Play Dead (7 page)

I put Doppler in the backseat to ride with
me to the O’Farrell-Adams residence where I expected to observe a fox terrier
named Mugsy who considered herself top dog. Last night, I had kept an eye out
for suspicious white sedans and spotted none. By now, I had almost succeeded in
convincing myself that I had not been followed yesterday afternoon. The
operative word was “almost.” If I
had
convinced myself, I wouldn’t have
been looking for white sedans in my rearview mirror, as I now was.

It had snowed a little during the night,
just enough to make the roads sloppy. The temperature now was well above
freezing—mid-forties, perhaps. I balanced my thoughts between how to
jockey for position among the cars on Folsom and how to squeeze house hunting
into my busy schedule.

The O’Farrell clan lived on a street
perpendicular to the South Boulder Rec Center, in a two-story colonial. I rang
the doorbell, and a thin-faced, thirtyish woman with a remarkably pointy nose
introduced herself as “Sarah Adams, John’s wife,” and ushered me inside. From
somewhere in the back of the house came the sounds of TV cartoons.

“John had to run to the store, but he’ll
be here in a moment,” Sarah said, unsmiling. “Let me introduce you to the rest
of the family.”

“Kids?” Sarah hollered over her shoulder, “Shut
that thing off and come say hello! The dog doctor’s here!”

I smiled at the thought that, from their
mother’s description, her children might well expect me to be a dog wearing a
white lab coat and stethoscope. She arched an eyebrow and studied me. Wearing
my tan cotton twill slacks and favorite striped shirt, I may not have looked as
professional as I had yesterday, but I was infinitely more comfortable.

“Let’s go sit in the living room,” Sarah
said, leading the way into a small room where an enormous sectional sofa left
almost no space to walk. “Where the kids go, Mugsy goes, so I’m sure she’ll be
here momentarily.”

To my surprise, not a fox terrier but
rather a
Scottish
terrier bounded into what little floor space was
left. The terrier was the classic solid black with pointy upright ears, a
muzzle that I think of as sprouting a goatee, and those stubby legs that, truth
be told, always struck me as disproportionately short. Not that I was anyone to
talk. A split second later, a chubby, redheaded boy appeared around the corner,
swinging into the room while gripping the door trim. He had a wooden gun in his
hand that fired rubber bands. He pointed it at me and said, “Pow!”

“Pow yourself,” I replied, eyeing his gun.
The dogs of my youth had been lucky. We didn’t have rubber-band guns back then,
just air-propelled popguns that could spit corks all of five feet.

“Benjamin!” his mother scolded. The
Scottie, in the meantime, began to bark, planting herself firmly in the center
of the room between Benjamin and me, next to Benjamin’s mother.

“Hi,” the boy said confidently, meeting my
gaze. He walked over to stand directly beside his dog. “My name is Benjamin. I’m
six-and-a-half. My little sister’s shy.” He turned and shouted with excess
volume, “It’s okay, Emmy! She’s kinda pretty and she doesn’t look mean!”

A little girl peered into the room. I
caught a quick glimpse of carrot-colored curls. She immediately ducked from
view. Maybe she disagreed with her brother’s assessment of my looks.

“Hi, I’m Allida Babcock,” I said to the children—or
at least to the boy and to the doorway Emmy was hiding behind. “I thought you
said you had a fox terrier,” I said to their mother. “Mugsy’s a Scottish
terrier.”

“Did I?” She clicked her tongue and shook
her head. “John’s always correcting me. Yes, Mugsy’s a Scottish terrier.
Terriers all look the same to me.”

That was a bit hard for me to understand;
not unlike claiming that all mountains look the same. Besides, Scottish
terriers were quite popular. Their owners tended to name them “Scottie,” just
in case anyone missed the point.

“Yep,” Benjamin said, grabbing the poor
dog’s head in a hammerlock which instantly forced me to bite my tongue, this
being too early for me to offer advice. “Mugsy’s a Scottie dog!”

It was not, however, too early for one of
my patented, paint-peeling glares. Benjamin took one look at my face and
released his grip on the dog. I love children, but my utter intolerance of pet
abuse takes priority. Mugsy whined a little and backed away from Benjamin, but
bravely maintained her post in the center of the room, looking in all
directions as if she were a sheepdog whose flock was so scattered she didn’t
know which one to rein in first. Judging from her bearing and the graying fur
around her mouth, I guessed her age at seven or eight—just past
middle-age for a dog this size.

“I take it Mugsy was your husband’s dog
before you two met?”

Though I phrased the question to his
mother, Benjamin immediately answered, “Our real dad lives in Oregon. Mugsy is
my stepdad’s dog.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Benjamin,” Sarah said through an
embarrassed smile. “You needn’t bore Ms. Babcock with our family business.”

“Actually, that’s very much part of Mugsy’s
personal history, which I need to learn in order to get at the cause of her
behavioral problems.” I had to say this to Sarah’s back while she left the
room, but she soon returned with a diminutive little girl clinging to her leg.

“This is Emmy,” Sarah said in baby tones. “We’re
a little shy, as you can probably see.”

“Hi, Emmy.”

The girl’s eyes widened, then she buried
her face in Sarah’s dress.

“To tell you the truth, I h-a-t-e d-o-g-s,”
Sarah spelled out.

No surprise there. I looked at Benjamin,
who was mouthing the letters to himself, probably deciphering the words as fast
as I was.

“If it were up to me, we’d put M-u-g-s-y
to s-l-e-e-p.”

This remark caused the hairs on the back
of my neck to rise. Put a dog to sleep just for nipping at heels a couple of
times? I knelt and stroked Mugsy, thinking there was more than one bitch in the
room.

Just then, the door opened, and a large,
muscular man entered. He had a broad, appealing smile, and a receding hairline.
“Hey, there. You must be Miss Babcock. I see you’ve already met my monsters,”
he said, ruffling Benjamin’s hair. Mugsy leapt a good two inches or so, and he scooped
her into his arms, let her lick his face, then gently set her down. He pumped
my hand. “So, how bad are we doing here, Allida? Any fur flying?” He released
my hand, then rubbed his stepdaughter’s back with a beefy hand and gave Sarah a
kiss on the cheek.

“Mister John?” Benjamin asked. “What does ‘put
Mugsy to sleep’ mean?”

John immediately shot a furious glare at
his wife and then at me. Before I could respond, Sarah cringed and said, “Nobody’s
saying a thing about that, Benjamin.”

“But you spelled that and—”

“That’s why you should never listen when
Mommy spells!” Sarah retorted. “It means she’s having an adult conversation
that you won’t be able to understand!”

Benjamin stomped his foot. Personally, I
was on his side in this particular argument and wanted to stomp my own foot. He
said, “But Mommy, you spelled ‘put Mugsy—’”

“Hush!” She grinned sheepishly at her
husband and wrapped her hands around his arm. Over her son’s protestations, she
said to her husband, “I was merely trying to voice a concern to Allida about
Mugsy without upsetting the children.”

Emmy was now saying, “Mom?” and tugging on
her mother’s dress so hard only one tippy-toe was left on the ground, and
Benjamin’s objections were continuing in a grating, high-pitched whine.

“Doesn’t look like you succeeded,” John
said sternly.

“Could we all sit down for a few minutes?”
I asked, wishing I could join in with Mugsy and bite these people’s ankles till
order was restored. “I need to ask some questions about Mugsy’s background and
your daily routine with her.”

“What routine?” Sarah quipped. “It’s
always a zoo around here.” As she spoke, she took a seat on the sectional and
hoisted Emmy onto her lap. John sat down beside her and Mugsy took an uneasy
seat between the big man’s feet, but Benjamin immediately climbed over the
sectional, firing his rubber band at the wall in the process. “Benjamin! Sit
down!” Sarah ordered. Mugsy instantly hopped up and punctuated Sarah’s words
with shrill barks.

“Quiet, Mugsy!” John cried.

For the first time since I arrived, a
silence fell over the room. My ears were ringing. I sighed, forced a smile, and
said to John, “I’m just going to take a wild guess here and say that Mugsy hadn’t
been around children much until you and Sarah got married.”

“That’s true.”

I turned my gaze to Sarah. “You and the
children had no pets at all until you married John?”

“That’s right.” Sarah asked meekly, “Are
we doing something wrong?”

I very much wanted to laugh at the
obviousness of that answer, but didn’t. “Benjamin?” The boy was squirming
around behind the couch section nearest the wall.

He raised up and said, “Yessy?”

“Can you tell me about the last time that
Mugsy bit you?”

“Mugsy bit me.” He averted his eyes and
started fidgeting with the wooden gun in his hands, reloading a rubber band.

“Where were you at the time?”

“Don’t remember.”

“Were you in your room?”

He shook his head. “This room.”

“And what were you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“Did you have anything in your hands at
the time?”

Benjamin dropped the gun on the couch as
if it were red hot and said, “No.”

“Benjamin!” John said. “Were you shooting
rubber bands at Mugsy? Like we told you over and over again not to do?”

“No, I wasn’t!” Benjamin got to his feet
and stuck his lip out. “I was shooting past her! We were playing cowboy and
Indian.”

John rolled his eyes and let out a
chagrined puff of air. “I told you so, Sarah. Mugsy was just defending herself.”

“This doesn’t explain why she bit Emmy,
though,” Sarah said to me, stiffening. “I saw the whole thing, and Emmy didn’t
do a thing to the dog. Emmy is always completely gentle with everything. Aren’t
you, Emmy?”

Emmy nodded. She chanced a smile at me,
then again buried her face against her mother. She was very cute with those big
eyes and that glorious Irish-setter red hair.

“Were you scolding Emmy at the time?” I
asked the mother.

“Why, yes. She’d made a mess, and I was
sending her to her room for a time-out. But how could that have anything to do
with the dog’s behavior? The incident had nothing whatsoever to do with Mugsy.”

“Was Mugsy nipping at Emmy’s heels as she
went to her room?”

“Yes, and like I said, Emmy wasn’t doing a
thing to her.”

“Mugsy was trying to help you discipline
your daughter by helping to hurry her into her room.”

Sarah scoffed. “Oh, come on, now! Aren’t
you anthropomorphizing here? How can a dog want to help discipline a child?
Emmy’s still bigger than she is, after all, so she can’t possibly know the
difference in authority between us and a child.”

“Sarah,” John said, “you’re
underestimating Mugsy. She’s a smart dog. Right, Mugsy?”

Mugsy barked.

Sarah looked away in disgust.

“Could we let the children go back to
their television show for a minute?” I asked.

Benjamin needed no other excuse and shot
out of the room calling, “Bye,” behind him. Emmy waited a moment, then ran
after her brother. Mugsy, who’d briefly settled down once again at her master’s
feet, got up and trotted to the hallway after the children, then stopped when
she saw John wasn’t following. She watched him for a moment, then settled down
in the hallway, within eyesight of John.

I waited until the children were out of
earshot. John put his arm around his wife and stared at me as if bracing
himself for some serious bad news.

“There are some things I can do to help
you to get Mugsy to behave better. I have no doubt that we can make some
adjustments and train her not to nip at the children, with the caveat that all
dogs have sharp teeth and are capable of biting. Most importantly, you both
have to start by training your son to be gentler with the dog.”

I leaned forward and lowered my voice. “However,
Sarah, none of this might change the fact that you’re not happy living with
this dog.”

Sarah squirmed in her seat a little, but
said nothing.

I continued, “Before we can start, I need
to know that you’re all truly committed to keeping Mugsy. Otherwise, I’ll be
working with my hands tied. Dog ownership is a big responsibility. You don’t
need to feel guilty if it doesn’t fit in with your lifestyle.” I turned my gaze
to John. “You need to ask yourself whether or not Mugsy and your family would
be happier if Mugsy were re-homed.”

“You think I need to give up my dog?” John
asked.

“No, I think the first step is going to be
for you and your wife to
decide
if you need to give up your dog.”