Barking Detective 04 - The Chihuahua Always Sniffs Twice

by Waverly Curtis

  “But I am too far from Phoebe,” said Pepe. “Take me down, Geri, por favor.”

  I lifted him down and carried him into the living room. Phoebe had stayed behind and was standing, gazing out the window at the scene next door.

  “Why is Phoebe here?” I asked.

  “Colleen asked if we could keep her during the weekend,” Yolanda said. “She thought it would be too chaotic to have a dog running around the farm. The festival organizers really frown on that. Some people are afraid of dogs.”

  “But Phoebe is worried. She senses an evil force at work,” said Pepe. “She cannot relax while she is over here. She needs to be protecting her property and her person.”

  “Poor dog!” I said, rubbing the top of her velvety head. She turned and gazed at me with soulful dark eyes. Believe me, I could almost hear her saying, “Take me back home where I belong.”

  “I wish I could take you over there,” I said.

  “She’ll be fine here,” said Yolanda firmly.

  “Oh, I have one other thing I need to tell you,” I said. “I don’t think you should take Henry to the vet on Monday. I think Hugh is doing unnecessary surgeries on the dogs.”

  “Why would he do that?” asked Clara.

  “Well, he gets paid, doesn’t he, for any services he performs? And that kind of surgery can be dangerous, especially in an older dog.”

  “Sure, I’ll cancel it,” said Yolanda. “I never really liked him. I thought he was a bit sleazy, to tell you the truth.”

  “Yes, sleazy is the word,” said Felix.

  I ignored him.

  “Thanks for bringing me the trust document,” said Yolanda. “Now I can give it to Sheila and she can get started.” She flipped through the pages.

  “Oh, this is interesting,” she said, stopping at a page near the front. Her eyes narrowed as she read the sentences over again and again. “Look at this, Clara!” She passed the papers to her niece.

  Clara studied the line Yolanda was pointing out. “It looks all right to me.”

  “But it says that the trust applies to all the dogs living on the property at the time of Lucille’s death and their issue.”

  “Yes.”

  “That would include the farm.”

  “How do you figure that?” Clara asked.

  “Well, the farm is owned by Mrs. Carpenter’s estate. Colleen is just leasing it.”

  “A good point!” Clara said. “You’ll have to ask Sheila her opinion, but I don’t see how it makes much difference.”

  “Phoebe,” said Yolanda, looking over at the graceful black-and-white dog. Phoebe looked up briefly, then returned to her vigilant posture.

  “Was Phoebe living on the property when Mrs. C died?” Clara asked.

  “I think so,” said Yolanda. “We’d have to ask Colleen.”

  “Surely if that was true, Colleen would have noticed it sooner,” Clara said.

  “Well, I don’t think she’s ever seen a copy of the trust document,” I said. “I don’t think any of the heirs have.” Except for the judge, and he had torn it up. And Kevin, and he had stolen it from Jimmy G.

  “Does this mean what I think it means?” asked Pepe, his voice full of wonder.

  “What do you think it means?” I asked.

  “I think it means Colleen doesn’t have any more money troubles,” said Clara, reading a little farther down the page. “Because anyone who is caring for one of the dogs or one of their issue receives an allowance, plus expenses.”

  “I think it means Phoebe is exactly my favorite type of bitch!” said Pepe. “Beautiful and rich!”

  Chapter 45

  “So you’re heading over to the farm for the lavender festival?” Clara asked. “You can come with me the back way, if you want.”

  “That would be great,” I said.

  “But you can’t bring the dogs,” she said.

  I looked at Fuzzy and Pepe. Fuzzy was wrestling with one of the younger cockers. I think it was Victoria, the chocolate-colored one. Pepe was gazing dreamily at Phoebe, who was still glued to the window.

  “Could we leave them here?” I asked Yolanda.

  “Absolutely,” she said. “It’s good for the dogs to have some company.”

  As Felix and I followed Clara out the door, I commented on the change in her aunt. “She seems like a different person,” I said. “So take charge. So confident.”

  “I know,” said Clara. “It’s amazing. She’s always had other people bossing her around—Boswell, most recently. But having the full responsibility for the dogs, and defending the trust—that’s really energized her. She’s already cleaned up the office and turned it into her command center. And she’s organizing a memorial service for Boswell. It turns out she just needed something more fulfilling to do than take care of a pack of yapping dogs.”

  We followed Clara through the gate in the chain-link fence and approached Colleen’s farm from the back. The chickens squawked at us as we passed their pen. We picked our way over some hoses that were lying in the garden rows.

  “Have you heard anything more about who shot at the dogs?” I asked.

  “No, not a word. I think the police department is just swamped making arrangements for the festival.”

  “And how’s Jay?”

  “Oh, no problems there,” said Clara. “He’ll be fine.”

  “It was very brave of him to run straight at the shooter,” I said.

  “He is very brave,” she said, with a blush.

  “So have you been over here today?”

  “Oh, yeah, I’ve been here since six this morning.” Clara led us in the back door of the farmhouse. It was hot and humid inside. The ovens were going full blast, I guess, and the house was full of people: women in yellow aprons, volunteers in purple T-shirts, vendors wearing lilac-colored baseball caps. Clara handed off the masking tape to Jay, who was sitting at a table in the living room, ticking off the names of volunteers who were coming in to sign up for various tasks.

  I looked around—I studied interior design, and I’m always curious about how people decorate their homes. It seemed like Colleen might have inherited the furniture from her father: a nubbly beige sofa, a dark brown Barcalounger, a boxy old TV on a wooden table, a rag rug on the scuffed hardwood floor. The wallpaper was a faded yellow-brown with vertical maroon stripes.

  She could really use her new fortune, I thought. Maybe she would hire me to redecorate the place. Just then, Colleen breezed in the door, smelling intensely of lavender, and rushed past us.

  “We have the best news for you, Colleen,” Clara sung out. But Colleen said, “Just a minute,” and hurried down the hall.

  “Should we really tell her?” I asked Clara.

  “Tell her what?” Jay asked.

  “We haven’t had a lawyer look at it,” I pointed out.

  “What are you guys talking about?” Jay wanted to know.

  “Colleen might inherit a whole bunch of money, just because of Phoebe,” Clara said.

  “What?” That was Kevin, coming out of the kitchen.

  “Oh, hi, Kevin,” Clara said. “Yes, the trust document says that whoever is taking care of a dog that lives on Mrs. C’s property gets an allowance and the use of the property for as long as the dog—and its issue—lives.”

  “I didn’t see that clause in the trust document,” Kevin said.

  “When did you have a copy of the trust document?” Colleen asked him, coming out of the hallway and giving him a hug. She still smelled like lavender, but it wasn’t as strong.

  Kevin looked a bit embarrassed. “A guest left a copy behind,” he said. “Actually, a private detective that Julian hired.”

  “What did this private detective look like?” I asked.

  Kevin narrowed his eyes. “He dressed like a forties cartoon of a detective,” he said.

  “Fedora, suspenders, narrow moustache, bulging eyes,” I said.

  “Yes! How did you know?” Kevin asked. “In fact, he’s here. I saw him just a
minute ago at Jillian’s booth.”

  “Jillian is here?”

  “Yes, I told her she could have a booth here,” Colleen said. “I felt sorry for her. She didn’t have enough money to pay the deposit for a booth at the fairgrounds or in town.”

  “I need to talk to that guy,” I said.

  “How do you know him?” Colleen asked.

  “He’s my boss,” I said.

  “But he’s working for Julian,” Kevin said. “I thought you were working for Boswell and the dogs.”

  “That’s what I need to figure out,” I said.

  I went storming out the front door and plunged right into the crowd, with Felix close behind me.

  The front yard was awash with people. They were forming lines outside the booth that sold the specialty cocktail of the day; they were standing and swaying in front of the stage, where a guitar player and accordionist played rancheras and polkas; they were thronging the aisles of the gift shop; they were gathering around the still as the brownish liquid gushed out of the copper tubing and squirted into a plastic bucket; they were sitting at picnic tables with plates of food purchased from the kitchen booth, where Lionel was dishing up skewers of lavender-marinated chicken and green salad dressed with lavender-honey dressing; they were wandering through the fields of fragrant bushes that stretched out in long purple rows and scented with air with their sweet perfume.

  It took a while, but I finally found Jillian’s booth, at the end of the line of booths. But it was empty. She had boxes full of the plastic-covered prints we had seen at her gallery lined up on a table in front. A few larger pictures were propped on stands on a side table, and there was a large easel in the back that was covered with a cloth.

  “Where’s the artist?” I asked the young woman who was selling lavender wands and lavender wreaths at the next booth over.

  “Oh, she went on an errand. She asked me to watch it for her,” she said. “Do you want to buy something?”

  “No, I’m just looking,” I said, shuffling through the prints right in front of me.

  “This looks like Phoebe!” said Felix, pulling out a copy of the print that Pepe had wanted, showing the farm dog sitting by the Lost Lakes sign.

  “I think it is Phoebe,” I said. “Don’t let Pepe know there are copies of it. He thinks he has the original.”

  Something about the print bugged me, and then I realized what it was. For Jillian to have captured the scene so well, she must have been on the property earlier. And that meant she had been near the cocker spaniels. That, combined with the suspicious chocolate-chip cookie and her disturbing paintings, made me wonder if she was the one who was trying to harm the dogs.

  “Is it OK if I look at these others more closely?” I asked the neighboring vendor, inching my way behind the table.

  “Sure,” she said. “I don’t think Jillian would mind.”

  I slipped between the poles of the booth and studied the pastels propped on the table. There was no way to tell exactly when they had been painted, but there was a little camera sitting next to them. I picked it up and found the buttons that would allow me to view the photos.

  To my horror, the first photo that came up was one of my boss, completely nude and lying on a rumpled bed, with a silly grin on his face. The date stamp said it had been taken only the previous day. I rapidly paged back past that, only to be even more horrified by the sight of Hugh the Handsome, sprawled out nude on one of the steel exam tables in his vet clinic. And the date stamp on that one was the previous night, in fact, the evening of the day when I had first visited Hugh, the evening when his clinic was supposedly burglarized. Clicking back, I finally came to the photos that confirmed my suspicions: one of Phoebe outside the sign for Lost Lakes on the day when the chocolate-chip cookies were left for the dogs, and then, even more damning, a photo of a plate of chocolate-chip cookies, lying by the driveway of Carpenter Manor.

  “It was Jillian!” I said, turning to Felix and waving the camera around. “She’s the one who’s trying to kill the dogs!” But in my enthusiasm I knocked against the picture on the easel, and it went flying.

  I set the camera down as I bent to pick the painting up.

  “Ack!” I was really sorry I did. I was staring at a large oil painting of my boss. The painter had established a point of view near his feet and painted him as he lay in a rumpled bed, every detail of his anatomy displayed in great detail. Except for the fedora on his head, he was completely nude.

  “Oh my God!” I said, turning my head away and groping for the cloth on the ground to cover it up. I wanted to erase the image from my brain, but I feared it would stay with me forever.

  “Is that who I think it is?” Felix asked.

  “Please just let me forget I ever saw this,” I mumbled.

  In my haste to cover up the painting, I knocked it off the stand. It landed facedown in the dirt. When I picked it up, some dirt and grass clung to the wet paint. I tried to brush it off and got flesh-colored paint all over my hands and my polka-dotted navy sundress.

  And just as I was holding it, paint side out, to avoid further contamination to the painting, I looked up and saw Jimmy G looking at me from the other side of the booth, a look of horror on his face.

  Chapter 46

  Jimmy G had been flattered when Jillian took him by the hand and led him away from the booth, after asking the vendor next door to keep an eye on her merchandise. He was keeping his eye on her as she threaded her way through the crowds, through the barn, and through the garden behind it, looking back over her shoulder frequently as if she was afraid they were being followed. He assumed she was interested in a roll in the hay, but he didn’t see how they were going to manage that with all the people around. Even behind the barn, a few tourists had gotten separated from the hordes in front and were wandering around, like lost ants off the trail, poking their noses into the greenhouse and peering into the henhouse.

  “Where are we going, doll?” Jimmy G asked.

  “Shhh! It’s a secret,” said Jillian, putting one finger to her lips.

  Well, fine. Jimmy G didn’t have anything to do except be led around by a gorgeous dame. He saw they were heading toward the back of the property along the fence line, which was planted on the other side with bamboo. But then they reached a little gate, which swung open and permitted them entry into the yard next door. He could see the back of a big house, designed to look like an English cottage, only on a grand scale, and a formal garden bordered by trimmed hedges.

  “I just discovered the gate today,” Jillian said, “while watching Clara.”

  That didn’t mean anything to Jimmy G, but he could see the logic: why not sneak into the next-door neighbor’s yard for a romantic rendezvous. This was one bold chick, but Jimmy G liked that! He probably wouldn’t admit it, if anyone asked, but Jimmy G liked dames who took charge.

  Jillian ducked down behind a hedge and motioned for Jimmy G to join her.

  “Here goes!” thought Jimmy G, sliding in beside her and tumbling her down into the soft grass. He tried to kiss her but, to his surprise, she hauled off and punched him in the nose

  “What?” he sat up, holding his schnoz, which was bleeding.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked, rearranging her top. Jimmy G’s enthusiastic embrace had caused a wardrobe malfunction.

  “I thought that’s what you wanted,” he said, wiping at his nose with his handkerchief.

  “No, stupid. I just want your weapon!” And Jillian made a lunge for the gun in his shoulder holster.

  Jimmy G pushed her back. “No one touches Jimmy G’s weapon!” he said.

  “Fine!” she said, with a pretty pout. “Then you will have to shoot the dogs!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Those stupid dogs. They’ll be coming out the door any minute now. Yolanda has them trained like clockwork. They go out right after lunch. And I want you to shoot them!”

  Jimmy G worked that out in his mind. “So you�
�re the one who’s been trying to attack the dogs,” he said.

  “Yes, and it hasn’t worked. I tried putting poison in some cookies, and the stupid dog walker noticed the cookies and wouldn’t let the dogs eat them. How was I supposed to know that chocolate is dangerous for dogs?”

  “Jimmy G wouldn’t have known that either,” he said, trying to be sympathetic.

  “And then I tried shooting them with a rifle, but I missed.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I’m not very good with guns.”

  Jimmy G remembered the conversation in the bar the night he met Jillian. “That was you? You told me someone got shot.”

  “Yes, some stupid farmworker got in the way while I was trying to shoot the dogs.” Jillian tossed her hair back. “So you can see why I need you, Mr. Dangerous.” She looked at him coquettishly. “When I get the fortune, I’ll pay you. I’ll pay you a lot.” She ran her hand along his arm.

  Jimmy G hesitated, trying to buy time.

  “Why are you so angry at the dogs?”

  “First, they got all my mother’s love. Then they got all her money. It’s not fair!”

  Jimmy G tried to think. He was aware of the clock ticking down. The dogs would be coming out any minute, and Jillian expected him to do something. Jimmy G was willing to do a lot of things, but shooting dogs was not one of them.

  He came up with an idea. “Well, Jimmy G can handle this assignment,” he said. “But you shouldn’t be anywhere around. So how about you go back to your booth to establish an alibi, and Jimmy G will meet you there.”

  Jillian sulked but finally agreed when Jimmy G pointed out that the fortune would not do her much good if she ended up in jail. He was shaking by the time she wandered off. What now? He couldn’t shoot dogs. He had to get out of there. He waited for three minutes, five minutes, ten minutes. Then he figured enough time had passed. He would make up a story, tell Jillian that he had taken care of the dogs, and then figure out what to do next.

  He tiptoed out of the yard—the dogs still had not made their postprandial appearance—and made his way back to Jillian’s booth. And to his shock, Jillian wasn’t there. Instead he saw his girl Friday holding a huge nude portrait of him. He had to admit, just for a second, that he looked pretty darn hot.