A Dog's Life

by Myra Love

       Chapter I 

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mattie announced. “That old witch is of no help to anyone, and I won’t consult her. What an idea!”

I sighed. “Mattie, please, be reasonable!”

“You’re the one who’s unreasonable, Andy. When have you ever known me to need advice from…from…an old hag?”

I scratched my head. Mattie is my aunt and I love her. But sometimes she’s impossible. “Anita is smart and loves to help people solve problems,” I tried, “and I’m sure she can help you.”

“She’s a miserable old hag,” Mattie retorted, “and I’m sure she can’t.”

This argument had been going on for too long, so I changed the topic to dogs, and we parted in peace. Mattie is a real dog lover. She has four. She also has a huge problem with her husband Jim. Jim is a little too fond of betting. He bets on anything, sporting events, cards and dice, even whether or not it will rain on a given day. And he’ll bet with anyone who’s willing. Lately he’s been losing more money than he earns selling auto parts and accessories. Mattie, who is usually too proud to turn to anyone for help, finally turned to me.

There wasn’t much I could do. I lent her a small amount of money, knowing I’d probably never see it again. I can’t lend her anymore. A policeman’s salary isn’t great, and I have to save for a new house. Lisa and I plan to marry, and my tiny place is just too small for the two of us. We both agree on that. In fact, Lisa and I agree on most things. The only bone of contention at present is whether she’ll take my name when we marry.

“Lisa Dunn,” she says. “I’m used to it. It suits me.”

“No,” I reply. “It’s time for you to be done with Dunn.”

This always makes Lisa laugh, and I think she’ll come around eventually. I don’t know why it’s so important to me, but it is.

Mattie thinks Lisa is a stubborn mule even to consider keeping her maiden name. Mattie has strong opinions, and they are all old-fashioned. That’s not unusual around here. I don’t have any problem with Mattie’s views until they start to mess up her life. And that is what her unwillingness to insist that Jim stop betting is doing. “He’s the man of the family,” she says when I push the issue. “It’s not for me to tell him what to do.”

I’ve tried arguing with her, but she just refuses to listen. At first I told her that betting was illegal, and I could arrest Jim to throw a scare into him. That offended her. “I want you to help us, not throw him in jail,” she complained. Then I told her Jim should channel his betting into the state lottery. At least that way his losses would serve the public good. She took that in good humor. “He’d just add lottery tickets to his other betting,” she said with a slightly exaggerated sigh of resignation. Since then I’ve suggested counseling, changing their banking arrangements so his paychecks are directly deposited, and even moving out of town so he has less contact with people who accept his wagers. Mattie wasn’t having any of it. I offered to talk to him, and she got really upset, saying it would insult him to know she’d talked about him behind his back. Probably suggesting she turn to Anita Carswell, our town mediator, was not the smartest move on my part, but I really was and still am at my wit’s end when it comes to Mattie and Jim.

Although I was sorely tempted to talk to Anita myself, I didn’t. It wasn’t my business, and I didn’t want to quarrel with Mattie. Ever since my mother died, she and Jim are my only older relatives living in this part of the world. I didn’t want there to be hard feelings.

Mattie doesn’t understand my relationship with Anita Carswell. When I tell her that Anita is probably the fairest person I know, she accepts what I say. But when I talk about Anita being kind and a good friend, she just rolls her eyes. “She’s an awful old woman,” Mattie lectures me. “She was a tyrant in the classroom and she’d shake hands with the devil if it suited her. She may be fair, and that’s why Jim and I have voted for her for the past twelve years. But having her as the town mediator is one thing; I really wouldn’t want to have anything to do with her myself, and I don’t understand how you can spend so much time with her.”

Lisa and I both spend much of our free time with Anita Carswell. It’s not a lot of time, but it’s more than we spend with anyone else outside of Lisa’s family and my sister. Lisa is a member of a pen-collecting club that meets at Anita’s house. I personally think Anita is a little over the top when it comes to fountain pens, but it’s a harmless obsession, and she never spends money on pens that she needs for food or taxes. Lisa isn’t a collector herself, but she fixes pen and uses them. I think she owns about ten with different points on them. Anita has tried to get me interested in fountain pens, but the only one I have any use for is a retractable pen she gave me. Keeping track of a pen cap is just too much trouble when you’re trying to take down the facts of a case.

The other thing Anita and I have in common is amateur theater. Nowadays we go see shows together. I used to act and she did lights for a pretty good group in Harrisville. We’re just spectators now, but we have a good time together. Ever since Lisa and I have gotten serious, she’s been coming with us. She’s not exactly an enthusiast like Anita and me, but she always brings a pad of paper and pens, pencils, and charcoal so she can sketch audience members during intermission and before the show starts. She says she wishes the room didn’t have to be darkened during performances, so she could sketch the actors as well. She’s a gifted portraitist and has been earning a little money doing illustrations for a friend’s books. I never thought I would fall in love with a visual artist and I’m surprised one has any use for me since I can’t draw a straight line with a ruler.

I hoped that I wouldn’t regret my decision to do nothing and say nothing to Anita about Jim’s gambling. I told myself I was letting Mattie and Jim solve their own problems, but I didn’t really believe that. I wish I had paid more attention to my second thoughts. I really do.

Five days after Mattie rejected my suggestion that she talk to Anita Carswell, I got a phone call at five o’clock in the morning. It was the chief alerting me to a break-in at Mattie’s house. “Jim phoned,” he said. “Said someone got in and made a big mess of the living room. We’re checking it out right now.”

I wasn’t on duty until eight, so I wondered why he’d called me. I found out soon enough. “Whoever did it stole Dr. Phil,” the chief added. “It would help Mattie if you went on over there. She’s pretty torn up about it.”

Dr. Phil is the dog that Mattie and Jim acquired most recently, an English bulldog pup. Mattie names her dogs after celebrities, and Dr. Phil is one of her favorites. She watches his show regularly, knitting all the while. Mattie supplements Jim’s income by selling knitted doll clothes that she produces in front of the television set.

“Did Mattie ask for me?” I demanded, holding the phone between my shoulder and my ear while I put on my pants.

The chief sighed. “She’s in no condition to ask for anyone. Jim dragged her out of bed and downstairs and told her she’d have to pay for a new window and clean up the mess since Dr. Phil was her dog. Whoever broke in knocked over a bunch of stuff, cut up the upholstery, and generally had a field day. Mattie’s in shock. She just holds onto the other dogs and cries.”

“She probably needs a sedative,” I mumbled, struggling to get my shirt on without dropping the phone.

“She doesn’t want the doctor,” the chief explained. “Jim says she’ll calm down as soon as she gets busy cleaning. He was acting strange too, Mattie said between sobs, so I don’t know whether to trust what he said about Mattie.”

“Strange how?” I asked, buttoning my shirt.

The chief grunted. “All I could get out of Mattie was that he kept running around the living room yelling, ‘I’m gonna kill them. I’m gonna blow their damned heads off’. But when I asked him if he knew who did it, he clammed up and shook his head.” The chief hesitated. “You know, he has a little problem holding onto his money.”

I was relieved that the chief knew. “Yeah, Mattie talked to me about it, but she wouldn’t listen to anything I had to say.”

“We need to talk about it some more, Andy,” the chief said, “ But for right now, just get yourself down here.”

“Yes, sir,” I replied and hung up.

The mess was far worse than I’d imagined, even though the chief and Lisa’s brother Donald had cleaned up a little after the chief did the usual checks for fingerprints and footprints and any other evidence that might be lying around. “Funny,” the chief said as soon as I walked in, “but there are no footprints outside the broken window. No tire tracks either. How the guy got the dog out is a mystery.” He shook his head. “I’m going to check the perimeter of the house. No other windows were broken and Jim says all the doors were locked when he came downstairs after the break-in. Didn’t hear a sound, so he claims. And Mattie sleeps like a log, they both agree on that.”

I shrugged and looked over at Donald. Donald is the chief’s ward, and it’s pretty clear that the chief is grooming him to join the force. I hope that works out. Donald is basically a good kid who got into some serious trouble. He was a small time drug dealer for a while, but he seems to have turned his life around. Living with the chief and his wife Elsa has been good for Donald. He just hated living on the Dunn farm. For a while we thought he’d have to move out of state to be safe from his former suppliers, but once we rounded them up and sent them to state prison, the coast was clear, and Donald agreed to stay in town. The chief’s kids are all grown up, and I think having Donald around is their cure for empty nest syndrome. Lisa’s and Donald’s father and mother are satisfied with the arrangement as well. Though Donald made it clear that he did not want to live out on their farm anymore, he spends a little time with them each weekend.

“Hey, it’s my brother-in-law to be!” Donald called out when I walked through the door. After the chief finished filling me in on what they had done, Donald came over and gave me an awkward hug. “Sorry your aunt and uncle have to deal with this,” he said, waving his hand at the destruction in the living room.”

The place looked like a crazed kindergartner on steroids had used a sledgehammer instead of a crayon during a temper tantrum. Instead of writing on the walls, there were big holes. “Woo-whee, someone was angry!”

“You can say that again,” Donald agreed. “Hard to believe no one heard a sound.”

“Where are Mattie and Jim?” I asked.

“I sent him upstairs to keep her company,” the chief replied, coming into the room from the kitchen, where he’d been taking notes. “ “Why don’t you go up and talk to your uncle. He may be more forthcoming with you than he’s been with me. All he said when I tried to question him was that someone broke in and took the dog.” The chief shook his head. “ After I talked with Mattie, I asked who he wanted to kill, but he clammed up and wouldn’t say another word.”

The chief seemed so bewildered that I felt a little sorry for him. We don’t usually get to deal with crimes like kidnapping around here, even if the victim is a dog, not a person. So, I went up to talk to my aunt and uncle.

Jim was sitting on the sofa in the TV room at the top of the stairs. He told me over the blare of the TV that Mattie had finally stopped crying and gone into the bedroom to lie down. The dogs were with her.

I walked over and turned off the TV. “Want to tell me what happened?” I asked, sitting down on the chair near the window.

“Already told the chief,” he replied, sounding annoyed. “I was watching that show.”

“You don’t need to watch Court TV,” I said as calmly as I could. “You need to tell me what happened.”

He shook his head violently, then sighed, and let himself sag against the back of the sofa. “I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. I went downstairs to get a beer,” he mumbled. “Dr. Phil was gone and the place was a mess, so I called the police.”

“Where were the other dogs?”

“The little ones were locked in the bathroom with some raw hamburger. Whoever did it brought the meat with him.” He yawned. “At least he didn’t get it out of our refrigerator. That would have been too much.”

“You don’t seem very upset by all this,” I said.

He shrugged. “I was real upset at first, even though it ain’t my dog that got taken. Mattie owns, or maybe I should say owned that ugly critter. She paid good money for it. I really feel for her, but what can I do?” He pointed to an empty bottle of vodka on the coffee table. “A good stiff drink does wonders,” he explained. “I tried to get Mattie to take a drink, but she was too damned hysterical.”

I sighed. “The chief says you were running around swearing to kill whoever broke in. Any idea who it was?”

He squinted at me. “Don’t remember running around and yelling. Mattie says I did it, so it’s most likely true.” He shrugged. “No idea who could have done this. No idea at all.”

“For some reason the chief had the impression you might know. Why do you think he got that impression?”

“He’s a suspicious guy, I guess,” Jim replied. “Most cops are.” He reached out and picked up the remote from the table. “Why don’t you go talk to Mattie? I’m sure she’s still awake and would like to see you.”

Mattie was sitting on her bed with the three remaining dogs gathered around her. The largest of them, a Great Dane took up most of the space on the bed, squeezing Mattie, the whippet, and the toy poodle to the edge. When I entered the room, the whippet bounded off the bed to greet me.

“Hello, Andy,” Mattie said softly.

Before I had a chance to reply, the whippet stood up on his hind legs, put his forepaws against my leg, and stuck his snout in my crotch. He always did that when I came over to visit. 

“Now you stop that, Montel!” Mattie scolded, to no avail as usual. “You know you’re not supposed to bother people!”

The dog whined, and when I leaned over to put him back on all fours, he licked my face frantically. Mattie usually laughed when that happened, but this time she just sighed. “Oh, Andy, don’t encourage him!” she said listlessly.

I walked across the room to the only chair big enough to hold an adult man and sat down. The dog settled on my feet. “I’m really sorry, Mattie,” I said. “Can you tell me what happened?”

She sniffed and held a tattered tissue to her eyes. “Not really, Andy,” she replied, suppressing a sob. “I was asleep. Jim said he had to call my name out loud twice before I woke up. Then I went downstairs and saw…” She sobbed and shook her head. “Oh, it was horrible! Poor Dr. Phil! I’m sure whoever took him is going to turn him into horse food.”

I wanted to laugh. She was always getting confused like that. Instead of telling her that dogs don’t get turned into horse food the way horses get turned into dog food, I just nodded in what I hoped was a sympathetic way. “It must have been just awful, Mattie. Do you remember what Jim was doing when you got downstairs?”

“Of course I remember! He was running around like a lunatic yelling that he was going to kill someone. I couldn’t blame him for that, but it didn’t help my nerves or the situation.”

“So he seemed to know who’d done it?”

I asked tentatively.She shrugged, and her shrug made the bed bounce slightly. It seemed to me like there was entirely too much shrugging going on, between her and Jim, but I didn’t say anything. The Great Dane whined loudly and jumped off, making the bed shake even more. Then he walked to the door that I’d closed behind me and barked at it.

Mattie looked at me. “Judge Judy wants to go out. If you open the door, he’ll find Jim. He’s Jim’s dog, you know.”

I certainly did know. Mattie mentioned it every time I stopped by. It was probably my own fault that she did. The first time I’d seen the obviously male dog and heard her call him Judge Judy, I asked about the name. She explained that Jim had bought the dog and named him. “He said he wanted a big dog, a watchdog,” she said with a faint frown on her face. “Then he named the dog Judge Judy.”

“But why?” I asked, foolishly as it turned out.

“Well, he said we needed a watchdog since the other dogs are so small.”

“No, why did he give such a big, male dog a woman’s name?” I persisted.

“He didn’t want to pay to have a female dog spayed,” she explained.

“Okay, but why call the dog Judge Judy?”

“So he would fit in,” she said, slightly exasperated. “The other dogs are named for famous people.”

“But they’re named for men,” I protested.

“Well, that’s because they’re mine,” she said with a triumphant smile. “Judge Judy is his.”

The logic of it escaped me, but then much of the logic of Mattie’s life did. So, I stood up and let the huge dog out into the hall. When I’d seated myself I again, Mattie told me she had no idea whether Jim knew who’d broken in and taken Dr. Phil. “He didn’t say, ‘I’ll kill John Walsh or Marcus Fleming’,” she said. “So it might not have been about money after all. He owes each of them quite a bit, you see.” She shook her head sadly. “I do wish he wouldn’t gamble. But since he didn’t name names, I thought he was just letting off steam. He was really shocked. We both were.”

I nodded. She had a point, but I wasn’t ready to discount the chief’s impression. “So where were the other dogs?”

“What?” she replied, looking distracted.

“Where were the other dogs when the intruder took Dr. Phil?”

“I don’t know about Montel and Jerry,” she said, putting her arm around the brown toy poodle she’d named Jerry Springer, “but Jim had locked Judge Judy in the laundry room.”

So much for having a watchdog, I thought, but said nothing. She looked uncomfortable. “He’d been misbehaving, you see.”

“Who?”

“Judge Judy, of course. Who’d you think I meant? Jim?” she snapped. Then she said in her normal tone of voice, “That’s why Jim locked him up.”

I still had trouble keeping Judge Judy’s pronouns straight. The dog was male, but the female name made me want to refer to him as “she,” especially in his absence. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“He was misbehaving,” she repeated.

“Barking? Chewing stuff up?”

She shook her head. “He was bothering Jerry.”

“Oh!” I replied, knowing exactly what she meant when she said bothering in that emphatic way.

“Jim said he didn’t want his dog to act like that. People might think he was…well…funny.”

“But dogs are like that,” I said.

“Not the dog,” she snapped. “Jim.”

I was thoroughly confused, and it must have shown on my face.

“He was afraid that people might find out that Judge Judy was misbehaving with another male dog and think it was his fault.”

I honestly didn’t know what to say to that, so I just got up and said good-bye. I was going to have to tell the chief that I hadn’t been able to learn anything useful. And then I was going to take a long walk to clear my head.

© 2015 Myra Love - All Rights Reserved