Bloodlines

too. If the AKC-registered mini dachshund you bought from Bill Coakley looks suspiciously like a pug, or if Coakley sold you a kennelful of cute little pet tapeworms, whipworms, and roundworms as well as the Pomeranian you wanted, complain! For a start, call Mrs. Appleyard, the Westbrook Health Department, the SPCA, the Humane Society of the United States, the American Kennel Club, and the United States Department of Agriculture.
    But I’m pretty sure that Mrs. Appleyard is wrong about why Bill Coakley informed on Walter Simms. I can’t prove it, but I have a hunch that my bribe worked. I’d bet that Bill Coakley wanted my five hundred dollars, tried to buy Missy back from Simms, and decided to get revenge when Simms refused to part with her.
    With regard to the Coakleys, I regret to report that, in spite of the recent scandal that hit all the papers (“Scabies Cases Traced to Local Kennel”), Your Local Breeder is still in business. Although Sarcoptes scabiei, the itch mite, is not yet registrable with the AKC, Janice Coakley apparently received a large shipment on a litter of Italian greyhounds flown in from Missouri. As I hope you’ve never had to learn, scabies itches like crazy. It’s caused by female mites that burrow in and lay their eggs under your skin.
    Oh, while we’re on that topic—under your skin—I have happy news about Gloria Loss, who kept the braids, lost the acne, and, at my suggestion, responded to an ad that read TATTOO FOR LOVE AND PROFIT. Gloria still doesn’t believe that we have a right to own companion animals, but she realizes that our dogs and cats are better off with us than they are in a research laboratory and that, at least until they’re all returned to the wild, a tattoo is the best protection we can offer them. And speaking of research laboratories, I’ll confess that I introduced Gloria to someone from my past who knows a lot about them and doesn’t like what he knows. Let’s just say that he’s committed to change, okay? And so is Gloria, of course.
    Steve offered to spay Missy free of charge, but refused to perform the surgery until I’d obtained written permission from her owner, Enid Sievers, or a signed document stating that Missy belonged to Malamute Rescue. I’d intended to call Enid Sievers, anyway. I wanted to have another go at persuading her to hand over Missy’s papers; I didn’t like the sound of the gentleman friend who’d recommended Bill Coakley’s boarding facilities.
    On the early March day when I stood on her doorstep, Enid Sievers’s house looked even more intensely raspberry than it had in February, almost as if the fruit had ripened. When Mrs. Sievers answered the bell and welcomed me in, she wore a chartreuse dress with dyed-to-match pumps. Prancing and yapping at her high heels was an incredibly cute little short-haired brown-and-white mixed-breed dog, half smooth fox terrier, I guessed, half something much smaller, anyway, a lively, yipping character with alert eyes and a bold expression. Within thirty seconds, he’d produced more noise than I’d heard from Rowdy and Kimi in the entire time I’d lived with them.
    Bending from the waist, Enid Sievers leaned down to the little dog and coyly shook an admonishing finger. “Friend, Pedro! Friend! Pedro, hush! Pedro, Mommy has company!”
    Pedro leaped in the air, danced in circles, and kept up the high-pitched barking. Eventually, though, Enid scooped him up in her arms and cooed at him until he quit.
    “Pedro is adorable,” I said. “Some terrier there, huh?”
    Enid Sievers’s expression was one I recognized immediately. I don’t usually see it, though; I just feel it spread across my own face whenever someone admires my huskies, my shepherd mixes, or, believe it or not, my beautiful Akitas. “Pedro,” she informed me, caressing the dog’s little head, “is a Chihuahua.” I sealed my lips. She read my face and asked in a tone of arch condescension, “You’ve never seen a Chihuahua like Pedro before, have you?”
    “No,” I admitted. “Actually, he seems a little, uh, bigger than usual.”
    “Well, that’s what I said when I first saw him,” Enid Sievers said. “So I said to the salesgirl, ‘Isn’t he big for a Chihuahua?’ But she explained that Pedro is supposed to be big like this because he’s a standard Chihuahua, not just an ordinary one. That’s why he was a little bit extra, of course. They’re very rare.”
    Rare? The standard Chihuahua is a member of