Dead and Doggone

by Dead

  weren't Cheerios at all, but some health food look-alike, and that the activity was facilitating the

  development of his fine-motor coordination. Rowdy cleaned up, first the Door, then the baby's face,

  and while we waited for Matt to finish shaving, I showed the baby how to toss the cereal into the air

  and let Rowdy catch it.

  "It facilitates the development of eye-mouth coordination," I told Marty. It does, too. Practice

  catching food was why Rowdy was so great with a tennis ball or a Frisbee.

  Matt finally came to the table, and while he ate more of the same little O's with milk and banana

  slices, I filled him in on what I'd been thinking about Clyde.

  "He's no place else, Matt. I've upped the reward as much as I can. I've had signs up and ads in

  everywhere. At first, I thought he was just lost, too, but he isn't. And these places really do exist-

  right here in Cambridge."

  "You're right. They do."

  "And they aren't going to talk to me. I'm not going to get inside a single door."

  "What makes you think they're going to welcome me?"

  "They aren't. They aren't going to welcome anyone. But you'd at least stand a chance, wouldn't

  you? You've got credentials. You're a researcher."

  "Not that kind. Believe me. Not that kind."

  "Of course not. I wasn't suggesting you were. But that's the thing. I don't know people like that,

  and I don't know how else to find out what's going on in those places except to find somebody who

  can get in. Will you at least try calling?"

  "Of course, but. . ."

  "I know you don't want to. I can understand that, but I'm desperate. I wouldn't ask you

  otherwise. Maybe it's a stupid idea, but I don't know what else to do."

  "It isn't that." He ate a spoonful of cereal. "Look, we, um, have a policy of not interfering in

  people's personal lives."

  I interrupted him. "This isn't just personal! Don't you care about wolves?"

  "Too much to keep one as a pet," Marty said.

  "Would both of you be quiet and let me finish?" Matt said.

  "I'm sorry," I said.

  "It's okay. Look, if you need someone to make the calls, ask David Shane. Ask him to make the

  calls. They won't talk to me. They're more likely to talk to him. They'll return his calls."

  I knew what Matt meant, of course. His own work was academic, theoretical, classy, and

  underpaid. Shane's wasn't. Making the calls was beneath Matt. He didn't want to dirty his

  theoretical hands. Let Shane do it. Really, it was good news because Shane would make the calls for

  me, and I didn't think he'd act like a snob about it. He'd probably even make some visits if I asked

  him. I knew he'd do it for me. He liked my hair. He'd said so. He liked me. He liked my father. I

  could get him to do it.

  -19-

  Kevin Dennehy's mother owns a comb and brush. After she's applied them to her hair, though,

  she pulls the whole gray mass tightly together, twists it around, ties it in a knot on the crown of her

  head, and gets out her principal cosmetic instrument, a hammer, and drives dozens of hairpins

  through the knot and into her skull. For all I know, she pounds in a few steel nails, too, or maybe

  the hairpins alone account for her expression, which is so pained and severe that her hair would

  probably stay away from her face without any hairpins or nails at all. An ex-Catholic Seventh-Day

  Adventist, she still worships Kevin, the last of her children left at home. She won't let him consume

  or even keep meat, alcohol, or caffeine in her house. They aren't good for him. She does all her

  housework and Saturday's cooking on Friday, and on Saturday, she goes to services, which is one

  reason I was surprised to find her at my back door when I returned from the Gersons' that Saturday

  morning. Another reason is that she knows what Kevin does at my house and yet another is that she

  suspects he does things there that he doesn't.

  "Blessed are they that do his commandments," Mrs. Dennehy announced, "that they may have

  right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. For without are dogs."

  "Revelation," I said.

  It was sure what I needed. Although Mrs. Dennehy favors a fundamentalist approach to the

  Bible, I'd assumed that she'd worked out a quirky interpretation of most of what it says about dogs

  because she'd always seemed to me to like them. Furthermore, although she disapproves of me,

  she'd also been kind to me, and everyone on the block, including the dog owners, considered her a

  good neighbor, not a complainer.

  "My dog hasn't been out," I added. "Not out loose. And I'm taking him in right now."

  "My friend Alicia just called me," she said, "and she wants Kevin to help her, and he isn't home,

  and he's not at the station, so I said to myself that it was my duty to help Alicia. She does not get

  herself worked up making something of nothing, and if she says someone has to do something,

  someone does."

  "Oh?"

  "And Alicia says the dog has been barking and whining, and usually it's a nice sort of dog. It

  barks, but not like this. And before the poor woman was murdered, there were two. And she doted

  on both of them, but now there's just this one, and Alicia doesn't know what happened to the other

  one, and it's not even getting enough to eat and is living in its own filth without so much as a kind

  word."

  "That sounds terrible," I said. "What does she want Kevin to do?"

  "I'm telling you, aren't I? She'd go and get the poor thing herself and bring it home, but she can't

  because Ralph can't abide a dog in the house, which is why Alicia doesn't have one of her own. And

  you won't believe it, but she likes the smell of them, especially in the rain, she says, which is funny,

  if you think about it, because Trapper was a nice clean dog but you'd never have known it when it

  turned humid. And I'd go and get it myself, but I can't with services and all, which I'm overdue for a

  half hour now."

  "So you and Alicia want Kevin to get someone to pick up the dog? Why don't you call Animal

  Control?"

  "And have him arrested and carried off and thrown in the pound where anything could happen to him? And it could be worse than where he is now with hundreds of other dogs when Alicia says he

  has prizes he wins all the time, or did before, anyway."

  "So Kevin's supposed to bring him back here? Just as a private citizen, so to speak."

  "But he isn't here, I'm telling you, and he's not at the station, and they won't tell me where he is,

  so I called Alicia back, and I said to her, 'I'll get that one that lives next door to do it that's so crazy

  about dogs and all. When she hears she'll be glad to help, and it won't take her any time,' which it

  won't, either, because it's just around the corner."

  "Alicia lives by Quigley Drugs?"

  "The green house with the shingles and the little hedge around the front. But she won't be there

  now because she has to go out to the Star Market because Ralph has to have his meat loaf, and he

  won't eat anything that isn't perfectly fresh, so she has to do the shopping every day, which is hard

  on her since she started getting these headaches and won't soak her feet in water like I told her, but

  she does it, anyway." Mrs. Dennehy's headache remedies, by the way, work better than aspirin.

  "I'll take a walk over and find out what's going on," I said. "If the dog's being neglected the way Alicia says, I'll bri
ng him back. Okay?"

  "And isn't that what you've kept me here talking about all this time? And the poor dog crying

  something awful, Alicia says."

  I needed to talk to Shane, of course, but his Mercedes, which had been ornamenting my driveway

  when I'd left for Matt and Marty's, was gone. Furthermore, as Mrs. Dennehy had pointed out, it

  wouldn't take me long to check on the dog. I put Rowdy in the house and, with a leash stuffed in my

  pocket, set out for Quigley Drugs. Although I'd forgotten the color of the house with the sprinkler in

  the yard, it was green, and, as I'd assumed, the barking and whining Alicia had described to Mrs.

  Dennehy came from Max. Quigley Drugs looked as open or closed for business as it ever had, so I

  risked the sign, still hanging over the door ready to concuss the customers, and walked in. I'd

  thought about simply marching through the gate to the backyard, leashing Max, and walking off

  with him, especially because I'd more or less promised Kevin to stay away from the Quigleys, father

  and son, but there seemed no reason to steal a dog Austin would probably be glad to have me take,

  or at least glad to sell. As Libby had said the night before, I am honest.

  "Mr. Quigley?" I called. "Austin? Pete?"

  In a little Maine seacoast town, a customer might walk into one of the gift shops to find the place

  empty because the proprietor was in back unpacking sachet pillows stuffed with pine needles or

  matching jars of real Maine blueberry honey and jam with coordinating bottles of blueberry syrup,

  but even in the smallest town the pharmacists know about people who find their stock sweeter than

  any honey, jam, or syrup. Even more than a doctor's or a dentist's office, a drugstore is vulnerable,

  and I'd always assumed that pharmacists took precautions, such as never leaving the door unlocked

  while the store was empty.

  "Mr. Quigley? Austin? Pete? Is anyone here?"

  But, of course, they lived in back of the place. In Cambridge, most of the mom-and-pop stores

  where the family lives on the premises are called spas, which means they sell groceries, cigarettes,

  and sandwiches, not thermal baths. Especially from the outside, Quigley Drugs looked more like

  one of those spas than like the good pharmacies, Skenderian Apothecary, Colonial Drug, Huron.

  Maybe the neighbor- hood customers were expected to ring a bell by the counter or even knock on

  the door to the family quarters?

  Sissy and Austin had resisted the urge to go computer. The cash register on the counter at the

  back of the store was an old-fashioned mechanical model. When I checked around it, I couldn't find

  a bell to ring, and there was no printed sign about what to do if you needed assistance. The area to

  the right was screened off, probably to avoid tempting the local druggies by advertising its contents,

  but to the left, between a sparse display of bottled antihistamines and an even sparser one of diet

  aids and vitamins, was a little gate obviously in- tended to keep the customers on their side of the

  counter. I half expected Austin to pop his head out the door behind the register, wipe his breakfast

  eggs off his face, and order me back where I belonged, but the only sounds I heard were the banging

  of the little gate as it slammed itself shut, Max's muffled yelps, and my own footsteps.

  By then, I should have known that no one would answer, but I needed to offer some noisy proof

  of my honest intentions to anyone who might walk in from the street. "Mr. Quigley? Austin? It's

  Holly Winter. Are you here? Are you all right?"

  He answered the question the only way he could. If you're sprawled on the floor surrounded by

  hundreds of bottles of pills and reams of little pieces of paper torn from prescription pads, that's

  saying you're not quite all right, especially if you also have a wooden-handled hunting knife sticking

  out of your chest.

  -20-

  Even when he was alive, Austin Quigley wasn't magnetic, and although I'd have said offhand that anything would have warmed him up, the hunting knife hadn't. I took a couple of steps toward him

  for a closer look. The only medicine I know anything about is veterinary, but I knew enough to

  realize that he might still be alive and that, if so, nothing I could do would keep him that way. The

  knife had been driven into his chest right to the hilt. I'm not squeamish about blood. After all, I am

  a woman. I'd have grabbed the handle and pulled out the knife if I'd been sure that removing it

  wouldn't do any more harm.

  On the wall just above his head hung a telephone, but to reach it, I'd have had to walk through

  the pill bottles and papers, and to use it, I'd have had to stand over him. Maybe it was a good idea

  not to walk there or touch the phone, anyway. My hunch that there'd be another phone in the

  family quarters in back turned out to be right. The room, a combination kitchen, living room, and

  dining room, hadn't undergone the store's recent renovation, and Pete hadn't done any finishes on

  its walls. The chipped enamel sink was spilling over with what must have been every dish, pot, mug,

  and drinking glass Austin and Pete had dirtied since Sissy died. Lined up on a grubby shelf over the

  sink were enough bottles, sprays, and ointments to constitute a second pharmacopoeia of over-the-

  counter antihistamines, decongestants, anti-itch creams, anti-allergy pills, and prescription

  remedies I didn't recognize. The rancid grease in a pair of iron skillets on the gas stove perfumed

  the place, too. The room had two windows, one on each side of the back door, but the shades were

  down, translucent yellowish shades that reminded me of human skin. I used my elbow to flip on a

  light switch by the back door, and I pulled the sleeve of my sweatshirt over my left hand before I

  picked up the receiver. The big black phone had buttons, not a dial. I used a grubby pencil stub I

  found lying on the table next to the phone to hit 911.

  I stayed in the greasy little room while I listened for the sirens of the ambulance and the cruisers,

  but I didn't make myself at home. I didn't sit down. This may seem like a crazy thing to have done

  in those circumstances, but I looked at the ribbons, pictures, and trophies displayed on the wall

  near the table. The framed photographs included one of Lady, three of Max, four or five of other

  pointers, and none of Pete. The trophies sat on shelves in a crudely carpentered hanging china rack

  that Pete must have produced in junior high shop class. Most of the trophies had been won by two

  dogs with names I didn't recognize, and a few were Max's. Tucked between and in back of two

  medium-size trophy cups, both dusty, was a clean little silver bowl inscribed with another dog's

  name, Argent Silver Regis. I recognized that one. It belonged to one of Mimi Nichols's pointers, Ed

  Nichols's hunting dog, Regis. Furthermore, although all the other booty came from dog shows, that

  bowl, according to the inscription, had been won at a field trial, a competition among hunting dogs,

  the kind of thing Ed Nichols might have entered. Or had someone enter.

  I discussed it with Rita later, and she reassured me that I was not as coldhearted as it may

  appear. She says I displaced my anxiety-provoking thoughts about who stabbed Austin and whether

  I might be next onto a substitute object and that I chose something comfortably familiar but

  puzzling enough to focus and contain my repressed fear-namely, the question of what a bowl won


  by Ed Nichols's hunting dog was doing there. I focused on this distraction until the sirens

  interrupted my thoughts.

  The first thing Kevin did was drag me out through the store, across the blacktop, and into the

  back seat of a black and white cruiser with blue lights on top. Kevin's name suggests his Irish

  ancestry. His fair complexion does, too. His face turns red when he's embarrassed and an even

  cuter red when he's angry.

  "You had orders to stay away," he said. "Did you forget? Let me ask you something. Since your

  memory appears to be failing, I've got a little memory test for you. What was the first thing the

  officers did when they arrived?"

  "They looked upstairs."

  "Good. Of course, I don't know why they bothered, because you'd probably checked already."

  "No. I hadn't."

  "Well, well. Here's item two. What did the officers have in their hands when they proceeded up

  the stairs?"

  "Kevin, cut it out. I know they were armed. If you call the cops because a raccoon knocks over

  your trash barrels, they pull their guns and go through every room in your house. That happened to

  Rita. She heard something one night, and you weren't home, so she called the cops."

  "What made her do that?" He stretched his arms out in an exaggerated shrug, tilted his head, and

  expanded his chest. "Weren't you home? You could've investigated everything. Unarmed. I mean,

  here we have the Cambridge Police Department determining that here's a situation that requires

  protection, but you don't need it. Not you."

  "I get the point. It was careless of me."

  "Careless."

  "It was your mother's fault."

  "My mother made you do it."

  "Alicia heard the Quigteys' dog barking, and she called your mother. Your mother couldn't find

  you, and she had to go to services, so she asked me to check on Max. He was Sissy's dog. He's the

  one out back now. And I walked in and found Austin."

  "And then you sat down and waited to see what would happen to you."

  "Come on, Kevin. I called right away. I wasn't sure he was dead, and I wanted to get the

  ambulance here. And I never sat down. I stood up the whole time."

  "The A Number One rule in personal safety," Kevin said. "Don't sit down."

  "Well, you know what? I used the time very productively." I told him about the bowl. "So where