Underdog

by Laurien Berenson

  No surprise who that turned out to be. “You lose!” Davey cried gleefully. Faith spun in a circle and barked.

  Some day I’d beat that team, but I doubted it was going to happen any time soon.

  The next day after school, Davey and I drove over to Aunt Peg’s. She lives in a rambling old farmhouse in back-country Greenwich which probably has about six times as much living space as she needs. The land surrounding it is beautiful though, and there’s enough room so that the fact that she has more than a dozen Standard Poodles usually doesn’t bother the neighbors.

  Roughly half her Poodles are finished champions that have retired from showing. Most of those live in the house with her. The long, profuse coats that are required for competition have been trimmed back, which means that these Poodles look pretty much like normal dogs. At any given time however, Peg usually has a handful of Poodles that are either currently being shown or else growing hair in anticipation of an upcoming career. Those are housed in the small kennel building out back.

  There was no answer at the front door when Davey rang the bell, but Peg’s station wagon was in the driveway so Davey, Faith, and I walked around back to the kennel. Aunt Peg was there in her grooming room. She’d just finished bathing an older puppy named Lulu and was using a big, free-standing hair dryer to blow her dry.

  Lying on the floor in a shaft of the late afternoon sun was Beau, her top-winning Poodle and beloved pet. He’d been missing for nearly three months over the summer. Now, when Peg was home, he rarely let her out of his sight. As I opened the door, he leapt up and barked sharply.

  “It’s only us,” I said as Faith bounded into the room. With a puppy’s typical lack of caution, she charged over and jumped on Beau who suffered her attentions with dignity and a gently wagging tail. “You know you really ought to hook up your doorbell so that it rings out here.”

  “It does.”

  “Well?”

  “Well what?” Aunt Peg gave me a mild look. “That way I know if someone’s come. It doesn’t mean I have to drop what I’m doing and go traipsing up to greet them. Anyone who knows me well enough, knows to come and look out here. Anyone who doesn’t, I’m probably not interested in seeing anyway.” She turned her attention to Davey. “How’s my boy today?”

  “Fine.”

  She lifted him up and sat him on the edge of the grooming table. “And how are you enjoying your new puppy?”

  “She’s neat.”

  “Better than a frog?” Aunt Peg shot me a disapproving look over my son’s head.

  “Much better,” Davey said happily.

  “I should hope so.”

  Urged on by Faith, Beau had decided to play. As the two of them began to chase each other around the room, Lulu stood up on the table and barked. The area wasn’t that big. I pressed back against a wall of shelves and narrowly avoided being run over by the onrush of activity.

  “Hey!” Aunt Peg said sternly as Beau grabbed one of Faith’s ears in his mouth. “You know better.” Then she grabbed the big black dog and gave him a hug, totally negating the effect of her words. “If you’re going to be wild, you can take it outside.”

  “Me too,” said Davey, hopping down off the table as Aunt Peg opened the door.

  “The house isn’t locked,” she told him. “If you’re hungry, I’ll bet you can find yourself a snack in the kitchen.”

  “Doughnuts?” Davey’s eyes lit up.

  “Maybe. Go see.”

  Doughnuts. You could tell these two were related.

  The door slammed shut behind him. Aunt Peg got Lulu resettled on the table and continued her blow drying. I pulled over a stool and sat down to watch. The nozzle on the dryer was as long as my arm and twice as thick. The stream of hot air emanating from it was strong enough to ruffle the curtains across the room.

  “I saw Rick Maguire yesterday,” I said.

  Her fingers moved nimbly through the hair, parting and drying it section by section. “Where?”

  “At his kennel. I drove up there.”

  “All the way to Ridgefield? Whatever for?”

  “Jenny lent me a book. I wanted to return it.”

  Aunt Peg stopped and looked up. “And you used the excuse to find out what happened to Jenny.”

  “I tried. I didn’t learn much. She did die of arsenic poisoning. Crawford was right.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. Crawford’s rarely wrong. How did it happen?”

  “Rick said he didn’t know. He said they kept rat poison on hand, that for a kennel that wasn’t unusual.”

  Aunt Peg nodded.

  “But he had no idea how Jenny might have gotten herself poisoned with it. He said she must have slipped up somehow.”

  “Slipped up?” Aunt Peg said incredulously. “Slipping up involves spilling a little on the ground, not ingesting enough to poison yourself. What have the police had to say about all this?”

  “According to Rick, they’re still asking questions.”

  “I guess that’s something. They didn’t even do that much when Beau was stolen.”

  “Beau’s a dog. Jenny’s a person. A woman who was relatively young, healthy, and happy only a week ago. Somebody’s got to ask questions about that.”

  Aunt Peg gave me a long look. “Like you, maybe?”

  I pulled in a long breath and let it out slowly, trying to make sense of how I felt. Jenny and I had shared a rapport and the promise of a friendship in the making. Our affinity had been based, at least in part, on our similarities and what we had in common. And that’s what was making me so uncomfortable now.

  I wanted to know why Jenny was dead while I was alive. What had been the difference between us? What choices had she made that had led to this unexpected ending, and in similar straits would I have done the same? Or did the blame lie somewhere else entirely and it was all only a matter of luck and destiny?

  I looked up and saw that Aunt Peg was waiting. I sighed softly, frustrated by all the things I didn’t know. “I want to understand what went wrong. Believing that Jenny’s death was an accident is too easy. Thinking of it as murder or suicide seems truly bizarre.”

  “Suicide?” Her brow lifted. “When did that become a possibility?”

  “It was something Angie said at the wake. She was really upset and she mumbled something about knowing Jenny was unhappy but never thinking she’d go that far.”

  “Angie? What would she know about anything? The girl’s a child.”

  “Not really.” I reached out and patted Lulu’s long muzzle as she lay patiently on the table. “She’s probably only a couple of years younger than Jenny. And she certainly knew her sister better than anyone.”

  Aunt Peg thought for a minute. “Jenny wanting to commit suicide? I just don’t see it.”

  “Neither do I. When I asked Rick about it, he said that he and Jenny were doing great, that she had no reason to be depressed.”

  Aunt Peg shook her head slightly. “That’s Rick’s version.”

  “Do you like Angie’s better?”

  “To tell you the truth, I don’t like either of them. But I also don’t like the fact that Rick feels so comfortable speaking for his wife. He did that when she was alive too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just that he’s the kind of man who likes to be in charge. You saw a little bit of what I’m talking about when you invited Jenny to dinner.”

  “You’re right,” I said, thinking back. “At the time, it seemed pretty funny.”

  “Then maybe, but not always. Come on, turn over.” Peg patted Lulu’s rear and the puppy stood up and turned over so that the other side could be dried. In a million years, Faith would never be that well trained. “I used to see them together all the time at the shows. Rick could be obsessive about controlling things right down to the smallest detail. Let’s just say that when he said jump, Jenny usually did.”

  “You just told me you didn’t think Jenny would have committed suicide. Now you’re agreeing with Angie that
she was unhappy.”

  “Don’t put words in my mouth. I said nothing of the sort. What I said was that Rick was definitely the one of the two of them who was in charge. Who knows? Maybe she wanted it that way.”

  “Maybe,” I mused, although her version of events didn’t jibe with my recollection of the woman I’d thought I was coming to know. Another inconsistency to file away for future consideration.

  “How much do you know about arsenic?” I asked.

  “Slightly more than the average layman, I suppose.” Aunt Peg finished going through the puppy’s neck hair and switched her pin brush for a slicker. “Amazing as it seems, in the old days some of the more unscrupulous handlers used to give arsenic to their dogs in small, hopefully controlled doses. It made them grow huge coats that looked great in the ring.”

  “That’s terrible!”

  “It certainly is. Especially for the owners whose dogs overdosed on a drug they had no idea they were being given.”

  “They don’t do that anymore, do they?”

  “No, although unfortunately it’s not because ethics have improved any. Now the drug of choice is steroids. It produces heavy coats and muscles. At the moment there’s no drug-testing program in place to ferret out an abuse like that. Luckily it’s too risky to be widespread. Why do you want to know?”

  “I was wondering about the rat poison in the Maguires’ kennel. Rick said that all of them handled it. Is arsenic something that could be absorbed through the skin if you weren’t careful?”

  Aunt Peg shook her head. “That’s not the way it works. If Jenny died from arsenic poisoning, she had to have ingested it somehow. Like maybe in the food she ate for dinner that night.”

  “Rick and Angie were right there. Presumably they ate dinner with her.”

  “I didn’t say that it was a sensible solution, only that it was a possibility.”

  I had plenty of possibilities. The problem was, there wasn’t a single sensible solution in sight.

  “Mommy, Aunt Peg, come find me! I’m hiding!”

  Davey’s shout from outside was followed by a high-pitched yip from Faith. My son loves to play hide and seek. He started when he was two by covering his face with his hands. Since then his skill at concealing himself has improved enormously. Having recently dug him out from beneath a steward’s table at a dog show and behind the bagel bin at the supermarket, it was a game I was hoping he’d soon outgrow.

  “Do you want to get him or shall I?” asked Peg.

  “I’ll go.” I slipped down off the stool and zipped my jacket. “You keep drying.”

  I pushed open the kennel door and found Beau outside, waiting to come in. At least that’s what I thought he was doing. He was whining urgently and dancing in place with impatience. But when I opened the door wide, he didn’t slip past me. Instead he turned and trotted off in the other direction.

  “Here, Beau,” I said, calling him back. “Go on in. Peg’s in here.”

  He stopped and turned around to look at me. I’m not one of those people who ascribes human characteristics to dogs. At best you might call me a recent convert to the joys of dog ownership. But I could swear Beau was trying to tell me something. Not only that, but he seemed to be baffled by my apparent stupidity in not understanding.

  I looked around, scanning the large yard. Davey and Faith were nowhere to be seen.

  “Do you know where they are?” I asked.

  Beau wagged his tail.

  So it had come to this. I was not only talking to dogs, but also expecting them to answer. Thank God Aunt Peg wasn’t outside to see it.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  Beau trotted across the lawn and around the side of the house. A wide veranda started in front and wrapped around both sides. In summer, Aunt Peg had filled up some of the space with a grouping of white wicker tables and chairs. Now, with the leaves already coming down from the trees and winter not far behind, she’d pushed the chairs to one side, piled them in a heap and covered them with a tarp for storage.

  Barking triumphantly, Beau scrambled up the steps. As he jumped up and placed his front paws against the pile of furniture, there was an answering bark from within.

  “Shhh,” whispered Davey, his voice clearly audible. “They’ll find us.”

  “They already have,” I said, drawing back the tarp. Faith and Davey were snuggled together in the seat of an upturned chair. “Beau led me straight to you.”

  “No fair!” cried Davey.

  “Says who? If you can have a Poodle on your team, so can I.”

  By the time I’d gotten both child and puppy extracted, Aunt Peg was finished in the kennel. She joined us on the porch and we went inside to be greeted noisily by the herd of house Poodles. Aunt Peg offered hugs and biscuits all around, then shooed them affectionately out of the way.

  The dogs draped themselves around the kitchen, Beau sitting in the place of honor beside her chair as she put the kettle on the stove to make tea. I loathe tea, not that that’s ever mattered to Aunt Peg. She serves refreshments the same way she does everything else, with the belief that anyone who thinks they have a better idea can make their own. I’d spent enough time in Aunt Peg’s house recently to have stashed a jar of instant coffee in the freezer. We got down two mugs and went to work.

  Davey boosted himself up on the counter, munching his way happily through what was doubtless not his first doughnut. He broke off a piece and fed it to Faith. I pretended not to notice. Aunt Peg, who is apparently a stricter parent to her Poodles than I am to my child, interceded immediately.

  “Don’t do that,” she told Davey. “The sugar’s bad for her teeth. Besides, you’ll spoil her appetite.”

  Bad for her teeth? Spoil her appetite? This from a woman who’d been feeding my son doughnuts all afternoon?

  “What about Davey’s teeth?” I asked mildly.

  Aunt Peg gave me a look. “I assume he brushes.”

  “I do,” Davey chimed in.

  “Well, there you are. Are you brushing Faith’s teeth?”

  I smiled, thinking she was joking. Slowly the smile faded. I was almost afraid to ask. “Should I be?”

  Aunt Peg lifted the puppy’s lips and had a look. “They’re in good shape now, but it wouldn’t hurt. Especially as she gets older.”

  Yeah, I thought. Right.

  But Aunt Peg was already moving on. She laid critical hands around Faith’s ribcage. “She’s still thin. Not that you ever want puppies to be fat, mind you, but a little more heft than this wouldn’t hurt.”

  “I was going to try a new food. . . ,” I said, then stopped. Right until that moment, I’d forgotten all about it. “Something Jenny told me about.”

  “Really? What?”

  “There’s a woman named Crystal Mars in Stratford. She bakes her own all-natural kibble. Jenny said Ziggy was pretty picky and he used to love it.”

  “You know you want to make any switch in diet like that gradually.”

  I nodded.

  “And you’ll have to check and make sure that the protein content isn’t too high—”

  “Aunt Peg!”

  She stopped mid-lecture. “What?”

  “I’m not two years old.”

  “No, you’re not.” Aunt Peg shook her head firmly. “You got Faith in September. It is now October. By my calendar you are less than one month old, which means that a little advice won’t kill you.”

  That shut me up, as I guess she’d known it would. I let her lecture on and didn’t bring up the subject of Jenny’s death again until later when we were ready to leave.

  “None of the choices make any sense to me,” I said. “Could someone have wanted to harm Jenny? Is it possible that she wanted to harm herself?”

  “Don’t look at me,” said Aunt Peg. “I don’t have any answers.”

  That was definitely a first. Too bad the timing wasn’t better.

  Seven

  Hunting Ridge Elementary School is a one-story brick building situa
ted just above the Merrit Parkway in north Stamford. The second wave of the baby boom—the original boomers having children of their own—caught our administration by surprise. For each of the last six years enrollment has been substantially above projections, which means that even though the facilities are up to date and well maintained, we suffer from overcrowding and understaffing. In spite of the fact that the school is bursting at the seams, each spring the town legislators vote to look the other way and hold our budget firm.

  When Davey and I pulled into school at eight-thirty the next morning, we saw that a delivery truck had stalled outside the kitchen door, blocking off a full third of the teachers’ parking lot. Business as usual at Hunting Ridge. I swung back around the front circle, avoided a bus making a wide turn and nabbed a spot in visitors’ parking.

  Like nearly everything else at the school, the parking lots are inadequate for the number of cars that have to use them. In theory our security force is out daily, checking for parking violations. In reality, the force consists of old Mr. Simms. As far as I can tell the major part of his day is spent drinking coffee and chatting with the school nurse. Habitual offenders like myself have little to fear.

  I delivered Davey to the kindergarten playground and headed over to my classroom, which is really an annex to the school library. My first three years at Hunting Ridge, I’d had a room off the main hall like the rest of the teachers. Crowding had been less severe then and popular thinking had dictated that children with learning disabilities were taken from their regular classes and taught in special sessions for at least part of the day.

  Now all that has changed. The new goal is to mainstream the LD kids, that is, to get them to be successful within their own classrooms. I spend most of my day going from grade to grade, taking aside those children that have been identified as needing extra help, and working with them in small groups. We do the same curriculum; we just work a little harder at it. The classroom teacher paints the broad strokes. For the kids who need it, I’m there to fill in the gaps.

  The door to the annex was open and when I went inside I found out why. Betty Winslow, who teaches third grade, was perched on the edge of my desk waiting for me. Betty’s forty years old and built along ample lines. Her skin is the color of dark chocolate and she has a short, neat Afro that’s just beginning to turn gray. Her taste in clothes runs to bright colors and flowing fabric, and she wears her glasses on a chain around her neck. She can move amazingly fast for someone her size and even in a room filled with twenty-four eight-year-olds, she never misses a trick.