Suzann Ledbetter - Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

“Lucky for him, you’re riding shotgun,” he told the dog.

It sneezed and wiped dog snot on his trousers.

“Oh, I hear ya. Moby Dickhead’s just begging to get his blubber whipped.” Jack signaled for a turn onto Lincoln Avenue. “But a man’s got to choose his battles, and Ms. Pearl wouldn’t be happy about you seeing me shred that creep like a head of cabbage.”

He was still talking tough-guy trash out the side of his mouth and pleased with the effect when he almost drove past Euclid Terrace. Its four double-long blocks surrounded by a crumbling fieldrock wall were a tiny suburb back when lawn tennis and badminton parties were in vogue. By the ’70s, the Victorian mansions were shabby white elephants too costly to heat, cool or maintain.

Some chopped up into student apartments were now being restored to their single-family glory, but it was even money which would will out: regentrification or blight.

TLC, Ltd. occupied the former carriage house and stable spared from a suspicious fire that destroyed the main house ten or twelve years ago. Inside the home’s granite footprint was a lush, multiflora rose garden with a tiered bronze fountain at its center.

“Looks more like a funeral home than a boarding kennel,” Jack said, pulling into the graveled parking area.

It was nearly as quiet as one, too. A Sherwood Forest of evergreens meted the property’s lot lines. Disembodied barks and yaps filtered through dense privets enclosing the chain-link runs, but evidently, a customer the dogs couldn’t see or smell was nothing to get excited about.

Until the Maltese sounded off. Wriggling against Jack’s chest, she yipped and snarled like a streetfighter with a serious anger-management problem.

“Jesus Kee-rist,” he yelled, struggling to control the yipping, snapping ball of fur with teeth.

Slamming the car door with his knee, he held the pint-sized Cujo at arm’s length. “Listen up, sister.”

She licked her bared chops. Her earsplitting barks subsided to motorboat growls.

“I’m operating on four hours’ sleep. A three-hundred-pound loony tune’s stalking me. If this hunch of mine doesn’t pan out or the cops nab the burglar before I do, I’m screwed and so’s McPhee Investigations.”

If a Maltese could look thoughtful, the one dangling in midair seemed to be taking the situation under advisement.

“So are you with me on this? Or do I take you home and tell Ms. Pearl her spy washed out in the damn parking lot?”

Sweetie Pie blinked, then her head drooped and she heaved a shuddering sigh.

“Good doggy,” he said, cradling her under his arm. “And you’d better stay good while you’re here, too.”

Few vestiges remained of the building’s original purpose, apart from the redbrick exterior and the interior ceiling’s hewed beams and support posts. The plastered walls were painted a soothing willow-green and hung with framed hunt scenes, greyhounds in repose and a huge watercolor chart illustrating more dog breeds than Jack knew existed.

A high counter and a wrought-iron gate divided the reception room from a larger concrete-floored area. Jack supposed the second gate barred a hallway leading to the kennel proper. His apartment should be as clean as this canine hotel—and might be, if it had brass floor drains to hose it out with.

At a rubber-matted, stainless-steel table, a ponytailed twelve-year-old wielded a spiky comb and a blow-dryer. Standing at attention in front of her was a burly Rastafarian with paws. The dreadlocked dog seemed to be in a vertical coma, while she nimbly sidestepped across the row of metal milk crates to offset the height advantage.

A sharp rap drew hers and Jack’s attention to a glass partition set in the back wall. A fortyish brunette jabbed a finger at the phone held to her ear, then at Jack.

Nodding, the groomer switched off the blow-dryer, called “Be right with you” over her shoulder, then snapped her fingers. The Rastafarian she was grooming didn’t lie down on the table as much as it melted into a prone position.

The girl’s soccer-style kick sent a milk crate skirring across the floor. “Sorry I didn’t hear you come in,” she said, climbing on top of it. “I keep forgetting the door buzzer is broken and that dryer’s so loud I can’t hear myself think.”

“It’s okay.” Jack made a mental note to get his eyes and perhaps his head examined at the earliest opportunity.

The groomer with the megawatt smile, soft brown eyes bracketed by laugh lines and womanly curves hadn’t seen puberty for a couple of decades. Which was terrific, since otherwise, his visual appraisal would be morally reprehensible.

A vague smell of wet dog and flea shampoo was strangely pleasant, exotic even. Most of all, the definitely adult groomer was short. Very short. Short enough for a guy who measured five-ten in leather lace-ups to feel like John Wayne bellying up to the bar in a Deadwood saloon. If Jack had a cowboy hat to doff, he’d have drawled, “Well, hello there, li’l lady.”

“Cute dog.” She scratched the Maltese’s wispy goatee. Not even a suggestion of a wedding band blemished the appropriate ring finger. “What’s her name?”

For the life of him, Jack couldn’t remember. Then he did, and wished the amnesia were permanent. “Fido.” He swallowed a groan. “Yep, good ol’ Fido. No middle name or anything. Just…you know…Fido.”

“Uh-huh.” She chuffed. “Sure.”

“No, no, really. It is.” Jack stopped himself before swearing to it, but his tone dripped with sincerity—although it was a bit soprano for any kinship to the Duke. A deeper, manlier chuckle preceded, “You’ve been around dozens of dogs, right? Hundreds, maybe. But I’ll bet this is the first, the only one you’ve ever met that was actually named Fido.”

On closer inspection, her velvet brown eyes were older, wiser and sadder than a thirty-something woman’s should be. It aroused Jack’s curiosity and an inner Don Quixote he thought was deader than Cervantes.

“Okay,” she said, “no bet. I’ve never met anybody who named his dog Fido.” Her expression implied she still hadn’t. “Do you have a reservation?”

“Uh, no.” Dogs needed reservations?

“It’s a good thing she’s small. We’re full up on medium and large boarders.”

The groomer reached for a clipboard, paged through several sheets, then frowned. “Except if she needs to stay past the weekend…”

“Just overnight.” Jack McPhee, private investigator, finally nudged aside Jack McPhee the lovelorn nonromantic. “I’m a sales rep for LeFleur & Francois Jewelers in Chicago.” His shrug expressed a redundancy akin to specifying New York in reference to Harry Winston’s. “See, uh, our chief designer had an eleventh-hour brainstorm. The sales team’s flying in to decide if the piece will be included in the fall line, or held for next spring.”

His original cover bio would have been smoother without the impromptu embellishments. Then again, a bumbled inside-the-park homer still counted on the scoreboard.

“So, you travel a lot?” she asked.

“Constantly.” A gem—pun intended—of a detail clicked into place. “Normally I lug around a sample case.” He sighed. “Thank heaven for small favors, I can leave the case at home for once.”

The groomer regarded Fido née Sweetie Pie Snug ’Ems, then her presumed owner. “It’s none of my business, but if she hasn’t boarded at TLC before, what do you usually do with her when you’re out of town?”

An excellent question. Jack scrambled for an answer. “Ah, uh, um, well, Swe—er, Fido—was my mother’s dog, then she died. My mother, I mean. I sort of inherited her—the dog—but I do most of my traveling by car, so from now on she can go along and keep me company.”