Ruff Way to Go (14 page)

“Or are you
here looking for something nice to wear? Maybe I can interest you in some
designer clothing.” She strode toward me. Suddenly she’d become a smiling salesperson,
complete with the mannequin smile and movements. I took a step back.

“The clothes
make the woman, Allida. If you want to run a successful business, you have to
begin by looking the part. You want an outfit that says, ‘I’m confident. Yet
fun. Appealing.’ After all, in your line of work, you have to be able to move
freely.”

I glanced at
the discreet signs on the table beside me, which sported a half dozen styles of
blouses. The small signs bore the names of the designers, which meant nothing
to me. I pulled out the price tag of a blouse and nearly choked. “Sorry, Edith,
but all these clothes will say on me is, ‘I’ve overextended my budget’. I don’t
think I’d be able to afford this kind of quality. I’m just trying to get my
business off the ground.”

Just as
though she’d decreased speeds in an internal blender, the intensity left her
mannerisms and her face. She said sourly, “I know what that’s like. Tell you
what, though. We’re just about to have an end-of-the-season sale. You’ll have
to come in then. All of our summer items will be marked down.”

“Season-ending
sale? But...this isn’t even summer yet.”

“You really
are a newbie in the fashion world, aren’t you? The things I could do for you,
Allida. Image, as they say, is everything.”

“Maybe I’d
put more stock in that particular slogan if it were coming from a more credible
source than Madison Avenue. Anyway, Edith, I
am
here to speak to you
about Shogun.”

“Good. I
want to remind you that, despite the horrible events at my house yesterday, I
still need you to make a decision regarding Shogun’s custody at the earliest
convenience.”

“Edith, I
don’t understand how you can ask me to decide custody of your dog when he’s
missing.”

“Trevor
kidnapped my dog. Probably even killed Cassandra in the process.” She tucked
the price tag of the blouse that I’d touched back out of sight as she spoke. “If
committing murder and kidnapping aren’t grounds for awarding custody to
somebody else, I don’t know what is.”

“That may be
true, but at this point, Edith, there is no dog.”

“I’m sure he’ll
turn up.” She realigned her display of sweaters, acting calm and blase, as
though she didn’t have a care in the world.

“You don’t
seem terribly worried. It’s almost as though you know where Shogun is.”

“I do.” She
didn’t look up from her compulsively neat sweater arrangement. “He’s with Trevor.”

“Not
according to Trevor he’s not.”

“He’s lying.”

“You’ve seen
Shogun over there? You know Trevor has the dog?”

“No, but I
have it on very good authority. I spoke to a mutual friend of Trevor’s and
mine. She told me that she saw Trevor with Shogun at his place not even an hour
ago.” Her speech bore an undercurrent of barely suppressed rage that was more
than a little daunting.

“Okay. In
that case, I’ll give him a call and see what he has to say about all this.”

“No, don’t
bother, Allida. Everything is under control.” She glanced at her watch. “Shall
we reschedule yesterday’s missed appointment at my place? Say, five-thirty
tomorrow evening?”

“Are you
sure you’ll even be back in your house that soon? Last I saw, it was still
cordoned off with police tape.”

“I’ll be
back in tomorrow. And mark my word. I’ll have my dog back from that lowlife I
used to be married to by this time tomorrow if it’s the last thing I do.”

As I left
the “boutique,” I realized I had plenty of time to see for myself if Trevor
Cunningham had Shogun before I would need to get home for my date with John.

Trevor’s
current residence was a duplex just north of Longmont, some fifteen miles south
of Berthoud. This particular section of town was a massive grouping of tan and brown
cubes, one duplex a mere doghouse’s width from the next. The yards were so
small that the residents could water their lawns by tossing a glass of water
out the window. If I were Shogun, I would certainly prefer Edith’s spacious
property in Berthoud.

I rang the
doorbell. No answer. Also, no dog barks came in response to the ring. Neither
Shogun nor Trevor was here. If Edith’s “mutual friend” had given accurate
information, Trevor could have the dog with him. At least equally possible,
though, was the notion that Edith had been feeding me nonsense, and Trevor didn’t
have Shogun in the first place.

As I was
leaving, Trevor’s thirty-something female neighbor from the other half of the
duplex emerged from her front door and padded down the concrete path toward me.
She was thin—emaciated, even—with unusually wide-spaced gray eyes,
and was exceptionally pale. She blinked and shielded her eyes as if she could
barely tolerate the bright sunlight.

“Are you
Edith?” she asked in a trembling voice, her face slightly averted as if she
were afraid of me. She peered through her long but sparse bangs at me, her eyes
wide. Despite the temperature of at least eighty degrees, she wore
an oversized
gray cardigan sweater that dwarfed her frail frame.

The woman’s
overall demeanor was so fearful that I was too curious to do the right thing
and simply say no. “Hello, there. Trevor didn’t answer the doorbell.”

“No, he’s
still not home, just like I said. I’m so glad you got my message. I wasn’t sure
you’d check your machine before Trevor got back.”

I made no
comment, but gave her a reassuring smile.

She chewed
on her lower lip and was a picture of nervous energy, still blinking almost
compulsively as she watched the street as if primed to bolt at the first sight
of a car. “He could be back any minute. I’ve got the dog, like you asked. But
Edith, I’ve just... I’m so...” She paused, then shut her eyes and blurted, “I’ve
got to tell you, I don’t feel good about doing this. He doesn’t even know I
have a key to his place.”

“You’ve got
Shogun in your home?” I tried to keep my emotions in check, realizing that
Edith, unlike me, would not have been taken aback by this odd bit of news.

She held up
her palms. “I know you told me to wait and do it tomorrow, but if what you say
about him is true, I didn’t want to risk leaving the dog in his possession for
another twenty-four hours.”

“Huh. I can
understand how you must have felt.” Edith must have manipulated the woman into
grabbing the dog, and the woman had done so a day ahead of Edith’s schedule.
Perhaps this was the “mutual friend” Edith had mentioned, who’d reported to her
that Trevor had Shogun. If so, this “friend” didn’t even know what Edith looked
like. Edith must have gotten hold of the woman’s number somehow and told her
that Trevor had been abusing the dog. Though I didn’t know either Trevor or
Edith very well, I at least knew that Trevor Cunningham was not about to abuse
his little dog.

“So can you
take Shogun now? I did exactly what you said and opened a back window a couple
more inches to make Trevor think the dog got out and ran away. But you’ve just
got to get him out of here right away. Trevor’s going to come
over to my
place the moment he sees the dog is missing. And sooner or later he’ll hear
Shogun bark through the common wall.”

Though it
was dishonest of me, there was only one way to make certain someone else didn’t
disappear with the dog. “Yes, it’s fine. I’ll take Shogun now.”

“Oh, thank
goodness.” She smiled for the first time and straightened a bit. She went
inside her place to get the dog.

I hated
compounding Edith’s deceit toward this kind-hearted, anxious woman with one of
my own. As soon as she’d given Shogun to me, I would tell her who I was and
explain that Edith had merely tricked her into believing Trevor was abusive to the
dog.

Before I
could give the matter more than a fleeting consideration, Edith’s black Lexus
came flying down the street. She must have heard the phone message that the
woman had left for her.

Edith hit
her brakes, the tires squealing in protest as a spray of dust went up. She left
her car running and emerged from it without pausing to feign calmness or even
dignity. It was probably too late for either pretense.

She gave a
glance at the door of the woman’s half of the duplex, then looked at me. Her
facial expression made it obvious that the wheels were turning in her devious
mind. “Oh, Allida. I see you’re here. Good. I meant to tell you. Trevor’s
neighbor now has Shogun.”

She gave a
second glance at the neighbor’s front door, where the woman was now emerging
with Shogun in her arms, then force-fed me a smile. “So you and I can go back
to our original arrangement. You can come over tomorrow to visit with Shogun
and decide which of us gets the dog, now that I’ve located him.”

She turned
her attention to the puzzled-looking woman before us. “You must be Fiona. Hi.
We spoke on the phone earlier. I’m Edith Cunningham. Thank you so much for rescuing
my dog.” She reached for Shogun.

Fiona
stepped back, turning her shoulder to block Edith
from even
touching the dog.
“You ‘re
not Edith Cunningham.” She pointed at me with
her chin.
“She
is.”

Edith
clicked her tongue and put her hands on her hips. “No, she isn’t. I am. Do you
need me to show you my driver’s license?”

“She’s
telling the truth. I’m Allida Babcock, a dog psychologist.”

Fiona seemed
to shrink into herself, but continued to stare at us through her bangs. She
clutched the dog closer to her chest

“I’m very
sorry, Fiona. The Cunninghams asked me to determine which of them deserved the
dog, and I let you believe that I was Edith until I could ascertain that the
dog was safe. It’d be best, under the circumstances, if you gave Shogun to me
for the time being.”

A car was
slowing behind me, and I knew even while I still had my back to the car that
Trevor had come home. Edith cursed, and indeed the driver of the approaching
car was Trevor. He took one look at the three of us standing out front,
deserted his task of putting his car in the garage, and raced over.

He stepped
directly between his neighbor and his estranged wife. “Fiona, what are you
doing with Shogun? Give him to me.”

She started
shaking her head, backing away from us. “You people are crazy. You don’t
deserve this precious dog! None of you do!” She shuffled into her home and shut
the door. An instant later, the metal click let us know that she’d thrown the
bolt. I’d have done the exact same thing in her shoes.

“Edith! What
the—”

Edith
whirled around and jabbed a finger at Trevor. “Don’t you even start! You tried
to kidnap Shogun! I’ll bet you even killed Cassandra Randon!”

“I didn’t
kill anybody! Though I’d snap that toothpick neck of yours like that”—he
snapped his fingers in Edith’s face—“if I thought I could get away with
it. And I
didn ‘t
kidnap Shogun. Luellen found him. I called her the
moment I found out he was missing. She drove out to look for him and found him
on Second Street a couple of blocks from the house.” Trevor turned to me. “She’d
already found him by the time I was talking to you and your mom, but I didn’t
know it at the time.” He refocused on Edith and said harshly, “He was probably
trying to find his way to
my
house to get away from
you.”

“You expect
anyone to believe that?” Edith shouted, just as Trevor cried, “He could have
gotten hit by a car!”

“As if it’s
my fault that
you
left the gate open!” Edith cried, opting to defend
herself against Trevor’s accusation of carelessness.

“How did you
know the gate was open, unless you left it that way?” Trevor asked.

“The
policeman told me, you moron! And I’m filing dognapping charges against you!”

“There’s no
such thing. Even if there were, neither my sister nor I stole the dog. Luellen
realized that Shogun would be best off with me, and so she kept him hidden away
for a day. That’s all there was to it. I was going to call you tomorrow and let
you know that I had the dog, just as soon as the dust settled.”

“Like hell
you were!” Edith said with a snort. “You and Luellen stole Shogun. I was
completely within my rights to ask your neighbor to help me get him back.”

“You’ve got
a lot of nerve accusing me of stealing the dog, when you coerce my neighbor
into snatching Shogun out of my house!”

I’d heard
more than enough of this and employed a seldom-needed talent I’d picked up as a
kid and put two fingers from each hand in my mouth and let go with an ear-splitting
whistle. The Cunninghams abruptly stopped arguing and covered their ears,
wincing and eying me in surprise.

“Fiona is
right,” I said through a tight jaw the moment they’d lowered their hands. “You
two
are
crazy for behaving like two-year-olds. And
I’m
crazy for
agreeing to mediate this mess!”

For a
blessed moment, they listened in silence.