Canine Christmas (22 page)

As soon as she got the Bufferin pulverized, she would have to think of what to use. She would have to find a knife in the kitchen, or a big heavy object, the cast-iron frying pan, a Dutch oven, to use instead. Suddenly, she felt as stressed as Lucy was. She could feel every pore in her body sweating. She thought of Lucy's head like an egg, with the shell cracked open. She thought of Lucy's face full of blood. She got a big heavy jar of Vaseline out of the medicine cabinet and started to pound the pills.

“What's going on in there?” Lucy said.

“Just a minute.”

Sammy yipped. When Sammy yipped, Carolanne pounded harder. She had to do it in three towels stacked up against the carpet on the floor, so that Lucy couldn't hear what she was doing.

“I'm dying here,” Lucy said.

Carolanne stood up and opened the plastic bag, fishing out the three big pieces she hadn't been able to reduce to powder. She wet her finger and tasted a little of what she had. It tasted terrible. She folded the bag and tucked it into the palm of her hand.

“I don't have very much,” she said. “I might not have enough.”

“Anything will be enough,” Lucy said.

Carolanne came out of the bathroom. Sammy rushed up to her, nuzzling at her hand. Carolanne bent down to rub her face against his side. He was so soft and so clean, the softest and cleanest dog she had ever seen. The dogs on the street always seemed to smell of something.

“Let me have it,” Lucy said.

Carolanne handed it over. Lucy looked at the bag, but not for long. She took the mirror Carolanne had brought with her and put it on the kitchen table. Carolanne knew this routine. Cokeheads were all the same. Once they started thinking about coke, they couldn't think about anything else.

Sammy was still prancing around the room, running in circles as if he had been cooped up all day. Carolanne drew him to her and into the kitchen. The Dutch oven was too awkward. She had a hard time moving it even when she only had to put it on the stove. The cast-iron frying pan was at least easy enough to pick up, even if it took both hands. She could use both hands. Lucy would be sitting at the table, bent over the mirror, laying out lines.

“I love you,” Carolanne said to Sammy, into his ear, where it would tickle.

Then she picked up the frying pan and stood up, moving very carefully, getting leverage, thinking what it would be like when the pan came down on the back of Lucy's head and the blood started to spurt all over the kitchen, all over everywhere. She would have to keep it away from the dog.

She was still thinking about the dog, about blood on the dog, when she realized that Lucy was not at the kitchen table setting up lines. Lucy was right in front of her, standing so close that her breath was hot in the air between them. The gun was hot in the air between them, too, and small, so small it should have been a toy. Carolanne knew it wasn't a toy. She knew it as soon as she saw it.

“You asshole,” Lucy said, “you called my
house
.”

“What?” Carolanne said.

Really, Carolanne thought. It had been like this forever. It had been like this all her life. She was never fast enough. She could never move when she was supposed to. She could never think when she was supposed to. Now she was standing in her own kitchen with a gun pointed at her heart and she had no idea what to do, no idea at all.

I'm going to die
, she thought, and looked up into Lucy Blackthorne Holt's furious, triumphant face, the face of a cokehead on a full-fledged paranoid high, all the stops pulled out and all the kickers working, pumping and pumping, pumping out hate. Lucy must have been high when she came. She must have been faking the shakes. She must have—planned it all.

Carolanne grabbed the dog's fur as it went by her, grabbed it and held tight, making the dog stop, making the world stop.

“You
asshole
,” Lucy said again.

And then she pulled the trigger, and the dog started to howl.

Fowl Play

Patricia Guiver

PATRICIA GUIVER, of Huntington Beach, California, writes about British widow Delilah Doolittle, a pet detective who tracks missing animals. Ms. Guiver's most recent novel is Delilah Doolittle and the Careless Coyote.

If I'd answered the telephone that Christmas Eve— actually it was the early hours of Christmas morning, come to think of it—things might have worked out differently. As it was I turned over and went back to sleep.

I didn't think about the call again until many hours later, after I'd had my first cup of tea and Watson and I had exchanged gifts. I had bought her a fancy leather leash and collar. She gave me the pink cashmere sweater I'd had my eye on for weeks, which had gone on sale two days before Christmas. Of course, I'd had to loan her the money and wrap the gift myself. But it's the thought that counts.

I had adopted the big red Dobie from our local shelter. Her previous owners had turned her in after she'd twice disappointed them, failing first at motherhood, proving unable to produce the anticipated championship litter, then later flunking a security dog course, the trainers being unsuccessful in their efforts to instill in her the necessary aggressiveness. Though she didn't graduate, she had, I was to discover, retained some lessons from the experience that occasionally came in handy in my job as a pet detective.

“No work today,” I told her, studiously ignoring the flashing light on the answering machine. “It's a holiday.”

We would be going to friends for Christmas dinner later in the day, and there would be more gifts. But for now, the two opened packages and discarded wrapping beside the miniature Christmas tree on the coffee table looked a little forlorn, making me homesick for past Christmases with family and friends back home in England's west country.

I attempted to get into the spirit of the season by listening to carols on the radio. But it wasn't easy. Christmas in California is an almost surreal experience for one brought up in colder climes. No Jack Frost nipping at your nose on these Pacific shores. No chestnuts roasting by an open fire, either—unless at a beach barbecue.

By nine o'clock, the red light still blinking reproachfully, my curiosity could stand it no longer and I played back the midnight message.

I wasn't surprised that I didn't recognize the voice. As a pet detective I am frequently called upon by complete strangers for assistance in tracing their missing animals. Neither was it unexpected that the tape took a minute or so to rewind, people being particularly verbose when it comes to their pets, especially their pets' misfortunes.

I poured myself a second cup of tea and settled down to listen as a woman's voice, soft and hesitant, told her story.

“I'm on my way to San Diego from Bakersfield with all my stuff in my car, and my pets—my dog, Bear, my cat, Smudge, and Daisy and Tulip, my turkeys.”

“What? No partridge in a pear tree?” I said in an aside to Watson.

She must have seen my ad in the yellow pages. I advertise throughout southern California: Delilah Doolittle, pet detective. Your best friend's ticket home. I liked that last bit. It sounded positive, and though I can't claim a hundred percent success rate, I do have my resources— good contacts with shelters throughout the region, a knowledge of animal behavior, and a vivid imagination that allows me to put myself, metaphorically speaking, in the animal's paw prints.

“Please help me,” the caller continued. She sounded young and unsophisticated. I wondered why she was traveling alone on Christmas Eve, and to a place several hundred miles from home. And where did she think she would find accommodation for a dog and a cat, not to mention those turkeys? “Your ad says you're a pet detective. I can't go to the police …” Here her voice broke, and it was a moment or two before she continued. “Oh, my name's Mindy Rogers, and I'm staying at the Motel Seven.” The tape ran out and she hung up in what sounded like an outburst of tears.

“And which Motel Seven might that be, young lady?” I said, addressing the now-mute answering machine. “Great Scott, Watson, she didn't even say what city.”

At that I was ready to forget the whole thing. Really, if people couldn't be more explicit, why should I disturb myself, especially on Christmas Day?

But wasn't that the point? It
was
Christmas Day, the season of goodwill to all, including young women traveling with turkeys. What else did I have to do for the next few hours? And wasn't the antidote for the Christmas blues supposed to be to go out of your way to help someone less fortunate? Fate had sent me this damsel in distress, all alone in a strange town—none stranger if she was, as I suspected, in the Greater Los Angeles area—and I had better respond if I wanted to keep my karma account in good standing. Besides, I needed to get out of the house if I was to avoid a plunge into nostalgia from which I would be unlikely to recover until well after New Year's.

I took out the telephone book and called the central reservation 800 number for the Motel Seven chain. A weary voice informed me that their computers were down, and it being a holiday, they were unlikely to be up for another twenty-four hours. I counted eighteen individual Motel Seven listings in southern California. I decided to call each in turn, in ever-widening circles radiating from my home, until I tired of the game. A point I had just about reached when, having inquired for the tenth time, “Do you have a Mindy Rogers staying there?” a man's voice answered, “Room 113. Hold on. I'll put you through.”

I waited while the extension rang a dozen times or more, then hung up.

She was in Winona, about a thirty-minute drive from my home. “Come on,” I said to Watson. “It's a nice day. Let's take a jaunt out there.”

Always ready for an outing, Watson was on her feet as soon as I reached for my car keys, and we were soon driving south on Interstate 5 in my old Country Squire station wagon, the tools of the pet detective trade— assorted cages and carriers, humane traps, a come-along pole, leather gloves, spare leashes and collars—rattling in the back.

“Two turkeys on the loose. Sounds risky at this time of year,” I said to Watson. “I wonder if they're the cause of Mindy's troubles.”

Holiday traffic was light, and I pulled into the motel parking lot sooner than I had expected. Bypassing the office I drove straight to unit 113. There was no car parked outside or in front of any of the neighboring units. Mindy had not yet returned.

With Watson by my side, I approached her motel room, surprised to find the door slightly ajar. She must have left in a hurry. I knocked, calling, “Hello. Mindy? Anyone here?”

Hearing a slight noise coming from inside, I pushed the door open a little farther. As I stepped into the room a sudden mass of energy rushed toward me, pinning me by the shoulders against the door as it slammed back on the wall with a crash.

Stunned, I found myself looking into the bright brown eyes of a huge dog. Judging by the coarse shaggy coat of charcoal gray, I guessed it might have had Bouvier and Irish wolfhound in its ancestry.

Watson hovered uncertainly in the doorway. “It's okay, girl,” I quickly reassured her. She was ready to attack if I insisted, but considering the size of this creature, I could tell she'd really rather not.

Its smelly dog breath and yellowed fangs notwithstanding, the dog did not appear menacing, just overly friendly. “Nice doggy,” I said, lifting his paws off my shoulders and pushing him away from me. But even with all four feet on the floor he continued to lean heavily against my legs, keeping me off-balance, and looking at me with that expectant expression dogs have when they just know you have something nice for them— usually food.

“You must be Bear,” I said to the dog as I made my way over to the bathroom. “Where's your mistress?”

A bowl of water and a paper plate, which looked like it might recently have held a hamburger, indicated that Mindy had taken the time to see to her dog's needs before she left. The door lock was broken and a piece of string dangling from the handle suggested she had attempted to keep Bear confined in her absence. Efforts he'd made short work of once he heard me call out.

Strewn across the unmade bed were several leaflets. They were all published by a farm animal rescue group and carried titles like
Save a life, adopt a turkey
.
Save a turkey, don't serve one.

I closed the motel room door on Bear, being careful not to trigger the bolt in case I needed to get back in, and made my way to the office, Watson padding along beside me.

Around the office window a few puny Christmas lights blinked in feeble competition with the brilliant midday California sun.

A young man sat behind the counter, his attention fixed on a small television showing cartoons.

“Good afternoon,” I said. “I'm a friend of Miss Rogers in Room 113. She's not there. Do you know where she's gone?”

“None of my business where the guests go,” the young man replied over his shoulder, not bothering to take his eyes from the television screen. “I just hand out the keys and take the money.”

I hadn't come all this way to be put off by an impolite young oaf. “Did she ask directions?” I asked.

The television program switched to commercials, and he was able to give me his full attention.

“She said something about wanting to know where some turkey place is, a few miles north of here. Bunch of crackpots run it.”

“Has anyone else asked about her?”

“Yeah. About twenty minutes ago. A guy. Said he was her boyfriend.”

“Did you tell him where she went?”

“Yeah. Gave him the same directions.”

“What was he driving?”

“Gray van. Old Dodge, I think it was. Look lady, do you want a room, or not?”

I opened my purse, took out a five-dollar bill, and waved it under his nose. “Could you give me the same directions?”

He scribbled something on a notepad and handed me the slip of paper.

“If you catch up with her, tell her she owes another night's rent if she wants to keep the room.” He looked at his watch. “Checkout time's noon. She's missed that. If I need the room, I'll have to take her stuff out and put it in storage.”