Canine Christmas (25 page)

The old man began sobbing in earnest. He hugged and patted the dog. Willie-Boy settled down complacently in his lap, gazing with unmistakable menace at Branson.

I looked at Trinka and she nodded. “Excuse me,” she said to the younger man, “Could I speak to you in the other room?”

“This is a family discussion. You are not invited!” he said.

“I might be able to suggest a solution for …” She jerked her head toward the dog, giving the impression she sympathized with Branson.

He hesitated, fists on his hips, then sighed theatrically and followed her into another room. Didi went with her.

As soon as they were out of earshot, I approached the bed.

“Mr. Atkins, I'm very sorry for this intrusion. I don't know if you remember me. My name is Andi Pauling, and I'm the veterinarian who implanted the microchip under Willie-Boy's skin. Today he wandered up to my clinic, and we looked up his number and called you. Frankly, we thought the dog had been abandoned but it's so close to Christmas and, well, we wanted to give him a chance. But if you can't keep him, well … I can see about trying to find someone who could.”

His arms tightened protectively around the dog. “Bran son took him away, about a month ago. He said—he told me he'd had him destroyed. Said it was … punishment. I've been so lonely ever since. I don't know what to do. I've been sick; I can hardly get out of bed. Branson's the only family I have left, and I need him. But oh, my, I've missed this dog.”

“Mr. Atkins, I … I don't know how to ask this.” I stared at the bruises on his arms. Blood thinners and various diseases caused people to bruise easily. Was I jumping to the wrong conclusions? But these were so symmetrical. I decided to just get it over with. “Does Branson … hit you?”

The devastation that crossed his face told me I shouldn't have been so blunt. But it also answered my question. I stammered an apology, torn between dropping the subject and wanting to help.

Then Marie stepped in. “Excuse me, Dr. Andi,” she said gently. I gladly yielded.

“Do you have other family?” she asked Mr. Atkins.

He shook his head desolately. I felt his humiliation. I looked away. In the other room I could hear the angry sounds of Branson trying to throw us out and Trinka blocking his way.

“Is this your home?” A nod. “Not Branson's?” Another nod.

Marie and I exchanged glances. How had the younger man taken over?

“He moved in about two years ago,” the old man said, as if reading my thoughts. “He's my sister Jo's boy. She died not long before that. Branson was … between jobs. I'm the only family he has left, so he said. It seemed only right that I take him in. Till he got back on his feet …” He trailed off, apparently lost in memories.

“He's had enough time for that, don't you think?” I said more harshly than I'd intended. It earned a reproachful glare from Marie.

“Then I … my health … First I couldn't keep anything down. My skin turned bad. Just look.” He held up a gnarled hand. The fingernails curled inward, with lines of discoloration across them. His skin had a waxen cast and hung from his arm loosely. “I needed him, to take care of me.”

“And so he stayed,” Marie concluded. “It must have seemed fortuitous that he was here.”

Mr. Atkins nodded absently. “Yes. Yes, at first. But now … now, I just wait here to die. If I'm good, he'll let me have some TV. If I'm bad …” A feeble shrug. His hand caressed the dog's ears almost convulsively. “I don't suppose he'll let me keep old Willie-Boy here. Will you see that he's cared for?”

This last was directed at Marie. A strange connection had formed almost instantly between the two of them. He seemed to have forgotten me altogether.

But something was nagging at me. Something about the list of symptoms. Risking stepping on my own tongue yet again, I said, “How did your sister Jo die?”

His eyes shifted to me. “Same thing that's got me, seems like. Same symptoms. No one ever did figure it all out.”

“And what do the doctors think is wrong with you?”

“I haven't been seeing doctors. Branson … It's no use anyway. They ran all their tests on Jo, there at the end. Never did figure it out, and she died just the same.”

Marie stared at me. I waved a hand, not ready to tell her what I was thinking. It was too weird.

Mr. Atkins's voice sank to a whisper. “The only consolation is that he won't get anything when I'm gone. I'm leaving it all to the Humane Society.”

I smiled involuntarily. Not only did I applaud his bequest, but I was relieved to see that he still had some fight left.

“We're going to make sure you get some medical attention,” I said firmly. “And then we'll talk about Willie-Boy.”

I was dialing 911 on Marie's cell phone when Branson returned. He actually reached to try to take the phone away from me but froze when I spoke into it. “I want to report a possible attempted murder,” I said. “And the victim needs help. Please send an ambulance.” And I stared into Branson's eyes as I gave the address.

I was watching him closely. His eyes grew enormous, and as I hung up, his shoulders slumped. Then he turned and quickly left the room.

On Christmas Eve, Marie and I picked Mr. Atkins up at the hospital. We took Marie's big, boxy Cadillac. Willie-Boy, his ribs already less prominent, lounged in the backseat.

“I'm already feeling better,” Tom said as an orderly wheeled him out. And his eyes held a shine that had been missing earlier. To me he said, “Marie's been filling me in. I know Branson's in jail. How did you know to ask them to test for arsenic?”

I glanced at the floor, embarrassed to admit the truth. “It reminded me of a case I'd read about.”

“Another case? Someone … someone poisoned a dog?”

“No, not that kind of case. It was, well …”

Marie laughed. “Oh, dear! It was one of those mystery books you're always reading, wasn't it?”

I smiled ruefully and admitted that it was. “The symptoms are classic, but only if you have reason to suspect it. The police found the ant spikes under the kitchen counter. Branson might have convinced them he was really trying to kill ants, but he'd pried several open and hadn't gotten around to emptying the trash containing the evidence. And they'll probably find traces of it in the powdered sugar they took away.”

“Of course. I wondered why he was so fond of French toast. All the trouble it took. The sweet taste hides the bitter poison.”

Tom chose to sit in the backseat, with his dog. “Willie-Boy,” he kept muttering. “The real hero of the day. How did he know to find you?”

Marie and I exchanged smiles. She dropped me off at the clinic. Tom would be recuperating at her house. I would drop by the next day with a few gifts.

I'd lost a volunteer, but gained a Christmas.

Good Dog Wenceslas

Melissa Cleary

MELISSA CLEARY writes about Jake, a German shepherd and former police dog with a flair for crimesolving. The latest novels in this series are And Your Little Dog, Too and Old Dogs. Ms. Cleary also contributed a story to the first Canine Crimes anthology: “You'll Never Bark in This Town Again.”

Jackie Walsh decided that if she never saw another packaged turkey again, it would be years too soon. She picked up a plump twelve-pound bird from a box of dozens, set it into a cardboard box labeled with the recipient's name, checked the name off the list on her clipboard, then repeated the procedure for at least the hundredth time tonight.

It should be no problem keeping the birds cold, she supposed. Every time someone opened up the big doors of the parish hall to take filled boxes out to the waiting vans and trucks lined up along the curb on Michigan Avenue, blasts of icy air blew in accompanied by flakes of snow. The flakes had been getting bigger and thicker for the last hour.

Jackie's teenage son, Peter, was visiting his father this Christmas vacation, which didn't exactly thrill her— she'd never spent a Christmas without Peter in fourteen years. Jackie would ordinarily have distracted herself with work, but she couldn't go back to her job teaching film classes at Rodgers University until after the new year. Her mother's attempt to get her out of her slump and into the proper holiday spirit by volunteering her for the St. Wenceslas Parish Holiday Dinner Drive had only succeeded in making Jackie sadder.

Jackie's mother was a feisty Irish American woman named Frances Cooley Costello, and when Frances Costello said you were going to come to church on Christmas Eve and pack boxes, you went and you packed. Frances meant well, but her plan had backfired through no fault of her own. The sheer number of people being provided a box of holiday groceries by St. Wenceslas volunteers alone made Jackie realize how many people in Palmer, Ohio, could not afford to buy a Christmas dinner for themselves and their families. She looked around at the parish hall floor, nearly wall-to-wall with cardboard containers of food, and realized that she could stuff dead turkeys into boxes for the rest of her life and not ever make a real difference in the life of a single person who needed it.

She sighed deeply, and her German shepherd, Jake, perked up his enormous black ears and cocked his head at her as if trying to figure out what her problem might be, and how it related to him. Jake's problem at the moment was the two-year-old who had hold of the shep-herd's bushy black tail and was swinging it around and around like a furry jump rope. “Be nice to the doggy, Trevor,” called a parent from somewhere in the maze of boxes, but Trevor was pretending not to hear. Jake was a retired police service dog who had once worked for the Palmer Police Department, but nothing in his years of training had prepared him for small children.

“It's a hopeless world, Jake,” Jackie told her dog, but as usual he declined to comment. A second toddler had wandered over to him and had him locked in a baby bear hug. Jake put his head down between his paws and adopted a look of pained resignation. Jackie went back to distributing turkeys and tried to brighten her spirits by humming along to “Angels We Have Heard on High,” which was currently playing over St. Wenceslas's public address system. It wasn't working.

“How's it going so far, Ms. Walsh? Have we gotten through our five hundred turkeys yet?” That was young Father Morelli, the new assistant pastor.

“Not quite, and call me Jackie, Father, please,” she told him, straightening up from depositing yet another turkey in yet another box. “I know you don't see much of me around here …”

“I wasn't going to be the one to say it,” said Father Morelli with a smile, “though Father Schumann might.”

Father Schumann was the cranky old priest who had served St. Wenceslas as pastor for the last forty years. Actually, Jackie had known him since she was six, which was a bit over thirty-two years now, and as nearly as she could remember, he had been a cranky young priest as well.

“What's that?” Father Schumann appeared out of nowhere, a trick for which he was justly famous. Fat flakes of snow glistened on his black jacket. He rubbed his hands together and shivered. “Where did all this snow come from?” he asked. “It has been almost warm for weeks, and now this!” He looked back and forth between Jackie and Father Morelli. “Did I hear my name spoken just now?” Father Schumann retained the ghost of a German accent and an old-world manner from his boyhood in Munich. The older ladies of the parish found him charming, Jackie's mother included.

“Only in the most glowing terms, Father,” Jackie assured him. “Father Morelli and I are impressed by the size of your holiday dinner drive this year.”

“Thank you, Jackie,” said Father Schumann. “Perhaps the scope of St. Wenceslas's charitable activities wouldn't come as such a shock if you came to mass on occasion.”

Jackie glanced over at Father Morelli in time to see his eyes roll up toward the ceiling. She bit her lip to suppress the giggle that threatened to get her into even deeper hot water with Father Schumann.

“I think we ought to be happy to have Jackie here whenwe can get her,” said Sister Mary Pat, walking up to the three of them with her usual cheerful expression. “So many of our regular parishioners can't be bothered to get involved when there's real work involved. Thanks for showing up tonight, Jackie.”

“I wish I could take credit for being a good person,” Jackie told her, “but it was all Mom's idea.”

“Is Frances here, too, then?” Sister Mary Pat wanted to know.

“I believe she's supervising the toy and clothing boxes in the church foyer,” Jackie told her, “and I hope she's warmer in there than we are in here.”

“We're warmer than some are tonight,” Father Morelli reminded them. “But just the same, I think I'll put on my heavy coat before I take another box outside.”

“That reminds me,” said Father Schumann. “Mr. and Mrs. Polinowski had to go home, and the snow is really picking up out there. I need some more people on the box line outside to get the trucks packed before it gets too deep. Jackie?”

“Sure thing, Father,” said Jackie dutifully. She could always get warm again when the last truck had pulled away, she supposed. “But who's going to pack the rest of the dinner boxes?”

“Why, I will,” said Father Schumann. “I am always glad to help.”

And you are always glad to get out of the cold, Jackie thought, but was careful not to say it. “I'll just go on out then” was what she did say, picking up her coat and scarf from the floor among the boxes.

“I'll go with you,” said Sister Mary Pat.

“You can go, too, Father Morelli,” said Father Schumann. “Don't forget your coat.”

“We'll see you out there, Father,” Jackie said to Father Morelli. “Come on, Jake.”

Jake got carefully to his feet with a look that Jackie assumed to be gratitude. “Come back, doggy!” said Trevor, but this time it was Jake who was pretending not to hear. Jackie picked up the end of Jake's leather lead that was trailing on the floor behind him and looped it over her wrist. They walked behind Sister Mary Pat toward the heavy double doors that led outside, and were nearly bowled over when the doors swung inward. “Hey, Sister,” called one of the bundled-up volunteers who was coming inside, “you won't believe what's outside in the crèche. It's a genuine dog in the manger!” They walked past, laughing, on their way to pick up more boxes.