All Shots (12 page)

“I got a job for you,” Kevin said. “Homework. Look on the Web and see if you can find a picture of the bike. If you do, print it out. Get me the model.”

“I’ll try. I think I’ll recognize it.” I paused. “Kevin, one other thing about the woman. And the dog. That ID tag? Kevin, she had that made, and she put it on the dog.”

“Someone did.”

“Okay, someone did. But the point is the same. Whoever put my name and my contact information on the tag wanted to make sure that if the dog got lost, as she did, or got in some kind of trouble, I’d be the person who was called about her. If you just wanted a tag, any old tag, you could invent a name and an address and a phone number. Or use your own, of course. Or pick a person at random. But when it comes to malamutes, I’m not just anyone. I’m active in malamute rescue, I belong to our national breed club, I’m on all the e-mail lists about malamutes, I show my dogs, and so on. In my column and in my articles, I write about malamutes all the time, my malamutes, other people’s malamutes, rescue malamutes, malamute history, malamute health, you name it. Do a Web search looking for me, and half of what you’ll find will be about malamutes. So, what I think is that whoever had that tag made and put it on the dog, on Miss Blue, was someone who knew about me and who cared about the dog. Yes, in a way, the tags were canine identity theft, but Kimi doesn’t have credit cards to steal or bank accounts to empty. She doesn’t have a Social Security number. The point wasn’t Kimi. The point was that I’m someone you could count on to do everything possible to help that dog. Why choose me? Because someone loved Miss Blue. And that’s the real point of the canine identity theft. Someone loved her. Someone loved her enough to pass her off, even briefly, as my dog.”

Holly Winter and her mother make their way along
Quincy Street, reach the intersection with Mass. Ave., pause to wait for a break in the traffic, and cross at the mother’s pace, which is slow. The mother, who is short and plump, is not, of course, my mother, Marissa, who was tallish, athletic, and notably swift of foot. The major difference between our mothers is, however, the difference between life and death: whereas the other Holly’s mother is alive, mine died a long time ago. If it had been my mother’s ghost and me who walked along Quincy Street and crossed Mass. Ave., it’s likely that we’d have been heading to Mr. Bartley’s Burger Cottage. I inherited my healthy appetite from both parents, but my metabolism is Marissa’s. When she used to take me to Harvard Square, we sometimes ate at Bartley’s, where she gave as little thought to calories as I do. In contrast to the other Holly Winter’s mother, mine was energetic. As she used to say, “You can’t work as hard as I do if you don’t eat.”

The other Holly Winter and her mother are walking, albeit slowly, toward a Thai restaurant that my mother would have hated. Steve loves the place, mainly because its menu items show little icons of peppers to indicate the spiciness or blandness of dishes. He is thus able to order and devour concoctions so blisteringly hot that they’d send me to the hospital. My mother hated hot peppers. In fact, Yankee that she was, she mistrusted even ordinary black pepper and used it sparingly, mainly as one of her rare concessions to the wants of other people. Or, I might add, the wants of dogs. Marissa met people’s needs, and she more than met the needs of our golden retrievers, but needs are not wants, are they? Well, maybe sometimes they are.

“I need you to take my arm,” says the mother. “It’s so confusing. I don’t know how you manage to find your way around.”

“It’s perfectly simple,” says Holly impatiently. “And we don’t have far to go.”

“This one must be good,” says the mother as Holly leads her around the line on the sidewalk in front of Bartley’s. “We could go here. What is it we’re having? Siamese food?”

“Thai.” She is about to say more when she catches sight of a couple emerging from the Harvard Square landmark that she wrongfully dismisses as a greasy spoon. As a statistician, she fully understands that statistical correlation does not imply causation. There is, however, nothing statistical about the association she is now observing. Rather, what she sees is a social association, the coming together of a Cambridge police lieutenant and a woman named Holly Winter, another Holly Winter, a Holly Winter who differs from herself in radical and suspect ways.

As I maneuvered Steve’s van out of a Harvard Square
parking garage built for compacts and as I drove home, I couldn’t help wondering what the other Holly Winter had made of seeing me with Kevin, or maybe what she had made of seeing Kevin with me. She knew who we were, at least in a superficial sense. Kevin had questioned her, and she’d paid a visit to my house. She’d obviously recognized us. No one ever misses Kevin. He’s a great big man with red hair, and although I don’t exactly believe in auras or energy fields, Kevin exudes such a strong sense of presence that it would be a gross understatement to say that he stands out in a crowd. The line outside Bartley’s had consisted mainly of late-adolescent students and of Harvardian adults with more brains than brawn. In that particular crowd, Kevin had looked like a woolly mammoth in a flock of sheep. I, perhaps, stood out as the sheepdog. In any case, there’d been no question about whether we were together. Kevin may be a mammoth, but he’s a gentlemanly one: he’d taken my arm as he’d made a path for us through the line. Catching sight of us, Holly Winter had visibly startled. In reality, Kevin and I were friends and next-door neighbors, but she must have seen only a Cambridge cop investigating the death of the woman who’d been stealing her identity and the woman who shared her name, the name that had been stolen, the same woman who had found the body of the would-be identity thief. It occurred to me that if the other Holly Winter searched the Web for information about Kevin and about me, she’d find nothing about our friendship. Furthermore, although Kevin lives next door to me, his mother is the one who owns the house, and the phone there is in her name; and whereas I’m listed as living on Concord Avenue, the Dennehys’ address is on Appleton Street. If the other Holly searched only for the Cambridge address of Kevin Dennehy, she might well fail to discover that we lived next door to each other. For all I knew, Cambridge had multiple Kevin Dennehys as well as multiple Holly Winters. When it comes to names, Greater Boston is as Irish as Dublin. Consequently, she might decide that my Kevin was some other Kevin Dennehy who lived nowhere near me.

When I arrived home, it was only seven thirty. Kevin eats early, and I eat anytime, as is indicative of our positions on the town-gown continuum: town has supper at five or five thirty, gown has dinner at seven thirty or eight, and I eat when the people I’m with want to eat or, if I’m alone, whenever it suits me. The dogs are evidently town rather than gown. To maintain flexibility in my own schedule, I avoid feeding them at exactly the same time every day, but they nonetheless remain convinced that five o’clock means food. Consequently, I’d fed them before leaving for the Square.

When I returned, I put Rowdy and Kimi outside in the yard and gave Sammy and Tracker, my cat, some house time. Neither Rowdy nor Kimi had been raised with cats, and although I’d made some slight progress in teaching them to remain calm in Tracker’s presence, I’d had to accept my limits as a trainer. Rightly is it said that dogs build character! Malamutes specialize in instilling in their owners a deep sense of humility. Rowdy and Kimi had learned to exhibit calm behavior when Tracker was on top of the refrigerator or otherwise out of their reach, but it would never be safe to have her loose with either one alone, never mind both. Sammy, however, had known Tracker since he was a little puppy. I wouldn’t have trusted him with her outdoors, but when the two had the run of the house, he largely ignored her. Because of the dogs, Tracker spent most of her life in my study, which had a carpeted cat tree, a window perch, and a variety of cat toys as well as her food and water bowls and her litter box, not to mention my computer, filing cabinet, books, and so forth. When Steve was home, we sometimes banished the dogs from our bedroom and let her sleep with us there. Steve was the only person she trusted. One of her few obvious pleasures was curling up next to him on his pillow. It was never clear to me if she actually enjoyed the freedom to explore the house that I sometimes provided when Rowdy and Kimi were outdoors or in their crates. In fact, she did little actual exploration and sometimes returned to my study on her own. Even so, I felt guilty about sentencing her to solitary confinement in my office and insisted on letting her out now and then, perhaps more for my sake than for hers.

Rowdy and Kimi’s absence also offered the opportunity to let Sammy play with one of his beloved one-dog-only toys, which is to say, toys that dispensed food. I had phone calls to make, so instead of giving him the noisy Buster Cube, I packed pieces of cheddar into the three openings in a hard black rubber disc that was supposed to look like a spaceship. (The real name of the toy is a Kong X-treme Goodie Ship. No, I do not own stock in Kong or, for that matter, in Dyson or in the company that makes Dr. Noy’s toys, either. I just wish I did.) Sammy watched eagerly as I jammed in the cheese; and when I had him sit in heel position, the tip of his tail flicked back and forth, his body almost vibrated, and his eyes gleamed. Still, when I told him what a good boy he was and presented him with the toy, he refrained from grabbing it and instead took it politely from my hand before dashing around in joy and then settling on the kitchen floor to chew out the bits of cheddar.

I then settled myself at the kitchen table and called one of my counterparts in Siberian husky rescue. As I expected, she had no news about Strike. She assured me that there had been posts about the lost Siberian on the sled dog lists and breed lists, and she promised to call me if she had any news.

Almost as soon as I hung up, the phone rang.

“Holly? Elise. Illinois rescue. I got your e-mail.”

I thanked her for calling and said, “Actually, I have the dog now. The blue malamute. She was found running loose, so I know a little more about her. She’s young, two or so, and I think she’s a breeder dog. We can’t find a spay scar, but we haven’t done an ultrasound, so we’re guessing. You know what that’s like.”

“Do I ever. The vet opens her up and finds she’s already been spayed, and you end up paying the whole bill for a spay.”

So why not do an ultrasound whenever there’s a question? Ultrasound is expensive, and rescue groups need to control expenses. In some cases, there is no question: the shelter or the owner assures you that the dog has been spayed…and you get a surprise.

“We’ve had that happen, too.” The
we
wasn’t royal. Or maybe it was? I meant AMRONE, Alaskan Malamute Rescue of New England.

“If she’s intact, then we didn’t place her,” Elise said.

“Of course not.” Every reputable rescue group spays or neuters all dogs before placing them unless the surgery would pose a health risk to the dog. For example, no sensible person subjects a fragile twelve-year-old male to neutering. Anyway, a firm spay-neuter policy is one hallmark of a good rescue group, and I didn’t want Elise to feel insulted.

“But she doesn’t sound like one of ours,” Elise said. “The woman you asked about doesn’t ring any bells, either, but I don’t meet all of our adopters myself. I might see their applications, or I might talk to them on the phone. But—”

“I don’t meet all of ours, either. If another volunteer works with an adopter, then maybe I’ll meet the adopter at one of our events, but that’s it.”

“So, what’d you want to know about Grant?”

“The reason I’m interested in him is that he had blue in his lines. And not all that many people do.” I explained the circumstances under which the photo had been found. “And the police still don’t know who the murdered woman is. I thought that if I could find out who the dog is, then maybe that would help to identify the woman. I showed the photo to Phyllis Hamilton, and Grant was one of the breeders she mentioned as a possibility. Anyway, let me tell you what I know about him, which isn’t much. Phyllis told me that he was a reputable breeder—or people thought he was a responsible breeder—and then his marriage went to pieces, and he got in some kind of financial trouble, and he disappeared. He got his dogs from Minnie Wilcox and Debbie Alonso.”

“Poor Minnie,” Elise said.

“Yes. I talked to her daughter.”

“Her mind’s gone. It’s so sad. Debbie took responsibility for the dogs of Minnie’s that Grant had. And her own. We got the rest.”

“The ones Grant bred himself.”

“Fourteen. Seven adults, seven puppies. His wife had left him, and he was living out there alone, and no one knew he was gone for maybe ten days. He just took off and left the dogs in their kennels, not that they’d been in great shape before. One of the males had an infected wound on his leg that hadn’t been treated. It was a real mess getting that cleared up. And all of the dogs were starving, and not from being without food for just ten days. The kennels were filthy. What happened was that a neighbor noticed that Grant wasn’t around and went to take a look. And found the dogs. Otherwise, they’d’ve all died. It’s a good thing for Grant that he took off. Everyone who saw that place and those dogs wanted to kill him.”

“No wonder.”

“And, Holly, these were such sweet dogs. They were real sweethearts. We placed all of them. They’re loves.”

“Any blue females?”

“One. One of the adults. She was five or so. But she’s not the one you have. I see her all the time. I know the adopter.”

“A puppy?”

“There was a blue male. That’s it.”

“Elise, when was this?”

“Two…two and half years ago, let’s say. Yes. It was in April. What I heard was that Grant started getting in trouble the summer before that. You know about that?”

“No. Phyllis says that I might’ve met him at a National, but if I did, I don’t remember. All I really remember is that you got a lot of his dogs.”

“Well, the trouble was that his money, which he didn’t have a lot of to begin with, was all going up his nose and into his veins. And his wife got sick of it, and she left him. I never met her. She didn’t go to shows or anything. I heard she was a nice woman. Debbie Alonso knew her a little.”

“You don’t suppose…?”

“That it’s her? The one who was murdered?”

“Just a thought. How old is Grant?”

“Thirty-five? Forty, maybe.”

“The murdered woman was probably too young to be his wife. She was in her early twenties. Still. I wonder how old Grant’s wife is. Was? His ex-wife.”

“You could ask Debbie.”

“I will. Elise, do you have any idea what happened to Grant? Where he went?”

“To hell, I hope. That’s where he belongs.”

“In the meantime?”

“Someone told me he was in the Southwest. I heard that someone ran into him there. I don’t care where he is as long as he doesn’t have dogs.”

“Do you remember who saw him?”

“Sorry. Someone told someone who…one of those things. This was maybe a year ago, anyway.”

After that, we talked about rescue for a while. As soon as the call ended, I refilled Sammy’s toy and called Debbie Alonso. The conversation was brief. Debbie had nothing good to say about Graham Grant. In fact, it sounded to me as if she was so furious at him that she could barely talk about him at all. His kennel name, I learned, had been Rhapsody. His wife was about his age, in her late thirties, Debbie thought. She certainly wasn’t in her early twenties.

Feeling discouraged, I made two calls intended to cheer me up. The first was to Steve. Amazingly, I reached him. Just as amazingly, his cell phone didn’t quit, so we had a long talk, during which I told him about everything except the murder and associated horrors. He’d be home on Saturday, and especially because we couldn’t count on being able to reach each other by phone, I didn’t want to worry him. Instead, I told him about the rally run-throughs I was going to the next evening, rally being a fun variety of obedience. Instead of performing a fixed set of exercises on the judge’s orders, the dog and handler move through a course marked by signs. Each sign represents an exercise, sometimes a simple one like Halt, sometimes a more complicated one that involves, for example, heeling in a pattern around traffic cones. Anyway, a few months earlier, I’d had a flare-up of ring nerves, and although I was feeling almost ready to show again, I was still concentrating on lighthearted dog sports and avoiding competition obedience, which was formal, serious, and nerve-wracking, mainly because I made it that way.
Run-throughs,
I should add, are just what they sound like, opportunities to practice for trials under similar conditions but without actual competition and without scoring that counts. The run-throughs were taking place on the green of a suburban town. A pleasant evening spent playing with Rowdy was just what my healing nerves needed. Heeling nerves. Sorry. Punning is an affliction, presumably one with a neurological basis. Anyway, Leah and I were taking Rowdy and Kimi, and I was looking forward to time with Leah, too. I’d talked to her on the phone a couple of times, but I missed having her live with us.

My second cheer-myself-up call was to Gabrielle. I simply wanted to hear her voice, which, I was increasingly forced to recognize, always felt more maternal than my own mother’s ever had. Force of habit, which is to say, the habit of addressing golden retrievers, had made Marissa sound like my handler and my breeder, as she was, of course, but my stepmother sounded like a mother and nothing more. Fortunately, it was Gabrielle and not Buck who answered, and she was filled with yet more excitement about drug enforcement and, in particular, about the DEA agent, Al, who was becoming a friend of hers. I was anything but surprised. Knowing my stepmother as I did, I expected to find that Al would be joining us for Thanksgiving dinner at her house in Bar Harbor and that Gabrielle already had a list of suggestions about what Steve and I should give him for Christmas. I’d have bet anything that Gabrielle had invited him to use her guest cottage whenever he liked and to spend his next vacation there. So, I let Gabrielle’s comforting warmth soothe me and paid little attention to the particulars about the latest complete stranger she was welcoming into our family. Out of the corner of my ear, I heard that the DEA confiscated all sorts of marvelous things. Raids yielded luxury vehicles and first-rate sound systems. Suspects were known as “subjects.” Al sometimes went undercover. I knew that if he ever did anything iffy or odd or obnoxious, Gabrielle would tell me about it before adding in tones of shared affection, “But that’s just Al. You know what he’s like.” If he did something truly egregious, she’d advise me to think of him as a difficult relative. She’d say it before I’d even met him.