Other People's Pets Read online

Anxious to get away, she drives too fast, her tires slipping on snow. As she pulls over in front of Zev’s house, she has trouble stopping and nearly slides into his van.

  Inside, Zev takes her coat.

  “I would only do as many jobs as it took to pay O’Bannon. I’d finish school next year,” La La says, as she sits on a kitchen chair.

  Zev sets a mug before her. “What if you get caught?”

  La La’s chest tightens. “Only one out of every eight burglaries is solved. Aren’t you the one who told me that? Sloppy jobs done by drug addicts and kids on crime sprees. Amateurs. You worked for years without getting caught.”

  “It’s gotten trickier,” he says. “People have doorbells that send video to their phones. Don’t know why they have to make it so tough.”

  “Terribly unfair,” La La says, laughing despite herself.

  “It’s not funny. We’ll figure out something that doesn’t involve you.”

  “Like what?”

  “If I knew, we wouldn’t have to figure it out.” He sits opposite her. “Maybe my father will lend me the money.”

  It’s been nearly two decades since La La saw her grandfather Sam, a man quick to anger, who’d broken two of their dining room chairs, raising them up and violently reintroducing them to the floor. Eventually, Elissa moved meals to the kitchen, where the chairs had metal legs, when he visited. He used to join them for Thanksgiving, complaining about the healthy side dishes she made—whole roasted yams, stir-fried string beans, and the tofu he called “soy paste.”

  Yet he always had a Hanukkah present for La La: a key-chain light, a notepad shaped like a duck, chocolates wrapped in foil and stamped with Jewish stars. Small things she kept on her nightstand, or in the case of the chocolate, devoured. But after Elissa left, he visited only once. When La La told him Zev was teaching her at home, he said to her father, “You? A teacher? Tell me another one.”

  “I’m not that bad,” Zev said, without conviction.

  “You’ll ruin her life.”

  “Like you ruined mine?”

  Their voices rose, and La La ran to her room and shut the door.

  She can’t imagine Sam giving Zev money, though there’s no harm in asking. The cash meant for Donella presses against her stomach. She intended to tell Zev about it but changes her mind.

  * * *

  That afternoon, La La joins her friend Nat at a reservoir for their weekly hike. Fifteen years La La’s senior, Nat enrolled in veterinary school after a career in finance, and La La was immediately drawn to her more mature classmate. They met in a large-animal anatomy lab their first year. Nat wore rubber boots, while La La, still trying to impress her classmates, sported new tennis shoes. Formaldehyde soaked the sneakers by the end of their first session dissecting a horse Nat named Secretariat. La La’s favorite scrubs were ruined, too.

  They share more than veterinary school. Once, after they drained a pitcher of beer at the Longview Tavern, Nat confided that her husband, Tank, had done time for drug possession. La La confessed her own criminal past and Zev’s. She was tired of keeping secrets, and it felt good to return Nat’s trust. Just as she hoped, Nat didn’t judge her, just made a joke about Zev and Tank both having a thing for stripes.

  Even now, when La La says, “Zev was arrested,” and tells Nat the story, her friend frowns sympathetically. But La La doesn’t really expect Nat to agree when she blurts out, “I’m considering doing a few jobs.” Perhaps what La La actually wants is to be talked out of it.

  A gray mist hovers beneath the sky. Nat pulls a bright wool cap over her ears, hiding her pixie cut. “Risky.”

  “I haven’t told Clem.” La La struggles to untangle the dogs’ leashes, but they’re pulling in opposite directions.

  Nat grabs their collars. “Could be hard on the victims.”

  Freeing the leashes, La La hands Blue’s to Nat. “It’s just stuff. They have insurance.”

  “You could lose Clem and your career as a vet. And you still might not save Zev. Is your father worth it?”

  “Impossible to say.” Snow blankets a layer of ice above the water, and a child chases a silvery green duck until, annoyed, the bird takes flight. The scene excites Black, whose gaze follows the bird into the ether and then returns to La La. Remembering another frozen lake, La La tightens her scarf and looks for the child’s parents. “At least Zev never abandoned me.”

  “That’s a pretty low bar.”

  A spot of yellow peeks out from between Blue’s lips, and La La reaches into his mouth and extracts wet keys on a damp fabric chain. “Yours?”

  “Thought they were in my pocket.”

  La La drops them in her friend’s palm.

  “Seems to run in the family,” Nat says.

  She means it as a joke, but it’s true. La La has crime in her blood as surely as the Flying Wallendas have acrobatics, and the Kennedys, politics. Maybe it’s pointless to resist it. Especially now that Zev needs her. The mortgage on his house isn’t going to pay itself while he’s under house arrest.

  The boy chases another duck. “Hey!” La La shouts, and waits for him to turn around. “Better watch out. A duck pecked a boy’s eyes out on this lake. Might have been that very bird.”

  “I never heard of a duck doing that.” The boy glances over his shoulder. The bird is getting away.

  “They don’t brag about it. They might honk now and then, but they’re actually pretty shy.” She’s caught his parents’ attention. Seeing a strange woman shouting at him, they corral him. “Anything interesting happen in the hospital on Friday?” La La asks Nat.

  “Litter of pug puppies came in for their first checkup. It was all I could do not to slip one into my pocket.”

  La La removes a glove and feeds each dog a biscuit, uncertain if her friend is acknowledging the impulse to steal or simply filling her in on the happenings at school.

  Back in her car, La La wonders what she’ll do if her grandfather won’t help.

  * * *

  After he rehangs the clean curtains, Zev takes out the smartphone La La bought for him to replace the phone the police kept as evidence. He reads everything he can find online about ankle monitors. He’ll give O’Bannon a chance to keep him out of jail, but if it begins to look like the lawyer can’t, he wants to be ready. He orders a duplicate of the monitor because he never really understands a device until he’s taken it apart and put it back together. Approaching his foot, Mo twitches her nose. She rubs her cheek against the plastic edge of the apparatus, marking it. “Don’t get used to it,” Zev says. “I don’t plan to wear it that long.”

  He photographs the device from above and below, front and back, only the side pressing his flesh still hidden. He zooms in to capture features he might otherwise miss. “Aren’t many new locks,” he says to Mo. “Haven’t been for years. Just variations on old ones. This one’s got high-tech features, which means they’ve been lazy about the physical ones. Better for us.”

  That night, he phones Sam and leaves a message. “It’s been a long time. I’m in trouble and could use your help.” Zev keeps his phone close for the rest of the weekend but doesn’t hear back.

  Monday morning, when Zev calls La La to report that he’ll have to use a public defender, La La insists on taking a leave from school and paying O’Bannon herself.

  “That’s not what I want,” he says.

  “Then you shouldn’t have taught me.”

  “If I could take it back, I would.”

  In the hall of the veterinary hospital, the flow of care all around her, La La types the name of the registrar into an e-mail on her phone. It’s hard to believe she’ll be leaving this place. Giving up, however temporarily, the life she’s imagined for herself since she was a child. Leaving it forever if she’s caught. Doctors and veterinary students stride past, bringing animals to and from examination rooms, their patients’ needs elevated above everything else. The perfect environment for someone like La La, and the only place she’s ever felt she belonged. Ye
t Zev has no one else.

  My father’s sick, she writes, and then pauses to reconsider. Accompanied by a nurse, a dog limps by. The animals need her, too. But the hospital is full of staff. The dog won’t go untreated. None of the patients will. I have to take a leave, she types.

  Leaning against a light blue wall, she doesn’t know if she can continue. She highlights the message, intending to delete it. She should take more time to think about it. But she doesn’t know how long O’Bannon will wait. And she’s afraid if she doesn’t do it now, she won’t do it at all. That she’ll choose herself over her father. I’ll be back next fall, she writes. I hope you understand.

  She reads the e-mail a dozen times before she can bring herself to send it.

  3

  Nine o’clock the next morning, La La drives sixty miles south to a town outside of Denver where she’s a stranger. Aviator sunglasses conceal her eyes; a cap with a hardware store logo swallows her hair, which is pinned up. She wears a men’s winter coat that she bought at a thrift store and loose jeans. Around her neck is an infinity scarf she’ll pull over her nose and mouth as she enters the home in case there are cameras inside.

  Reaching a neighborhood Zev suggested after realizing she wouldn’t be deterred, she slows down and eases the Mercedes past houses with three- and four-car garages, sunlight reflecting off meandering snow-covered lawns. The day before, she traded in her Honda, hoping the fifteen-year-old luxury car she got in its place would blend into the upscale neighborhoods where she plans to work, as long as no one looks too close. Her eyes barely crest the steering wheel of the vehicle meant for someone larger.

  At the end of the street, she identifies a potential target: a house where flyers flap on the door handle, and Saturday’s snowfall still blankets the driveway. Five thousand square feet, she guesses, a size all but ensuring she’ll find valuables inside. A blue-eyed Siamese cat, abandoned if only temporarily, keeps watch from a bay window. Feeling the animal’s pinched heart, his confusion at having lost his family, La La says, “I’m coming, baby.” But then she notices the red, white, and blue decal of a well-known security company stuck to a corner of a window.

  Driving on, she feels relieved. Perhaps this isn’t something she should do. But three blocks later, in front of a property surrounded by a privacy fence, La La’s stomach cramps, the ache belonging to a creature inside. What if she stuck to robbing homes where animals need her? Sure, the owners would be upset, but she’d be keeping their animals out of pain. In exchange, they’d be helping her keep her father out of jail. They might not appreciate the good she’s doing for them, but wouldn’t it be there all the same?

  The lattice-top fence, newly stained, shields the family from snooping neighbors and will allow La La to work unobserved, too. She parks around the corner. Taking off her small engagement ring, she slips it into the glove box and pretends she’s someone other than Clem’s fiancée, a woman he doesn’t know and never will.

  As she lowers her window, she listens. Trucks rumble and clank on a nearby highway, but the street is quiet. Snowblowers sleep, shovels rest, on the weekday morning. A gray squirrel burrows into a drift, recovering food he stashed or raiding another squirrel’s store. La La reaches into her veterinary bag for a dog biscuit and tosses it. The squirrel stands, jerks his head, and darts toward the bounty. Surely her kindness toward the squirrel and the animal inside outweigh the material loss to the family. Even if they don’t, there’s Zev to think of.

  Shutting the window, she pulls on clear medical exam gloves so she won’t leave fingerprints. Many police agencies won’t bother collecting prints from the scene of a burglary. They lack the resources to investigate nonviolent crimes and homes are full of fingerprints that need to be eliminated. But La La isn’t taking any chances. Likewise, she wears oversize men’s boots, toes stuffed with socks so she can walk, footwear meant to throw off the police in the unlikely event they photograph or cast an impression of the boot prints. She grabs a canvas duffel that conceals her tools: crowbar, wrench, dish towel, veterinary bag.

  After determining the doorbell isn’t one of those high-tech devices Zev warned her about, camera lens peering out above the button, she approaches the door and rings a dozen times. The sun shines like a spotlight on her. Though in movies burglars wear ski masks and climb through windows in the dark, most burglars actually work during the day when homes are more likely to be empty. La La waits, squeezing the handles of her bag. If someone comes to the door, she’ll claim to be lost and ask for directions. The thing she fears most—more than being caught by the police—is surprising an owner who’s armed.

  When she was twelve, an associate of her father’s lost his front teeth. “Did you have an accident?” she asked.

  “Yeah, an accident with a baseball bat,” he said. Now you’d be lucky if all an owner wielded was a bat.

  When no one answers the door, La La walks to the side of the house and opens the sash lock on a sliding window by vigorously working the frame up and down. She climbs into a hallway. A grandfather clock ticks; fresh ice drops in a freezer. The floor creaks in another part of the house, and she stiffens. She waits but doesn’t hear the sound again. Perhaps it was just the structure settling. Creeping toward the back of the house, she passes a display of family photographs on the wall: colorful present-day shots and sepia images of ancestors. In a modern one, a mother wraps a baby in her arms, touching her lips to his forehead. La La brushes the image with a finger, though part of her would rather smash it. She has no memory of a mother caressing her. She’d like to steal some of that affection, but since she can’t, their possessions will have to do.

  When the child gets older, the mother will greet him after school with a glass of milk and a plate of truffles that cost $5.50 each at Rocky Mountain Confectioners. Or at least that’s how La La imagines it. Unlike her own childhood, Zev home with her, teaching her the differences between fine watches and fakes.

  As La La steps into the dining room, a woman appears. La La panics, bumps into an ornate high-backed chair and then into a console table. She’s about to flee when she realizes it’s her own reflection in the glass door of a china cabinet. More than a decade has passed since she regularly entered strangers’ homes, and she can’t help but feel jumpy.

  Reaching the back door, she unlatches it, giving herself a second escape route. She doesn’t know whether the owner has stepped out for ten minutes or is gone for the day. Some people work at home, while others don’t work at all. A woman might return from yoga or Pilates. A maid might show up to clean. Only the poor do everything for themselves.

  Outside a bedroom, a cramp twists La La’s gut. When it passes, she ducks inside. A cage monopolizes a child’s desk, a tawny hamster lying against the bars. Carrots, lettuce, and turnip slices fill a bowl. Someone meant well, but the portion is far too large—it should equal, at most, a few raisins—and is making the animal sick, at risk of dehydration. La La dumps the vegetables into the trash and refills the animal’s water. She cleans the heavily soiled wood shavings as best she can with the plastic scoop next to the cage, then gently strokes the animal’s back.

  In the master bedroom, she rummages among silk thongs in the top drawer of an antique dresser. A jade ring and diamond studs nestle in small velvet cases. La La drops the jewelry into her bag. Longines and TAG Heuer watches keep time on top of a polished men’s bureau, and she slips them into her pocket. She pulls women’s designer clothing from hangers in the closet. In an office, on a desk covered with files and a calendar turned to the wrong month, a laptop tempts her, but heeding Zev’s warning about tracking devices, she leaves it behind.

  A man’s leather coat and a short mink jacket hang in a front closet. She thrusts the leather coat into her duffel and cringes as she takes the fur off the hanger, intending to wear it beneath her own coat. The fence will give her a good price for it. Why leave it behind for the owner to enjoy? But as soon as she slips her arm through a sleeve, her lungs slam shut and dozens of needles p
rick her chest. Gasping, she tears it off and drops to her knees, feeling the anguish of the dozens of animals gassed to make it. They deserve a burial, but there’s no time. When she can breathe again, she folds the jacket and tucks it away on a shelf toward the back of the closet.

  She checks the time on her phone. “In and out,” Zev taught her. “Never more than seven minutes.” She’s been inside ten already, each passing minute increasing the likelihood an owner will return or the police will arrive after being called by a neighbor.

  As she rushes out the back door, she slips on an icy step that leads down to the yard and falls hands-first into the snow. Her duffel sails away. Retrieving it, she plows through white drifts to her car.

  She drives twenty miles on the highway and pulls over at a truck stop, trembling. An animal shakes after an encounter with a predator to clear the body of the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol, a veterinary professor once explained. To calm herself, La La recites a dog’s anatomic systems—cardiovascular, digestive, respiratory, urogenital, lymphatic, neurologic, and orthopedic—and the parts of each system.

  It’s not too late to toss everything into a dumpster. Maybe even get her Honda back. She could describe her father’s miraculous recovery to the registrar and finish her final year. Her heart rate slows and she stops shaking. But then she pictures Zev in a stained orange jumpsuit, in a cell he can’t clean. At the mercy of prisoners with shivs carved from toothbrush handles or fence wire. With his prior conviction—her fault—and without a good attorney, he could be locked up for years, especially if the old man dies. Zev needs her help until O’Bannon negotiates a plea or somehow manages to win at trial.

  La La gets back on the road, plucking off her cap and releasing her hair while she drives. She finds the dollar store her father told her about and pulls in facing the dusty window, the Mercedes out of place next to a Chevy truck with mismatched replacement parts. Half of the storefronts on the street are dark. La La changes into old sneakers.