Page 12 of A Matter of Pedigree (A Carole and Poopsie Mystery #1)

C arole cooed to the dog as she gently lifted her up.

Poopsie had that glassy-eyed stare she knew was trouble, and Carole handled her gingerly, fearing she might snap at her.

Poopsie just closed her eyes, however, and resumed her nap, resting her chin on Carole’s shoulder.

The dog wasn’t very big, small for a Brittany at about twenty-five pounds, but what with those killer heels and all, Carole was out of breath when she finally got into the examining room and set Poopsie on the stainless-steel table.

She continued to coo softly and stroked her head, hoping to prolong her nap as long as possible, but Poopsie was definitely waking up.

“Give her a minute,” Carole warned the vet, a plain young woman in a white coat and thick eyeglasses with round black frames. “She’s just waking up, and it takes her a min ute or two …”

“I thought you said she was barking hysterically,” said the vet, reaching for Poopsie’s neck.

Predictably, Poopsie snarled and snapped at her, but thanks to divine intervention or maybe just grogginess, she didn’t connect. Carole exhaled a grateful sigh and looked upward, at the ceiling.

“Whoa,” exclaimed the vet, jumping back. “She is skittish, isn’t she.”

“The trainer says it’s fear aggression,” said Carole, who was now struggling to keep a wriggling and protesting Poopsie on the table now that her fight-or-flight reflexes had kicked in.

“Yeah, well, I think you can let her down,” said the vet, checking the chart. “My colleague examined her recently …”

“Only a month or so ago.”

“Right. And she seems quite healthy. I have no problem prescribing something to relax her,” continued the vet, scribbling away while keeping a nervous eye on the dog.

Poopsie was at the door, scratching furiously. “Why don’t you take her out to the car? She’ll be more comfortable there,” suggested the vet. “I’ll meet you at the front desk.”

“Righto,” said Carole, relieved, picking up the leash, which was trailing on the floor.

She opened the door, Poopsie charged out, pulling her across the waiting room to the exit, where she again began her frantic pawing and scratching at the door.

The same scene was repeated in the parking lot as the small dog dragged the grown woman to the car and waited, shivering, with her tail tucked between her legs, until Carole opened the door and she jumped inside.

Carole marched back inside to face the music.

“I have to tell you,” said the vet, peering through those glasses, “that unless you undertake an intensive program to train that dog, you are looking at trouble down the line.”

Carole nodded obediently while groping in her bag for her checkbook.

Been there, done that, she was thinking, but she didn’t say it.

Instead, she dutifully took the name of the trainer the vet suggested, wrote the check, and left holding tight to the vial of magic pills.

Back at the car, she climbed into the back seat next to Poopsie and gently embraced her with one arm while tickling her chin with the other hand.

Slipping a finger between her jaws, she gently pried her mouth open and poked one of the tablets down her throat.

Quickly wrapping her hand around the dog’s muzzle, she stroked her throat until she felt Poopsie swallow.

“Better living through chemistry,” she muttered, climbing behind the wheel.

She carefully maneuvered the big SUV out of the tight parking lot and headed back toward Providence, mentally checking her collected to-do lists.

She needed salad for supper. She had to drop off the check for Frank-O.

And she really ought to see how Mom and Big Frank were doing now that yesterday’s jubilant celebration was over and the grim reality of Frank’s situation was setting in, kind of like cold, bleak January coming right after Christmas.

Traffic was light on Route 95, and she was making good time, so she decided to zip along Valley Street and on to Federal Hill to Venda for a prepared salad and some more stuff for Frank-O, since he was a bottomless pit and always needed more nourishment, taking advantage of the fact that Poopsie was now sleeping like a dream in the back seat.

She was heading back home with a couple of bags of groceries in the rear when a rag-tag procession of people carrying signs caught her eye, walking along the sidewalk in a straggly line.

She’d seen other processions like this before, usually organized by a parish priest agitating for the homeless or the hungry or the unborn, but this group was a lot more flamboyant than those faithful souls.

These folks were dressed in colorful clothes; they were banging drums and tooting horns; they even had a huge puppet that several of the marchers were carrying on poles.

She smiled, watching the show pass by, until she spotted a familiar head of spiky blue hair. Frank-O!

“Hey, Frank-O!” she called, steering the car alongside and lowering the window. “Way to go!”

Frank-O didn’t notice her at first, but one of his companions did and pointed her out to him.

Smiling, he left the group and ambled toward her parked car, still carrying his sign.

“Gentrification kills art!” it read, above a sketch of a smocked artist complete with beret and paint palette facing a wrecking ball.

“What’s with the demonstration?” she asked.

Frank-O bent down and stuck his head through the open window, and she had a déjà vu moment, remembering him doing the same thing as a scrawny Little Leaguer.

Now he was so big that his broad shoulders filled the whole window opening, and it was hard to believe she had actually given birth to him as a tiny, seven-pound baby.

“It’s about the Factory, the way it’s displacing all these artists and small tradesmen,” he explained. “Where are they going to go?”

“They can stay right where they are,” exclaimed Carole. “They’re not tearing those old buildings down; they’re just rehabbing them. It will be better, all nicely landscaped and cleaned up.”

“Oh, yeah, it’ll be nice all right, but they won’t be able to afford the new rents.”

Carole rolled her eyes. “Sure they will. They’ll make more money because people won’t be afraid to come down to Valley Street and will stop avoiding the area.

” She waved her arm. “Nobody picks up litter, it’s a maze of chain-link fences and weeds and hand-lettered signs.

Where exactly are these businesses? I tried to find that table and chair place a couple of months ago, and I got kind of lost, so I parked to figure out where I was, and some weird-looking guy was staring at me. I got out of there fast.”

“That weird-looking guy was probably a great artist, on the verge of being discovered,” said Frank-O.

“I think he was a wino,” said Carole. “But anyway, I’ve got some groceries for you.”

“Great,” said Frank-O, watching as the tail end of the procession wound its way past the parking lot. “Can you drop them at the apartment? I’m kinda busy right now.”

“Okay if I leave them on the porch? I don’t want to climb the stairs.”

“Sure, Ma.” He withdrew his head from the car. “And remember how I told you I need some money for art supplies?”

“Oh, right,” said Carole, reaching for her bag, but stopping when a niggling little thought popped up.

She turned and raised a freshly manicured finger.

“Hold on here,” she said. “Are you aware that this money you want me and your father to give you comes from this very project that you’re demonstrating against?

How do you think your father makes his money? ”

“From those toilets, Ma.”

“Yeah. And where do they put those toilets? In projects just like this one, all over the country. And where is your father works hard to keep his brother and mother and father living in the style to which they’ve become accustomed?

And to which you seem to be taking for granted? ” she finished, ungrammatically.

“Look, I don’t have to agree with everything my father does …”

“But you’ll take his money?”

“Well, Ma, I don’t want to, but I’ve got to, don’t I, if I’m going to finish my sculpture project? Art supplies are expensive, and this is a big project; it needs a lot of stuff.” He shook his head mournfully. “I wish it was different, but it isn’t.”

“Okay, okay,” said Carole, digging into her oversized purse.

“I’ve got it right here.” She was holding the folded check in her hand, and he started to take it, but she didn’t let go.

“But listen to me, Frank-O. I don’t want your father knowing that you’re demonstrating against his project, okay? Not a word to Frank, right?”

“I promise, Ma.”

She let go of the check and smiled fondly as he ran off to catch up with the demonstrators, just like he used to run off to join his friends when he was a kid on the Hill. Nostalgia, it’ll get you every time, she thought, blinking back a tear. What happened to that cute little kid? Where’d he go?

Carole was still thinking fond thoughts about her not-so-little boy when she dropped off the groceries for him.

Then, remembering she wanted to touch base with Frank’s parents, she circled back to Federal Hill, where Mom greeted her by engulfing her in a big, welcoming hug.

Mom wasn’t exactly fat, but she did carry an extra fifteen pounds or so, and hugging her felt a bit like hugging a marshmallow.

She wore her gray hair short, didn’t bother with makeup, and favored elastic-waist pants and arch-support Skechers sneakers.

“How’re you doing, sweetie?” she asked, concern clouding her big brown eyes. “Is Frank holding up okay?”

“You know Frank. Nothing short of a nuclear bomb bothers him.”

“That’s my boy,” crowed Big Frank, who was cooking up his gravy. The whole house smelled like tomatoes and herbs and garlic; the scent wrapped around you, like a favorite old sweater.

“Y’eat?” asked Big Frank, turning to her.