A Last Goodbye

by J. A. Jance

  On their way to the counter, Ali counted seven dogs in all: a sheltie, an aging, white-nosed golden ­retriever, a bug-eyed pug, two docile pit bulls, and two Chihuahuas. Both of the Chihuahuas were decked out in sparkly Christmas-themed rhinestone vests. In addition, there were two carriers with cats in them added to the mix. The humans in the room looked worried and concerned. The animals, barely acknowledging anyone else’s presence, merely waited.

  “Can I help you?” a young woman in a blue flowered uniform asked. “What ails your baby this evening?”

  “She’s not really ours,” B. explained. “We found her abandoned earlier today, and we’re wondering if she has a chip. If we need to make an appointment . . .”

  “No appointment needed for that,” the receptionist replied briskly. “I’ve got my wand right here. It only takes a minute.”

  She was right. After bringing an electronic device out from under the counter and with B. still cradling the dog in his arms, she ran the wand over the dog’s shoulder.

  “Yup, she’s chipped all right,” the clerk announced. “An LPID chip. L-P-I-D—stands for Lost Pet ID,” she added, spelling it out. “You can get their information off their website on the Internet. When you contact them, either by phone or e-mail, give them this number.” She passed B. a slip of paper on which she had written the information.

  “The poor little thing looks pretty thin,” she added. “Do you want me to weigh her?”

  “Please,” B. replied.

  When the clerk returned the dog to them, she was frowning. “A miniature dachshund like this should weigh right around ten pounds. This one clocks in at only seven—that’s a third under her ideal body weight. And her teeth are a mess. If you want me to, I can take her back and keep her here with us while the people from LPID try to locate her owner.”

  “What happens if the owner can’t be found?” B. asked.

  The receptionist shrugged. “At that point we’ll contact Animal Control and turn her over to them.”

  B. took a deep breath and looked at Ali. This was the moment of decision. The clerk had given them a clean shot at simply walking away from the situation and getting back to concentrating on their wedding.

  “It’s up to you,” he said.

  Ali took a moment before making up her mind for both of them. “No, thank you,” she said. “We’ll look after her until the owner is found.”

  “Good,” B. said.

  In the roomful of people, it may have sounded like he was speaking to the clerk. Ali knew he was really speaking to her.

  “What do we owe you?” he asked.

  “Not a thing,” the clerk said. “We never charge for helping return lost pets to their owners. It’s a public service.”

  Back in the car, with Ali holding the once again shivering dog, B. turned to her and said, “What now?”

  “Let’s get this over with and do what we can to find her owner tonight,” Ali said. “Assuming the chip connection works, we can drop her off either before or after we go to the courthouse for our marriage license.”

  By then, iPhone in hand, Ali was already searching Safari for LPID. Once she found the website and the phone number, she handed the phone to B. Then she reached down and held the trembling dog close to her breast. “It’s going to be okay,” Ali murmured comfortingly. “We’re going to find your owner now. Just you wait and see.”

  Once B. had dialed the number, they sat in the clinic’s parking lot for the next several minutes while he waited on hold. Finally when an operator picked up, he launched off on an explanation of the situation. When he finished, he was again placed on hold. For several more minutes they waited while an annoying version of elevator music hummed through the phone’s speaker. At last the operator returned to the line.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I can tell you that the dog’s name is Bella. I called the number we have listed in our records. Unfortunately, it came up as a disconnect with no referral to a new number. There was an e-mail address listed as well. I tried that, too, but the message bounced.”

  “Could you give me that phone number?” B. asked.

  “No,” the operator said. “Sorry. Privacy concerns and all that. We’re not allowed to give out that information to third parties. As for the dog? You should probably drop Bella off with Animal Control. If you’ll give me your current location, I can find the address for you.”

  B. looked at Ali.

  “Bella?” Ali asked. The dog immediately sat up straight, ears on the alert, and looked Ali directly in the eye. She knew her name. No doubt about it.

  Ali sighed in resignation. “All right,” she said in answer to B.’s unasked question. “We’re sure as hell not taking her to the pound. Colleen would have our ears.”

  B. nodded in agreement. “And we’re doing this?” he asked.

  Ali knew at once that they were no longer discussing what should be done with the dog.

  “Yup, we are,” she said. “Next up, it’s time to get the marriage license. The rehearsal isn’t scheduled to happen until eleven. Maybe we’ll have time to do something more about the Bella situation in the morning. In the meantime, you’d better dig Mrs. Hastings’s card out of your pocket, give her a call, and see if she’ll give us a daily rate for tomorrow.”

  The Clark County courthouse was in a disturbingly seedy neighborhood—bad enough that they both worried about leaving the dog alone in the car, but with a sign on the entrance announcing NO DOGS ALLOWED, they didn’t have much choice. Inside, they spent the better part of forty-five minutes filling out paperwork and standing in a long line of mostly giddy couples intent on their Christmas weddings. Finally it was their turn at the bulletproof window, where the clerk found B.’s quip about shotgun weddings not especially funny. With their marriage license safely stowed in Ali’s purse, they returned to the hotel, where the valet who opened Ali’s door nodded in Bella’s direction as she exited the car.

  “Any luck?” he asked. Evidently all the guys at the valet stand were aware of the situation.

  “Not so far,” Ali answered. “We’ve established that the dog’s name is Bella but that’s about all. We have yet to locate her owner.”

  “Too bad,” he said.

  With Bella once again on her leash, they started into the lobby. “Wait,” Ali said. “Before we go upstairs, maybe we should walk her again.”

  A bellman directed them to a grassy area on the far side of the hotel’s front drive that turned out to be the pet walking area. Ali was relieved to see that it was fully stocked with poop bags and poop bag garbage containers. She was also relieved to see that Bella lived up to Mrs. Hastings’s advance billing. She did her duty at once and was ready to go inside.

  Upstairs, Ali led Bella into the room and then knelt down to remove the leash. As soon as she did, the dog gave herself a thorough shake, then scampered over to the mat with the bowls. She sniffed at the empty food bowl and took a few more dainty laps of water. Her next move was to hop back up on the bed and burrow under the pillows.

  Ali couldn’t help laughing at this second disappearing act. “I guess this is how it’s going to be, isn’t it?”

  B. nodded. “For tonight, anyway,” he agreed. “But as you said, we’ll take another crack at this in the morning.” He already had his phone out of his pocket.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “Stuart,” he told her. And then, into the phone, he said. “Hey, Stu. How are you doing? I hope you’re feeling better than you were earlier.” There was a pause, then he added, “Great. Do you happen to have your computer handy?”

  Ali thought that to be a stupid question. It seemed unlikely that Stuart Ramey would go anywhere without having a computer keyboard readily available.

  “Ali and I have a little problem here,” B. said. “I was hoping maybe you could help us with it.”

  Because Stuart had missed din
ner, he had to be brought up to speed on the Bella saga from the very beginning. “So that’s what’s needed,” B. finished. “I’d like you to see if you can get inside LPID’s server. Even if the phone number of the dog’s owner is a disconnect, we should be able to get a physical address. That would give us a place to start.”

  While B. was on the phone, Ali slipped into her nightgown and robe.

  “Well?” she asked when he ended the call.

  “He’ll be back in touch.”

  Good to his word, Stu called back less than fifteen minutes later, and B. put the phone on speaker.

  “Okay,” Stuart said. “The phone number leads back to a woman named Harriet Reid in unit number 3-407 at a condo complex on Harmon. It’s just off the Strip, near the MGM Grand. According to Zillow, at least twenty-five of the units in that complex are currently in foreclosure, including the one listed as belonging to Ms. Reid. While I was at it, I did a quick check of public records. I don’t see any death listings for someone named Harriet Reid. That doesn’t mean she isn’t dead. It just means she didn’t die in Clark County.”

  “Thanks for the help, Stu,” B. said. “We’ll look into this in the morning. In the meantime, you might want to check with the security folks over at the Palazzo and see if their cameras picked up any information on an unidentified vehicle that came through their parking lot this afternoon at about four forty-five. It was a dark SUV of some kind, but I didn’t get a good look at it; I was too worried about Colin and the dog.”

  When it was time to go to bed, B. moved the dog bed so it was next to theirs and tried relocating Bella. It didn’t work; not the first time, or the second or third times, either. On each occasion, she immediately hopped back up onto the bed. On the fourth try, Bella didn’t hop up immediately. Instead, she waited until B. switched off his bedside lamp. That was her signal. Seconds later she landed on the bed again, first making a beeline for the head of the bed and then burrowing under the covers. Once there, she immediately settled down. With a contented sigh she stretched out with her surprisingly long back pressed up against Ali’s back.

  “Wait a minute,” B. complained from his side of the bed. “You’ve got the good part of the dog. All I’ve got are four sharp little feet poking me in the side.”

  “Too bad,” Ali told him over her shoulder with a singular lack of sympathy. “Wasn’t all this your idea?”

  When Ali opened her eyes at seven o’clock the next morning, Bella was still there, snuggled under the covers. Despite Ali’s earlier protests about not being the designated dog walker, she hurried out of bed, careful to not awake B., threw on her previous night’s clothing, leashed up the dog, and headed downstairs. When she and Bella returned to the lobby after their successful walk, Ali was surprised to find B. not only up, he was also dressed, downstairs, and waiting for them in the lobby with two paper cups of coffee in hand.

  “Chris, Athena, and the kids came by a minute ago,” he informed her, handing her one of the cups. “They’re on their way to the breakfast buffet. I told them we had an errand to run. Want to go and try tracking down Harriet Reid?”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  When they turned off the Strip onto Harmon, Bella suddenly sat up on her haunches in Ali’s lap, positioning herself like a tiny meerkat, staring ­eagerly out the windshield, with her nose going a mile a minute.

  “Looks like we’re on the right track,” B. observed.

  When they located the condo complex, the Palms on Harmon, they found a set of buildings that might have presented an impressive appearance when first built, but that was no longer true. The signature palm trees out front were all dead. So was the grass. Flower beds that had most likely once been planted full of petunias were thick with weeds and grass.

  As dismal as the place looked, a glance at Bella told them they were in the right place. They were still cruising the parking lot, but the dog was already scratching at the window in her eagerness to get out.

  “Bella seems to like it,” B. muttered, “but this could just as well be a ghost town. The only thing missing is a few tumbling tumbleweeds.”

  B. finally located a spot with the word VISITOR printed in faded white paint. After parking, B. got out, and started toward what was billed as the main entrance. When Ali stepped out of the car with Bella, however, the dog clearly had something else in mind. She set off in a different direction, determinedly dragging Ali along with her.

  “This way,” Ali called. “Apparently Bella knows where she’s going.”

  The complex was divided into four separate buildings. Bella walked up to the glass door of building number three and stood there expectantly, waiting for someone to open it. B. picked up the old-fashioned security phone and held it to his ear while studying the names listed on the directory. Harriet Reid was still listed as a resident, but he didn’t bother pressing the button beside her name. Instead, he located a button marked MANAGER and pressed that one. No one answered there, either.

  “He’s not here,” a woman’s voice said behind them. “He’s supposed to be here by eight, but he generally doesn’t make it before eight thirty or nine. But with the wages they’re paying building managers these days, it’s hardly surprising that they don’t get good help.”

  B. and Ali both turned to glance at the new arrival—an elderly woman who shuffled toward them on a pair of worn house slippers. A cloud of cigarette smoke accompanied her approach. Ali, accustomed to Sedona’s high-desert winter temperatures, thought this late-December day in Vegas to be reasonably balmy. The woman, obviously a local, was bundled up in a winter coat buttoned over what was evidently a bathrobe. Wrapped around her neck was a long homemade knitted scarf in an ungodly chartreuse that clashed with the brown wool of the coat.

  To B.’s and Ali’s amazement, the dog immediately darted forward to greet the newcomer, standing on her haunches, whining, and pawing eagerly at the woman’s bare knee.

  “Why, little Bella Mia!” the woman exclaimed in delight. At once she knelt down to embrace the ecstatic dog, who eagerly kissed the woman’s nose and ears and left a scrim of wet noseprints on her glasses. “What in the world are you doing here, little one?”

  “Someone dumped her in the parking lot at the Palazzo late yesterday afternoon,” B. explained. “We’re trying to find her owner.”

  “Somebody dumped her? Poor baby. Probably Harriet’s worthless son. Can’t remember his name right now—Garvin or Marvin or something like that. Never did like the man. He always gave me the heebie-jeebies.

  “I’m Merle, by the way,” she added. Rising to her feet, she stepped up to the door and punched a code into the security pad. Immediately the door clicked open. “Merle Goodwin,” she added over her shoulder. “Why don’t you come on inside?”

  Bella didn’t wait for Merle to finish the invitation. She streaked inside, pulling Ali along with her.

  “It’s way too cold to stand out there jawing,” Merle continued. “And I’m pretty sure I’ve still got a can of those Vienna sausages up in my unit. Bella just loves them to death, don’t you, girl?”

  Once inside the lobby, Bella made straight for the elevator while the three humans walked behind her.

  “Harriet always swore by that little tyke,” Merle added. “Just loved her to bits.”

  They rode to the fourth floor in silence. When the elevator door opened, Bella darted off to the right while Merle turned to the left. It took considerable tugging on Ali’s part to convince the dog to go in the other direction.

  “Sorry, girl,” Merle said. “Harriet’s not there anymore.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Damned if I know,” Merle said, unlocking the door to her unit. “Last I saw, they were hauling the old gal off in an ambulance. Left the poor dog there all by herself. I heard her barking and barking. I finally raised enough hell with the manager that he let me in so I could take care of her and see
to it that she got fed, watered, and walked. It was the least I could do. That went on for a couple of weeks. Then one day her son came by while I was out shopping. He took the dog away with him without so much as a word of thanks, either.”

  Taking off her coat and hanging it up, Merle looked down self-consciously at her faded bathrobe. “We’re not supposed to smoke inside the building,” she explained. “Even if there’s nobody around who cares about the rules anymore, I still do my best to follow them. Now, what can I get you? Some coffee, maybe?”

  Ali nodded.

  “Coming right up. You all have a seat,” Merle said, then wagged a finger at Bella. “Don’t worry. I won’t forget you.”

  As soon as Ali and B. took seats on the worn cloth couch, Bella hopped up and positioned herself between them. The only other chair in the room was a well-used recliner, which was evidently Merle’s preferred spot.

  The combination living room and dining room was shabby but neat. An outdated oak pedestal table marked the dining space. The long interior wall was lined with a series of tall, cheap bookshelves that bulged with paperbacks stacked two deep on every shelf. A bulky television set, several generations earlier than the current crop of flat-screen models, sat on top of an oak buffet that most likely had started out as part of a dining room set.

  Merle came back into the room, carrying a pair of matching china cups and saucers. Ali recognized the delicate flowered pattern as an antique one, long out of use. The gilt edging around the tops of the cups and the edges of the saucers was chipped and cracked.

  “Cream or sugar?” she asked.

  “No, just black, thank you,” Ali told her.

  Merle glanced at the dog, who was watching the woman’s every move with avid interest. “Don’t you worry, little one. I know just what you want.”