Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 17, No. 4, April 1972

Satisfaction by Virginia Long

The name is the game, dear reader, and may you find ‘satisfaction.’

He was the most beautiful animal I’d ever seen. He was white — not the cold, colorless white of an albino, but a rich, vanilla-ice-cream white that nourished your eyes while you stared; and your soul, too, if you loved dogs as I do.

My spirits hit a new low as I looked at my dog-show program and reread the name: Kileyken’s Nemesis, Best of Breed, Best in Show. I could never swing the deal now. With an across-the-board winner like Nemesis and all the publicity about it, Kiley Kennels was beyond my reach.

For three years, ever since I retired from the Air Force, I’d been dropping by to see Mrs. Kiley at least once a month, mostly just to talk and to see the German shepherds, but also to renew my offer to buy the kennels from her. If I ever had a real, honest-to-goodness, technicolor dream, owning those kennels was it.

Mrs. Kiley was getting on — sixty-five or seventy, I’d guess. She was a little woman, not frail but short and sturdy. Her white hair fluffed out around her head like a tired halo, and her face itself was ordinary except maybe for an odd look around her eyes. It was a sort of wary, waiting look that I couldn’t figure out. I remember when I first started stopping by the kennels to look at the dogs, sometimes I’d feel those eyes following me while I wandered along the pens, and my scalp would begin to prickle; but after three or four visits and some conversation, the feeling disappeared and we got to be pretty good friends — at least as good friends as you can be with someone who never uses two words where one will do, and never smiles at you or anyone else. I actually began to like the old girl. There was a dedicated, no-help-needed air about her I admired.

It was hard to figure why she worked so hard. She ran the whole thing single-handedly as far as I could see. I had the impression she didn’t need the money, and I couldn’t see that she had any particular love for the animals, but she did seem to have a sort of grim determination to develop one special dog — a white German shepherd that would outclass anything in its field.

In three years of looking over each new litter, I’d been positive at least three times that she’d done it, but she wasn’t satisfied. One had beige tipping on the hair around its ears, another had a fringe of brown on its tail, and the other had dark ridges above its eyes. It had to be perfect for Mrs. Kiley and, looking at Nemesis now, I could see that she’d finally brought it off. He was perfect in every way — full-bodied, strong, bright-eyed and weighing in at a good eighty pounds. He made every other dog in the show look like a dog.

I didn’t go by to congratulate Mrs. Kiley. Her gain was my loss, you might say, and I knew I couldn’t afford to boost my offer any higher than I already had over the past year. Not that I’m such a poor loser, but I just thought it might be easier to be a good loser tomorrow.

That’s why I was so surprised to get a telephone call from her, first thing the next morning. I’d slept late after an evening of moderate sorrow-drowning, and I was still half asleep when the phone rang. I fumbled past my untasted coffee and somehow or other got the receiver to my ear right side up.

“Mr. Dunham? This is Margaret Kiley. Are you still interested in buying the kennels?”

That brought me wide awake like a shot, and I assured her I most certainly was. Then I remembered I’d already reached my limit on an offer, and she could ask almost anything now and get it. It took a few minutes to get my predicament across to her, but it seemed that it wasn’t any problem at all.

“I accept the offer you made last time I talked with you, Mr. Dunham. I appreciate your concern for the niceties but, I assure you, Nemesis has already given me the satisfaction for which I had hoped.”

“But Mrs. Kiley,” I sputtered, “at least you should keep him. My offer didn’t cover a prize winner — just the kennels and the other dogs. He’s a spectacular animal and you’ve worked a long time to produce him.”

“Fifteen years, to be precise,” she answered firmly. “But as I indicated, he has served his purpose. Do we have a deal?”

“You bet we do!” I said, before she could come to her senses, and we made an appointment to sign the papers that afternoon.

As soon as I had dressed and tossed down a swallow of my lukewarm coffee, I went straight to the bank and did a lot of bonds-savings-checking account shuffling to raise the ready cash for the deal. It’s lonely being a middle-aged widower, but I could see that there was one advantage to it when financial matters came to a head. I didn’t have to consult or convince anyone about the wisdom of’ the investment and the only signature anyone needed was mine. Too, I knew I’d be a lot less lonely when I had a yard full of those beautiful dogs for company. I’d been drifting from one thing to another ever since I retired from the service, and I knew this would be something that would keep me happy for the rest of my life. People are all right, I guess, but I haven’t known many I wouldn’t swap for a good dog.

I was so afraid the old lady would change her mind, I got to the kennels twenty minutes early. I walked into the office section of the living quarters, found it deserted, and paced nervously for a few minutes while I considered all the things that could have gone wrong; someone had doubled my offer; all the dogs had come down with a mysterious, incurable disease and she was too distraught to see me; she had changed her mind and was ashamed to face me. When I found my imagination getting too fertile, I decided to walk around and look for her, or at least for a clue to the catastrophe.

I followed an odd sound that hit my ears as soon as I stepped outside the office door. Chunk, chunk, chunk, it went, as steady as a heartbeat, and I finally traced it down to a large shed near the exercise runs. I stuck my head in the door and saw Mrs. Kiley at a high wooden counter, rhythmically swinging a big cleaver. When my eyes had adjusted to the dimmer light, I could see that she was chopping meat into fist size pieces. She finished as I watched and, using the flat side of the cleaver, pushed the pile off into a vat that bubbled over a low burner at the side of the counter. As she turned, she caught sight of me and glanced quickly around her as if to see what else needed to be done. Then she waved me in as she planted the heavy cleaver in the wooden block with a vicious, practiced swing that shook me as well as the counter. Who would think an old woman could put that much weight behind a thing that size?

She moved over to the other end of the counter and started an efficient-looking grinding machine. Over its noise, she yelled, “You might as well start learning something about the operation. This is where I prepare the dogs’ food. Mix it all myself.”

She picked up a long, slender bone and started feeding it into the grinder. The scream of the machine made conversation impossible for the next few minutes, so I just watched her.

A funny sensation crept over me as I watched. The long bone she held moved in slowly and steadily, but it wasn’t the bloody bone that really bothered me. It was the expression on her face. She looked almost blissful. She’d had an odd inflection when she talked about ‘satisfaction’ in our telephone conversation, but this was more than satisfaction. This was consummation!

I kept my eyes on her in a sort of horrified fascination while she maneuvered the long bone and a couple of smaller ones through the machine. Then she abruptly flicked off the switch, and the sudden silence seemed more violent than the scream of the grinder. I must have jumped a foot. I must be getting neurotic over this deal!

If she noticed my uneasiness, which I was feeling pretty foolish about, she ignored it as she moved briskly around the shed, explaining the proportions of meat, bone meal, cereal and vitamins for her special mixture of dog food. She showed me the ledgers listing the ranches and dairy farms in the vicinity that supplied her with their culls from butchering. I could see that she ran a very economical business, with no wasted material or motion.

Maybe the prospect of getting out from under the pressure of business worries and feeding schedules had cheered her, because for the first time since I’d known her she seemed relaxed and almost jovial. We chatted like old friends while we walked the fifty yards or so back to the office, and I took advantage of her good mood to ask something I’d often wondered about.

“Mrs. Kiley, how did you ever get started with these dogs? Why the obsession with a perfect white German shepherd?” I wished I hadn’t used that word, but she didn’t seem to mind.

“I didn’t get started. My husband did.”

I was quiet for a minute, acknowledging for the first time that there must have been a Mr. Kiley once, even if I’d never thought about it.

She went on slowly. “He wanted a championship white German shepherd all his life, and he finally bred one.”

I waited for her to continue but she walked silently, her head down and her face again closed and set. Her expression didn’t invite further questions, but I couldn’t help it. “What happened to it — the dog?”

She gave me a long, expressionless stare as we reached the door to the office and she stopped with her hand on the latch, looking off across the yard toward the run where Nemesis stood watching us. Finally, she spoke: “It died the same night as my husband, fifteen years ago.” She opened the door and walked in, and I knew the conversation was over.

I didn’t have time for curiosity. The lawyer we had agreed on was waiting for us, and we went over the papers he had drawn up. There were a couple of things I didn’t understand but he explained them to me, so we concluded the sale, signed the papers, and I handed over a certified check in full payment.

I felt wonderful, better than I had for a good many years, and I hoped Mrs. Kiley was as happy to have it all settled as I was. It was hard to tell, but there was a satisfied expression on her face and that spooky, waiting look was gone from her eyes, so I decided she was.

She cheerfully agreed to stay a few days to show me the ropes. She was a good instructor and besides explaining all the details of the daily operation, registration procedures and feeding schedules, she somehow found time to clean the house, office and sheds like I’d scheduled a white-glove inspection. She’d stored a week’s supply of dog food in the refrigerators, polished the trays, vats and grinder till they shone like mirrors, and scrubbed the counter till it was white. I knew I’d never be able to keep things up like that, so after she left I found a good, reliable housekeeper who would do the cleaning and food preparation while I managed everything else.

The first month I was so busy I hardly had a chance to realize that my dream had really come true, but finally I adapted to the routine and found time to enjoy it all. I got to know the dogs, their personalities and peculiarities, and played midwife to a beautiful tawny bitch that upped my inventory by four pups. Best of all, I made friends with Nemesis. What a magnificent creature he is! I’ve gotten more satisfaction out of just knowing that dog than out of owning all the rest.

It was the nagging memory of that word ‘satisfaction’ that finally drove me to the public library. I kept thinking of Mrs. Kiley’s use of the word, the expression on her face in the food shed, and her one mention of the other white dog.

So last night I took a run down to the library and asked for the bound copies of the town newspapers of fifteen years ago. I started with January and worked my way through the months. It was May before I found it. It was on the front page of the Courier, and there was a fuzzy picture showing a Kiley Kennels sign much like the one that’s still standing, pens in the background and several police cars around a covered figure on the ground. The story was short and to the point:

There was a little more about the lack of any solid clues in the case, but I didn’t read it. I just sat there and thought for a long time.

I thought about Mrs. Kiley saying that Nemesis had “served his purpose,” and I shuddered as I remembered the way she handled the cleaver, and the sound of those long, slender bones screaming through the grinder. But who’d ever believe the weird story that was taking shape in my mind? Talk about a lack of solid clues!

I slowly folded the newspaper, handed it in at the desk and walked outside. I sure don’t have much sympathy for a guy who shoots an old man and feeds doped hamburger to a fine dog. Besides, like I said, I never knew many people I wouldn’t swap for a good dog.

I got in my car and drove home to Nemesis. I’d never given his name an awful lot of thought, but you can bet old Mrs. Kiley did.