the owners, too. I mean, he works for everyone, huh? And he can't keep them all himself, can he?
Be reasonable, Holly. That's just not possible, is it?"
The other message was from my father. Millie was finally in labor. When I called back, he even
answered the phone. Naturally, there's an extension in the barn.
"Not yet," he said, "but she's doing great. She's a trooper. You'd be proud of her."
"I already am," I said.
"We're on 'Darling Clementine,' " he said. Bitches need very little help in whelping. Most of the
time, the best thing to do is not interfere. Buck knows that, but he needs to feel that he's easing
their discomfort, assuring them of his presence, and welcoming the pups into the world. The news
that your father is singing "Clementine" to a whelping wolf hybrid bitch might make you think he's
taken leave of his senses, but when my father becomes a musical lupine Lamaze coach, he's getting
back to normal.
"I'm sorry," I said, "but I still haven't got any news about Clyde. I'm doing my best." I hated to jeopardize his new-found mental health by mentioning Clyde, but I had to do it. "It's only been four
days. I’m still looking, and I've got people helping me."
"People," he said with disgust.
"What else do you want me to do? I'm doing everything I can, and there's a guy who's helping me.
I've got signs everywhere. The ads are in all the papers. I've been checking all the shelters. Everyone
knows he's gone. I'll hear about it the second he turns up. And I know Austin Quigley doesn't have
him, because I went there. And besides, if he were that close, I'd have heard him howling. Austin
does not have him."
"Someone does," Buck said. "Some bastard does."
"You could be right. I'm working on it."
"There are no single parents in a pack," Buck said. "Fatherhood lasts a good three or four years."
"I know," I said. "I've read L. David Mech and Matt Ger- son, too, you know. And obviously, I've
heard you talk about it. I'll find him."
"Regina's back Sunday. I'll be down then."
"Sure," I said. "Give Millie a pat for me. Sing her a verse of 'Clementine' for me."
-16-
Kevin doesn't like to be called at the station, but I had to do something. "Hey, Holly," he said.
"How ya doing?"
"My father's doing better for the moment," I said, "but if I don't find Clyde, he's threatening to
come down here on Sunday."
"It's my speech impediment," Kevin said. "I try to ask about you, and damned if I don't ask about your father by mistake. Let me have another go at it. What about you?"
"Aw, shucks, I didn't know you cared." Not so. When he asks how I'm doing, he means it. "Really,
how I am is worried about Clyde. I don't know where to go from here except to try to find out if he's
been stolen, I guess. And if he has, maybe that means I have to find out about research labs. I've
been doing some reading, but. . . I don't even want to think about it."
"Yeah," he said. "But of course, the police are assisting me in my inquiries. Right?"
Rowdy, who'd long ago discovered that I could be persuaded to pat him while I talked on the
phone, lifted his head up as if I'd asked him a question. I shook my head and smiled at him.
"It's only been five days," Kevin said. "That's not long for a lost dog."
"Oh, Kevin, be serious. It's not as if he's an ordinary dog. He looks like a wolf. If he were
wandering around, somebody would've noticed him, and somebody would've called me. And,
believe me, the shelters all know me by now. They'd call."
"I'd call you."
"You've got guys looking?"
"Yeah. What I can swing."
"What about people who steal dogs?" I was rubbing the top of Rowdy's head.
"Yeah. There's a kid down in East Cambridge I talked to, but in my opinion, he's got nothing to do
with this. And I've never seen him around Fresh Pond." He didn't mean the pond itself — Fresh
Pond is also what our neighborhood is called. "It was a long shot."
"Thanks for trying," I said. "What about what he does with them, the ones he steals?"
"Did I say he said that?"
"Didn't he?"
"Well, talk to him again. I will. Where does he live?"
"Not on your life," Kevin said.
"Then you do it. Find out where the dogs go. Clyde could've ended up in the same place even if
this kid didn't take him. Or you know what? You can visit the research labs. How many can there
be? They're not going to let just any outsider in, especially with this ordinance coming up before the
city council, but you could do it."
"How is that?"
"Think of something."
"What?"
"Use your imagination."
"Sure," he said. "I'll start with Harvard. I'll tell them there's this new law that says they can't buy dogs anymore. They won't know the difference."
"Okay. Once they've got the dogs, it's all legal. I know. Or maybe I can get in. There must be some way. I just don't know how these things work."
"Look, I probably shouldn't say this, but how long you been in Cambridge? I been here my whole
life. How it works is you know somebody."
"Somebody who works in a research lab torturing dogs? Oh, sure, I know dozens of people like
that. They're my best friends. We just don't discuss religion or politics. And what do I do if I find
him in one of those places? He's the most gentle dog in the world. I don't think he's even brave." I
hate to cry, especially over the telephone. "Kevin, do you know what they do?"
"Hey," Kevin said. "Don't think about that. If he's in one of those places, he's stolen property. I'll take care of that. I'll get him out."
"What's left of him. If anything."
You have to know somebody, Kevin had said. The members of Mimi's animal rights group were
the last people in Cambridge who'd know anyone on the inside, but I called anyway and the woman
who answered the phone in their office gave me the names of some of the labs and wished me luck.
I had a plan. Not a great plan, but something. It involved Matt Gerson. He'd make the calls and the
visits. A Harvard professor? Scientist? With a book published by Harvard University Press? He was
as close to the right kind of somebody as anyone I knew. The not-so-great part of the plan was how
I was going to persuade him to do it.
Faith Barlow called before I reached him.
"I'm in Belmont," she said. "And there's someone here I want you to talk to. There's a story I want you to hear."
"I can't, Faith. I'm working on finding Clyde."
"I know. Get over here."
Belmont is next to Cambridge, down Concord Avenue beyond Fresh Pond. The address she gave
me turned out to be a yellow ranch house with an ordinary front yard and a long back lawn covered
with spring bulbs. The yard ended at Spy Pond, which has water too dirty for swimming but looks
pretty, anyway, especially when you sit at a table in the bay window of a little yellow house and
appreciate the scene from a distance.
"So we put an ad in the paper," said the person whose story Faith wanted me to hear, a petite
woman with very short, very curly dark hair who'd been a neighbor of Faith's until a couple of
months earlier. Her name was Linda. "You know, 'friendly, good with kids, free to good home,' all
that. And it was all true. He was friendly. And wonderful with kids. The kids loved him. I mean,
t
hey named him. His name was Grover. From Sesame Street?"
"Yeah," I said. "The only thing was allergies. We have this pediatrician and he was totally
insistent that we had to get rid of Grover, because Jared had this sort of perpetual cold, so what
could we do? I mean, we believed it was allergies. This pediatrician is really famous, and we trusted
him. And now, we find out, he tells everyone that. I mean, basically, he just doesn't like dogs. He
doesn't like cats, either. And I find out, he always tells people that. And he didn't do cultures or
anything. He just said it was allergies."
"And somebody else found something different?"
"The allergist did! He tested for allergies, and Jared isn't allergic to dogs."
"But Grover was gone by the time you saw the allergist?"
"Yes. But, of course, we tried to get him back. "
"And?"
"And we'd been so stupid. The guy we gave Grover to seemed so nice. Dave Johnson, he said his
name was. And you could tell Grover liked him. When you give away a dog, you don't ask for
references."
Oh, no? You should. I didn't say it.
"And he told us about his farm, and how Grover'd be able to run all over the place. He said his old
dog had died. And he really had had a dog. That part was true. You could tell, because there was
one of those wagon barriers in the back of the car. He just seemed so sincere. He seemed like a nice
ordinary working guy. He was very likable. And then when we tried to call him, basically, he didn't
exist."
"The phone number was for a dry cleaner," Faith said.
"I think he just made it up," Linda said. "But it was in Sudbury, which is where he said the farm
was, even though there wasn't any phone listed to him there. So we didn't have an address, but he'd
told us the name of the street, and we drove out there. That was three weeks ago. My husband and I
went alone. We didn't take the kids. And, first of all, there weren't any farms there, just houses. And
we stopped and asked about him. We were still convinced there was some mistake. But finally, we
got it. Nobody there had ever heard of Dave Johnson. And then, of course, we realized it's like John
Smith. There was no Dave Johnson."
"I'm sorry," I said. "My father's dog disappeared in Cambridge last Sunday night. I can't find him, either."
"We promised the kids we'd get Grover back. We shouldn't have done that."
"How were you supposed to know?"
"I wasn't," Linda said. "I do now."
Faith and I talked for a few minutes on the sidewalk in front of Linda's house.
"I don't know why the hell she didn't call me," Faith said. "I'd have kept him for a week or two to see if the kid really was allergic. And free to good home? Did you hear that?"
"Most people don't know any better."
"And that business about the farm?"
"Yeah. He probably tells the girls he wants to show them his etchings, too."
"They probably believe him," Faith said. Her hair looked more gray than blond, and her dimples
weren't showing. "Some people will believe anything. And Linda's no fool, at least most of the
time."
"Yeah," I said. "She sees it all now, doesn't she? I feel so bad for her. What kind of dog was
Grover?"
"A big friendly mutt," Faith said. "Black with a big white splotch over one eye. White on the tip of the tail. You know, cute and funny-looking, like a clown. They got him at the pound. The pound.
You know that's how research labs pay? They buy dogs by the pound, like they're buying meat."
"They are," I said.
"So I thought you'd want to know. I mean, obviously, this is a racket, right? It's a scam. And this
is pretty close to your part of Cambridge. And they're both big dogs. I thought you should know."
"Thank you. I'm not sure if it'll help. I was sort of starting to think about something like this,
anyway. I think I won't tell Buck, not yet."
"Good," she said. The dimples appeared for the first time that day. "So when do I get Rowdy
again?"
"We'll do the June shows. Okay?"
"Sure," Faith said. "He's a love. He's a real honey."
Free to good home. I thought about it as I drove back along Concord Avenue toward Cambridge,
past the golf course, the fast-food places, the industrial parks. How was Linda to know? What was
she supposed to do? Take big, friendly Grover to the vet and have him put to sleep, put down, done
in? Sell him? People who buy dogs don't want a dog like Grover. They want cute puppies, and if
they pay for them, they're apt to want purebreds. So she'd tried to do the right thing, but there'd
been a hitch. The world is a crueler place than she'd suspected.
Near the Fresh Pond traffic circle, I saw a black and white spotted dog following a runner on the
path around the pond. In the back of the Bronco, Rowdy caught sight of him, too, and growled and
yelped out a warning to get off his turf, which was, in Rowdy's view, the planet earth. I only caught
a glimpse of the dog, but it was enough to see that he had some pointer somewhere in his ancestry,
enough pointer to remind me of Max, and what Austin had done to Lady. I wondered if Max's days
were numbered, too. But Max was worth something. Austin would know that. Somebody might
even have made an offer already. Would anybody pay for euthanasia when he could get good money
for the dog? Maybe yes. Maybe if he just didn't like the dog, the way Austin just hadn't liked Lady.
Or, for that matter, Sissy. If he was killing off the whole family, maybe Max was next.
I was eager to get home and get hold of Matt Gerson, but I turned left onto Walden Street, pulled
into a permit-only spot, leashed Rowdy, and started toward Quigley Drugs. All I'd have to do was
walk Rowdy past the place, and if Max was there, he and Rowdy would both let me know.
Sissy's old car was parked in the driveway by the store, and Pete Quigley was standing at the open
tailgate sorting through some cans of paint in the back. The last time I saw that car, there was a
bumper sticker on the rear: "Caution. Show Dogs. Do Not Tailgate." I always notice bumper stickers
like that because I don't understand why people use them. Why advertise that the dogs are
valuable? It's a written invitation to steal them. Anyway, the bumper sticker was gone. I hoped Max
wasn't. I was relieved to see the wagon barrier still in place inside the car, and even more relieved to
see Rowdy's hackles go up and to hear Max start barking out some hearty threats.
Pete looked up from the paint cans. "Dog's locked up. It doesn't bite, anyway." He sounded
disappointed, as if he were complaining about a toy that didn't work.
"Nice dog you've got," Reggie said.
"Thanks," I said, rubbing Rowdy's head. "He really is a good dog. He's a honey."
I don't know why I used Faith's word. I usually say he's a sweetie.
-17-
Ron was right. No gold faucets. Nothing garish, nothing opulent, nothing showy. For instance,
the upstairs bedroom where one of the crimson-jacketed kids from Harvard Student Agencies told
me to leave my coat had only two Matisses. Three obtrude, I always think.
My mother believed in rules, including the rules of the human social world, and she liked them
spelled out in writing, which may be why I grew up thinking that Emily Post was a woman hired by
the American Kennel Club to write its human obedience regulations. Consequently, just in case you
were wondering, I knew better than t
o show up at Mimi Nichols's in my kennel clothes, not that
anyone would have noticed. Or cared. After all, this is Cambridge. People here notice whether
you're really asserting or merely mouthing the views expressed in the latest issue of The New York
Review of Books and care about whether your kids go to public school because you're political or
because they flunked the Shady Hill kindergarten entrance exam. Even for concerts or big parties,
people wear anything from formal evening dress to embroidered Greek peasant costumes to jeans
and Reeboks. Not everyone has had my advantages. I wore a silky gray pants outfit that I'd picked
up at a discount in Freeport before I decided to have Faith show Rowdy in breed instead of showing
him myself. As I'd suspected in the store, the outfit really brought out the shine in his coat, and vice
versa. Too bad I'd had to leave him home. A stunning dog makes the best accessory.
People were pushing their way upstairs as I went down, and the front entrance hall, bigger than
my kitchen and study combined, was jammed with people, most of whom I didn't know. I felt
awkward until I pretended that Rowdy was with me. I only imagined him — I didn't talk to him or
pat him or anything — but as soon as I did that, I felt self-confident and realized the thing to do was
head for the food, just as he'd have done. Ray and Lynne Metcalf had already beat me to the
shrimp, which were jumbo, like giant-size Nylabones, only not ham-flavored, of course. I wondered
whether my donation had been big enough and whether I could afford to have any more. That was
the idea, I guess.
“Hi, Holly," Ray said. "Just arrive? Can I get you a drink?”
"Sure. What is there?"
"Red or white."
"Red."
He pushed his way through the crowd and, after Lynne and I had talked and eaten shrimp for a
while, he made his way back and handed me a glass of red wine. The glass was the kind I have, but
it was real, not one of those plastic things with the stems that fall off, and the wine was jug
Burgundy. You don't believe me? I saw the bottles later. The white was Chablis. If I'd given a party
like that, I wouldn't have ought good wine, either, but then I wouldn't have served shrimp or hired
what must have been the entire staff of Harvard Student Agencies, which is the Cambridge solution