Fool's Bluff

by Lee Gregg

  Two little dogs ran out of the woods and splashed into the lively creek, impervious to the frigid temperature of the water.

  “William! Harry!” Sam called. The dogs trotted through the water straight to her, their tails rotating like helicopter blades that propelled them forward. She bent down and gave each dog a scratch behind their long, dripping ears and a treat that they both swallowed whole without chewing. They sat in front of her, staring with their big, brown eyes, hoping for more. She couldn’t say no and was surprised to see their tails kick into a higher gear, wagging more quickly than she thought possible.

  “Hey, mama!” Penelope said as she approached, her hand raised in response to Sam’s wave. “Where’s your dog?”

  “He’s at home, traumatized and pouting from his medicated bath ritual.”

  Penelope laughed. “Dogs are just like kids, they’ll stomp through every puddle they come across, the dirtier, the better. William and Harry can lounge in mud water all day long, but as soon as they’re in the bathtub with a bit of shampoo, it’s torture. Add a couple of drops of ear cleaner and they’re ready to call the SPCA on me. At least you’ve only got one dog to deal with. Have you got a name for him yet?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t had a chance to think about it. I wasn’t even sure if I could keep him.”

  “Well, he’s your dog and you’re keeping him and he needs a name and that’s that,” Penelope said as though it was a ridiculously obvious, irrefutable fact. “Your dog’s been neglected or abandoned or abused or maybe all of those things. You totally saved him!”

  “I just took him to the vet.” Sam looked at her boots as she felt her cheeks blush from the unexpected compliment. “People rescue dogs every day. It’s not like I cured cancer. It’s not going to change the world.”

  “But you did change his world. Forever. Dogs know, you know. They know good people, they know real love and they know when they’ve found their human. Harry had three homes before I got him. Three families who said they wanted him, but didn’t really. Sure, they gave him food and shelter, but none of them really loved him.”

  “Yeah, I heard you mention that to the animal control guy. Do you know Harry’s story?”

  “Well, I’ll never know everything that’s happened to him, but when I got him, he was absolutely terrified of men wearing hats and he wasn’t even house-trained. I think that a man who wore hats must’ve been mean to him to make him so scared, but we worked on it a lot and now he seems fine with men, regardless of how they’re dressed.”

  “Aww, poor Harry.” Sam bent down and rubbed Harry’s neck, making him crane his head forward and squint with satisfaction. “You’d never think that he had a dark history. He looks so normal and acts so happy all the time.”

  “He had to gain a lot of weight to get to a healthy size, the ticks and fleas were easy to treat and he had to have a shocking number of teeth pulled. Otherwise, he’s good. But sometimes, he’ll suddenly yelp, crawl along the ground, hide under something and whimper. It’s totally heartbreaking. So, I might not know his whole story, but I learn bits and pieces every now and then. Just last week, I figured out that he’s afraid of rolled up newspapers. Who knows how many other hidden traumas he has.”

  Sam moved her hands down Harry’s neck to massage his shoulders and back. He was now laying on the ground, fully stretched out, his eyes tightly closed in bliss.

  “It’s easy to take an X-ray and put a cast on a broken bone,” Penelope continued, “but how do you disinfect a memory? It’s like those viruses my cousin Claudia told me about, the ones that becomes a part of your DNA. You hope that they stay inactive, but every once in a while, they’re triggered by stress or something and then...boom! Cold sore. So, maybe those wounds never heal, but maybe there’s a way to make sure they stay in remission. I think that he just needs to learn that whatever hurt him before will never hurt him again. He learns really fast, too. It only took one day to house train him. The problem was, nobody ever took the time to teach him to do his business outdoors. His first family, they moved out of the country and just left him. Just abandoned him in the house alone with a bag of unopened kibble. Like, hello, brainless people, couldn’t you have just dropped him off at a shelter? People who do stuff like that shouldn’t have children, in my opinion. Anyway, he cried for days before his second family, the next door neighbors, got him. They kept him for a while before they gave him away to a friend of theirs because they had a baby. That friend gave him to me. She admitted that she just didn’t have time for him, that she didn’t want to make time for him. She wasn’t mean to him like the man with the hat, but at the end of the day, to Harry, it probably felt the same — his family didn’t care about him. They weren’t really family though, were they? So, now he finally has a forever home with me. I’m not sure he even knew what it felt like to be loved before, but I try my best to make sure he knows that feeling every day. So give your dog a name. He needs all the love he can get.”

  Sam gave William and Harry another treat and smiled. They swallowed the treats quickly and ran over to Penelope, where they sat at her feet and stared at her intently.

  “Okay. I get your point,” Sam responded. “I’ll try to think of a name for him. But right now, I need to ask you a question.” Penelope looked up from petting her dogs, her eyebrows raised with interest. “Did you take any pictures or videos while we were on the Challenge?”

  “Sure,” Penelope said, whipping out her phone. “Here. What are you looking for?”

  “So, at the first checkpoint, where we camped the first night—”

  “You mean bean night?” Penelope said with a smile.

  “Yup, that’s the one.” Sam crinkled her nose as she looked up from Penelope’s phone. “I woke up to go pee sometime after we fell asleep. And…and I think I saw someone watching us.”

  “What?” Penelope’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open.

  “I thought I saw a dark figure over by Ben’s tent, so I went to look. One minute the branches were moving and the next they weren’t. And when I got there, there was a cigarette butt on the snow.”

  “What?” Penelope’s eyes bulged out further. “And you didn’t wake me up? He could have been out there sniffing my shoes!”

  “Hmm?” Sam wasn’t fully paying attention to Penelope as she slowly scrolled through the photos, studying them carefully.

  “Well, I don’t know, he could be one of those weirdos who has a foot fetish and likes to sniff shoes.”

  “I…I don’t think so, Pips,” Sam said. She squinted, studying one photo carefully. Could there be something in this one?

  “You don’t know that Sam. Can you say that with one hundred percent certainty? That there isn’t one, teeny, tiny chance that somebody in this world of billions of people has a foot fetish and would be willing to inhale while in the close proximity of my shoes?”

  Sam didn’t respond as she zoomed in on the photo. Did Penelope actually capture hard evidence right here on her phone?

  “Sam!”

  Sam zoomed in on the photo a little more and her heart jumped. “Okay,” she said with satisfaction as her heart started beating faster.

  “Aha! You caved!” Penelope jiggled back and forth, clearly proud of herself.

  “Pips, Look at this!” Sam held the phone up for Penelope, her voice full of excitement.

  Still basking in her win, Penelope took a second to finish her happy dance. Taking the phone, she zoomed in and out before saying, “Is that someone in the bushes?”

  20

  Dan arrived at the station at his usual time, sipping coffee from his usual travel mug, packing his usual lunch, chatting with the usual colleagues and settling down to work as he usually did. He had gone to bed the previous night working on his breathing. Deep breaths in through his nose followed by slow breaths out through pursed lips. He had repeated the exercise until he fell asleep around 4am and when his alarm went off at 5am, he realized that the breathing exercises hadn’t worked at all
. He was still angry.

  Dan clicked away on his computer, unaware that he was tapping the mouse with more force than necessary until he looked down and found his left hand balled up tightly in a fist. He rubbed his hands together, massaging the muscles in his palms to release the tension in his body and when he looked up, he saw the wall clock strike ten o’clock and Chief Constable Joe saunter into the station. The Chief poured himself a coffee and helped himself to a handful of Timbits, popping one donut hole in his mouth while he chatted with Maureen.

  “Dan!” Chief Constable Joe called from across the room, blowing a cloud of powdered sugar out in front of him. “In my office. Let’s have a chat, okay?”

  “Yes, sir.” Dan took a deep breath and held it for a few seconds as he walked to the Chief’s office.

  “Come in and close the door. Have a seat, Dan. Timbit?”

  “No thanks, sir,” Dan replied with a courteous smile.

  “Listen, Dan. I wanted to talk to you about all this hoopla with your daughter. It looks bad now, but you have to trust me. Nobody here is looking at your little girl for the kidnapping,” the Chief said, stuffing another donut into his mouth. “We juff needed to fop the colff fomm comin’ in.” He swallowed. “To stop people from thinking that we weren’t doing our jobs. We had our little parade and now it’s over. Everyone’s going to forget about it with a bit of time.” He took a bite of a jelly-filled donut and red jam spilled onto his hand.

  “Of course, sir. Whatever is necessary to protect the department and our brothers and sisters. That’s one of the only things that matters to me in my life.” Dan’s voice was sincere as he looked the Chief in the eye, shook his sticky hand and gave him a reassuring nod.

  After leaving the Chief’s office, Dan stopped in the men’s restroom to wash his jelly-stained hand, but no matter how hard he scrubbed, he couldn’t wash away the feeling that his hand was still dirty. There was a time when Dan truly believed the words he had just said to the Chief, a time when he meant them with all his heart. But that time was coming to an end.

  * * *

  The mirror in front of Wesley’s face was covered in steam. He had taken an extra long shower in preparation for his big date today, scrubbing all the important bits a little harder with soap. His armpits and feet were now bright red from the extra friction. He wiped the mirror with the palm of his hand and gave his clouded reflection a nod of approval as he stroked the peach fuzz on his upper lip.

  Wesley knew that he was late, that Elle MacTavish was waiting for him in his games room and that she would wait there for as long as he wanted her to. She had requested another interview and he figured that a photo of him on his gold throne gaming chair with his massive video game collection behind him would be perfect for the article. Maybe, he hoped, she would look around and see that the records for highest score in every arcade game machine listed his name at the top. Ben’s scores weren’t even close to what he had achieved. Maybe she would start to see what he always knew: that Ben didn’t deserve all the privileges and recognition he received just because he was older; that Ben was lame and shouldn’t be put in charge of him when Dad wasn’t around since, clearly, Ben was not as smart or as skilled as he was; and that only he, Wesley Black, was in a class of his own and could do things others could only dream of.

  Wesley had wanted to be fashionably late and by the time he entered his games room, Elle had been waiting for over an hour.

  “Hey, hi, Elle.” Wesley was surprised to feel an uprising of frantic butterflies in his stomach.

  Elle looked up from her phone, smiled brightly at him and readied her voice recorder. “Hello, Wesley. Thanks again for meeting with me.”

  Wesley glanced around the room and was disappointed to see screensavers on all of his machines. “D-did you get a chance to play any of the games? We could play together, if you want. Or you could watch me try to get a new all-time high score?”

  “Oh, um, well, maybe we could chat a bit first? Get started with the interview?”

  Wesley could feel himself deflate almost instantly, but then he remembered the money shot he had in mind for the article. “Yeah, I thought you could take a picture of me sitting here.” He climbed into his throne and crossed his legs.

  “Oh. Yeah, okay, we can do that.” Elle snapped a few photos of Wesley and turned her voice recorder back on. “So, the last story we did on you went so viral, our website couldn’t even handle the traffic!”

  Wesley watched Elle’s lips part into a beautiful smile, revealing perfect, white teeth. He felt a surge of energy and pride fill his chest and he knew that he was beaming. He shouldn’t have been surprised with what she had told him. Not only was he finally getting the recognition he deserved, but his popularity was so huge that it broke the Internet! He felt so light and jittery with happiness that he was sure he’d be able to jump up and touch the sixteen-foot ceiling right now, if he tried.

  “So, Wesley, I thought maybe you could tell us what Ben has told you about his kidnapping?”

  The lightness inside him disappeared as he thought about her question. Why was she asking about stupid Ben? He looked down at his lap as he tried to figure out what to say. He noticed a small scratch in the leather beside his left arm and picked at it out of frustration.

  “Or, maybe we could continue our conversation from before?” Elle said after a minute. “You could tell me more about Samantha Shepherd and all the other questionable things she’s done?” Wesley looked up from his chair and saw that her face had suddenly changed. She had creases in her forehead that made her look worried and nervous, but she was still as gorgeous as ever. Her eyes were more greenish today and he counted three black specks in her left eye.

  “She’s the worst,” Wesley said, cringing at the memory of Sam seeing him cry on the mountain, and feeling humiliated all over again. If only she hadn’t been there. She was the reason that nosy, old Bloom lady had called him out in the village too, saying his full name, like she was his mom or something. His embarrassment was transforming into anger. “Look at what she did to my hand,” he said, holding up his cast.

  “She did that to you?”

  “She might as well have.” And with that, all of Wesley’s frustration and bitterness spilled out. Maybe not everything he was telling Elle was completely accurate, but Sam deserved it. This would teach her not to try to tell him what to do.

  “Wow. Wesley. That is quite a story.” Elle looked very impressed.

  “And she’s putting everyone in Glacier Village at risk of a fatal disease. Even tourists! What happens when word spreads across the planet that Glacier Village isn’t safe? When little kids walking down the Ice Bridge get bitten by rabid dogs and die? Say goodbye to tourism and every business here. This place is going to be a ghost town before you know it.”

  “Okaaaay. Yeah, yeah. I definitely see what you’re saying there. Wow. That’s a really great story. Do you think we can just touch on what happened to Ben on the mountain? Did he tell you who kidnapped him or what they looked like?”

  Wesley’s eyes shifted back to the scratch in his chair and he peeled off a small strip of the top layer, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger. Why was she asking about this again, he wondered? Didn’t he just give her enough juicy information for another viral story? He flicked the piece of leather away and stared at the tiny white spot on his chair where the top strip was missing. Without looking up, he said, “I think your story should be about me and my fight to keep Glacier Village safe from evil.”

  Elle didn’t respond right away, but as he started peeling off a long strip of leather, he heard her say, “You know what? You’re absolutely right. This story is fantastic. What do you think — if we run it — would you be able to dig up information on Ben’s kidnapping to help save other villagers from suffering the same fate as your brother?”

  Wesley tugged at the long strip, his eyes locked on the destruction. Now Elle was asking for his help to find Ben’s kidnappers? Who else in the village woul
d be worth kidnapping? Nobody! What other family would be able to pay off a big ransom? No family was richer than they were. The only person in Glacier Village at risk of being kidnapped was his soft big brother. And it wouldn’t be a bad idea if Ben got taken again.

  “Why don’t you just publish this story first and we’ll see what happens? And if you follow up this story with one that has Sam crying or going to jail for what she’s done, then I think you might be pretty happy with what I can give you,” Wesley said, looking over Elle’s shoulder at the poster-sized image of himself that had been taken for her last article. In front of it was a thick gold bracelet he had intended to give her before questions about Ben had popped up. His brother’s kidnapping had served its purpose and it was time to move on. Now it was his turn to shine and if he happened to get a little bit of sweet revenge in the process, then everything will have worked out perfectly. Fair’s fair.

  * * *

  Sam watched people strolling along the Ice Bridge from her table beside the window at Glacier Surge. The barista had shaped the whipped cream on top of her hot chocolate into an adorable pig and she didn’t have the heart to destroy it. She watched the little pig melt slowly into the drink and, after realizing that it was drowning, scooped it up with her spoon and swallowed it with one bite. Better a quick end than slow, painful suffering, she thought.

  The clock on the wall read three twenty-five. Five more minutes. Sam took a sip of her drink and rehearsed her pitch in her head.

  “Hey!” Dr. Henry Chow’s slim frame burst through the entrance, his arm in a cast. “I am so sorry your dog is gone, Sam. You know, he just bolted out the door as soon as I opened it. Caught me by surprise and now I have to wear this for six weeks.”

  “Oh no, Dr. Chow, are you okay? Did he hurt you? And don’t worry, I found him again. Or, actually, he found me.”