Gun Shy (6 page)

“Well, he can just eat his cold,” she declared. “Come on in here, honey, and let’s sit down. It’s not like we all get to eat together every day. You think he’d show a little consideration.”

I pulled out my chair just as Uncle Roe came into the room, rubbing his hands together and looking pleased with himself. He surprised me by dropping a kiss on my head before he took his own chair. “You,” he said, “are a smart girl. I’ve got calls in to the mini-mart and the grocery store, just on the off chance somebody might remember something helpful. Then it occurred to me that maybe some city tourist with a nice purebred Lab like that wouldn’t buy their dog food at a grocery store. They’d be like you, and get it at some high-priced pet store. And since the Feed and Seed is the closest thing we’ve got to a pet store, I just called Jeff to ask if he remembered any tourists coming in to buy dog food. Turns out somebody did come in, asking for a brand he didn’t even carry. Jeff remembers because the fellow was driving a PT Cruiser, silver colored, with South Carolina plates, and they’re funny-looking cars. You don’t see a lot of them around here. That was on Wednesday, the day before the dog started barking enough to bother the neighbors. Fellow said he and his wife were renting a lake cabin, and they had forgotten dog food. You know Jeff, dog lover that he is. He asked what kind of dog the man had, and he said it was a yellow Lab.”

I had been in the process of passing him the bread basket, but I stopped with the basket in midair. “No kidding. And you think it might be the same dog?”

Uncle Roe nodded, taking the basket from my hand. “That’s exactly what I think. This woman, whoever she turns out to be, did not come up here alone. She had a husband, and we’re mighty interested in finding out what became of him.”

When you live alone, you don’t often get to sit down to a meal of roast chicken and dressing, real mashed potatoes, three kinds of vegetables and hot biscuits. Most of my meals, in fact, consist of something wrapped in a piece of bread or poured from a can, and are eaten while catching up on paperwork or returning phone calls. It takes a lot to turn my attention away from one of Aunt Mart’s home-cooked meals, but this development actually caused me to abandon the spoon with which I had been about to help myself to a huge serving of crowder peas.

“Do you think maybe they had a fight and that’s why she killed herself? That he left her after they got up here? How can you be sure it’s the same couple?”

“ ‘I don’t know’ is the answer to all of those questions,” replied Uncle Roe, holding out his hand for the bowl of peas. After a moment to refocus my thoughts, I quickly took a serving for myself and passed the bowl.

“I mean, this county is crawling with tourists, and the yellow Lab is the most popular breed in the country,” I pointed out.

“Absolutely right. You going to take any of those potatoes, hon?”

I did, and he added, “I’ve got Buck and Wyn and half the force working on finding some answers, so don’t expect him for supper tonight.”

Something about the way he just assumed that Buck and I were having supper together made me a little uncomfortable, even though it was the truth. I lathered artificial butter on my biscuit. “What kind of jerk goes off and leaves his wife in a remote mountain cabin without a car
or
dog food?”

“Well, that’s exactly what we need to find out, don’t we?”

“I wonder if Jeff—”

My aunt set her fork down on her plate with a clink. Her plump, perfectly powdered face was stern and her eyes like flint, but nothing could have been sweeter than her voice as she remarked, “Haven’t the poplars put on a show for us this season?”

Chastised, I murmured, “Sorry, Aunt Mart.” And for the rest of the meal we talked about what an outstanding leaf season it had been thus far, in terms of both natural beauty and tourism, and about the trip to Myrtle Beach my aunt and uncle were planning in the spring. There were some rules for which there simply were no exceptions.

After I helped clear the table and do the dishes, I excused myself to walk the dog. He left the crate calmly when I slipped the leash around his neck, obligingly lifted his leg on a stump at the edge of the lawn when I took him there, and lapped in a desultory fashion at the water I poured into a collapsible travel bowl for him. The yard was filled with chattering squirrels, quail darting upward from the brush, chipmunks wiggling through the log pile and even a couple of insolent striped cats, but Hero wasn’t interested in any of them.

He didn’t look at the cats, or the birds, or the golden leaves twisting in the sun as they showered down around us. Worst of all, he didn’t look at me. He just stood there at the end of the leash, his head bowed and his back to me, until I decided to try an experiment.

I said, “Hero, sit.”

Without looking at me, he sat.

I was impressed. Most dogs, after even the most rudimentary lessons, are fairly reliable on the “sit” command—as long as they are standing right in front of you or beside you and are watching your body language when you say it. If you
really
want to test how well trained your dog is, give him a command while you are lying on the ground, or sitting in a chair with your back to him—or while his back is to you.

I said, “Come.”

He didn’t move.

A really well-trained dog will respond only to specific words, not to a beckoning tone or to generalizations such as “Come on,” or “Come here.” I tried again. “Here.”

He got up, plodded toward me, circled behind me, and came to a stop in perfect heel position with his shoulder adjacent to my knee. I let out a breath of surprised appreciation.“Good boy,” I said, stroking his shoulder blades. “Somebody’s been to obedience school.”

I bent down and offered my hand. “Shake,” I invited.

He placed his paw in mine. “Curiouser and curiouser,” I murmured.

I stroked under his chin, a gesture most dogs love, but he was indifferent. I stood up. “Okay, kennel up,” I said, but made no move to lead him to the car. He turned to the car of his own volition, leapt into the crate and lay down.

I walked thoughtfully back to the house.

“There’s something strange about that dog,” I said as I came into the big, sun-filled front room. Aunt Mart was carrying a tray filled with a coffee service and dessert plates, and I quickly went to help her. A chocolate layer cake was already waiting on the coffee table, displayed beautifully on a cake plate decorated with autumn leaves.

“He didn’t try to bite you, did he?” she asked in quick alarm, and Uncle Roe looked up from the newspaper he was crumpling underneath the logs in the fireplace.

“No,” I assured them both. “The opposite, really.” I set the tray down next to the cake, trying not to jostle the pretty china dessert plates. “Somebody went to a lot of trouble to train him—maybe even to competition level. I mean, a lot of people take their dogs to obedience class, and some people even keep up with their training so that the dogs have good manners in public. But you just don’t see a lot of pet dogs who are so well trained that they will obey commands even from a stranger, in an unfamiliar environment, under stress. It’s just odd, that’s all.”

Uncle Roe struck a match and the newspaper caught, sending blue and yellow flames dancing around the logs. “I don’t suppose there’s any way you could figure out who trained him, is there? Or where?”

I smiled regretfully. “Sorry. It’s a long list.”

Aunt Mart said, “I know it’s early in the season to light a fire, but I just love the look of it, don’t you?”

“You’ll be sick and tired of it come January,” said Uncle Roe, straightening up from the hearth. “And I’ll be sick of chopping wood.”

“I had a fire this morning,” I said, remembering how nice it had been to come down and find the woodstove in the kitchen already glowing.

“Well, of course you’re in the shadow of the mountain over there. It’s a lot cooler.”

“That cake looks wonderful, Aunt Mart.” When Aunt Mart serves dessert, you don’t complain about how stuffed you are from the meal, or how you’re trying to lose weight, or how you really wish you’d worn a skirt with an elastic waistband. You sit down with the giant wedge she places on your plate and you count your blessings.

Uncle Roe settled down in his easy chair with his own giant wedge of cake and a cup of coffee resting on the end table at his elbow. He took a bite of the cake, complimented the baker, and then asked me, “What are you going to do with the dog?”

I gave him the same answer I had given my aunt earlier. “If the next of kin doesn’t want him, or can’t be found, I’ll turn him over to Rescue. There are a lot of great groups out there, and as well trained as he is, he’ll be a snap to place.”

Uncle Roe speared another forkful of cake and nodded thoughtfully. “Meantime, I guess you’d better keep a close eye on him.”

At my questioning look, he smiled. “Right now, that dog is the only one who knows what really happened up at that cabin.”

I know it’s silly, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what Uncle Roe had said: The dog really
was
the only one who knew what had happened. He knew whether or not he had arrived in a car with a husband and a wife, and whether or not they had stopped for dog food. He knew where he came from. He knew what had happened just before the shot was fired that had taken the life of the woman in the bedroom and had begun his nightmare. It was strange, to imagine all that knowledge locked up inside the brain of a living being, but to have absolutely no way to retrieve it.

So naturally I called my friend Sonny Brightwell.

Sonny is a well-respected attorney who also happens to be an animal lover. One of the animals she loves is a sweet little border collie named Mystery, who managed to find her way to Sonny from the evil clutches of none other than Reese Pickens. That was how we had first met. But during the course of our meeting I had also discovered something else about Sonny. She claims she can communicate with animals, in particular—as far as I’m concerned—dogs.

This is what I think. Dogs are intelligent, imaginative creatures. They know how to plan, to form social relationships, to work in groups. There is even compelling scientific evidence that they dream, and they process information while dreaming in much the same way we do. And if “sentient” means self-aware, I’ve never known a living being more self-aware, and in fact, self-
interested
, than a dog. Do they think in the same way we do? They absolutely do not. They think
better
. They are in a dozen or more ways much more efficient, more alert, and more adapted to their environment than we are. But can they talk?

I don’t think so.

That did not, however, keep Sonny from being the first person who popped into my head when I thought about Hero being the only witness to the tragedy about which there were so many questions. It wasn’t that I
exactly
believed that she could talk to dogs—or rather, that they could talk to her—but if I were to be perfectly honest, I’d have to admit there had been too many coincidences concerning Sonny and the messages that she had purportedly received from animals for me to ignore. Whether it was because she was talking to them, or because of her natural empathetic personality, she did have a demonstrably calming effect on most dogs. Besides, Aunt Mart had sent home enough leftovers to feed an entire kennel club, Buck was working late and Sonny was pleasant company.

When I told her that my aunt, not I, was in charge of the kitchen, Sonny didn’t hesitate to accept my invitation to supper. I’m sure the chocolate layer cake had nothing to do with it.

When introducing a new dog to the household, the best thing to do is to arrange a first meeting on neutral ground—in a park, on a street corner, or some other place where neither the resident dogs nor the new dog has a territorial stake. My version of neutral territory was the kennel play yard, which hundreds of strange dogs passed through every year, and where all of my resident dogs were accustomed to playing with visitors.

I placed Hero the Lab in the play yard and, one by one, brought out my own dogs to meet him. Part of my evaluation, before placing him with a rescue group, would be to determine how he reacted to strange dogs. His reaction was completely noncommittal. First I brought out Majesty, who is the most inoffensive dog I own, who did the whole circle-and-sniff bit while Hero just stood there stoically, ignoring her. Then I let Cisco have a turn; he was far more interested in sniffing out the aroma of chicken and dressing that clung to my hair and my clothes than he was in the stranger in the play yard. After all, he had seen them come, and he had seen them go. The Australian shepherds did their best to entice Hero to play, leaping, twirling and play-bowing, but he just gave them a long-suffering look and lay down on the ground with his head on his paws.

I had intended to keep the Lab in the boarding kennel, as was my usual custom with rescues, but something about his brokenhearted demeanor changed my mind. The other dogs obviously did not feel threatened by him, and I thought he could benefit by some hands-on interaction inside the house. So I dragged out another big wire crate and washed and sterilized another dog bowl.

When Sonny came knocking at my door around six that evening, there were five, not four, dogs waiting to greet her. Some were better behaved than others.

The happy chaos of welcoming a visitor began with Cisco spinning and play-bowing his greeting, Majesty barking, and the Aussies bouncing from sofa to chair to floor and back while awaiting their turn to be petted; Mystery, the border collie, who accompanied Sonny everywhere she went, playfully pawed and tugged the ears of each dog who crowded around Sonny. Sonny sank quickly into a chair by the door, her long silver braid swinging over her shoulder as she bent forward with outstretched arms to give each of my pushy pets the greeting they demanded. I let this go on for about ten seconds, because Sonny would have scolded me if I had not, and then sent each of the girls to their separate crates, where they found a peanut butter-stuffed rubber toy waiting for them. Cisco, who tended to panic in small enclosed spaces like dog crates, was sent to his rug in front of the hearth, while Mystery pranced around the room picking up toys and trying to tempt him to come play. Some people might have said that was unfair to Cisco, but I thought it was good for his self-control.