The Twelve Dogs of Christmas Read online

  “I don’t keep records very well,” she says. “Probably sixty thousand a year.”

  “In twenty-four years, has anyone ever complained about what you’re doing?”

  “Just once. Three weeks ago.”

  “How did you find out about it?” I ask.

  “I got a notice telling me I needed to stop within thirty days. It said I was breaking the law.”

  “Did the notice tell you the source of the complaint?” I ask, getting nervous. Here’s where Pups might go off the reservation.

  “No, they said it was made anonymously.”

  “OK, then—” I start, but she interrupts me.

  “But I know who complained. It was that asshole Hennessey.”

  This is what I was afraid of. Pups has a new neighbor named Randy Hennessey, and she’s sure he’s the one who complained. I told her not to mention his name, but she didn’t take my advice. If she has to go through this, she at least wants him publicly humiliated.

  I ignore the reference and move on. I have her describe the way that she places the dogs in homes once they are old enough. She is very careful and rejects potential adopters if they don’t live up to her view of what makes a good dog home, which is often the case.

  I end the examination. I only called her to demonstrate her character and commitment and to get on the record what she does for these dogs. That much has been accomplished.

  Jonathon must sense the reason for my nervousness, because his first question on cross-examination goes in for the kill. “Ms. Boyer, did you speak to Mr. Hennessey about your suspicion that he made the complaint?”

  “You’d better believe it,” she says, as I cringe.

  “Did he confirm that he did so?”

  “No,” she says. “The little weasel denied it, but it was obviously a fake denial. My other neighbors told me it was him.”

  “So you didn’t believe him?”

  “No way.”

  “Did you threaten him?”

  She thinks for a moment. “Yeah, I guess you could say that.”

  “I asked you the question. So what did you tell him?”

  “That if he caused any more problems, I’d cut his heart out and shove it down his throat.”

  For some reason, the gallery roars with laughter at this. Jonathon lets her off the stand, probably because he won that round and is afraid of what else she might say.

  Pups struts off the stand and takes her seat next to me. It’s clear that she thinks she did well, and, all in all, it could have been worse.

  Either way, it’s OK. Because now it’s my turn.

  Jonathon calls Stanley Wade to the stand.

  Unlike Pups, who went up there like she was spiking a football, Stanley looks like he’s walking the plank. There are even some boos from the gallery, which Judge Hough stifles with a few angry bangs of her gavel.

  Jonathon establishes Stanley’s job and credentials and then asks him why the zoning board has taken the position that it has in this case.

  “The law is clear,” Stanley says. “No one in Paterson is allowed to house more than three dogs, unless they have a kennel license.”

  “Can Ms. Boyer acquire such a license?”

  Stanley shakes his head. “No. The area in which she lives does not allow it. A kennel is considered a business, and that area is not zoned for that type of business.”

  “So you and the board were not making a judgment of any kind … you were simply following the law?”

  “Yes. That’s all we were doing. We don’t make the law; we are charged with enforcing it. It doesn’t matter if I like the law or not; I don’t have any say in it.”

  “Thank you. No further questions.”

  I stand up and walk slowly toward Stanley, who looks like he would hide under the chair if he could. “Mr. Wade, your position, as you’ve just stated it, is that you are upholding the law, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Without bias?”

  “Correct.”

  “And you are sworn to uphold the law, no matter whether you agree with it or not? If zoning-law breaking is reported to you, you will step in and act, quickly and decisively?”

  “Yes.”

  “In this case, like all others, you cannot look the other way and allow lawlessness to prevail. You get a complaint, and if it is legitimate, you act. Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you like chocolate?” I ask.

  He seems surprised and wary, but says, “Sure. Who doesn’t?”

  I walk over to Hike, who hands me a small bag. “Your Honor, I’d like to introduce these chocolates into evidence.”

  “I’m sure you’ll explain why,” the judge says.

  I smile. “Imminently.” Then I turn to Stanley and say, “These are chocolates made by a company called Candies of Hope. Have you heard of them?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’re made by Diane Feller, who happens to be the wife of Mayor Feller, right here in Paterson. Did you know that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Amazingly, she makes them right in the house where they live. It’s all set up in the basement.”

  Jonathon objects that this is all irrelevant and going nowhere, and Judge Hough tells me to get to the point.

  Which I do. “But it turns out that where they live is not zoned for business, and the state of New Jersey defines making and selling chocolates as a business. Isn’t that right?”

  “She donates the proceeds to charity,” Stanley says.

  “How nice for her; what a worthy thing to do. Some would say that making chocolate for charity ranks right up there with saving puppies. But the mayor’s wife is breaking the law, is she not?”

  “Technically.”

  Hike hands me two pieces of paper, which I submit into evidence. I show the first one to Stanley and ask him if he’s ever seen it. He admits that he has, and I ask him to tell the court his understanding of it.

  “It’s an e-mail complaint about the mayor’s wife having a chocolate business in her house.”

  “Who made the complaint?” I ask.

  He reads the name. “Andrea Carper.”

  “If it please the court,” I say, “Andrea Carper is really me, Andy Carpenter. I was deep under cover for this one, so I used my secret identity.”

  The gallery laughs at this, increasing Stanley’s discomfort. Judge Hough gavels them into silence.

  I hand Stanley the second piece of paper. “Mr. Wade, is this an e-mail from you responding to Andrea Carper and saying that you would look into the matter?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you then threaten the mayor with eviction for breaking the zoning law, in the same manner that you threatened Ms. Boyer?”

  “No.”

  “I’m surprised,” I say, “because as a person devoted to the law, I’m sure you share my outrage. Can we assume you will threaten the mayor with eviction when court adjourns? Or would you like to do so right now? I can wait.” I take out my cell phone and offer it to him. “You can even use my phone.”

  He doesn’t answer, and Jonathon objects, so I put the phone away and move on.

  “Mr. Wade, how did you drive here today?”

  “I took Route Four and then city streets,” he says.

  “While you were on Route Four, did you pass any other cars?”

  “I’m sure I did.”

  “Did you beep your horn as you did so?” I ask.

  “No, there was no need to.”

  “Did you know that there is a New Jersey State law, on the books for the last seventy-one years, that says you have to beep your horn when passing another car? I can quote the statute number if you’d like.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Ignorance of the law is no excuse. You can turn yourself in to the authorities after you evict the mayor.”

  Judge Hough says, “Mr. Carpenter, can you move this along?”

  I introduce a magazine article into evidence; i
t’s a profile of Judge Hough that ran in the The Newark Star-Ledger four years ago. When she looks at it, she says, “Tread carefully, Mr. Carpenter.”

  I nod. “I will, Your Honor.”

  I ask Stanley to read a paragraph from the profile that says that the judge lives with her husband, two children, two dogs, and two cats.

  “Four pets in one house?” I ask. “Now we have a mayor and a judge about to be put on the street?” By now, the gallery is nearly out of control with laughter.

  I don’t wait for an answer and instead ask if he knows when the kennel-license law was passed. “No, I don’t,” he says.

  “Eighteen eighty-one,” I say. “Are you familiar with the wording?”

  “Not entirely.”

  “Do you know that it refers only to household pets and specifically excludes livestock and farm animals? That area was farmland back then.”

  “I wasn’t aware…”

  “Is it your position that Ms. Boyer can’t care for these puppies, but she can have a houseful of pigs and cows and goats? Is that your position?”

  “I—”

  I interrupt, though I don’t think he even knows how he was going to finish the sentence. “Mr. Wade, Ms. Boyer has been saving puppies in that house for many years. Have you ever had a complaint from a neighbor before?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Do you think you can come up with some waivers that prevent the mayor and this fine judge from being homeless and lets poor, abandoned puppies live and find good homes?”

  Stanley has been defeated. “Perhaps we can revisit this and…”

  Judge Hough: “Revisiting this is an excellent idea. I’ll hold off on my ruling until you do so. The court will wait to hear the results of your revisitation by the close of business today.” She slams down her gavel. “This hearing is adjourned.”

  I turn to Pups and say, “This one’s in the bag.”

  She’s not exactly beaming with relief. “I can’t believe that son of a bitch complained.”

  “Hennessey?”

  She nods. “The little twerp.”

  “Pups, let it go.”

  She looks at me like I’m out of my mind. “Yeah, right.”

  We need to talk about our names.”

  My wife, Laurie Collins, says this after dinner and after our son, Ricky, has gone off to his room. I always enjoy these family dinners, but this one more so than usual, because Laurie spends most of it complimenting my performance in court.

  About a half hour ago, I got a call telling me that Stanley’s revisiting the issue has resulted in Pups’s getting a waiver to continue saving the dogs. I can only hope and pray that the mayor and judge were allowed to stay in their homes as well.

  I called Pups to tell her the news, but she wasn’t home.

  Laurie and I are in the coffee phase of dinner, and she obviously has something she was waiting to talk to me about.

  “Our names?” I ask.

  She nods. “We need to make some changes.”

  “You mean like nicknames?” I have no idea what she’s talking about.

  “No, I mean our last names. Ricky’s doing a project at school, and apparently he had to list our names. He asked me why we all have different names.”

  Now it makes sense. When Laurie and I married, she wanted to keep her name, Collins, rather than switch to Carpenter. We simultaneously adopted Ricky Diaz, whose father had been murdered not long before that. We never really gave much thought to changing his name at the time; it would have seemed disrespectful to his father.

  “So what do you want to do?” I ask.

  “At this point, I just want to talk about it.”

  “OK. You start.”

  “I think Ricky should have one of our last names, if he wants to,” she says.

  I nod. “Works for me. Ricky Carpenter has a nice ring to it.”

  She smiles. “So does Ricky Collins.”

  I hum, as if it is a lyric, ‘Ricky Collins, Ricky Collins.” Then I shake my head. “Not really— it has a decent beat, but you can’t dance to it. I’d go with Carpenter; it’s more modern, more with it.”

  “Really?” she says, “I’ve been trying both versions out, and Ricky Carpenter sounds awkward to me. Way too many syllables.”

  “There’s five syllables, and Ricky Collins has four.”

  She nods. “But that one makes a huge difference. It’s twenty-five percent more syllables.”

  “You could be right,” I say, “Let’s make it Rick Carpenter. Then we’re back to four.”

  “So you’re taking a stand on this?” she says.

  “I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we make it Andy, Laurie, and Ricky Carpenter?”

  “We’ve been through this. I like my name.”

  I nod. “And it’s a fine name, an outstanding name. But Carpenter represents New Jersey royalty. You notice Martha took Washington in a heartbeat. Eleanor took Roosevelt. Jackie jumped at Kennedy; you think she thought about staying Jackie Smith?”

  “First of all, Jackie Smith was a tight end for the Cowboys,” she says. “Jackie Kennedy’s maiden name was Bouvier. And when she remarried, she dumped the Kennedy name and took Onassis.”

  “She would have kept Carpenter.”

  “I think we should talk to Ricky,” she says, effectively ending the conversation. “We can do it when you get home from your walk.”

  I take Tara, the golden retriever who, in all respects, towers above all other living creatures, and Sebastian, our basset hound, out for their evening walk. It gives me some time to think about the whole name thing with Ricky.

  I’ve never really thought about whether the Carpenter name will live on after me, but if Laurie and I don’t have another child, then Ricky is my only shot. I have this feeling that I should care more than I do, but I can’t get myself to do so.

  We take a fairly brisk walk. It’s very cold out, and while Tara has always loved frigid weather, the shorter-haired Sebastian is not a big fan. So he steps up the pace more than usual, probably to get it over with, or maybe to generate warmth.

  Many of the houses that we pass have colored Christmas lights all over them, some just tracing the borders of the house, and some with elaborate designs. I’ve always liked this stuff, and Tara seems OK with it, but Sebastian isn’t the festive type. He walks on the other side of the sidewalk whenever we pass a lit-up house.

  When I get home, Laurie comes out of the kitchen, talking on the phone. “He just walked in, Willie,” she says, walking toward me with the phone.

  Willie Miller is my former client, current friend, and partner in the Tara Foundation, a rescue operation that we run. The foundation is named after my aforementioned wonderful golden retriever. “Can you tell him I’ll call him right back?” I ask, wanting to get out of my coat and get the dogs’ leashes off them.

  She shakes her head and hands me the phone. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  It’s a strange thing for her to say, but the only way I’m going to find out what’s going on is to take the phone. “Willie?” I say, moving the conversation right along.

  “I’m at Pups’,” he says. I knew that he was going there to drop off two puppies we had at the foundation. We were just waiting to get her case resolved before doing so. “You’d better get down here.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The police are here. They’ve got her under arrest.”

  This is not computing. “Why?”

  “Well, I only got to talk to her for a second. But it sounds like they think she murdered someone.”

  “Is that what she said?”

  “No, I overheard it from one of the cops. Pete was here also, but he didn’t see me, and he left.”

  “Who was murdered?”

  “I don’t know,” he says.

  “What did Pups say when you talked to her?” I ask.

  “She said, ‘call Andy.’”

  I give the phone back to Laurie and zip my coat back up.
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  “Call me and let me know what’s going on,” she says. Laurie likes Pups … always has.

  “I will. And if you talk to Ricky, tell him I vote for Carpenter.”

  Pete, it’s me, Andy,” I say into my cell phone.

  “I knew that,” he says. “My caller ID said, ‘slimeball defense attorney.’”

  Pete Stanton is actually one of my best friends in the world, but as a captain in the homicide division of the Paterson police, he seems not to have a great respect for my profession.

  I ignore the insult. “What the hell is going on with Pups?”

  “What do I look like, CNN?” he asks.

  “Do I have to play my attorney-client chip?” I successfully defended Pete a few years ago when he himself was wrongly accused of murder. Not only did I get him off, but I didn’t charge him for the defense. In the world of guilt infliction, that ranks as a weapon of mass destruction.

  The truth is that I know he’s incredibly grateful to me, even though it would break the code for him to admit it. But he’s not grateful enough to help a person he considers a murderer get off, so he’s still going to give me a hard time.

  “The guy she killed was one Randall Hennessey; they apparently had a dispute over some dogs, and she figured that shooting him in the head would swing the argument in her favor.”

  “Any witnesses?”

  “A neighbor saw her running out of his house.”

  “Murder weapon?” I ask.

  “Is this particular murderer your client?”

  Pete apparently is unaware of the courtroom hearing this afternoon. I’m not surprised; other than his work, the only thing he cares about is sports.

  “If you are talking about the alleged murderer, she is,” I say. “Where is she?”

  “She’s at County being processed; the alleged dead body is at the coroner, where it will be determined whether the bullet that blew open the top of his head had anything to do with the cause of death.”

  “I need a favor,” I say.

  He laughs. “You want to plead it down to jaywalking?”

  “No. There are a bunch of dogs in her house. I want you to get word to your people that Willie and I can go in and get them.”

  “What the hell is it with you and dogs?” he says. “Besides, it’s not my case. I was just there in a supervisory capacity, because I’m a big shot. It’s Luther Crenshaw’s case.”