The Bark Before Christmas

by Laurien Berenson

  The secretary looked shocked. “You were expecting them?”

  “Not this quickly.”

  It couldn’t have been more than half an hour since Sondra had left the bazaar. And while I’d always known that there were Howard Academy parents who possessed the kind of power and connections most people could only dream of, I still had to wonder what kind of clout the McEvoys could bring to bear in order to roll out a police response this swiftly over a missing dog.

  “Oh my word,” said Harriet. Her hand fluttered to her chest again. “Do I even want to know?”

  “Probably not,” I told her. “Though I’m sure you will soon enough.”

  Unfortunately I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be long before we would all find ourselves swept up in whatever kind of retaliatory maelstrom Sondra McEvoy chose to create.

  Leaving Harriet behind to follow more slowly, I hurried out of the auditorium and down the well-lit passageway that connected the school’s two buildings. I was feeling a bit breathless myself when I reached the mansion’s front hall and paused outside the closed door to Mr. Hanover’s office. Nerves probably.

  I smoothed down my hair, straightened my blazer, then knocked lightly on the door.

  “Come,” said Mr. Hanover.

  I pushed the door open slightly and peered around it, into the room, before entering. Not that I wanted to appear hesitant—that was always a bad strategy when dealing with our forceful headmaster—but in the past I’ve found myself involved with Detective O’Malley of the Greenwich Police Department on several occasions. From my perspective, our interactions haven’t always ended well.

  Mr. Hanover was standing by the window. In the middle of the room was a tall, well-built, black man whom I didn’t recognize. That was good. Maybe I could start with a clean slate for a change.

  “Ms. Travis?” Mr. Hanover sounded impatient, and I realized that I was still hovering in the doorway. “Please come in and close the door behind you.”

  I quickly did as I’d been told.

  “Detective,” said the headmaster, “this is Melanie Travis, the woman who’s in charge of our bazaar. Ms. Travis, let me introduce you to Detective Raymond Young of the Greenwich Police Department.”

  We shook hands and took one another’s measure. Detective Young had a firm grip and piercing brown eyes. O’Malley had always reminded me of a Chow: bulky, and a bit fluffy around the edges, but fierce underneath. Detective Young was more of a Doberman Pinscher: all muscle and focused intensity.

  If anyone could locate Sondra’s missing Westie without delay, this had to be the man for the job.

  “I’m very pleased to meet you,” I said.

  “And I’m sorry to tell you that I’ve come with bad news,” the detective replied. “I’m afraid your Santa Claus is dead.”

  Chapter 11

  “What? No . . .” I frowned, then shook my head.

  The news was so unexpected that I couldn’t seem to process it. “Santa Claus isn’t dead. He’s just missing.”

  “I’m afraid not,” said Mr. Hanover.

  He walked out from behind his desk and guided me to a chair. My legs felt suddenly boneless and I sank into it gratefully.

  “But how . . . ?” I sputtered. “What happened? Where was he?”

  Young’s lips thinned into a straight line. “O’Malley warned me you would ask a lot of questions.”

  So much for my clean slate.

  Grateful to think about something else for a moment, I said, “How is Detective O’Malley? I haven’t seen him since last summer.”

  “He’s enjoying the sunshine in Florida, and happy to be there. All in all, he’s doing a whole lot better than your Santa Claus.”

  Just as I’d suspected, Detective Young was a man who knew how to focus. I took a deep breath and gathered myself together. Then I looked back and forth between the two men.

  “Would somebody please tell me what happened?” I asked.

  Mr. Hanover ceded the floor to the detective. Rather than telling the story, it appeared that the headmaster preferred to hear it again himself. Though you’d never know it to look at him, I was sure that Mr. Hanover was just as shaken by this unexpected news as I was.

  “Half an hour ago, we received a call to nine-one-one,” said Detective Young. “The caller said there was a man dressed like Santa Claus lying on the ground next to a car in Union Cemetery, and that he didn’t appear to be breathing.”

  Union Cemetery was only about a mile away from Howard Academy on the other side of the Post Road. It was a small burial ground, containing mainly older graves dating from the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. This time of year, I would have expected the cemetery to be mostly deserted.

  “Under the circumstances, the dispatcher thought at first that maybe we were being pranked,” Young continued. “But unfortunately that wasn’t the case. The officers who responded found just what the caller had described. EMTs arrived shortly thereafter and the man was pronounced dead at the scene.”

  “In the cemetery,” I murmured. There was a certain irony there. I looked up and asked, “Do you know how he died?”

  “It appears that he was hit by a taser at fairly close range and died as a result of that assault. We will know more after an autopsy has been performed. But right now we’re guessing that the intent was to disable your Santa Claus, not to kill him.”

  “Why do you keep calling him our Santa Claus?” I asked. “This time of year, there are Santas everywhere. What makes you so sure that the man you found in Union Cemetery is the man that appeared at our bazaar?”

  “I’m not yet certain of that,” Detective Young replied. “But on the front seat of his car, the officers found a flyer for your Christmas bazaar with this address circled. It seemed logical to assume that this was where he’d been. And now that Mr. Hanover has informed me that your Santa Claus disappeared unexpectedly in the middle of the afternoon, I think we’re on the right track.”

  “The man we hired was named Chris Tindall,” said Mr. Hanover.

  Young consulted his notes. “According to his driver’s license, the man in the cemetery was Jerry Platt.”

  Mr. Hanover and I shared a look. It was hard to tell which one of us was more relieved.

  “So that’s good,” I said. I braced my hands on the sides of the seat and stood up. “The man you found isn’t our Santa Claus at all.”

  “I’d like to be sure.” Detective Young pulled out his phone. “Do you mind if I show you a picture?”

  “Is it horrible?” I asked.

  “No, he just looks like he’s sleeping.”

  Mr. Hanover walked over to join us. Together we looked at the screen. The man I saw there had closed eyes and slack features. He didn’t appear familiar to me at all.

  “Well?” Young asked after a long moment had passed and neither of us had spoken.

  “I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “I never saw our Santa Claus’s face.”

  Mr. Hanover shook his head as well.

  The detective looked at us incredulously. “Neither of you saw him?”

  “He was Santa Claus,” I said with a shrug. “He had on a big, fluffy beard. And a red hat that came down low over his brow. I think his eyes might have been brown . . . maybe.”

  I looked at Mr. Hanover. He had nothing to add.

  “Let me get this straight,” said Detective Young. “You hired this guy to come to your school and interact with your children but you never bothered to meet with him ahead of time?”

  “It’s rather a long story,” said Mr. Hanover.

  The detective crossed his arms over his chest. “Go on.”

  The headmaster and I gave the detective a condensed version of the previous week’s activities, beginning with the original Santa Claus who’d been hired well in advance and canceled at the last minute, and ending with the eleventh-hour phone call from Chris Tindall the previous morning.

  “At that point, our choices were extremely limited,” Mr. Hanover said
. “Had we not agreed to hire Mr. Tindall, we would have had to give up on the idea of our Santa Claus and Pets Photo Booth.”

  “Pets?” Detective Young repeated. He regarded us with interest. “What kind of pets?”

  “Whatever kind the kids wanted to bring,” I said. “It was mostly dogs and cats. But we also had a ferret and a parrot. And one girl brought a pony.”

  “A pony?” Mr. Hanover swung his gaze my way. “I must have missed that.”

  “Don’t worry,” I told him. “Scooter was amazingly well-behaved. All the kids loved him.”

  “Wait a minute. Back up,” Detective Young broke in. “There were dogs here with your Santa Claus?”

  “Sure,” I said. “That was the whole point. Kids brought their pets to have their pictures taken with Santa.”

  “Could be that explains something,” the detective said thoughtfully.

  “Yes?” Mr. Hanover lifted an inquiring brow.

  “Along with the flyer for your bazaar, we also found a photograph on the front seat of Platt’s car. It was a picture of a dog.”

  “What kind of dog?” The question popped out before I’d even had time to think. Aunt Peg would have been proud.

  “Small . . . white . . . fuzzy looking,” Young said vaguely. “You know, a dog.”

  My stomach dropped. “Damn,” I muttered.

  I walked back to the chair I’d recently vacated and sat down again. It was beginning to look like we might be there a while.

  “What now?” asked Mr. Hanover.

  “Kiltie,” I said.

  “What about Kiltie?”

  “He’s a West Highland White Terrier. He’s small, and white, and fuzzy looking.”

  The headmaster made the connection. His face fell.

  “A West Highland what?” asked Young.

  I already had my phone out and was searching for a picture. Then it was my turn to tilt a screen the detective’s way. “Like that?” I asked.

  He squinted uncertainly. “Yeah, I guess that looks the same. I’m not much of a dog person. The little ones all look alike to me.”

  “Kiltie’s a show dog,” I said.

  “Like Westminster?” Young asked. “My wife watches that on TV.”

  “Exactly like that.”

  “And that dog was here, at this school, earlier today?”

  “He was,” I confirmed. “His owner’s daughter brought him to the bazaar to have his picture taken. He was here until sometime after lunch when he went missing.”

  “The dog had his picture taken,” Young repeated, as if he wanted to be sure that he had his facts straight. “And that would have been with Santa Claus?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And then he disappeared?”

  “Right again,” I agreed unhappily.

  Mr. Hanover had turned his back on our conversation. Once again, he was staring out his window. I’d known him long enough to realize that was a sure sign of his agitation.

  “The same Santa Claus who’s now lying dead in Union Cemetery?” said Detective Young.

  I winced. “It’s beginning to look that way.”

  Slowly Mr. Hanover turned around. “Why is it, Ms. Travis, that whenever I hope your information might simplify things it always ends up doing the opposite?”

  I shrugged helplessly. There was no good answer to that.

  “This Jerry Platt person,” Mr. Hanover said to the detective, “who now appears to be the man we thought was Chris Tindall—who is he and why does he have two names?”

  “Platt’s a small-time crook who’s pretty well-known to the authorities in Fairfield County. He’s been in one kind of trouble or another since he was in high school, and it’s not unusual for him to operate under different names.”

  “Small-time,” I said. “What does that mean exactly?”

  “Petty theft, criminal mischief, drunk and disorderly, things like that. Platt seemed to have an aversion to making an honest living, especially when he could find a way to get by outside the system. He didn’t appear to be much of a thinker. If he was offered something that looked like an easy job, he usually took it.”

  “And this is the man whom we introduced to our students.” Mr. Hanover closed his eyes. I thought I might have heard a small moan.

  “Not your best choice,” Young agreed. “Even under the circumstances.”

  “We didn’t know,” I said.

  “Of course not,” Mr. Hanover said briskly. “Had we been aware of Platt’s background, we would have handled things very differently.”

  “The little dog that went missing,” said Detective Young. “Who does it belong to?”

  “A Howard Academy parent named Sondra McEvoy,” the headmaster said. He didn’t look pleased. “Will it be necessary for you to speak with her?”

  “Possibly. I’d like to keep my options open. Can you get me her contact information?”

  “You won’t need it,” I told him. “Sondra left the bazaar an hour ago. She was on her way to the police station to report that Kiltie was gone. And speaking of which . . .”

  “What?” asked Detective Young.

  “You found Platt’s car and a picture of a Westie.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “But no dog?”

  “No,” the detective replied. “But the car door was open. If Platt had your missing pooch, he probably jumped out and ran away.”

  “Let me get this straight, Ms. Travis.” Mr. Hanover’s voice sounded like a low growl. “Are you implying that Kiltie didn’t just wander off? That you think he might have been dognapped?”

  Usually our headmaster is quicker on the uptake that that. With his job, he has to be. Now I suspected he’d known where I was heading all along even as he’d tried to deny it to himself.

  “That’s what it sounds like to me,” I said.

  “I’ve never heard of dognapping.” Detective Young shook his head. “But petty theft fits the profile. It’s the kind of criminal activity we’d expect from Jerry Platt.”

  “It’s unlikely that Sondra McEvoy will think of Kiltie’s disappearance as petty theft,” I told him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Kiltie is a very successful show dog.”

  The detective looked at me blankly. “Is that a good thing?”

  “There are lots of people who would think so.”

  “With a name like Kiltie”—Young shrugged—“he doesn’t sound like much. Those dogs on TV have fancy names.”

  “Kiltie has a fancy name, too,” I assured him. “It’s GCH Westglen Braveheart.”

  “Gee cee aitch,” he repeated slowly, sounding out the letters. “Is that some kind of title?”

  “It stands for Grand Champion. It means that Kiltie has beaten a lot of other good dogs over the course of his show career.”

  “At Westminster, right?”

  He sounded so pleased with himself that I hated having to correct him.

  “Westminster is just one dog show,” I said. “There are hundreds of others held all around the country every year. Dogs like Kiltie compete in shows nearly every weekend. When they win, they pile up points toward year-end awards.”

  “Hundreds?” Young was surprised. “I thought there was just the one.”

  “Not even close. Westminster is the pinnacle of the sport in the U.S., and it’s our most famous dog show. But you might want to think of it as the tip of a very large iceberg.”

  “So it sounds like this dog show thing must be a pretty big business.”

  “In some ways it is,” I said. “There are a number of supporting industries where money can be made: professional handlers, photographers, advertising, things like that.”

  “And this Kiltie dog, when he wins at dog shows he rakes in a lot of money to pay for all that?”

  “Well . . . no,” I admitted. “Dog show exhibitors don’t actually make any money. In fact, it’s the opposite. Campaigning a top level dog can be incredibly expensive.”

  “So why
do people do it?”

  “Because they love it,” I said simply.

  Young didn’t look impressed by my answer.

  “Dog shows are fun, and exciting, and interesting on all sorts of different levels. Exhibitors love their dogs and they love the competition. And the satisfaction you feel when a good judge—a person whose opinion you really respect—says that your dog is the best one, that’s what makes it all worthwhile.”

  I hadn’t meant to give such an impassioned speech but the words had just come pouring out. The dog show world was stimulating, perplexing, and ever-fascinating. I hoped my explanation had helped the two men begin to understand that.

  No such luck.

  Mr. Hanover, who’d been content to listen silently for the last several minutes, now glanced over at the detective with a dubious look on his face and said, “I guess it’s like owning a boat.”

  “Yup.” Young nodded. “If you have to try and explain the thrill, it’s just not there.”

  Well, that put me in my place. Too bad Aunt Peg wasn’t in the room. She would have made sure they felt the thrill. Or else.

  “So with all that going on,” said the detective, “how much is a dog like Kiltie worth?”

  I thought for a moment, then went for the easy answer. “To Sondra McEvoy, I’d imagine he’s priceless.”

  “How about to someone else? Jerry Platt, for example. What would he do with a dog like that?”

  That was a tough question. It was also one I’d been pondering myself.

  When Aunt Peg’s stud dog was stolen, the thief’s intent had been to substitute Beau for a lesser Standard Poodle and use him to revitalize his entire bloodline. In the intervening years, however, much had changed in the world of dog breeding and genetic research. Now the American Kennel Club did DNA testing, which would make such a switch impossible. So how would someone benefit from Kiltie’s abduction?

  “Maybe they’ll hold him for ransom,” I said. I was only half joking.

  “A dog,” Young said. His tone was flat.

  I wondered if he’d been listening to anything I’d said.

  “A show dog,” I corrected.

  “Maybe someone wanted to remove Kiltie from competition,” Mr. Hanover said thoughtfully. Obviously he’d been paying attention. “A disgruntled competitor perhaps? Someone who might have been tired of losing to him—?”