Sire and Damn (Dog Lover's Mysteries Book 20) Read online

  But wait! A big car pulls up nearby, and—wham!—here’s the bang of the gate, and here’s an excited shriek, and here’s that black Lab bitch. Yes, she’s spayed, but sex isn’t everything. If anything is everything, it’s food. Cold weather is another strong candidate. So is fun. And the bitch is fun.

  chapter three

  Zara was immediately recognizable as a blood relative of Rita’s. They had the same pretty facial features and the same slim build, though Zara was in her mid-twenties, younger than Rita, and she had the height that Rita achieved only by wearing high heels. They also shared the distinctive look of New York City. Zara’s hair was lighter and longer than Rita’s and cut in the kind of sleek style you see on models in fashion magazines.

  If Zara were a dog, I’d know the proper term for her haircut, and I’d be able to guess the techniques that the groomer had used to create smooth lines and artful angles. Maybe fashionable women, like poodles, get continental clips? Like Rita, Zara wore white, but her pants were loose and flowing, and on her feet were the practical running shoes of someone who’s been exercising a big dog.

  I’d met Zara only five days earlier, but her resemblance to Rita made me feel that I knew her better than I really did; some of my immediate liking for her stemmed from my affection for Rita. In fact, Zara benefited from a double halo effect: she shone in the twin lights of Rita and of Izzy, her simply marvelous dog.

  For his own reasons, Rowdy shared my opinion of both Zara and Izzy—this despite Zara’s tendency to mistake Rowdy for his son, Sammy, and to mistake Sammy for Rowdy.

  After making her dramatic announcement, Zara responded to Rowdy’s greeting by laughing melodiously. “Oh, Sammy,“ she told him, “you say that to all the girls!”

  “This is Rowdy,” I told her.

  “Sorry! Rowdy, I am so sorry!” Both she and Izzy went up to my handsome boy and jostled with each other to get right in his face. For all that Rowdy is eighty-five pounds of show dog, multi-titled obedience dog, gentle therapy dog, and beloved soul mate, he can be a shameless showoff. His showoff show-dog mode is fine when his object is an AKC judge, but far from reserving it for the show ring, he glories in strutting his stuff for anyone who happens to glance at him. When Zara crouched in front of him, he scoured her face with his tongue. Then Izzy joined in, and the three shared a three-way kiss.

  “Zara,” said Rita, “you can’t just make an announcement like that and then not tell us anything.”

  “Everything’s okay now.” Zara removed Izzy’s service-dog vest and rose to her feet. “Izzy is fine. We’re both just hot. She drank all of our water”—Zara pulled a flattened fabric water bowl from a pocket in Izzy’s vest—”but she’s still thirsty. Me, too.”

  “You can use the hose to fill that metal dog bowl,” Rita said.

  Zara made a face. “Izzy doesn’t drink hose water,” she said with an apologetic laugh. To me, she said, “New converts are always the most devout, huh? Oh, thanks for the OmniThrive. Izzy loves it.”

  “It’s great stuff,” I said. “It’s the best supplement going. Just don’t mention it to Steve! I have to sneak it to Rowdy and Sammy and Kimi when he’s not around.”

  Izzy was Zara’s first dog. To my surprise, Zara had told me that she’d adopted Izzy from a shelter. My experience in malamute rescue had taught me that show-quality dogs sometimes ended up in rescue; some of the most beautiful rescue malamutes I’d seen had been found wandering. Like those malamutes, Izzy would have looked more at home in the show ring than in an animal shelter. To a large extent, the Alaskan malamute is a unified breed: some breeders place a heavy emphasis on preserving the malamute’s original ability to work in harness, but the breed as a whole isn’t split into what would be, in effect, two sub-breeds or varieties, working malamutes and show malamutes.

  In contrast, there are two somewhat separate lines of Labrador retrievers. What are known as American, field, or working Labs tend to be tall, lean, and active. In contrast, English, show, or conformation Labs are shorter in the leg and broader in the head and body than working Labs. Overall, show Labs are comparatively stocky and blocky, as Izzy was, and her calm temperament was typical of those lines.

  When Zara adopted Izzy, she knew nothing about Labs, nothing about service dogs, and, in fact, almost nothing about dogs. While Zara was growing up, her mother had refused to let her have so much as a goldfish, never mind a dog, but Zara had always been attracted to the dogs she’d seen in Central Park. Two years earlier, when she got Izzy, she was simply looking for a pet. Although she hadn’t told me the details of her psychiatric problems, she’d said that she’d had a lot of difficulty in leaving her condo, which was in the West Sixties, just off Central Park West. She worked as a freelance book editor and copy editor, so she never had to leave home to go to work, and when she was unable to go out, she had groceries, meals, and everything else delivered.

  Oh, and by the way, no, Zara didn’t pay for the ritzy address and all the rest on her income from editing. Her paternal grandfather, an investment banker, had left all of his money to Zara’s father, Dave, who was an only child, and to Dave’s only child, Zara.

  Before adopting Izzy, Zara made plans to hire a dog walker if she found herself unable to take Izzy out. She soon discovered, however, that she enjoyed taking Izzy to Central Park. No longer just an observer of the dogs there, Zara was part of a group. Until then, her social networks had been mainly online; now she belonged to a real-world group. She’d intended to hire a private dog trainer, but with the help of her dog group, she found an obedience class that she and Izzy enjoyed.

  Soon after that, Izzy showed some behaviors that initially disconcerted Zara. One day, Zara’s mother called and kept her on the phone for thirty minutes. “My mother has an irritating voice,” Zara had told me, “and at first, I thought that Izzy just didn’t like the sound, but what happened was that Izzy leaned up against me and then started barking and barking. So, I got off the phone. And said thanks! I didn’t want Izzy to make a habit of barking when I was on the phone, of course, and she didn’t.

  “But the next time my mother called, Izzy did the same thing. And I had the weirdest sense that it wasn’t my mother’s voice that was bothering her. I had the freakish sense that Izzy knew I was upset and was trying to help me.

  “And not too long after that, I made a big mistake. I was doing great, okay? Taking Izzy out, going places, feeling good, so I decided not to take my meds. I take a mood stabilizer and some other stuff, and they have side effects I don’t necessarily like. So I decided I didn’t need them. And what happened was that I ended up lying in bed. For hours. All day. I’d get Izzy out first thing, but then I’d go back to bed. And after maybe three days of that, Izzy dragged the blankets off the bed, and then she tried to drag me off.

  “She was very determined. She knew something was wrong. And she sort of woke me up—in more ways than one. Among other things, I saw what I was doing to myself. And to Izzy. So, I took my meds and took a shower and took Izzy out, and she was happy and so was I. Well, not exactly happy. But I was myself again.”

  Zara’s psychiatrist had heard of psychiatric service dogs and put Zara in touch with people who knew about them. Zara did research online, too. Before long, Zara and Izzy were getting individual instruction that prepared them for certification and also taught them specific tasks. Especially difficult, Zara said, was the multi-part public-access test designed to make sure that Izzy really could go everywhere with Zara and could not only behave herself but also create a good impression. Among other things, they were tested on Izzy’s ability to accompany Zara on the New York subway, a test I might have flunked myself.

  Where was I? Oh, yes, talking about dogs. Surprise! Specifically, Zara had refused to let Izzy drink water out of the hose and had said that new converts were always the most devout, by which she meant that in converting to the cult of dog worship, she’d become fanatical about taking perfect care of her dog, not that taking perfect care of dogs is a si
gn of suspect extremism. I strive for the same thing myself. In any case, once Zara had supplied Rowdy and Izzy with fresh kitchen water, as opposed to hose water, and had settled at the table with a big glass of lemonade, she finally told us what had happened.

  “We were going to go running, but it was too hot. I didn’t even feel like walking all the way around the little lake.”

  “Fresh Pond,” I supplied. Cambridge has its own reservoir, Fresh Pond. Yes, indeed. Cambridge eccentricity! Is there something in the water? Anyway, Fresh Pond is surrounded by trees, fields, and a golf course, and a trail runs around the pond itself. Runners and bikers complain about the rough paving on the trail, but some of them use it anyway, as do walkers, birders, and especially dog walkers. Dogs with Cambridge licenses are allowed off leash there—provided that they are under, and I quote, “voice control,” by which the City of Cambridge must mean the control of God’s voice, since I’ve never seen a single one of these off-leash dogs obey a human being.

  Unfortunately, while the owners are issuing futile orders (“Fang, here! Come! Come here, Fang! Good boy. That’s it! Yes, come to Mommy!”), God apparently remains silent. I’ve quit going to Fresh Pond. I got sick of fighting off aggressive dogs who tried to attack my dogs—the only dogs there who truly were under voice control and who were, of course, safely on leash.

  “And you scared me off, Holly,” Zara continued. “I got worried that Izzy would get attacked. So we walked a little, and we got to a sort of park, near a couple of busy streets, and then we picked up the trail again. And all of a sudden, a young guy jumped out of nowhere and grabbed Izzy’s leash. I was watching for loose dogs. He caught me totally off guard. And he ripped her leash right out my hands.”

  “Good lord,” said Rita.

  “I screamed. And then I started calling Izzy, and she tried to come back to me, but then some guy saved us. A runner. He’d seen what had happened, and he was fast! He flew after the guy, and meanwhile, other people were yelling, and the runner got his hands on Izzy’s leash, and the dog thief ran off.”

  “Did you get a good look at the thief? What did he look like?” I asked.

  Zara’s face lit up. “Hot!” She laughed.

  “Like the rest of us,” Rita said. “Including the dogs.”

  Black dogs like Izzy are solar collectors. Izzy had flopped down on the bluestone. She and Rowdy lay sprawled near the water bowl.

  “Not that kind of hot, Rita. Cute. Great body. Tan. Tallish. Curly brown hair. Hot!”

  “We get the point,” I said. “What was he wearing?”

  “Jeans. A white T-shirt. Running shoes. Nothing distinctive.”

  “That’s what I’m wearing,” I said. “And a million other people. Tattoos? Scars? I guess that would be too much to hope for.”

  “The only distinctive thing about him was his looks. He wasn’t just ordinary cute. Seriously, he was gorgeous.”

  “Zara,” I said, “I think maybe we should call the police. Unless you already have?” Besides the phone that she was never without, she probably had another device or two­—or ten or twelve—in the pockets of Izzy’s vest.

  “No, I haven’t.” Zara rose from her seat.

  Rita caught my eye and, while Zara was bending over to pick up Izzy’s vest, gently shook her head and made a cool-it gesture with her right hand.

  “I’m taking a shower,” Zara said. “Izzy!”

  “Please don’t take her in the bathtub,” Rita said. “I really don’t want dog hair in it. Or in the drain.”

  “Rita, there are limits,” Zara said. “Really, I promise. No dogs in the tub.”

  When Izzy got up, Rowdy did, too. He shook himself all over and started to follow Izzy, but at my request, Zara let herself and Izzy into the kitchen and closed the door without admitting Rowdy. My own kitchen is moderately malamute-proof, but if Rowdy had been loose in Rita’s, he’d have surfed the counters and raided the trash before checking the cabinets for edibles.

  “Sorry, big boy,” I said. “The only reason I don’t trust you is that you’re not trustworthy. So, Rita, what was that about?” I mimicked her hand gesture.

  Rita blew out a puff of air. “Let’s keep the police out of it. Zara doesn’t have a thought disorder—at least I’ve never known her to have one—but she’s capable of dramatizing things.”

  “She made it up? Or she was imagining things?”

  “No. Not exactly. Something happened, I’d say. But whatever it was, it doesn’t warrant calling the police. Could you just let it drop?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  chapter four

  When I returned to Rita’s in the midafternoon, her husband-to-be, Quinn Youngman, was unloading boxes from the back of Zara’s car, which looked like a gigantic black cube on wheels. For someone who lives in Manhattan, the sensible vehicle is a bus, a subway car, or a taxi, but Zara had told me that she’d bought the gargantuan SUV during what she’d called a “little up episode” shortly after she’d adopted Izzy and that she now kept it at a friend’s house in Westchester County.

  “I wanted a way to get Izzy out of the city,” she’d told me. “And I wanted the safest car I could find. Also, after being afraid to go anywhere, before Izzy, I was psyched at the idea that all of a sudden, we could just jump in the car and take off. I was a little too psyched. But I’m not sorry I bought it. We do use it now and then.”

  Zara spoke of her life before and after Izzy as people typically speak of monumental milestones that divide their lives in two. In many cases, the milestones are traumatic: before the war, after I lost my leg. Is there such a thing as positive trauma? Maybe. When Zara said before Izzy and after Izzy, she referred to a cataclysmic disruption for the good.

  After greeting me, Quinn said, “Zara’s Benz really came in handy. I don’t know how I accumulated all this stuff, but with my Lexus, it would’ve taken me three trips to move it from my old office.”

  Damn! If dogs could talk, they’d call cars cars, whereas Quinn always referred to his as my Lexus; and as for that Benz, well, Mercedes can squeak by as an abbreviation, but Benz is an outright affectation.

  As a dog trainer, I’m a convert to positive methods. Furthermore, as Zara had recently mentioned, converts are often the most devout. My pockets are so reliably filled with goodies that my dogs view me as a human treat-dispensing machine. Because dogs respond to human expectations by acting as expected, I cultivate happy visions of perfect canine behavior. I wear a pleasant expression. I ooze cheerful pheromones. I am optimistic to the point of nauseating Pollyannaishness.

  So thoroughly am I the spiritual disciple of B. F. Skinner, the patron saint of operant conditioning with positive reinforcement, that I sometimes sneak Rowdy into Mount Auburn Cemetery to visit Skinner’s grave, where I murmur prayers of thanks while doling out liver biscotti to my well-trained dog. Quinn, however, frequently inspires in me the urge to reach into my pockets and then pelt him with microwaved hot-dog slices and bits of desiccated liver brownies.

  But in the upbeat spirit of positive methods and positive thinking, let me say that if sized up as a sperm donor, Quinn had almost everything to recommend him. He was older than I’d have liked, but he was tall, healthy, and not bad-looking, and he was intelligent enough to have graduated from medical school. The previous May, he’d done a lot to win me over by helping to save the life of one of my dogs. When my Kimi had been in danger of bleeding to death, his medical training had kicked in. He’d applied pressure to her wound, and he’d remained calm.

  While saving Kimi, he’d made the discovery, self-evident to me but new to him, that dogs have souls. At the same time, during a period of personal crisis, he’d opened himself to his love for Rita and to hers for him. He was admittedly a lot older than Rita, but the age difference didn’t bother her, and they had interests in common. In her clinical practice, she did talk therapy, and he was a psychopharmacologist, but they both worked in mental health.

  They both read The New York Times and the
New York Review of Books; Rita because her interest was genuine, Quinn because he liked to be seen consuming highbrow publications, at least in his mind’s eye, or so I suspected. Their shared taste in movies ran to those depressing foreign art films in which almost nothing happens. The characters mope around muttering about life’s meaninglessness. They have symbol-infested dreams and occasionally rouse themselves from their torpor to have languid sex and commit suicide.

  I picked up a box and trailed after Quinn, who was carrying an open carton of drug samples.

  “Some of this stuff is so old that I almost don’t remember what it is,” he said. “Most of it’s expired. I need to sort it out and dispose of it in some responsible way. Public water supplies are filled with traces of prescription drugs as it is. I don’t want to add to the problem.”

  He put the carton down and opened the side door to the house. Even before I entered, a blast of cold hit me. I am half malamute. Central air: bliss.

  “I’m putting everything in the playroom,” he said. “Just temporarily. Some of my old files can get stored in the cellar, and most of the books can get donated, but I have to decide which ones.”

  This driveway-side entrance gave access to a little mudroom that led to the kitchen. Straight ahead, on the far side of the kitchen, was a family room that Rita and Quinn intended to use as a ground-floor nursery and, later, as a repository for toddler furniture and toys, hence the term playroom. Like the living room, dining room, and kitchen, and like all of the bedrooms and bathrooms, the playroom complied with the City of Cambridge code that forbids all persons holding advanced academic degrees from using any color of paint except white. Both the kitchen and the playroom had floors of shiny Mexican tile. At the moment, the playroom held only two pieces of furniture, a long table and a chair, but it was crowded with wedding presents, many still in boxes and shipping cartons.

  On the table sat an old notebook computer that Zara used to keep track of who’d sent what. Also on the table were silver serving pieces and place settings, and on the floor were open boxes of china and crystal. Sealed boxes displayed pictures of the usual wedding-present kitchen appliances, including the inevitable duplicates. Because the living room had a fireplace, fireplace implements must have seemed like the perfect gift: two doomed-for-return sets were of wrought iron; the keeper was a gorgeous brass-and-copper toolset that I’d admired at the nearby Adams Fireplace Shop but hadn’t been able to afford.