This Dog for Hire

stayed; I was there already, and it seemed as good a place to be as any. With Magritte asleep under my coat on Dennis’s vacated seat, I watched Mark Threlfall handle the springer spaniel Ch. Salilyn’s Condor to the win.
    I even stayed in my place to watch all the reporters and photographers rushing out onto the floor to take pictures of the pretty springer with his huge blue ribbon and sterling silver Tiffany trophy, his humans behind him, beaming.
    For just a moment, I let myself think about how much Dennis would have loved to have stood there with Magritte, and I got so sad, I nearly cried.
    The Garden was half empty by the time I woke Magritte and walked him toward the ladies’ room. Crates full of dogs, stacked three high on dollies like doggy apartment houses, were being wheeled out by grim-faced handlers. Better luck next time, I wanted to say. But I didn’t say anything. I thought they were pretty lucky already. They were still alive.
    I was only paying enough attention to where I was going not to step in some dog’s “accident” and not to trip over a leash, an empty dolly, or a very short dog, when something in front of me slapped my brain awake.
    I saw him from the back, only his shoulders were too narrow, his feet too slim.
    It wasn’t a him. It was a her.
    She was wearing a long camel coat, her hair tucked neatly into a black beret so that I couldn’t tell what color it was or if it was long or short.
    She took a step and turned toward me so that I could see not only her profile but her companion as well.
    It was Veronica Cahill, bending her long, graceful neck so that Louis Lane could take the white silk scarf he had been carrying for her around his neck and put it around her own.
    Too bad the case was closed, I thought as Magritte and I continued on our way to the ladies’ room. It would have been deliciously satisfying to pin something on those two.
    I still had questions I couldn’t answer. There was one less now. It had been Veronica Cahill who had come to the loft to remove the tape from Clifford Cole’s answering machine. Her perfume had made me sneeze a second time when she had come to see Magritte in the benching area. And one more. Why?
    Suddenly I found myself thinking about Beatrice and the time I had gotten stitches on my arm right after getting my first two-wheeler.
    “Don’t touch those,” she’d said as I poked around under the bandage. “Leave well enough alone.” “They’re my stitches,” I told her, “and I’ll do as I please with them.”
    “In that case,” she said, turning her back toward the sink and away from me, “whatever happens, you’ll only have yourself to blame.”
    Maybe the case was closed for Dennis, but I never had learned to leave well enough alone.

27
    You Can Send Your Dog

    THE CRUCIFORM LADIES’ room, swinging doors on two sides, was nearly empty when I walked in, schlepping my heavy coat, Magritte, and Magritte’s Nutro Max. Two handlers, armbands still in place, were at the sinks washing their hands. The aisle where the stalls were was deserted. There was no line of patient, chatting women, making friends while waiting their turn, no purses visible on the floor of the stippled gray stalls, no ugly crepe-soled, laced-up dog show shoes, facing forward, visible under the doors, no cries for toilet paper, hands fishing around in the neighboring stall, no toilets flushing, no one humming, laughing, or sobbing because their dog hadn’t taken Best, no nothing. When the handlers left, Magritte and I were alone.
    I went two-thirds of the way down the aisle, hoping for a cleaner stall that way, took Magritte in with me, hung my coat on the hook, and propped the bag of dog food against the front left pilaster. The moment I sat, Magritte on my lap and licking at my face, I heard the door open, the one on the side that led to the benching area, the one I had used.
    I was doing nothing but wishing I had thought to use the handicapped stall at the far end of the aisle, where I could have put Magritte on the floor and peed in peace, when I beard the sound of stall doors opening and closing, one, then the next, then the next, coming toward me.
    I wondered if they were about to close the Garden and wanted to make sure they weren’t locking anyone in the john, but I checked my watch and it was much too early. I was sure the cleaning stall' would be here for hours.
    Maybe the first few stalls were out of toilet paper, It was late in the day, after