Dog Gone, Back Soon Read online

  THE WORD chill in windchill feels like a cruel joke. I think the local meteorologists meant “windkill” and it came out wrong. Though the drifting snow sparkles in the truck’s high beams like fairy dust, there’s nothing magical about it. Round these parts the word chill is about as useful as the word warm in the Sahara Desert.

  As I drive, the left, logical side of my brain comes back to my conversation with Harry. Harry said he’d only just met this Marco character. This might suggest someone who’s not been in Amy’s life for very long, but the phone call at the bar, the one Amy insisted she take, seemed like a conversation with an old friend, and she alluded to the fact that he was someone important from her past. Assuming the caller to be one Marco Tellucci, why did the Italian merit only the briefest of meetings with Amy’s favorite relative? Has she been as secretive with Harry as she has been with me? “Seemed nice enough,” said Harry. Nice enough for what?

  A bend in the road catches me by surprise, sharper than I imagined, and suddenly I’m dazzled by the flash of brilliant blue and red light filling the cab and spilling across the right side of the highway up ahead. Instinctively my foot comes off the gas and I hit the brakes, the back end of the Silverado fishtailing but not enough to lose control. There’s time to recognize Chief Matt Devito’s police truck parked behind a vehicle that’s nose-in down a trail between the trees. Probably drunk, I think, looking for telltale skid marks. But I don’t see any, and that’s when I recognize the vehicle—the windowless double back doors of a dishwater gray minivan—the gaunt man with his faithful labradoodle.

  I pull over farther up the road, wishing I had a reverse gear in this stupid truck because now I’ve got to jog back though the knee-deep snow.

  “Doc!” Chief Matt sees me coming, blinding me with his Maglite, the flashlight held at the side of his head, Hollywood-cop style. He’s opted for a Cossack hat with earflaps over his standard-issue patrol cap. Less heat loss through his fashionably bald chrome-dome. “I was about to give you a call. Need your skill set to access the victim.”

  Skill set? Victim?

  “What happened? Are they hurt?”

  I keep pumping my legs, desperate for traction, trying to get past him, trying to get to the van.

  “Doc, stop,” says Devito, reaching out to grab me by the arm. “It’s too late. The dog’s alive, but the guy’s gone.”

  Breathlessness takes me, and for a few seconds I slump, hands on hips, letting the shock and the sadness settle.

  “You okay?” asks the chief.

  I nod that I am.

  “Yeah, it’s just… I know this guy. Well, I met him. He came in earlier… with his dog.”

  “So who is he?”

  The flashlight beam is back in my face.

  “I don’t know. He wouldn’t give a name. I know the dog is Stash.”

  What I know feels too complicated for right now. Being economical with the truth is still the truth, and if the chief doesn’t believe me, he keeps it to himself.

  “Follow me and please, watch where you tread. I’m trying to minimize contamination of a potential crime scene.”

  Crime? What crime?

  The van’s parked a good twenty yards off the highway, down a narrow trail more suited to ATVs and snowmobiles. It’s a whole lot easier to walk in Devito’s wake.

  “This is one of my spots for a speed trap,” he says. “Hide down here with the radar to get myself a DUI from the inn. That’s when I saw the van. Didn’t look like an accident. Made me wonder if I might have a lewd and lascivious instead.”

  First thing I notice about the minivan, the driver’s side and passenger side windows are rolled all the way down. No smoke from the muffler, in fact not even a tinkle of cooling metal. The van’s engine has not been turned over for some time.

  “They’re up front,” says Devito, waving his beam toward the driver’s door, “but the dog means business. You got a blow dart in your truck?”

  He backs off as I make the final few feet to the front of the van. Just like that time at the diner, the gaunt man is slumped behind the steering wheel, but this time Stash the labradoodle is lying across his lap. As soon as I go near the open window, Stash lunges, barking with junkyard ferocity. I’m frightened, but more so by the fact that the man doesn’t even flinch.

  “Shine your light on me,” I shout over the barking. “Stash needs to see what I do.”

  The beam swings into my face, and, staring back at the dog, I call Stash’s name while delivering a fake karate chop to my windpipe. It’s like pressing the mute button—one gesture and the only sound is the wind in the trees overhead.

  Devito pans back to the open window, catching the devil-dog red eyes from the doodle’s dilated pupils.

  “Stash, sit.”

  I remember how I was struck by the gaunt man’s crisp, confident commands, and I try to mimic them. Again, Stash is on it, backing his haunches up and onto the passenger seat, sitting perfectly square and to attention.

  “Stash, stay.”

  This last one gets a tilt of the head and nothing more. It might be a canine version of “that’s redundant, you idiot, I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Is it safe?” asks Devito.

  Sir Lawrence Olivier in Marathon Man pops into my head, and you don’t know how much I want to say, “Yes, it’s safe, it’s very safe, so safe you wouldn’t believe it.” But I just nod, and Devito shoos me back from the vehicle with a gesture he must have learned during Crowd Control 101.

  Still wary, the chief opens the driver’s side door to reveal a man with no more life in him than a crash dummy. I take in the scene—empty prescription medicine bottle in the well behind the gearstick, half-empty bottle of water, no seat belt, the man’s white T-shirt peppered with tiny clumps of black fur. Of course, I already know this is a man with a death wish. I guess when I couldn’t help him he decided to find another way. Windows rolled down, T-shirt, January in Vermont. Someone wanted to get cold—real cold—cold enough and sick enough to fall asleep and never wake up.

  Eyes fixed on the dog, Devito leans in and pokes under the man’s chin to feel for a pulse.

  “Oh my God,” he shouts. “He’s still alive. I could have sworn he was—”

  “Step back,” I say, pushing the cop aside, squatting down next to the gaunt man, laying my fingers in the jugular furrow below his chin.

  In seconds I pick up a pulse, not strong, not weak, but surprisingly regular. I turn to face Devito, shocked, about to agree that he is in fact alive, when I stop and realize something’s off. My fingers haven’t moved.

  “I’ll fetch the defibrillator from the truck,” says Devito, starting to wade back the way we came, suddenly all animated.

  “No wait, hang on a second,” I call to him.

  Consulting my wristwatch, I count as the hand spins through fifteen seconds, I multiply by four. Precisely seventy-two beats per minute; and that’s the important word—precisely. Assuming severe hypothermia and a core temperature less than 82 degrees Fahrenheit, the heart rate should not be more than forty beats per minute. His chest does not move. He’s not breathing. I raise the gaunt man’s left eyelid. The pupil of his eye is fixed and dilated. He’s definitely dead, but his heart keeps beating. Only one possible solution.

  “He’s gone,” I say, standing up. I let the wind slash across my cheeks and allow myself a moment to appreciate the despair in this poor man’s demise. What a strange resting place. Even his best friend couldn’t save him, though based on the black fluff covering his T-shirt, Stash did everything he could to keep his master warm. Devito won’t need forensic testing to discover the dog’s saliva all over the man’s ice-cold face.

  “You’re right about the pulse,” I say. “But it’s too fast for a dead man.”

  “I’m not with you.”

  “I’m saying he must have a cardiac pacemaker. The artificial beat doesn’t switch off just because you’re no longer alive.”

  To be fair to Devito, he seems genuinel
y disappointed that we’re too late, and for a while the two of us just stand there, uncertain what to do next.

  Like you, I eventually came home, only you got this practice and I got this dog.

  What did the dead man mean?

  “Why here?” I wonder out loud.

  The chief pans his beam into the darkness beyond the front of the van, but there’s nothing to see.

  “Another twenty yards out that way and there’s an overlook with a view across the valley.” And then, as if something makes sense, he adds, “Faces west. Nice sunsets.”

  “Okay,” I say, and start to explain exactly why the man with no name came to see me, and how, sadly, he took his own life because he couldn’t wait for nature to take it from him.

  Devito waits for me to finish before rifling through the various pockets of the dead man’s jeans. Stash does not look pleased. Gingerly, the chief reaches over to open the glove compartment—empty.

  “Seems like your client made an effort not to be identified.”

  The beam flashes on the lower part of the windshield at the dashboard. The thin metal plate with the vehicle identification number is missing.

  “Bet I won’t find a license plate, either,” says Devito, straightening up. “What did you say the dog’s name was?”

  “Stash.”

  “Stash? Makes you think our John Doe was a drug dealer. Wonder if he knew Trey Garvey.”

  And I thought I was the one who leaped to the wrong conclusions. Trey fails a sobriety test, and Devito thinks he’s on the trail of a Mexican cartel. Given the apricot fur around the dog’s muzzle, my money would be on a nickname, a short version of “Mustache.” It may be too dark for Devito to notice, but I keep this to myself.

  “The man was terminally ill. I imagine the dog was the only thing making the last few months of his life bearable.”

  “Then that’s how we’ll track him down,” says Devito, pleased with himself, jabbing a finger in my direction. “The dog will have left a trail. He’s obviously been specially trained. So who trained him? And if Bedside Manor wasn’t his regular vet, then who was? Your chance to play detective, Dr. Mills.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I say. “In the meantime, you might want to call a coroner.”

  I begin trudging back the way I came, careful to follow the trail.

  “Whoa, there. What about the dog? I can’t take him.”

  I dip down to see Stash, eyes still focused on his sleeping master, his body fidgeting for the next command.

  “Let me try something,” I say, coming around the back of the van, “so long as you don’t mind me destroying your crime scene.” In lieu of air quotations I go with a sarcastic rising intonation. Even so, Devito vacillates before waving his permission to go ahead.

  The passenger-side door proves difficult to open, buried on the windward side by drifting snow, but as I swing it as wide as I can without a shovel, Stash keeps his back to me, unable or unwilling to escape his responsibility.

  “Stash,” I call, with the same forceful tone I used before. “Stash, come.”

  The doodle glances my way, just for a second.

  “Stash, come.” Firm, not angry.

  This time the dog turns his entire body toward the crack in the passenger door, appears to think about it, but turns back.

  “Stash, come,” I say, unable to keep the regret, the resignation out of my voice, and then, as if against his will, Stash tears free, squeezes through the gap, and jumps down, swallowed by the soft powder as he comes to my side. In the glow of the flashlight, I watch as the dog’s head tilts back, ready for his next command—from me.

  Friday

  12

  IT SEEMS I HAVE A TALENT FOR HARBORING DOGS OF mysterious derivation. Last week it was a fugitive golden retriever named Frieda Fuzzypaws. Almost everyone in Eden Falls thought Frieda was missing, everyone except her owner, a guy who wanted this dog out of his life, until he realized she was an integral part of it. In the short time Frieda was with me, I discovered I quite liked canine companionship. Okay, “quite liked” may be an understatement. Oh, she was needy and worshipped my refrigerator, but at least I no longer had to talk to myself.

  Stash is an altogether different lodger. I’ve traded golden tumbleweeds for fur that undergoes a bizarre chemical reaction when combined with powdered snow to form grape-sized, snarly, and intractable balls of ice that cling to Stash’s legs and undercarriage. Where Frieda craved physical contact, Stash appears content to be hovering at my side, but he’s always by my side, a canine shadow, following me from room to room, including visits to the bathroom—and I don’t think this is because he’s needy or afraid. If anything, he appears to be on duty. Last night I was getting undressed for bed and he sat in front of me with something stuck in his mouth. My cell phone must have slipped out of my pocket when we were sitting together on the couch. This wasn’t about being impressed by a retrieval instinct. This was about being scared by bright brown eyes that might be saying, “Lost something?” Those same brown eyes greeted me the moment I woke up this morning, inches from my face, seemingly chiding me for languishing in bed. And when I offered him breakfast, he wouldn’t eat until I was working on my own bowl of granola. It’s as though he doesn’t quite know how to relax and simply be a pet.

  Right now I’m pretty sure Stash is critiquing my attempt to secure Crispin’s broken tail back where it belongs. Either that or he thinks I’m a total freak for even trying. Under his watchful eyes, I sit on the floor at the back of Crispin’s run, beside me an open pack of surgical instruments, a can of WD-40 (I was serious about fixing that castor), and the bottle of Gorilla Glue.

  “Not funny,” says Doris, standing over me, trussed up in her downy ski jacket. She’s glancing at the card I attached to the gate of the run, a card identifying this patient as “Crispin Peebles, 14-year-old Labrador, Broken Tail, DNR.” DNR—do not resuscitate.

  “Sorry,” I say. “A little gallows humor. Didn’t want anyone to not find a pulse and go hunting for a defibrillator.” Assuming we’ve got one.

  Doris isn’t interested in an explanation, her twiggy index finger flicking back and forth between the two dogs. “Hard to tell which one’s stuffed and which one’s real.”

  She’s right; Stash possesses an uncanny stillness and unblinking stare as he waits for my next command.

  “Where are my manners? Doris, this is Stash, the labradoodle who—”

  “Belonged to that guy found dead in his car last night.”

  There’s no point in asking how. Of course she knows. But she used the word guy. Should I infer Doris has discovered the details but not the identity of the man?

  “So if he wasn’t from Eden Falls, then where?” I ask.

  Her only response is to shrug her shoulders, but there’s a glint of something that might be pleasure in Doris’s eyes, something that tells me she’s already on it.

  “Well, Stash will be staying with me. At least for now. There, what do you think?” I get to my feet, gesturing to Crispin’s tail, ignoring the stainless steel towel clamps holding everything in place until the glue dries.

  The snappy upward curl at the margins of her orange lips is faster than a blink.

  “It was your father’s idea.” Doris jerks her hairy chin in Crispin’s direction. “Getting him stuffed. Thought it was the best way for Mavis to stay independent.”

  “I don’t get it. Mavis Peebles looks like she’s in desperate need of a helping hand.”

  “Looks can be deceptive,” says Doris. “Her daughter, Trish, she means well, but it’s her husband, Lionel, who wears the pants and holds the purse strings.”

  “Lionel—allergic to dogs, right?”

  “So he says, though I’d bet the only thing he’s allergic to is losing his mother-in-law’s inheritance. Trish and Lionel live in a fancy McMansion out toward Patton, but Mavis might spoil the feng shui when friends come over for cocktails, if you get my meaning.”

  Feng shui. There’s cle
arly far more to Doris than Marlboros and big hair.

  “You’re saying Trish wants to be rid of Crispin so her mom can either live with her or go into assisted living, whereas Lionel would rather keep Crispin around so that Mavis remains in limbo. Not staying with him because of his so-called allergy, and not eating up her savings in a nursing home.”

  Doris clucks her tongue like she’s encouraging a stubborn horse to move forward and hits me with an unsettling “you got it” wink.

  “What do you think Mavis wants?” I ask.

  “No idea,” snaps Doris, visibly insulted. “You do realize the woman’s old enough to be my mother?”

  “Of course, I never meant to suggest—”

  “And given my current pay, I can’t afford a nursing home anytime soon.”

  “That’s great, I mean, that I, that we, still get the pleasure of your company, still get the benefit of your… expertise.”

  My detour from salary to corny compliment fails to dent Doris’s scowl. I can tell she’s jonesing for a cigarette, eyeing a roll of bandage material like it might be worth lighting up.

  “Probably wants her dog back in one piece,” she says. “And while you’re at it, a cure for arthritis. How should I know?”

  Doris spins on her heels, nimble and light on her feet, her elaborately teased yellow hair quivering wildly as she marches off.

  “I’m practically a spring chicken compared to Mavis Peebles,” she shouts without turning back.

  And I have to agree. Doris’s scrawny legs do share certain characteristics with the domesticated fowl.

  With Cripin’s tail in a holding pattern (literally), it’s time to use Stash for a special assignment—unmasking the identity of the gaunt man. This way I get to bypass the sleuthing incompetence of Chief Matt Devito, and I already have an obvious lead in the investigation—missing testicles. Somewhere along the way Stash has been separated from this part of his manhood. And if he’s been neutered, then he’s probably been vaccinated, tested for heartworms, treated for ticks, and the list goes on and on. Next clue, though they might not have hailed from Eden Falls, when you’re living out your last few days on earth, I’m betting you want to stay close to home. If they’re not clients of Bedside Manor, then who better to check out than a certain rival practice across the valley? I pluck Guy Dorkin’s crumpled business card from my pocket and dial the number for Healthy Paws.