Paws before dying

we left and before this jogger ran through there, so sometime in the night. Did any of the neighbors see anything?”
    “Not unless they got X-ray vision.” Kevin shifted in his seat. “The wall. Right.” I nodded. That’s where the graffiti were painted, on the inside of the concrete and stone wall that surrounds the park entrance. I’d assumed it was a WPA project. It had that carefully designed, perfectly constructed, labor-intensive look. “Anyway, someone could’ve noticed someone going in or coming out. Or maybe a car was parked there or something.”
    “Could be,” said Kevin unenthusiastically.
    “Maybe someone will remember something, someone who isn’t home from work, someone they haven’t talked to yet.”
    “Maybe,” said Kevin.
     
    Steve and I finally got some time alone that evening because Leah had a date to go into Harvard Square with a kid she’d met at dog training. His name was Jeff Cohen. He was tall and gangly, with curly dark blond hair destined to turn brown by the time he reached eighteen, and he turned out to be the handler of the snazzy black and white border collie I’d noticed in Bess’s class. Unfortunately, he didn’t bring the dog when he came to pick up Leah, but otherwise, he seemed pleasant and trustworthy enough. He shook hands with Steve and me, admired the picture of Larry Bird, and apologized to my disappointed dogs for leaving them home. Steve and I decided that there can’t be too much wrong with a Celtics fan who owns a border collie. Border collies are smaller than rough-coated collies like Lassie. I can’t write it in Dog’s Life or say it aloud in my own house, but the border collie is undoubtedly the most intelligent and trainable breed in the world. Trained border collies understand seventy or eighty commands and control flocks of sheep by staring at them with their eerie, hypnotic eyes. Owning one is a sign of good character. And he brought Leah home at exactly eleven.
    The next time I saw Jeff Cohen was on Thursday evening. He and his dog, Lance, were warming up for the ring in a grassy area by the parking lot of the Lincoln Kennels. The town of Lincoln is a rural suburb with lots of high-tech industry executives who build discreet glass and wood palaces in the forest, join the Audubon Society, buy Labs and golden retrievers, and have them trained and boarded at pretty, pastoral Lincoln Kennels. Jeffs dog looked at home in the country setting, and in spite of the muggy heat that would make most of the dogs lag, this one was keeping his strange, piercing eyes fixed on Jeff, who held himself rigid.
    “Jeff looks a little nervous,” I said to Leah as I killed the engine.
    “He’ll be all right,” she said. “Let’s go.”
    “We have to exercise them first,” I said. “Soiling in the ring is an automatic disqualification. Then we check in. Then we warm them up. Just a little heeling, sits, a couple of finishes. Nothing that even looks like real training.”
    I’d insisted on grooming and bathing the dogs. A lot of people don’t bother just for a fun match, but Marissa always maintained that turning up with a grungy dog tells the judge, the dog, and everyone else that you have no respect for the sport. For an indoor trial, I always dress up, and for an outdoor fun match like this one, I wear new jeans and a decent-looking shirt. Leah had French-braided her hair into an elaborate series of demure plaits and exchanged her multi-exercise outfits for a pair of jeans and a plain blue T-shirt she’d borrowed from me.
    Ten minutes later, when we’d registered and fastened on our armbands, we spotted Rose Engleman sitting in a folding chair near the Utility ring, which, like the other rings, was simply a roped-off rectangle in the middle of the field. Perched in Rose’s lap, Caprice was evidently assessing the competition. A couple of other people with real obedience dogs—a sheltie and a golden—were talking with her. Heather and Abbey, though, had set up their chairs so close to the ring entrance that they were all but in it. Between their chairs was a silvery gray polypropylene crate. A thermos and two cups sat on top of it. I assumed that Panache, Heather’s poodle, was inside.
    We’d have settled down near Rose, but it is against my principles to station a malamute anywhere near an obedience ring. No matter how perfectly the malamute behaves, something about the scent or appearance of the breed constitutes an unfair distraction to the