Paws before dying (19 page)

“With you, there always is,” he said.

Chapter 19

“THAT’S the original,” I told Steve. Pale pink-red showed through the scrubbed, whitened blotch on the wall as if someone had scoured Bon Ami into dried blood. “Mine’s a mere reproduction.”

“The house backs onto the woods?” He tilted his head toward the maze of trails and trees.

“Faces them. It’s across the street. But there isn’t a house across from it, just the woods and sort of a low fieldstone wall, not like this. The whole block across from the Englemans’ is woods, no houses.”

“But it’d be easy enough...”

“Cross the street and jump over the wall. Step over it. And there’d hardly be any objection from home, if they even knew about it. Well, from the mother, anyway.” I narrowed my eyes, hunched my shoulders, and mimicked Edna’s smug, bigoted whine: “What kind of a name
is
‘Winter,’ anyway?”

“That doesn’t have to mean Jewish or not,” said Steve, rubbing a hand up and down Lady’s shoulder. Of our four dogs, she was the only clingy one, an insatiably love-hungry but endlessly lovable pointer.

“No. It just usually does because it’s usually anti-Semites who want to know. So the question’s neutral, but the people aren’t. You haven’t met Edna Johnson.”

“Maybe. Yeah. It’s true I never get asked what kind of name ‘Delaney’ is.”

“Of course not, but ‘Winter’ really can be Jewish. Or lots of things, I guess. I don’t know. I don’t care. But I do get asked, and, yeah, once in a while, it’s probably just curiosity, like ‘What kind of dog is that?’ But you know what? That doesn’t sound neutral if you’ve got any kind of bull terrier.”

“Yeah. Then it’s not curiosity. Most of the time.”

“Right, because some people are dying to see a real, live pit bull attack someone, and they’re disappointed when the dog just stands there acting like any other dog. Some of the time, though, people just want to know what kind of dog it is. Period. But how do you tell?”

Kimi suddenly raced out of the woods, down a hill, and across the field. Her target was one she’d hit before: my left knee. I made for the wall and flattened myself against it. At the last second, she veered, fled back to the center of the field, and flew around and around in narrowing, frenetic circles.

“Jesus,” I said. “But you see? In places where people are keeping lots of wolves and hybrids, I’d have to worry. What if the wrong person strolls into the park and sees her like that?” We decided to take a look at the gate before it got too dark. The high chain link fence enclosed six courts, one row of three in the area we entered through the gate, then beyond it, another three in a second area separated from the first by yet more chain link. Steve bent down and peered at the gate and the handle, and I took my first inside look at the courts.

“Hey, Steve, watch it,” I said. “Keep the dogs out. There are nails all over the place. We better put the dogs in the van. If they get in here, their feet’ll be filled with punctures.”

Once we’d crated the dogs, we returned to the courts. They were red clay, but I can’t imagine that anyone could have played tennis on that powdery, sandy surface. Maybe what’s luxurious about clay courts is that they need maintenance. These hadn’t had any. The nets were missing, and nails stuck out of long, thin strips of once-white plastic that had originally marked out the lines in the courts. Many of the plastic strips had come loose, and the nails that had tacked them in place now protruded upward.

“How could Rose’ve trained here?” I said. “Look at it! She’d never have trained here. I don’t understand this, because I know she did.”

“What’s it like back
there
? Maybe it’s better. There’s a door there, a gate, on the right.”

As Steve guessed, the distant row of courts was in much better shape than the first. Like the first, it had no nets and a pretty rough surface, but the white plastic strips were in place, the nails sharp-end-down in the clay.

“Okay,” I said. “This is it. Obviously, this is where she trained. She kept Caprice on leash, or at least at heel, and they’d walk through that mess back there. Then once they got in here, she’d shut this second gate. And then it was fine.”

“So which gate? Which was the one they found her by?”

“The other one. The one that leads out of the courts. Somebody pointed it out to me, at class. I guess we were all feeling superstitious or something. Nobody really wanted to go near it. Actually, this explains something.”

He got it, too. “She’s training in here. Between her and that first gate, there’s this fence.” He rapped his knuckles on the chain link that separated the rows of courts. “And then there’s the whole length of the other courts.”

“And her mind’s on Caprice, right? What’s she going to notice?”

If you’ve never trained a dog for show, maybe you don’t understand, but success in the ring is about ninety-nine percent a matter of attention, the dog’s and yours, and you lose yourself in your dog. His front feet are misaligned by one inch? Oh-oh. If the judge notices, that’s a half point lost. That’s where your attention goes, to the off front foot. Two baseball teams show up and start a game? Does it register? Yes. Great natural opportunity to proof the exercise, you think. Two teams of Martians land and launch a game of intergalactic planetball? Another great distraction, nothing more. A strange dog leaps into your training area? Now, that’s a real interruption, a break in the fusion. But a little thunder? The threat of rain? Some guy hanging around doing something off there somewhere? Who notices? Not a trainer like Rose Engleman.

“Someone could’ve wired a bomb to that gate,” I said. “Jesus. Basically, someone did.”

“Okay,” Steve said, “let’s walk through it. She finishes up in here. She snaps a lead on the dog, or she calls her to heel. They go through here.” He opened the gate to the first set of courts, and we passed through. “Okay, next?”

“Next, they make a sharp right, here, and they go parallel to this center fence, and then down this way toward the gate, because it’s a sort of nail-free path.” I walked briskly down it because that’s how dog trainers are supposed to walk. The AKC says so. “And they get here, and guess what? They’re in a puddle.”

As I’ve mentioned, the surface of the court was tom up and rough. In front of the gate was a wide, shallow depression, a dry puddle.

“They’re in a puddle,” he repeated. “Can’t avoid it. And there aren’t any nails here. Rule that one out. There aren’t any nails for, say, the first two, three yards. Hey, were the dog’s feet cut? Punctured?”

“No. I don’t think so. No. It was Friday night, and I saw her Sunday. She wasn’t limping.”

“So she didn’t run around in here. Okay, the gate. You see anything?”

I bent down as he’d done before. A flat strip of metal, maybe eight inches long, an inch wide, and quarter of an inch thick, formed the handle. I held it, moved it up and down, and ran the tips of my fingers over it. “Not a thing,” I said. “It’s smooth.”

“It’s getting dark now,” he said. “Heavy clouds. Rain. You want to go home. You’re standing in a puddle. And?”

“And my dog’s in the puddle. I’m feeling a little guilty, keeping her out in the rain. I’m thinking about home. And next time, what we’re going to work on, how we’re going to do it. I’m not thinking about this fence. The gate. The handle.”

“So?”

“So I’ve been here God knows how many times. I don’t need to look and see where the handle is. Maybe it’s dark enough so I can’t see it all that well, anyway. So what? I know where it is. I reach out and grab it.”

“And? What do you do if what you grab isn’t what you expect? Instead of the handle, there’s... something else.”

“Ah, okay. You know what I’d think? I’d think, Oh, someone found something, something someone lost, and put it here. At this time of year, it wouldn’t be a hat or a glove or anything, but it could be—I don’t know—a baseball mitt? Anyway, that’s what you do if you find something in a park: You put it in a prominent place. You hang it somewhere. So if I reach out and grab the handle, but what I feel is something else—you know what? I’m not scared. I’m not suspicious. If I think anything, I just wonder, Huh, what’s this?”

“And if it feels like leather? If you’re Rose Engleman, and you wonder if it’s something you dropped, and it feels like leather? A leash.”

“Yeah. A leash. Or even a collar. But was she going to stop and think, I better not touch this? Probably it’s a shock collar? Of course not. That’s the last thing she’d think.”

“Hey, Holly, cut it out.”

“What?”

“The last thing. You know, that’s frivolous. It’s not funny.”

“Jesus. I didn’t mean... Steve, I didn’t mean it like that.”

Chapter 20

“LOOK, Leah, we had an agreement, right? You train her, you groom her. And you also said you’d give me a hand with the vacuuming, and, in fact, you said you’d do it while I was out. I can see that you’ve been working on this SAT stuff, and maybe that’s important, especially to your parents, but I can’t live like this.”

“I’ll do it! I said I’d do it. See? I’m doing it now.” She headed for the broom closet. “Someone called you!” she added as if the news were unprecedented. “Someone named Ample.”

“Ample? A man or a woman?”

“Woman.”

“Oh.” I spelled it out. “A-M-P-L, not Ample. Alaskan Mala-mute Protection League. Malamute rescue. Did she leave a message?”

“She’ll call back.”

And after I managed to take a shower without slashing my feet on the razor Leah had left blade-up on the floor of the tub, she did.

“Holly?”

“Yeah?”

“Tina. AMPL? I’ve got the sweetest little bitch here, and I could use some help.”

“Tina, I can’t. My male might not be too bad, but not my bitch. Not a chance. But I’d like to help.”

“Good. Find me a home for her. You want to hear about her?” She didn’t pause. “Four years old, spayed, a little obedience.”

When someone says that about a rescue dog, it usually means the dog sits once in a while whether you tell him or not. See? He understands
sit.

“Where’s she from?”

“Found wandering, picked up by the pound here. They called me.”

“What’s she look like?”

“Pretty. Nice face, full mask.” That’s what Kimi has, a full mask, black cap, black goggles around her eyes, a black bar down her nose. Just as Tina suspects, the more these rescue dogs sound like my own, the harder I try to locate homes for them. “Small, maybe sixty pounds, but thin. She’s putting on weight, though, and she’s such a sweetheart.”

Tina had tried and failed to trace the owner and the breeder. The bitch didn’t act as if she’d been abused, but maybe she had. Or maybe she’d been neglected, or maybe she’d simply been too big and rambunctious for the people who’d bought a furry little bearlike puppy on the assumption that she’d stay the same size.

“Tina, Pm sorry. I can’t think of anyone offhand. But I can ask around.” I was thinking about Groucho, Rita’s dachshund, about the white on his muzzle and the far-off look in his eyes. How much longer did he have? And how long would Rita insist on waiting? You can hardly blame a therapist for being too psychological, but I was sure she’d insist on devoting a year to working through the loss of Groucho. In the meantime, thousands of wonderful dogs would be destroyed because mourning people weren’t yet ready for new dogs. Ask yourself: Would your old dog really mind enough to let my lovely malamutes perish in those gas chambers? Die in agony in research labs? To hell with this sentimental grieving. Your dog just died? Call the American Kennel Club and ask for a referral to Malamute Protection. Save my dogs. Do it now.

Then a face came to mind. “Actually, there is one possibility, a guy I talked to a while ago. I’ll give him a call.”

When I phoned Jack Engleman’s to get Jim O’Brian’s phone number, a woman answered.

“Jack is busy at the moment,” she said. “This is his sister, Dr. Zager. May I help you?”

“This is Holly Winter,” I said. “Fluoride trays? Malamutes? We talked about brushing their teeth?”

“Uh, yes. Is there a problem? With—?”

“No, not at all. Actually, all I need is the number for a guy named Jim O’Brian. He was a student teacher of Rose’s. I met him there at Jack’s. If there’s an address book with phone numbers there, or a Rolodex or something, maybe you could check it for me. I’m trying to place a rescue dog. I thought he might be interested.”

Charlotte Zager asked the right question. It boosted my confidence in her: “What kind of a dog is it?”

“A malamute. Spayed female, four years old. Are you—?”

“I might be.”

“Do you have any cats?” I always ask that. If the answer’s yes, mine is no. Some malamutes like cats. Some like cats for dinner.

“Two,” she said. “And Daisy, of course. She’s a springer spaniel.”

“Then you don’t want this dog.” I felt like St. Michael weighing her soul and finding that the scales tipped in the wrong direction. Heaven’s all right, but it’s not quite appropriate for your situation. “I don’t know her history, but malamutes aren’t usually great with cats.” Or other dogs. It’s true, but I feel guilty if I say it aloud.