Biting the Moon

by Martha Grimes

  Andi leaned forward. “Operation?”

  Mrs. Silverstone raised her well-tended eyebrows in surprise. “The fights, of course.”

  When they both looked at her blankly, she said, “You mean you’re not here about the damned dogfights?”

  It was hard even for Andi to recover herself. So Mary said, “Yes, more or less, but specifically about the dog down there by your gate. You mean the dog at the gate has some connection with your husband’s operation?”

  Mrs. Silverstone gave a short bark of laughter. “Hey, I would’ve thought you gals too clever not to put that together. The dog’s for the fights, for God’s sake. That’s my dear hubby’s hobby.” Her smile widened. “And you didn’t know this and now I’ve gone and given the whole thing away. That’s rich. But of course I won’t tell him if you won’t.”

  Mary looked at her in disbelief. Andi’s face was a frozen mask, an ice sculpture.

  Mrs. Silverstone shook her head. “Hard to believe the ASPCA doesn’t know about the fights. By the time that poor benighted animal gets in the ring, Buck knows he’ll lose and puts his money on the other dog.”

  Mary said, “But he’s so thin; he looks starved. Who would be stupid enough to bet on him?”

  Mrs. Silverstone gave a bark of laughter. “Stupid enough? Honey, when it comes to the type likes those fights, there’s no ceiling on stupidity.” She looked from Mary to Andi. “You know, for two gals working for the ASPCA, you don’t know much.”

  Andi and Mary exchanged a glance. After a few seconds’ pause, Andi said, “We’re not. That story was just a cover so you’d see us.”

  Stubbing out her cigarette, Mrs. Silverstone rose, saying, “Now I wonder how I guessed that?” She yanked down the tight-waisted jacket of her dress, picked up her glass, and went over to the bar again. She poured in scotch and a little water, added ice cubes.

  Mary said, “We had to see you about the Labrador out there. I’m sorry we tried to fool you.”

  Returning, Mrs. Silverstone said. “For God’s sakes, don’t apologize. I don’t know anyone half as resourceful as you two.”

  Andi ran her hand through her hair, as if she hoped its rearrangement might provide her with a better disguise. “I guess we don’t look the part, much.”

  “Oh, it’s not that. It’s my name. I’m not Mrs. Silverstone.” Her eyes glittered with the humor of this. “My name’s Follett.”

  Andi was so puzzled by this she mentioned the letters on the foyer table. “That’s the name on the envelopes.”

  “Mail was delivered here by mistake. I’m Marie Follett.” She smiled and winked as if she were in on the charade. “So why are you here?”

  “The dog,” said Mary, looking at Andi, who nodded. “We were just driving by. We want to take the dog to a vet.”

  “All this trouble over a dog?” Marie Follett shook her head, dismayed.

  Andi said, “But I guess you can’t give us the key?”

  “I don’t have it. Don’t know where he keeps it. Wait a minute, though.” Marie Follett stood and made her rather irregular way to the French door leading onto a patio. She went out and in a few seconds was coming back in holding some kind of gardening tool, heavy and long-handled. She snipped it a couple of times. “Shears. The fellow that does the garden can cut through anything with these. It’s worth a try. There’s usually a weak link. Buck sure is one.” She smiled. “Now, how do we get this past Danvers?”

  Andi rose and took the shears. She stuffed the tool under her coat, lengthwise, and held on to it by pressing it to her body. “Is that okay?” She looked from one to the other.

  Marie said, “See if you can hold your arm a little less stiff. Maybe you could shove that hand into the pocket—there. Looks fine if no one tries to strip-search you.”

  Andi said, “This is really nice of you, Mrs. Follett.”

  “Marie, call me Marie; after all, we’re in a dog heist together. If you want a vet, there’s one off Route Ninety-three called Peaceable Kingdom.”

  Mary was a little worried about Marie’s fate at the hands of her husband. “But what excuse will you give your husband if we do manage to cut the chain?”

  Marie waved a hand in dismissal. “Him? Time he gets home, I’ll think up a dozen excuses, don’t worry.” Marie shrugged. “Maybe I’ll just tell him the story you told me. There were a couple of people here from the ASPCA and they must’ve taken the dog.” She paused. “And that they’re going to slap him with a lawsuit. You can’t get away scot-free with animal abuse anymore. That the ASPCA had his number for a long time. It might even get him to stop starving dogs.”

  Andi smiled. “Thanks, Mrs. Follett. Marie.”

  “I’ll walk you to the door; I’ll say something for Danvers’s benefit.”

  The three of them walked across the marble foyer, where the housekeeper stood guard before another door across from them. Marie Follett said, loud enough for the housekeeper to hear, “Look, you just be sure you tell your office this is none of my doing or my responsibility. It’s his, Mr. Follett’s. Here, I’ll open the gate for you.” Marie pressed a button set in a mechanism on the wall.

  The housekeeper, looking as if she’d love to slap Marie’s hand down from the device, stood rigid, her eyes stamping each of them with disapproval. Had she inspected Andi more closely, she would have noticed the stiff posture, the arm held straight against her side.

  No one shook hands. They said good-bye. Out on the porch, they looked behind them, but the door had closed. Then, Mary saw Marie at the window, drink in hand, waving and her mouth forming words Mary couldn’t decipher: “Good-bye,” perhaps, or “Good luck.”

  There was a weak link and it was at the collar where the joining had been done.

  “Jesus,” whispered Mary. “Did he sodder this on while the poor dog was in it?”

  Grimly, Andi had managed to lever the shears around the weak join without any danger of cutting into the dog’s neck. “At least the collar isn’t very tight.”

  Mary looked back up the gravel drive. At some distance she saw a man who appeared to be walking their way. “Hurry up, there’s someone coming.”

  “There!” said Andi, as the chain dropped away. But the cut in the collar still didn’t leave enough room to take it off. “Let’s go.” She looked around. The man was still at a distance. Between them they carried the dog, who seemed disoriented by its freedom, or its new captors, but when it saw the food on the floor of the car that Mary had put there, it gladly went into the backseat. Andi plucked up the camera she’d left on the seat and took a picture.

  Mary said, in a tone of exasperation, “You only got my back. At least wait till I stand up.”

  “Who said it was of you?” Andi shoved the camera in one of the coat’s pockets and asked, “Who’s driving? I’ll do it.” They piled into the car, Mary and the dog in a heap on the backseat.

  The figure on the drive was now less than twenty feet from the gate and nearly through it as Andi accelerated. Whoever he was, he was yelling and taking swings at the air with his fist.

  • • •

  Peaceable Kingdom was down a side road off Route 93. Mary wondered why veterinarians had to reach so far for names to convince pet owners that their cats and dogs were tended by people who answered to a higher calling.

  They had managed to work the metal collar from the dog’s neck, since it would certainly invite comment, especially put together with its weight loss. Mary inspected the neck, rubbed raw in places. She shook her head. It amazed her the dog could be in such good spirits. “Wait a minute, I have a leash in the back somewhere.”

  As Mary went to get it, Andi called, “For what?”

  “Sunny.” Mary rooted inside the trunk in the place where the tools were kept. She went back to the dog.

  “Sunny? He’s a coyote; you can’t walk a coyote around with a leash on it.”

  “I know. That’s why it’s not on him.” Mary put the choke collar with the leash attached over the Labrador’s h
ead. She was impeded by his licking her face and hands. “I got it on him once and then he went off. Later, just by accident, I found it buried along with some other things. Sunny likes to save things for later use. Even the leash. Okay, let’s go. Wait,” Mary put her hand on Andi’s arm. “Shouldn’t we have a name for him?”

  “I was thinking Jules.”

  “Who chased badminton birds.” Mary smiled. “What’re we going to tell the vet about Jules’s condition?” When Andi shrugged, Mary said, “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

  Inside, the woman behind the counter looked up from whatever work she wanted to appear had been interrupted by mere caprice on the part of the client. Her “yes?” was so weighted with dislike that it cast a pall over the whole room—over the tabby cat, the Pekinese, the spaniel, the rabbit. They all stopped moving for a few seconds and the Pekinese, which had been sending forth a salvo of barks to drown the silence, stopped barking.

  Andi said, “This dog needs attention. We found him along the road.”

  Miss Abrahams (the name on a little plaque) rose just far enough to glance down at the dog. She put her fingers on the edge of the counter as if to balance herself. Her hands were the smallest Mary had ever seen, small as a raccoon’s. “Do you have an appointment?”

  Mary opened her mouth to answer this ridiculous question, but Andi beat her to it. “We don’t have an appointment. We didn’t have an appointment to find him, either.”

  The receptionist threw Andi a glance of pure vitriol. “Doctor is a very busy man.”

  “I bet he can find ten minutes to look at this dog. Or maybe”—she looked at Mary—“maybe we should just take him to the ASPCA and tell them Miss”—Andi looked pointedly at the nameplate—“Miss Abrahams wouldn’t let the doctor see him.”

  Miss Abrahams rose from her stool with a sigh. “Sit down,” she commanded them. “I’ll ask Doctor.”

  Andi nodded and she and Mary sat on a long bench, the Lab sniffing bench and floor and rabbit cage. Several of the room’s occupants were smiling at them; a couple gave them a thumb’s-up sign and one man saluted. Clearly, they had all suffered at Miss Abrahams’s raccoon hands. Beside her, a boy who must have been waiting for his cat or dog, for he hadn’t anything with him, had his head down, looking at the floor. Mary asked, “Is your dog sick, or something?”

  “No. He’s dead,” the boy said to the floor.

  “I’m really sorry.”

  Miss Abrahams was back, looking disappointed that “Doctor” had agreed to see Jules right away. Andi was trying to make the Labrador sit, but he preferred to stand and wag his tail. For him, the day was a dazzlement of new experiences. He’d probably even like the doctor with his shots.

  He did. Dr. Krueger could barely get the needle into him because the Lab insisted on licking his face. The vet smiled. “Pretty friendly. My receptionist said you found him. He’s a stray?”

  “Not exactly,” said Andi. “We got him from the gypsies. They had their camp by the road; you know the way they stop their carts and throw up tents by the side of the road, wherever they want to. Well, this dog was obviously hungry—and so, I guess, were the gypsies. We gave them ten dollars for him. Probably, they’d’ve taken five.”

  Dr. Krueger managed to get the dog to lie still so that he could run his hands over him and inspect his teeth, throat, ears. “He seems to be in pretty good shape, but as malnourished as he is I’d say you found him just in time. Another few days, certainly another week, and—” The veterinarian shrugged. “It would probably be best if I kept him here for a couple of days, just to see he doesn’t have a bad reaction to the shots.”

  Mary calculated: Rosella would be back in a week, and it would take them two days to make the drive back. They’d have five days, then, in Salmon. “Could you keep him four or maybe five days? We’ll be going back then and we can pick him up on the way to Santa Fe.”

  “You’re from Santa Fe? That’s a long drive for you girls, isn’t it?”

  Mary ignored the patronizing tone. “But could you keep him? The reason we’re headed for Salmon is to go rafting, and we wouldn’t have any place to keep him there.”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem. You’re going rafting on the Salmon?”

  Mary nodded; Andi’s attention was taken up by the Labrador, who appeared to be enjoying his stint on the cold table, his terrible imprisonment forgotten, even his hunger.

  “You’ve gone rafting before, have you?”

  “Dozens of times,” said Andi, still leaning over, muzzle to muzzle with the dog but losing no opportunity to shore up any fantasy. She straightened from the stainless steel table and asked him, “Do you know anything about dogfights around here?”

  His reaction was surprising: he took a few steps backward, as if she were about to assault him. And then his face became that expressionless mask faces take on when they don’t want to pursue a subject. “Dogfights? What makes you ask that?”

  Andi shrugged but still gave him a searing glance. “The gypsies said there were.”

  “No. It’s against the law, at least in Idaho.”

  “It’s certainly against something.”

  Dr. Krueger made no comment, continued making notes on his writing pad. “All right, then? We’ll see he gets back to you in better condition.” He had a rather bitter smile, made so probably because his mouth was so thin.

  In a swift movement, Andi, as if just now recalling something, took the camera out of her coat pocket, set the flash, and took a picture of Jules with Dr. Krueger beside him. Then she gave the dog a last pat on the head and the doctor a brilliant smile. “I’m always taking pictures. You just never know.”

  They left the office.

  The boy was still there. Mary thought it rather inhuman to keep him waiting. Bad for business, too. She went over to him. “I’m really sorry about your dog,” she said in as low a voice as she could.

  His look was woebegone. “Thanks.”

  Mary said, “Look, I don’t want to make you feel any worse, but . . . what did he die of?”

  “She,” he said. Forlornly, he went on, “I’m not really sure; I brought her in here because she had a kind of fever. Something connected with that, I guess.”

  Mary frowned. For God’s sake, why did he have to guess? Hoping she wouldn’t bring on a fresh spate of tears, she asked, “What are you going to do with the . . . remains?”

  “The vet said cremation”—he paused and swallowed—“would be the best thing to do.”

  Mary stood there for a moment, staring at the bulletin board over his head. There were snapshots of lost dogs, hand-lettered cards giving information about them. The dogs around here seemed to be disappearing with amazing regularity.

  Mary felt queasy. She said good-bye to him and walked out to the car where Andi was waiting. She got into the passenger seat and said, “Did you notice all those missing-dog pictures? Do you think we should leave Jules there?” Forlornly, she looked back at Peaceable Kingdom. “I think he acted kind of—strange.”

  Andi gathered speed after she turned onto Route 93. “Why do you think I took the picture?”

  • • •

  They stopped twice along the sixty miles of highway from which they could sometimes see a river, and they wondered if it was the Salmon River. At one point, it was wide and calm and serene, the canyon walls studded with Douglas fir and whitebark pine and acres of the loveliest flowers that spread like a blue lake in the distance. Mary wondered what they were. Andi paged through the guidebook and said, “Looks like camas. I never heard of them.”

  They heard the water first as a distant murmur, growing into a roar as the road curved by the river. When they stopped again to look, they were staring down deep canyon walls where water flowed like a flume, shot up in towers, roared between basalt boulders. Mary had never done any white-water rafting, had never really thought much about it, except when she saw photos of people in the churning water, almost invisible inside the white spray, looking like drowning
puppies. And this view did nothing to tempt her further. She could see rafts and kayaks down there, dropped like dimes on the rapids, squeezed between rocks, torn from the surface of backwash, spun out of control like leaves.

  “Lord,” Mary whispered.

  “Looks like fun,” said Andi.

  Mary rolled her eyes.

  Back in the car, it was Mary who picked up the map of Idaho. She looked again at the uneven green outline of the Frank Church Wilderness and the words printed across it. She said, “You know what the Salmon is called? River of No Return.”

  “I wonder why.”

  The image of those white pillars of water, those little boats, rose before Mary’s eyes. “I think I know.”

  • RIVER •

  25

  WILDEST RIVER IN AMERICA, said the brochure. Mary imagined a few other rivers were right now making the same claim, but she was ready to believe the Salmon’s wildness quotient was pretty high after one glance down those sheer canyon walls. According to the brochure Mary was reading outside the Forest Service office, Salmon was a good-sized town whose population increased threefold in summer with the influx of tourists who came for the rafting and steelhead fishing. The canyons (the leaflet told her) were at some points deeper than the Grand Canyon. She’d never been interested in going down that river, either.

  Andi was inside talking to a petite gray-haired woman with the darting eyes of a field mouse. The open door looked out onto the clean-swept street and the businesses lining it. She was thinking what a neat, pleasant, pretty town it was when Andi came out.

  “What did you find out?”