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I WAS UP AND GONE EARLY on Thursday morning with a new sense of purpose. The evening before, Dale had suggested a partial solution to the shelter’s overcrowding problem. I’d called Bill again and found him amenable to helping, as usual. Arriving just after the shelter opened, I sought Sylvia out to explain my proposal. “I could take the three house dogs out to my son’s farm,” I told her. “Bill has a fenced, heated calf pen next to the barn that isn’t currently in use. We can keep them isolated until we’re sure they have no hidden health issues, and my sons can start working to train them.”
“I don’t know,” Sylvia said. “Those dogs are pretty aggressive.”
“Because they’ve been encouraged to be,” I argued. “They need to learn another way to behave.”
“That won’t be easy. They don’t even know common terms like Heel or Sit.” With obvious reluctance she added, “It’s been suggested that we put those three down and work with the less violent ones.”
“We have to give them a chance.” I’m not great at pleading a case, like Barb is, and I can’t coax and cajole the way Retta does. But I had to try. “Everyone on our farm works with animals every day. They know the risks, they’ll be careful, and they might reach at least one of them.”
“It would help to get them out of here,” Sylvia admitted. “At least two of them are barking at all times, so they keep the others riled up.” I waited expectantly, and she said, “Let me check the vet’s notes.”
As I waited for Sylvia, I enjoyed the antics of the adoptable cats, who were housed in a sunny room that had a big observation window. They roamed freely in plain sight of anyone who came into the shelter, attacking scratching posts, climbing little flights of stairs, and batting toys around the floor. It was a clever plan, both for the cats, who weren’t caged, and for possible adoptions. It was hard to resist the thought that one of them should go home with me.
“The border collie’s acting sluggish,” Sylvia said when she returned. “I’d like to keep her here for a while, but the other two seem healthy.” She still seemed doubtful. “Are you sure they’d be secure on your son’s farm? There’d be no getting them back if they got loose.”
“My sister says they responded when Kurst spoke to them.”
“I heard. The animal control officer asked him to teach us the signals. He said we can kill them all as far as he’s concerned.” Sylvia frowned. “Without his help, we’re stuck. They could be trained to respond to words, gestures, or a combination of the two.”
“What kind of a man is he?” I said, but the answer was obvious. Kurst was a monster. Was there a way to convince him to help the people charged with retraining his animals? If there was, I guessed it would have to benefit him.
Coming back to what we could do at the moment I said, “Let me take the two to the farm, and I’ll be sure my son understands the risks. That will allow you and your staff to concentrate on the sick ones.”
We went together to one of the large pens at the side of the building. They’d kept the three dogs together in hopes that having each other for company would calm them, but as far as I could tell, it hadn’t worked. The Rottweiler was hoarse from barking, the Chihuahua yipped steadily. Only the collie was quiet, and I saw what Sylvia meant about her condition. She looked sick, but whether it was physical illness or mental stress, I couldn’t tell.
Sylvia stopped a few feet back from the pen to signal she was no threat. The Rottie’s barking increased in volume anyway. “It might be best to euthanize him, at least,” she said. “Dogs as vicious as that are almost impossible to re-home, and the other two might do better without him as a trigger.”
The thought of it made me sick. “At least let me ask my son.”
After a pause she said, “Okay, but I need to talk with him myself.” Her tone signaled no compromise. “If you don’t mind my saying so, you’re a little soft-hearted on the subject of dogs.”
I had to chuckle. “That’s possible.”
Of course my phone was in the car. I had a habit of leaving it behind, which Retta said was Freudian, and she was probably right. Despite the convenience of instant communication, I had never become fond of being connected to the world 24/7.
I fetched the phone, called Bill, gave him a brief summary of the situation, and handed the phone to Sylvia. They spoke for some time, and I wandered the shelter, greeting the dogs and looking for signs they were responding to better treatment. The puppies with ringworm had been dipped in lime sulphur, and while their lesions were still visible, they seemed to be fading. Two with eye problems had been treated with a castor oil wash. The bitches were still weak, but one of them raised her head when I spoke, showing interest in the world outside her pen that I took as a good sign. A young dog with a broken leg due to being in an overcrowded cage now limped around on a colorful cast.
As I passed, I heard Sylvia explaining the dogs’ behavior to Bill and asking questions about the pen where he’d keep them. I stopped before the cage where the three remaining labradoodle puppies were kept and enjoyed their antics for a while. It struck me that the world isn’t fair, not that I didn’t know that before. Comparing these dogs, who’d been fed and tended in preparation for sale, with those who’d been stuck in a dark corner and ignored, I wondered how anyone can deny that the start a puppy—or a person—gets in life has a lot to do with how they turn out.
In the end Sylvia was satisfied that Bill knew what he was getting into. When she gave my phone back she commented, “Your son is a real animal lover, like you.”
I took that as a compliment to both Bill and me.
“You can take the big guy and the little one now. We’ll see how the border collie does in the next day or so.” She got busy, locating a cage that would hold both dogs and still fit in the back of my Ford Escape. While I wrestled it into place, she gave each dog a small dose of Xanax to render them calm but not unconscious. After we gave it a few minutes to work, three staffers brought the dogs out and got them into the cage. The Chihuahua was easy, but the Rottweiler was not. As he fought, I wondered if I’d gotten my sons in over their heads, but it was too late for doubts. Starting the car, I headed for the farm.
Our childhood home is some distance from Allport, and my sons have turned it into a multi-purpose farm and unofficial animal sanctuary. As I came down the long driveway and pulled up beside the farmhouse, a school bus was loading a group of children for the ride back to town. Each kid held a dried-flower souvenir of the trip to Prospero’s Farm, where they’d had the chance to milk a cow, feed everything from chickens to peahens, and pet the reindeer. I smiled at the happy looks on their faces, pleased they had experienced a bit of the magic I’d grown up with: the unconditional love we get from animals.
The place was decorated for Christmas, with a long garland swooped over the barnyard gate and homemade, not-quite-perfect but still beautiful ornaments hung everywhere. There were lights too, since Bill often took groups on evening rides through the woods in a carriage pulled by horses. Later, when there was snow, the rides would be in a sleigh he’d found somewhere and refurbished. Of course it would be pulled by the reindeer.
I waited until the bus pulled away then backed my car up to the calf pen. Bill and Cramer came to help unload the dogs. The Chihuahua was still groggy, and I lifted him out of the cage while Bill sat in the front seat, holding the Rottie’s leash so he couldn’t reach me. As I set the smaller dog inside the hutch he made no fuss, and I concluded he was “more growl than gonna,” as Dad used to say. I wondered if he might do better separated from the Rottie at some point.
Getting our other guest out of the cage was tricky. Any hope that he’d join his buddy willingly was quickly abandoned as the big dog snapped at Cramer. After some discussion, he closed the cage door while Bill and I changed places. I held the leash from inside the car, keeping the Rottweiler back, while the boys slid the cage out far enough that they could stick a rake through one side and out the other. Using its ends as handles, they tilted the front of the cage until it rested on the ground. As the slope increased, the dog rattled the sides and snarled like a wild thing. I held onto the leash with both hands, letting out only enough slack to allow him to breathe.
The cage floor was now a ramp, and Cramer opened the door again. I let go of the leash, and the dog staggered forward, landing on the grass. Quickly Bill pulled the cage off to the side, and Cramer closed the gate. The Rottweiler turned to lunge at it, but his reaction time was slowed by the tranquilizer. Still, he hit the fence full force, letting us know in no uncertain terms he was not happy. Our limbs shook from exertion, and the magnitude of the task we’d taken on was clear. “He’ll be really hard to handle when the drug wears off,” I said.
“There’s got to be a command that calms him down,” Bill said. “It would be nice if we knew what it is.”
“Poor thing.” I turned to find Carla standing beside me. My daughter-in-law is different from me in many ways. For example, I love old-fashioned meals with fried food and lots of gravy while Carla eats no meat and dips her vegetables in hummus or tabbouleh or some other concoction I’m not sure I’d call food. But where it matters, like children or animals who need love and support, she and I agree completely. “I wish we could tell him things will be better from now on.”
When none of us moved toward him, the over-stressed dog backed up to where his companion lay. A second later his back legs folded then his upper body went down. With a final, weak growl, he laid his head on his paws and closed his eyes.
Carla said in a low voice, “Time and patience is what they need.”
I’d hoped bringing the dogs to the farm was the right thing to do, and now I knew it was. If anyone could save them, it was these people. Again I promised myself I’d do whatever I could to help.
Bill and Carla went back to their chores. Cramer and I stood at the fence a while longer. “The little one’s cute,” he said. “Does he have a name?”
“Retta says their former owner addressed them in general terms, and not kindly.”
“Huh.” After a moment he said, “I wonder if he’d mind being called Pepe.”
“I think he’d say, ‘Call me whatever you want; just don’t call me late for supper.’”
He chuckled at the old joke. “Most dogs would go along with that. Remember the dog we had when I was in school, Roscoe? He’d come to any name as long as you had food in your hand.”
For some reason that reminded me Cramer had been in school with Frannie Habedank. “Did you hear about the murder in town?”
“A guy would have to be a hermit to miss it.”
Actually Cramer is a bit of a hermit, but I didn’t say that aloud. “Frannie Habedank was engaged to the victim. Can you tell me a little about her?”
He rested a foot on the fence rail at his back. “She’s okay, I guess. She’s a year or two younger, and we didn’t have many classes together. She took whatever was easy and scooted through on C’s and D’s.” He sniffed. “She’d have done worse than that if it wasn’t for Oscar.”
“Oscar who?”
Cramer’s face revealed amusement at my demand for family background, but lineage tells. While not an indicator of success or failure in life, family is a starting point that a person has to either embrace or work against.
“Oscar Farwell.”
“Oh.” The Farwells were long-time citizens of Allport. The term hard-working came to mind. “How does Oscar figure in Frannie’s life?”
“He had a crush on her from I don’t know how far back.” Cramer tucked a strand of hair behind his ear. “Oscar and I used to talk a little in CAD class. Not that he’s much of a talker.”
Nor is Cramer. Again, no comment from Mom.
“The other guys used to kid him about being Frannie’s love slave. I remember he’d do her homework. You know, the boring assignments like ‘Answer the thought questions at the end of the chapter.’” He went on to another example, one that clearly demonstrated the boy’s infatuation. “Oscar inherited this old Corvette from an uncle or something, and he restored it a little at a time. He used to let Frannie drive it, even before she had a driver’s license.”
“How did Frannie respond to all this devotion?”
“She used him when she needed something and ignored him the rest of the time.” Cramer’s lips twisted. “Everybody but Oscar saw it.”
“Some guys miss the signs.” The comment came out before I could stop it, and I bit my lip. Cramer’s wife had used him—twice—for financial security and dumped him—twice—when someone she found more exciting came along. I stay out of my children’s personal lives and don’t give unsolicited advice, but it’s hard.
“What happened to Oscar and Frannie after high school?”
He shrugged. “I’ve seen Frannie with different guys, but she never got married. Guess she was waiting for someone like Deline.”
Jealousy is a motive for murder. “Is Oscar still hanging around?”
“He never dated anyone else I know of,” Cramer replied. “He works with his dad at their metal shop.”
“F & F Welding. Your dad has them repair things for him, but we deal with the father, Bruce.”
“These days he runs the business end and Oscar does the metal work.” Cramer’s head tilted to one side. “All Oscar ever wanted from life was to work for his dad and get Frannie to marry him.” Cramer shrugged. “Guess he got half of what he wanted.”
I left the farm pleased with myself. I’d settled the two dogs where they had the best chance to thrive, and I had information—okay, gossip— to share with my sisters about the murder victim’s girlfriend.
I didn’t know there was trouble brewing in that area, and that my information would apply to our newest investigation.
