This Dog for Hire (11 page)

Morgan Gilmore beamed. “No problem,” he said. He reached two bony fingers into his breast pocket and withdrew his card. The logo was a beagle puppy sitting next to a cowboy boot. Talk about non sequiturs!

“Do you specialize in the hound group?”

“I'll handle
anything
,” he told me, and for once I thought he was telling the absolute truth. “So, little lady, just call me when your girl's cycle starts, and we'll arrange everything.
No
problem.”

He had no questions to ask me. Not one. He didn't even ask for a recent brucellosis test, the very least thing you'd want before any breeding, since brucellosis causes sterility in both dogs and bitches and is nearly impossible to cure. But, hey, this is not to say the man wasn't careful. He probably only bred Magritte to “qualified bitches,” as the ads always say, “qualified” meaning he'd get paid in advance.

“Well, what about his show schedule and all?” I asked. “Will scheduling Crystal's breeding be a problem?”

“Well”—he paused and laughed intimately, since we were such good friends—“you know basenjis. They can be a handful, can't they? They don't always get along that well, even males and females. I'm sure your, um—”

“Crystal.”

“I'm sure your Crystal is a dream girl, but I've seen some nasty bitches, and I can't take a chance my little boy will get hurt.”

My
little boy!

“So I just avoid the dangers of shipping, possible dogfights, or missed breedings because of Magritte's show schedule. None of this is a problem,” he said smugly. “I bank his sperm.”

Bingo! I thought. Morgan Gilmore had just moved up to number one on my hit parade.

13

We've Locked the Barn

If you've never turned on a date with a detailed description of how semen is collected and banked, and you think you might like to give it a try, just say, “I was thinking of using frozen semen to breed my dog. Less hassle.” And when they ask the inevitable, just roll your eyes and say, “Don't ask.” Human imagination always makes things more interesting than they actually are.

With Morgan Gilmore's card safely tucked into my purse, I pushed and shoved my way over to the bar, snagged a glass of white wine, then shoved and poked my way back to Dennis. Before I got there, to retrieve my dog and tell my client the news, I overheard a voice so condescending and full of authoritative ignorance that it could only belong to a gallery owner. Veronica Cahill was briefing the press.

“—a little steep for someone who's hardly sold, never had a show before, never been reviewed?”

“It might seem that way, but this is all there is of Clifford's art, all there's ever going to be.” Dramatic pause. Eyes lowered. “Forty-seven paintings and five pieces of sculpture. This is it.” She waved a careless hand to indicate the sweep of the gallery.

She was tall, about six feet one, what my grandmother Sonya would have called a long drink of water. But to an immigrant who lived where food was not plentiful, it would have been said with pity.

Veronica Cahill was anything but pitiful looking. She was stylishly slim and elegant, not poor and underfed. Her red hair, red from a bottle but nevertheless gorgeous, was cut short, boyish on someone else, but not on Veronica. Her features were slightly oversize—large eyes, long nose, wide mouth—giving her a dramatic look that the cropped hair, the makeup, the big jewelry, and the constant use of her large, long-fingered hands only emphasized. She had a ring on every finger, several bracelets that made noise as she moved, piercing hazel eyes that gave each and every one of us a turn. She was some piece of work, this Veronica Cahill.

“How did you discover Cliff?” someone asked.

“Oh, I've known Clifford for ages. I've been watching his art develop and waiting for a large enough body of work so that I could do this,” she said, once again gesturing around the room. She smiled for someone's camera. She was wearing a short green silk dress to emphasize her legs, which, if she were lying down, would reach from here to Hoboken. And shoes I couldn't sit in, let alone walk in.

I had lost the drift of the interview for a moment, but something brought me sharply back.

“—saw it all, that poor, dear thing. It's lucky
he
didn't get killed, too. You can see, in Clifford's work of the last few years, how the image of Magritte,
our
Magritte, of course, not René, is used to express Clifford's emotional turmoil.”

Shit. Dennis had told Louis, and Louis had told Veronica. Was that before he promised to watch his mouth or after?

“How do they know he was there? I had heard the dog was missing,” a pretty woman in skintight jeans asked.

“Oh, it seems Clifford's friends have chipped in and hired a detective. A retired
police
detective. This is off the record, of course. It's all very hush-hush,” she said to reporters from the
Times
, the
News
, the
Village Voice, People
magazine, and the
New Yorker
, according to the press badges I could see. “You know, so many of these cases go unsolved. Well, Clifford's friends would have none of that. At any rate, Magritte's collar and leash turned up at the pier. Poor thing. You know, it's most amazing, his recovery. It was because of a tattoo—”

The note taking had taken on a furious pace when I decided the only rational thing to do was to find Dennis and murder him. As I began to work my way out of the group that had gathered around Veronica, I could hear her finishing her botched story about how the National Dog Registry works and I heard her say, “The little darling is here, if you'd like photographs.”

Somehow I knew it was Magritte she was referring to, not me, a retired
police
detective.

I decided to look at some more of the pieces, not wanting to find my face in Saturday's paper, even as part of the background. My only hope now was that my fucking name wouldn't appear along with the rest of the information I'd rather not have as public knowledge.

I decided to take a philosophical attitude.

A fuckup. How unusual.

The paintings were actually arranged intelligently, earliest to most recent. Unless you headed straight for the bar, you would see the few pre-Magritte paintings when you first came in. Next you'd see the beginnings of the flat technique, the texture of the canvas as part of the painting. The very early works looked more decorative, and though they were certainly beautiful, they didn't have the punch of the post-Magritte paintings, nor the humor of the Magritte pieces.
Our
Magritte, not René. I was surprised to see the small painting of Magritte as an angel, talk about oxymorons, because it had to have been one of Cliff's personal favorites, but then I noticed the “NFS”—not for sale—on the title card. That pleased me enormously. I loved the piece. It was as beautiful and perfect as an old miniature.

The alienation grew as you proceeded toward the later works, and then there was a sudden, harsh change with the appearance of the untitled “Uncle Miltie” painting and several other of these recent works, all in black, gray, and white or in grays with one startling touch of color. For example, there was one called
s. b
. that showed a street-tough boy, around twelve, in a dress. Everything else was typically male: dirty high-tops, one sock up and one halfway down, even the basketball steadied with one hand and poised on his hip. Everything was in shades of gray, except the basketball.

I looked around for
les and mor
. It should have been with this group of recent work, but it wasn't. I wondered if Veronica deemed it too weird to include it. But certainly others were equally disturbing.

When I glanced around for Dennis, I panicked. I had forgotten that Dashiell was with him. If Dashiell showed up in the papers, I might as well be there too. It would kill the chance for me to work undercover again. This was serious. Deception was not only essential in this work, it was one of my favorite parts, sort of like improvisational acting, only sometimes life-threatening.

The photographers had finished with Magritte, and I got over there as soon as I could get through the crowd. If Cliff had only lived to see this day. Then again, had he lived, he might have gotten one piece in a barely advertised group show during the slowest time of the year, and three people, all relatives of the other artists, would have shown up. He wouldn't have made a dime.

I got next to Dennis and looked around. Dash was nowhere in sight.

“
There
you are,” Dennis said, before I had a chance to say a word. “My friend Roger took Dashiell for a walk. You were tied up with Gil, and Dash kept looking at pedestals as if they were fire hydrants. Maybe he was just too hot, I don't know. Rog should be back any minute. I hope that's okay?”

That's when it occurred to Dennis that it might not be okay. I could see the fear coming into his eyes.

“I did it again, right?”

But before I had a chance to describe the enormous knot in my stomach over the fear that a stranger had taken my dog and I'd never see him again (how could I be sure Rog wasn't the murderer!), I was thrown onto Dennis and nearly knocked him down. It was just Dashiell's way of telling me how happy he was to see me again. He often made his sentiments crystal clear with a head butt.

“Rog, this is—”

“Louise,” I said, standing up and giving Dennis a look that if looks could kill it would have, “Louise Keaton. I'm Dennis's cousin.” Seeing the look on Roger's face, I added, “Long lost. Which is why he may have never mentioned me.” I was too distraught and angry to do a good job of this. I just shrugged, turned to Dennis, and said, “We have to talk, cuz.”

“Roger, thanks.” Then he turned to me. “You
know
Dr. Schwartzman said no more alcoholic beverages, Louise.” And back to Rog. “I have to get her out into the air.”

We retrieved our coats from the rack in the back room and headed for the stairs. Magritte jumped down each steep step, following Dashiell, who kept turning to see if he was coming. When we got to the street, I opened my mouth, and Dennis grasped the back of my coat collar and hoisted it, making me lose my train of thought.

“Not yet, Louise. We need a drink first.”

I decided not to remind him that he had just finished telling Rog that I was under doctor's orders regarding alcoholic beverages.

We stopped at the first place we came to. I showed the waiter Dash's bright yellow Registered Service Dog tag. He didn't say anything about Magritte, so neither did I, and we were taken to a corner table.

“Two kir royales, please,” Dennis said. “And keep them coming.”

He turned to me, reached out, and covered one of my hands, covering his face with his other hand. “Give me a minute,” he said. I decided to skip the several sarcastic things that popped into my head, and wait.

“Look. First of all, I'm sorry.”

“You ought to be,” I said angrily. “I don't make it a practice to lend my dog or my gun to strangers.”

“You have a gun?”

“Do Hasidim have sheets with holes in them?”

Dennis rolled his eyes.

“Okay. I accept your apology.”

“Except
that's
not what I was apologizing for. It was—the
other
thing. But I fucked up before you told me, uh, not to fuck up. Okay? I didn't think. I didn't know Louis Leaky would tell Veronica.” He held up his hand. “Yes, yes, I know about it. And then for her to tell the press. God! At least she got it screwed up.”

The kir royales arrived. The bubbles looked pretty rising through the raspberry-colored creme-de-cassis-spiked champagne. I lifted my glass, clinked Dennis's, which was sitting on the table, and took a sip.

“I spoke to Louis. He spoke to Veronica. We've, uh, locked the barn. I'm sorry.” He picked up his glass and chugged half of it down. “Are you hungry?”

“Starved! Let's forgive each other and eat. But not until we have a few of these.” I could feel the drink going to my head and warming my body, all at once and all lovely. The fact is, as long as my name and picture didn't appear in the paper, the rest was workable. I told Dennis. He leaned over and hugged me and finished his drink. The waiter brought two more. I hurried to catch up.

“Okay,” I said, “there'll be a few articles about Cliff, they'll say thank God his lost dog was found, the prices of the paintings will go up, and”—I gave his glass another clink; this time it was in his hand—“Morgan Gilmore has been stealing sperm!”

“What?”

“Morgan Gilmore has been banking Magritte, for who knows how long. Evidently he refused to take no for an answer. So Magritte has sired pups, my guess is a
lot
of pups, and it looks as if Gil has been pocketing the stud fees.”

“Good grief. Gil?”

“On Monday I'll go over to the American Kennel Club library and check the studbooks for the last few years and see if I can get an approximate count of Magritte's get. This could be big bucks, all stolen from Clifford.”

“Rachel,” Dennis said. He took a long drink of his kir. “
How
could I have forgotten! Well, I know how. I mean, it was
ages
ago, he never explained it, and, well, nothing happened. You know how it is, your own problems are at the fore, and you, well, you get caught up, oh God, I should have remembered. I should have told you.”

“What? What are you babbling about?”

The waiter put two more drinks on the table. I felt something brush my leg, and suddenly a basenji was on my lap.

“About three months ago, Cliff came over looking really upset. It was in the evening, sevenish. I was having dinner. I asked him to join me, but he declined. He wouldn't even sit down. He was pacing. I hate it when people do that, don't you?”