“I can’t do that! You’re talking about bringing a traumatized dog who, from all indications, hasn’t eaten in days, and turning attempts to help him into a circus act!”
Tracy smiled and took a swig of whiskey. She said in a throaty voice, “No, Missy Babcock. I’m talking about giving your doggie’s shrink practice such a boost, you’ll be turning collies into shelties on a regular basis.”
“Thank you for having me on your show, Miss Truett. I only wish I’d been on yesterday, instead of today.” I’d listened to that broadcast. She’d been sober then and had done a good job. But no use crying over guzzled whiskey. I walked out of the studio.
“Hey, Greg,” I heard Tracy exclaim from the speakers in the hallway. “Don’t just sit there! Stop her!”
I hesitated in the lobby for just a moment, thinking I wouldn’t mind giving Greg an earful, now that I was off the air. He didn’t come after me. I crossed the parking lot, got into my cherry-red Subaru wagon, started the engine, and heard the voice of Tracy saying over the air, “—listeners’ poll on how many of us think Sage did indeed witness the murder of—”
I clicked off my radio and drove west toward my downtown office and the Flatirons, craggy mountain faces that towered over the town of Boulder. The least I could do to vent, I decided, was throttle that ignoramus Russell Greene for asking me for a date during a live broadcast.
Despite trying to focus on my officemate and not to draw conclusions before meeting Sage and his owner, I found myself mulling Sage’s possible status. Depression in dogs over the loss of a beloved owner has been well documented. I’d recently heard of a dog in London who, every day for seven years, returned of his own volition to wait on the steps of the hospital in which his owner had died.
On the other hand, I wondered if Beth’s conclusions about “a man in a raincoat” were an example of what I liked to call “The Lassie Syndrome.” It was all too easy to read a human response and thought process into each little dog-like action of a beloved pet.
I pulled into my reserved space next to Russell’s avocado-colored Volvo on the formidable hill by my building. I got out, descended the concrete steps where my office entrance was cut into the hill, and marched straight through my office and into Russell’s. Empty. Probably ran for cover, I thought. The coward.
The light on my answering machine was flashing. Four calls in my brief absence. That was a personal record, but then, they might all be sympathy calls from friends and relatives who’d heard the broadcast. I pressed the playback button. I had a pair of quick hang ups, but also messages from two prospective clients: a fox terrier too rough with the children, and a golden retriever destroying the house whenever the family was away. I grinned. Ironic that bad news for others meant good news for me. If I was really lucky, half of the dog population in Boulder would run amok and make their owners’ lives truly miserable.
Before I could return my first call, the door creaked, and I whirled around, hoping to see Beth and her collie. Instead, it was a very humble-looking Russell Greene. His dark hair and mustache were as neat as ever. Today he wore newly pressed jeans and a white shirt with a striped tie.
My high heels negated the six inches he had on me. I strode toward him, doing my best to sound like a growling pit bull as I said, “Russell—”
He took a step back, but held up a colorful bouquet of spring flowers as if it were a shield. “Before you say anything, Allie, I just—”
The flowers only caused a momentary distraction to my instantly accessible anger. “It’s Allida,” I snapped. “In fact, it’s Miss Babcock for you, from now on.”
“Sorry, uh, Miss Babcock.”
Now that I heard him call me that, I felt a little silly and had to resist a smile.
Russell cleared his throat. “What I’m trying to say is that I’m really sorry. Believe it or not, I just wanted to impress you by demonstrating how...er...spontaneous and fun I could be. Rumor has it that we electrical engineers are not known for our spontaneous wit. I thought you’d...be charmed.”
“You thought it was charming to call into the live radio show I was only doing to advertise my profession and ask me for a date?”
He gave me a sheepish grin, which, framed by the bouquet in his arms, was rather charming—though I was not about to admit that to him. “Yes, but then I listened to some more of the show, and I realized you weren’t enjoying yourself and I probably embarrassed you.” His cheeks growing redder by the second, he offered me the bouquet, already in a jar full of water. I recognized from the wrinkled mayonnaise label that this was the jar that had been catching drips underneath the sink in our bathroom.
I decided not to make a wisecrack about the makeshift vase. He handed me the flowers. His eyes were sparkling, and he truly was an attractive man.
“Thank you. They’re lovely.” I took a deep breath of the sweet fragrance, then set the jar and contents on the corner of my desk—a “slightly used” oak set I’d gotten from a bankruptcy sale, along with the other sparse furnishings—two gray two-door file cabinets, a pair of hard-backed chairs, a folding table, and a personal computer.
“Could I...take you out to dinner to make this up to you?”
“No, Russell.” Sheesh! I silently added. I’ve worked with wolf hybrids who had an easier time taking no for an answer.
There was a light tapping on the glass door just behind Russell, who stepped back to reveal a disheveled looking young woman with a sable collie. This could only be Beth Gleason and Sage. Russell surveyed the two of them and, demonstrating his usual dog phobia, held up a palm, murmured, “I’d better get back to work,” and strode into his office, shutting the door.
The dog and his owner entered. I gave a quick glance at Beth, mentally registering that she was in her twenties or so, attractive, very tall, and wore loose-fitting dark clothing, then I turned my gaze on the collie.
By show standards, Sage could not be called beautiful. Though his coat was full and in the classic sable pattern— snow-white ruff, tan body and muzzle, white paws and tail-tip—he had a face only a dog person could love. His nose was not only Roman, but oversized and bumpy. One of his black ears was up, the other down. He walked as if carrying the weight of the world on his back—head hanging. The midsection of the leash dragged on the ground like a jump rope.
“You’re Allida Babcock?” Beth asked nervously.
“Yes,” I answered, “and you must be Beth Gleason.” I flashed a quick smile at her. She bore the same dispirited countenance as her dog, as well as the nearly identical shade of reddish brown, long, shaggy hair. I noted that her entire outfit, including her socks and sandals, was black. Returning my gaze to Sage, who flopped down in front of the door, I said, “Hi, Sage.” I moved toward him slowly. He looked up at me with his beautiful brown eyes, his chin still resting on his paws. I stroked his head, then gently moved my hand down his body. Sage’s ribs were protruding, though this was hidden by the thick coat, which was shedding between my fingers.
“We walked here,” Beth said. “I live about a mile east on Pine Street.”
A residence on that part of Pine meant lots of traffic and a small yard, I thought. Problematic for a large dog. I reached into the bottom drawer of my desk and grabbed a premium-quality dog biscuit, which I brought over to Sage. Strangely, Sage sniffed at it but jerked away as if afraid he’d get an electrical shock. “He’s been drinking plenty of water?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Beth answered, her voice rife with concern, “but he won’t go near his food.”
“What about table scraps? Will he eat those?”
“Isn’t it bad to feed a dog table scraps? I’ve always been told that.”
The ever-present list of “thou musts” and “thou must nots,” I thought. If I were Sage’s adopted owner, I’d feed him filet mignon straight off the plate, if that were my only means to keep him from starvation. I suspected that if more owners trusted their own instincts instead of seeking expert advice, their dogs would do just fine. H
owever, since I was one of those “experts,” this was an opinion I kept to myself.
“Mixing table scraps into a dog’s dry food is not necessarily wrong. I sometimes do that with my own dogs. At this point, we need to know whether or not Sage will eat anything. We need to ensure he doesn’t starve while we’re still trying to identify the cause of his problem.”
Beth shrugged, her hands buried in her pants pockets, and chewed on her lower lip. “I’m a vegetarian, so it never occurred to me to try to give him some of my food.”
I tried what was perhaps the oldest and most obvious trick in the book. I broke the biscuit in half and pretended to eat my half, palming it, then offering it again to Sage. To my mild surprise, he chomped both halves of the biscuit down with a ravenous hunger.
“Wow!” Beth exclaimed. “How did you get him to do that?”
I grabbed the box of biscuits and selected a second biscuit, letting Sage watch my every motion. I held it out for him. He rose and sniffed the dog bone carefully, keeping an eye on me, trembling in his widespread stance as if set to bolt if I made a move. He gobbled it down. I offered him a third, and this he ate without hesitation.
“I’ve tried the dog biscuits he’s used to, but he wouldn’t take them from me at all.” Beth sighed. “Maybe Sage just doesn’t like me. Or doesn’t trust me to feed him.”
“I doubt that’s the problem. You offer him one.” I gave Beth the box of dog biscuits. Beth coaxed in a babyish voice, holding out a biscuit. Sage panted, watching her, and then glanced at me. He wouldn’t take the biscuit. “Act as though you’re eating it.” She did, and Sage immediately gobbled the treat in her palm.
Sage’s eating problem seemed to be related to his actual dog food, so I explained that I needed to make a house call. First, we discussed fees and the possible length of treatment. Then I got Beth’s address and said I’d meet them there once I returned some phone calls.
My heart lurched as the collie hesitated before following Beth, instead looking up at me and lifting a paw. “Good dog, Sage,” I said.
The collie turned to follow his owner out the door with all the resignation of an animal that knows he is about to be beaten.
With renewed determination to help Sage as quickly and completely as possible, I replayed my first message and dialed the number. The woman’s voice that answered was the same as the one on my recorder. I identified myself and said, “I understand you have a fox terrier who’s snapping at your children?”
“Oh, yes. Let me get my husband. He asked me to call, but it’s really his dog.”
That struck me as a bit odd; in my experience, most women claimed ownership of all matters regarding their children. The woman dropped the phone with a thud and called, “John!” at the top of her lungs. In the background, I could hear what sounded like young children laughing and a high-pitched yap of a dog.
“Allida Babcock?” a deep voice finally asked on the other end of the phone.
“Yes.” I looked at my notes where I’d jotted the name Sarah Adams and said, “Is this John Adams?”
“O’Farrell, actually. John O’Farrell. Adams is my wife’s maiden name. I listened to your show, so I can tell you right off the bat that, yes, I’ve taken Mugsy to a vet, and he told me my dog badly needed some obedience training.”
“Has he actually bitten one of your children?”
“She. Yes, she’s nipped at both my five and my seven year olds’ ankles, but never hard enough to really hurt them. The bites didn’t even break the skin, or—” He paused, and I could hear angry murmurs of his wife’s voice. “Just the top layer of skin got a little scratched. It healed in no time.” Again, there were angry murmurs in the background. He said into the phone, “We’re on our way out.”
“Can we set something up now? Maybe have you come to my house to do an observation?”
“Sure, that would be—”
“How ‘bout tomorrow? I know it’s a Saturday and everything, but weekends would really be best for me. That way we can all be here. I could pay double your going rates for a house call, since you’d have to give up part of your weekend.”
“I suppose tomorrow would be all right,” I said, trying to sound slightly downhearted at the concept of “having” to work the next day. At this stage of my career, I would drive to Wyoming on the Fourth of July if that meant establishing a client base. “I don’t charge extra for weekend visits.” I took down the address and set an appointment for ten A.M.
The next call—whose golden retriever was chewing up house and home—also had a schedule that he thought was best observed during the weekend. I set up my visit to his house for late Saturday afternoon, then made the short drive to Beth’s and pulled into a space by the curb.
Beth was watching out the front window and opened the door for me before I could knock. “Sage is in the kitchen,” she murmured. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her nose pink, as if she’d recently been crying. “I tried that trick you taught me... pretending to eat the dog food and offering it to him. He all but ran away from me.”
I placed a reassuring hand on Beth’s forearm. “Let me see what I can do.”
Beth took a halting breath and said, “You’ve got to do something to help me. I just don’t know how much longer he can last.”
I tried to project confidence as I nodded at Beth’s words, but I had no idea why Sage would starve himself here, yet eat dog biscuits in my office. If there was one thing I knew for certain from my three decades of being in the company of dogs, it was that neither I nor anyone else could ever truly know what was going on in a dog’s mind.
Sage was lying on his side in front of the refrigerator. Despite his lethargy, which was no doubt a result of his starvation and the walk to and from my office, Sage’s tail thumped on the grimy maroon linoleum when I entered the small, dark, and messy kitchen. I petted him, feeling heartsick at his skeletal body.
“Can I see his feeding supplies, please?”
Beth pulled out a nearly full forty-pound bag from beside the refrigerator. It was the same top-of-the-line brand that I fed my German shepherd. I grabbed a handful of the dry dog food, then dropped it back into the bag. My palm felt strangely sticky afterwards.
“This is the food you got from the animal shelter?” I asked.
“Uh huh. Hannah’s neighbor, Dennis, was taking care of Sage for a couple of weeks after Hannah died. He donated his food and dog treats to the shelter.”
Underneath the window by the heater was a large red dog bowl, with the name SAGE in white letters. I grabbed a kibble from the bowl and squeezed it between my fingertip and thumb. I sniffed it. It smelled perfectly normal. The kibble had such a tacky surface it stuck to my index finger, and I had to shake it off to drop it back into its bowl.
I touched my fingertip to my tongue. An acrid taste filled my mouth. “Can I see the dog biscuits, too, please?”
“Sure.” Beth held out the box. “Why? Is there something wrong with the food?”
I grabbed a bone-shaped biscuit and scraped its surface with a fingernail. I touched that fingertip to my tongue. Again the taste was so bitter my lips nearly puckered.
“The dog food’s been tainted.”
Beth’s face paled. “You mean, someone poisoned it?”
“Not exactly. It’s been treated with something, probably an odorless dog repellent, such as Bitter Apple. It’s not poisonous, but it makes the food taste repulsive to dogs.”
Chapter 3
Beth Gleason’s jaw dropped. “What do you mean? How could that be? I don’t—”
“Could anyone have doctored Sage’s dog food after you got it?”
Beth began to pace in tight circles, combing her fingers through her hair. At length, she shook her head. “No, that isn’t possible. Somebody had to have done this to the food before I got it. Oh, God. This makes me so sick! Here I’ve been trying to get Sage to trust me, and I’ve been offering him only inedible food!” She punched her thigh. “Why didn’t I think of that? But, how
could I have known? I mean, it’s so...weird.”
Beth sat down on the floor beside Sage and lifted his head onto her lap. She said under her breath, “I could kill whoever did this!”
Why would anyone want to hurt Sage? Was it possible somebody wanted him dead because of what he’d witnessed? Surely not. Even assuming, despite the suicide ruling, that Hannah Jones was murdered, Sage could do nothing more threatening than to bark at the killer.
The dog might have been used as a guinea pig in some food aversion experiment or training exercise by his former owner. Could Hannah Jones have been that cruel?
“The good news,” I said, “is with some new food, we can restore Sage’s strength and spirit very soon. Though he’ll have to be retrained to know that he can eat kibble and dog biscuits again. I need to try to find out why and when this happened. That will help me determine my course of treatment.”
“That’s what I’d like to know, too,” Beth said, gently scooting out from under Sage’s head. She hopped to her feet and started rifling through a layer of papers spread across the off-white and gray speckled Formica top of her kitchen table.
“What are you looking for?”
“I can’t believe Hannah would have done this to her dog. It had to be...the people who were taking care of him in between her and me. I’ve got Dennis’s number here someplace. That’s his name. Dennis Corning.”
“Why don’t you think Hannah Jones was responsible?”
Beth paused from her search to meet my eyes. “She loved Sage like he was her kid or something. She used to bring him to class and everything.”
“Class?”
Beth nodded, returning to her search. “I took vegetarian cooking lessons from her. That’s where I first met Sage and decided I wanted to get a dog just like him.” She grabbed a small strip of paper that looked as if it had been torn off the bottom of a sheet of yellow notepaper. “Here.” She handed me the slip of paper, which contained only the name Dennis Corning followed by a phone number, then she whirled on a heel and headed toward the refrigerator.
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