Canine Christmas
Authors: Jeffrey Marks (Ed)
Praise for
Canine Christmas
“Two paws up. Canine Christmas provides as much pure pleasure as a good old-fashioned belly rub.”
—DAVID HANDLElR
Edgar Award–winning author of
The Man Who Loved Women to Death
“A witty, deliciously mysterious romp through Christmas in Dogland.”
—ELLEN HART
Lambda Award–winning author of
Murder in the Air
“Move over, Jane Austen. These canine scents and sensibilities unearth a lot more than pride and prejudice. Murder, for example. Yule love these tails.”
—ABIGAIL PADGETT
Author of the Blue McCarron novels
Presented by Jeffrey Marks
Published by Ballantine Books:
CANINE CRIMES
CANINE CHRISTMAS
Books published by The Ballantine Publishing Group are available at quantity discounts on bulk purchases for premium, educational, fund-raising, and special sales use. For details, please call 1-800-733-3000.
Contents
Parnell Hall, “Clicker Training”
Leslie O'Kane, “The Emerald Collar”
Taylor McCafferty, “O Little Hound of Bethlehem”
H. Robert Perry, “Toy Pincher”
Mark Graham, “The Fencing Crib”
Virginia Lanier, “Red Shirt and Black Jacket”
Dean James, “The Village Vampire and the Yuletide Yorkie”
Deborah Adams, “Psycho Santa's Got a Brand-New Bag”
Lillian M. Roberts, “The Reunion”
Melissa Cleary, “Good Dog Wenceslas”
Introduction
Jeffrey Marks
Home for the holidays.
The words evoke images of happy families gathered around the fireplace anxiously awaiting the arrival of Santa, with eggnog prepared, and gifts wrapped under a decorated tree. Songs revel in merriment, and television specials concoct a happy ending in thirty minutes or less.
However, we all know about the dark side of the Christmas season as well: merchants who start their commercial escapades at Halloween, the mall sales and Muzaked carols in mid-November assaulting hordes of people in every corner. Christmas ranks as the most stressful annual event on our calendar. The increased crowds, the inflated prices, the expectation of gifts, the parties, and the obligatory ho-ho-ho spirit—they all take a toll. As Christmas can summon the altruistic spirit of a reformed Scrooge, it can also summon depression, avarice … and the basest forms of humanity: con artists, pickpockets, and those with homicide in their hearts.
This year won't be the first incidence of a felonious Noel. One of the earliest signs of a contentious holiday came just after the birth of Christ. Herod demanded the death of all infants under the age of two to rid himself of the Christ child and to protect his claim to the throne. While the Holy Family slipped into the night en route to Egypt, thousands of innocents were slaughtered by this edict. Malice as an accompaniment to the year-end holiday season has a long and bloody history.
Small wonder that so many mystery authors set novels and stories in the confines of a Christmas setting. From Agatha Christie to Ellery Queen, crime writers have recognized the blackness in men's souls—which is not diminished by a special date on the calendar.
To continue the tradition, please begin your investigation of the stories in this volume. The crimes, all purely fictional, continue apace—but here's the special attraction: they are always accompanied by the appearance of man's best friend.
So lean back in the easy chair, let the fire warm your toes, sip that eggnog, and enjoy these fifteen tales of mischief, mistletoe, and murder. And be sure to slip something extra in the stocking for your dog.
Clicker Training
Parnell Hall
PARNELL HALL is the author of the Stanley Hastings private eye novels (beginning with the Edgar Award– and Shamus Award–nominated Detective), the Steve Winslow courtroom dramas, and the Puzzle Lady crossword puzzle mysteries. He lives in New York City with his wife, his two sons, and Sophie, his Portuguese water dog.
“That's a nice poodle.”
“She's a Portuguese water dog.”
“Whatever. She's a fine looking animal.”
“Thank you.”
I said it through gritted teeth. I wouldn't have minded so much if it wasn't the third or fourth time we'd had the exact same conversation. But either Mr. Abercrombie had a worse memory than mine—hard to imagine— or else he was determined to pretend to forget due to a bizarre sense of humor of the type that was apt to be funny only to him. In either event, I was finding it rather tiresome, particularly since my wife and I had only checked in the night before.
The Stone Inn—the unlikely name of the sprawling, three-story, white, wood-frame house that to the best I could determine did not have a single stone in it—was one of the few bed and breakfasts not booked solidly through Christmas in all southern Vermont, due to the fact there had been three straight weeks of light, dry, powdery snow, resulting in gorgeous, idyllic New England landscapes and the best skling conditions in twenty years.
My wife and I don't ski. We were in Vermont because our son Tommie was spending his Christmas vacation in France on a school trip—don't ask. (In my day a school trip meant going down to the firehouse to see the firemen polish the fire engine.) So for the first time in years our apartment would seem rather empty over the holidays, and we wanted to get out of town.
To be sure, the snow was a lure. We don't get snow much in New York City these days, what with global warming, and as a New England boy born and bred, I miss it. So we opted for Vermont.
The Stone Inn was not our first choice. In a guide book that gave up to four stars, it got one. Nonetheless, we had chosen it on the basis of two important criteria: it had a vacancy and it took dogs.
Mr. Abercrombie, it occurred to me uncharitably, had probably chosen it because it was cheap.
Abercrombie was a plump man with a bulbous nose, twinkling eyes, rosy cheeks, and a predilection for heavy knit sweaters with reindeer on them. So far he had exhibited only two, still that was enough for me to fantasize dozens more carefully packed in an enormous suitcase.
But I was talking about the dog.
The morning after we had arrived we were all sitting around the spacious living room after a rather feeble breakfast of French toast and coffee, garnished with an occasional grape, served by the stout Austrian man whose stout Austrian wife had prepared the sumptuous repast. The two of them presumably owned the Stone Inn and were responsible for racking up its impressive total of one star. Such as it was, that was breakfast. The Stone Inn was a bed and breakfast, and since we'd slept there and had breakfast, we'd gotten what we'd paid for, and now we had all adjourned to the living room, where Alice and Zelda were holding an impromptu lecture on clicker training.
Alice is my wife.
Zelda is the dog.
“Pure clicker training,” Alice was saying, “is very nice, because basically the dog teaches herself. The dog offers you a behavior, you click the clicker. The dog hears the click, realizes she's done the right thing. The dog repeats the behavior to hear the click again.”
“Why?” said a young woman with sandy hair and a rather well filled out ski sweater, if aging married men are still allowed to notice such things, sexist notions dying hard. The woman was presumably the wife, girlfriend, or sister of the young man in the green fleece pullover who had blond hair, wore wire-rimmed glasses, and looked too all-American to be true. They were sitting on a love seat in the corner, which made me think they probably weren't brother and sister, but I've been wrong before.
Also in the audience were a middle-aged couple, he bald, she white haired, whom I shuddered to think were probably no older than I; an elderly man with wizened hands, an emaciated face, and an alarming death rattle when he opened his mouth, who damn well better have been older than I; and a man I classified as a sailor, though I hadn't a clue why, unless it was his large, black beard that I somehow associated with sailing through some elusive, subconscious, psychic connection of which I was not aware.
Alice and I had been introduced to all of these people during breakfast, but I, who retain names like a sieve, could remember only Abercrombie's, either because he grated on me so or because of the association with Abercrombie and Fitch.
“Why?” Alice said. “Because of the food. We call it clicker training, but it's really click/treat. You click the clicker and give the dog a treat. The dog quickly comes to associate the click with food.”
Alice plunged ahead, in full lecture mode. “Take a puppy, never been trained before. You want to teach her to sit. So you wait till she does. The puppy sits, you click. And give her a treat. But you don't feed the puppy where she's sitting. You hold the treat so she has to get up and get it. Now she's standing. When she sits again, you click. And treat. It's amazing how quickly the puppy realizes, If I sit, they'll click me and I'll get a treat.”
“Why click at all?” the bearded sailor-type said. He had a cultured voice which, I had to admit, didn't sound a bit like a sailor. “Why not just give a treat?”
“Because you can't do it fast enough,” Alice said. “When the dog sits, you feed her. But by the time you reach out and hand her the treat, it's several seconds after she sat. The dog is smart, but not that smart, to have to think back and say, Oh, they're feeding me, is that because I just sat? But the click is instantaneous. It pinpoints the action. And promises a treat.”
“Then how come your dog isn't sitting all the time, trying to get a treat?” the young woman in the sweater said.
“Because you change the game,” Alice said. “After the dog learns the behavior, you add the word
sit
. Or a hand gesture. Then you only click and treat when the dog does the behavior when you ask her to.”
“So, what can she do?” the bald man said. (The one I was afraid was younger than I.)