Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 108, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 661 & 662, September/October 1996

Puppyland by Doug Allyn

© 1996 by Doug Allyn

With three first-place wins in the EQMM Readers Award competition and a half-dozen Edgar Allan Poe Award nominations and awards for his short stories, Doug Allyn is one of the most celebrated of all mystery short story writers. “Puppyland” is the fourth entry in a series that has appeared only in this magazine.

The bitch had golden eyes, liquid and deep. Her coat was sleek, a lustrous liver color with white ticking on her shoulders and rump. She was a four-year-old German shorthaired pointer, weight, about seventy-five pounds. She looked exhausted. She was lying on her side on a red velvet pillow in an elaborate wicker dog basket. Her name was engraved on an ornate brass plate on the front. Hilda Von Holzweg. Five squirming furballs were sucking at her swollen breasts.

A sixth wasn’t squirming anymore. She’d pushed it to the edge of the basket away from the others. David picked up the dead pup. It was already cooling. Hilda raised her head a moment and glowered at him, but didn’t growl. Probably didn’t have the energy.

“How long was she in labor?” David asked.

“I’m not sure,” Ted Crane said. “She had them in the night. I checked her at eleven just before I went to bed. Then this morning, about seven, there they were.”

“And this pup was alive then?” David said, turning the small body over, examining it for injuries or obvious flaws.

“I believe so. I can’t honestly say I took special notice of it, I mean, they all look pretty much alike, except for the solid white one. Is it an albino?” Crane was a bit of an albino himself, a handsome one, tall and fair, with sandy hair and nearly invisible eyebrows. He was dressed for the office in a mocha-brown three-piece power suit. His Sulka tie probably cost more than the loden-green corduroy sport coat David was wearing.

“I doubt he’s a true albino,” David said. “His nose is dark. Can’t be certain until his eyes are open, though. Solid-white shorthair pups are quite valuable, I understand. Did the dead pup try to suckle at all?”

“I think so. I didn’t really pay any special attention to it until I noticed it was just stumbling around, kind of wheezing. And then it died. The other one was wheezing too, but it was all right afterward.”

“The other one?”

“Another pup was behaving oddly. My wife has it in her room, feeding it with a bottle.”

“And it’s taking the bottle?” David frowned.

“Seems to be. But only when she holds it. It stops trying when she puts it down.”

“I see. Is she cradling it? Like a baby, I mean?” David demonstrated what he meant by cradling the dead pup in the crook of his arm, with its head upright.

“Something like that,” Ted acknowledged, wincing at the casual way David handled the tiny corpse. “But she can’t hold it for long. She’s... quite ill herself. Look, I can’t hang around here all day, I have to get back to the office. I have a luncheon meeting at one.”

“I’ll just be a few more minutes,” David said, examining the dead pup’s face more carefully. There were bubbles of dried milk in its nostrils. He tried to force its mouth open with a fingertip but it was locked shut. Rigor mortis had already set in. “I don’t think this is anything serious, Mr. Crane. The mother and the rest of the pups look healthy as horses. I’d guess this fella’s problem was a birth defect rather than an illness. I’d better examine the other sickly pup, though, if you don’t mind.”

“My wife’s room is at the head of the stairs,” Crane said impatiently. “I really have to go. Will you take care of the dead one?”

“You mean dispose of it?” David said.

“I’d appreciate it,” Crane said. “I don’t like having to mess with... dead things.”

“I thought you worked at the hospital,” David said.

“I’m Director of Public Relations,” Crane said, trying not to sound smug, and failing. “I deal with fund-raising, not patients. Frankly, I try to have as little to do with corpses as possible.”

“I’ll see to this one,” David said. “Do you have a plastic bag?”

“In the kitchen. Thanks for coming by, Dr. Westbrook. I really have to go.” Ted Crane hurried off. Grateful for an excuse to be away from the messy business of life and death, David thought.

David left Hilda and her pups in their basket and wandered into the living room. The Crane home was a mansion, really, filled with antiques. The Persian rugs were rich, but showed signs of wear. Tudor furniture was covered in white damask, and an honest-to-God Gone with the Wind staircase swept up to the floors above. The stairway had been modified to accommodate a wheelchair lift. David followed the lift rails up to the second floor. The first door was ajar and he rapped lightly.

“Mrs. Crane?” No answer.

“Hello?” He peered cautiously around the door. A woman was propped up in bed, surrounded by pillows, cradling a puppy in her arms. “Hi,” David said, “I’m Dr. Westbrook, the veterinarian. Your husband said you were having a spot of trouble with some of the pups. May I come in?”

She nodded, closing her eyes a moment. Her hair was auburn and very fine, like a wispy halo of fire. She was wearing a jade-green embroidered silk bed jacket. It matched her eyes, which were a deep, deep emerald. And very sunken. She was probably in her mid thirties, but illness was ageing her. There was a rack of medical equipment beside her bed, a humidifier, a heart monitor, and a respirator the size of a small microwave. A length of flexible tubing connected the respirator to a breathing mask on the pillow beside her.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, “I have some difficulty talking. How’s Hilda?”

“She’s fine,” David said. “So are her pups. How’s this little guy doing?”

“Not well. He’ll only eat if I hold him.”

“May I?” David took the pup from her arms. He stepped over to the window for better light, then worked his finger into the hinge of the pup’s jaw, pried it open, and peered in. Damn. There was a narrow schism in the roof of its mouth. Double damn.

“What is it?”

David hesitated.

“Just say it, Doctor. I’m used to hearing bad news.”

“He has a birth defect, Mrs. Crane, a cleft palate. I expect the one that died had the same problem. I’m sorry.”

“Call me Inga, please. How bad is it?”

“It’s usually fatal, I’m afraid. They can’t suck very well, you see, so they either starve, or milk gets into their airways. The pup downstairs probably suffocated.”

“But this one seems to be feeding all right.”

“That’s because you were holding him upright. He doesn’t have to suckle. The milk’s trickling down the back of his throat.”

“Well, what’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing, for now. But he won’t be able to eat solid food that way, or even drink water normally. He could choke, or get fluid into his lungs and die of pneumonia.”

“Isn’t there anything you can do?”

“Well, on an adult dog, I could repair the palate by inserting a plate, perhaps, but the procedure’s not practical and the surgery would be both risky and expensive in any case.”

“But it would be possible? On an adult dog?”

“Mrs. Crane, Inga, forgive me for being blunt, but pups with this problem rarely reach adulthood.”

“Really? Take a look at all the machinery beside my bed, Doctor. Do you know what it’s for?”

David glanced at the rack of equipment on the left side of the bed against the wall. “A heart monitor,” he said. “And... some kind of a respirator?”

“That’s right. I have ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease. I had an auto accident nearly three years ago, shattered my right shoulder and hip. And while I was in the hospital, in traction, they diagnosed the ALS. They gave me eighteen months to live, or less. That was three years ago. I need a wheelchair to get around now, and the respirator breathes for me much of the time, but I’m still here. Maybe that’s why life seems very precious to me these days. If I care for this pup properly, will he have a chance to live?”

“That depends. He won’t be a pup for long, you know. He’ll only drink milk for a few weeks, then he’ll need solid food and it’ll have to bypass his mouth. Are you up to feeding him through a tube? Several times a day?”

“If that’s what it takes to save his life, then I’ll either do it myself or see that it’s done. I’m not alone here, my mother can help, and my niece. And you? Are you willing to help?”

“I don’t know,” David said. “What you’re suggesting would be difficult for anyone, let alone someone in your condition. No offense, ma’am, but you seem to have troubles enough of your own.”

“Trust me, a few puppy-sized troubles will make a pleasant change from the rest,” she said, smiling. It was a wan, but fine, smile.

“Then I guess we’ll all have to do the best that we can,” David said, handing her the pup.

“Good,” Inga Crane said. She cradled the pup to her breast. “Can you sit a minute? I don’t have much company. You’re the newcomer Yvonne LeClair married, aren’t you?”

“Not such a newcomer,” David said, easing into the chair beside her bed. “I’ve been practicing in Algoma for about four years.”

“In northern Michigan, unless you’re born here you’re a flat-lander forever. Ted, my husband, moved here... My God. Is it five years now? It seems like so much longer. We hadn’t been married long when... this happened.” She indicated her wasted form with a wave of her free hand. “He tries, but he’s such an active man, he has a little trouble dealing with illness, I think.”

“On the other hand, you seem to be handling it well enough,” David said.

“But I have no choice, have I?” she countered. “Oh! Is something wrong? The puppy’s twitching.”

David peered at it intently, then relaxed. “No, nothing to worry about,” he said. “He’s just dreaming, that’s all.”

“Dreaming? About what?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he was just born last night. He hasn’t been anyplace or done anything yet. His eyes aren’t even open,” Inga said. “So what can he possibly be dreaming about?”

“I don’t know. I guess I never thought of it that way.”

“Maybe he’s dreaming about Puppyland,” she said.

“About what?”

“Puppyland. My family has always had dogs, so my mother never told us the stork story. She said that baby dogs came from Puppyland, kind of a hound heaven, where they can run and play all day. When I was a girl, this house was my Puppyland. My grandparents built it and I grew up here. Ted thinks we should sell it now. I know it’s expensive to maintain, but I doubt my mother’d be happy anywhere else, and I love it too. God, I used to run like a deer in the hills out back when I was a kid. I still dream about it sometimes. I’m running flat-out with the wind in my face, and I can breathe easily again. I almost hate to wake up. I hope this little guy won’t be too disappointed when his eyes open and he finds out he’s not in Puppyland anymore. He’s stuck in our world now.” She smothered a cough with her hand. She was clearly tiring.

“At least he’ll have a friend,” David said, rising to leave. “What are you going to call him?”

“I don’t think I’ll name him yet,” she said, thoughtfully tracing his silken ears with her fingertip. “It will be harder to lose him if he has a name. I’ll wait a few weeks. See how he does. Thanks for coming by, Dr. Westbrook.”

“Call me David,” he said. “Would you mind if I stopped by now and again? No charge.”

“I’d like that,” she said. “Maybe you can help me choose a name. If he... needs one.”

“He’s going to need one,” David said.

She named the pup Hector, after the old phrase “since Hector was a pup.” Neither of them could remember who the original Hector the pup was, but it didn’t matter. Inga’s Hector soon developed a quirky personality of his own. Despite his defect, he cheerfully adapted to his circumstances, learning to feed and drink in Inga’s arms, first liquids, then solid food through a tube. Over the next several months, as spring warmed into summer, David stopped by once or twice each week to check on the pup and to chat with Inga Crane. The visits often stretched into an hour or more, talking about dogs, or mutual friends, or just life in general. David rarely saw Ted on these visits, but he did meet Inga’s mother, Clare, a charming, drifty old soul who seemed to wander through the house like a ghost. She’d obviously been a beauty once, but her mind was as cloudy now as Inga’s was clear.

Most of the scutwork and heavy lifting involved in caring for an invalid fell to Inga’s niece, Cindy, a stolid, pudgy girl of twenty or so. She wore her dun-colored hair in an MTV-style shambles and her ears were pierced with three studs each. She never complained, but David sensed that she resented his visits a little, so he generally took her arrival as his signal to leave.

The truth was, his visits had become more personal than professional anyway. Hector was healthy and growing like the national debt, and David really couldn’t afford the time away from his practice, but there are some things you have to do for yourself. For your soul.

In any case, he knew that the visits wouldn’t continue for long. He was a vet, not an M.D., but it was clear that even as Hector was flourishing under Inga’s devoted care, Inga herself was wasting away, as though the fire of her spirit was consuming her shrunken body. It should have been depressing, but he found her struggle an inspiration instead. He’d read Dylan Thomas in college, but he’d never truly understood the line “Rage, rage, against the dying of the light,” until he met Inga. Her thirst to savor every last drop of her life, however bitter, personified the indomitability of the human spirit more than anyone he’d ever known. And in the end, she did not “go gentle into that good night...” Not gentle at all.

The phone dragged David up from the depths of a dark dream. He glanced at the nightstand as he fumbled for the receiver. Four-thirty. What the hell?

“Hello.”

“Dr. Westbrook? This is Sheriff Wolinski. I’m sorry to bother you this time of the morning, Doc, but I’ve got a special problem. Are you awake?”

“I am now. What is it, Stan?”

“I’m at the Crane place on Stillmeadow Road. Do you know it?”

Damn. “Yes, I know it,” David said. “Is it Inga?”

“Yeah, she’s gone all right. Thing is, it looks like her dog may have killed her.”

“What?”

“Look, Doc, I can show you a helluva lot faster than I can explain it over the phone. Can you get out here, please? Now?”

“Right,” David said, fully awake now. “I’m on my way.”

The emergency flashers of the Algoma County Sheriff’s patrol car and the EMT van were already being washed out by the first light of dawn when David pulled into the red brick drive of the Crane estate. Sheriff Stan Wolinski was waiting for him on the porch, pacing impatiently. Stan’s concrete-block build and gray uniform were both in perfect order and his eyes were clear. A grayish stubble of beard was his only concession to the early hour. David wondered if he ever actually slept, or just caught catnaps at his desk at the county jail.

“Morning, Doc,” Stan said, leading the way into the house toward the winding staircase. “Sorry to drag you out like this, but I’ve got a bit of a situation here.”

“What’s happened?”

“Mrs. Crane’s mother called nine-one-one about three A.M., said her daughter’d passed away, then started mumbling. When the EMT techs got here they found the mother sitting by the bed. The dog was on the bed, guarding the body. The old lady seemed to be pretty much in a fog.”

“She’s on quite a bit of medication,” David said.

“Anyway, Mrs. Crane was dead, probably had been for an hour or so. The bedclothing was disarranged a little, as though she’d thrashed around some at the end. And as the technician was checking over the body, he noticed the respirator was unplugged.”

“The respirator?”

“Right. Apparently she could only breathe without it for short periods. I guess she was in pretty bad shape. Thing is, the machine’s quite close to the wall, and there’s other equipment near it. The mother said she hadn’t touched it, and the tech thought it was unlikely it could have been unplugged by accident. It looked odd to him, so he called me.”

“And you called me? What the hell for?”

“I’m coming to that. By the time I got here, the husband had showed up—”

“What do you mean, showed up?”

“Came upstairs. He said he was asleep, but the EMT guys had been there half an hour at that point, and hadn’t been particularly quiet.”

“Maybe Crane’s a heavy sleeper.”

“Maybe. He said he’d had a few scotches before he turned in and I believe him. He smelled like a brewery. On the other hand, he was wearing street clothes. I ask you, if you had a sick wife and heard noises in the night, would you bother to get dressed? Anyway, when the tech tells Crane the respirator was unplugged, he goes ballistic. He says the dog must have pulled it out, that he’d been prowling around back there before. And there are some marks on the plug that coulda been made by a dog. So I called you.”

“To look at a plug?”

“Dave, what I got here is a dead woman who probably would have passed away naturally in a month or two anyway. Maybe a few things don’t quite add up about it, but that’s not unusual. Death is a messy business sometimes. I’ve got no real reason to doubt the husband’s story, I just want to be sure. If the marks on the plug look like toothmarks to you, we can all go home.”

“What the hell is he doing here?” Ted Crane bellowed. He was blocking the head of the stairway in his stocking feet. His shirttail was half out of his dark dress slacks. He was weaving and his face was flushed. “This is his fault!”

“Mr. Crane—” Stan began.

“He knew that damned dog had a birth defect! If he’d done the right thing and put it down before my wife got so attached to it—” Crane lunged at David, swinging wildly at his head. Stan grabbed his arm but the force of Crane’s rush carried all three men down in a heap, struggling dangerously at the top of the stairs.

“Damn it, Crane, get hold of yourself!” Stan roared, twisting Ted’s arm behind his back and hauling him to his feet.

“Let go of me, you bastard! This is my house!”

“This is a crime scene until I say otherwise!” Stan said, forcing Crane against the wall. “Now you settle down or I’ll cuff you and lock you in the back of my patrol car. Are you all right, Doc?”

“I’ll live,” David said, getting to his feet, more shaken than he cared to admit. He touched his cheek with his fingertips. They came away bloody. Terrific.

“You’ve got a nick on your cheek.”

“It’s nothing,” David said. “Crane’s cufflink grazed me, that’s all. Mr. Crane, I’m terribly sorry about your wife, and I know this must be an awful time for you. So why don’t you let me take care of my business and I’ll get out of here.”

“You’d better take that dog with you,” Crane snarled over his shoulder. “You get it out of here or I’ll kill it! I swear I will!”

Stan marched Crane over to a chair and parked him in it, none too gently. David left them in the hall and stepped into Inga’s room. A burly, uniformed medical tech was standing just inside the door, his arms folded. Inga’s mother was sitting beside the bed in her robe and slippers. One of her hands was beneath the sheet that covered Inga’s body and David guessed she was still holding her daughter’s hand. He touched the elderly woman’s shoulder. She glanced up at him without a hint of recognition, then looked away.

David eased cautiously around the bed, knelt beside the respirator, and picked up the plug. Tooth marks. He’d seen them a thousand times on everything from fine furniture to briar pipes. Puppies test their strength against the world by grabbing and tugging on things. Or they just chew things up for the sheer joyful hell of it. There were several other cords plugged into the multiple socket, for the other medical equipment and her bedside lamp. They’d been chewed as well. He examined the respirator plug closely to be sure, but there was little doubt. Damn it. Sometimes it seemed like the Almighty had an almighty warped sense of humor...

He rose slowly, dusting off his hands.

“What do you think?” the medic asked. The tech was a heavyset man with a beer-barrel build and a dark stubble of beard. He looked tired, probably nearing the end of his shift.

“I’d say her husband is right. There are toothmarks on that plug,” David said, gazing down at the shrouded body. “How did she... die?”

“Heart failure, I think, triggered by anoxia. Actually, in her condition that mask was barely adequate to keep her going anyway. Her doctor wanted to hospitalize her weeks ago to have a ventilator tube inserted. She refused.”

“Can’t say I blame her for that,” David said. “It can be a pretty uncomfortable situation.”

“True blue,” the medic agreed, “and it’s not like it would have cured her. It would only have prolonged her dyin’ a bit. Maybe it’s best this way. If she woke up at all, she was probably too groggy to realize what had happened.”

“I hope so,” David said. “She was quite a lady.”

“Well?” Stan Wolinski said from the doorway.

“They... certainly look like tooth marks to me,” David said. “Proper depth, proper spacing. Maybe a lab could tell you more.”

“Do you think a lab’s necessary?”

“No,” David said. “They’re tooth marks all right.”

“Anything wrong, Doc? You look a little bummed.”

“Just upset,” David said. “The lady was a friend of mine.”

“In that case, considering Crane just decked you, I’ll assume your opinion’s as close to objective as I’m likely to get. Thanks for coming down.”

“I’ll send you a bill,” David said. “Where’s Hector?”

“Hec — oh, the dog, you mean?”

“We shut it up in the next bedroom,” the medical tech volunteered. “He wouldn’t let us near her.”

“You gonna take him with you, Doc?” Stan asked.

“I think I’d better, under the circumstances, don’t you?” David said. “There’s been enough trouble here for one night.” He collected Hector from the adjoining bedroom. Ted Crane was still in the hallway chair where Stan had left him, sitting with his head in his hands. He didn’t look up as David passed.

David put Hector in the back of his Jeep. He clipped a lead to the pup’s collar, but it wasn’t really necessary. Hector made no move to escape. He seemed dazed and disoriented, barely aware of his surroundings. And David knew exactly how he felt.

During the course of the day, David tried to feed Hector several times. He’d seen Inga do it, cradling the pup lovingly in her arms, slipping the feeding tube into the corner of his mouth to bypass the schism in his palate. Hector had seemed to enjoy every moment of it. Why not? It was the only way he’d ever been fed by the only mother he’d ever known. When David tried it, though, the pup snapped out of his apathy long enough to snarl at him and spit the tube out. An hour later David’s second attempt failed as well. He decided to have his assistant, Bettina, try the next one. Perhaps a woman’s touch...

“Doctor?” Bettina stuck her head around his office doorjamb. “There’s a Cindy Meyers to see you. She says it’s urgent.”

“Meyers? Oh, that would be Inga Crane’s niece. I’d better see her now, if no one’s bleeding to death on the waiting-room floor.”

“Nope, everything out front’s routine. I’ll send her back.”

David met Cindy at the door. She was wearing a Def Leppard sweatshirt and jeans. Her eyes were red, but she seemed more nervous than sad. She scanned the office warily, as if she were scheduled for some uncomfortable procedure.

“I’m very sorry about your aunt,” David said, taking her hand and leading her to the chair beside his desk. “If there’s anything I can do...”

“Actually, maybe there is,” Cindy said, glancing uneasily around the office. “I need to talk to you privately. Would you mind closing the door?”

David hesitated, then complied. “What is it?” he asked.

“Ted called me around ten this morning,” she said. “I was visiting a girlfriend over at Central Michigan. He... he sounded pretty loaded, you know, drunk?”

“I suppose that’s understandable, wouldn’t you say?”

“I guess it is,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Anyway, I drove straight back, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought I’d better talk to you before I went home.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The thing is, Ted said that Hector killed Aunt Inga. That he’d been chewing on the respirator plug and pulled it out somehow. He said the sheriff even called you out to look at it.”

“That’s right. There were tooth marks on the plug—”

“How many marks were there?” Cindy interrupted. “I mean, was it all chewed up? Or were there just a few?”

“Well, I didn’t actually count the marks but the cord wasn’t badly chewed. They were definitely toothmarks, though.”

“I know they were,” she said. “I’ve seen them.”

“What do you mean you’ve seen them?”

“Hector’s been chewing up things for the past few weeks,” Cindy said carefully, her voice tautly controlled. “Slippers, shoes, table legs, anything he can reach, really. And Inga caught him chewing on the cord a couple of days ago. She had me paddle his bottom good.”

“He’s just a pup,” David said. “Sometimes one lesson isn’t enough.”

“You don’t understand. Inga and Ted had a big fight about it. He wanted her to get rid of the dog, said if it happened again, he’d get rid of it whether she agreed or not. So she was real careful to watch Hector when he was with her, and she’s been shutting him out of her room at night.”

“What are you saying?” David asked.

“I’m not saying anything,” Cindy said. “I’m just trying to... understand how Inga died. Ted said it must have happened during the night, right?”

“I believe the EMT people got there about three-thirty,” David said.

“And Inga seldom went to sleep before midnight,” Cindy said. “So, let’s say Clare forgot and left the door open or something and Hector got in. The first thing he would have done was jump on her bed to say hello. He always did.”

David started to speak but she waved him off.

“I know,” she said. “He’s only a pup. So maybe he didn’t say hello. Maybe he went straight to that cord and chewed on it until he pulled it out. But he couldn’t have done that without drooling on it, could he?”

“No,” David said, “I suppose not.”

“So? Was the plug damp?”

“No,” David said slowly, remembering. “It was dry. A little dusty, in fact. I... brushed my hands off after I handled it.” Neither of them spoke for a moment, each of them considering what the other had said.

“You don’t think the pup unplugged that cord, do you?” David asked at last.

“I don’t know what to think,” Cindy said. “You’ve got to understand, I’m in kind of a shaky situation here. Inga took me in when my parents died, but everything will belong to Ted now and he can put me out in a heartbeat if he wants to. I wouldn’t mind so much for myself, but who’ll take care of Clare? She can’t fend for herself and she loves that house. So I don’t want to make waves, but I think I’d better take a look at that cord. After all the fuss about it earlier, I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to tell if Hector chewed on it again. The thing is, I think I should have a witness, but if I ask the sheriff to go with me and nothing’s wrong, Ted might... Look, these past weeks you’ve been the closest friend Inga had. Would you come with me? Please.”

“I — of course,” David said abruptly. “Let’s go.”

Cindy entered the house without knocking. “With any luck, we’ll be in and outa here before anybody knows it,” she said quietly. “I’m probably just making a fuss over nothing anyway.”

David followed her quietly up the main staircase. He felt a bit like a burglar, but he hoped to avoid trouble with Ted Crane if possible. Clare was still in Inga’s room, sitting beside the empty bed where David last saw her, hours before. She might have been there the whole time, except that she’d exchanged her bathrobe for a prim gray housedress and sensible shoes.

“Hello, Dr. Westbrook,” she said vaguely. “Inga’s not here now.”

“It’s all right, Gran,” Cindy said, swallowing. “Everything will be all right. We’ll just be a moment.” She moved around the bed, knelt beside the respirator, and examined the plug. Her mouth narrowed to a thin line. She rose slowly.

“I can’t be absolutely positive, of course,” she said grimly, “but I’d swear the plug doesn’t look any different than it did before. Gran, when you... found Inga last night, was Hector in the room with her?”

“Hector?” the old woman echoed.

“Just tell us what happened,” Cindy said impatiently. “One step at a time. You came into the room, right?”

“Yes, something woke me... The phone? Or the doorbell? I can’t remember. I thought at first it was morning. The pills I take... usually I sleep very soundly. But when I woke up I had a bad feeling about Inga. And so I went to her room. But... she wasn’t there anymore. She was gone.” Clare looked away.

“The room,” Cindy prompted. “Tell us about the room.”

“It was... a little messy,” Clare said. “And you know how fussy Inga was about things being neat. So I straightened up a bit. I didn’t want... strangers to see it like that.”

“And Hector?” Cindy asked. “Was he in the room?”

“Hector? No,” Clare said. “He was on his blanket in the hall. He came in with me and jumped on the bed but... he didn’t get all excited the way he usually does. He just... licked at Inga’s face a little, and then he curled up at the foot of her bed. He didn’t move after that until the ambulance men came. He got excited then, tried to keep them away from her, so they put him in the next room.”

“So he was out in the hall until you let him in,” Cindy said. Her eyes met David’s for a moment.

“Yes.” Clare nodded. “Hector was outside.”

Cindy took a deep breath. “You said you straightened up the room? Why, Gran? Was it messed up?”

“The... bedclothes were disarranged,” Clare said vaguely. “As though... she must have had trouble... at the last.”

“And is that all you did? Fix the bedclothes?”

“No, I... her book was on the bed,” Clare said. “It was open and I knew she wouldn’t want people to read it, so I put it away.”

“Her book?” David echoed.

“Her diary,” Cindy said, moving to the bookcase and picking out a slim volume.

“You shouldn’t touch that,” Clare said. “Inga will be angry...” Her voice trailed off as she realized what she’d said.

Cindy leafed through the diary, then froze. She passed the book to David. The paragraph at the top of the page was dated and neatly written in a careful hand. But below it was a wobbly scrawl that covered half the page. Ted unplu... The line sagged away at the end. Unfinished.

There was a rustle from the hallway, and suddenly Ted Crane was standing unsteadily in the doorway, his face flushed, his hair disheveled. “What’s going on here?” he mumbled blearily. “What the hell are you doing here, Westbrook?”

David carefully closed the journal. “What I’m doing, Mr. Crane,” he said, picking up the bedside phone, “is calling the police.”

Crane made it easy. When Stan Wolinski tried to question him about the diary Ted was so outraged he took a swing at the sheriff. A big mistake. Stan took him into custody for attempted assault and hauled him off in the back of his patrol car.

David left Cindy and her grandmother on the porch, arm in arm. The elderly woman didn’t seem to comprehend what had happened, and David recalled Cindy’s earlier question, “Who’ll take care of Clare?” Perhaps the answer was beside her now. He hoped so.

David hadn’t liked Ted Crane all that much initially and his recent behavior hadn’t helped matters. Still, the thought that Ted might have killed Inga or contributed to her death was hard to stomach. People killed each other in Detroit or New York or L.A., not in Algoma. Folks moved to the north country to live happily ever after. Maybe that had been Ted’s problem. Knowing that he and Inga would never have a happily ever after.

David didn’t know what to do about Hector. The pup was still rejecting the feeding tube. If he didn’t start eating in the next few days, force-feeding him while he was sedated would be the only option left. It was a tough choice. Hector wouldn’t be mature enough for a surgical repair of his palate for another twelve to fourteen months, minimum. David doubted the pup could survive more than a few weeks of force-feeding, to say nothing of a year. Besides, he’d seen this behavioral syndrome before.

Dogs that are strongly attached to their masters or their mates will sometimes mourn their deaths so keenly that they lose their own will to live. They don’t whine or howl or carry on, they simply sink into a numbed apathy and refuse to eat. Exactly as Hector was doing.

David was in a black mood for the rest of the afternoon, curt with his clients and Bettina. His temper didn’t improve when his last client at the end of the day turned out to be Stan Wolinski.

“Doc,” the sheriff said, following David back to his office, “I think I need another favor, or rather, Ted Crane does.”

“I don’t owe Crane any favors,” David said grimly, waving Stan toward the chair beside his desk. “I don’t owe you any either, for that matter. What’s happened?”

“Well, for openers, I’ve caught Mr. Crane in a half-dozen lies,” Stan said. “At first he said he was home, asleep, but when I showed him Inga’s diary he changed his story. Swore he was with a lady friend whom he preferred not to name. I told him chivalry was a helluva nice idea but it wouldn’t do him much good in the state pen. Them hardcase cons ain’t big on Mother may I, you know? At which point he caved in and named... a prominent local lady. Who happens to be more’n slightly married to a prominent local gentleman.”

“Who?” David asked, his curiosity piqued.

“I’m coming to that,” Stan said. “I called the lady in question. She told me she barely knew Crane, couldn’t even remember his first name.”

“So what’s your problem? It sounds open and shut to me.”

“That’s the problem,” Stan said. “It is open and shut. Now maybe Ted Crane’s not one of my favorite human beings at the moment, but he’s an educated man. He’s not stupid. So why would he give me an alibi that was so easy to disprove? For that matter, why would he bother to murder his wife? She was dying anyway. All he had to do was wait, and probably not for very long, either.”

“Maybe he got tired of waiting.”

“Maybe so. But that still leaves me with his alibi. He claims he can prove he and the lady were more than acquaintances. He says he gave her a puppy as a gift. Says it was a pure white one, worth a lot of money. Do you know anything about it?”

“There was a pure white pup in the litter,” David acknowledged. “And he’s right about it being worth a lot of money. White German shorthairs are rare. I’d guess it would be worth at least a thousand dollars, probably more.”

“So if the lady in question actually has this dog, then she and Crane are probably better friends than she wants to admit.”

“I suppose they could be,” David said. “Where are you going with this?”

“It’s not where I’m going, Doc, it’s where you’re going. Would you recognize this dog if you saw it?”

“A white shorthair? Probably. But so could you. Why not just go check?”

“Because I’ve already asked the lady and she said she doesn’t know Crane. So if I show up on her doorstep asking to inventory her dogs, she may just infer that I doubt her word.”

“So? Since when did you get sensitive about offending a suspect?”

“But the lady isn’t a suspect, she’s only a witness. And she also happens to be Senator Holcomb’s wife.”

“Diane Holcomb?” David whistled. “She’s Crane’s alibi?”

“So he claims. And since I have to run for election in this county, the senator and his wife aren’t people I’d care to tick off unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

“So you want me to tick them off instead?”

“I’m hoping to avoid offending anyone, period. The Holcombs have a kennel attached to their guesthouse. If you drive past you can probably spot the dog from the road. If it’s there, then I’ll make an official call on Mrs. Holcomb.”

“And if it’s not?”

“If you don’t see it, then it comes down to her word against Crane’s, and he’s already lied to me. The funny part is, you’re the reason I tend to believe him. That nick on your face you got in the scuffle this morning? He grazed you with his cufflink. Most guys don’t wear cufflinks except on special occasions.”

“Like a hot date with someone else’s wife, for instance?” David said, touching the cut gingerly with his fingertips. “All right, I’ll take a drive past the Holcombs’ kennel, but that’s all I’m doing. Don’t expect me to stick my neck out for Ted Crane.”

“All I’m asking for is a look, okay?”

“Right,” David said grimly. “A look.”

Easier said than done. The Holcombs lived in a rambling brown brick ranch house that sprawled along a ridge west of Algoma. There was a four-car garage behind it with guest or servants’ quarters above and a kennel attached to its rear wall. The impeccably landscaped grounds were enclosed by a decorative split-rail fence. It was an expensive home, but most of the homes nearby were equally posh, built on ten-acre lots with three-car garages standard and rolling lawns large enough for polo. Which meant it wasn’t a neighborhood where a strange car could linger for any length of time without being noticed.

Fortunately, the next home was a Windsor manor set well back from the road. Its long driveway ran parallel to the rear of the Holcombs’ guesthouse, which gave it a clear view of the kennels.

David swung the Jeep into the driveway, slowing as he approached the kennels. Beagles. The first three runs held pairs of beagles. The dogs raised their heads to watch him pass, but otherwise ignored him. The last two kennels were a problem. They were larger than the beagles’ pens, but one stood open and empty. No way to be sure what lived there, except that it was probably larger than a beagle. The last pen held a white dog. It was the right size to be Crane’s pup, but it was sleeping in the afternoon sun with its back to him and David couldn’t be sure one way or the other.

He stopped the Jeep abruptly and climbed out. He vaulted the low fence and trotted to the kennels. The beagles came to life, raising the alarm, yawping and yapping as he approached.

The white pup in the last kennel stirred and rose to check him out, but it didn’t deign to join in the clamor. Barking was for beagles, and this pup was no hound. He was a German shorthaired pointer, a solid-white male. And he was almost certainly Hector’s one-time littermate.

David knelt for a closer look, to be absolutely sure. The pup approached him curiously and sniffed his hand.

“What are you doing here?”

A woman had appeared at the corner of the building. She was strikingly attractive, with fine, aquiline features and honey-blond hair tied back in a lustrous ponytail. Her eyes were hidden behind dark glasses. She was dressed for country life, riding breeches, boots, and a flannel shirt, but there was nothing working class about her. She oozed the confidence that comes with old money and social position. Or perhaps her confidence came from the fiery-eyed Doberman that was straining at the short leash she held in her gloved hand. The dog wasn’t growling or even baring its fangs, but its gaze was locked on David’s throat. All business. Probably a trained attack dog.

David rose slowly. “I guess I could say I was just passing, Mrs. Holcomb, but I’m not much at fibbing, even in a good cause. My name is Dr. David Westbrook. I’m a veterinarian. Sheriff Wolinski asked me to stop by in order to verify some information, an alibi actually.”

“This has to do with that... Crane person, doesn’t it? I’ve already told the sheriff that I scarcely know him. My husband and I may have met him at some function, we’re quite active socially—”

“Mrs. Holcomb, you don’t have to convince me of anything,” David interrupted. “I’m not a policeman. On the other hand, this is a very unusual pup you have here. Pedigreed and AKC registered, I imagine.”

“What business is that of yours?”

“None at all, ma’am. But if you wouldn’t mind an observation by your friendly neighborhood veterinarian, this dog will be awfully easy to trace, which means you’re likely going to be involved in a murder investigation whether you like it or not. Ted Crane named you as his alibi. He also said he gave you this dog and here it is. Rather an expensive gift from a man you scarcely know, wouldn’t you say?”

She started to reply, then bit it off.

“Ma’am, if you really want to get clear of this thing, the smart thing to do is to just tell Stan Wolinski the truth. He may seem like a rube to you, but you can trust his discretion. He doesn’t want to cause any problems for you, and he certainly doesn’t want trouble with your husband. That’s why he asked me to stop by instead of coming himself.”

“And what’s your part in this?” she asked coldly.

“I don’t have one. I’m only here because I can identify the dog.”

“But I’m supposed to rely on your discretion too?”

“I can only give you my word for that, but I live in Algoma now, and practice here. I’m not looking to make enemies either.”

“No,” she said, releasing a long, ragged breath, “I suppose not. All right then, Ted was here last night. My husband is in Lansing for the week. He spends much of his time there, and I... Anyway, Ted arrived about midnight, I believe, and left a few hours later. I’m not really sure of the time, we... were drinking quite heavily.” She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. Her eyes were coldly unreadable behind her smoked glasses. “That’s really all I have to say on the matter,” she said firmly. “I’d appreciate if you’d pass it along to Sheriff Wolinski for me. I’m leaving for Lansing within the hour to join my husband. We’re dining with the governor tonight.”

She tugged the Doberman’s leash and turned away, but then hesitated. “Please tell Sheriff Wolinski that I am relying on his discretion. And yours. And by God, I’d better be able to. Do you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am,” David said, eyeing the Doberman. “Definitely.”

“I don’t like it,” Stan Wolinski said. “I should have questioned her myself.” They were in Tubby’s Restaurant in downtown Algoma, seated at Wolinski’s favorite table. The room was paneled in knotty pine, the furniture was dark oak, and the only decorations were trophy mounts of white-tailed bucks. The chandeliers were made of elk antlers. North-country chic.

“You can still question her if you like,” David said, sipping his coffee. “Lansing’s only an hour and a half away. If you leave now you can probably roust her in the middle of the governor’s after-dinner speech.”

“Very funny.”

“Sorry. The truth is, I’m a little disappointed too. I was hoping Crane was lying.”

“Maybe Mrs. Holcomb’s lying. Maybe she’s covering for him.”

“I doubt it,” David said. “She didn’t strike me as the sacrificial-lamb type. I got the impression that she only bothered to tell me the truth because it was expedient. If it had been more convenient to let Ted hang, she would have.”

“Poor Crane. He doesn’t seem to have much luck in love, does he?”

“That depends on how you define luck,” David said. “I’d say Inga Crane, as ill as she was, was ten times the woman Diane Holcomb is. And a lot better than Ted deserved.”

“But as you say, Inga was in rough shape and that can be a terrible drag, emotionally and financially,” Stan said. “Personally, I don’t think Crane has the backbone to carry the weight. Alibi or not, I still like him for the killing. And he’s the one Inga named.”

“Yeah, so she did. I’ve been chewing on that all the way back to town. Why did she name him?”

“Maybe because he did it,” Stan snorted. “Or at the very least, she thought he did.”

“You mean she woke up in the night, suffocating, realized her respirator was shut down, and just assumed Ted unplugged it? I doubt that. She couldn’t function without the machine for long and she couldn’t get out of bed without help. So with her dying breath she managed to scrawl his name? Very dramatic.”

“Sometimes death is dramatic.”

“But she didn’t want to die. At least, not yet. So why did she bother to scrawl his name? Why didn’t she just pick up the phone and dial nine-one-one? Her bedside phone worked, I used it to call you today.”

Stan stared at him a moment. “Are you sure about that?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then maybe whoever unplugged the machine did the same to the phone, or at least moved it.”

“Or perhaps Inga simply never woke up. The machine stopped breathing and a few moments later, so did she. But either way, she couldn’t have written the note blaming Ted.”

“Why not?”

“Because her mother said the book was open on the bed. She put it away to protect Inga’s privacy. If Ted killed her, he must have either unplugged the phone or moved it out of her reach and then replaced it afterward. But if he did that, he would have seen the diary.”

“But the only other person in the house was Inga’s mother. Surely you don’t think she could have done this thing?”

“If she had, she’d hardly have put the diary away, would she? No, I think the person that killed Inga knew Ted would be visiting his ladylove and knew Clare would be too zonked on medication to hear the machine’s alarm or any sounds Inga might make. Inga once told me that Ted was worried about how much her care was costing, that he wanted her to sell the house. With Ted out of the picture and the old lady clearly incompetent, I wonder who will inherit the estate?”

“You mean the niece? But she was out of town, staying with a girlfriend.”

“Was she? Did you actually check her story out, Stan?”

“No, I didn’t,” the sheriff said slowly. “I had no reason to. Until now.”

David was in his kitchen making a cup of midnight cocoa when he heard the crunch of tires on the driveway. He poured a second cup as Stan Wolinski eased quietly in the back door.

“Thanks, Doc,” Stan said, gratefully accepting the steaming cup. “Thought you might be waiting up for news. I’ve arrested Cindy Meyers. She claims it was a mercy killing. Says poor Inga was suffering and she only wanted to put an end to it.”

“Maybe that’s how it was,” David said, waving Stan to a seat at the kitchen table.

“She’ll have a tough time making that fly,” Stan said. “She arranged an alibi for herself and forged that death note to frame her uncle. I doubt a judge will buy the idea that she did Inga in out of the goodness of her heart. The friend Cindy claimed she stayed with in Alma folded like an accordion when she learned it was a murder case. She admitted Cindy’d told her she was seeing someone secretly and borrowed her car to drive back here.”

“A secret lover? Maybe she got that idea from Ted.”

“Possibly, although she’s certainly sly enough to have thought of it on her own. She stuck to her story about being out of town until I hit her with the phone record.”

“Phone record?”

“Sure. The thing is, Cindy knew about Ted’s little midnight visits and she wanted to be sure the EMT guys would find Inga’s respirator unplugged and Ted gone. So I figured she must have made a call to wake Clare on the way back to her friend’s place. I checked the records, and there was a call from a gas station pay phone just outside of Algoma to the Crane home. Cindy even used her credit card.”

“Not very clever of her.”

“She didn’t have any change,” Stan said wryly. “And she didn’t want to ask the attendant for any. She was afraid he might remember her. And now I’ve got a question for you, Doc. Something’s been bothering me all day. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

“Maybe I won’t,” David said. “What is it?”

“This morning at the Crane place when I asked you about the tooth marks on that plug? I got the feeling you had some doubts.”

“No, they were tooth marks all right.”

“I’m not saying you lied about anything, only that you might have had some doubts.”

“It did seem awfully... convenient,” David conceded. “There were several cords back there and Hector’d chewed on all of them. It seemed odd that the only one he unplugged was the one that really mattered.”

“But you didn’t say anything.”

“No. It was early in the morning and I hadn’t had time to think. It occurred to me that Crane might have pulled the plug, but if so, I wasn’t sure I should point the finger at him.”

“Why not?”

“Because Inga was my friend and she was in a lot of pain,” David said evenly. “It cost her every time she drew a breath. To be honest, I’d thought about pulling that plug myself more than once.”

“I see. But later, when Cindy asked for your help in implicating Ted, you went along.”

“I’d thought things through by then,” David said with a shrug. “And I realized that if Inga wanted to end things, she could have done so anytime just by leaving her mask off. But she didn’t. I think she intended to live long enough to see Hector healthy and strong and able to stand on his own. Maybe it was a foolish idea, but no one had the right to take it from her, not her friends, nor her family. Only Inga.”

“That’s straight enough,” Stan said, rising. “But next time, if you have any doubts, you tell me about ’em, okay?”

“I hope to God there won’t be a next time,” David said. “At least not like this one.”

“It came down pretty hard, I’ll admit,” Stan said, pausing in the doorway. “But at least one good thing came out of it. Your friend was in a lot of pain, and now it’s over.”

David nodded without answering. But he knew it wasn’t true. It wasn’t over. Not yet.

Four days after Inga’s funeral, Hector died. At the end, David eased his passing with an injection. The pup wouldn’t accept food from anyone but Inga and he was wasting away. David decided against trying to anesthetize Hector in order to force-feed him. It would only have prolonged the inevitable, and he couldn’t find it in his heart to compel Hector to abide in this world when he so clearly wanted to be gone.

Later that afternoon, David placed the pup’s small body in the Crawford furnace behind his office and cremated it. His ashes barely filled an envelope.

Dusk was falling and a hint of rain was in the air as David drove his Jeep through the gates of Holy Cross Cemetery. He parked near the entrance, then followed the tiled walkway to Inga’s grave. Her resting place seemed more final somehow than it had the day of her funeral. The flowers were gone now and fresh strips of green sod had been neatly laid down over the mound of raw earth.

He knelt in the grass beside her grave for a moment. He didn’t pray. He’d never been a religious man and it would have seemed hypocritical. After a few moments, he glanced around to be sure he wasn’t being observed. No one was near. The cemetery stretched away to the foothills beyond. The only other mourner in view was an elderly woman in a dark raincoat and she was far off and lost in her own thoughts.

David carefully raised the corner of a sod strip and slid the small envelope of ashes into the soil beneath, then gently patted the grass back into place. He wasn’t sure if what he was doing made any sense, even to himself. But he hoped that it might mean something to Inga.

He lingered as the shadows lengthened, waiting in silence for... something. Anything, really. A sign, perhaps. Some indication that he’d done the right thing. But nothing happened, nothing changed. He’d thought that burying Hector’s ashes here might give him a sense of closure. It didn’t. It felt like an empty, futile gesture. Maybe the cynics are right. Maybe the grave is truly the end of things after all. Eventually he tired of waiting, and rose on stiffened knees. But he hesitated. Something in the distance caught his eye. A movement. Probably just the wind in the trees. The Algoma hills rolled away into the dusky distance like shadowy waves, bathed in the blaze of the lowering sun. And in the dying light, the hills seemed to glow from within, as though they were being magically transmuted into gold, like the hills of Oz or...

Puppyland. That’s what Inga’d said those hills meant to her when she was a child. And perhaps that was why he felt no sense of her presence at the grave. She wasn’t here anymore. If she was anywhere, she would be there, in those shining hills, running free. Breathing free. But not alone. Hector had been so eager to follow her, surely he must be with her now. Perhaps he’d gone to show her the way back to the place he’d come from. Puppyland. Where the air is sweet, and the hills are so lush and lovely that puppies are born dreaming of them.