Flawed Dogs Read online

  Hamish was silent for a moment. “I know you’re angry, Heidy,” he finally said.

  He suddenly stood up into the firelight. He was still in his pajamas, and his hair was long and mussed. “I knew how to sight the slightest detour in the backbone of a Pookishtan dingle hound from two hundred feet. I could massage out the kinks from the curls of a crested Capetown kinkapoodle. I knew how to nurse twenty puppies with twenty bottles with two hands and another five with my feet! Twenty!”

  Hamish pointed at Heidy. “But I couldn’t braid a six-year-old girl’s ponytail.”

  “I do my own braiding,” said Heidy, not buying it for a second.

  He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry. Parenting you would’ve made as much sense as Cassius here herding sheep.”

  “The horror,” said Cassius. “The grass stains.”

  Heidy felt the bag on her shoulder move. The dachshund wanted out. I do too, thought Heidy.

  Hamish collapsed back into his huge chair and put his face in his hands. He spoke quietly this time. “It . . . it was me who dreamed of finding a champion Tibetan yak nibbler hound. It was my dream. But when the hot air balloon went down in the storm over the Himalayan mountains, it wasn’t me in it. It was your parents. I had sent them instead.” He looked up at the little girl. “Me. It should have been me.”

  Hamish looked empty. The dogs in the paintings seemed to peer down at the rumpled man with cold judgment.

  “I think I died too, Heidy. This was no longer a place for life. Or show dogs. Or little girls.”

  He collected himself and stood again. “But you’re older now. There’s something I want you to see.”

  Hamish moved unsteadily toward the towering window, covered with a heavy curtain tapestry. “All I want now . . . is for you to stay. All this . . . McCloud Heavenly Acres will be yours. Soon. It’s time you made it so. This house. This world. Yours.”

  “Mine?” sputtered Heidy.

  She suddenly noticed Mrs. Beaglehole standing in one of the room’s dark corners, listening and watching her carefully, quietly. Cassius sat next to her, doing the same. The huge poodle rose and moved to Heidy, where he slipped his long bony nose into her hand dangling at her side so that her fingers cradled his chin. He looked up at her with coal black eyes. “No. Ours,” said Cassius.

  She pulled her hand away.

  Hamish drew back the window curtains, flooding the room with dazzling sunlight. Heidy looked out the window and gasped.

  The entire population of Piddleton was in the backyard. Cars covered the nearby hills, brightly striped tents sat amidst the verdant gardens and people milled about the sprawling lawn in their finest Sunday clothes. The women were festooned in sparkling bracelets and astonishingly large hats in the shape of inverted serving bowls. Men sported two-toned shoes and pressed cream trousers. Children chased each other and dropped ice cream onto lace-trimmed skirts.

  And each gloved hand held a leash, at the end of which was a strutting hound of traffic-stopping beauty . . . of brushed and curled and poofed fur glistening like woven gold . . . and noses and backbones aligned more perfectly than the pyramids of Egypt. The ancient oaks overhead seemed almost to bow at the sight of so much naked dog glamour passing below them.

  The pampered paws moved toward a central clearing on the lawn, around which hundreds of white folding chairs awaited the pressed linen bottoms of their proud owners. A woman with a clipboard stood waving in the center.

  “It’s a dog show,” said Heidy, staring below, guessing correctly that it wasn’t the Spring Tractor Pull.

  “The Piddleton Open,” said her uncle, without zeal. “Held here at McCloud Heavenly Acres every year for the past hundred. Go down there and dip in your toes, Niece. It’s your new pond.”

  “Mine?” asked Heidy again, eyes wide, incredulous. She looked down into the rolling ocean of flowered hats and perfumed spaniels as she would lava. “Are you coming with me, Uncle?” She looked up to see that she was alone. “Uncle?” she whispered into the room’s darkness. There was only silence. The firelight flickered on the faces of the dogs in the paintings staring down, now at her.

  EIGHT

  $180,000

  Out! There’s that word again, popping into her head for the second time today, pressing on the inside of her skull as she hurried through the front door toward the McCloud Heavenly Acres gate. Out! OUT!

  Now this word too: AWAY!

  Also these: Go! Now! Quick! Before anyone pulls you back into this cuckoo land of demented dog dips!

  She passed Violett carrying a tray of champagne glasses toward the backyard, baby Bruno strapped happily across her back. “Heidy! Where are you going?”

  “Fiji!”

  She kept moving, then suddenly stopped at the gate, remembering the dachshund bouncing around in her bag. She pulled the dog out and set him on the lawn at the edge of the woods, where he wobbled a bit as he looked up at her.

  “That was fun!” he said. “What’s next, pardner?”

  “Shh! Go! You’re liberated. Join a pack of wolves!”

  He looked at her squarely: “I have to tell you: banana taffy is my new favorite thing.”

  Heidy began backing away, but the little dog followed.

  “No! Go! GO!!” she yelled. “They don’t allow dogs in Fiji! They pee on the coconuts!” This was a guess. Her tone turned angry: “Go very far away. I’m doing the same.”

  The dachshund kept following. Heidy put her face down to his and was about to scream louder when he licked the underside of her nose.

  She froze at this unexpected attack.

  A familiar shriek from behind made her jump. She turned to see Mrs. Nutbush from the airport—still in her blue fur coat—run in and scoop up the dachshund, holding it above her head. “MY LOST LITTLE DUÜGLITZ TUFT!! Where have you BEEN, naughty boy!”

  The dog looked as if it was about to be eaten. Which, in a sense, it was.

  Heidy looked down the road to freedom. Then she looked back at Mrs. Nutbush, terrified dog in hand.

  “Arrrgghhh . . .” muttered Heidy under her breath as she pulled the little dog from the woman’s grasp, giving him the sternest angry-nun look that she could muster. “Naughty boy is right! Always chasing big . . . blue . . .” She looked at Mrs. Nutbush. “. . . critters.”

  “Well, n-n-now, who are you and why do you have my Duüglitz-tufted Austrian red dachshund?” stammered the flustered woman, reaching for the shaking animal. Heidy backed away.

  “I’m Heidy McCloud. And this is . . . this is, uh . . .”

  She needed a name. Her imagination failed her:

  “Sam. My dog Sam.”

  “Sam? SAM?” repeated Mrs. Nutbush, suspicious.

  “Yes! Good ol’ Sam . . . the Lion.” An entirely perfect name, Sam the Lion. Heidy looked down at Sam and gave him a little eyebrow flash, which is more a warning than a wink, meaning: We’re both in it up to our butts now, pal.

  Sam looked back at her in panic. “Do NOT hand me back to the blue and hairy woman,” he said. “I will throw up taffy and fries on her.”

  Mrs. Nutbush narrowed her eyes and leaned in to Heidy. “I think the police might like to know why a discarded snot-nosed orphaned McCloud has a one-of-a-kind $180,000 Duüglitz dachshund,” she sneered.

  Heidy’s eyes popped. $180,000?

  She looked down at Sam. “You poop rubies?”

  “WHY WOULD YOU HAVE SUCH A DOG?!” demanded Mrs. Nutbush.

  Good question.

  Heidy opened her mouth. Nothing.

  “It was a gift from her uncle,” said a voice from behind. It was Miss Violett, holding a punch bowl containing a humming baby Bruno. “Goodness, no reason to involve the police with an honest misunderstanding, Mrs. Nutbush,” she said as she laid a gentle hand atop Heidy’s strewn hair and stared carefully into the girl’s surprised face. “You’re late, Miss McCloud. The competition is about to start. Take . . . Sam the Lion there and hurry on to register.”

  Heidy, to
o confused to argue, moved back through the gate, past the huge dog-shaped bushes and toward the house. She looked back at Miss Violett, who gave her an eyebrow flash.

  Nobody before had given her an eyebrow flash.

  A smiling Violett turned to a shocked Mrs. Nutbush. Violett daubed her eyes with a corner of her apron. “Heidy and Sam’s first show! A big moment for all of us.” Sniff.

  Mrs. Nutbush snorted a suspicious snort, pushed past Violett and stomped after the girl holding her $180,000 Duüglitz dachshund.

  Heidy walked as if in a trance . . . back toward the dreadful place that she had just run from. Sinister cosmic forces beyond her understanding had seized her life, she figured. All she could do was put one foot in front of the other and not fall over.

  Carrying Sam and his Duüglitz-tuft-whatever thing, she stumbled toward the jostling crowd and their trash-can-lid hats and their hydraulic bosoms and their powdered, pooferized dogs and the gathering realization that this was going to be the end of her life.

  She found herself at the end of a long line of fancy people with fancy dogs at the center of the McCloud Heavenly Acres back lawn. She stood frozen in dazed terror, gripping Sam close to her chest. Upside down.

  She was in a dog show. The horror.

  The competition was about done. Heidy became dimly aware of people clapping and cheering. She looked up to see a beaming Mrs. Beaglehole getting back in line after showing the dazzling, showstopping Cassius. The people in the surrounding lawn chairs clapped loudly while Mrs. Beaglehole smiled triumphantly and made a little bow to the crowd. The big poodle had won the Piddleton best in show for the past three years. He would grease this one, and Mrs. Beaglehole knew it.

  The world championship Westminster show in New York City lay in the future. Cassius would win best in show. The most beautiful dog on the planet. They both knew this.

  “Wait a minute, ladies and gentlemen,” announced a lady with a microphone and clipboard at the center of the lawn. “A last-minute entry has been added. It’s . . . oh, what a lovely surprise . . . Heidy McCloud, Hamish McCloud’s niece! And her Austrian red dachshund . . . Ham the Lion.”

  “Sam,” corrected Heidy in the tiniest whisper.

  The crowd went dead silent.

  A shocked Mrs. Beaglehole and Cassius spun their heads to stare at her at the end of the line.

  Then a frantic, low murmuring raced throughout the crowd: “The little orphan McCloud girl!” “A McCloud hasn’t shown up at their own dog show for ten years!” “She looks like her mother.” “They say at school she set the nuns’ toilets to flush in reverse!”

  Heidy heard all of this, which made her mortification complete. She wondered if the others could hear the pounding of her heart.

  “Miss McCloud and Sam the Lion!” said the woman in the center, gesturing toward Heidy. “The judges await.”

  Heidy stared. The judges awaited what? Here was the dog in her hands. What else did they need?

  The clipboard woman gestured to her to do something.

  What? What did people do at dog shows? Hundreds of eyes were on her as her panic slipped into action, and she instantly went with her best guess. She put Sam on the ground.

  Then she began to dance.

  She’d been good at dancing, and her freestyle was legendary among the students at St. Egregious. So she played Elvis’s “Hound Dog” in her head, closed her eyes and let it all fly.

  Sam stared up at Heidy’s windmilling arms and legs and wondered if this simply was what all human beings suddenly did around noon every day.

  So he began to dance as well. Hopping. Twirling. Bouncing. Heidy smiled. He looked like he was on a hot skillet.

  Then Sam noticed Mrs. Nutbush. She was in the crowd and moving closer, dead set, he figured, on eating him. So Sam did what worked before and shot up Heidy’s legs to find high ground. In this case, to the top of her head.

  The tittering began. Tittering is polite laughter that never stays polite. Eventually, all three hundred dog lovers were spewing champagne punch through their noses in open hysterics.

  Heidy only danced harder, while Sam hung on. He found himself nose to nose with the judge.

  Her eyes went to the top of his head.

  The judge stopped laughing.

  “The Duüglitz tuft!” she said in an awed whisper normally saved for matters of religion or premium gossip.

  Her mouth dropped. Then slowly, one by one, Piddleton’s fanciest citizens began murmuring the same thing: “The Duüglitz . . . the Duüglitz . . . !”

  And one by one, they stood in solemn reverence. As if the pope himself had suddenly alighted upon Heidy McCloud’s head.

  The most supernaturally beautiful dog that any had ever seen was before them. Sam’s perfect proportions, crowned with his tuft born of almost inconceivably careful breeding, was almost more than many could take. Flemmie Croup in the back fainted and needed slapping.

  For a moment, Heidy thought that her dancing had won the crowd over . . . but then realized that all eyes were on Sam.

  She looked up at her uncle’s window. The curtains were parted enough for her to see that his face peered down. Suddenly it was gone.

  The judge approached and handed Heidy a large silver trophy cup while people clapped. Heidy had never won anything in her life other than time-outs in the closet from nuns.

  She looked around at the grinning, cheering strangers . . . who suddenly didn’t seem so strange anymore.

  The judge tied a blue ribbon around Sam’s neck and smiled at the dog. Sam grinned back. “I love banana taffy,” he said.

  NINE

  GOPHER

  The crowd roared their approval and then, very suddenly, hushed to silence. They parted as if somebody important was moving through. More murmuring: “It’s Hamish McCloud!” “Hidden for all these years!” “He’s come out!”

  Heidy’s uncle, still in his robe and pajamas, moved unsteadily toward her, wincing in the noon light, as would a prisoner emerging from a dark prison cell. He looked at Heidy, then at Sam. He plucked the dog from her head and stretched out his long torso, examining his ears, nose, toes, fur and finally the wonderful tuft. He looked back down at Heidy.

  “Where did you get him, Niece?”

  The crowd stared. Heidy saw Miss Violett standing off to the side with a plate of little sandwiches. She smiled sadly at Heidy and didn’t give her an eyebrow flash.

  Heidy looked up at Hamish and then at Sam. “He just . . . dropped into my life.”

  “Is he yours?” asked Hamish.

  “NO!” thundered another voice. The crowd parted yet again, revealing Mrs. Nutbush in her blue fur, stomping toward them across the lawn, waving a shipping receipt. Her pointy heels suddenly sank into a mushy patch in the grass and she stopped, struggling to pull free.

  Heidy dropped a horrified Sam to the ground. “RUN!” she screamed. “GO! RUN FREE! LIVE IN THE FOREST LIKE A GNOME!”

  Sam didn’t run. It had been a confusing day, but one thing was very, very clear: He didn’t want to live like a gnome. He wanted only one thing now. Looking up at Heidy, he knew exactly what it was.

  Mrs. Nutbush wobbled closer toward Sam, arms reaching out, eyes ablaze, fur gyrating and flying.

  Enough is enough, thought Sam the Lion. Time for action.

  He turned to face all the show dogs lined up beside him. He yelled one word, very loud and very clear.

  The other dogs pricked their ears. There are exactly four words that are genetically guaranteed to turn a gaggle of pampered lapdogs into a mob of killers. “Federal. Express. Guy.” are three.

  The fourth is the word that Sam now said.

  “Gopher.”

  At the sound of it, the dogs spun their heads and spotted a furry blue rodent of monstrous proportions.

  Mrs. Nutbush froze five yards from Sam. Four dozen of Piddleton’s finest purebreds blocked her way, noses flaring.

  Mrs. Nutbush flared her own nostrils right back at them.

  Sam u
ttered the magic word again:

  “Gopher!”

  “GOPHER!” they repeated like a chant. “GOPHER! GOPHER!”

  Good-bye.

  The human owners dove to avoid the explosion of their howling, barking darlings galloping across the lawn, leashes ripped from their gloved hands. Led by a snapping, saliva-spewing shih tzu named Mr. Tinkles, the fifty-two elegant show dogs chased a screaming Mrs. Nutbush and her blue gopher fur coat through the orange meringue on the dessert table, under the coffee cart and directly through the Heavenly Acres reflecting pond.

  Now, this is a shocking and violent part of the story, and there’s no need to dwell on the details. All that anyone needs to know is that by the time the Piddleton police department removed Mrs. Nutbush from the empty Heavenly Acres dog kennel into which she had dived, she was mostly naked but unhurt. Her blue fur coat, however, would be aggravating the delicate bowels of Piddleton’s parlor dogs for weeks to come.

  Hamish McCloud and Heidy watched as a babbling, blanket-wrapped Mrs. Nutbush was strapped to a gurney and driven away in an ambulance. Her car was towed by the police captain, who turned to Heidy and said that it might take some time until the woman recovered from her emotional collapse. Would Heidy mind looking after Mrs. Nutbush’s new Austrian red Duüglitz dachshund? . . . And give him a home?

  Heidy looked at Sam, who looked back at her. She gave him a little eyebrow flash.

  She thought he gave her one back.

  “Sure,” said Heidy quietly.

  Now there’s a word, thought Heidy. Home. Hamish put an arm across her shoulders, and they both turned to walk back toward her new one.

  TEN

  MURDER

  Heidy slept in a room by herself for the first time since she could remember. No other girls. No nuns. No locked doors.

  Only one dachshund curled up in the crook of her knees. A first for both.