Dog Have Mercy Read online

  Reviews for the Golden Retriever Mysteries:

  Mr. Plakcy did a terrific job in this cozy mystery. He had a smooth writing style that kept the story flowing evenly. The dialogue and descriptions were right on target.

  --Red Adept

  Steve and Rochester become quite a team and Neil Plakcy is the kind of writer that I want to tell me this story. It's a fun read which will keep you turning pages very quickly.

  Amos Lassen – Amazon top 100 reviewer

  We who love our dogs know that they are wiser than we are, and Plakcy captures that feeling perfectly with the relationship between Steve and Rochester.

  -- Christine Kling, author of Circle of Bones

  In Dog We Trust is a very well-crafted mystery that kept me guessing up until Steve figured out where things were going. --E-book addict reviews

  In the sixth golden retriever mystery, Dog Have Mercy, Christmas approaches and reformed hacker Steve Levitan tries to help a fellow ex-con now working at the vet’s office in Stewart’s Crossing. His curiosity, and the crime-solving instincts of his golden retriever, Rochester, kick in when liquid potassium ampoules are stolen from the vet and Steve’s new friend is a suspect.

  Is this theft connected to a drug-running operation in North Philly? Or to a recent spate of deaths at the local nursing home? And can Steve continue to resist his computer-hacking impulses or will his desire to help others continue to lead him into trouble?

  Dog Have Mercy

  By Neil S. Plakcy

  Copyright 2015 Neil S. Plakcy. All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  1 – Pet Therapy

  I didn’t think that my golden retriever Rochester would be calm enough to visit nursing home patients, because he was always eager to pull me down the street, jump up on strangers and lick effusively. But he surprised me when we went to visit Edith Passis at Crossing Manor, the nursing and rehab center where she had gone to recuperate from a broken hip.

  Edith was my childhood piano teacher, and she’d been one of the first people I reconnected with when I returned home to Stewart’s Crossing, a small town along the Delaware River in scenic Bucks County, Pennsylvania. With both my parents gone, I’d enjoyed keeping in touch with her as a reminder of my childhood.

  She loved Rochester, the big, goofy golden I had adopted two years before, and when I called to check on her, she’d asked if he could come by to say hello. “People bring dogs in all the time,” she said. “Those tiny ones. I’d love to see Rochester.”

  I called the Manor to be sure he’d be welcome, and the administrator said that as long as he could behave I could bring him. So one Saturday morning in mid-December, when the roads were clear of snow and the sun was shining brilliantly, my girlfriend Lili and I loaded him into my ancient BMW sedan for a visit.

  It seemed strange to call Lili my girlfriend when we were both in our forties, and had already been living together for a couple of months, but the English language hasn’t caught up with modern-day dating practices. She was a professor of visual art and chair of the fine arts department at Eastern College, where I also worked, and sometimes I looked at her, her auburn curls cascading around her heart-shaped face, so beautiful and smart and funny, and marveled at my luck in finding her.

  A block before we reached the rehab center we passed a man wrapped in ragged layers pushing a rickety shopping cart piled with cans and newspapers and other unidentified packages. A brown teddy bear with a missing arm was strapped to the front.

  “That’s so sad,” Lili said. “Every time I see someone who looks like they live on the streets I wonder how our society can consider itself progressive when we don’t take care of all our citizens.”

  “Some of us are lucky,” I said.

  Crossing Manor was a low-slung building down by the Delaware River at the edge of town. A couple of tall pines stood sentinel by the front doors, but the rest of the landscaping was brown, from the grass to the leafless maples and oaks. Shortly before he passed away, my father had spent some time there, recovering from a stroke, and my inability to visit him then still haunted me.

  I signaled to turn into the driveway, but had to wait for a hearse from the local funeral home to pull in first. I felt a chill and remembered that many of the patients at Crossing Manor might be leaving like that.

  But at least they’d have died of natural causes, unlike those whose deaths Rochester and I had investigated. My neighbor Caroline, who had originally adopted Rochester as a rescue; my old friend and mentor Joe Dagorian; and others Rochester and I had met, known, and lost. I reached over and squeezed Lili’s hand, glad that she was by my side, and that my happy dog was behind me.

  Once the hearse had turned in and driven around to the back of the property, I parked and we went inside, to a cheery, clean lobby festooned with photos of staff and patients and posters about bingo night, exercise groups and what to do if someone was choking. Signage indicated that Crossing Manor was home to both short-term rehab patients, and those who needed long-term care. One poster had a photo of a woman whose lip was curled oddly, and the legend “This woman is having a stroke. Get help immediately.”

  “You be good, Rochester,” I said, holding my dog on a tight leash. He walked proudly, his head up and his plumy tail waving from side to side.

  A plump thirty-something whose name tag read Cindee sat behind the reception desk, a wooden semi-circle stacked with Crossing Manor brochures. A teenaged girl in scrubs decorated with cartoon animals stood beside her. The girl had shoulder-length blonde hair and her right eyebrow was pierced with a small gold ring. “What a beautiful boy,” she said. “Can I pet him?”

  When she spoke I saw that her tongue had been pierced as well, and repressed a grimace. “Sure,” I said. “Rochester, sit.”

  He plopped his furry butt on the ground and looked up at the girl, who offered him her palm to sniff. “I have a teacup Yorkie at home,” she said.

  He didn’t lean forward the way he usually did with new friends, but I assumed that was because he was trying to be quiet and gentle, or perhaps because he could smell the Yorkie on her.

  I signed the visitor’s book. “My name is Steve Levitan,” I said to the receptionist. “We’re here to see Edith Passis.”

  Cindee looked at me. “Any relation to Dave Levitan?” she asked. “He was a patient here a couple of years ago. Very sweet man.”

  “That was my dad,” I said.

  She nodded. “He came in right after I started, which is why I remember him so well. He used to come out to the desk and talk to me. I think he was lonely, poor thing.”

  A pain rose from the pit of my chest. He was lonely because his only child was in prison in California and couldn’t come to see him.

  Lili must have sensed my unhappiness because she took my hand. Her right arm was stacked with silver bangles that tinkled softly as she raised it. She’d worn an old pair of LL Bean duck boots that morning, and they gave her an extra inch in height, so she was almost at my six-one. “Where can we find Edith?” she asked.

  “She’s in the lounge. I can take you down there,” the girl said. “I’m Allison.” Rochester ignored her hand, instead rearing up to sniff her pants pocket, then going back to the floor. Allison suddenly reached down to pat her pocket.

  “Oh, no, did he take something from you?” I asked. “He likes to grab tissues.”

  Rochester lay down on the floor and I could see he had spit whatever was in his mouth out between his paws. It was the shape
of a tube of lipstick, but I couldn’t see anything more because Allison quickly reached down and grabbed it from him.

  She slipped the tube back into her pocket. “The dining room, exercise rooms and offices are to the right,” she said as she led us through a door to the left. “There are twenty-four rooms with capacity for fifty patients, though some of the triple rooms have only two patients in them right now.”

  Most of the rooms we passed were empty, and when I asked, Allison said, “The nurses like to get the patients up and out of bed whenever they can. And it gives the staff a chance to clean the rooms.”

  Rochester was behaving very well, walking by my side, not pulling or stopping to sniff anywhere. I was impressed.

  “Are you a nurse?” Lili asked Allison.

  “Oh, no, I’m still in high school. I’m really interested in science, so I’m a volunteer here. Kind of like a candy striper. I was one of those at the hospital until they told me I had to leave.”

  I’d never heard of someone being kicked out of a candy striper program – usually the kids either got bored, or finished their required hours of community service. I had a couple of friends in high school who volunteered that way, and all they ever did was push people around in wheelchairs, fill water pitchers and fetch magazines.

  Crossing Manor seemed like the kind of place few teenagers would be willing to volunteer, so perhaps the administrators had been willing to overlook whatever Allison had done wrong at the hospital.

  She stopped at the doorway to a large room where a documentary about the clubbing of baby seals was playing. Patients sat in chairs and lay on gurneys positioned around the room, some watching the TV, others looking out the large windows to the parking lot. A few just stared into space.

  Edith sat in a large armchair with her feet planted on the floor. Her normally puffy white hair was flat against her head, and her salmon-pink skin had faded, but her eyes were still fierce and blue, and she smiled when she saw us. “You came!” she said.

  Rochester gently tugged me toward Edith, as if he knew what his purpose was. He sat obediently by her side, sniffing, and she reached down to scratch behind his ears. “Oh, this is such a treat!” she said.

  Lili pulled over a couple of chairs for herself and me, and we sat. “How are you doing, Edith?” she asked.

  “I’m getting stronger,” she said. “I can’t wait to get back to my own house, so I’m working extra hard at my therapy. You get so weak so quickly when they have you lying in bed, you know. But I can stand on my own now, and put weight on my new hip. So I should be going home in a few days.”

  An emaciated elderly woman on a gurney beside Edith extended her hand toward Rochester, and he turned in her direction, allowing her hand to rest on his head. “That’s Mrs. Tuttle,” Edith said. “Poor thing has dementia. She doesn’t usually respond to any of the staff. I’m surprised she reached out to Rochester.”

  “He has that effect on people.” I watched as Mrs. Tuttle caressed Rochester’s head for a moment, then brought her hand back up and smiled a gap-toothed grin. A bag of fluid hung on a movable stanchion beside her, with a tube running into her arm. “They must have a nursing staff here, if they give IV fluids,” I said to Edith.

  “They can give us basic care,” Edith said. “I read about it in their brochure before I agreed to come here. Some of the patients have PICC lines – you know, those long-term catheters—and the nurses can use those to dispense medications. They also give insulin shots, clean wounds and change tubes and so on.”

  She looked over at the woman beside her. “Mrs. Tuttle is my roommate. She was throwing up this morning and when the doctor stopped by to see her he said she was badly dehydrated. He’s the one who ordered the IV, but he said that if she didn’t respond to the fluids they’d have to send her to the hospital.”

  She shook her head. “Poor thing. I pray I don’t end up like that. When God is ready for me, I hope he takes me quickly.”

  “Let’s hope he won’t be ready for you for quite a while,” Lili said.

  From across the room, an elderly black man called, “Can I pet your dog?”

  I looked at Edith for permission. “You go on, I don’t want to be greedy,” she said.

  While Lili sat with Edith and chatted, I took Rochester on a circuit of the room. The old man, Mr. MacRae, had a smooth, ebony face with a bit of grizzle at his chin, and short, nappy iron-gray hair. He had been a janitor at Crossing Elementary when I was a kid, and he remembered a couple of the teachers who’d made an impression on me.

  “How long have you been here?” I asked.

  “Going on five years now,” he said. “My kidneys ain’t no good anymore, and they take me for the dialysis. My kids done grown up and moved on, and I can’t live on my own, so I thank God and Franklin Roosevelt for the Social Security and the Medicaid.”

  A very short, skinny man in his fifties walked into the lounge leaning heavily on a cane. His face lit up when he saw Rochester, and once he was settled in a chair Rochester went over to be petted. “I could never have a dog when I was a kid,” the man said. “Too sick to take care of one. But I always wanted one.”

  He looked down at Rochester. “What’s your name, handsome?”

  “He’s Rochester,” I said. “I’m Steve. Levitan.”

  “Mark Pappas.” He looked at me. “You grow up around here?”

  “I did. In the Lakes. You?”

  “I thought you looked familiar. I live on Lakefront Drive.”

  Though he was a few years older than I was, the Lakes was a compact neighborhood centered around two lakes – Mirror Lake and Reading Lake – and most of the kids knew each other. I vaguely remembered Mark as a sickly kid who often missed school. It was a shame that he was still so sick as an adult.

  As we moved around I learned that Mrs. Curry, a quadriplegic woman in her sixties, had been at the Manor for nearly twenty years, while Mr. Bodnar, who was about my age, had been there for fifteen. “Got hit by a car when I was walking down State Street in Trenton,” he said. “Cut my lumbar spine like that. If it wasn’t for these people here, I’d have been dead long ago.”

  It was awfully sad. I was glad when we finally made our way back to Edith; at least she had a chance to go home soon. Not that the place was terrible; the certified nursing assistants who moved around the room seemed genuinely caring, and the patients were clean, their sheets and bandages white and fresh. Posters advertised bingo nights, card games and knitting circles, and relatively new movies were shown on Tuesday afternoons. Motivational posters of beautiful landscapes urged patients to soar, believe and achieve.

  “Now, no more walking on ice,” Lili said to Edith as we prepared to leave. “If you ever need anything, you call us, all right? One of us can bring you groceries or clear your walk for you.”

  Edith had no children of her own, though I knew that many of her former piano students considered her part of their families. “I hate to impose,” Edith said.

  “It’s not an imposition. Do you have someone to take you care of you at home when you’re ready?”

  Edith nodded. “I have a long-term care policy, so as soon as I’m ready I can go home and have an aide live with me for a few weeks until I can get around easily.”

  We both kissed her goodbye and Rochester led the way back out to the front door. Allison was chatting with an older woman I thought might be a doctor. “That’s Rochester,” Allison said to the woman. “He’s a sweetheart.”

  “I’m Marilyn Joiner,” the woman said, walking over to us. She wore a pink wool turtleneck under her lab coat, with an intricate gold chain around her neck. Her straight brown hair was flecked with gray. “I’m the administrator here. I happened to look into the lounge when you were visiting. Thank you so much for coming. I’m a big proponent of pet therapy, and so many of our patients respond very well to dogs and cats.”

  “We’re happy to be of help,” I said.

  “Do you think you might come back sometime? I know you cam
e to visit Edith, but she’ll be going home soon. As you may have seen, we have a mix of long-term and short-term patients—it’s something that Manor Associates does with facilities in small towns, to keep people close to family and friends. But some of our long-term residents have no one to visit them, and I’m sure they’d appreciate seeing your handsome boy.”

  “We’d be happy to,” Lili said. We waved goodbye to Allison as we walked outside. As soon as the door was closed, Rochester nearly pulled my arm off tugging me over to the base of a pine tree, where he lifted his leg.

  “Good boy,” I said when he was finished. I reached down to scratch around the scruff of his neck. “You were very well-behaved in there. I’m proud of you.”

  He nodded his head and woofed once.

  “Sometimes I think that dog really understands you,” Lili said.

  “I know he does.”

  On the ride home, I wondered how my father had done at Crossing Manor. Because I was in prison at the time, I couldn’t fly back to visit him. Had anyone else? He could be a prickly guy, and I could remember many times when he’d yelled at me as a kid, usually because I mouthed off to him. But he also had a lot of friends from work and from our old neighborhood. I hoped he’d had good care and the love of those around him.

  2 – Final Papers

  On the way home, we stopped at the supermarket so Lili could run in and pick up a few things she needed for the dinner she was preparing that night for my friend Rick and Tamsen, the woman he was dating. Rick and I hadn’t seen each other for a while; I’d been nesting with Lili after she moved into the townhouse with me and Rochester, and he’d been spending time with Tamsen and her young son.

  Rick and I were the same age, though he was graying faster than I was – probably all the stress of police work. He was a couple of inches shorter than I was, and more muscular, from running and regular gym workouts. We’d first met in high school chemistry class, becoming pals over fumbled experiments. When I returned to Stewart’s Crossing we’d met up again at the Chocolate Ear café, and bonded once more over bad divorces. He was a detective with the Stewart’s Crossing police department, and occasionally Rochester and I had been able to help him with investigations, often against his will.