Drop Dead on Recall (6 page)

15

Giselle Swann waddled over
and took the spot behind me in line, distracting me from the accusatory gossip about Suzette and Abigail. Precious, her minuscule Maltese, watched her warily from the end of his leash, a pink bow tilting his silky white topknot to a rakish angle. I thought of asking why he wore one topknot, like a Shih-tzu, rather than the conventional two that most Maltese wear, but I was afraid she’d take that as criticism, which I knew Giselle did not appreciate, however constructive it might be. No, she would take my question as an attack on her person.

Precious. I like to think that in the community of dogs he was known as “Spike” or “Ratslayer.” It might make up for the pink bow. He kept a close eye on his mistress, not so much attentive in an obedience sense as observant in the self-preservation sense. Some people say dogs don’t reason, but those are people who haven’t observed dogs and other animals very closely. I know the little guy had a pretty good idea of what would happen if Giselle toppled onto him. I put Jay in a down stay, and the little white fluffball came up and sniffed a greeting while Jay wriggled his rear end in reply.

Giselle peered at me from under her stringy bangs, her body listing to the left as if she were ready to duck and cover. “Hello, Janet?” It sounded more like a question than a greeting. Except for our encounters at the weekend dog show, Giselle hadn’t spoken to me in months, not since our last online dust-up over a dog training issue. I couldn’t help but wonder why she seemed so eager to talk to me now.

“Hi, Giselle. How are you holding up? I know you and Abigail were pretty close.”

“Oh, okay. Not bad? You know, I feel pretty sad for poor Greg? But okay. You know, not too bad.”

“Yeah, rough for Greg.” I tried to make eye contact, but she dodged me. “Kinda rough for Abigail, too.”

Giselle blinked and shuffled, hoisted Precious, and enveloped him in her massive arms. “Oh, sure, of course? But,” her voice went dreamy, “she’s in a better place.”

“I hope they have obedience trials there. I don’t think Abigail would find harps and clouds all that heavenly. Anyway, I’m not sure she was quite ready to go.”

Giselle shot me a look I couldn’t interpret, then lowered her gaze again. “I just wanted to let you know I’ll take care of Pip for Greg?” Was she asking or telling? “You don’t need to bother?”

“It’s no bother. I think Greg is okay with this arrangement for a few days. Besides, Pip and Jay are having fun together.” She tried to sneak a sidelong look at me, but I caught her and she looked at the floor instead. “But thanks for offering.”

We’d reached the head of the line and it was my turn for a recall, giving me an escape. The obedience rules say that “The dog must come directly, at a brisk trot or gallop, and sit straight, centered in front of the handler.” I told my dog to stay and walked the forty feet to the other end of the ring. When I called him, Jay came running, failed to brake, hit me in the chest with his front paws, and dropped into a sit in front of me with a grin on his face. Fine with me. I’ll take happy over precise any day, as long as I don’t end up on my butt.

I got a bottle of water from my bag and was just swiping my sweatshirt sleeve along my mouth when I heard Tom’s voice behind me. “Nice recall. Brownie points for staying on your feet.” He was grinning that grin again, and my stupid knees wobbled. Then he shifted his gaze to my lovely dog. “Jay’s really shaped up in the past year.” He murmured something to Drake, and the big dog lay down, rested his graying chin on the cool linoleum, and closed his eyes. “I remember when you first got him.”

You do?

Tom hunkered down and let Jay sniff the back of his hand, gently stroking the underside of the dog’s chin with the other. “You look great now, Pal! Shows what love can do.” He turned to me and winked a wicked wink.

Whoosh! Blood rushed to my face. Tom was so busy petting Jay that I doubt he noticed my reaction, and I managed to get a grip on myself and babble, “He was seventy-three pounds when I got him. His breeder had already taken ten off him. He was so fat he couldn’t roll over, had no training, and was afraid of other dogs, too. Now he’s fifty-four pounds and as sweet and confident as can be.”

“His breeder let him get into that condition?”

“Oh, no! She sold him as a puppy. The people who bought him decided four years later they didn’t want him. Thank God they brought him back to the breeder. She was furious about the shape he was in, but thankful they didn’t just dump him somewhere. I saw him a couple days after she got him back, when she had me take some photos of her other dogs, and I couldn’t get him out of my head. I’d just lost my old Aussie, Rowdy. It took me a month to talk her out of Jay.”

“Some things are meant to be.” He stood up and I found myself falling again into eyes so brown they made my mouth water. After maybe a minute, maybe a month, Tom asked, “Have you heard any news about Abigail?”

Earth to Janet.
“No, nothing, except that they aren’t sure what she died of.”

“Not bee allergy?”

Giselle was watching us from across the ring. She stopped when she noticed me noticing her.

“Apparently not. Actually, I wondered about that when the epinephrin didn’t work. It should work really quickly, as I understand it. And besides …”

“It should have,” Tom cut me off. “But I suppose other factors could affect how well it worked. I know just enough about commercial drugs to be dangerous.”

Commercial drugs
, I wondered.
As opposed to what?

16

I had Tuesday morning
free, so after I fed the dogs, Leo, and myself (in that order) and pooper-scooped the litter box and the back yard, I settled into my new green Adirondack-style chair that sat outside the ring of shade from my enormous red maple. The chair is actually periwinkle blue, but it’s made of recycled milk jugs, so I love it double. I wrapped my fingers loosely around my mug and inhaled the musky sweet steam of blackberry sage tea and savored the moist heat against my palm. I had the latest copy of
Nature Photography
, the membership roster from Dog Dayz, and my cell phone. Jay and Pip were playing “toss and tug” with a big knotted rope, and Leo was honing his claws on a landscape timber backed by purple and orange Jolly Joker pansies that slow-danced in the breeze.

I leafed through the magazine until 8:30, then dialed the Dorns’ number and counted thirteen rings. No Greg, no “leave a message after the beep.” The dogs bounded over when they saw me hang up, panting and wagging and eager to slobber on my clean sweatshirt. I blocked with a bent knee and a firm, if frantic, refrain of “Off! Off!,” saving myself from drool and paw prints but slopping tea all over myself.

The dogs suddenly spun toward Goldie’s yard, ears alert, Pip’s fully erect and Jay’s folded over about a quarter of the way from tip to base. They blasted over to the fence and shoved their black noses into the space between the pickets. Jay’s short little nub directed his fanny in a wriggle, and Pip’s long, lush plume swung back and forth.

“Good morning, Mr. Jay! And good morning to you, handsome boy. I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name already, but I haven’t forgotten your toast!” Jay has a morning ritual of fence talk and toast with Goldie. Not a leftover morsel, mind you, but a fat slice of Goldie’s home-baked flavor of the week, toasted lightly and polished with a thin gloss of jam made from one of Goldie’s raspberry vines. This morning she brought two slices, neither of them for me. Maybe I should slobber and wriggle my fanny too.

Leo stopped his claw sharpening and studied the goings-on at the lot line. He trotted over, leapt to the top of the fence and onto the ground beyond, and began meowing and rubbing against Goldie’s legs. “Ah, Leo! Good morning to you. Come on, we’ll get you a fix, too.” I hauled myself out of my chair and walked to the fence, watching as Goldie and Leo strolled through one of the herb beds and selected a tender new sprout of catnip. Leo never helps himself to Goldie’s cat-drug stash, but waits for her to serve him as is his divine right. He took the morning’s tribute and trotted to a patch of lawn, where he chewed a bite of the herb, slid the top of his skull through the leaves, then his ears, neck, shoulders, and back, and began the whole sequence again.

Goldie turned to me and said, “I need to run to the co-op for some flour and stuff. Want to go?” Her face was pale in the morning light, and the dark circles I’d noticed the last couple of weeks still hunkered under her eyes. I was about to say yes, thinking I could press her about her health if I had her captive in the car, when my phone rang. A pang in my gut reminded me that I hadn’t returned Detective Stevens’ call. I nodded at Goldie and spoke into the receiver, expecting a summons to police headquarters.

It was Suzette. She wanted to have some pictures taken of Fly, so we set a time and I turned off the phone.

“Actually, I wanted to leave a note for Pip’s owner at his house. He’s not answering the phone and the machine is off. I want to be sure he has my number. We can do both.”

17

I bagged a half
pound each of organic rolled oats (for homemade
dog biscuits, the only thing I bake) and licorice all-sorts (for me) from the bulk bins at the Three Rivers Food Co-op. I was adding up the price tags on the stuff in my cart as I rounded the end of the aisle and pulled up just short of a crash. “Oh! Tom! What a surprise!”

Tom Saunders stood in front of a display of garden seed packets. “Janet! Hey! What’s up?”

“Running some errands. You? You’re not working today?” I caught myself wishing for the second time in so many days that I’d taken time for a dab of makeup this morning, at least a bit of shadow and mascara. I could have changed out of my tea-stained apparel, too.
You slob
, scolded my guardian angel.
Get real
, countered the little demon.
If you’re looking for a fashion plate, it ain’t me, babe.
“I’m on a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule this semester.” I remembered then that I’d heard he was a professor, although I didn’t know whether he was attached to the Purdue or Indiana University side of the joint Fort Wayne campus.

“What do you teach?”

“Anthropology.”

“Oh.” I could have sworn someone told me he worked with plants. “Somehow I got the idea you were in botany.”

“I am, sort of.” He grinned. “Ethnobotany.”

Recalling his comment about commercial drugs, I would have pursued the topic, but Goldie rounded the end of the aisle, asking something about which essential oil I liked better for a spring potpourri, lilac or lily-of-the-valley. She stopped and got a tricky twinkle in her eyes when she saw Tom. I introduced them, and she offered her hand. He looked a tad startled when she held on longer than strictly polite and gazed into his eyes. Then they grinned at one another, and she let him go.

“It’s great to see you, Janet.” That struck me funny since he was still grinning at Goldie. “Unfortunately, I have a faculty meeting in half an hour.” He and Goldie both nodded, as if they shared a secret. Then Tom turned his baby browns to me, reached out and squeezed my shoulder, making several parts of my body contract. “See you soon.”

As we watched him walk to the check-out line, Goldie leaned into me and said, “Not bad!”

“Yeah, I guess.” My face was heating up again. “I barely know him.”

“Ha! But you’d like to!”

“Don’t be silly.”

“Me? Silly? You’re the one who’s drooling! And frankly, it’s about time. They aren’t all like Cheat.”

“Chet.” Goldie and I had played the Cheat/Chet game for years. “It has nothing to do with Chet.” She was right, of course. It had everything to do with cheatin’ Chet and his escapades. “I’m just not interested. I like my freedom.”
And my sanity, credit rating, and bank balance, modest though it is.

Goldie rolled her eyes and made a rude sound.

“Oh yeah?” I couldn’t come up with anything intelligent for the moment. “And what, pray tell, was that business with Tom’s hand?”

“Just checking.”

“Checking?”

Goldie is not merely a New Age seeker of enlightenment. She’s been this way since the sixties. For all I know, she was born this way. More than once. “Feeling his energy,” she shrugged as she plunked both flower oils into her basket and furrowed her forehead. “I know him from somewhere.” Then she grinned at me. “Hey, girlfriend, go for it!” She adjusted her glasses halfway down her nose and spun the seed display rack.

“I’m not interested in going for anything!” I glanced into Goldie’s cart and did a double take. She must have had thirty bottles of vitamins and herbal concoctions. Saw palmetto. Green tea. Cat’s claw. Stuff I’d never heard of.
What’s up with that?

I couldn’t think of what to say, so I read the names on the seed packets she was studying. Alyssum. Bachelor’s buttons. Calendula. Castor bean. “Castor bean? Aren’t these poisonous?”

“Deadly.”

“And they sell them?”

“Oh, my dear, lots of plants are poisonous. Castor plants are gorgeous big things. Just don’t eat the seeds.”

“Seems a bit casual to me.”

“Oh, heavens, we’re surrounded by toxic plants. Did you know that rhubarb leaves are poisonous? Tomato leaves too. Daffodil bulbs. Lily-of-the-valley. Here—foxglove—poisonous.” She pointed to a packet of
Digitalis purpurea,
then another
with blue flowers like those painted on the Rule of Three sign in her garden. “Monkshood too. Deadly. Used to be known as wolfsbane. Those yews in front of every other house in suburbia? All toxic. Shall I go on? And then of course there are the wild poisonous plants—jimsonweed, the hemlocks, pigweed …”

“Okay, okay. I get it. Remind me not to piss you off.”

18

“Holy moly,” said Goldie.
We had just pulled up in front of the Dorns’ house, one of a handful scattered around this slick new subdivision. The nearest neighbor was a block away, although not for long. Streamers of fluorescent orange tape flapped from stakes in the lot next door.

The front of the Dorns’ house was all glass, taupe-tinted brick, and putty-colored woodwork. The double front door was one of those snazzy jobs with an intricate full-length pattern of clear leaded glass set into a frame of rich, luminous cherry-stained wood. The landscaping, mostly shrubs and groundcovers and saplings, was professional and neat, but lacked the joy and passion of Goldie’s plot of ground. The path to the door was fancy aggregate set in concrete and hemmed on both sides by brick to match the house. It struck me as a swanky piece of impersonal architecture, but not a home to comfort those within, the expensive, hard facade of the house not unlike the face that Abigail herself had shown the world.

An engine roared somewhere nearby but out of sight, and as I stepped from the car a noxious blend of gasoline and new-mown grass surged into my nose and planted a blade of pain in my skull. I was scurrying toward the front door and trying not to inhale when a boy of about fourteen pushed a beat-up mower around the corner of the house. He waved at me through the blue fumes, mowed to about ten feet from me, and cut the engine. The silence was deafening. The boy shoved a shock of brown hair off his forehead. “Mr. Dorn isn’t here right now.”

“Any idea when he might be back?”

“No. Not for a while, I guess. He paid me in case he doesn’t get back before I finish. He had to go to the store, for the new locks, I guess.”

I guessed I’d leave a note, and the kid nodded, restarted the mower, and roared away to where the yard met a raggedy lot aglow with early yellow sweet clover. There he turned and disappeared toward the back of the lot again.

Why did Greg need new locks? According to Connie, he and Abigail were separated. Had she changed the locks? I filed my questions away for later, finished the note, and went to the front porch. There was no storm door, so I wedged the scrap of paper into the frame around the leaded glass, hoping he’d see it there, and returned to the car.

“Speaking of toxic plants.” Goldie nodded toward the ratty vacant lot next door.

“What?”

“Right there. Poison hemlock.”

“As in Socrates and death by hemlock?”

“Precisely. The stuff with the purple stems. Grows all over in waste areas. When it’s in bloom it’s easy to mistake for wild carrot, you know, Queen Anne’s Lace, or for wild parsnip. If in doubt, think ‘hemlock is hairless.’ Wild carrot has little hairs on the stems and leaves, hemlock doesn’t. Not that you’re likely to be collecting wild carrot, although it is pretty in a late summer bouquet.” She spoke faster. “I remember a field near a lake, now where was that? I can’t remember, but this field was like a gigantic bouquet of Queen Anne’s Lace and ironweed and black-eyed Susans. Oh my, that white, purple, and yellow combination was exqui …”

“Shit!” I was about to turn left from Greg’s street onto Rothman Road when a green car with cancerous rust patches squealed around the front of my van from the right, nearly taking my left headlight as a souvenir. I slammed on the brakes.

Goldie twisted in her seat. “Don’t see many of those anymore.”

“What? Idiots?” My stomach heaved from the adrenaline surge.

“Yugos. And I’ve seen that one before.”

“Yeah?” I made myself resume breathing. “Well, I hope I never see it again.”

“So you don’t know whose it is?”

I glanced at her. “Why would I know tha … ?” The grumpy mailman shuffled into my thoughts. “Wait a minute! The mailman said there was a Yugo parked in front of my mailbox yesterday. That’s weird.”

“Weirder still, it drove by three or four times while I was waiting for you back there.”