Give the Dog a Bone (10 page)

“It must have been very disappointing to you when you found out that your brother was leaving all of his money to his dog.”

Arlen put his hat back on and gave me a sheepish smile. “That was just Kenny, for you. He loved that . . . he loved Maggie so much, and he never did think twice about his money. It wasn’t important to him, and so he couldn’t imagine why it was important to other people.”

I nodded in agreement with Arlen’s assessment.

He gave me another smile, which could only be described as nervous, at best. “There wasn’t anything in his will that specifically excluded me from being able to get Maggie, was there?”

“I don’t think so, no. Was there a reason you expected there to be one?”

“No. No.” He shook his head. “We’ve had our share of disagreements, is all. Ken and me. Just like in any family. I’m sure you know what I mean.”

“Yes, I do. I’ve got a brother myself.” We both stared at Maggie, who seemed content to sit between us. This was decidedly un-Maggie-like behavior, but I doubted it would last, unfortunately. “It was nice meeting you, Arlen.”

He shook my hand enthusiastically. “Nice meeting you, too. So . . . you’ll call me, right? Or just drop by?” He reached into his jean back pocket and gave me his card. “About when you want Maggie to come back?”

I gave the card a quick glance and replied, “Yes. Unless you’d rather set up a time now.”

“No, I’d just as soon . . . wait a bit. Get things fixed up for her a bit.”

“ ‘Fixed up’?”

“Maybe build a doghouse, that sort of thing.”

“Don’t go out of your way, Arlen. As I said before, I haven’t made a decision yet and may need at least a couple of days.”

“Okay. Be hearing from you then.” He watched as Maggie eagerly hopped back into the back seat. I read his card. He was self-employed as a television repairman. His company name was Culberson TV Repairs. I wondered if, before Ken had struck it rich with his invention, that title had once been Culberson Brothers. He lifted a palm as we drove away. I needed to drop Maggie off at Mom’s house. I just couldn’t have her with me, tearing up Russell’s office or sitting in my car for hours on end.

We drove home. Maggie barreled past me and through the door, toward my mother. I managed to press the button on my noisemaker just before the exuberant dog could jump on my mother. The noise, which had emanated from my pocket, did its trick and she pulled up short and looked around.

Her attempt to rush toward my mother was a massive breach of dog etiquette, and Pavlov let her know this by barking at her and snapping in the direction of Maggie’s muzzle. This could have deteriorated into a fight, because Maggie was unaccustomed to being in another dog’s domain. Fortunately, Maggie did the right thing and backed off, while I played my part and greeted Pavlov first, then the other two dogs.

Meanwhile, Mom went back to searching for something in the junk drawer. She said over her shoulder, “I listened to an interesting little piece about your furry friend here on my drive home from the airport this morning.”

“You heard something about Maggie on the radio?” I asked in alarm.

“From our favorite talk-show host.”

“Oh, no.” A friend of mine, whose softball team I played on—and we had a game tonight, in fact—was forever blabbing things on the air about existing police investigations. Where she got her information was a mystery to me.

“Yes, Tracy broadcast the fact that Maggie, here, was the recipient of a substantial inheritance, and that you, local dog psychologist, were in the process of determining who Maggie’s caretaker should be.”

“That’s great,” I muttered. Though she was a fun person to be around and I enjoyed playing on her softball team, Tracy Truett was not one to hesitate to blab someone’s secret on the air, without considering the possible consequences.

“Now everyone listening to today’s show knows that we’ve got a millionaire dog in our yard.”

Chapter 10

Though perturbed at my deejay friend, I didn’t have time to stew about it. I wanted to pay a visit to Ruby before my first appointment to see how T-Rex was doing. I said good-bye to my mother, then had to go through considerable effort to get out the door without Maggie following. She was so good at getting her muzzle into the doorway, in fact, that I finally had to partially close the door on her face while pushing on her nose with one hand. Maggie was making me feel like a complete novice dog handler.

Ruby was home. I knew she’d blow up at me if I admitted I was there to check on her dog, so I said I was “in the neighborhood and thought I’d say hello.”

She smirked and said, “Seein’ as we’re such close friends you mean?”

Okay, not one of my better excuses. “How’s T-Rex feeling today?”

She gave me a hateful glare but, to my surprise, swung the door open and gestured for me to enter. “See for yourself. He’s his old self again. I should’ve trusted myself. I knew there was nothing wrong with him.” As I stepped around her to look at her dog, she grumbled, “Now I s’pose you’re gonna try to convince me to hire you. And I wouldn’t pay you to squeeze his butt.”

“Good thing butt-squeezing isn’t on my list of specialties, then.” As devastating as that was to my self-image, I added to myself. Indeed, T-Rex seemed to be doing well. He wagged his tail and sniffed my breath as I got down on one knee to pet him.

“So where’s Maggie at?” Ruby asked. “Did she finally get herself taken to the pound?”

“No, she’s got a temporary home and is doing fine.”

“That won’t last. Dog’s a nuisance. Wait till this ‘temporary’ owner starts hearing from his neighbors.”

“Had you told Ken about how annoying you found his dog to be?”

“Sure. Didn’t do me no good, though.”

Someone tapped on the screen door immediately behind me, and I quickly stood up. It was a tall, pretty, fortyish blonde, attractively dressed in black slacks and a beige silk blouse. She gave me a winning smile. “Hello. My name is Rachel Taylor. Is Ruby Benjamin here?”

“I’m here,” Ruby answered, leaning around me to look at her visitor. “Come on in.”

“I brought the job application you asked for,” Rachel said, pulling a sheet of paper out of a folder as she entered the trailer.

“Application?”

“As I told you over the phone, for you to live in a person’s home and provide care, we’ll need references and work history.”

She glanced at both sides of the form as if overwhelmed at the notion of filling it out, which was understandable for an illiterate person.

I said to her, “I’m glad T-Rex is doing better.”

Ruby winced as though I’d let the cat out of the bag, which was true, but there was no way she was capable of being a health-care provider when she could misread the labels on her dog’s medicine bottles.

“T-Rex?” Rachel repeated. “Was your dog ill?”

Ruby merely glared at me as if waiting for me to leave, but I felt it was important that Rachel Taylor know about Ruby’s limitations for providing health care. “No, he was overmedicated the other day.”

“Was not!” Ruby snarled. She screwed up her features and mumbled, “I gave him a double dosage by mistake. It was just an accident and it won’t happen again.” She shot me an accusatory glare, as if my spoiling her job opportunity was an unpardonable offense. It would have been a worse offense to allow someone like this to perhaps “double” dose a human being under her care.

Rachel Taylor’s expression was inscrutable, yet I immediately sensed that she’d picked up on the intent of my statements. “Mail the application back to me once it’s completed, Ruby. Or give me another call, and I’ll come pick it up next time I’m in the area.” Rachel gave her a warm smile, which was not returned.

Ruby grimaced and crossed her arms.

“I’d better be going,” I said. “Take care, Ruby.”

“Let me walk you to your car,” Rachel said to me, then shifted her focus to Ruby. “You know, Ruby, having a friend and neighbor die unexpectedly like this is difficult. Sometimes we find ourselves grieving when we least expect to. Don’t hesitate to call me if you want to talk.”

“I won’t,” Ruby said evenly.

Rachel held the door for me, and we left together.

We walked a few steps away from Ruby’s home so that we would be out of earshot. “What happened with the dog? Did she misread the directions on the medicine bottle?”

“I got the impression she couldn’t read the prescription.”

She sighed. “She won’t be working for me anytime in the near future, then.” Her face looked grim. “Too bad. An adult-care provider is a really difficult position to fill.”

“Terry Thames gave me your card the other day.” I turned and looked at Ken’s trailer. “He said he’d referred Ken to you.”

“Yes. Poor Ken was just so sweet and guileless. I had my hands full, trying to protect him from certain individuals who were intent on taking advantage of him. He spoke very highly of you, however.”

“He did?” We’d only just met, though, the day before he died. “When?”

She gave me a small smile. “Actually, I’d asked around town about you before Ken ever came to see you. He needed someone excellent to work with Maggie, and you came highly recommended.”

“Thank you.” Considering the rancid opinions that Ken’s psychologist and veterinarian had of me, this was music to my ears.

Her expression grew somber. “Ken and I spoke again, right before he was . . . before he died. He called me in a panic, because you had his dog and he was alone. Naturally, he told me about his decision to appoint you temporary guardian of Maggie. I told him he’d done the right thing. That you were the right person for the job.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” I muttered.

“Perhaps I can help you in deciding who gets his dog. Ken always expected his dog to outlive him. He had a weak heart and was overweight and . . .” She paused as if struggling with the sadness. “Anyway, he told me he didn’t want Maggie to go to a stranger, and I’m fairly familiar with the people in Ken’s life.”

“Thanks. Bearing that in mind, what do you think of his brother, Arlen?”

She frowned a little and said, “He wouldn’t be my top choice. For one thing, he pretty much hated Maggie. Terry Thames would be a good choice, however. He’s good with dogs, and I know Ken trusted him implicitly.”

I stifled a grimace at the thought of my rewarding Dr. Thames with Maggie and her money. “I’ll keep that in mind, but Dr. Thames and I didn’t hit it off.”

“No? He
can
be rather full of himself sometimes. Typical doctor-as-god syndrome.” She rolled her eyes, and I couldn’t help but chuckle. She added thoughtfully, “Both he and his wife work and aren’t home a lot.” She paused and shook her head. “Come to think of it, I’m not sure who I
would
recommend. Too bad you can’t just violate the conditions of the will and put the dog in a good home . . . let the courts resolve who should inherit the money.”

“My thoughts exactly,” I muttered.

“It’s all so sad. I spoke to the police at length. Apparently he was murdered, though they didn’t say how.”

“They didn’t tell me that either.” He had to have been suffocated, I thought; if he’d ODed on the ACP, the police would probably still be considering his death a possible suicide.

“It’s so hard to believe,” Rachel continued. “The man couldn’t possibly have brought himself to hurt anyone, regardless of the circumstances. If only the burglar had realized that.”

“ ‘Burglar’?”

She nervously fluffed her short, blond hair as she spoke. “That’s an assumption on my part, but the papers this morning said that he’d been asphyxiated during a struggle. Asphyxiation seems to be a code-word these days for strangulation. All I could think was that he could have battled with a burglar and lost. He was so careless with his cash. He’d told me he’d been at the police station that night, and the way he always bellowed when speaking, some punk probably overheard him talk about how he kept cash in a shoe box, then followed him home.”

Ken couldn’t have been killed in a burglary—at least not because he had interrupted one in progress. The man had died on his bed. I didn’t want to share this information, however, and instead feigned ignorance and asked, “He kept his money in a shoe box?”

She nodded. “He had two. One for the hundreds, the other for the smaller denominations.”

Someone cleared her throat harshly and we both looked over. Yolanda was standing with her arms crossed, glaring at us from her side of the fence. In a strangely loud and carefully enunciated voice, Rachel said, “Hello. How are you doing today?”

“I
do
just fine, missy. I can
hear
just fine, too, so you don’t have to shout. And I un’erstand English just fine, too.”

“I didn’t mean to imply—”

“Course you didn’t mean to imply nothin’. You jus’ don’t know any better. Always making assumptions about people.”

The color rose in Rachel’s cheeks. “We were just chatting about your neighbor’s untimely death. It’s such a tragedy.”

“Tragedy?” she repeated and let out a puff of indignation.

“Yes. It was.”

“The likes of you have no right to call Ken’s death a tragedy.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

She let out the deep, rumbling laugh of hers but the smile never reached her eyes. “That’s funny, missy. ’Cuz I’m pretty sure you
do
. I seen you the night Ken died.”

Rachel’s expression grew hard. Through gritted teeth, she said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Nor do I care for the implication.”

“I seen you drive past our trailers around three A.M. On the night Ken died.”

Rachel spread her hands. “There was nothing sinister about that, Yolanda. You’re Ruby Benjamin’s good friend, right?”

Yolanda, rejecting Rachel’s attempts to establish camaraderie, maintained her stone-cold front. Her lips were set in a frown and her brown eyes, magnified by her thick glasses, were unwavering and hateful as she stared into Rachel’s.

Undaunted, Rachel continued, “Ken called me, distraught because he wasn’t used to being home alone without his dog. I reassured him, but couldn’t get back to sleep. I decided to drive by just to see if his lights were out and his home quiet. Everything looked peaceful, so I drove home without stopping.”

Yolanda let out another puff of air and tossed her head, her short gray hair maintaining its brittle-stiff appearance. “A likely story.”

“I reported it to the police already,” Rachel said evenly.

“Course you did. Like you had any choice, since I already tol’ them about you myself.” Yolanda spat out the words, and I had to admit that she was making me nervous. This was not a woman I would want to cross. I was reevaluating her as my top candidate for guardianship of Maggie; perhaps she lacked the patience and warmth to be a dog owner.

“What can I say, Yolanda?” Rachel asked. “I was worried about my client and drove past his home. That’s all there was to it.”

“So you was just
innocently
spying on Ken at three A.M.,” Yolanda said. “Sure am glad I ain’t one of your so-called clients.” She pivoted on a heel and marched off in the opposite direction of her home.

Rachel sighed and glanced at me. “That’s a very angry woman. I run into her kind too often in this job.”

“I’m sure you do,” I murmured, feeling awkward at having been a silent witness to Yolanda’s hostility. I suppose I should have been grateful that, for once, someone else was playing the part of the fall guy.

I glanced at my watch. I had an appointment to keep with a burrowing basenji—which wouldn’t have been so bad, if he’d confined his digging to outside, but the dog had dug through two couches and an ottoman. “I’d better get going, Rachel.”

She searched my eyes. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but as I tried to tell Ruby Benjamin, I’m a trained counselor in helping people handle their grief. Don’t hesitate to call me if you should feel the need yourself.”

“Thanks.” I hesitated as I started to get into my car and watched her getting into hers. “Do you own a dog, Rachel?”

She smiled. “Yes. I love dogs. I have a schnauzer-mix named Cinnamon.” She stared at Ken’s trailer behind us for a moment. Her expression grew somber. “Though, if you’re in any way considering giving me Maggie, perish the thought. I put in too many hours away from home to take on an untrained golden. And Cinnamon doesn’t get along with other dogs.”

“Okay, then. Bye,” I said and left. Ruby was standing outside as I drove off. I smiled and waved, but she merely glared at me.

About twenty minutes later, I arrived across town at the home of the basenji, who was, in my opinion, the victim of an unscrupulous or ignorant pet store salesperson. Basenjis, as is widely known, are the “barkless” dog. They are not mute, but make a yodeling sound that resembles a many-pitched howl. Active, headstrong, and willful, basenjis are great pets for attentive dog lovers; not so great for a leave-the-dog-home-alone-for-ten-hours-during-workdays owner.

The black-and-brown short-haired puppy needed some outlets for his intelligence and energy that didn’t include damaging property. One suggestion I not only made but also sold to them was a toy that challenges the dog to figure out how to feed himself. It is a hollow ball that they would fill with his breakfast kibble. The opening to the ball was small enough to release only one kibble at a time, and this changes meal times from five minutes of gobbling from a bowl into an hour to two hours of the dog kicking the food ball around.

We discussed diet and exercise routines at length, as well as a plan to have them simulate leaving the house for work on weekends as well, and varying the lengths of time that they stayed away, so that Benji didn’t take every time his owner departed as indicating a ten-hour separation.

I had another appointment with the Akita mix and her woeful owner, still in need of my “magic wand,” then grabbed a late lunch and headed back to the office. To my surprise and immediate concern, my mother’s pickup was parked outside. I pulled into my space and raced to the stairwell, to find Mom and Maggie sitting on the bottom step. Mom was reading a paperback, with the loop of Maggie’s leash fastened over her forearm. Maggie’s tail started wagging at the sight of me and she tried to run toward me, but Mom quickly reined her in.