I stood looking at him. “You sure he needs it?”
“That’s what it said . . . Why?”
“It’s just that you might consider buying a clipper instead.”
“And trim Bits’s claws at home?”
“Right. It’d be less traumatic for him.”
“Hmmm . . .”
“If not today, maybe next time.”
He scratched under his chin. “I don’t know. Dr. Lester’s assistant told me Bits also needed a refill on his vitamin tablets—”
“It’s only a suggestion to keep in mind, Morrie,” I said, and decided to give him something else to contemplate. “You know those prescription eyedrops you sell at your office?”
“Yes . . .”
“According to the consumer Web sites, they’ve got something major in common with the pet vitamins.”
Understanding dawned on Morrie’s face. “I can find the same thing over the counter for half the price?”
I pointed a finger at him.
“There you go,” I said, and turned toward my parking space.
Chapter 9
“You want me to drive out and see this ex-Pilsner dude?” Bryan Dermond said.
I was in the kitchen of my Airstream trailer watching him reach into a cabinet above the sink. Exhausted from her trip to the vet, Ski was snoozing obliviously in the overhead compartment to his right, on a shelf she’d staked out as her private loft.
“He’s Gail’s ex-husband, not an ex-Pil—” I broke off my sentence. He’d taken some purified sea salt from the cabinet. “You cooking?”
He shook his head. “Gonna mix some salt and warm water in the bathroom.”
“Oh. Any special reason?”
He slid shut the cabinet’s door and faced me. “Tell me you don’t notice anything different.”
“About what?”
“My nose,” Bryan said. “C’mon. Make like I’m Socrates.”
“Huh?”
“We gain wisdom by asking questions. Check out my nose. What do you see?”
“Well, it’s in the middle of your face.”
“Skyster, I asked what’s different.”
I sighed. Bry and his girlfriend were film buffs, so I figured they’d seen the old Rossellini movie about Socrates. It went to show how DVD rentals could be damaging to young, impressionable viewers.
I counted his nasal piercings. Ah-hah.
“You got a new ring in your left nostril.”
“A new stud. Right nostril.” Bry tapped it with a fingertip. “You seriously didn’t notice?”
I seriously hadn’t. No surprise, considering the huge number he had in his nose, ears, and lips—and other places I didn’t want to picture. What did kind of amaze me, though, was the realization that I wasn’t too awfully grossed out for a change.
“So,” he said. “Guess I should head over to the clinic.”
I was quiet a second. Since hiring Bry, I’d learned that not all my clients readily accepted his body jewelry, tattoos, and burgundy-streaked Goth black hair. Bry’s appearance was extreme to put it mildly. While trying to be sensitive to his feelings, I also granted that some people needed a little prep work.
“The salt and water for cleaning off the stud?” I stalled.
“Yeah,” Bryan said. “And the crud.”
I pulled a face.
“Sorry,” he said. “What I meant is it helps heal the skin too. But don’t worry; I’m sanitary.” He cocked a thumb over his shoulder at the bathroom door. “Got my own glass, cotton pads, and disposal bags in there.”
“Thanks.”
He shrugged. “So what’s the verdict? Do I head over to the clinic when I’m done?”
I hesitated a moment. “I think maybe we should both meet Vaughn,” I said. “Together.”
“How come? I know the joint inside out. Been cleaning the office and kennels for two months on my lonesome.”
“I know.”
“And you’ve got, like, three jobs lined up today. Besides our usual at City Hall.”
“Two.” I glanced at my Felix the Cat clock on the trailer wall. His pointing white-gloved hands told me it was almost eleven a.m. “The first’s in about an hour. Second’s at three this afternoon, but it’s a quickie . . . that little summer bungalow down on Periwinkle Road.”
“Somebody renting it already?”
“No,” I said. “But Mrs. Filbert likes it dusted and vacuumed once a month starting in the spring. In case any tourists show up to give it a look.”
Bry grunted. “I heard those goobers who broke into the clinic did a real number on it. On Doc Pilsner too.”
I nodded slowly.
“Really, Skyster, I’ll handle this,” Bryan said. “You take care of other gigs and split for home. Maybe catch a nap.”
“What about City Hall tonight?”
“We can take my wheels . . . I’ll pick you up around sevenish.”
I expelled a deep breath, looking him straight in the eye. “Bry, listen, I appreciate what you’re trying to do. But Vaughn Pilsner’s a retired corporate investment broker who still kind of dabbles for the fun of it.”
“Square as a cube, huh?”
I nodded. “I doubt he’ll be into the piercing experience.”
“Or charmed by my ink?”
“To know you is to adore you,” I said. “I just think I ought to make the introduction.”
A couple of seconds passed. I hoped I hadn’t hurt Bry’s feelings. If I had, he was good at hiding it.
Finally he shrugged. “I got five minutes to do my dabbing before we leave?”
“Dab to your nose’s content. I’ll put out some cat food in the meantime. Ski hasn’t had much of an appetite lately. If she wakes up hungry, I’ll be on my way to being relieved.”
Bry glanced into the cabinet where she was curled in a sleeping ball. “You never gave me the four-one-one on her trip to the vet,” he said. “How’d it go?”
“Pick your term for the opposite of calm and relaxing,” I said, and then gave him an instant recap. “I’m still not sure what’s wrong with Skiball. Or that anything is wrong with her. She’s just kind of . . . I don’t know. Logy, I guess. But I’m definitely not turning her over to the mad Dr. Ruthless.”
“There an option B?”
“I’ll wait till later to see if she’s back to her normal irritating self,” I said. “Otherwise, I’d better have the clinic in Gloucester squeeze her in for an appointment.”
Bry grunted and carried his sea salt to the bathroom sink, closing the door behind him. I poured some kitty kibbles into a bowl, then sat down at my desk to wait. With everything that had gone on over the past couple of days, I decided to check the calendar appointments on my cell phone and make sure there weren’t any that had slipped my mind.
I hadn’t even gotten the phone out of my bag when its ringtone sounded. That’s Coldplay’s “Yellow,” if you’re curious.
“Grime Solvers,” I answered. “Sky speaking.”
“Hey there, gorgeous! I see you’re up and at ’em early today!”
I suppressed a groan. “I guess I am,” I said, and swiveled around toward my window. The Getaway Groves model unit was a few hundred yards behind Abe Monahan’s old stone wall—the one he’d built around the property before I inherited it. In fact, the unit’s second-story terrace faced my trailer and the little unpaved parking area in back. Something told me that if I held a pair of binoculars to my eyes while looking out at the terrace doors, I would see Bill Drecksel right behind them, scrutinizing me through his own binoculars.
“This is your buddy Billy,” he said.
“Uh-huh.”
“Or your Billy buddy, you want to flip it around,” he said. “That’s a joke; get it? Billy buddy. Like those kids’ toys—”
“I got it,” I said. “Bill.”
He cleared his throat. “So what’s with you today?”
“I’m not sure what you mean—”
“You sound in a lousy mo
od.”
“Actually, it’s that you caught me at a busy time.”
“Why?”
“Why am I busy?”
“No, why ain’t you in a better mood?”
“I just said—”
“ ’Cause busy, schmizzy, I know you’d feel better if you tasted my quiche last night,” he said. “Or Chloe gave you a warm slice for breakfast like she promised.”
“I left in a rush,” I said truthfully. “She didn’t have a chance to put it in the oven.” Which might have been the truth, not that I’d checked.
Drecksel exhaled at his end, a big, gusty mouthful of air that was loud enough to hurt my ear.
“Don’t think I’m pokin’ for compliments,” he said. “People know what kind of quality to expect when I bake something for ’em.”
“Without a doubt.”
“So what’d you decide? Gonna ditch your junk-heap trailer?”
I wanted to bite my tongue. His unmitigated gall was beyond belief. “Bill, I really do have to run . . .”
“Go ahead. I don’t mean to put the squeeze on you.” He blew more wind. “But keep in mind the advantages of sharin’ my office space. And that I can’t hold the offer open forever.”
“Right,” I said, about to cut him off. “Talk to you another time—”
“Incidentally, you see any bears this morning?”
My thumb paused over the phone’s End button.
“See what?”
“Bears,” Drecksel said. “Wild ones.”
I shook my head.
“No, Bill,” I said. “I haven’t.”
“Not that I ever heard of tame bears. Except maybe in the circus or Vegas. Even then I ain’t so sure. There’s a difference between training and taming ferocious animals. Remember that time with Siegfried and Roy? I know they fooled with tigers—”
“Bill, what’s this about?”
“Just that I got reports they been spotted in the woods around here.”
“Wild bears.”
“Right. A whole herd of ’em. Couldn’t say what kind . . . You got any idea if we got grizzlies in this part ’a the country?”
“No, Bill.”
“How about black bears? Or maybe brown ones?”
I suddenly had a weird sense of déjà vu. It was almost as if I were talking to Hibbard and Hornby again. Except they were idiots without being hustlers to boot. “I told you. I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure bears don’t roam in herds.”
“I’ll remember that next time I’m on Jeopardy!” Drecksel sounded indignant. “Look, I wanted to give you a heads-up, is all. Say there’s a bear outside the trailer. That could mean trouble, dependin’ if it’s hungry and spots that little cat of yours in the window of the trailer. Or maybe sees you gettin’ in or out of your car . . .”
“Bill, I haven’t read a single report about bear sightings. And I write for the local newspaper.”
“Who said it was in that rag? We real estate developers got our own insider sources. When there’s bears in the neighborhood, lemme tell you, property values go down. So you might wanna cash in before the public gets wind of it. Do yourself a favor ’n’ vacate the trailer. I’ll scrape together a few bucks for the ground it’s sittin’ on.”
How sweet and considerate. “Aren’t you worried they might scare people off from buying units at Getaway Groves?”
“Huh?”
“The bears. What’s to prevent them from licking their chops over the residents of your condos?”
Bill chortled. “C’mon, Sky, be real. A wild bear looks one way and sees that pile of rocks Abe called a wall around your trailer. Looks the other way, it sees a seven-foot-high steel gate . . . Getaway Groves bein’ a gated community. Which one ’a those two obstacles is it gonna hop lookin’ for easy chow? Especially since you got a little cat in the window?”
I weighed several replies. But I was trying to avoid profanities and ruled them out. So I did the next-best thing and finally pressed the button to end the call.
“Bry?” I could hear the sink running in the bathroom. “You almost done?”
“Washing up—I’m zipping!”
Zipping? I shrugged, grabbed my bag, and headed out back to wait in the Versa. When Bry appeared from the trailer, I was sitting with all the windows rolled down to let in some fresh air, blithely unconcerned with big, bad bears.
“How do I look?” he said, opening the passenger door.
“Freshly dabbed,” I said. “C’mon, it’s getting late.”
Bry slid in beside me and we zipped on out to meet Vaughn Pilsner.
SKΥ TAΥLOR’S GRIME SOLVERS BLOG
Tight Spots
When we started furnishing my Airstream, Bry and I knew its spotlessness would be our calling card. We also knew we’d be in and out on jobs constantly and didn’t want cleaning it to eat up time and productivity.
Keeping a small place tidy presents its own set of challenges, whether it’s a trailer, the motor home you’re using for your cross-country vacation, your one-room office, or a shoe-box studio apartment.
It sounds obvious, but the best way to keep a small dwelling or workplace clean is to avoid clutter.
With this ground rule in mind, I’ve got a few more helpful tips for setting up and cleaning small interior spaces.
1. Be picky with your furnishings. The simpler they are, the easier it is to be orderly and organized. Stick to pieces with nice straight lines. Ornately carved table legs and chair-backs might look great in the family home or multiroom apartment, but where space is limited, they gather dust, take longer to clean, and can make for a dingy atmosphere.
2. Hide things in plain sight. An old-fashioned storage chest is the best place for . . . well, just about everything you aren’t sure where to stash away. Looking through the chest in my Airstream, you’ll see extra blankets, office and sewing supplies, seasonal decorations, lightbulbs, paper towels, bottled water, even CDs and DVDs. A chest of this sort can also provide extra seating or double as a coffee table.
3. Opt for natural-fiber area rugs. They can be removed and laundered, or flipped over and snapped to rid them of superficial dust and dirt. Furthermore, they don’t have that nose-itching synthetic/chemical carpet smell that can permeate small quarters.
4. Use sliding doors wherever possible. They’re ideal for kitchen cabinets, closets, dressers—you name it. It’s a lot easier to maneuver when you don’t have to back up when opening a door—or dance around it.
5. Taylorian Cleanliness Logic: Small spaces get dusty faster than large ones because the dust has fewer places to settle. Most dust in our work and living places comes from outside, and we can control the amount that enters with window coverings—so it’s important to choose them carefully. Mylar shades are a good first cover because they’re smooth and easy to clean. They let in light while keeping out heat and cold. A bamboo or rice-paper shade as a second covering offers further protection from outside elements and offers a soothing ambience.
6. Leave your shoes at the door. Think about it. We always hear about washing our hands often because they pick up germs—and we should. But who knows what we’re tracking in on the bottoms of our shoes? If it was on the street, we should be sure to keep it off our floors and rugs.
Chapter 10
Twenty minutes later Bryan and I were at the Pilsner home. Just last night, I’d run breathlessly from across the road behind Chief Al, stuffed to the gills with sushi. Now I’d again found myself short of breath going up the steep wooden stairs to the door—but for a very different reason. As I may have mentioned, I’d gotten in great shape at Get Thinner’s that winter. The climb wasn’t what bothered me.
I supposed what did was just returning to the place so soon. When I’d parked the Versa out front, everything I’d seen inside had flashed through my mind. Gail’s body in the entry hall, the ransacked veterinary offices . . . everything. I don’t know how to describe the way I felt. Not exactly. I can only repeat that the sheer force of those
images knocked the wind right out of me. And add that I was almost gasping for air as I reached the hilltop and rang the bell.
Naturally Vaughn Pilsner answered the door before I could pull myself together.
A tall, rail-thin man with a light natural tan offset by a mane of white, wavy hair, he smiled at me from the entryway, wearing perfectly pressed jeans and a pale blue oxford shirt that matched the color of his eyes. Pushed behind his ears, that snow-white hair fell at least three inches below his collar and instantly caught my attention. So did the fact that he was barefoot, though I couldn’t have explained why . . . and yeah, I know I’m a newspaper columnist, a basic requirement of which is that I be able to express myself with words. But when I’m at a loss, I’m at a loss.
“Sky?” Vaughn said in a quiet voice, offering his hand.
“Not to be confused with Bry,” Bryan said from beside me. “That’s my name tag. Making us ‘Sky and Bry’ when we’re together.”
Vaughn’s smile grew larger as he shifted his attention to Bryan. I might have cringed otherwise. But he seemed slightly removed without being aloof, and the result was an air of calmness about him.
“I heard you’ve done a wonderful job with Gail’s kennels,” he said. “Come on in. It’s chilly out here. We can chat in the sunroom.”
So much for Vaughn having a problem with Bry’s hard-core bodywork. As he led us through the foyer, in fact, he carried himself with such ease that my cringefulness was almost dispelled.
But when my eyes landed on the still-broken mahogany rail along the staircase . . . well, so much for not cringing.
“I truly apologize.”
I looked up at Vaughn.
“For what?” I said.
“You were here the night of the attack. Right after they found Gail.”
I shook my head. “It’s all right.”
“No. No, it isn’t.” He’d remained soft-spoken. “This is a big house. I should have had enough sense to have you come through one of the side entrances.”
I stood looking at him a moment. And though I knew people’s eyes shaded darker only in sappy romance novels, it seemed to me they’d done just that.
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