lawyer didn’t smile. “I’m suggesting that you both might be more satisfied with the outcome if you could discuss terms face-to-face.”

  Jocelyn stopped fidgeting. “Do you think he has a case?”

  “In strict accordance with the letter of the law, no, I do not. But if this case were to make it in front of a judge, I can’t predict how it would go.”

  “That’s not very reassuring.”

  “Judges have a lot of discretion when it comes to interpreting and applying legal precedent.”

  “Then what’s the point of even having a will?” Jocelyn demanded. “Why even bother if everyone can challenge everything willy-nilly?” She heard the panic in her voice and tried to quell it. “Why go to the trouble of estate planning when your heirs are just going to have to roll the dice and hope the judge had his coffee that morning?”

  The attorney’s tone was patronizing. “It’s not quite as capricious as that, although there was that one case during my clerkship . . . never mind, another story for another time. At any rate, my advice to parties in situations like this is always to try to work it out amicably first. Amicably and privately.”

  Jocelyn pounded the desktop. “He’s being completely unreasonable!”

  “Yes, he is.” The lawyer continued to ooze condescension. “And I’m sure he’s doing so on the advice of his legal advisers. It gives them room to negotiate.”

  Jocelyn sat back in the chair, crossed her legs, and stacked her hands one on top of the other. She’d worn a suit (her only suit) to this meeting so she would feel and look like a woman who commanded respect. Yelling and smacking the table wasn’t the image she was going for.

  “You’re saying I should give him something even though he’s entitled to nothing,” she said crisply.

  “I’m saying it’s going to cost you dearly in terms of time and money if you don’t.” The lawyer glanced back down at the papers. “And as far as what he’s entitled to, well . . . he was Mr. Allardyce’s son. His only child, as far as we know.”

  He didn’t say out loud that Jocelyn herself was entitled to nothing by virtue of blood or birth. He didn’t have to. She received the message, loud and clear. And frankly, she was sick and tired of all the implications that she was lucky, that she was undeserving, that she had somehow cheated the system. When the going got tough, when Hester was in labor on a dark night full of hail, none of these lawyers or accountants had helped her out.

  Only Liam had done that.

  “He can’t have the dogs,” Jocelyn decreed. “Not the dogs and not the beach house. Those are my non-negotiables.”

  “That’s more than reasonable,” the lawyer said. “I’d consider offering him a settlement of cash or stock.”

  “So this is what it’s like to be rich.” Jocelyn smoothed the polyester of her suit skirt. “Paying people off so they’ll go away.”

  “Happens all the time,” the lawyer said.

  “Fine. I’ll ask him what he wants and get back to you.”

  “Excellent. Now, there’s one other piece of business to discuss.” The lawyer took off his glasses and put them aside.

  Jocelyn tensed. “What?”

  “I received a phone call this morning from an acquaintance of yours.”

  “Who?”

  “Lois Gunther.”

  Jocelyn crossed and uncrossed her ankles. “Are you serious?”

  “I’m afraid so. She expressed some concerns about the welfare of the dogs.”

  “This is ridiculous. Curtis—he’s the big fluffy goofball—was clowning around at a conformation show this weekend.”

  “She said as much.”

  “And . . . ? She called you to tattle on me?”

  He inclined his head. “I don’t think we’ll hear from her again—she was angry and annoyed, but not litigious. I think she just wanted you to know that she’d contacted me.”

  “What does she think you’re going to do? Smack my hand with a ruler?”

  “She wants to make sure the dogs are well looked after.”

  “They are. You’re welcome to do a welfare check any time.” Jocelyn collected the papers from the attorney’s desk and prepared to go.

  Mr. Tumboldt slid his spectacles back on. “You’re leaving?”

  “Yep. I don’t need this right now. I need a strong drink, a hard-as- nails negotiator that isn’t costing me hundreds of dollars per hour, and the human equivalent of a Magic 8-Ball.”

  “Where are you going to find all that?”

  “My laundry room, obviously.”

  * * *

  • • •

  “She actually called your lawyer to complain?” Bree nudged Curtis with her foot until the big galoot got up from the pile of sheets and towels he was napping in. “What a crybaby.”

  “Lois has been mean-girling me since the day I met her.” Jocelyn threw pillowcases into Mr. Allardyce’s high-tech dryer as though she were pitching for the major leagues. “I’ve been nothing but nice to her, and she stabbed me in the back.”

  “Of course she did.” Bree seemed almost amused at Jocelyn’s dismay. “You should have expected that.”

  “But why? I saved Carmen’s life.” Jocelyn tossed in a dryer sheet and straightened up. “And Mr. Allardyce knew her forever. He liked her. He trusted her to help me with the dogs after he passed.”

  “But he left all his money to you,” Bree pointed out. “What’d he give her?”

  Jocelyn tried to remember the details from the reading of the will. “Three grand and some trophies, I think.”

  “I’d be pissed, too.”

  “Being pissed is one thing. Starting a custody battle is quite another.”

 
“Eh, I wouldn’t worry too much about her,” Bree said. “I’d worry about Liam. He’s going to be much harder to get rid of.”

  “Is that a professional legal opinion or a palm reader prediction?”

  Bree stuck out her tongue. “Both. And it’s worth exactly what you paid for it.”

  “Well, since you’re handing out free advice, what do you suggest I do to get rid of him?”

  Bree mulled this over. “That won’t preclude me from ever passing the character and fitness requirements of the bar exam?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d listen to your attorney. Track the guy down and settle this like adults. Make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

  “‘Listen to your attorney,’” Jocelyn mimicked. “Ugh. You’re already one of them.”

  “If only that were true.” Bree sighed. “I could skip three years of studying and some serious student loan debt.”

  Jocelyn made a mental note to talk to her co-trustee about setting up a generous scholarship for first-generation law students. She would use it to honor their proud canine legacy: The George Clooney Allardyce Scholarship. Bree must’ve suspected something, because she shook her head while she measured out detergent.

  “Don’t even,” Bree warned.

  “You don’t know what I’m thinking,” Jocelyn said. “Do you? Stop reading my mind.”

  “I read hands, not minds, but I know you too well.”

  No need to press this issue now. There were still months before the semester started. Jocelyn steered the conversation back to the immediate crisis. “How am I supposed to make Liam an offer he can’t refuse when I can’t even find him? I have no idea where he’s staying.”

  “There’s two ways to go about this,” Bree said. “Option one: You play sweet and dumb, wait for him to pick you up for your big date, and then tie him to a chair and make him listen.”

  “I’ll take option two, whatever it is.”

  “Option two is, we run a full recon mission on him right now and show up unannounced at his doorstep. Surprise, you lawsuit-happy jackass!”

  Jocelyn nodded. “I like it.”