Bloodlines

you don’t mind me saying so, you’re new at this,” she said firmly. “Take any pet shop dog you want, and go back far enough, and what you find is a reputable breeder somewhere there. It can happen to anyone. How far back?”
    A woman and a stunning Afghan hound, a snood on his head to protect his ears, appeared on the other side of the display of leads.
    “Betty, could we, uh... let’s move somewhere else, huh? Where we can talk.”
    Rowdy followed me to the Cherrybrook counter, where I paid about half what the same collars, treats, conditioner, and chew toys would’ve cost at Puppy Luv. Then Betty, Rowdy, and I made our way through the narrow, crowded aisles between the baby-gated rings to the cafeteria, bought some of that poisonous dog-show coffee, and stood at the vacant end of a long, high counter.
    “From what I can tell,” I said, “Lois sold a bitch to a puppy mill. I’m sure she didn’t mean to, but Missy’s dam is Icekist. Do we tell her?”
    “Who’d Lois sell to? Who’s the breeder?”
    “Some guy I’ve never heard of. Walter Simms, his name is. You ever hear of him?”
    Betty shook her head and said definitively, “He’s not from around here.”
    “Probably in Missouri,” I said. “Minnesota. Iowa. Whatever.”
    Although I didn’t know where Walter Simms was, it seemed to me that I knew who he was. I could see his face, fleshy, ugly, and brutal. His nose was like a pig’s, with open nostrils that spouted clumps and tufts of white hair. His laugh was ugly, too, and rotten teeth fouled his breath.
    I cleared my mind. “The other names, on the sire’s side, all sound like puppy mill dogs, and there’s a whole lot of inbreeding.”
    “Puppy mills do that. Look, Holly, I don’t know how well you know Lois.” Betty paused. “She breeds a lot of litters.”
    “I’ve heard,” I said. “Betty, do we tell her? Or...?”
    “You never know.” Betty stretched up an elbow and leaned on the counter. “And if it happened once, it could happen again. She’s got to do a better job of screening. It’s not just her. We all do. But, you never know, maybe she can try and buy the bitch back. It’s been done before. You end up paying two or three times the purchase price, but you get your bitch back.”
    “It’d be worth it. It’d be worth anything.”
    “Yeah,” Betty agreed. “You want me to tell her?”
    “Yes,” I said with no hesitation. “It might be—”
    “She’s going to want to talk to you. She’s going to need to see the papers.”
    “Rowdy, get over here,” I said. In search of crumbs, he’d snuffled his way to the end of his six-foot lead. “Good boy. Stick around, huh? Anyway, I don’t know if I can get the papers, but I can show her the pedigree. I don’t have it with me, but I copied it down. This woman, Enid Sievers... Look, I know this sounds crazy, but she wants to keep the papers. They have sentimental value or something. They belonged to her husband.”
    “People’ll buy them, you know. Puppy mills will. What’s she...?” I could see Betty envisioning Enid Sievers as a sharp, sneaky character with connections in the canine underworld.
    I smiled. “Enid Sievers is just not that kind of person. I really don’t think we need to worry about that. She’s, uh, sort of vague. I mean, I think she really is the kind of person who’d give up her husband’s dog and insist on keeping the papers. She struck me as being sort of, uh, out of touch with reality.”
    Betty didn’t trust my judgment. “She tell you about the husband?”
    “She mentioned him. Edgar.”
    “She tell you that he knew he was dying when he bought the puppy?”
    “No.” Dog-show coffee is bad enough to make anyone choke, but I’d barely sipped mine. “You mean...?”
    “Yeah. I do mean. From what she says, he walked into that goddamned Puppy Luv, told ’em all about how sick he was, he always wanted an Alaskan malamute, it was his last dying wish, and then he walked out with the dog. You like that?”
    “That’s sick,” I said. “He bought a puppy when he knew...? And with a wife like that?”
    “Yeah, well, you’re young,” Betty said. “Except for dogs, it’d be a pretty sick world out there. And even with them. Look, I've got to get back to my dogs. You coming with me?”
    “Sure,” I said, following her, “if you want. Unless it’d be easier...”
    “Yeah, maybe it would,” Betty said. “Give me ten minutes or so, would you? We’re set up over