A Pedigree to Die For (4 page)
Four
The small kennel building where Beau had been housed stood not more than ten yards from the main residence. It was painted to matchâwhite, with a creamy, yellow trim; and on this bright, sunny morning, it looked like the last place where something terrible might have happened. Somewhat like the witch's gingerbread cottage, I supposed.
A row of long narrow dog runs stretched out from the side wall into the large field beyond. When we left the house they were empty, but as we approached, the swinging doors that connected them to the kennel burst open. Each held a big, black, hairy Poodle, one to a customer, and all barking a frenzied welcome.
I glanced their way, then quickly looked again. Most of the Poodles looked like normal dogs. The two on the end, however, were clipped elaborately. The front halves of their bodies were encased in a huge mane of hair, while the hindquarters and legs were shaved down to the skin, leaving only a profusion of pompons to cover their nakedness.
“Aunt Peg, why exactly are the dogs cut that way?”
“They're in show trim. This is the Continental clip,” she said, pausing by the fence of the nearest run. “It's a traditional trim which, according to legend, was developed for practicality's sake by the German hunters who originated the breed.”
“German? I thought Poodles came from France.”
“Most people do. And the little ones might well have. But the Standard Poodles were first bred in Germany where they were used as retrievers. Because the waters there were so cold, they needed the long thick coats for warmth, but then they got bogged down trying to swim in them. To help out, the hunters clipped away all the hair that wasn't essential.
“The mane,” Aunt Peg said, pointing to the big ruff of hair on the front, “serves as protection for the heart and lungs. The bracelets on the legs warm the joints. The hip rosettes cover the kidneys. And the pompon on the tail stood up to mark the dog's spot when he dove underwater after a bird.”
“I never knew any of that,” I said, joining her beside the run. I threaded my fingers through the fence to pat a closely clipped, inquisitive muzzle. It felt surprisingly like my ex-husband with a case of five o'clock shadow. Dark intelligent eyes regarded me calmly as, with utmost dignity, the Poodle began to lick my fingers.
“Now you do,” Aunt Peg said briskly. “Poodles aren't just any dogs, you know. They're very special.”
“Of course,” I murmured, and kept the rest of my thoughts to myself. Every mother thinks her own child is the best.
Davey came racing around the front of the building as Peg opened the door. He glanced inside, then kept on going. Just as well. No doubt he would get up to less trouble outside the kennel than in.
The room we entered seemed to be part sitting room and part grooming area. A rubber-matted grooming table was parked in the middle of the floor, and I stepped around it to inspect the well-stocked shelves that filled one side wall. The quantity of equipment she had lined up and ready for use was nothing short of amazing.
Of course there were brushes and combs, each in several different varieties. But I also saw clippers and nail grinders, three kinds of shampoo with matching conditioners, colored rubber bands, special wrapping papers, and a leather case filled with scissors. And those were only the things I recognized. Obviously the time and effort it took to keep Aunt Peg's Poodles in top shape had to have been staggering.
That her efforts had paid off handsomely, however, was apparent from the condition of her trophy cabinet, which overflowed with an assortment of gleaming silverware. It was an impressive display, and I said so.
Aunt Peg shrugged off the compliment and passed by the hardware without so much as a glance. She stopped at a collection of framed pictures, all eight-by-ten shots, all taken at dog shows. Each one featured Aunt Peg holding one Poodle or another while the judge awarded them a prize.
“Champion Cedar Crest Salute,” she said, tapping her finger against several of the frames in turn. “My first Best in Show winner, and Beau's great-grandfather.”
We moved a bit farther down the wall, and the pictures shifted from black-and-white to color as they became more recent. “These two here are Beau,” Aunt Peg said proudly.
I leaned over and peered closely at the pictures. Like all the others, they showed Aunt Peg, a judge, and a big black Poodle. How she managed to tell the dogs apart, I had no idea.
“He's very pretty,” I said politely.
Aunt Peg smiled but didn't comment. I hadn't fooled her for a minute.
When we reached the end of the row, she led the way through an arched doorway, and we entered another large rectangular room. This one was lined on both sides with wire pens, most of them taken. As we walked down the aisle, Aunt Peg stopped to greet each dog by name.
“This is the inside half of the runs you just saw.” She gestured toward an empty pen at the end of the row, then quickly looked away. “That's where I found Max.”
I nodded, eyes down, and headed that way. The back wall, with two windows and a door had definite potential, and I bent down to inspect the area. There was nothing unusual about the first window, and its latch was still securely fastened. Aunt Peg leaned down over my shoulder to have a look, too.
“What are you doing?” asked Davey, sneaking up behind us as we hovered solicitously over the sill.
Aunt Peg and I both jumped, and I could tell from the look on her face that she felt every bit as foolish as I did. “We're looking for clues,” she said, mustering a considerable show of dignity. “You can help if you want.”
“Okay,” Davey agreed, disappearing again.
Aunt Peg and I went back to our examination, but the second window was no more promising than the first. An inspection of the back door showed that it was bolted as, Aunt Peg maintained, it had been all along.
“Maybe the windows in the other room?” she suggested, and we went back to look. They yielded nothing of interest either.
Frustrated, I stood in the archway between the two rooms. We'd checked every entrance to the kennel, and they all looked as though they'd never been disturbed.
“Mommy! Aunt Peg!” Davey called out. “I'm hiding. Come find me.”
It was bound to happen sooner or later. Davey has two passions in life: cars and playing hide-and-seek. At any given moment, he's either involved with one of those two pursuits or plotting how to get that way. Now I knew from experience that he was probably wedged into some impossibly small spot that was the last place I'd think to look. Unfortunately, he wouldn't leave either one of us alone until he'd been found.
Aunt Peg and I checked all the obvious places first. None of them panned out. But since I could hear him giggling, he had to be in the kennel. Suddenly I realized that the door to the empty pen at the end, which had been open, was now shut.
“Aha!” I cried, pouncing on the gate and opening it wide. To my chagrin, the pen was empty. Then I noticed the large dog door that led to the outside run. Aunt Peg had the same idea at the same time. We left through the human door and went around the side of the building.
Davey was sitting in the outer pen, enclosed in wire mesh fencing, and playing happily in the gravel. “You found me,” he said with a pout, clearly disappointed in the outcome of the game.
“We sure did. But how do we get you out of there?”
“Easy enough,” said Aunt Peg. “There's a gate at the end of each run for getting in to clean up. As you can see, I couldn't fit through the dog door.”
“You might,” I said slowly. “If you wanted to badly enough.”
Aunt Peg looked up. “You know, I might at that. At any rate, it's not impossible. The gates are locked so that the neighborhood kids can't come over and let the dogs out, but I suppose it would be easy enough to climb the fence.” She went inside to get the key, and within moments, Davey had been freed.
“Were any of the runs empty that night?” I asked as she clanged the gate shut.
“That one there.” Aunt Peg pointed to the third from the end. “It's been empty for several weeks. I only put Lulu in there yesterday.”
Lulu was forty pounds of shaggy, playful puppy, and I saw right away that her exuberance had probably destroyed any clues we might have found. All the same, it was worth a look. Aunt Peg went back around into the building again. I heard her call, and Lulu disappeared, whisked inside through the dog door to be moved to another run.
We covered every inch of the inside pen, then moved to the run outdoors. To be honest, I didn't know what exactly what we were looking for, or what we'd have done with it if we'd found something. Still, it was hard not to be disappointed when nothing turned up.
I was just about ready to give up when Davey, who was back in the dirt by the dog door, began to laugh gleefully. “I'm rich!” he cried, tossing a handful of pebbles and small shiny objects into the air.
“What have you got there, Davey?” I scrambled to my feet. If he'd found marbles, I would have to move fast. For some reason he persisted in thinking that, like olives, they were meant to be eaten.
“Buried treasure!”
I went to look and discovered that he had indeed found money, a small pile of coins mixed in with the gravel near the door. I scooped the money into my hand and counted it. Two quarters, three dimes, and a nickel, including three Canadian coins. Hardly a fortune, even by my standards. “You don't suppose this is the clue we've been looking for, do you?”
“I hope not,” said Aunt Peg. “Because if it is, it's a damn poor one. All it tells us is that maybe I was robbed by someone who carries change in his pockets. And that includes just about everyone. On the other hand, it could just as easily have been dropped by the workmen who fixed that fence for me last month.”
I juggled the change in my hand. “Do people show Poodles in Canada, too?”
“Of course, their system is quite similar to ours. Why?”
I showed her the Canadian coins. “Do you suppose there's a chance that someone came down from Canada and took him?”
“A small one, if that. Good as Beau is, he's had almost no exposure outside this country. I just can't imagine that anyone up there could have wanted him that badly. Besides, what's the big deal about a few Canadian dimes? You can get those from any supermarket. It happens to me all the time.”
“Want my money back,” said Davey, tugging at my leg from the ground.
I handed it over, then stood him up and dusted him off. “So much for easy solutions.”
Aunt Peg gave me a look. “I don't know what ever made you think this was going to be easy. If it was easy to find Beau, I'd have done it myself a week ago.”
As usual, she had a point.
Five
Back in the kitchen, I leaned Davey over the sink and lathered his hands and arms with soap. The house Poodles vied among themselves for the best vantage points, then sat down and watched every move. I'd never seen dogs that were so intensely curious about everything that went on around them. Next I'd be expecting them to form an opinion.
Aunt Peg came upstairs from putting the towels in the dryer and stepped around the lounging black animals with practiced ease. “He keeps you busy, doesn't he?” she asked.
Davey grabbed for the soap, narrowly avoiding knocking over a bowl of soaking kibble. I settled for answering with a nod.
“I guess that's what children are all about.”
She was stalling, I realized, and I wondered why. I used the sprayer to rinse Davey off, then dried him with a paper towel. “In another couple weeks, things will get better when he starts summer camp. I can't wait.”
“Nine to five?”
I smiled at her naivete as I hopped Davey down and steered him into the den toward the TV. “Mornings only. When they're four, you take what you can get, and thank God for it.”
Thanks to the wonders of syndication, “Father Knows Best” was on. I'd grown up with Marcus Welby. Leaving Davey with Robert Young was like leaving him with a member of the family. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich completed the picture, then Aunt Peg and I were free to go in the living room and talk. The Poodles, seeing the possibility of a handout, elected to remain behind.
“So,” said Aunt Peg. “You're the one who reads mysteries. After we've checked out the scene of the crime, what are we supposed to do next?”
“That's easy. Compile a list of suspects.”
“I tried that. I'm afraid I didn't get very far.”
“Short list?”
“Very.”
“Let's hear it.”
“You're not going to like it.”
Aunt Peg waffling? Now I knew there had to be something wrong. “What's the matter?” I joked, trying to lighten things up. “Am I on it?”
“No . . . but Rose is.”
“Roseâas in Aunt Rose?” My voice ascended an octave. “Sister Anne Marie?”
Aunt Peg shoved her hands in her pockets and strode across the room. “I told you you weren't going to like it.”
“True, but you didn't tell me I wasn't going to believe it. ”
“How well do you know your Aunt Rose?”
I held the pause long enough to make my point. “About as well as I know you, give or take the first five years of my life.”
“You were educated by the nuns, weren't you?”
“I only admit that to people who are liable not to hold it against me.”
“It sounds to me as if you hold it against yourself.”
“Only on bad days. On good days I tell myself I'm strong enough to overcome it.”
Aunt Peg walked over and took a seat. “You're very flip about the subject. I wonder why.”
“Trust me, twelve years of convent schooling is enough to drive anyone to flippancy.”
“Considering your attitude, perhaps you won't be surprised by what I'm about to say.”
“That depends,” I said carefully.
Aunt Peg patted the chair beside her. “Come sit down. We'll talk about Rose.”
“The chief suspect.”
Aunt Peg didn't even crack a smile which was, as I saw it, a bad sign. Obediently, I came and sat.
“As you may or may not know, Rose was very young when she entered the convent.”
“Seventeen, right?” Where I'd picked up that information I wasn't quite sure. It had happened before I was born.
“Right. That was the way things were done in those days. If you felt you had the calling, you entered the novitiate right out of high school. I didn't know Rose then, of course. I didn't even meet Max until several years later. But as I understand it, Rose had led quite a sheltered life up until that point. She was not only the youngest, but also the only daughter in the family. She'd been educated by the nuns as well, so that sort of life was really all she'd ever known.”
“So far, it sounds more to me as though you're trying to make a case for Aunt Rose not having been involved.”
“Maybe I should skip on ahead.”
I nodded, and she continued.
“Rose came to see your Uncle Max last month. I'd like to say that she came to see us both, but it wasn't true. She specifically requested privacy for their meeting, and I was happy to give it to them.” A sly grin slipped out. “I knew Max would tell me everything after she left.
“Anyway, the reason for the visit was that Rose had some rather incredible news. She's planning to leave the convent and get married.”
That landed with a jolt. “She . . .
What
?”
What
?”
“I know, it came as a shock to us, too. Less so for me, I suppose, but Max was rather dumbfounded. It almost seemed as though he had a hard time grasping the idea that such a possibility could even exist. You know Max. He was just so very . . . Catholic.”
“Just like the rest of the family,” I said, then brightened. This was the juiciest gossip I'd heard in years. “Tell me all about it. Who is Aunt Rose going to marry?”
“He's a priest from the local parish.”
“A priest!”
Aunt Peg gazed calmly down her nose. “Think about it, Melanie dear. Living in a convent, how many other men would she be likely to meet?”
“I guess. It's just that it all seems so . . .”
“Incredible, I know, that's exactly the way Max and I felt. Once Max got his bearings back, he even tried to talk her out of it. Big brother to little sister, if you know what I mean. But of course she's been out from under Max's wing for years, and I gather his advice didn't go over very well.”
“Is that why Rose came then, she wanted to ask Uncle Max's opinion?”
“No, actually that wasn't it at all. She'd already made the decision, and as far as I know, she has every intention of going ahead with it.”
“So.?”
“So, you know how it is with nuns and priests and all those rules about worldly goods. Apparently she and the good father haven't got a sou between them. What Rose wanted from Max was enough money to enable the two of them to get started.”
“Wait a minute. Do you mean to tell me that she presented Uncle Max with a proposal she knew he wasn't going to likeâone that was already more or less a
fait accompli
âthen expected him to underwrite the whole idea?”
fait accompli
âthen expected him to underwrite the whole idea?”
“Well, yes, although Rose didn't look at it that way. You see, according to what Max told me, she seemed to think that he owed her the money.”
“I don't get it,” I said flatly.
“How old were you when Nana died?”
Nana was my father's mother. Spry and energetic, she'd been the much-beloved lynchpin around which our family had revolved. She'd outlived her husband by a half-dozen years, then died during my senior year of college. “Twenty-one, I guess. Why?”
“Do you know anything about her will?”
“A little,” I said, hedging. “I know it contained a trust fund for Frank's and my education.”
“You know more than that,” Aunt Peg guessed. “But in case you don't, I'll tell you. The bulk of the estate went to Max.”
I did know that, although I hadn't thought about it in years. There'd been a lot of silent, telling looks passed back and forth between my parents after Nana's will was read.
“Your father, who, I believe, was doing rather well as a stockbroker at the time, received a lesser amount. And Rose, who, of course, had no need for money, received almost nothing at all.”
“And now,” I said slowly, “all these years later, she wants back what she considers to be her share of Nana's estate.”
“Exactly.” Aunt Peg nodded.
“What did Uncle Max say to that?”
“Well, as you know, I wasn't there, but I'm sure he wasn't pleased. The money itself wasn't necessarily the issue. It's just that he seemed to think that the whole idea was so rash and ill-considered. He asked to meet the man in question, and Rose became furious. She declared that she was fifty-two years old and she didn't need anybody's permission to do anything.”
“She had a point.”
“Not really. The thing is, I'm sure he'd have given her the money in the end. But Rose didn't know that, and when she left that day, she was absolutely livid.”
“I didn't think nuns were allowed to show that much emotion,” I commented mildly.
“Obviously Rose isn't your common garden-variety nun. She stormed out of here in a real huff, and although I'd missed their earlier conversation, I did hear her parting words. You might say they were delivered at a rather loud pitch. She said âYou can try, but you'll never keep me away from the man I love. I want my money, Max, and one way or another, you're going to give it to me.' ”
I pulled in a deep breath, then slowly let it out. Coming hard on the heels of Aunt Peg's other revelations, it was all a bit much to take. “You really think Aunt Rose is a dognapper?”
“Why not? Her motive was as strong as anybody's. I'd imagine the plan was to take the dog and simply keep him stashed somewhere until Max came up with the money she needed.”
“But if she does have Beau, wouldn't you think she'd have gotten in touch with you by now?”
“After the way things turned out? I doubt it. Catholics may preach forgiveness, but that doesn't mean they expect it or even offer it to themselves. For all we know Rose may be feeling stuck in a situation that's gotten way out of hand.”
“So you haven't spoken with her at all?”
“No, I just saidâ”
“What you just said,” I interrupted calmly, “is that Aunt Rose hasn't contacted you. What you didn't explain is why you haven't called her.”
There was a moment of silence, just long enough to be uncomfortable. I sat back in my chair and waited her out.
“Rose and I have never gotten along,” Aunt Peg said finally. “It's old stuff that goes back years. To tell the truth, I think she was jealous when I married Maxâthought I was taking over her place in the family or some nonsense like that. Suffice it to say that she and I have never been friends, and as things stand now, I doubt that's about to change.”
I had no idea what to say to that, so it was almost a relief when the doorbell rang. Immediately the herd of Poodles came charging out of the den, barking wildly.
“I wonder who that is,” Aunt Peg said with some annoyance. “I hate people who drop by without warning.”
I pondered the irony of that remark as I waited in the living room while she went to answer the door. Peering out the side window offered me an excellent view of the proceedings, though unfortunately for my budding career as a snoop, I wasn't able to hear a thing.
Aunt Peg's visitor was a man of medium build, with a compact body that ran to thickness through the middle. Not quite as tall as Aunt Peg, he had dark brown hair liberally shot through with gray, and a bushy moustache that was holding its color better. He spoke with great animation, his hands gesturing in the air for emphasis.
It was clear from Aunt Peg's reaction that they were at least acquaintances, perhaps even friends, but she didn't invite him inside and he didn't seem perturbed by the omission. Their conversation was brief. At its end, the man leaned over and brushed a quick kiss on Aunt Peg's cheek that left her looking severely taken aback.
I wondered what that was all about and didn't have long to wait. As soon as he had gone, Aunt Peg came back into the living room, her arrival preceded by the swarm of Poodles. She still looked somewhat bemused, as if she had no more idea what the unexpected visit was about than I did.
“Who was that?” I asked as she sat back down.
“His name is Tony Wasserman. He and his wife Doris are our next door neighbors.”
Considering the size of Aunt Peg's property and the fact that no other houses were visible, I'd never given her neighbors any thought. “Where?”
Aunt Peg waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the kennel. “To the north. Because of the way the land dips, you can't see their house from here, but it really isn't that far away. When Tony and Doris first moved in five years ago, we actually became rather good friends.”
“Then why did you look so surprised to see him?”
“Did I?” Aunt Peg frowned. “I thought I'd covered it rather well. Unfortunately our relationship has been considerably less cordial in the last year. I'd like to say that it was the Wassermans' fault, but I suppose Max and I were equally to blame. For some reason Tony got the idea that our dogs were making entirely too much noise. They do bark sometimes, of course, but he and Doris had never seemed to mind before. Anyway, Tony came marching over here one night really quite angry, and told Max to shut the goddamned dogs up.”
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