The Rita Farmer Mystery series Box Set

by Elizabeth Sims

  “But here,” said the Colonel. He opened a photo album to a glossy color photo of a male beagle posed in a commanding stance on a judging platform. Ernest’s full name, in black type in the border, was Ch. Ernest Jiggs Cognac V. The dog stood grandly, chin up, tail high, muscles poised.

  “Good-looking dog,” said Rowe. “Stud?”

  “Exactly. I showed him for four years. He’s eight now. He took seventeen all-breed best in shows, ninety-eight group wins, and hundreds of best of breeds. Do you know how valuable his semen is?”

  “More than mine or even yours, I’d guess.”

  Markovich ghost-laughed. “Isn’t that the way of it. Nine hundred dollars a shot. I used to charge only five hundred if I could take a puppy or two from the litter. Which I would do only if I thought the brood bitch was outstanding.”

  “A valuable dog, then.”

  “Yes.”

  “All pedigreed dogs have names like that, don’t they?”

  “Yes. Some find it silly, but that’s the way it’s done. To show the lineage.”

  The way it’s done seemed to fit Markovich on many levels. He wore pressed gray slacks, a navy double-breasted blazer, and handsome black loafers. His grooming was impeccable. He was a type Rowe respected. But this dog thing.

  Markovich flipped through a few more pictures. “He’s a classic tri-color: white and tan, with a black saddle. Here’s his face full-on, take a look. See this?”

  Rowe perceived that the dog’s muzzle was mostly white, except for a thin column of tan shooting straight up from the dog’s nose, flaring out and ending in a horizontal line on the forehead, where the white took over again. It looked like a perfect Doric column, and gave the dog a most intelligent look.

  “Yes, I see,” he said.

  “That’s his distinctive mark, that tan-inside-white blaze. Of course he’s microchipped too.”

  “OK, yes. Uh…”

  Markovich said, “I sense you’re not very familiar with the world of elite show dogs, Mr. Rowe.”

  “Yeah, dogcatcher wasn’t what I had in mind when I came here.” Rowe rubbed the side of his neck. He had taken a few sips of the whiskey and felt quite warm. “I really don’t think—”

  “I have enemies,” Markovich said bluntly.

  Rowe stopped. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, as you say. There is a man named Nicholas Polen. Nick Polen. He and I were friends once. We both showed beagles, but we had an unspoken agreement that I could have the United States, and he could have the rest of the world. He’s a Pole living in Montreal. It worked well, until we both happened to fall in love with the same woman. Dreadful coincidence. She favored me. He challenged me to a duel. His Polish blood, you know. It was supposed to have been to the death. Should have been, anyway. We were almost middle-aged men by that time.”

  “Pistols?” asked Rowe, his pulse quickening, an enjoyable ripple in his veins.

  “Knives.”

  “Knives? Not swords?”

  “Daggers. Fighting knives.”

  Rowe went silent with interest. The old dude had taken all this time to get to the good part.

  “Well,” Markovich continued, “I won. I trained up for it, and you may be aware that back in ’44 I was awarded—”

  “The Distinguished Service Cross for taking out a dozen Nazis with a bayonet and the butt of your empty M1.”

  “Oh, so you did do a little homework on me.”

  “You made it possible for your company to regroup and capture more than forty enemy soldiers. What happened in the duel?”

  “Nick Polen drew first blood, but I drew best. I got him in the chest, and he fell, and I thought that was the end of it. The man was dead—I saw the life leave his eyes—and I walked away immediately, which is what you do. But they revived him. He’d stashed a small field hospital in a corner of the neutral property we’d agreed to meet on—a game park in Virginia. Just in case! Can you imagine that? Hidden in a copse of trees. I had no idea. They brought him back. Still, that should have been the end of it, you know.”

  “Did you get the girl?”

  “I did. We were married for thirty-six years.”

  “That’s a good thing,” said Rowe.

  “She died of a heart attack last spring.”

  “I’m sorry, Colonel.”

  Markovich laced his fingers and looked at them, then unlaced them. His hands were as clean and straight as the rest of him, with coarse white hairs on the backs. He looked up. “I’m quite certain Nick Polen took Ernest.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “He’s never forgiven me for besting him.”

  “Well, why would he bother you now, after all these years?”

  “It’s more than trying to get back at me, especially now that Emily’s gone. He’s fallen on hard times. Beagles are all he knows. And he knows them, believe me. Polen’s a well-connected man, but he’s made some major blunders on the dog circuit. Some litigation, some things went against him.”

  “As in…?”

  “He was accused of bribing a show judge.”

  “He got nailed?”

  “No, he tapped himself out defending against it, and he beat it, but he never collected costs. I had nothing to do with that one. He’s carried a grudge against me all these years. Here’s his plan, I’m sure of it. He’s got an outstanding beagle stud named Rondo, about the same age as Ernest. He’s put by some of Rondo’s semen, but it’s a finite resource, you understand. Rumor has it Rondo’s got cancer and isn’t long for this world. Polen’s plan is to disguise Ernest as Rondo, claim a cure, and go on breeding him. I just know it. If he plays it right, he could make good money, set himself up for some new venture. He’s a bit younger than me, still in his seventies. I’m eighty-six.”

  “Hm,” said Rowe. “Do you have any evidence of—”

  “You wouldn’t believe the intrigue in the show-dog world. I miss it terribly. But it wasn’t good for my heart. Are you a military man yourself, by any chance? You look like you might have been.”

  “No,” said Rowe. “Private security, corrections. Then insurance investigation, as you know.”

  “You keep yourself fit.”

  “Try to.”

  Rowe, though not tall, was built well, with sloping shoulders and a flat stomach. He wore his cinnamon hair in a crew cut and he favored short-sleeved shirts and leather shoes when on the job. He liked to wear nondescript clothing, it paid off so often. But he took pride in his body, running and lifting weights a few times a week. He liked morning calisthenics, and had followed the fitness routine of the Royal Canadian Air Force for years, after picking up a paperback book on it in high school.

  “But what about DNA?” he asked. “Wouldn’t—”

  “Yes, there’s DNA profiling. The AKC requires it if a dog is used more than a few times. But somebody’s suspicions would have to be raised for a good reason, because you can tell pretty quickly when the puppies are young whether they’re from good stock or not. Polen would simply breed Ernest—as Rondo—with a spay/neuter agreement, meaning that his progeny wouldn’t be allowed to breed, therefore would never need to be DNA profiled. He can sell his own spayed or neutered puppies for a thousand dollars apiece. When you think about it, it’s really the perfect dog crime.”

  Rowe considered. “What about ransom? Has he been in touch with you?”

  “No, but I expect he might make contact. I’ve been reading the classifieds in case he’s trying to send me an anonymous message.” Rowe searched the Colonel’s eyes. The man returned his gaze with depth and calmness. “Mr. Rowe,” he said, “there are many scenes out there. Most dog people are timid about breaking the law, though they’ll do many things just short of it. And they’re very credulous. Well, people in general are credulous. They want to believe they’re special, they want to believe they’re sharp, they want to believe there’s a great deal waiting for them in the hands of a handsome stranger.”

  “Yes,” said Rowe. “Is Ernest insured?” />
  “No.”

  “How much is he worth?”

  “Hard to say. In the States I could sell him for perhaps twenty thousand dollars, tops. But I could likely get much more than that if I were to sell him overseas. Upwards of a hundred, I’m sure, especially in Japan, they’re mad for champion show dogs. The Chinese now too.”

  “OK,” said Rowe.

  “Let me show you one more thing.” Markovich took the private investigator outside. They walked across the plush green lawn. Rowe saw an empty fenced kennel, a doggie shower and outdoor grooming table, the table nicely carpeted, all beneath the shady branches of an arbutus tree. A chew ball lay sadly next to a root.

  Rowe asked, “Is Ernest your only dog these days?”

  “Yes, I sold off my other animals. I do miss the excitement of showing, but I’m just too old for it now. Six years ago a mastiff nudged me at a show, and I fell and broke my hip. Oh, the champions I’ve bred. I don’t need any more money. Once in a while I breed Ernest, but only for someone special—for an old friend or two.” The colonel mused, “Why not rob a bank, why not take candy from a baby if candy’s what you want? If dogs are all you know, you’re going to look for a way out of your troubles via dogs.” They walked all the way to a vine-covered fence at the edge of the property. It was a white board fence with peaked finials on the posts, about eight feet high, Rowe judged. Jasmine vines crept over it, helped every so often by narrow trellises. Rowe saw a slab of unpainted plywood about two feet square nailed into the fence at ground level.

  “That’s where they cut their way in,” said Markovich. “I had my gardener fix it like this until the fence man can come and repair it properly.”

  “Did it happen at night?” Rowe asked.

  “Oh, no, Ernest sleeps indoors. This happened in broad daylight, when I let him out that afternoon. Polen must have lured him out with a piece of steak.”

  Rowe looked at the fence.

  “I found meat scraps on the other side,” Markovich added. “I’d give anything to get him back.”

  “If I find where he is, you won’t have to pay ransom,” said Rowe.

  “Does that mean you’ll take the case? I don’t care about recovering any frozen semen that might have been collected from him. I just want Ernest. I’ll pay your expenses and whatever your usual fee is. Plus a hundred thousand dollars extra if you bring Ernest home.”

  Rowe looked at the old man, the breeze riffling his white hair like the crest of a proud stork. He thought about the twelve dead Nazis and the knife-blade duel and the international world of purebred animals. And he thought about a hundred grand.

  “I’ll take the case.”

  Chapter 3 – The ABCs of the Case

  “Hold still now.” The emergency room doctor injected my left upper arm with anesthetic as I lay watching. Needles have never bothered me. She told me she was a resident specializing in trauma. “Never been shot before, have you?”

  The outside of my biceps, more or less, was where my skin lay open in a diagonal line about four inches long, like half of a sergeant’s chevron. The doctor was injecting lidocaine around its edges. The bleeding had slowed way down; the paramedics had bandaged it snugly for the ride in. It hurt like a large cut. I hadn’t really needed to ride in an ambulance, I thought. Looking down, I realized that the skin along the projectile’s path had been sort of vaporized along the way. Still, it didn’t look all that bad.

  “Well,” I said, “this is hardly a bullet wound, I mean, it’s just a—”

  “You got creased. It is a wound and it was made by a bullet, so you might as well make the most of it.” She wore black plastic Buddy Holly glasses and pink lip gloss. She pressed the plunger steadily.

  “Come to think of it,” I remarked, “my little boy would be very impressed. But I don’t think I ought to tell him a bad man shot Mommy.”

  “Oh, tell him! He’ll think you’re invincible for the rest of his life.”

  I thought of Petey, his five-year-old face and his wise eyes.

  It was good to be off the hot, dirty street.

  The doc reached for another syringe. The linens on the gurney and the gown they’d given me to cover my breasts smelled clean and cool.

  I asked, “Is the young man who came in with me going to make it?”

  “He’s in surgery now, that’s all I know.”

  She stepped out to let the anesthetic work, and a police detective came in to talk with me. The responding cops had questioned me quickly at the scene, but this detective, named Herrera, wanted to go over things more thoroughly.

  “Ms. Farmer, we know you’re not a real police officer.” He smiled.

  “Right, I never said I was.”

  “So the uniform?”

  “I told the first cops, I—”

  “Tell me, please.”

  This young detective wore his close-nipped black hair spiked down in front. His nose was flattened at the bridge and bulbous on the end, as if he’d been quite the brawler before giving in and joining the Academy.

  “I’m an extra in a movie, we’re shooting on Eighth Street by the river.”

  “What’s the name of the movie?”

  “The Canary Syndrome.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “Oh, global warming and globalization and probably gamma globulin, I don’t know. I haven’t seen the whole script, only like a page. There were a bunch of us fake cops. Plus all these angry protesters. Of course, there were real cops there as well, you guys always have to be on hand when a street’s blocked off. So you should have some information from—”

  “Yes, I know,” interrupted Detective Herrera. “And what were you doing way up on Mateo from there?”

  “Uh, well, there was this roach, you see.” Suddenly I felt lightheaded. “This cockroach, because I think the budget for this one was a little too stingy, and this bug crawled right onto my ham, and I threw away the whole ciabatta. And I was so darn hungry. And, uh, then this little girl—”

  “Back up. Where did you get the uniform?” His questions sounded harsh but his voice was not.

  “From wardrobe. The wardrobe people. You can see it’s fake, I’m sure, plus my fake gun and all that. Wherever it is.” I realized the equipment belt had been taken off me, and I only had on the uniform pants.

  “You know you’re supposed to turn in your gun to props before leaving the set for any reason. What happened?”

  “I forgot!”

  I don’t know if he was practicing interrogation techniques or what. His eyes kept moving over my face and hair and my covered-up chest. I began to doubt, however, if I ever would’ve convinced him that I was a paid performer in cop garb, not some scammer impersonating a cop for nefarious reasons. But a uniformed officer stuck his head in and told him two of the movie guys had followed the ambulance and wanted to talk to him.

  “Tell them to come in here.”

  I said, “I don’t think that’s a good—”

  But there they were, crowding in, big fine Sylvan and little tweaky Stuart, the first AD. Sylvan gave me a wide smile and, after taking one glance at my arm, avoided looking at it. Stuart stared at it and turned gray.

  “She’s bleeding!”

  “I’m OK, Stuart. Thank you for coming. Thanks, Sylvan.”

  “But aren’t they going to help her?” Stuart’s whole body trembled with empathy. If you can imagine a mutation between Peter Pan and Sylvia Plath, you’ve got Stuart.

  Detective Herrera said, “They are helping her. Monday afternoons usually aren’t too busy here.”

  “Where’s a doctor?” Stuart’s voice rose uncontrollably. “Get this person a doctor, for God’s sake!”

  Sylvan grasped him under the armpit in case he fainted. “Man up here, buddy. Come on. Deep breath here, buddy.” Stuart clutched a sweaty sheaf of papers.

  I told them, “The doctor’ll be back in to sew me up in a jiffy.” Brave smile.

  Detective Herrera said to Stuart, “So she works for yo
u?”

  “Yes.”

  “As what?”

  Sylvan prompted, “You have her on the list.”

  “Oh, yeah, here.” Stuart unscrolled the damp papers and jabbed at my name with a shaking finger.

  “And did she,” asked the detective, stealing another look at my chest, tented over though it was, “have your authorization to leave the set in the uniform of the LAPD?”

  “Uh,” Stuart looked up at Sylvan like a mixed-up kid, afraid to say the wrong thing.

  I spoke up. “It was my fault. I should have either stayed on set, or gotten out of costume before taking off to hunt for edible food.”

  “What?” said Stuart.

  “There was a roach in my sandwich.”

  Sylvan threw back his head and laughed. He had a great laugh.

  “You’re kidding,” said Stuart.

  “No, there was.”

  Stuart slumped against Sylvan. “Oh, the liability!” he wailed. “I hope those bastards have insurance.”

  “You guys can go,” said Detective Herrera.

  “I’ll drop off Stuart and come back to wait for you,” said Sylvan.

  They went out past a couple of badges idling in the curtained passage. Herrera told the cops something, and one of them said, “When I saw her standing there bleeding, I thought it was Annette. I swear to God, she looks exactly like her.”

  “She does,” agreed Herrera.

  “Who’s Annette?” I asked, but they didn’t hear me.

  Then the other one said something about the kid being in surgery. Herrera said his name, Kip Cubitt.

  “Cubitt?” I called from my table. “Is he related to Amaryllis B. Cubitt?”

  Herrera stuck his head back in. “He’s her grandson.”

  All of Los Angeles knew and respected Amaryllis B. Cubitt, founder of the ABC Mission in South Central. Using volunteers and donations and her own two hands, she helped needy people and unwed teen mothers of all colors. Angelenos listened to her brisk contralto voice on the radio, where she gave ass-kicking advice for free. “You’re paying a cable bill and you don’t have money to feed your kids? Wait on that!”