Beaglemania

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Praise for Linda O. Johnston’s Kendra Ballantyne, Pet-Sitter Mysteries

  “Humorous, cleverly constructed.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “A brilliantly entertaining new puppy caper, a doggie-filled who-done-it . . . Johnston’s novel is a real pedigree!”

  —Dorothy Cannell

  “A fabulous series.”

  —The Best Reviews

  “Animal lovers will adore this series for the mystery as well as the animals.”

  —CA Reviews

  “An incredible writer who creates believable, intelligent characters . . . [A] fun-filled, suspenseful story line that contains intrigue, mystery, murder, lots and lots of animals, and humor.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Fast and fun.”

  —New Mystery Reader

  “The author has done a great job of making the reader care about the animals. Plus their personalities really shine through.”

  —Mystery Lovers Corner

  “Johnston’s ability to blend pet love, mystery, and romance into one well-wrapped package makes this a summer treat for mystery and pet lovers alike.”

  —Front Street Reviews

  “Exciting . . . Johnston is a creative storyteller who not only writes a fascinating mystery but also creates a deep character study.”

  —Books ‘n’ Bytes

  Berkley Prime Crime titles by Linda O. Johnston

  Kendra Ballantyne, Pet-Sitter Mysteries

  SIT, STAY, SLAY

  NOTHING TO FEAR BUT FERRETS

  FINE-FEATHERED DEATH

  MEOW IS FOR MURDER

  THE FRIGHT OF THE IGUANA

  DOUBLE DOG DARE

  NEVER SAY STY

  HOWL DEADLY

  FELINE FATALE

  Pet Rescue Mysteries

  BEAGLEMANIA

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196,

  South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  BEAGLEMANIA

  A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / March 2011

  Copyright © 2011 by Linda O. Johnston.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-47734-2

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME

  Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  Acknowledgments

  Conducting research for Beaglemania and future Pet Rescue Mysteries has been fun and rewarding, as well as eye-opening and, sometimes, sad.

  There are a lot of wonderful people who gave unstinting time to answer my questions, show me around their facilities, and be generally supportive of my plan to turn Lauren Vancouver into one determined pet rescuer.

  I admit to using poetic license in my writing, so any inaccuracies are mine, definitely not theirs.

  I want to thank them all, including:

  Detective Susan Brumagin of the LAPD, who is the head of the Los Angeles Animal Cruelty Task Force, as well as the many devoted members of her team.

  Kathleen Davis, general manager of the Los Angeles Board of Animal Services Commissioners, who helped to put me in contact with others to interview.

  Captain Karen Knipscheer-Cox, commanding officer of SmART, D.A.R.T., and Animal Emergency Preparedness, who showed me around an amazing, yet unopen, Los Angeles Animal Services care center, and didn’t flinch when I told her I might use her position—but not her—in my story. Also, special thanks to all the members of the Small Animal Rescue Team (SmART) who let me observe their training sessions and answered a lot of questions—especially Team Leader Armando Navarette (Nav).

  Los Angeles Animal Services Officers Daniel Gonzalez and Eric Gardner, who, individually, graciously provided answers when I ran into them and started asking a lot of questions.

  Thanks, too, to some amazingly dedicated, friendly, and helpful animal shelter administrators and others:

  Arlene Ober, Office Coordinator, and more, of Pet Orphans of Southern California, as well as all the wonderful staff members and volunteers.

  Tina Ito, Director of Administration of the Glendale Humane Society.

  Ricky Whitman, Vice President of Community Resources of the Pasadena Humane Society and SPCA.

  Thanks also to my excellent editor, Michelle Vega, and my incredible agent, Paige Wheeler.

  This book is dedicated to animals everywhere, especially those pets who are awaiting new forever homes. I wish I could help all of you!

  It’s also dedicated to those . . . well, dedicated animal rescuers who work hard to take care of those animals, and to help them find the right forever homes.

  And, as always, to my husband, Fred, who helps keep me sane. I think. Most of the time.

  Chapter 1

&nbs
p; I am not a killer.

  At least not a killer of animals. I save their lives whenever humanly possible, especially pets. Their sole purpose on this earth is to love and be loved, like perpetual children.

  People are something else.

  Right now, I’d have gladly used my own hands—nice, strong ones for someone in her forties, since I do a lot of enclosure cleaning, lugging and opening of animal food containers, and other physical labor—to strangle Efram Kiley, the man who stood in front of me. His expression was the picture of innocence even as he squared his thin yet sturdy body, as if attempting to hide the filled floor-to-ceiling cages in this torture chamber of a mega shed from my view.

  Impossible, considering how many there were.

  He couldn’t hide the smell, either. It was awful. The caged puppies and their parents obviously had no choice but to eliminate their wastes in the same place they lived and ate and suffered. The only surface beneath them was wire mesh that undoubtedly hurt their feet. No comfy rugs or mats for them.

  And the sounds. Their cries. Their barks.

  The outraged comments and shouts of the three Los Angeles Animal Cruelty Task Force members who’d leaped in like superheroes to reinforce regular animal control officers, all intent on saving these poor creatures.

  Efram must have read the fury in my expression. Or maybe he’d learned enough about me, in the past few months, to know what I was thinking.

  He quickly turned, and before I could say anything, he’d plucked an adorable beagle puppy from one of those appalling crates and gently placed her into my arms.

  What could I do but nestle the squirmy little body close to my face, stench and all? “You poor little thing,” I whispered against one of her long ears as I used my free hand to extract a small towel from the tote bag over my shoulder and wrap her in it.

  “She’ll be all right now, Lauren,” Efram assured me. As if he had anything to do with this rescue. Instead, the opposite was true. He was a party to the horror of this puppy mill. Even so, he said, “Isn’t this just a terrible place?” He shook his head slowly, as if he was as upset as I about the condition of this hell house and the innocent beings who lived here.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Terrible. So why do you work here?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Then are you one of the owners?” I demanded.

  “You know better than that, Lauren.”

  What I knew was that he was involved. I didn’t need to know exactly how, although I doubted he owned the place. But I’d have bet he profited from it somehow.

  I glared into Efram’s doleful brown eyes as I shifted the puppy in my arms. Towel or not, that smell was getting to me. But I wasn’t about to release her till I saw she would be taken care of.

  She was just one of dozens of puppies here that the ACTF and animal control officers were handling with great care and angelic concern. And I would, eventually, have to hand her over to them.

  Efram was in his twenties, with dark, messy hair that hung over his forehead. He worked out a lot and favored T-shirts with torn-off sleeves to show off his muscular biceps. His jeans were worn, his sneakers new.

  He did a lot of work for me at HotRescues these days—the no-kill animal shelter I had helped to open a few years ago and now ran.

  Oh, yeah. Efram was an animal care apprentice tending to creatures in need. He even had a choice about it: either learn how not to abuse pets and help care for them while they waited to be adopted, or forgo the substantial amount of money that was part of the legal settlement we’d entered into a while back.

  Guess which he’d chosen.

  Last year, Efram had threatened to sue HotRescues and me for rehoming his dog, Killer, without attempting to find the lost pup’s real owner. I, in turn, had been furious about the condition of that poor dog, now called Quincy, who had been brought to HotRescues as an apparent rescue from a public shelter, or so I’d chosen to believe. The settlement of our dispute had been fair. It resulted in Efram’s being paid to learn how to really care for animals. I’d even thought that, after all we’d taught him, he had become genuinely contrite for having abused Quincy. He certainly had seemed to throw himself energetically into his quasi-volunteer work with HotRescues.

  I wondered now if every bit of it had been an act.

  “You’re Lauren Vancouver, aren’t you?” One of the uniformed animal control officers I’d glimpsed outside approached me. She was tall, her ginger hair pulled starkly back from her round face.

  Efram looked relieved, as if this official, who could arrest him, was easier to deal with than me. Maybe she was.

  I expected J. Gibbons—the ID on her nametag—to demand that I leave. Now. Civilians weren’t particularly welcome here, in the middle of an official investigation. I knew that.

  But this wasn’t the first animal rescue that I’d crashed. Nor would it be my last.

  “Yes, I am.” I mentally prepared my argument to stay here.

  “Ralph told me to come get you.”

  That would be Officer Ralph Alazar, who’d gotten to know me on some of my forays to the East Valley Animal Care Center. I’d seen him outside, too. He was a good guy, didn’t usually give me a hard time.

  Even so, I hesitated. Should I go find out what he wanted or remain here and see how I could help more with the pup in my arms and the others?

  Officer Gibbons’ next words quickly convinced me that I should head outside. “The SmART team just arrived. Ralph thought you’d want to be there.”

  I absolutely would. SmART was the Small Animal Rescue Team of Los Angeles Animal Services. All animal control officers were trained to conduct some rescues, but SmART was called in for situations beyond normal, where special expertise and equipment were needed.

  Like puppies trapped in storm drains.

  I threw an accusatory glance at Efram as I gave the baby in my arms one more hug, then handed her to one of the rescuers.

  Efram wasn’t looking at me. Instead, he was helping the uniformed ACTF members remove puppies and older dogs from the cages, check to make sure they were alive, then place them gently in cleaner crates, stacked on wheeled dollies, before taking them outside to change their lives forever. As if he’d come here, like me, to help out.

  I knew better, but I’d have to let the ACTF, including its Animal Services members and LAPD cops, do their job. I was aware from the tip I’d gotten that at least some of them suspected Efram’s complicity in this situation.

  Following Officer Gibbons, I hurried out of the well-insulated backyard shed that had appeared so inconsequential from the outside—a moderate-sized steel structure that looked like a rural barn’s younger brother, complete with red sides resembling painted wood. It was at the rear of a nondescript two-story commercial building that could have held anything from a bakery to an accounting firm. I suspected it contained only the office of the puppy mill owners. Could be they even lived there. The place was large enough.

  It was a wonder that the nearby neighbors, even in this commercial area, hadn’t complained to authorities before about the sounds and smells emanating from here. Maybe they had. Or maybe they’d indirectly collaborated in silence because they, too, were hiding things.

  At least one of them—finally—had been horrified enough to report this place. Or maybe it was a visitor. Or a curious passerby. Someone complained and that was why rescuers had converged here at last.

  I hurried over the concrete-paved driveway, skirting an animal control officer confronting two people—an obviously angry man, who was gesticulating and shouting, and a crying woman. Were they the puppy mill owners? I’d heard that a married couple was at least partly to blame. Efram wasn’t in this all by himself.

  I exited through the open gate in the tall picket fence that was in dire need of painting. I’d used the gate along the main avenue to enter, but this one opened onto a narrower side street, now an ER triage of activity, especially in the area of the gaping slash of a hole along the curb that led to the s
torm drain. Despite all the conversations, the sound of crying puppies wafted from somewhere below street level.

  Poor little creatures.

  They’d been down there when I’d arrived. I’d heard some Animal Services people trading shouts about it as they headed that way. At the time, I’d been single-mindedly intent on confronting Efram. But now, I wanted to know what was happening.

  I excused my way through the crowd of onlookers being herded out of the way by animal control officers. On the sidewalk was a stenciled, stylized picture of a leaping dolphin, labeled, “No dumping. Drains to ocean.” But someone apparently had started dumping puppies there, hoping the current below would drain away some of the evidence of what was going on in the nearby shed. I felt my teeth clench at the very idea. Had it been Efram? The emotional couple in the driveway? Once again, my urge to do something in response surfaced. Fortunately, I’ve always had a lot of self-control. Even in situations like this.

  Even more important, I’d achieved what I’d set out to do initially—confirm Efram’s inexcusable presence here. Now, I wanted to do all I could to help in this rescue.

  At least whoever had done this hadn’t gotten very far before Animal Services arrived. Otherwise, there wouldn’t have been so many small canines still shoehorned into that faux barn.

  Muffled puppy cries continued to rend the air. They were alive, and, somewhat luckily, the sounds emanated from a storm drain and not a sewer. If the animals were trapped in a sewer, I understood that the SmART team members would have to wait for appropriate Department of Water and Power personnel to help deal with any gases and other dangers.

  At a van parked nearby, three people—two men and a woman—dressed in brown T-shirts with white letters and the round logo of Los Angeles Animal Services, Small Animal Rescue Team, pulled equipment out. The shirt worn by one of the men indicated that his name was Renz, and he was the team leader. They all wore red caps. Another man, dressed in a more standard Animal Services uniform, observed them, issuing orders.