Gone to the Dogs Read online

  FETCH THE MURDER WEAPON

  The man pivoted slowly, his hands still primly and dutifully fixed behind his back. Clasped between them was a large hypodermic syringe. In the near darkness, I managed to tie Kimi’s leash tightly to the stair rail. At my side, Rowdy waited for the first command in this interesting new obedience event.

  Rowdy and I moved forward into the dim light of the hallway. I unhooked his leash, bent down a little, held my left forearm and hand parallel to his head, and pointed directly at the syringe. If the man saw Rowdy coming? If Rowdy grasped the needle by the sharp, deadly point?

  Suddenly, I moved my hand forward and said firmly, “Rowdy, take it!”

  He was primed for the ring. He shot forward and bounded into the little room, opened his jaws, and leapt.…

  By the author of:

  PAWS BEFORE DYING

  A BITE OF DEATH

  DEAD AND DOGGONE

  A NEW LEASH ON DEATH

  BLOODLINES

  RUFFLY SPEAKING

  BLACK RIBBON

  STUD RITES

  ANIMAL APPETITE

  THE BARKER STREET REGULARS

  EVIL BREEDING

  CREATURE DISCOMFORTS

  All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  This edition contains the complete text of the original hardcover edition.

  NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.

  GONE TO THE DOGS

  A Bantam Crime Line Book

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Doubleday edition published July 1992

  Bantam edition / December 1992

  CRIME LINE and the portrayal of a boxed “cl” are trademarks of Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1992 by Susan Conant.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 91-41171.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address:

  Bantam Books.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-78546-6

  Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, New York, New York.

  v3.1

  Dedication

  In August of 1990, Janelle Fowlds and her associates at the all-volunteer Becker County Humane Society participated in a raid on a puppy mill near Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. Their efforts brought an end to the neglect, abuse, and suffering of more than a hundred Alaskan malamutes, golden retrievers, Norwegian elkhounds, Samoyeds, Siberian huskies, and dogs of numerous other breeds. For many months after the raid, Janelle Fowlds continued to work for the well-being of the rescued dogs and puppies. With thanks from the Alaskan Malamute Protection League as well as from the author, this book is dedicated to Janelle.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  For help with this book, I want to thank Barbara Beckedorff, Laurel Morrissette, Gail and Rick Skoglund, Joel Woolfson, D.V.M., and my beloved companions, Frostfield Arctic Natasha, C.D., T.T. and Frostfield Firestar’s Kobuk.

  1

  If your name is Holly Winter, Yuletide can be a real bitch. When I say bitch, I know what I’m talking about. I earn my living in the world of dogs. In the pages of Dog’s Life magazine, including the pages occupied by my column, bitch is a neutral word for “female dog,” and when I tell you that I have two Alaskan malamutes, Rowdy and Kimi, a dog and bitch, I’m not swearing. But Holly Winter? In December?

  I make the best of it. Take Christmas cards. If your name sounds like an ecumenical version of Merry Christmas, you don’t have to wish anyone Season’s Greetings, Happy Holidays, or Health and Happiness Now and in the Coming Year. You just sign in the white space below the picture of your spectacular dogs. In this year’s picture, the best ever, Rowdy and Kimi are wearing snazzy red harnesses, and they’re pulling their sled across a field of snow. The sled is piled with red-blanket stand-ins for bags of toys. The dogs’ plumy white tails are waving over their backs, and their big red tongues are hanging out of their eager, grinning faces. Festive and woofy.

  In case you wondered, I would like to add that Rowdy and Kimi are certainly not wearing those humiliatingly stupid reindeer-antler headbands you can order from R.C. Steele, New England Serum, J-B, and the other discount pet-supply houses. My picture doesn’t reveal the detail, but the dogs have on Velcro-fastened red velvet bow-tie collars that I copied from the ones in the R.C. Steele catalog. The originals cost about twelve dollars apiece, and I whipped up Rowdy and Kimi’s for practically nothing. The R.C. Steele version, though, is presumably durable. My homemade collars were starting to fray by mid-December, when the dogs had worn their finery only twice, once for the Christmas card photo and once for pictures with Santa. And, no, I did not drag my dogs to some shopping mall to wait in line with the kiddies. The occasion, it so happens, was a benefit for the Animal Rescue League.

  As I was saying, to preserve the velvet collars for Christmas, I was saving them for special occasions, one of which was Rowdy and Kimi’s visit to the vet for rabies boosters. The fancy dress wasn’t mandatory—you don’t really have to get spiffed up for church or temple, either—but I warn you: Ministers, priests, and rabbis may overlook dirty, ragged coats, tartar-encrusted teeth, untrimmed nails, and unswabbed ears, but veterinarians do not. All creatures bright and beautiful?

  The late afternoon Boston commuter traffic zooming along in both directions in front of the clinic was so ferocious that I stopped wondering whether my Bronco would get hit before I could make the turn and instead tried to decide whether we’d get front-ended, rear-ended, or sideswiped. I suddenly wished I’d crated the dogs instead of leaving them loose behind the wagon barrier. When a break came, I slammed my foot on the accelerator and roared into the parking lot. Ms. Evel Knievel.

  I’d just killed the engine, scooped up the ribbon collars, and opened my door when a bright, educated voice rang out my name. A lot of Cambridge women have those classical-music-station voices. Maybe they’re what you get for a big donation to National Public Radio. For a pledge of a hundred dollars or more, you get an NPR voice or a radiotelegraphically correct sweatshirt. My friend and tenant Rita’s friend Deborah must’ve forked up twice: She never left home without the voice, but on that unseasonably warm December day, she also wore one of the sweatshirts. Deborah’s skin is either naturally oily or heavily moisturized. Some stylist must’ve promised her that with a body perm, she could just wash her brown hair and then forget it. Forget it? Whenever Deborah looked in
the mirror, she must have noticed that sprouting from her scalp were the crisp liver-colored ringlets of an Irish water spaniel. I mean, how could she forget a thing like that? The woman with Deborah had very short, dark, distinctly human hair and wore a red jersey outfit I’d admired when I’d seen it in the window of Pirjo, a tiny place on Huron Avenue where I can’t afford to shop. Envy? Of course.

  If you live somewhere normal, you probably think that after hailing me, Deborah introduced me to her friend, and you’re right, except that in Cambridge, names are incidental. An introduction here consists of telling each person what the other one does for a living. Psychotherapists, though, usually don’t even do that; unless stated otherwise, it goes without saying that everyone else is a therapist, too.

  “Karla’s at the Mount Auburn,” Deborah said. I understood what she meant because Rita, who’s a psychologist, speaks the same patois: Karla, Deborah was informing me, worked as a psychotherapist at the Mount Auburn Hospital. Then Deborah explained me to Karla. “Holly is Rita’s landlady,” she began, then added, “Holly’s a, uh, dog writer.” She sneezed, pulled a tissue from her pocket, and wiped her nose. “Is that what you say?”

  “Dog writer,” I said. Self-explanatory, isn’t it? Still, I felt compelled to expand. “I write about dogs.”

  People usually say, “Oh, isn’t that interesting,” as if it weren’t—it is—or they ask me whether there’s some quick, easy way to get their dogs to come when they’re called—there isn’t.

  “Really?” Karla said. She paused. An unspoken word formed on her lips. Outré? or maybe quaint. “Rita talks about you,” she added ominously, extending a tentative hand for me to shake.

  If she expected me to give my paw, the mistake was natural. Brush two malamutes, and you end up disguised as a third. Except for the knees, my jeans were okay, but bits of pale, fluffy malamute undercoat clung to my old black lightweight hooded sweatshirt, the one with the kangaroo pocket. Worse, my hairy, oversize, once-black socks were the pair my teenage cousin Leah had made me buy. Slouch socks? Is that what they’re called? Out of some misguided sense of family loyalty, I’d smooshed them around my ankles the way Leah always did. She’d persuaded me that the socks were definitely not too young for someone just over thirty. They were.

  Anyway, the embarrassing thing wasn’t the shirt or the socks or even the fur. When I pulled my right hand out of the pocket of the sweatshirt, out tumbled a mess of semipowdered freeze-dried liver and some desiccated, long-forgotten bits of cheese. I train with food.

  “Dog treats,” I said feebly, wiping my palm on my jeans. I nodded toward the Bronco.

  Karla withdrew her hand and said, “Huskies.” Malamutes aren’t, of course.

  “Beautiful,” Deborah said.

  Like most other malamute people, I have a spiel that I usually deliver when someone mistakes the dogs for Siberians—malamutes are bigger than Siberian huskies, never have blue eyes, and all the rest—but today I just said thanks. Deborah and Karla took off on long, confident strides. They probably discussed some fashionable topic in female psychology. Bonding rituals. Women and self-esteem.

  I inched open the tailgate of the Bronco. I had the collars looped around my left wrist, and I groped with my right hand until I had a solid grip on the dogs’ leashes. Rowdy and Kimi wagged their tails, licked my face, and squirmed to get out of the car. Because Rowdy was a little closer to me than Kimi was, I grabbed his regular rolled-leather collar first and held it tightly while I wrapped the velvet ribbon around his neck and tried to line up the Velcro strips to fasten it neatly. The first time, I got it on too loose, and just as I was ripping the little plastic teeth apart, Kimi spotted something compelling across the street, a dog running loose, a child eating an ice cream cone, or maybe nothing more than freedom itself. I should, of course, have fastened her leash to some solid object in the car or, failing that, locked it in my fist, but as it was, the loop at my end of the leash hung around my wrist. When Kimi barged past Rowdy and shot out of the car, she and her leash flew beyond my reach.

  I shoved Rowdy backward into the Bronco, slammed the tailgate, then stepped toward the traffic, as camouflaged in my black jersey and navy jeans as Kimi was in her dark wolf gray. Both of us blended invisibly into the twilight. Some of the cars speeding by had their headlights on. Kimi’s full mask—her black cap and goggles and the black bar down her muzzle—absorbed the light and left her nearly invisible as she pranced back and forth along the white line separating the two lanes of dog-crushing metal speeding southward from the two lanes heading north. The cars and vans shot by her like a barrage of bullets from a pair of double barrels aimed at each other. My beautiful dog capered in the cross fire.

  Seconds later, no longer playful, she began to watch for a break. Taller and wiser, I saw none, but stood helpless, almost in the street, my heart thudding painfully, the whoosh and roar of the traffic sucking at my clothes. I desperately needed to guide Kimi, but what could I shout to her? Stay! And wait to be hit? Kimi, come! And be killed instantly? Waving my arms, I screamed to the passing drivers: “Stop!” Then desperately, over and over, “Help me! Stop! Please stop!” A dark van veered toward me. The driver leaned on his horn.

  In the two lanes close to me, the traffic was even heavier than on the far side, but slower. A Mercedes doing a good forty or fifty in this thirty-mile zone missed Kimi by inches, and in the lights of a demon-driven Saab, I saw on her pretty, gutsy face an expression I’d almost never seen there before: the flash of raw fear. No longer prancing, she paced slowly, ready to bolt. I knew what would follow: panic, a dash, the squeal of brakes, and the horror of metal on flesh, Kimi in agony, maimed, dead, and all of it my fault, the inevitable result of my vain need to doll up creatures born perfect.

  Then a black pickup with a cheery, red-ribboned wreath on the front grille headed straight for Kimi, and I really lost it, shrieking and bellowing. As I was about to hurl myself through the traffic, a stranger appeared on the opposite side of the street, dodged between a Volvo wagon and a battered Chevy sedan, raised a fist toward a delivery truck, dashed, leapt, and miraculously ended up in the center of those death rows of traffic with Kimi’s leash in one hand and the other wrapped protectively around her hindquarters. Light-clothed, towering over the cars, he succeeded where I’d failed, commanding the traffic to a brief halt, leading her safely to me. I grabbed the dense, soft fur around Kimi’s neck, rubbed gently, and felt beneath her coat for the unbroken bone of her skull.

  Her tail wagged, and her eyes smiled.

  I’m no good at sappy speeches. “Jesus,” I said to the man. “Who are you?”

  Remember how The Lone Ranger always ended? That’s how I felt, except that Kimi was the one with the black mask, unless a beard counts. This guy’s was dark, like his hair, and scissored short, mustache and all, not the usual Cambridge professorial Vincent Price pointed-chin type or a thick, full mass of Santa curls. Also, the Lone Ranger always wore white, and this tall stranger was dressed in light tan pants and a faded beige jacket, but I don’t think Clayton Moore ever had the kind with a rib-knit waist and cuffs. To anyone other than me, my lone ranger probably looked like a forty-odd-year-old off-duty photocopier repairman on his way to play candlepins at the local bowling alley. I wanted to kneel and kiss his feet.

  “Jesus,” I repeated, without waiting for the guy to answer. “ ‘Thank you’ doesn’t even say it.”

  “Forget it,” he said, stroking Kimi, then thumping her on the shoulder in the manner of someone who likes big dogs with deep, wide chests that resonate with comforting booms. “The traffic isn’t so bad on that side, and, hey, I’ve got dogs myself.”

  “Oh,” I said brightly. “What kind?”

  Suppose that instead of saving Kimi’s life, he’d just punched me in the stomach, converted me to Rosicrucianism, or failed to sell me tax-free municipal bonds. Anything. It’s a reflex. Tickle me, I giggle. Stick a finger down my throat, I gag. Tell me you have a dog, I ask what kind.

&n
bsp; “Mutt, I guess you’d say.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Not like this.” He jerked a thumb toward Kimi.

  “Oh, what kind?” I asked again. Mutt, by the way, is not what I’d usually say and not what I’d ever write. The word is banned from the pages of Dog’s Life, as is mongrel. A dog that’s half one breed and half another is a cross, like a Lab-golden cross. A something mix means that the dog’s part something, like a Dobie mix or a shepherd mix, unless his ancestry is anybody’s guess, in which case he’s simply a mix or, better yet, an all-American.

  “Uh, kind of like a shepherd. I only got one now.” Despite the weird sixty-degree weather that had tricked lots of forsythia into mad bloom, the sun was setting promptly on its December schedule. By now, it was so dark out that I couldn’t see his face clearly, but he sounded so sad that I didn’t ask about the other dog or dogs. I wondered whether he’d had one killed by a car and whether that was why he’d taken the risk of saving Kimi. “Bear, his name is,” he added, his voice suddenly unapologetic, his face breaking into a smile.

  “I’d like to see him,” I said. True. Mention a dog, and I’d practically always like to see him. “Um, my name is Holly Winter. This is Kimi. The one in the car is Rowdy.”

  Rowdy’s nose was plastered to the window, and his eyes were fixed on the dried liver and cheese I’d spilled on the asphalt several mental eons ago. If he’d watched it being deposited there during the early Pleistocene, his gaze wouldn’t have wandered since.

  “John. John Buckley.” Our savior nodded and held out his hand. I shook it. For what it’s worth, his clasp was muscular.

  “You live around here?” I asked.

  “Just, uh, moved here,” he said, stepping away. “Hey, I gotta—”

  “Well, if you need a good vet for Bear, this one’s terrific.” I gestured toward the clinic. “He’s a friend of mine, so I’m sort of biased, but he really is good. Hey, come in with me. Come and meet him.”