A Last Goodbye (7 page)

It happened that my mother's parents, Grandpa and Grandma Anderson, were visiting at the time and staying in our downstairs apartment. The next morning, at breakfast, I noticed that Grandma was taking bits of bacon off her plate and holding them under her very loose green sweater. My mother may have said no, but Grandma Anderson overruled her. That's how Daisy came into our lives and stayed for the next dozen years.

As newlyweds living in a barrio in Tucson and later out on the reservation, my first husband and I had several dogs. One was a border collie named Sunny who couldn't be trusted not to steal the neighbors tamales when they were delivered on Friday afternoons. Another was a bluetick hound named Huck, who was a great dog but not particularly smart. He was always sticking his nose into places where it didn't belong; as a consequence he was bitten by a rattlesnake once and came home with a nose full of porcupine quills twice. At the same time, we fostered Smokey, an Australian shepherd, for a year or two until his family got settled in their new home in Oregon and he could join them.

After Smokey, we ended up with a black and tan hound named Zeke. A year or so later, all three of the dogs—Huck, Sunny, and Zeke—died in a pickup truck rollover accident when the guy at the wheel, one of my husband's students, suffered a seizure.

After that, we found a pair of reservation dogs. Scratch was a German shepherd mix of some kind, and Azalea was most likely part sheltie and part dachshund. Azalea was run over on the highway before we ever left the reservation. Scratch made the move from Arizona to Washington and from Washington back to Arizona in the cargo holds of airplanes. I was coming back to Arizona at the time, too, but my parents were the ones who actually picked Scratch up at the airport. He rode in the backseat of their car from Tucson to Bisbee without ever lifting his chin off my mother's shoulder. He was glad to see me when I showed up, but he made it clear that from the moment my mother rescued him from that airplane, he was her dog, not mine.

Bootsy was a gangly puppy who came into our lives a few years later in Phoenix. Of all the dogs that have come through my life, she was by far the dimmest. No amount of training worked on her, and she did her best to empty the fishpond of goldfish. She's the one dog in my life with whom I never really bonded.

Barney, a black Lab who “followed” my daughter home, was a stray who was wearing a collar. His owner lived miles away from us, across I-17. We returned Barney to him twice, and each time he found his way back to us. The third time we kept him. For both my kids and me, giving up Boots and Barney was one of the toughest parts of leaving Phoenix, but it was what had to be done in order to embark on our new lives in a condo in downtown Seattle.

When Bill and I married, we thought having a pair of puppies in our lives might help smooth over the rough edges of having a “blended” family. That's how Nikki and Tess (named after Nikola Tesla) came into our lives. They were cute eight-week-old red-dog golden retrievers who chewed on everything in sight, including the new carpeting in the family room. Once they grew up, Tess was known for flopping down on the floor, while Nikki entertained herself for hours by taking tennis balls to the top of the stairs, dropping them, watching them bounce down, retrieving them, and then carrying them back up. Nikki and Tess made their literary debut in
Taking the Fifth
when J. P. Beaumont, lost in Bellevue, is forced to ask a lady walking two golden retrievers for directions.

Mandy showed up in our lives when Nikki and Tess were five years old. We didn't really want another dog, especially since we had an unfenced yard, but her family was moving into a condo where dogs were not allowed and they had to get rid of her, so we took her in. Mandy was a ten-year-old platinum-colored golden retriever. Up to then, we'd had to walk Nikki and Tess on leashes. When it came time to “get busy,” Mandy refused to do anything at all as long as she was on a leash. In the war of wills that followed, Mandy eventually won. She also taught Nikki and Tess that they didn't need leashes, either.

Mandy was filthy when we first got her. She had clumps of tangled fur on her hindquarters. It took us weeks to get all of those tangles combed and clipped off her. She spooked easily and was terrified of anyone with a broom in her hands, but she settled in, dutifully making the long slow climb up the stairs to sleep contentedly on the floor of our bedroom. Six months after she came to live with us, her retirement ended abruptly when we learned that what we'd been told was a “touch of arthritis” actually turned out to be bone cancer. We had to put her down. She'd only been with us for a short time, but losing her hurt like hell.

Weeks later, when I was writing
Payment in Kind
(Beaumont #9), it was hardly surprising to have a dog named Mandy show up in that book. The fictional version of Mandy belonged to Beau's long-estranged grandfather, and she lived on in my books for the next several years.

Shortly after we lost Mandy, another rescue came into our lives. Boney started out as a tiny five-pound rescue from the Pullman, Washington, pound. At the time I was housebreaking him and carrying him up and down the stairs one-handed, there was no way to tell that he was part German shepherd and part Irish wolfhound. Which is to say that, over time, he grew like crazy.

When Bone was about six months old, he collided with a brass and glass table while chasing after a tennis ball. As a result, he broke a tooth. Our vet referred us to a doggy dental specialist. When he tried to start the root canal procedure before Bone was properly anesthetized, the dog ended up putting a hole in the dentist's hand. (Having grown up with a dentist who didn't believe in novocaine, I have to say Bone and I were on the same page there!)

Boney's dentist, however, was furious. He told us that he was an extremely vicious dog who needed to be put down IMMEDIATELY! We went back to our original vet—the one who didn't do dentistry. He suggested we send Boney to the Academy for Canine Behavior in Woodinville. Six weeks of academy boot camp training turned Boney into a complete gentleman!

By then, Nikki and Tess were aging. Tess was the first to go. We lost her at age twelve, and Nikki a few months later at age thirteen. With his companion dogs gone, Boney went into deep mourning. In order to bring him out of it, we came home with two more puppies, red-dog goldens again. This pair we named Aggie and Daphne after Agatha Christie and Daphne du Maurier.

As far as Boney was concerned, Daphne was perfect and could do no wrong. He allowed her to chew on his ears and pull his tongue and tail without ever saying a cross word. Aggie, however, Boney regarded as the devil's spawn. She couldn't come anywhere near him without him baring his teeth and growling at her.

We lost Mr. Bone to a fast-moving tumor on his heart at age eleven, but not before he had wormed his way into a book or two. He shows up as David Ladd's Oho (“oho” is Tohono O'odham for bone) in
Hour of the Hunter.
By the way, both the real dog and his fictional counterpart would eat unwanted broccoli if someone slipped it to them under the table.

We lost Aggie to a raging case of valley fever when she was only eight. When Daphne came down with the same symptoms a month or so later, we coughed up a king's ransom in vet bills in an effort to save her. For two and a half months she was too sick to do anything but lie on the kitchen floor and moan. In all that time she didn't bark once. And then, one March afternoon in Tucson, about the time she was starting to feel better, Bill added up the amount that we had spent on her and was shocked to discover that the total came to a whopping $15,000.

Pointing a finger at her he said, “Daphne, you are a truly golden golden retriever.”

Our property manager, who was out on the patio at the time, put his arm around Daph's shoulder and whispered in her ear, “You must catch a burglar to earn your plate of food.” Which it turns out, she did, the very next night, barking to alert us to the presence of an ­intruder in our BEDROOM!!! Yes, Daphne's vet bills were definitely paid in full! Some of you may remember that the bedroom intruder incident, complete with a barking dog named Mojo, turns up in Joanna Brady #13,
Damage Control.

Aggie and Daph turned up in a novella called “The Case of the London Cabbie” in an anthology named
Bark M for Murde
r. Their fictional owner turns out to be a widow named Maddy Watkins who lives on Whidbey Island. Maddy and her two dogs have turned up in more than one of the Ali Reynolds books.

Four years after losing Aggie, we still had her sister, Daph, and were starting to get used to being a one-dog family. Then, on a rainy Saturday morning in October, my daughter, my grandson, and I caught sight of a stray miniature dachshund running down a busy street in Bellevue, Washington. Over time, we pieced together some of Bella's history before she came into our lives and before she became Bella the Book Tour dog. She's been on six book tours in the past several years, and she is still an important part of our lives. Right now she's outside making noisy sure that no birds or lizards are trespassing in her territory.

In writing Bella's story—something my editor refers to as my “nobella,” I've had to use my literary license to re-create the portions of Bella's story that we'll never know.

When Bella came to us, she was the exact opposite of Mandy. While Mandy refused to “get busy” on a leash, Bella refused to do anything without being on one. It was provoking to be outside in the rain and snow in two ­totally fenced yards, walking a dog who simply had to be on a leash. Eventually Bella would go on her own as long as we were at least standing there with a leash in our hands. Now she's learned to go on her own, but she still prefers to have someone outside with her, and she appreciates having the door opened and closed for her rather than having to use the doggy door. And yes, I can assure you that the first time we took her to a hotel, she was completely at home in the elevator at the Ritz in Phoenix.

Now, like many of my other dog companions, Bella, too, has wormed her squirmy little way into my fiction. I expect she'll be a big part of B.'s and Ali's lives for years to come, just as she's a big part of ours.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

J.A. Jance is the top-ten
New York Times
bestselling author of
Edge of Evil
,
Web of Evil
,
Hand of Evil
,
Cruel Intent
,
Trial by Fire
,
Fatal Error
,
Left for Dead
, and
Deadly Stakes
.
Moving Target
is her 50th book in a career that spans more than thirty years. She is also the author of the Joanna Brady series, the J. P. Beaumont series, and four interrelated thrillers featuring the Walker family. Born in South Dakota and brought up in Bisbee, Arizona, Jance lives with her husband in Seattle and Tucson. Visit her website at
www.jajance.com
.

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ALSO BY J.A. JANCE

ALI REYNOLDS MYSTERIES

Edge of Evil

Web of Evil

Hand of Evil

Cruel Intent

Trial by Fire

Fatal Error

Left for Dead

Deadly Stakes

JOANNA BRADY MYSTERIES

Desert Heat

Tombstone Courage

Shoot/Don't Shoot

Dead to Rights

Skeleton Canyon

Rattlesnake Crossing

Outlaw Mountain

Devil's Claw

Paradise Lost

Partner in Crime

Exit Wounds

Dead Wrong

Damage Control

Fire and Ice

Judgment Call

J.P. BEAUMONT MYSTERIES

Until Proven Guilty

Injustice for All

Trial by Fury

Taking the Fifth

Improbable Cause

A More Perfect Union

Dismissed with Prejudice

Minor in Possession

Payment in Kind

Without Due Process

Failure to Appear

Lying in Wait

Name Withheld

Breach of Duty

Birds of Prey

Partner in Crime

Long Time Gone

Justice Denied

Fire and Ice

Betrayal of Trust

Ring in the Dead

Second Watch

WALKER FAMILY MYSTERIES

Hour of the Hunter

Kiss of the Bees

Day of the Dead

Queen of the Night