Catwalk

by Sheila Webster Boneham

  Copyright Information

  Catwalk © 2014 Sheila Webster Boneham

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Midnight Ink, except in the form of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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  Any unauthorized usage of the text without express written permission of the publisher is a violation of the author’s copyright and is illegal and punishable by law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First e-book edition © 2014

  E-book ISBN: 978-0-7387-4085-0

  Book design by Donna Burch-Brown

  Cover design by Lisa Novak

  Cover Illustration: Gary Hanna

  Midnight Ink is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

  Midnight Ink does not participate in, endorse, or have any authority or responsibility concerning private business arrangements between our authors and the public.

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  dedication

  For “the Margarets” who handed down the genes…

  Peggy (my mom), Maggie (my grandma),

  and Meg (my great-grandma).

  I’m sure there were more.

  acknowledgments

  Writing a book can sometimes feel like herding cats, although I happen to think that writing is also as much fun as a basket of kittens. The truth is that everything depends on community—ideas, memories, feedback, support, and the occasional obstacle that says “try harder.” So, in no particular order, my thanks to those—human and otherwise—who have fed my passions for writing and animals. I can’t name everyone, but I will pick out a few special people who had their paws on this book, one way or another.

  Because he usually isn’t mentioned until the end, I’ll start with my husband, Roger Boneham—thanks again for supporting my writing, for talking out (and offering) ideas, and for loving the animals. What’s for supper?

  Thanks also to my agent, Josh Getzler, for good-humored support, and to acquisitions editor Terri Bischoff, who believed in the Animals in Focus series enough to run with it. Special thanks to Lisa Novak, who designed the beautiful cover of this book; to illustrator Gary Hanna, who made the model Aussie look like my Jay; to Donna Burch-Brown, who not only designed the interior of the book, but who also rescued a Labrador Retriever named Cosmos while this book was in the works. Drake is proud! Brenna Spencer and Rhonda Calhoun Mullenix of Lumos PhoDOGraphy staged the “catwalk and body” photo from which Gary Hanna worked (brilliant!), and Doug Smith of Wysiwyg Photography took the photo of my friend Nita Gandara’s Aussie in the perfect sniffing posture. Sharp-eyed, light-handed editor Connie Hill is always a pleasure to work with.

  Special thanks to my brilliant early readers Linda Wagner and Nancy Gadzuk. Remaining booboos are mine, all mine! Although they didn’t have a direct hand in this book, the members of the DogRead discussion list provided much useful feedback about the two preceeding books, and some story snippets that I have modified and used in Catwalk. Special thanks to Dana Mackonis and Patricia Tirrell for inviting me to sit in the author seat.

  My profound thanks to the animals who enrich and inspire me in so many ways, and to the people who take animals seriously—the TNR community and other rescuers; the enthusiasts who share the joy of sports like agility with their animals; the serious, ethical breeders who pour love and knowledge into their animals from pre-birth through old age; the people who simply love their pets and care for them well and responsibly. Last, but far from least, my profound thanks to readers of all stripes, and to booksellers—

  especially the independents, and more especially, Kathleen Jewell and Pomegranate Books. You rock!

  one

  The voice came through as a half-squeal, but I managed to make out, “She’s gone! They’ve kidnaped her! Oh, God, I hope they don’t hurt her!” The caller’s identity was blocked, but I was pretty sure I knew who it was.

  “Alberta?”

  “I know they did it to get back at me, but how could they? She’s so little, she must be scared, terrified, oh God, we have to find her …”

  I heard a huge sob, then silence.

  “Slow down and tell me what you’re talking about.”

  “They’ve been after me for months but that was just my car and my house, you know, stuff, but this …” Another terrible ragged gasp.

  Despite the sobbing, enough of the voice came through to assure me that it did indeed belong to Alberta Shofelter. I wouldn’t say we were friends, but I had known her from dog shows for years, and had spent a weekend with her in Indianapolis a few months earlier. We were there on her dime to photograph her nationally ranked Welsh Terrier, Indy, aka Champion Welsho’s Start Your Engines, at the Indianapolis 500 Museum. While we were there, a little boy went missing and my Australian Shepherd, Jay, found him where he was hiding. Ever since then, Alberta has regarded Jay as Superdog, and as Superdog’s sidekick, I am now her photographer of choice.

  That’s what I do, you see. I’m Janet MacPhail, and I take photos, mostly of critters. It’s so much fun that even after three decades of being paid to play with my camera, I can barely think of it as work. Truth is, though, that the publishers and animal lovers who buy my photos enable me to pay my bills.

  “Can you bring Jay? I know he can find her, I know he can.” The sobs gave way to a glimmer of hope. “Please, Janet, she’s so small and …” Apparently Jay and I have also become Alberta’s go-to finders of lost creatures.

  The clock on my microwave said 4:02. That meant we had a little more than an hour before sunset, and maybe another quarter hour until full dark. “I can, but you’ll have to pick me up. My car’s in the shop.”

  “I’ll just grab my keys and …” Alberta wheezed and grunted and something clicked in my ear. “Tell me your address again … GPS … ” One of Alberta’s dogs barked in the background.

  The pile of bills and paperwork on my kitchen table seemed to expand as I looked at it. I had hoped to whittle it down to nothing before date night started, but how could I not help look for a lost animal? At least I assumed it was an animal, since Alberta’s kids were grown and scattered across the country. I took a deep breath and told Alberta to do the same. “And drive carefully. A ticket or fender bender won’t help.” She wasn’t the most cautious of drivers even without the agitation.

  “Right, I will.” Wheeze. “I’m fine. I’m on my way.”

  It takes me about half an hour to drive to Alberta’s house, so I figured I had maybe twenty minutes until she arrived. “Jay, come on, Bubby. Work to do.” He was sacked out on his big round bed in the kitchen, but at the sound of his name he rolled onto his feet in one smooth, muscular motion, ready for whatever
I had in mind. I took him to the garage and grabbed his tracking harness from between leashes, long lines, collars, and assorted other training paraphernalia. When he saw the harness, Jay’s rear end went into full Aussie wriggle, and he whined and snorted as if to say, “Yay! Tracking!”

  Jay stepped into the harness and as I clipped the second of two fasteners, I said, “So, Bubby, here’s the thing.” He turned to look at me, his brown eyes wide, his expression saying, Yes? Tell me!

  “I have no idea who we’re looking for.”

  Jay cocked his head to the left.

  “Alberta was so agitated, I never asked.”

  He swiveled his head the other way, and I hoped he wasn’t thinking what I was. What a dope.

  Once he was suited up, so to speak, I lifted the shorter of my two long lines from a hook. It’s twenty feet of soft one-inch black nylon rope, shorter than a regulation tracking line, but a lot easier to manage than forty feet of potential tangles. I had no idea whether we would be working around traffic or pedestrians or other potential hazards, so I didn’t want Jay too far ahead of me.

  Jay followed me to the bedroom, where Leo was curled into an orange tabby knot between the pillows. I pulled on a pair of clean jeans, squatting a couple of times to loosen them up and promising that I really would lose those extra ten pounds I’d been carrying around for a decade. Okay, fine. Twenty. I stuffed the slacks and sweater I had been wearing, along with a pair of flats, my purse, and a pair of earrings, into a duffle bag. We had been having unseasonably warm weather, but the air had developed a chilly edge in the past hour, so I zipped my red Indiana Hurryin’ Hoosiers hoody over my long-sleeved tee and tied on the waterproof running shoes I wear for tracking. Jay and I sat on the front steps and I called Tom to tell him what was happening.

  I’m never sure how to refer to Tom. Boyfriend seems a bit silly at our age. We haven’t made any long-term commitment and don’t live together, so partner isn’t right, but we’re much more committed to everyday companiony things than lover seems to suggest. I rather like the sound of paramour, but can you imagine people’s reactions if I used that? Mostly I just refer to him by name. When Tom nearly died a couple of months earlier, I thought I finally knew what I want out of our relationship. Since then, I had thought of all the reasons I liked being independent, if spending three or four nights a week together still counts.

  “I’ll come help,” Tom said after I explained about Alberta’s call. “Who are we looking for?”

  Good question. “You know, she never said, but I assume it’s one of her dogs.”

  “She lives near Times Corners, right? I can be there in half an hour.”

  “It might take a while.” One thing about searching with a tracking dog—darkness is no obstacle to scent. As long as I could see to follow safely, we could search into the night if necessary. We agreed that I would call again when I knew more and had some sense of what the search might entail.

  “My ride is here,” I said as Alberta screeched to a stop in front of my driveway.

  “Jay will find her, whoever she is.”

  two

  Alberta scurried around the back of her SUV and opened the back passenger-side door. She glanced at me, her eyes feverish, then turned her attention to my dog. “If anyone can find her, Jay can,” she said, leaning over to press her lips into the top of his muzzle. “You have to find …” Alberta choked, stood up, and turned wide, wet eyes my way. “She’s pregnant, you know.” I did not. After all, I didn’t even know who she was. One of Alberta’s dogs? She had a litter only about every five years, when she wanted a new puppy herself, and I was pretty sure her youngest terrier was only about two years old. Of course, the older I get, the faster time slips by, so I knew I could be wrong. I decided to wait until we were underway to ask who we were after, but I did have another question.

  “What happened to your car?” The paint on the hood was pitted and crazed into a loose map of Australia.

  Alberta didn’t answer. She pointed to the open door and waited for Jay to jump in. I put my bag and long line on the floor and shut the door while Alberta climbed in behind the wheel. She really did have to climb. Alberta is maybe five feet tall in her sneakers. She has at least a dozen years on me, which puts her on the downslope to seventy, and she’s even less athletic than I am. When we were both buckled in, she slammed the accelerator, raced to the end of my street, barely slowed for the corner, and ignored the thirty m.p.h. signs.

  “You might want to watch your speed, Alberta,” I said. “Our local speed trap is just behind those shrubs.” We whizzed past the sprawl of unpruned forsythia and I swear I pulled three G’s as we turned the corner onto Lake and shot toward downtown. Whoever set the Fort Wayne traffic lights years ago did a bang-up job because, as usual, once we got a green light on Washington, we had green all the way to Covington Road. We were through the business district and into the Westside historic before I talked my fingers into releasing the edge of my seat.

  “So, Alberta, what’s going on? Who are we looking for?”

  “Gypsy! They’ve kidnaped her. Those …” Her voice morphed into little heart-rending whimpers for a moment, and then anger restored its strength. “They did that a couple of weeks ago.” She indicated the messed-up paint on the hood. “Egged it in my own driveway.”

  “But weren’t quite a few cars vandalized out your way? I mean, Halloween …”

  She cut me off. “And they sprayed ‘crazy cat lady’ across my garage door with red paint. Ruined the fiberglass. But those are just things, I can fix them, replace them. But this …” Her voice dissolved, then reassembled itself into a snarl. “If they’ve hurt her …”

  I was starting to get a glimmer of clarity. “Gypsy is the cat you took in, right?” Alberta had told several of us at agility class the previous week that she had adopted one of the feral cats she fed in her neighborhood.

  “Lovely little creature. Calico. I’ve always loved calicos. Not that it matters, really, what color they are. And she takes no nonsense from my dogs. They like her, well, all but Lola, and I keep her away from the cats. The rest of them like her, and I like her. I love her.” Alberta karate chopped the steering wheel and then closed her fingers around it. I watched her knuckles blanche as she squeezed the leather cover.

  “Could she have slipped out? I mean, she’s been living on her own. Feral cats don’t always like being confined.”

  “I just don’t think she would.” Alberta shook her head and spoke slowly, as if considering the possibility for the first time.

  “Okay, let’s just focus on finding her. Then we can worry about how she got out.”

  We drove the rest of the way in silence. Alberta turned into her subdivision, oddly named The Rapids of Aspen Grove. Sycamore or oak or maple or beech­—those would make sense in northern Indiana. Perhaps the developer dreamed of Colorado. The subdivision was a place of sprawling homes, mature trees, and professionally maintained perennial borders radiating out from the centerpiece private golf course. The grandest of the homes are nearest the course, which seems counterintuitive to me. We pulled into the driveway of Alberta’s 1990s take on the Craftsman. It was as stunning as I remembered, even in the bleakness of early November. The huge wreath of bittersweet on the double front door didn’t hurt. If I remembered correctly from my only visit, the back of the house was virtually all windows, which looked straight at the clubhouse and the first tee.

  “Alberta, aren’t you afraid you’ll get a golf ball through a window?”

  She turned off the ignition and turned to me, eyes wide. “I suppose they might do that. I mean, they sprayed my door.”

  “No, I mean …” I stopped, wondering for a split second whether this might all be a hallucination. “Your garage door looks fine.”

  “That’s the new one.”

  She was out of the car before I could babble any more, so I hopped out and stood fo
r a moment just inhaling the intoxicating fragrance of burning wood. The house to the north of Alberta’s place was a sprawling ranch. To the south lay a field that sloped into a pond backed by a stand of bare-naked trees. A mixed assortment of waterfowl dotted the water’s surface, and large stands of cattails hemmed the pond at ragged intervals. A truck was parked on the street in front of the pond, a small caterpillar chained to its trailer bed. A pile of bland white rocks, the sort used to shore up slopes on highways, filled two parking spaces in front of the trailer.

  “What’s that all about?” I indicated the construction equipment.

  Alberta didn’t even check what I was pointing at. “Bastards want to ‘improve’ the edge of the pond.” She sneered the word improve. “They also want to put up condos.”

  “Where?” Other than the small field next door, I didn’t see any available land.

  She swept her arm to take in the pond and woods. “There. They want to cut down the trees and fill the wetland.” A fire burned in her eyes. “We’re trying to stop them.”

  That piqued my curiosity, but it could wait. The sun was low and hazy on the horizon, and we needed to get moving. I opened the back door for Jay. He waited, as he’s been taught to do, and I snapped a leash to his collar, slipped the coiled long line onto my shoulder, and said, “Free.”

  A chorus of high-pitched barks sounded from inside the house, and Jay bounced around and wriggled his nubby tail, then looked at me and barkwhined. We followed Alberta onto the porch and waited while she punched numbers into a lock pad. Her hands were shaking and she had to try twice before the door opened. The barking got louder, but was coming from somewhere toward the back of the house.

  “They’re in the family room. I have the gate up. They’re okay.” She seemed to be trying to convince herself.

  “Do you have something with Gypsy’s scent?”

  “Food bowl?” she asked. Then turning toward the uproar, she yelled, “Quiet!” Jay lay down with a thunk, I froze, and the barking all stopped. Impressive, I thought, although I’m not much for yelling at my dog. Then again, I don’t have a house full of terriers.