Live and Let Growl

by Laurien Berenson

  “They’re all cute,” Aunt Peg agreed. “And nicely behaved too, as long as someone’s paying attention to them. Not that I had any doubts, mind you. Miss Ellie never would have tolerated a pack of undisciplined dogs in her house.”

  I’d noticed Aunt Peg observing the quartet and making her assessment as we’d traversed the neighborhood together. Juggling my two charges, I’d attempted to do the same. Not that my opinion made any difference. When it came to dogs, Aunt Peg’s viewpoint was always the only one that mattered.

  “If Gates decides he’s not in the right place to take on the responsibility of their care, I’m sure I’ll be able to find good situations for them,” she said. “They may have to be broken up into pairs, however.”

  There weren’t any crates on the first floor of Miss Ellie’s home. I took that to mean that it was all right if we gave the JRTs the run of the house. Releasing John, I hung his leash on a hook near the back door. While Aunt Peg freed her three charges and put away their leads, I picked up the big water bowl that was sitting on a woven mat on the floor.

  The dish was nearly empty. I rinsed it out in the sink, then refilled it with fresh, cool water. When I set it back down on the mat, three of the terriers immediately crowded around for a drink.

  “Who’s missing?” Aunt Peg looked around quickly.

  “I think it’s Ringo.”

  “He was just here a second ago. He can’t have gone far.”

  Aunt Peg was right. The Jack Russell hadn’t gone very far at all. As I walked through the living room, skirting between two columns of stacked boxes, I saw the little dog lying on the hardwood floor in the front hall. Head resting between his front paws, he was staring at the closed front door with an air of patient resignation. How sad was that?

  “You’re waiting for Miss Ellie to come back, aren’t you?” I asked.

  Ringo glanced up at me briefly, then resumed his quiet vigil.

  I crossed my legs and sank down to the floor beside him. “I wish I could tell you that everything is going to be all right,” I said softly. “But I have a firm rule about lying to dogs.”

  Ringo’s tail made an abbreviated swish across the hardwood surface. The gesture wasn’t an indication of happiness. Rather it was simply an acknowledgment that the small dog had heard what I was saying.

  “I know you miss her. But you’re going to find somebody else to love. Somebody great. Aunt Peg will make sure of it.”

  “What’s this?” asked Aunt Peg, coming up behind me. “Did I hear my name?”

  “Ringo is missing Miss Ellie,” I said. “I was telling him how much he’s going to like his new home.”

  “Poor bereft boy.” Aunt Peg reached down and lifted the little terrier into her comforting arms. “I quite understand how he feels. I wonder if Miss Ellie made provisions for these dogs in her will. Most responsible dog owners do.”

  That stung just a little. I consider myself to be a responsible dog owner but when Faith was young and newly mine, the thought of making a provision for aftercare had never even crossed my mind. A year later the topic had come up in conversation and Aunt Peg had demanded that I remedy that deficiency immediately. She’d kept after me until I’d sat down with a lawyer and fixed things.

  “Gates will know,” I said. “We can find out from him later.”

  Aunt Peg turned and headed back toward the kitchen with Ringo in her arms. I stood up and followed.

  “Take a look inside there,” she said, nodding toward an open cardboard box as she walked by. “I see some interesting reading material on top. Fond memories for me,” she added archly. “Prehistoric archives for you.”

  I paused and had a look. The big carton was filled nearly to the brim with dog show memorabilia from the 1970s and ’80s. There were marked catalogs from the Poodle Club of America National and Regional Specialties, and half a dozen well-read copies of the annual Poodle Review stud dog edition. Stacked beneath those were numerous glossy issues of other decades-old canine magazines and periodicals.

  “Wow.” I pulled out a worn copy of Poodle Variety and began to flip through its pages. “Look at these old ads. The Poodles in here are amazing.”

  “Of course they are.” Aunt Peg was in the kitchen with Ringo, making sure that he got a drink. “They’re the ancestors of most of the good Poodles you see in the ring today.”

  “Puttencove, Eaton, Bel Tor . . .” The illustrious kennel names rolled off my tongue like those of long-lost friends. “How cool is this?”

  I set the first magazine aside and reached for another. Then I stopped and glanced up. “Do you think it’s all right if I look at these? I mean, it’s not like I have Miss Ellie’s permission to go through her things.”

  “I think Miss Ellie would be disappointed if you didn’t look,” Aunt Peg said. “She kept all those magazines for a reason, probably because she referred back to them herself. I’m sure she would have been happy to share them with you.”

  I spent the next half hour happily immersed in Poodle history. After Faith and the Fab Four had settled down to nap, Aunt Peg came over and joined me. Together we worked our way through Miss Ellie’s incredible collection of twentieth-century Poodle media.

  Reaching into the carton for another new magazine to peruse, I found my fingers closing over something that was the right size and shape but bound with a hard cover. The book was wedged in down near the bottom of the pile. Curious, I shifted some other things aside and jiggled it free.

  The tome gave off a musty smell as I lifted it up and out of the box. Its pebbled-leather back cover was dotted with mold. I flipped the book over and saw that it was an old yearbook. FOXCROFT SCHOOL 1974 was emblazoned across the front.

  “Look at this.” I held the volume out to Aunt Peg. “I found Miss Ellie’s high school yearbook.”

  “Hmmm, 1974.” She opened the cover carefully and began to flip slowly through the pages. “I’ll bet that was her graduating year. Let’s see if she had a senior picture.”

  I looked over Aunt Peg’s shoulder as she thumbed through the section of the yearbook devoted to the school’s graduating class. Some of the pages stuck to each other and needed to be separated gently. The names of the senior girls were listed in alphabetical order.

  “Elizabeth Bernice Everley, Sarah Marjorie Framingham. . .” Aunt Peg read. Then she pointed to the next page and said with satisfaction. “Here she is, Eleanora Bentley Gates from Lexington, Kentucky.”

  I leaned in for a closer look. Like all the others, Miss Ellie’s photograph was black and white. She was wearing a creamy off-the-shoulder dress and had a string of pearls around her neck. Her head was tilted up toward the light and she had a dreamy, faraway look on her face.

  “Miss Ellie was beautiful,” I said. “What does it say about her?”

  Beneath the picture was a quote that Aunt Peg identified as coming from John Lennon’s song “Imagine.” It was followed by a paragraph of humorous quips relating to Miss Ellie’s time at Foxcroft. Lastly, she had filled in the blanks left in some rather predictable phrases.

  “Favorite food . . . rare steak,” I read. “Always ready to . . . play hooky. I’d rather be . . . at the stable.”

  Then my eyes skimmed over the last item and I lifted my head abruptly.

  “Look at that,” I said.

  “What?” Aunt Peg pushed my hand aside. “I can’t see anything while you’re in the way.”

  I pulled back and Aunt Peg read aloud the same words that I’d seen a moment earlier. “When she should be studying, often found . . . writing love letters to Danny Nash.”

  Chapter 21

  “Maybe it’s a coincidence,” said Aunt Peg.

  “Maybe it’s not,” I shot back.

  “Daniel Nash . . . Danny Nash . . . they might even not be the same person. And so what if they are? Lots of single people are reconnecting with old beaus from high school. It’s the thing to do these days.”

  “Miss Ellie didn’t mention him,” I pointed out.

>   “Why would she have done that when we had so many other, more interesting things to talk about? There was no reason for Miss Ellie to make us privy to the intimate details of her life.”

  “It is not a coincidence,” I insisted stubbornly. “Unless you’re asking me to believe that two different people named Daniel Nash both happened to have connections to members of the Gates family?”

  “All right. Then suppose they are one and the same,” Aunt Peg said, equally stubborn. “Maybe Miss Ellie’s old friend Danny Nash decided to buy a racehorse. He remembered that she came from a prominent Kentucky family and he asked her to introduce him around.”

  “Nope. That’s not the way it happened.”

  “How would you know?”

  “Because that’s not what Daniel said when we were talking to him at Miss Ellie’s funeral.”

  “Oh?” Aunt Peg thought back, then shook her head. “I’m not sure I remember that part.”

  “We were standing with Gates and Erin when Daniel came over to pay his respects,” I told her.

  “That’s right. Gates introduced him to us and Daniel said that he was a Puritan from Boston. That made an impression on me because he’s from our area of the country, more or less. It occurred to me that he was a long way from home, too.”

  “Daniel also mentioned that he hadn’t known Miss Ellie long. He said Billy had just introduced the two of them a week earlier.”

  “How very interesting,” Aunt Peg said thoughtfully. “Clearly I should have been paying closer attention at the time. I would hate to think that we might have overlooked something like that.”

  It wasn’t exactly high praise. But it was closer to an expression of approval than I usually get from Aunt Peg. So maybe I basked just a little.

  She shut that down in a hurry.

  “Obviously we ought to have a conversation with Mr. Nash,” Aunt Peg said. “What kind of contact information do we possess for the man?”

  “None that I’m aware of.”

  “Do something about that, would you?”

  “Umm . . . like what?”

  “You have a phone; I suggest you put it to good use. In the meantime, I’m going to return the boys to the backyard and make sure that they have access to shade and water out there.”

  I started with accommodations on the west side of Lexington, those closest to both Midway and Keeneland. It only took fifteen minutes to track down the hotel in Beaumont Centre where Daniel Nash was staying. The person manning the front desk offered to connect me to Mr. Nash’s room but I declined. Instead I bookmarked the hotel’s address and handed the information over to Aunt Peg.

  “I hate leaving these dogs on their own again,” she said, “but I suppose it can’t be helped. Hopefully Gates will be by in a few hours to tend to them. In the meantime, isn’t it lucky that we were planning to switch locations anyway?”

  “I take it we’re about to join Daniel Nash in Beaumont Centre?”

  “Indeed,” Aunt Peg replied cheerfully.

  We locked the back door and took one last look around the house to make sure everything was in order before letting ourselves out the front. As we passed through the living room, Aunt Peg reached into the carton where I’d replaced Miss Ellie’s yearbook. Without even breaking stride, she scooped the book back out and slipped it beneath her arm.

  “All in aid of a good cause,” she said. “I’m sure Miss Ellie won’t mind if we borrow this for a day or two, in case Mr. Nash needs further persuasion to talk to us.”

  “But Gates—”

  “Pffft.” Aunt Peg waved a hand through the air, shutting down my objection with her usual disregard for criticism. “We’ll have it back where it belongs before he even notices it’s missing.”

  * * *

  Our plan hit a small snag: the hotel in Beaumont Centre did not accept pets. Luckily the hotel’s daytime manager was the second person Faith would meet that day who had grown up with a Poodle and still remembered that childhood companion as the best dog ever. Having been introduced to Faith—who was her usual charming and Poodlely self—the woman allowed Aunt Peg to persuade her to bend the rules on our behalf.

  In return we agreed to take a room in the back of the hotel on the ground floor. We also promised to keep a low profile and that Faith wouldn’t be exercised where the other guests could see her. That appropriate cleanup was our responsibility went without saying.

  It wasn’t until after we’d completed the check-in and unloaded our things from the minivan that Aunt Peg casually mentioned that she’d also persuaded the day manager to divulge Daniel Nash’s room number.

  “How?” I asked. “She’s not supposed to do that.”

  “She’s not supposed to do this either,” Aunt Peg said, gesturing toward Faith who was lounging happily on the nearest bed. “But she did.”

  Honestly, I don’t know why this stuff even surprises me anymore.

  “So what’s our plan?” I asked.

  “I’m going to ring Daniel Nash’s room and invite him to join us for dinner this evening. Gates has already introduced us, after all. So I’ll present myself as another newcomer to the Thoroughbred industry and ask if he wants to get together and compare notes.”

  Aunt Peg always sounds so sure of herself. I wish I had even half of her confidence. Maybe it’s a height thing. I’ve always wanted to be taller, too.

  “What if Daniel says no?” I asked.

  “Why would he do that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he’s busy tonight. Or maybe he won’t remember us. Could be that he’s tired of talking about horses since he’s probably been doing it all week. Maybe he’s not even in his room. . . .”

  I might have kept going, but Aunt Peg had stopped listening to me. Instead, she was making a connection via the hotel phone. Her conversation with Daniel Nash was brief. It was also—much to my surprise—punctuated at one point by what sounded like a girlish giggle.

  “I guess he remembered who you were,” I said mildly when she’d hung up the phone.

  “Of course he remembered us.” Aunt Peg’s brisk reply steamrolled right over my innuendo. “And he wants to hear all about Lucky Luna. Daniel told me there’s a lovely restaurant across the street named Azur. We’ll be meeting him there at six-thirty.”

  “Just don’t forget,” I told her.

  Aunt Peg paused in the act of lifting her rolling bag up onto a suitcase rack. “Melanie, what are you talking about now?”

  “We know that Daniel Nash lied to us. And that for some reason he’s chosen to hide his former connection to Miss Ellie from her family.”

  She slanted me an exasperated look. “So?”

  “So he’s not the kind of man we want to trust.” Did I really have to point that out?

  When Aunt Peg didn’t reply, I added, “And I don’t want to hear any giggling over dinner.”

  “I won’t if you won’t,” Peg snapped.

  Just as long as we were both on the same page.

  * * *

  Even at six-thirty on a Tuesday night, Azur was already crowded. In horse country people get up early and they go to bed early. And their socializing habits follow.

  Daniel Nash was at the restaurant when we arrived. He had taken a table outside on the patio. The late-March evening was brisk, but heaters warmed the small courtyard to a very comfortable temperature.

  Daniel stood as we approached. He had donned a sports coat for the occasion and his silk tie was festooned with tiny flying horses. As the waiter held out my chair, Daniel stepped over and seated Aunt Peg himself. The smile she thanked him with made me want to smack her.

  Any minute now, there was going to be giggling. I just knew it.

  “I hope this is all right?” Daniel asked Aunt Peg. “I’m visiting from Massachusetts where we’re still months away from being able to eat outside, so I couldn’t resist giving it a try. But if you think you’re going to be cold, we can move indoors.”

  “This is fine,” Aunt Peg replied. “Melanie and
I are from the Northeast, too. So this weather feels mild to us.”

  “Where in the Northeast?” Daniel asked after the waiter had taken our drink order and disappeared.

  “Connecticut. Fairfield County,” I said. “I live in Stamford and Aunt Peg is in Greenwich.”

  “Lovely area.” Daniel nodded. “I went to college in New Haven.”

  “Yale?” Aunt Peg asked with interest.

  Daniel confirmed her guess. Then he and Aunt Peg spent the next fifteen minutes comparing connections and trying to discover friends, school ties, club affiliations, or even far-flung relations that they might have in common. And repeatedly coming up blank.

  For some reason, that initial lack of success didn’t deter either of them. I sat back in my seat and watched in silence as Daniel and Aunt Peg continued to spar back and forth. The longer their name dropping game went on, the more it began to seem like a competition.

  Several dozen people were brought up and quickly discarded as possible links. But oddly, the only person whose name hadn’t been mentioned was the one Aunt Peg and Daniel should have started with: Ellie Gates Wanamaker. It appeared that they were both determined to explore every other potential association first.

  I sipped a glass of cool Chenin Blanc and pondered the interesting fact that Daniel seemed to be scoping out Aunt Peg’s bona fides with every bit as much attention to detail as she was devoting to his. He had represented himself as a newcomer to the horse industry, but obviously something had already taught him to be wary. I wondered what that was.

  “Melanie?”

  I tuned back into the conversation and saw that Aunt Peg was gazing at me expectantly. I didn’t have even the slightest idea why.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “What did you say?”

  “Daniel was just asking me how well we knew the Gates family.”

  Well, then. Game on. Finally.

  “Aunt Peg and Miss Ellie were old friends,” I told him. “But I just met her for the first time last week. Although I’ve been familiar with Miss Ellie’s name and her line of Standard Poodles for years.”