Authors: Susan Conant
Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Women dog owners, #Women Sleuths, #Winter; Holly (Fictitious character), #Dog trainers, #Dogs, #Maine, #Massachusetts, #Indian captivities, #Women journalists
Animal Appetite (15 page)
After I left Buttonwoods, I took a back route across the Merrimack to a rural section of Bradford, where I stopped in at Janet Switzer’s. When I arrived, Janet was in the kennel area just in back of her tiny blue Cape Cod house. Parked in the driveway were her tan RV, tan house trailer, and tan Chevy wagon. The rear ends of all three vehicles were plastered with bumper stickers, including a new one: Monotheism: The Belief in One Dog, the Alaskan Malamute.
A few years earlier, when Janet had had breast cancer, she’d taken a break from breeding. Her face had looked a little haggard, and she’d lost some weight. Today, I noticed, her weathered face had regained its former fullness. Through her short mass of gray-streaked brown waves you could see her scalp.
To avoid causing a commotion, I left Kimi and Rowdy in the car. At a minimum, Janet would’ve said hello to them and shaken their paws. Without greeting me, she announced, “I might want to use Rowdy at stud.”
“I thought you weren’t breeding anymore,” I said. The statement was as close as I’d ever come to asking about her health.
“I’ve got a bitch here that ought to be bred. Victoria. She’s finished”—AKC champion—“and she’s OFA excellent.” OFA: Orthopedic Foundation for Animals, an organization that examines and rates hip X-rays to determine whether dogs are clear of hip dysplasia. Buying a puppy of
any
medium, large, or giant breed? Oh no you’re not. Not until you see proof in writing that both parents are OFA good or excellent, or that they’ve both cleared something called PennHip.
any
medium, large, or giant breed? Oh no you’re not. Not until you see proof in writing that both parents are OFA good or excellent, or that they’ve both cleared something called PennHip.
Walking over to Victoria’s kennel, I said, “She’s nice. She has a beautiful head.”
Victoria, who knew we were discussing her, licked my fingers through the chain link. She had lovely dark eyes, good pigment, decent bone, and small ears. Color and markings aren’t all that important in malamutes, but Victoria was Rowdy’s color, dark wolf gray, with shadows under her eyes and a trace of a bar down her muzzle. I opened the kennel door and entered. You can’t do that as just any kennel, but Janet’s dogs have excellent temperaments. I ran my hands over Victoria and checked her mouth. Her bite was good, and she wasn’t missing any teeth. “She’s out of . . . ?”
“Denny and Lucy. His eyes have been checked?” Janet demanded.
I nodded. “Clear.”
“Run a brucellosis test,” Janet ordered me. Before you can get a marriage license, you need a syphilis test. Before you breed dogs, you check for brucellosis. Except that no one had yet accepted the proposal. As you’ll have gathered, Janet’s idea of tactful negotiation was to state outright what she was going to do.
I cleared my throat and asked Janet for a cup of coffee. Seated in her kitchen amid forty-pound bags of premium dog food, water buckets, chew toys, and stacks of dog magazines, I raised no questions about whether the breeding should take place. With anyone else, I’d have put up an argument. I’d have wanted my opinion solicited. I wouldn’t have followed orders. With Janet, all I did was ask when she expected Victoria to come in season. It seemed to me that I was playing Mary Neff to Janet’s Hannah Duston, except, of course, that we’d be bringing life into the world, not taking it away. Spurred by the thought, I told Janet all about what I’d been doing in Haverhill. Janet knew who Hannah was; I didn’t have to explain. “The book I wanted is missing from the library and from Buttonwoods, too,” I said. “It’s a privately printed book about Hannah:
And One Fought Back
. The author taught at Haverhill High School. Lewis Clark. He died in World War Two.” With no pun intended, I said, “For the moment, I seem to have hit a dead end.”
And One Fought Back
. The author taught at Haverhill High School. Lewis Clark. He died in World War Two.” With no pun intended, I said, “For the moment, I seem to have hit a dead end.”
Janet promised to ask around to see whether she could locate a copy.
On the way back to Cambridge, I belatedly realized that Janet and I hadn’t discussed a stud fee. Rather, I hadn’t raised the matter, but had assumed that, as usual, I’d go along with whatever Janet decreed. I knew the pedigrees of Janet’s dogs all the way back to Rowdy of Nome, the first AKC-registered Alaskan malamute. For the first time, I wondered about Janet’s own ancestry. I knew as little about her family tree as I’d ever known or cared about my own. Switzer was Janet’s married name. I didn’t know her maiden name. She grew up in Haverhill. So did her parents. Her grandparents? Great-grandparents? And on back? Hannah and Thomas Duston had had thirteen children. If I recalled correctly, nine had survived to adulthood and married. In the gift shop at Buttonwoods, I’d seen numerous pamphlets about the genealogy of the Duston family. I’d paid no attention. Only now did it cross my mind that Janet might well be one of Hannah’s descendants. In certain respects, she was, I thought, exactly the type.
CHAPTER 17
I’m seldom invited to tea by anyone at all, never mind by a Harvard professor emeritus. Although I felt certain that the unpretentious Professor Foley wouldn’t object to my usual garb—T-shirt, sweatshirt, jeans, running shoes—I felt compelled to costume myself for the occasion. At the back of my closet, I located a blue corduroy Laura Ashley pinafore and a simple white blouse with ruffles at the neck and sleeves. I wore dark stockings and flats. For the first time since last winter, I removed my good navy wool coat from its dry cleaner’s bag. Just before leaving the house, I went over myself with one of those red velvet clothes brushes that actually do a half-decent job of removing dog hair. With a steno pad and pens stashed in my purse, I set off on foot down Appleton, turned right onto Huron, and then made my way against the cold December wind up Fayerweather Street toward Governor Weld’s house. The route was familiar. The ladylike attire was not. Slapping the sidewalk, my leather-soled flats sounded like someone else’s shoes. I may have paused here and there at Rowdy’s and Kimi’s favorite trees and utility poles to wait for invisible dogs.
Professor Foley’s house proved to be an immense Victorian I’d admired on previous walks. It was painted a soft, inviting shade of yellow, with shutters and trim in rich cream. A row of solar-powered lamps illuminated the path from the sidewalk to the house. The grass had been cut short for the winter, and the wide flower beds that ran up to the sidewalk and circled the property in gentle curves had been put to bed under cozy-looking blankets of salt-marsh hay. Along the front of the house, little wooden structures protected the foundation evergreens from snow and ice that would cascade from the steep roof. The massive front door was deep green. The electric light mounted above it was on. On the brick stoop by the door, a big pot of pale pink chrysanthemums had toppled over in the wind. Still encased in plastic, the
New York Times
and the
Boston Globe
lay on a long, wide jute mat. A sheaf of magazines, letters, and junk mail protruded from the brass mail slot. The windows at the front of the house were dark.
New York Times
and the
Boston Globe
lay on a long, wide jute mat. A sheaf of magazines, letters, and junk mail protruded from the brass mail slot. The windows at the front of the house were dark.
I pushed the doorbell and heard distant chimes. No lights came on. No footsteps approached. No voice called out. I rang the bell again. This
was
Friday, I reminded myself. I checked my watch: ten after four. To avoid seeming gauche, I’d tried to arrive a few minutes late. Mounted on the door was an old-fashioned door knocker, a brass lion’s head that I’d assumed to be mainly decorative. I pounded hard. Then I again rang the bell.
was
Friday, I reminded myself. I checked my watch: ten after four. To avoid seeming gauche, I’d tried to arrive a few minutes late. Mounted on the door was an old-fashioned door knocker, a brass lion’s head that I’d assumed to be mainly decorative. I pounded hard. Then I again rang the bell.
Elderly people who live alone, I reflected, sometimes establish a sort of home-within-a-home at the back of the house. Perhaps Professor Foley didn’t use the front rooms of this gigantic place, but denned up in the kitchen or a breakfast room, and took it for granted that visitors would seek him out in the part of the house where he really lived. The explanation felt far-fetched. I pursued in nonetheless. I couldn’t believe that Professor Foley had forgotten his gracious invitation.
To avoid trampling the lovingly winterized flower beds or shoving my way through the shrubbery to get to the back door, I returned to the sidewalk and made my way down a narrow gravel driveway that led to a two-car garage and the rear of the house. Lights were on in what I guessed was the kitchen, but when I rang the bell at the back door, no one answered. Reluctant to conclude that Professor Foley had stood me up, I fished for ways to excuse him. I was a stranger in the world of those who routinely took tea: To habitual sippers, four o’clock might be universally understood to mean four-thirty or even five. Perhaps Professor Foley intended to serve a real English tea and was now hurrying home from one of the fancy shops on Huron Avenue where he’d bought fresh scones, little cakes, and out-of-season giant strawberries to be served with Devon cream. If so, I didn’t want to be caught lurking around his back door.
Returning to the front of the house, I felt obliged to explain my presence there to onlookers who were, in fact, nonexistent. I again rang the bell, listened to the chimes, and pounded the lion’s head door knocker. Eager, I suppose, to set something right, I put the overturned pot of mums back on its base by the door. At four thirty-five, I came to my senses. The mail might not have arrived until the afternoon, but the newspapers had been delivered in the early morning. Professor Foley was elderly, but he’d shown no sign whatsoever of forgetfulness and every sign of gentlemanly manners. And, no, my own memory wasn’t slipping, either. I’d been invited for four o’clock on Friday. If Professor Foley wasn’t here to welcome me, something was wrong.
In my own immediate neighborhood or another like it, I’d have marched up to one of the nearby houses to ask whether anyone had seen my inexplicably absent host. Here, I hesitated, mainly, I guess, because I was afraid that any of the grand doors to these imposing arks might be opened by a uniformed maid. It’s not that I’m exactly phobic about maids. I’m just not used to them, and on the rare occasions when I encounter them, they make me nervous. There’s something about maids that seems so . . . judgmental. Before I open my mouth, I always feel as if I’d already said the wrong thing. But maybe I confuse them with nuns. All that black and white. Anyway, steeling myself against the fearsome prospect of encountering a maid, or maybe just a neighbor who’d make me feel small, I went to the house closest to Professor Foley’s—not, I might mention, Governor Weld’s—and boldly rang the bell. The person who promptly came to the door was a plump, apple-cheeked woman with thick brown hair piled in a loose knot on her head. She wore a brown wool skirt and what I thought was called a “twin set,” a cardigan over a pullover, in the medium brown of her skirt and hair. That’s a cardigan sweater, of course, not a Welsh corgi; there was no sign of the comforting presence of any kind of dog. Faltering only a little, I introduced myself and stated my dilemma. “The mail is in the mail slot,” I went on to explain. “The newspapers haven’t been taken in. I couldn’t help worrying. But maybe Professor Foley just forgot. I wondered whether anyone had seen him today. Or maybe he’s gone away?”
The woman shook her head and frowned. “No, he’d have told me. I have a key. Let me get it and grab a jacket, and we’ll run over.”
A few minutes later, after dutifully ringing the bell by the front door and waiting while no one answered, she inserted the key in the lock and opened the door. “He has an alarm system,” she informed me, flicking on the lights and stepping over the pile of mail that had fallen from the slot, “but it’s never turned on.” Even so, as I followed her, she opened the front-hall closet and examined the digital display on a little plastic box.
“George!” she called out. “George? It’s Lydia! George? Are you all right?” Ignoring me, she swiftly moved to a huge dining room with a fireplace at one end, an immense sideboard laden with china platters and tureens, and a mahogany dinner table with twelve chairs neatly grouped around it, and not crowded in, either. At the head of the table, one place was set. A solitary lace place mat held a flower-painted plate, polished silverware, and a wineglass. In front of it stood a small book stand. I glanced at the book it held open:
The Unredeemed Captive
by John Demos, the story of Eunice Williams. As a young girl in Deerfield, Massachusetts, Eunice had been captured in a raid in 1704 and taken to a settlement near Montreal, probably the same one, I guessed, where Hannah had accepted her captivity. Eunice Williams had more than accepted hers: She’d horrified her family and, in fact, all colonial New England by refusing to cooperate in efforts to release her and, indeed, by marrying within what she must have considered her own tribe.
The Unredeemed Captive
by John Demos, the story of Eunice Williams. As a young girl in Deerfield, Massachusetts, Eunice had been captured in a raid in 1704 and taken to a settlement near Montreal, probably the same one, I guessed, where Hannah had accepted her captivity. Eunice Williams had more than accepted hers: She’d horrified her family and, in fact, all colonial New England by refusing to cooperate in efforts to release her and, indeed, by marrying within what she must have considered her own tribe.
“George! George!” the neighbor persisted. Swinging open a door that led to the kitchen, she came to an abrupt halt. Veering around, she accidentally slammed into me. Her apple cheeks were suddenly white. “Dear God,” she breathed. “Dear God.”
I brushed past her. Sprawled facedown on the shiny, speckled linoleum of the kitchen floor was the body of a man I barely recognized as Professor Foley. Everything about the scene—the awkward twist of the legs, the strange angle of the neck, the hand outstretched toward the spilled coffee mug, the little puddle of liquid by the mug, the glare of the harsh lights—was a duplicate of what I’d seen in the police photo Claudia had given me of Jack Andrews’s dead body. Professor Foley’s most distinctive feature was hidden: His blue eyes had glinted with the charm and curiosity of a bright toddler’s. Now his head faced away from me. I approached slowly and tiptoed around the remains. The eyes were open. They were still, of course, blue. In all other respects, they were no longer George Foley’s. The stench was strong and vile, like the reek of a dirty nursing home that somehow housed a filthy dog kennel. I felt sickeningly relieved that I didn’t have to touch the corpse. Death was all too apparent; there was no need for me to verify it.
“His heart, I suppose,” said the neighbor, Lydia. Suddenly losing control, she bent over, covered her mouth with her hand, and gagged.
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