Chapter 12

When we got home, I sent Davey straight upstairs to take a shower. Then I went to look in the kitchen to see what kind of supplies we had on hand that could be turned into an appealing, healthy, low-cal, child-friendly, dinner. You know, the kind that sitcom mothers toss together with ease while also juggling three kids and holding down a full-time job.

Milk, peanut butter, and dog biscuits are the staples in my house. We always have those. But beyond that, Sam’s and my food shopping habits are a bit haphazard. In our refrigerator, you never know what you might find. Sometimes you get lucky. And sometimes you kick yourself for not thinking ahead and stopping at the supermarket on the way home.

The first drawer I opened revealed packages of boneless chicken breasts and Portobello mushrooms. The crisper held a bag of romaine lettuce. There were fresh tomatoes from the farmer’s market on the counter. It looked as though things were going to shape up nicely.

As I was closing the refrigerator, the back door pushed open. The Poodles came spilling through first. Tar, Augie, and Raven caused a bottleneck as they all tried to scramble through the doorway at the same time.

Faith and Casey had more sense. They both hung back and waited their turns. Eve was walking more sedately behind the rest of the crew as Kevin had grabbed a fistful of her neck hair and was marching beside her across the deck. Sam brought up the rear.

Gently I disentangled my son’s fingers from Eve’s coat. The Poodle winced slightly as I performed the task. When she was finally free, she stepped away in relief and had a long shake.

“Good dog,” I told her, giving the area a good rub with my hand. “You did such a good job.”

Tar’s ears pricked at the words. Our only intelligence-challenged Poodle, he sometimes struggled with basic commands. But Tar understood the words good dog readily enough. Not only that, but he had enough of an ego to assume that they always applied to him.

Now, certain that he’d heard himself praised, Tar was quite sure that I should give him a biscuit. He walked over to the pantry and waited. The other Poodles, catching on quickly, followed suit. So I got out the box of peanut butter biscuits and handed out treats all the way around. What can I say? My dogs have me beautifully trained.

“Where’s Davey?” Kevin asked.

“Upstairs,” I said. “He’s taking a shower.”

“Go see,” my son announced. Small legs pumping, he trotted purposefully from the room.

Eve hesitated a moment, then followed. That Poodle is a glutton for punishment. Either that or she should be nominated for canine sainthood.

“So,” said Sam, “did you and Claire have a good talk?”

“We did.”

“And . . . ?”

I waited for him to elaborate, unsure which direction the conversation was going to go. Sam puttered around the kitchen for a minute before finally realizing I that hadn’t yet answered.

“How did you two get along?” he asked.

“Just fine,” I told him. “Claire seems very nice.”

“That’s great.”

Sam nodded with satisfaction. As if he deserved some sort of credit for my belated opportunity to meet with my ex-husband’s girlfriend. Which he most assuredly did not.

I was about to point that out when he said, “Then everything worked out. So what was all the fuss about?”

For a moment, I froze in place. I bit back the first retort that sprang to mind and reminded myself that it wasn’t about winning or losing—no matter what Bertie had said. This was about us finding a way to work through a significant difference of opinion so that we could both come out whole on the other side.

“The fuss—as you call it—had nothing to do with Claire,” I said slowly. “It was about everyone else trying to manage my life for me.”

“I don’t think so,” Sam replied.

I tipped my head to one side. “Let me get this straight. Did I misunderstand what was going on? Were you and Bob not trying to keep me from finding out about Claire?”

“Really, Mel, you’re getting all wound up over nothing again. This isn’t a big deal; let’s not try and make it one. I think you just need to take a deep breath and calm down.”

Lord save me from a patronizing man. Especially one who flat-out refused to try and see my side of things. Nothing—short of threatening one of my children—could have lit my fuse faster.

“Thank you for your concern,” I said shortly. “But I’m quite calm.”

“If you stop and think about what really happened, I’m sure you’ll realize that you read way too much into the whole situation. I know you’re upset about Bob and Claire’s relationship—”

I gasped in outrage. Sam couldn’t really believe that, could he? If so, he and I not only weren’t on the same page, we weren’t even in the same library.

“I am not upset about Bob and Claire,” I told him, speaking slowly and spacing my words for emphasis. “Whatever they want to do together is fine with me. I wish the two of them well.”

“If you say so.”

“I do,” I said firmly.

“Good. Then whatever it is you are annoyed about, you need to put it behind you and get over it.”

Sam left the room. I stood and watched him go. Even though we’d resolved nothing, I made no move to follow him. What’s worse, I didn’t want to. For the first time I could remember in all the years I’d known Sam, I had no desire to prolong the time we spent together.

And I wasn’t happy about that one bit.

 

That evening I asked Bob for Nick’s client roster. He ascertained that he had Claire’s permission to release the list, then called me back.

“When I took over the accounting for Nick’s business in the spring, he gave me all his records,” Bob said. “They go back three years, to when he was first getting started. How far back do you want me to go?”

“I’d like to see all the current clients, certainly. And then how about everyone else from the last year? Can you give them to me in reverse chronological order from when they started using Nick’s services?”

“Sure, no problem.”

“Rough idea, how many names are we talking about?”

“Probably around twenty, give or take. And most of those are still listed as current. Even when Nick had finished working with a particular dog, he’d still check back with the client periodically to make sure that things were continuing to go well. That kept their accounts open in the books. Nick always said that in order to understand what was going wrong with the dogs, he first needed to understand their owners. It seems like a number of his clients ended up also becoming his friends.”

As he was speaking, Bob e-mailed the list to me. I opened the file and ran my gaze down the list of names and addresses. Also included were the names and breeds of each client’s dogs. They ran the gamut from large to small, and mixed breed to purebred.

“I hope Nick’s clients will be as happy to see me as they apparently were to see him,” I said.

“They will,” Bob said with confidence. “And, Mel?”

“Hmm?” I was still busy reading.

“Thank you. Claire and I both appreciate what you’re doing.”

“You’re welcome,” I replied. I felt unexpectedly touched by his gratitude. “Let’s just hope it works.”

The next morning I picked up the phone and started at the top of the list. The first two numbers I called resulted in nothing more than the opportunity to leave a message on an answering machine. It looked as though summer vacation might play a role in determining how many of Nick’s former clients I could talk to. I left a brief message on each machine and moved on.

With my third try, I was luckier. Fran Dolan picked up on the first ring. I explained who I was and what I wanted and Fran assured me that her schedule was clear and that she’d be delighted to meet with me that morning.

“And Barney too,” she said.

Thanks to Bob’s detailed notes, I knew that Barney was Mrs. Dolan’s Basset Hound. “Woof!” I replied.

Sam and I managed to split up our parental duties with a minimum of conversation. I agreed to drop Davey off at soccer camp and Sam volunteered to take Kevin to swim class at the Y. Sam had a meeting in White Plains after that, and I assured him I’d be home to see to the dogs. If our schedules continued to dovetail so neatly, it seemed conceivable we might reach the point where we barely had to speak to one another at all.

Mrs. Dolan lived in Greenwich, just a short trip away down the Merritt Parkway. Her house, like so many in the area, was a traditional Colonial in style. Painted white with black shutters, it was situated on a wooded, multi-acre lot north of the parkway.

Mindful that there was a dog in residence, I drove slowly up the gravel driveway. Barney didn’t put in an appearance, however. Nor did he accompany his owner to the front door when she let me in.

Mrs. Dolan was a plump, pleasant-looking woman in her mid-fifties. Her blond hair was gathered into a low bun but the day’s humidity had caused a profusion of curls to escape and frizz around her face. Dressed in a caftan that swirled with bright colors, she had a ready smile and a firm handshake.

“Please call me Fran,” she said as she ushered me inside. “Everybody does.”

“And I’m Melanie,” I replied. “Thank you for agreeing to see me.”

“Don’t thank me. I was glad you called.” Fran’s hand fluttered in the air. “What happened to that poor young man was awful. I’m happy to have the chance to talk to someone who knew him like I did.”

Caftan swishing around her legs, Fran turned and went striding down the hall toward the back of the house. I fell into step behind her.

“Do you live here alone?” I asked.

“My son lives on the property. He’s in his twenties and doesn’t want to admit that he lives with his mother, so he’s made himself an apartment over the garage. Mr. Dolan and I are divorced.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Fran smiled at me back over her shoulder. “I’m not. It’s been ten years. Best thing I ever did was get rid of Jerry. He lives in Fort Lee with his ex-secretary. Let me pour us some coffee and we’ll go sit in the sunroom and chat.”

Our first stop was the kitchen and it was there that I got my first look at Barney the Basset. The low-slung hound was lying on the floor, asleep in a wide shaft of sunlight. The dog’s broad body was settled heavily on its side, which left his lower legs resting on the tile surface beneath him and his upper ones simply extending outward into space.

Awakened by our arrival, Barney rolled into a semi-upright position. He lifted his head, opened his eyes, and regarded us both balefully. Long silky-looking ears puddled on the floor beneath his head. Then he sighed heavily and flopped back down. Within seconds he was snoring.

“That’s Barney,” said Fran. “I’d introduce you but he’d probably sleep through it. He’s not much of a watchdog.”

“So I see,” I said with a laugh. “I’m pretty sure that Bassets aren’t known for their vigilant qualities.”

“I know that now,” Fran admitted. “But back when I got Barney, I just assumed that any dog would run to the door and bark when somebody arrived. His disinterest in guarding the house came as a big surprise.”

“Is that why you hired Nick?” I asked.

“Oh no. Far from it.”

Fran poured us each a cup of coffee from the pot on the counter. I added a measure of milk to mine from the pitcher beside it. Fran helped herself to a generous teaspoon of sugar. Then we carried our cups to the sunroom: a bright, step-down alcove located behind the kitchen. White wicker chairs with plump, chintz-covered, cushions were grouped in front of oversized windows that overlooked a spacious backyard.

The area wasn’t fenced, I noted idly. Having been trained by Aunt Peg, I shared her belief that dogs should always be safely contained. Toward the back of the yard was an old, wooden shed with warped walls and a sagging roof. A pile of new lumber was stacked beside it. Maybe a fence was coming, I thought, as we both found seats in the sun.

“Nick was a fine young man,” Fran said. “You have no idea how sorry I was to hear the news that he’d been killed. He was nothing short of genius when it came to understanding dogs and knowing what made them tick. Is that how you met him too?”

“No, he was a friend of my ex-husband,” I told her.

“Well, if you never saw him in action, let me tell you that Nick Walden had a real gift. Barney can be a little hardheaded. He listens when he wants to and ignores me when there’s something else more interesting on his agenda.”

Hounds, I thought. You had to love them.

“Watching that dog interact with Nick was like seeing two friends who spoke the same language. It was uncanny the way they communicated with one another. I told Nick he must be psychic, but he said no, that he was just an empathetic dog trainer.”

“Hardly just,” I said. Truly empathetic dog people, those who possessed an instinctive understanding of canine thoughts and behavior, were few and far between. “That’s a rare skill.”

“That’s what I told him.” Fran nodded. “But Nick was modest about what he was able to do. I swear he even knew what Barney was thinking.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, why did you hire Nick’s services?”

“I was at the library one day and I saw an ad Nick had left pinned to the bulletin board there. I figured it was like a sign from God that I ran across it because Barney had been driving me crazy.”

As one, we turned to look at the sleeping Basset. If that was his usual level of activity, it was hard for me to see how the dog might arouse strong emotions at all, much less go so far as to drive someone crazy.

Fran laughed. She must have been reading my thoughts. Her cup and saucer clinked as she set them down on the wicker table between us.

“Maybe he doesn’t look like it now,” she said. “But when Barney’s outside, he’s a live wire.”

“Really.” I smiled politely.

“Not fast necessarily. But determined to go where he wants to go when he wants to go there.”

Now that I could readily see.

“Barney’s also kind of food motivated,” said Fran. “That dog will eat anything. And with that nose of his, it seems like Barney can sniff out something interesting half a mile away. So he has a tendency to wander off. Sometimes I would put him in the yard, come back five minutes later, and he’d just be gone. I was always having to go out looking for him.”

“I can see how that would be a nuisance,” I agreed.

“I called the number on the card and told Nick that I needed someone who could train Barney to stay home. He asked me a lot of questions and then came for a home visit.”

“And was he able to help you?” I asked.

“Yes, and no.” Fran smiled ruefully. “Like I said earlier, he and Barney got along like a house on fire. That part was great. Nick was the one who told me about Barney being a scent hound. And that scent hounds follow their noses. He said that’s what Barney was bred to do.”

“Did he have a solution for you?” I asked.

“He most certainly did. He told me I needed a fence.”

Fran started to giggle. After a few seconds, I was laughing with her. Barney didn’t open his eyes, but his tail thumped up and down on the floor. I guess even he was in on the joke.

“When he said that I felt pretty dumb,” Fran admitted. “But Nick delivered the news in the nicest possible way. That was how he did things. He was very clear about that fact that our problems weren’t Barney’s fault, that he was only doing what generations of selective breeding had taught him to do.”

I nodded.

“And then Nick told me said that the problems we’d been having weren’t my fault either. How could I have understood something I didn’t even know? So then I didn’t feel like such an idiot anymore.”

Nick not only had a way with dogs, I thought. He knew just how to handle their owners too.

“I had an invisible fence installed the following week,” Fran said. “And now when Barney goes outside, he wears the collar. And he stays where he’s supposed to be.”

“I’m glad everything worked out. So I guess you only needed Nick’s services for one visit?”

“Oh no,” Fran said quickly. “That’s not how it worked at all. After I had the fence put in, Nick came back to teach Barney how the system worked. First Barney had to learn where the boundaries were and how to stay inside them.”

“And after that?”

“Nick was just such pleasant company. And he never made it seem like it was an imposition to stop by and see how we were doing. We even started teaching Barney some basic tricks. Just fooling around and having fun. Nick would come over and spend an afternoon, and Barney and I always looked forward to his visits . . .”

Fran’s voice trailed away unhappily. She glanced at the dog in the kitchen. Barney was still snoring. Every so often his feet would paddle in the air or his tail would wag, but for the most part he was oblivious to his surroundings.

“I’m not the only one who will miss Nick,” she said with a sigh. “He and Barney got to be great friends. Now Barney won’t have anyone to talk to.”

“It sounds as though both you both got to know Nick pretty well,” I said. “Were you aware of any problems Nick might have been having?”

Fran thought for a minute before answering. “No, nothing,” she said finally. “Nick was always the same happy, sunny guy. He never seemed to worry about stuff at all. If I had to guess, I’d say that whatever happened to Nick . . . he never saw it coming at all.”