Once Bitten (A Melanie Travis Mystery) (18 page)

He was the top Poodle handler in New England, an enviable position that he’d held for as long as Aunt Peg had been showing dogs. In the ring, Crawford never underestimated an opponent. Outside it, he was unfailingly gracious and always discreet.

Unlike his flamboyant partner, who enjoyed good dish more than anything. Thanks to Crawford’s vast network of connections, Terry had sources everywhere. A situation I hadn’t been above exploiting from time to time.

Someday Crawford may figure out how to get me to stop pumping Terry for information, but it hasn’t happened yet.

“Marla?” I asked.

“Open Bitch.” Terry sighed. “Big hair. Bad hair. Pouf it up and it just falls flat. That’s why we always save her for last.”

“Can you talk and brush at the same time?”

“Do pigs eat truffles?”

Terry opened a large wooden crate, reached in and cupped his hand around the muzzle of a white Standard Poodle bitch with a stunning head and tight, arched feet. As soon as I saw the face, I recognized Marla; I’d shown against her with Faith last year when Marla was in the puppy class. Even then, her limp, wispy coat had been a liability, and I didn’t think Crawford had managed to put many points on her.

“Aunt Peg will love that head,” I said, sliding off the tabletop as Terry hoisted the bitch up onto the other side.

“And her front.” Terry took my hands, placing one on the bitch’s withers, the other on her chest, and let me feel for myself.

It’s considered exceedingly bad manners to touch someone’s dog without asking. Not only are you likely to muss the hair, but you also might discover secrets about poor structure that the handler was planning to use that hair to hide. The fact that Terry invited me to verify his claim meant that the bitch’s front assembly had to be above reproach.

“Teeth?” I asked.

Terry nodded and I lifted Marla’s top lip. The Poodle’s tail wagged as I had a look. All were there, with the correct scissors bite.

I remembered Marla as an exuberant puppy with considerable reach and drive. The lack of coat—considered to be of paramount importance by that all-too-common breed of clueless judges who don’t know what else to look for—wouldn’t mean a fig to Aunt Peg.

“She’ll love her,” I said to Terry.

He glanced in Crawford’s direction and was relieved to see that the handler hadn’t overheard. Crawford, like Aunt Peg, is superstitious enough to believe in jinxes.

“We’re hoping,” he replied.

The dog show mantra.

T
erry placed Marla on her side on the grooming table with her right side up. The left side—the side that faces the judge during competition—is always brushed last. He then sifted through the arsenal in his tack box, selecting and laying out an array of tools.

Finished with the Standard dog, Crawford came sauntering down the aisle to check on his assistant’s progress. “If you’re going to hang around,” he said, handing me a pin brush and greyhound comb, “you might as well make yourself useful. That brown puppy’s head and ears need to be brushed out.”

A pro like Crawford would never let anyone touch his trims, his topknots or his spray jobs. But brushing, once you knew the routine, was idiot work. Presumably, I qualified.

“Don’t let Terry give you advice about your love life,” Crawford counseled. His hearing must have been better than we’d thought. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

“No?” I grinned. Crawford and Terry had been partners for more than a year. “It looks to me like he’s doing pretty well.”

“Sure,
he
is,” Crawford grumbled fondly. “But what about me?”

“You’ve got the best looking boy on the block,” Terry announced immodestly.

Crawford’s only answer to that was to lift one brow. Then he pointed his comb at me. “Exes are always trouble. Tell yours to take a hike.”

Just what I needed, another mother.

“I didn’t know you’d met Bob, too.”

“I didn’t have to meet him. I heard about him.”

“What is he, famous?”

“Word gets around.” Crawford’s calm, direct gaze nailed me. “And you never come by my setup unless you need help.”

“Not with Bob. Him, I can handle.”

“Then who?” Terry asked curiously.

“Sara Bentley.”

Crawford shook his head. “I should have known.” This time the comb pointed at Terry. “You—keep working.” It swung back to me. “You—try not to get him in too much trouble.”

He turned on his heel and strode away.

“I think Crawford’s getting used to you,” said Terry.

“Resigned is more like it.” I popped the rubber bands out of the puppy’s short, spikey topknot and began to brush.

“What about Sara Bentley?”

“This is kind of delicate,” I said.

“Perfect,” Terry cooed. “I’m good with delicate.”

“I might be totally wrong about this, but I had an idea—an inkling really—and I wanted to see what you thought.”

“I don’t mean to complain, doll . . .” Terry glanced up. “But at the rate you’re going, you’ll have to e-mail your questions to me after the show.”

He was right, I was stalling. In truth, I’d been stalling ever since I came over. I might as well just blurt it out.

“Here’s what I was wondering about. Is Sara Bentley gay?”

Terry tipped his head to one side, considering me with a bemused expression on his face. “Is this one of those gaydar things? Like I should know because I’m gay? Honey, in case it hasn’t occurred to you, that’s not the way it works. I check out men. Or maybe you figure that if we’re gay, we’d all hang out together, common bond and all that—”

“Quit it!” I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to laugh or blush. “Just shut up. That isn’t what I meant and you know it.”

“Okay.” He was prepared to be placated. “What did you mean?”

“I came to you because you know everyone’s secrets.”

His tone was playful. “I don’t know yours.”

“Terry, you cut my hair. You know everything there is to know about me.”

“Maybe you’re right.” He reconsidered. “Crawford thinks you have hidden depths, but maybe you don’t.”

“He does?” I focused on what Terry had said at the beginning, rather than the implied insult at the end.

“Of course he does. That’s why he worries about you.”

“Crawford worries about me?” This conversation was turning out to be full of surprises. “I thought he just found me annoying.”

“That, too,” Terry admitted.

Right. It was time to get back to the topic at hand. “Sara?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“Looking at things in your narrow, compartmentalized, hetero way, I guess you might say that Sara is gay.”

It was also turning out to be full of insults.

“How about if, just for a minute, I was able to shed the inhibitions of my conventional life and look at things from your ultra-hip, free-spirited homosexual viewpoint?”

Terry smiled. My sarcasm had hit home. “Then you’d probably say she’s bi.”

That wasn’t such a hard concept to accept. In fact, it made a lot of sense.

“So Sara likes men and women both?”

“So it seems.” He made a new part in Marla’s hair and continued to brush. “Does it matter?”

I nodded. “I’m pretty sure it does. I’m just not sure how yet. How well do you know Sara?”

Terry shrugged, an answer that was pretty much what I’d expected.

“You wouldn’t happen to know who she’s been seeing for the last few months, would you?”

“Does this have anything to do with her house burning down?”

“I think so.”

“Then why don’t you go ask Sara herself?”

“We’re back to that delicate thing again. There’s some stuff she doesn’t want to talk about.”

The brown puppy squeaked and looked at me reproachfully as my comb caught in a small tangle in his ear hair. I soothed the ear leather with my fingertips and teased the knot apart.

“Then I guess we’ll just have to talk about it for her,” Terry agreed. “But to tell you the truth, I don’t keep tabs. Wasn’t she seeing some yummy guy who was related to Bertie?”

“Last summer. But there was someone after that. Someone who was important to her.”

Important enough to be the father of her unborn child, I thought but didn’t add.

“Sorry, can’t help you there.”

“That’s all right. Actually, you’ve been a big help.”

“Of course. Aren’t I always?” He leaned closer and whispered, “Want to pay me back? I could use some influence with the judge.”

“Baloney,” I said loudly.

“Oh, well, it was worth a try.”

Crawford reappeared to put in the brown puppy’s topknot. My job was done, and the lunch break was ending. Aunt Peg, looking well fed and eager to get back to work, was once more in her ring.

The rest of the afternoon careened by. There’s something about playing hooky from school that makes time pass with unseemly speed. Aunt Peg sorted out her Miniature Poodle entry with dispatch, then turned with great enthusiasm to her Standards.

By the time the dust had settled at the end of the day, the Mini puppy I’d helped to brush out had been third in a class of three, but Marla had gone Winners Bitch to secure her first major. A beautiful black Standard champion from Pennsylvania had won Best of Variety, with the silver Toy beating both him and the Miniature for Best of Breed.

At any dog show, there will always be more losers than winners. Aunt Peg had quieted much of the usual grumbling, however, by declaring herself available to discuss her decisions at the end of the day. I’d hoped to have another chance to talk to her, but in light of her pronouncement, Peg became a much sought-after guest at the wine and cheese party after the show. I wasted half an hour trying to get her alone and watching as none of my twenty raffle tickets won a prize. Finally I gave up, grabbed a couple of cubes of cheddar, and headed home.

Even though I was heading mostly against the rush-hour traffic out of White Plains at five-thirty on a Friday afternoon, I wasn’t going to get anywhere quickly. Half of New York’s residents seemed to be in their cars, and every one of them wanted to be somewhere other than where they were. I was afraid Bob might be annoyed by the delay—I’d told him I’d be home early and he could go ahead and make plans for Friday night—but when I called from the car, he sounded curiously acquiescent.

“Just have a safe trip,” he said. “Whenever you get here, Davey and Faith and I will be waiting.”

Give me a break. Who did he think he was, Mr. Donna Reed?

Just for the heck of it, I asked Bob to put Davey on the phone.

“Hi, Mom,” my son chirped happily.

“Everything okay?”

“Sure. It’s great. Dad and I are making a surprise.”

“A surprise?” I gulped. “What kind of surprise?”

Davey didn’t answer, but I did hear him giggle. A moment later, Bob was back.

“See you soon,” he said cheerfully.

“Bob?” I braked abruptly in the bumper-to-bumper traffic, paying too much attention to the phone and not enough to my driving. “What’s going on?”

There was no answer. I was talking to dead air.

When I finally reached home, everything looked normal. Still, I sat in the Volvo for a minute before going in. Excited as Davey had sounded, I couldn’t quiet the nagging thought that my son and my ex-husband were up to no good.

Presently the front door opened and Bob peered out. “There you are,” he said, squinting into the darkness. “Faith told us you were here, but you didn’t come in, so I came to check. Need any help?”

“No, I’m fine, thanks.”

As I got out of the car, I realized what Bob had said.
Faith told them I was there?
When had my ex-husband started listening to my dog? More important, when had he started understanding her?

Bob came down the steps and walked over to the driveway. “Long day?”

“The day was lots of fun. It was the traffic on the way home that nearly did me in. How about you guys? Have you been entertaining yourselves?”

Bob shut the Volvo’s door and looped an arm around my shoulders. “We went shopping.”

“Shopping?” That was hardly the answer I’d expected. “For what?”

“Umm . . .”

Bob hesitating was never a good sign. I pulled away.

“I told Davey we had to get your permission first,” he said.

“What are you two up to?”

“Basketball. Davey wants a hoop.”

“He has a hoop.”

A small one, set on a plastic stand and base that sat in the backyard. Though now that Bob mentioned it, I realized Davey had had that child’s version of the real thing since he was three.

Bob slanted me a look. “He wants a real hoop, regulation height, with a backboard. Something that doesn’t fall over if the ball hits it too hard.”

I stopped and looked around at the short, narrow driveway that connected my house to the street. Between Bob’s Trans Am and my car that was now parked behind it, the paved area was nearly full. And installing a hoop off to one side would either block our front door or encroach on the neighbor’s property.

“There isn’t room for a full-sized hoop,” I said. “Where would it go?”

“If it’s all right with you, I could nail the backboard to the garage. That way, we wouldn’t need to install a pole and the whole thing would take up a lot less space. As long as you park inside the garage, Davey will have plenty of room to dribble and shoot.”

“Inside the garage?” Lately I’d been letting things pile up, which was why the Volvo had been spending nights out in the driveway. “I guess you haven’t taken a look in there recently.”

“Actually, I did. This afternoon.” Bob grasped the handle on the door and raised it. “Davey and I saw you had some work to do, so we did it.”

He walked inside and turned on the light. I stared, dumbfounded, at what was surely the most pleasant surprise I’d had in a long time. The single car space, which that morning had been so cluttered with junk I could barely open the door, was now neat and clear. One might almost say pristine.

I hate cleaning the garage, which is why I do it as seldom as possible. In the spring and summer it’s easy to ignore the problem. But with winter coming, I’d been steeling myself for the task. And now, just like that, it was done. Six months’ worth of debris and neglect—gone. Knowing what Bob had had to work with, the transformation bordered on miraculous.

Slowly I walked over to stand in the pool of light that flowed out onto the driveway. “Where did you put everything?”

“Some of it was just a matter of organization.” He sounded smug. A man, Bob’s tone implied, would never let such valuables as tools and lawn mowers come to such a state. “And we took the recycling to the dump. The rest of it, the stuff that looked like junk, Davey and I piled outside around the corner. Once you’ve had a chance to look at it and make sure there’s nothing you want, we’ll load it up and haul it away.”

It was all a little much to take in.

“Who are you really?” I asked. “And what have you done with my ex-husband?”

Bob moved over to stand beside me. “I hoped you’d be pleased.”

“Pleased? I love it. You’re a lifesaver. . . .”

His hand slid up my arm to my shoulder. He turned me to face him and I realized how close he was standing. The soft, indirect lighting threw muted shadows over us both.

“I’m going to kiss you,” Bob said.

“Yes.”

It was just that simple. And just that good.

My fingers went up to tangle in his hair. His warm breath mingled with mine. It wasn’t until several minutes had passed and I began to feel frustrated by the bulky layers of clothing between us that I remembered we were standing outside, in the cold, in full view of the neighborhood. Damn.

The realization was enough to make me pull away.

With obvious regret, Bob let me go. “To be continued,” he said.

My heart, already thumping hard in my chest, gave a little leap. Did I want this? I wondered. Could I handle this?

I had no idea.

A large box tucked in the back corner of the garage caught my eye. Grateful for the distraction, I went to see what it was.

“Backboard and hoop,” Bob said, following me. “Davey and I were hoping you’d say yes. If not, we can return it tomorrow.”