Gaits of Heaven

“Not just dog lovers should enjoy Conant’s carefully crafted mystery. Plenty of interesting facts about Holly’s favorite breed, the Alaskan malamute, coupled with the humorous portrait of the Boston-area therapeutic community, help make this a particularly delightful cozy.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Conant concocts a complex plot, and Holly—with a little canine assistance—cracks the case. So sit, stay, and read.”

—Richmond Times-Dispatch

“Trainer/writer Holly Winter learns yet more reasons why dogs make better friends than people. Conant’s amusing and informative tale of noble dogs and ignoble humans has something for both dog devotees and mystery lovers.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“Conant tells her story with good humor. Her fans will enjoy Holly’s latest.”

—Booklist

Praise for the Previous Dog Lover’s Mysteries

“Fun, fast-paced…An independent, witty protagonist…faced with the most eccentric and quirky of characters.”

—Publishers Weekly

“The dog lovers’ answer to Lilian Jackson Braun’s The Cat Who series.”

—Rocky Mountain News

“Dog and mystery lovers know a champion when they see one.”

—Carolyn G. Hart

“Hilarious.”

—Los Angeles Times

“A real tail-wagger.”

—The Washington Post

“An absolutely first-rate mystery…and a fascinating look at the world of dogs…I loved it!”

—Diane Mott Davidson

“Conant’s readers—with ears up and alert eyes—eagerly await her next.”

—Kirkus Reviews

A DOG LOVER’S MYSTERY

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

GAITS OF HEAVEN

A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

Copyright © 2006 by Susan Conant.
Cover illustration by Louisa St. Pierre.
Cover design by Lesley Worrell.

All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

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ISBN: 1-4295-8784-9

BERKLEY
^®
PRIME CRIME
Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
The name BERKLEY PRIME CRIME and the BERKLEY PRIME CRIME design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

In loving memory of my own Rowdy,
Frostfield Perfect Crime, CD, CGC, ThD, WPD
(November 29, 1993–November 29, 2004),
my perfect girl.

I am grateful to Phyllis Hamilton for allowing me to write about her majestic Monty, Alaskan malamute Ch. Benchmark Captain Montague, ROM, a legend in the breed.

For answering my questions, I am grateful to James Dalsimer, M.D., and Michael Glenn, M.D. Special thanks to Carter Umbarger, Ph.D., for discussing hypothetical cases with me. Any errors are mine alone. Roseann Mandell, please accept my thanks for your help with the manuscript. Profuse thanks, too, to Jean Berman, Lynn Madar, Pat Sullivan, Margherita Walker, Anya Wittenborg, Suzanne Wymelenberg, and Corinne Zipps.

For companionship and inspiration, my thanks to Jazzland’s Got That Swing, my beloved Django.

The first step in recovery is to admit that you are
powerless—your life has become unmanageable. Second, you need to believe in a power greater than yourself that can restore you to sanity. When I first met Ted and Eumie Green, they were indeed powerless. Their dog, Dolfo, hadn’t exactly become unmanageable; he had never been otherwise. As to restoration to sanity, I, Holly Winter, intended to become the Higher Power: I wanted to rid poor Dolfo and his owners of their multitudinous defects and shortcomings, thus inducing in all three a spiritual awakening that would free the dog from his seemingly incurable addiction to canine bad citizenship and simultaneously cause Ted and Eumie forever after to practice the principles of responsible ownership.

Having mentioned sanity, I feel compelled to defend myself against the potential psychiatric insinuation that I was suffering from delusions of omnipotence. I intended to become a Higher Power only with respect to
Canis familiaris
: I never imagined that I had created the world or had the power to change it except in one limited sphere, which was, is, and ever shall be the behavior of dogs. Even so, such chutzpah! The word was a favorite of Ted Green’s. In his devotion to Yiddish expressions, he pronounced the
ch
with a deep gurgling in his throat. Shikse that I am, I settle for a WASP’s
h
. Still, no matter what your ethnic origin, you’d readily admit that when it comes to dogs, I have a lot of nerve.
Chutzpah
: nerve, gall, moxie, as opposed to the ancient Greek
hubris
, pronounced “Hugh Briss,” as if it were a normal first name followed by the term for a Jewish circumcision ritual. Anyway, chutzpah can be bad or good, whereas in ancient Greece,
hubris
referred to considering yourself on a par with the gods, an act of arrogance that invariably led to divine retribution. In this story, fairly or unfairly, the person who suffered the ultimate fatal fate was not she who set herself up as God’s gift to horrible-acting dogs. Rather, it was Eumie Brainard-Green.

To begin: I first met Ted, Eumie, and Dolfo at 6:15 on the evening of Thursday, May 26, in front of the Cambridge Armory, where the Cambridge Dog Training Club holds its classes. The armory is a low, unprepossessing brick building on Concord Avenue near the Fresh Pond rotary and the LaundroMutt self-service dog wash. The club’s classes take place in the big hall that occupies most of the armory’s interior, a space big enough for the club to run three classes simultaneously and blessedly free of those damned supporting columns that handlers are always smashing into when they’re zeroing in on their dogs rather than on the risk of bruises and concussions. From my viewpoint, another advantage of the armory is its proximity to my house, which is the barn-red one at 256 Concord Avenue, on the corner of Appleton Street. My husband and I, together with two of our five dogs, were making our way along the sidewalk by the little fenced playground that abuts the armory grounds, and both dogs, Rowdy and Sammy, father and son, the two most breathtakingly beautiful male Alaskan malamutes ever to set big white snowshoe paw on the lucky planet Earth…Sorry. I seem to have drifted Arcticward.

Anyway, as Steve, Rowdy, Sammy, and I approached the armory, I got my first glimpse of Ted, Eumie, and Dolfo, and without even knowing who they were, I knew they were rank beginners, and I knew they were trouble. The club’s current beginners’ class had started on the first Thursday in May, and this trio wasn’t enrolled. Ted Green, whose name I didn’t yet know, was a tall, slim man dressed in crisply creased dark-navy jeans, a cotton pullover in the shade of periwinkle that L.L.Bean considers unsuitable for men and offers only in women’s sizes, and leather loafers rather than Cambridge-ubiquitous Birkenstock sandals or the sensible dog-training footwear that most of us wear, namely, running shoes that give good traction. His black hair was so short that if it hadn’t been for the presence of the woman and the dog, I might have overlooked his age—midfifties, at a guess—and assumed that he was at the armory for a National Guard or army recruiting event rather than for dog training. The woman, in contrast, had lots of hair that had been skillfully tinted in shades of light brown and blond. The effect of the colorist’s art was expensively naturalistic or even hypernatural; art imitated nature with no intention of fooling anyone. She wore unflatteringly cropped khaki pants, a blouse in a sickly shade of yellow-green, and dainty leather sandals that revealed pedicured feet with bright pink toenails.

I soon had the opportunity to observe details such as the woman’s nail polish, as well as the man’s receding chin and the reflection of the yellow-green blouse on the woman’s face, because having sized up the situation, I handed Rowdy’s leash to my husband, Steve, and dashed ahead to offer my help. The armory, I should explain, has a front lawn with a concrete walk that leads to the doors. The fencing on either side of the walk turns it into a sort of chute, capering about in which was one of the most peculiar-looking animals I had ever seen. His size was ordinary: I guessed his weight at sixty pounds. His coat, however, was a motley assortment of colors and textures, and consisted of uneven patches of gray and yellow, some long and silky, some short and wiry, as if his body had been inexplicably carpeted with a dozen or more ill-chosen remnants. His floppy ears and exceptionally hairy feet, in combination with his goofy smile and his long, heavily furred tail, gave him a clownish appearance. One of his eyes was hazel, the other deep brown. So odd was the creature’s appearance that to the casual observer even his membership in
Canis familiaris
might have been open to question. I, however, had been raised not merely by golden retrievers but as a golden, and had spent the rest of my thirty-plus years with dogs. I train dogs, I show dogs, I earn my living by writing about dogs, and I live with my two Alaskan malamutes, Rowdy and Kimi, my husband’s German shepherd, India, his pointer, Lady, and the aforementioned Sammy, Rowdy’s son and the household’s third malamute, the only one of the five dogs Steve and I co-own. The previous October, I’d added a new credential by marrying not just any veterinarian, but my own veterinarian, Steve Delaney. In brief, I was in a position to conduct an expert assessment of the bizarre-looking animal running from one end to the other of the armory’s front walk, with pauses to leap on the man and woman who accompanied him, and authoritatively to reach the counterintuitive conclusion that he was most definitely a
dog
.

I learned his name, Dolfo, from his strikingly coiffed and dressed owners, who were uselessly repeating it, the man in a deep, pleasing voice, the woman in a high squeak. “Dolfo! Dolfo, good dog! Good Dolfo! Good, good boy!”

In violation of the Cambridge leash law and the rules of the Cambridge Dog Training Club, Dolfo was off lead. When I had pulled a spare leash from my pocket and brushed past the woman, who was blocking the dog’s access to the traffic on Concord Avenue, I discovered that he wasn’t even wearing a collar. Having applied my expertise in dogs to identifying Dolfo’s subspecies, I should have gone on immediately to apply my knowledge of Cambridge and, in particular, my familiarity with Cambridge psychotherapists to the simple task of realizing that the absence of a collar was a sign of owner lunacy and therefore a sign that Dolfo’s owners were probably psychotherapists. As it was, I naively assumed that Dolfo had slipped his collar.

My spare leash was a four-foot leather obedience lead with a snap at one end and a loop handle at the other. When I reached the dog, felt for his collar, and found none, I ran the length of thin leather through the handle and slid the resulting noose over the dog’s head and around his neck. Pleased with the success of this makeshift arrangement and the dog’s consequent protection from the cars on Concord Avenue and in the nearby rotary, I smiled at the owners and said, “He’s safe now!” As I awaited their thanks, the dog jumped on me, but I didn’t correct him and didn’t really mind. After all, if a guy walks into a psychiatrist’s office and faints from a panic attack or announces that he’s Jesus, the shrink’s task isn’t to criticize and complain, is it? So, my principal reaction was happiness that the dog had arrived where he belonged, namely, at a psychoeducational facility where he could gain control of a symptom that irritated people and could go on to master skills that would transform him into a delight to himself, his owners, and the community as a whole. Also, I was wearing old clothes that had been ruined, in part, by dogs a lot bigger than Dolfo. My female malamute, Kimi, was seventy-five pounds, Rowdy was a lean eighty-five, and his young son, Sammy, was eighty-two pounds and still filling out. India, Steve’s shepherd, was a big girl, but she was too perfect ever to have ruined a piece of clothing, and Steve’s pointer, Lady, was small by my standards and too gentle and timid ever to have done any harm at all.

Anyway, instead of thanking me for capturing their loose dog and instead of apologizing for his uncivilized behavior, the couple exchanged knowing glances. Clearing his throat, the man said in that strikingly pleasant, deep voice, “
Oy vey!
It’s hard to explain. Let’s just say that we don’t believe in leashes.”

Evidently feeling that her partner had failed to express himself properly, the woman confided in a soft squeak, “Dolfo isn’t really a dog, you see. He’s a fur person.”

I came close to welcoming her to the Cambridge Fur Person Training Club. What stopped me was the realization of who these people were and the concomitant understanding that their presence here was my fault.

As I heard the woman, she uttered two personal pronouns: “You me.” When she held out her hand, I understood that she was saying her name. “Eumie Brainard-Green. And my husband, Ted Green. And Dolfo, of course.”

Still holding Dolfo’s makeshift leash, I shook Eumie Brainard-Green’s hand. “Holly Winter. And you won the Avon Hill auction.”

Several months earlier, my cousin Leah, who had taught at the Avon Hill School’s summer program, had persuaded the board of the Cambridge Dog Training Club to donate training classes to the school’s benefit auction. Leah, a Harvard undergraduate, had insisted that she was too busy to act as the liaison between the club and the elite private school. Consequently, I’d volunteered and had dutifully sent the auction chairperson a write-up of exactly what the club was offering, together with instructions for the high bidder and a brochure about the club. The most important instruction to the winner had been to call me to register for a class. The information packet had explained the need for preregistration and had contained a list of rules, including the requirement that dogs arrive on leash. So, it may seem as if the fault lay with Ted and Eumie, but it didn’t. I knew better. Pop psychology would, of course, urge me to soften the statement by saying that Eumie, Ted, and Dolfo’s presence was my responsibility rather than my fault. In reality, it was both. When I’d convinced the club to donate dog training to the Avon Hill School, I’d made the mistake of listening to my cousin Leah and ignoring the possibility—worse, the likelihood—that we’d end up with rich Cambridge lunatics who’d feel entitled to show up at the club whenever they felt like it and to violate the club rules in exactly the same fashion they violated the Cambridge leash law and, for that matter, all other rules and regulations written and enacted for ordinary human beings and irrelevant to special people like them. And special dogs, too.

As if reading my thoughts, Eumie said, “We were going to call, but Dolfo is a very special dog, you see, and we’re in a crisis. We need help now.”

My pockets are dog training kits. After raiding my supply of Gooberlicious peanut butter–flavored treats, I’d lured Dolfo off me and was helping him to love the feel of concrete on his paws. He was licking my hands and bouncing around. He didn’t try to force the treats out of my hand, and he didn’t growl at me. Furthermore, although Steve, Rowdy, and Sammy were now approaching, Dolfo stayed focused on the food in my hand. If a dog is going to display aggression toward any other dogs, he’ll usually show it to Alaskan malamutes. The stimulus isn’t malamute behavior but what’s called “breed type”: as big dogs with ears up, plumy tails waving over their backs, and thick coats standing off their bodies, malamutes register as potential threats even when they are behaving like ladies and gentlemen. But as I’ve said, Dolfo didn’t react.

“Beginners’ classes start on the first Thursday of the month,” I said, “and it’s too late to enter the one that’s already begun. You’ve missed too much, and it’s full, anyway. There won’t be another beginners’ class until September. I’m sorry. But you’re welcome to come in and—”

As I’d been apologizing, my dog training buddy and my plumber, too, a guy named Ron Coughlin, had opened one of the armory doors. The club was lucky to have the use of the parking lot behind the armory. People who parked there entered through the back doors, as Ron had done; I’d noticed his van turning in. Ron was a nice guy and an excellent plumber. I’d known him for ages. We’d both served on the club’s board, we’d trained dogs together, he owned a perfect male golden retriever I’d helped him to adopt, and we’d hung out together at obedience trials. He’d recently done a lot of plumbing for Steve and me when we moved my friend and second-floor tenant, Rita, to the third floor and converted her second-floor apartment and my original ground-floor apartment into one big unit for ourselves. Still, when I ran into Ron, I didn’t fly up to him and give him a hug, and I didn’t shriek.

That’s just what Eumie Green did. “Ron!” she squealed. “What a surprise! What are you doing here?” When he finally escaped, his normally ruddy complexion was outright red, but he managed to mumble the obvious, namely, that he was training his dogs.

“The Greens won us at the Avon Hill auction,” I told Ron. “Their dog needs a collar and a leash so they can come in and observe. Do we have—”

Ron was now expressionless. “Dolfo,” he said, “doesn’t wear a collar.”