Cici said, “He took me for a dumb nigra. That’s the simple why. If he saw me at this show, he’d die. He thinks I’m too embarrassed to act on him. That old dog was no good to him, so he fixed her up and unloaded her on me. Do not mistake me, the ten K is not the point.”
“Yes,” said Rowe. “Why don’t you just sue the guy? I’d think your husband would be glad to—”
“Oh, he offered! But I said no, I want to handle this myself. I made the mistake.”
Rowe really liked this woman’s spirit. “Where’s Gold staying?” he asked.
“Oh, he lives over in Glendale, so he’s not at a hotel. But the in crowd hangs out at June’s, that bar across from here? I heard he’s on the prowl every night.”
“OK. Tell you what. Meet me in this closet again tomorrow morning. Say ten o’clock.”
“The herding group goes out at eleven.”
“Plenty of time.”
_____
“Collies are the new ocelots,” Orlando Gold said earnestly, then took a sip of a pink drink from a champagne flute. Rowe watched and listened from a few feet away in the crowded bar.
“The new what?” The well-dressed woman was drinking a similar cocktail. Her silver hair was pulled back smooth and held by a pearl fastener. She wore more pearls around her neck, as well as gold bracelets and rings.
“Remember how women in the sixties used to walk up Fifth Avenue with an ocelot on a gold chain? Diamond collar?”
She laughed. “Are you old enough to remember that?”
“Well, I read about it, I’ve seen photographs. Oh, they were gorgeous!”
Rowe saw Gold’s manner—ingratiating, affable—and he heard his oily tone. Beneath that, he saw the pridefulness in his eyes, and the opportunism. Gold was the kind of person who considered every new acquaintance a potential mark. If he hadn’t been good-looking, with that thin, refined face and long upper lip, his shtick would have been much harder to pull off.
People were talking dogs everywhere.
Gold wore the exact same hairstyle Rowe had noticed on certain other male dog handlers—nipped short and pushed up in front, stiffened with goo, the frost-tipped hair being like a little tiara. Rowe could not understand this hairstyle. He sipped his beer.
The woman tittered faintly in Gold’s face. He was ladling the shit, all right. He called, “Two more Kir Royales here!”
Rowe edged closer and heard, “… and I’m telling you, the opportunities that open up when you invest in show dogs—well, I’m talking international opportunities. Ever been to the St. Petersburg Winter Carnival?”
“No!”
“Well, they put on an amazing dog show there, you know, as part of the week. And the festival itself—it’s just beyond words. The people, all the big society people of Europe, go every year. They fall all over you when they learn you’re a member of the AKC. Ever watched the aurora borealis from a hot tub for two?” He chortled subtly, and the woman dropped her eyes in discomfort.
Rowe waited until the woman went to the powder room. He approached Gold and introduced himself, using the name Simon Westfield.
Gold said, “Oh, you’re that guy Nick told me about.” He looked Rowe up and down with distaste, pursing his mouth at Rowe’s plain pants and shoes. “I’m a little preoccupied right now,” he said in an uptight voice, sipping his drink.
“Yes,” said Rowe. Guys like this couldn’t make a muscle if their lives depended on it. He talked to Gold about Markovich.
Gold knew who Markovich was, of course, and he was aware of Ernest’s disappearance. “What about it?”
Rowe said, “Markovich thinks Polen took the dog, or arranged for it to be taken.”
Gold laughed a genuine, unforced laugh. “Ernest the beagle is retired from the ring, but you can bet Markovich’s put up hundreds of units of his semen. A champion sire’s lifespan is almost irrelevant these days.”
“He doesn’t seem concerned about that part of it. He misses Ernest’s companionship.”
“I’m sorry. Shit happens.”
As they talked, Gold kept one eye out for the woman. Rowe had noticed, however, that she’d slipped her purse and wrap off the back of the bar stool before going off.
His feeling had been growing that Polen, whatever else he was up to, was innocent of dognapping Ernest. And this Gold had other rackets going; he was running all over the dog show handling other owners’ dogs, Polen’s two among them, and he had his own prized collies to look after. He had, it appeared, investors to keep happy, and he had sub-par dogs to barter to people who didn’t know any better.
“You seem to have a way with the ladies,” Rowe remarked.
“Oh…” Gold waved his hand.
“I bet some of them are—fringe benefits, in your line of work.”
“Ha!” Gold warmed up now, helped by the next Kir Royale. The one at the woman’s place sat giving up its bubbles. “Well, it’s a pretty good position to be in, I have to admit. It’s amazing what these rich women’ll do just to have some fun.” Rowe snickered encouragingly. Gold went on, “It’s amazing how far a few good manners will get you. And clothes, you have to look good, rich broads notice. If you look nondescript, they won’t even see you.”
“Yes,” agreed Rowe.
There was a certain charisma about Gold; you had to have something going for you to relate well to dogs—yet there was an overwhelming slyness about him, as well as something stunted. Rowe supposed Gold and Polen got along splendidly. As far as Rowe knew, Gold hadn’t killed anybody, he hadn’t beaten up a woman, he hadn’t gotten drunk and crashed his car into a preschool; he was just a sleaze.
“I bet a lot of these folks,” Rowe said, “while they’d like to have a show dog for bragging rights, probably aren’t going to actually show them.”
“That’s right.” Gold smirked.
“I saw that your collie, Conqueror, won breed today. Congratulations.”
“Thank you. He’ll wipe the floor with the herding group tomorrow morning.”
“And tomorrow night?” Rowe asked.
Gold just smiled.
Rowe said, “Polen let slip that he gambles on his dogs.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“It didn’t seem to work out for him.”
“Hey.” Suddenly Gold was force-nine huffy. Rowe almost winced at how easy this was.
He said, “Polen trusted you. He’s trusting you now. And you’ve got reverse money on his dogs.”
Gold made a move as if to jump to his feet, then, really noticing Rowe’s sloping shoulders, thought better of it. He jutted his chin and said, “Hey, buddy, I have just one thing to say to you—”
“Who carries the bets? How does it work?”
“Fuck you!”
Chapter 25 – Mrs. Emberton Throws Rowe in the Deep End
That Saturday afternoon, Gina went to work at the record store, which needed all hands on deck as it prepared to release Quint Watkins’s long-awaited next album. They were doing some kind of bait-and-switch giveaway of the original Shenanigans—remember them, they had that TV show where they drove this bus around, fighting crime with music? Weird band.
I took the opportunity to do a day spa for myself, starting with a bubble bath. I lounged in the suds with my clay skin-tightening mask on, thinking about Amaryllis and Mrs. Keever.
The phone rang, and I let the machine get it. But in two seconds I was slushing from the tub, running for it without even grabbing my towel, because Aunt Toots’s voice had a life-and-death pitch to it.
“I’m here! Aunt Toots!” My clay mask fractured around my mouth.
“Rita, is that you? God damn it!”
“Yes, yes! What is it?”
“Petey’s on the roof!”
“Oh, my God! Can’t he get down?”
“Hell yes he can get down, but he won’t!”
I breathed. “OK, what’s the matter?” I stood naked, dripping suds.
“He says he’s busy!”
&nb
sp; “Doing what?”
“Exploring. He says he’s being Chet Glaston.”
“Oh.”
“Who the hell’s Chet Glaston?”
“He’s a famous mountain climber.” I brushed bits of clay from my face, trying to make them fall on a coaster.
“Oh. Well, he’s crawling all over the chimney using just his fingers and toes. I’m having a heart attack.”
I pictured their stone chimney. “Oh, he’s bouldering. Our friend Daniel taught him that.”
“God damn it!”
“How did he get up there?”
“First he climbed the maple tree and then he swung onto the roof from the branches!”
“Really? Wow.”
“None of you kids ever did that.”
“The tree wasn’t as big then.”
“You don’t seem very upset!”
“Well—”
“I want to call the fire department but Sheila says no, let him stay up there until he cries to come down. I said I’d ask you what to do.”
Maybe because it was impossible for me to deal directly with the situation, I felt calm. “Are you prepared to send up sandwiches and candles? Because for all I know—”
“God damn it, Rita, we need help here!”
I’d spent all five years of Petey’s life worrying about him, and the past year and a half—as he grew out of toddlerhood—absolutely freaking out if I thought he was in the slightest bit of danger. That’s typical, I guess. But now I felt almost elatedly calm. Petey had spent so much time climbing and roughhousing with Daniel, that for the first time, I felt confident that he was OK.
“Oh, Toots, I’m sorry he’s being such a pain in the ass.” I thought for a moment. “You know, the psychology you should not use is Gramma Gladys’s Old You’re Gonna Fall And Crack Your Head Wide Open. That’s totally useless on him. What you’ve got to do is lure him down with something even more dangerous than climbing on the roof.”
“Ah!”
“Like, I’m trying to think of—”
She interrupted, “Hey, I’ll tell him we’re gonna dynamite that stump in the pumpkin field.”
“That’s excellent, Toots. Uh, do you guys actually have dynamite?”
I wondered if Gina and I would someday wind up like Aunt Sheila and Aunt Toots. Then I wondered whether that would be a good thing or a bad thing.
“Oh, yeah,” said Toots, “we use it on stumps all the time. One time Sheila moved a boulder with it, but it didn’t go in the direction she wanted. Hah! A fella brings it around to us.”
“Really.”
“It’s so useful. Sheila said if she got stuck on a desert island with only two tools, she’d want her Sawzall and a crate of dynamite.”
“Really. Well—OK, I guess you know what to do now.”
“Thanks, Rita.”
“OK.”
“I’m glad I never had kids.”
“But you love Petey, don’t you?”
“This is not the best time to ask me that.”
I laughed.
She growled, “Of course I love the little shit! We both do.”
When I was pregnant with Petey, I couldn’t remember what it was like to not be pregnant. Then, half an hour after he was born, I couldn’t imagine life without him. I could barely remember life without him.
I climbed back into my womblike bathtub. I lay back, smelling the pretty lavender oil I’d poured in, and I thought about childbirth and how small Petey had been—barely five pounds, barely there. Holding him, I felt the dark mystery of the place he’d been before he pushed his way out of me. I could not imagine him not existing.
I dozed.
I bolted upright. “Oh!” I said out loud.
After I finished my bath, I put on my kimono and went to my computer. I got on line and searched on “California abortion law.”
_____
George Rowe passed a photographer’s booth where a woman and two dachshunds had composed themselves in front of a woodsy backdrop. The jolly photographer had rigged a fishing pole with six feet of line and baited it with a foxtail; he jerked it to and fro, and the dogs’ eyes followed it eagerly. The woman smiled. He squeezed his shutter.
It was now Sunday, the final day of the Pan Pacific Canine Exposition. Rowe watched Orlando Gold enter the arena with yet another client’s dog, this one a Bedlington terrier, which had made it to the terrier finals. The detailed printed program, plus a quick Internet search of Saturday’s winners, had made it easy for Rowe to figure out Gold’s logistics for the day. Gold walked tall with the curly silver terrier, his stride steady in spite of all those Kir Royales last night. He and the Bedlington were early for the finals and would wait on the sidelines.
Rowe knew that Gold’s prize collie, Ch. Conqueror Whitehill Face the Music, would be relaxing in his crate in cubicle 729, along with Polen’s two beagles, one of which would be competing in the hound finals this afternoon.
Rowe met Cici Emberton at the storage closet. Her eyes shone with excitement. Today she had on a peach-colored outfit with a towering matching hat—very attractive, and clever besides: people would notice the hat and not so much her face. She carried the electric shears in a flowered tote bag.
Most of the cubicles were empty, as most of the losers in breed had gone home last night.
Yesterday Rowe, from ringside, had watched Polen’s male beagle, handled by Gold, come in third in the fifteen-inch category. He had compared the dog’s profile with a picture of Ernest and immediately seen that the slope of the dog’s forehead was slightly different, and the muzzle just a tad shorter. A beautiful dog, but not Ernest.
The woman with the Pomeranian was in her cube fluffing its amber fur. Rowe noted that the name strip on her cube said, MRS. LAURIE FURTADO. The dog reared, and the woman said, “No. Four on the floor. Good girrrrrl.”
When Rowe and Cici passed by, she lifted her head and stared at them. Then she set down her comb.
Gold’s dogs stirred in their crates. “Hello, kids,” said Cici.
Rowe turned to the doorway, intending to block any possible view in. He almost bumped chests with Laurie Furtado, who said, “Excuse me,” in an on-the-muscle tone.
“Yes?” he said calmly. He heard Cici behind him talking to the dogs in a voice intended to sound casual.
“Ah,” said the Pomeranian-owning Laurie Furtado, whose lustrous bangs and small eyes lent support to the cliché of people looking like their dogs. “What is your business here?”
Rowe never minded monkey wrenches of this kind.
“I’m Dr. Garner, veterinary staff, Mrs. Furtado. May I help you?”
The woman only stared hard at him. Rowe watched her brain register something. Slowly, she said, “There is no veterinary staff at this show. The show vet is off-site. I know him: Dr. Baer.”
Rowe smiled. “Well, I can assure you, I’ve been hired. The committee made the decision to add me as a floating doc, so to speak, just Thursday. There’s a virus going around Southern California that they were a little nervous about.”
“Well, d’you have your badge?”
“I’m very bad about that sort of thing.”
“Who’s she?”
“Ma’am, may I ask what your interest is? You understand.”
“Oh! Well, Orlando”—here she sighed ever so slightly, ever so fondly—“asked me to keep an eye on his dogs while he’s doing terriers. So that’s what I’m doing.”
Rowe threw back his head and laughed deeply.
Startled, the woman added, “I mean, Orlando’s got all his hopes riding on this collie, he told me so.”
“And a good bit more,” muttered Cici under her breath, behind Rowe. He laughed louder to cover it.
“Haha!” Rowe caught his breath. “How narrowly we escaped a misunderstanding, Mrs. Furtado!”
She looked at him beadily.
“Mr. Gold stopped me in the concourse,” he said, “on his way with the Bedlington and he asked me to do a quick check on Conque
ror here. Mrs. Robertson, I wonder if—ah, thank you!” Cici released the dog from its crate and as it leaped gracefully to the grooming platform, she bit back a smile.
“My assistant,” he explained professionally, as Laurie Furtado took in Cici’s outfit with a flat expression. “Now then, let’s see.” Now convinced, Mrs. Furtado said worriedly, “I hope he’s OK.”
Cici piped up, “I believe Mr. Gold mentioned a rectal problem, doctor.”
“So he did, so he did,” said Rowe, cutting her an evil look. “Hm. Well, without gloves, I’ll only be able to do a visual examina—”
“I have disposable latex gloves!” exclaimed Mrs. Furtado. “I use them to shampoo Ginger.” She ran down to her cube and stampeded back before Rowe and Cici had time to exchange more than a look.
Suddenly sweating, Rowe drew on the gloves, as Cici guided Conqueror’s head into the safety leash. “Yes, OK,” he asserted, amping himself for the task.
Mrs. Furtado watched, quite concerned.
He cleared his throat. “Tail, please, Mrs. Robertson.” Cici lifted Conqueror’s tail, and Rowe had no choice but to steady the dog’s hips and peer at its butthole. “Rectal area looks normal,” he observed.
Next, he looked skyward as casually as he possibly could, and took a deep breath. He parted the dog’s hair and gently inserted his right index finger into Conqueror’s anus. The dog flinched, but Cici held his head confidently and murmured, “Good boy, good boy. It’ll be over soon.”
Not fucking soon enough.
The dog’s sphincter closed tightly around Rowe’s finger and he felt the animal’s warmth through the thin glove, disgustingly reminiscent of intercourse. He felt inside the dog’s rectum. “Uh, prostate appears OK. Hm. Hm.” He withdrew his finger and stripped off the gloves without looking at them, tossing them into the wastebasket.
“I don’t know,” he remarked, “if diarrhea is the problem, or not. I’ll have to speak to Mr. Gold again, and perhaps get this big guy into my office for further testing after the show” He smiled jocularly. “That OK with you, Mrs. Furtado?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Sorry to have bothered you. But—you know. I heard one time somebody drugged somebody else’s dog so it couldn’t compete.”
The Rita Farmer Mystery series Box Set Page 52