by Mike Resnick
“Mist them?” I repeated.
“Here. Take a look.” He walked to the side of a kennel building and pointed to a small copper pipe that ran over the tops of the runs, just under the fiberglass. He reached down to the ground and turned a small handle, and suddenly I heard a rush of water going through the pipe. There were numerous tiny holes in it, and a number of fine sprays shot out, throwing a gentle mist over the runs.
“Keeps them cool and prevents their skins from getting too dry,” he said proudly. “I adapted it from some collie breeders who had to create a little humidity to help their coats grow. It’s in common usage throughout the Southwest in one form or another.”
We stopped at another building that had just one large fenced run. He opened the door and seven little gray puppies raced out, stubby tails wagging furiously.
“Excuse me for a moment, Mr. Paxton,” he said. Then he walked into the run, sat down on the ground, and played with them for the better part of five minutes. They squealed piteously when he left.
“I make it a point to socialize my pups as much as possible,” he said. “After all, they’re going to be going to new homes very soon, and I don’t ever want it said that we breed shy dogs here. And besides,” he added, and suddenly his face softened, “I enjoy it even more than they do.”
We walked around for a few more minutes, then returned to the house.
“Got your count, Mr. Paxton?” he asked.
“Thirty-three,” I said.
“Thirty-six,” he corrected me. “You missed a few.”
“No offense meant, sir, but they all look alike to me. I don’t know how you tell them apart.”
“You get the hang of it after a while,” he replied.
“Getting back to Baroness,” I said. “Can you think of anything else I should know?”
“Hell, it all took place at your end,” he said. “There was nothing unusual out here at all. The plane was a couple of hours late, but that’s nothing out of the ordinary.”
“I guess that’s it, then,” I said, walking through the foyer to the front door. “I think I’d better get back to the motel and call Lantz. It must be getting near midnight, Cincinnati time.”
“Just a minute, Mr. Paxton,” said Nettles, following me out to the car.
“Yes?”
“I want to ask you a question, and I want a straight answer.”
“Shoot.”
“Do you think Baroness is alive?”
I paused for a moment, then decided to level with him. “No, I don’t.”
“Neither do I,” said Nettles. “I know you’re working for Lantz, and I understand that you’re going to have to come back here and try to prove that I’m hiding Baroness somewhere. But once all this stupidity is over, if it turns out that Baroness is dead, I want to hire you to find out who killed her.”
“It could cost a lot of money,” I said. “More than she’s worth.”
“I’ve worked forty years to come up with a specimen like her,” he said grimly. “Money is no object.”
“Let’s play it by ear first,” I said. “We’ll proceed on the assumption that she’s alive, and if it turns out that she isn’t, we’ll go from there.”
“Fair enough,” he said.
We shook hands, I told him I’d be back the following morning, and I started off toward my motel. When I was about halfway there I became aware of a set of headlights following me. Since I was unacquainted with the roads, I reached my left arm out the window and gestured for the driver to pass.
He accelerated, then slowed down and matched my speed as he pulled alongside. Some instinct told me to duck, and I lowered my head less than half a second before I heard an explosion and a bullet went right through the passenger’s window on its way out of the car. The glass cracked, but didn’t fall out.
I slammed on the brakes and skidded crazily to a halt on the shoulder, trying to get a license plate number off the other car, but it was too far ahead of me. I couldn’t even make out the model or color.
I waited about five minutes for my hands to stop shaking, then proceeded slowly back to my hotel, half-expecting to be shot at again along the way.
Nothing else happened, though, and I left the car outside the door, drew the drapes, put on the latch and the chain, and spent the next few hours wondering what the hell I knew about Baroness that made someone feel I had to be eliminated.
4.
I spent a lousy night in the hotel.
I’d been shot at before, but I had always known who was doing it and why it was being done. I knew what areas to avoid, I knew where to go to be safe, and in Chicago I had the resources of a twenty-thousand-man police department, at least half of which was honest, to help protect me. (In Cincinnati, where they don’t much tolerate lawbreakers, I had the populace at large to help me, and indeed, a client’s irate husband who was taking pot shots at me was run down by a bunch of what I fondly considered to be patriotic if fun-loving youngsters driving a souped-up 1958 Studebaker.)
But here, in a strange city and a strange state, things were different. I didn’t know who was out to kill me or why, and the closest secure retreat I knew was two thousand miles away in Cincinnati. Even before I got to Nettles’s place I was going to have to show myself to a number of motel guests, and a gas station attendant, and probably two hundred motorists, any one of whom might be gunning for me.
And the frustrating thing was that after puzzling half the night I still didn’t know what information they thought I had, what they thought I knew that was so damned dangerous to them. (My mind had built my assassin up from “him” to “them” somewhere around three in the morning.)
I was still trying to sort things through as I got dressed. Someone had tried to kill me, no doubt about it; that hadn’t been any warning shot. Someone had almost certainly killed Alice Dent; those bruises on her head didn’t have to have come from the steering wheel or the windshield (or if they did, it didn’t mean someone hadn’t smashed her head into them before shoving the car into the river.) Without knowing anything about it, I figured Steve Raith’s car crash on Tuesday was probably as phony as Alice’s.
And all of this was over a dog that was of absolutely no value to anyone but its owner.
My next logical step should have been to track down the other guy who’d been working Sunday, the one who’d been transferred to Texas or Oklahoma, but somehow I knew, deep down in my gut, that I’d be signing his death warrant the second I began asking questions about him, and I decided to put it off as long as I could.
I called the restaurant, which was attached to the motel, and had them bring me two large glasses of orange juice and a cup of coffee. Someone knocked on my door a minute later and I told him to leave the tray outside. I waited another thirty seconds, then opened the door and brought the tray in. I downed the orange juice in a hurry—the sun was barely up and I was already feeling dehydrated—and then called Joan Linwood, the Phoenix dog judge whose name and number Lantz had given me the previous day. She agreed to meet me at Nettles’s place in an hour.
Then I had the motel switchboard place a call to Jim Simmons for me. I could have dialed him direct from my room, but if anyone was keeping tabs on me I wanted them to know that the Cincinnati Police Department knew where I was and what I was doing. Of course, a police force halfway across the country wasn’t much of a club to hold, but it was better than nothing, and I had a feeling that I needed all the clout I could get.
When Simmons picked up the phone I told him where I was.
“Arizona?” he laughed. “I just saw you yesterday. You’re a busy little detective, aren’t you?”
“Right at the moment, I have the feeling that what I really am is an endangered species.”
I could almost see the smile vanish from his face.
“What’s up?”
“I wish to hell I knew,” I told him truthfully. “But if I don’t check in every day, I want someone to know that something’s happened to me. Also, keep
an eye on Hubert Lantz.”
“The dog guy we checked out yesterday? Is he in trouble?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I doubt it, but he may be. And if you have any contacts over at Clermont County, have them run an autopsy on Alice Dent.”
“Who’s she?”
“Traffic accident. They pulled her out of the Little Miami on Wednesday night.”
“I seem to remember seeing that on the news,” he said. “What do you expect us to find?”
“Probably nothing,” I said. “But have someone check the bruises on her face and see if they couldn’t have occurred before the accident.”
“Will do.”
“I’ve got another fruitless quest for you if you’re interested,” I said.
“Shoot.”
“A guy named Steve Raith. He worked for Federated Cargo Lines and piled up his car Tuesday. I don’t even know where, but I assume it had to be local. It’s probably going to check out negative, but it’s worth a shot.”
“You really have been busy, haven’t you?” he said. “Take care of yourself, Eli.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said, and hoped that my best would be good enough.
Then I called up the Casa Grande police, got hold of a rather sleepy desk sergeant, told him that I was a detective working on a case, gave him the name of my motel and the make and license of my rented car, and told him that if anything happened to me he was to get in touch with Simmons. Not that I thought it would do much good, but I had a feeling that if someone got to me they’d make me awfully difficult to identify, and at least the car might be a hint.
I couldn’t think of any more bases to cover, so I finished my coffee, walked out to the Pontiac, and started driving out into the dusty Casa Grande countryside toward Nettles’s place.
As I drove I kept trying to come up with answers and kept drawing blanks. It was frustrating. I’d been more than an honest cop when I was in Chicago; I’d been a damned good one. I’d broken open two dope rings with no more information that I had now—but at least I had known what I was looking for then. The more I thought about this case, the more I kept coming back to the dog, and I just couldn’t get past it: if I could just figure out what made it so damned important, I was sure I’d know why two people were dead and why someone was trying to kill me.
I was still battering my head against a stone wall when I pulled into Nettles’s driveway. He came out to meet me, never noticed the bullet hole in the passenger’s window, and took me right inside.
Mrs. Nettles was awake, and he introduced me to her. She was a frail-looking woman, no more than five feet tall, and couldn’t have weighed ninety pounds dripping wet. Her hair was a nice steel gray. She extended a hand that had to be toting ten times Baroness’s worth in diamonds, and asked me if I’d had breakfast yet. I told her I had, but she insisted on having the maid bring me some coffee anyway.
“I want you to find my dog, Mr. Paxton,” said Mrs. Nettles as we sat down in the family room to wait for Joan Linwood.
“I’m working on it,” I assured her.
“I don’t care what it takes or what it costs,” she continued. “If Hubert won’t pay you, we will.”
“I understand.”
“I don’t think you begin to understand,” she replied. “Hubert and Maurice keep talking about her value, and of course she’s a very valuable animal, but she’s more than that. I raised her with my own two hands. Her mother’s milk went bad two days after she was born, and I bottle-fed her five times a day until she was weaned. I housebroke her and I leash-broke her and I show-trained her. She almost died when she was five months old, and I stayed up around the clock nursing her back to health. Maurice is concerned with showing, but what I love about this sport is the dogs themselves. I never worked harder to keep any dog alive than I worked with Baroness. The fact that she’s one of the finest show animals in the country is an added bonus, and of course I’m pleased about that, but I would love her every bit as much if she were just an ugly old pet. I don’t even like sending her on show circuits; I miss her, and I know she misses me.” She paused. “I love my dog and I want her back, Mr. Paxton.”
Detectives get lied to all the time. You get used to it. If you stay in the business long enough, you start assuming that everything you hear is a lie until proven otherwise. But as I looked into that fragile old woman’s eyes, I decided that I would bet my bottom dollar she was telling me the truth, not just about loving Baroness but about wanting her back. I was dead certain that our expert kennel inspection was going to be a waste of time.
Still, I’d been fooled by sweet old ladies before, so I simply promised to do my best and waited for Lantz’s judge to show up.
A few minutes later the bell chimed, and Joan Linwood walked in. She was tall, about five foot eight, slender, with a pretty decent bustline and narrow hips. Her skin looked more bronzed than tan, just like the Coppertone commercials, and she had her auburn hair done up in a bun. I put her age at thirty-five, maybe a little more, but she had the athletic grace of a teenager who plays five sets of tennis every day just to work off energy. I guess that’s what running around a show ring with a dog does for you.
She greeted the Nettleses like they were old acquaintances, then shook my hand and suggested that we get about our business. There were three kennel buildings, not counting the one that housed the puppies, and it took her less than a minute in each to determine that Baroness wasn’t there. I couldn’t think of a graceful way to suggest that she check out the puppy building, too, but Nettles took me off the hook by insisting that she inspect it. There was nothing there but the seven pups.
We then returned to the house, where Mrs. Nettles was waiting for us with some very welcome lemonade.
“Satisfied?” asked Nettles.
“I was satisfied last night,” I told him. “We went through this fiasco to satisfy Lantz. I’m sorry to have taken up your time, Mrs. Linwood.”
“It hasn’t been Mrs. in a long time,” she said with a smile. “And I’d prefer that you call me Joan.”
“All right, Joan,” I said, returning her smile. “I’m sorry to have gotten you down here on a wild goose chase.”
“I quite understand,” she said. “And I assure you it was no hardship. I always like visiting with Maury and Nancy. By the way, that’s a hell of a puppy you’ve got out there, Maury.”
“One of the babies?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “In the first building. About seven months old.”
“Oh!” he said, his face lighting up. “That’s Joker.”
“Nice deep chest, beautiful rear angulation. Teach him not to toe out with his left front foot and you’ll really have something there.”
“We’re working on it,” said Mrs. Nettles, in a tone of voice that meant she was working on it.
“When will you be bringing him out?” asked Joan.
“Probably at one of the California specialties this fall,” replied Nettles. “I’m thinking of getting Greta Koonce to handle him. What did you think of the litter?”
“A couple of nice bitches, but nothing special,” she replied. “You know, I’m judging the Albuquerque all-breed show next winter. I’d love to see Joker there.”
I must have looked disapproving, because she turned to me and said, “We’re really not fixing the show, Mr. Paxton. The fact that I would like them to enter Joker under me doesn’t mean that I’ll put him up. I’d just rather judge good dogs than bad ones.”
“I didn’t say a word,” I answered hastily.
“I’m sorry,” she replied with a smile. “It’s just that Hubert Lantz thinks any show he doesn’t win is fixed, and since you’re a stranger to the dog game and have probably heard about it only from him, I didn’t want you getting the wrong impression.”
“The impression is corrected,” I replied. “Do you breed dogs yourself, or do you just judge them?”
“These days I’m living in a townhouse and I don’t have the room to keep them,�
�� she answered. “I used to be quite active, before my divorce. I suspect I’ll start breeding again one of these days. It’s like an addiction; once you start, you can never really stop. The flip side is that once you’ve bred good ones, you can never tolerate an ugly one as a pet. So I’ve got one housedog, a champion male who really ought to be out burning up the show circuit and servicing bitches, and there he sits, soaking up air-conditioning and growing fatter and fatter every day.” She paused for a moment. “If you’re going to be out here for another day, why not come over for dinner? Maybe I can explain some of the terms you’ve been hearing from Hubert and Maury, and at the very least I can show you what a fat old champion Weimaraner looks like.”
“I think I’ll take you up on that,” I said. “I can catch a plane to Cincinnati a lot easier from Phoenix than Casa Grande.”
And, I added mentally, I won’t have to go back to a motel that’s probably being watched.
She pulled a notepad out of her purse and scribbled her address and phone number on it.
“Can I drop you anywhere?” she asked, getting to her feet and handing me the paper.
“I have a car,” I said.
“The one with the broken window?”
“Yes.”
“It looks just like a bullet hole,” she said.
“You’ve been reading too many detective stories,” I answered. “A piece of gravel flew off a truck as I was moving out to pass it.”
She gave me the same kind of look that I give Billy Fourth Street every time he tells me he’s got an absolute lead-pipe cinch in the sixth at River Downs, but she didn’t say anything, and a moment later she left.
“Where will you be going next?” asked Nettles.
“The airport,” I said. “I don’t imagine they’ll be able to tell me anything, but I might as well touch all the bases while I’m out here. Can you give me directions?”
“I’ll do better than that,” he said. “I’ll take you there myself.”
