Hannah West: Sleuth on the Trail (Nancy Pearl's Book Crush Rediscoveries)

by Linda Johns

  In a total show of ambidexterity, I used my left hand to dial Lily’s phone number and my right hand to pour Vincent and Pollock into their bowl.

  “Lily! It’s me. I’m at the new apartment, and I think I may have already found my next case,” I said, wiping up the water I’d spilled all over the kitchen counter. Apparently I’d overestimated my ambidextrous abilities.

  “A new case? I haven’t dried off from our last one,” she said. “Does this one include television appearances?”

  “Um, excuse me. Who needs TV when we’ve got real-life action?” Here we were, typical middle schoolers by day and cunning detectives by night, yet Lily was more interested in whether we could talk our way into being extras on a TV show like we were over the summer, on the set of Dockside Blues.

  “Well, you don’t exactly make money in the crime-solving business,” she said.

  She had a point. We had each made a hundred bucks as extras in that cable TV drama. But our brush with fame also put us in the middle of a mystery. Which we’d solved, of course.

  “This case has a significant reward,” I said, trying to entice her.

  “Okay, you’ve got my attention now,” she said.

  “A dog is missing from our new apartment building,” I said. “There are signs all over the neighborhood about it.”

  Silence on the other end of the phone. Then, a big sigh. “Hannah, a missing dog is hardly a crime. Granted, it’s heartbreaking, but the pooch could be seeking kibble elsewhere. A lost dog does not indicate criminal activity.”

  Now it was my turn to sigh. Lily, of all people, should know to trust my intuition on these things. “It might not officially be a dognapping—yet. I still want to do some digging around. Did I mention there’s a reward?”

  “I’m sure I can convince my dad to give me a ride over there. He’s all excited about you and Maggie living on top of one of the Puget Sound Co-op Natural Markets, better known in our house as PCC,” she said.

  “Great,” I said. “I’ll see you soon.” I tried to hide the disappointment in my voice. It’s not that I wasn’t excited to see Lily—I was. After all, she was my best friend. It was the fact that her dad was excited about PCC Natural Market that was bumming me out. I’ve learned from experience that the kinds of markets that get Dan Shannon excited are not the kinds of supermarkets that carry Snickers bars.

  While I waited for Lily to arrive, I looked around for the best place to put Vincent and Pollock’s fishbowl so it would be safe from the dog. Elvis might have short legs, but Piper had warned us that his long body makes it so he can “counter surf,” rise up on his back legs and reach the kitchen counters. He does it in search of food, but I didn’t want to take any chances.

  “Whoa!” I said, carrying the fishbowl into the living room. When I’d visited the apartment before it had been nighttime. I could tell there was a view, but I had no idea that the corner windows would have such a spectacular view of the canal. Those metal swirls that decorated the outside of the building actually overlapped part of the windows, almost as if punctuating the view. I put my fish on top of a small hutch and headed back down the hall. I pushed the two doors that were ajar all the way open, and was thrilled to see that they were both bedrooms. One was obviously Piper’s—my mom would use that one. So I checked out the other one.

  “Whoa!” I said again. No one had told me I was going to have my own bathroom and a walk-in closet. I bopped across the hall to check out Mom’s bedroom, which also had a bathroom and walk-in closet. “My” bedroom, however, had two added bonuses: a TV and a velvet-covered chaise longue for my TV-watching comfort. “This place seems almost as big as our old house,” I said a bit wistfully. I missed having a real home that we could call our own.

  “Actually it’s a bit bigger than our old house. About two hundred square feet bigger,” Mom said.

  I unpacked my clothes and hung them in the walk-in closet. They took up about one-hundredth of the closet space. I arranged my books, sketchbooks, CDs, and photos on the bookshelves. I guess the good thing about having sold most of our possessions is that unpacking takes only about nine minutes.

  I was checking out the television channels at my disposal (at least ninety) when Lily buzzed. “Quick, let me up!” she said frantically over the intercom. “My dad is threatening to drag me into the grocery store and give me a tour of the produce aisle and tell me which vegetables are the highest source of vitamin K or Q or whatever.”

  I buzzed her in and told her how to get to our new apartment. I know it’s not really “our” apartment, but it’s too clunky to say “the apartment where we’re house-sitting” or even “Piper’s apartment.”

  When she got up to the apartment, I gave Lily the grand tour, leading her down the hallway and showing off the bedrooms and the bright kitchen. I saved the view for last. “Whoa,” Lily exclaimed, echoing my earlier amazement. I had to admit, it was an impressive view.

  We headed back into “my” bedroom, and I showed Lily the bright yellow flyer.

  “Look! See how there are three exclamation points after the word reward?” I asked.

  “The overuse of exclamation points, in addition to being irritating, is usually done by those who are trying to make something out of nothing,” Lily said. “In this case, I bet it means a teensy tiny reward for a teensy tiny dog.”

  I pulled out my copy of Legacy of the Dog, a book about dog breeds that I’ve practically memorized. I quickly turned to the toy group section and found a two-page spread on the bichon frise. “Meet the bee-shahn free-zay, so much more than what you call a teensy-tiny chien,” I said, trying to sound French to pique Lily’s interest. But I knew once Lily saw photos of this little white fluffy dog she’d be hooked, with or without my lame attempt at an accent.

  “Oh, look,” she practically cooed. “Its name means ‘curly-haired puppy.’ We have to help find this little fluff ball.” We read about the bichon frise together, learning that it was only about ten inches tall, weighed only about ten pounds, and has been around since the Middle Ages. The book also noted that the breed has a “pretentious gait,” which I think could also be interpreted as the dog has a happy, jaunty walk. My preschool teacher at Montessori Garden had a dog like this named Bijoux, and it was about the sweetest dog I’ve ever met.

  “It sounds like the perfect dog. Ack!” Lily squealed as she looked down. “And speaking of dogs, you must be Elvis.”

  Piper’s basset hound was licking Lily’s wrist, an act of sincere friendliness that Lily seemed unable to fully appreciate.

  “Come here, Elvis,” I said, and immediately the hound transferred his licking to me. “Look at these ears! How could you not love these velvety soft ears?” I asked, petting Elvis’s eight-inch-long brown ears.

  “And look at all this extra skin,” Lily said, grabbing hunks of skin around his neck. “He looks like old, fat Elvis Presley from the 1970s, not young, cute Elvis from the 1950s. Eww! He stinks, too.”

  “He doesn’t stink. He just has a distinctive houndy odor. He also has a magnificent nose, second only to a bloodhound in terms of its power. And, I might add, he’s of French descent.”

  “Uh-huh. He still stinks,” Lily said.

  I have to admit Elvis did smell kind of doggy. It’s a good thing basset hounds are so cute. Their long bodies, short legs, sad faces, and soulful eyes make them pretty irresistible. I could tell he was winning Lily’s devotion. She started singing “You ain’t nothing but a hound dog” in a twisted attempt to sound like Elvis Presley.

  “Maybe Elvis will be my new sidekick. He can track Boris. You know, Columbo had a basset,” I said. I love old 1970s and 1980s detective TV shows, and one of my favorites is Columbo, where this seemingly absent-minded detective in a trench coat brilliantly solved cases in an understated way.

  “I hate to tell you that you’re not Columbo. You’re not even Sherlock Holmes. And Elvis is no hound of the Baskervilles,” Lily said. We recently read The Hound of the Baskervilles in Language Arts
. The horrific hound causing centuries of havoc in that story was nothing like the sweet basset hound lying next to me.

  I know that I’m no Sherlock. But I believed that there was something going on behind Boris’s disappearance.

  I have a nose for these things.

  Elvis rubbed his cold nose against my arm, as if he agreed.

  CHAPTER 4

  ELVIS NUDGED MY arm harder, and I realized that he may not have been agreeing with me as much as he was trying to tell me he needed to go outside.

  “Perfect!” Mom said, as I walked into the living room to get Elvis’s leash. “Lily, Hannah, get your coats. We’ll check out the neighborhood together, with Elvis as a tour guide.”

  Elvis was ready to lead us, practically pulling us out of the building, through the alley, and up a short flight of stairs that led to Fremont Avenue. Mom was the real tour guide, though, making sure that I knew cross streets and landmarks. Let me tell you, Fremont has some great landmarks. We were walking down Thirty-fifth, and all of a sudden there was this fifty-foot silver rocket on the corner. Across the street was Norm’s, a restaurant that lets you bring dogs inside. We peeked inside just to make sure it really would be okay to come back with our dog.

  “Well-behaved dogs are always welcome here, as long as the humans are well behaved, too,” a man behind the bar said.

  As we left Norm’s, someone called out, “Elvis has left the building.” Apparently everyone really does know Elvis around here.

  We kept going, looking at the sights. Besides the bus people statue, there’s a tall bronze statue of Vladimir Lenin on a patio outside of a Mexican restaurant. I don’t even really know who Lenin was, but according to the sign next to the statue he had been a communist leader of the Soviet Union.

  We walked along slowly, allowing Elvis to sniff at whatever he liked while we checked out the windows of a couple of clothing stores and Fremont Place Books. We peeked in at Frank and Dunya, a store that sold pieces by local artists and that had sculpted dogs—named Frank and Dunya, the owner’s former dogs—ready to greet us. Mom wasn’t kidding when she said that people in Fremont really loved their dogs.

  Close to the canal was Costas Opa, a Greek restaurant we go to at least once a year when my mom’s cousin is in town. We walked along the canal a little bit, and then we went into Capers, the housewares and home-furnishings store where Mom’s friend Polly Summers works. She’s the one who set up this house-sitting and dog-sitting gig for us.

  “Believe me, you’ll need some of this,” Polly said, showing us these candles and fragrance sprays called Fresh Wave. “Piper buys this stuff all the time to cover up those houndy smells. No offense, Elvis.”

  Finally we came to the spot I wanted to visit. Joe’s Special. “Hey,” I said. “This is the place where Boris was snatched.” I started to look around, to see if I could spot any evidence.

  “We don’t know that the dog was snatched, Hannah,” Mom said, with just a bit of warning in her voice.

  Ted’s yellow “missing” flyers were posted on both windows of the restaurant. Elvis started sniffing around. “Look! He’s sniffing for clues! Maybe he’s going to track Boris,” I said.

  “Or maybe he found a piece of bread,” Lily added, as Elvis hoovered up a snack and followed his tasty treat with a fit of barking. A long fit of barking.

  “Shhh!” I tried.

  “Quiet!” Mom said.

  “Hush!” Lily said.

  “Try ‘quiet, please,’ ” said another voice. Elvis stopped barking. Immediately. The first thing I saw was a huge sheepdoglike dog, but at the end of the dog’s leash was a guy, maybe around our age. But you can never really tell with boys. In my seventh-grade homeroom, there was a twelve-inch difference between these two guys, Garth and Caleb, who are best friends and have birthdays in the same month.

  “I guess that worked,” Mom said. “Is that some kind of universal dog command that we don’t know?” Mom asked.

  “Nah. I just know that Piper uses the phrase ‘quiet, please’ in that tone of voice, kind of soft and nice, if you know what I mean. It’s the only thing that gets Elvis to stop barking sometimes. If you yell or say something loud, he’ll just bark more to try to be heard. Kind of like he’s in a contest to outbark you.” He looked as if he was sizing us up.

  “We’re Elvis’s dog-sitters, taking care of him for Piper,” I said. I didn’t want some stranger thinking that we were dognapping Elvis.

  “Cool. Piper said to be on the lookout for you guys. This is Scooter. He and Elvis are good pals,” the shaggy-dog guy said. The two dogs were sniffing each other happily.

  “It’s nice to know that people know each other’s dogs and are watching out for them,” Mom said. “Especially since one of our neighbors just lost his dog.”

  “I saw the flyer. It doesn’t sound like Boris is lost,” Shaggy-Dog Guy said. He looked at his watch. “I gotta go. Nice meeting you.”

  Only we didn’t really meet him.

  “He never said his name,” Lily pointed out. “Then again, we didn’t tell him ours either.”

  “Yeah, but he did say that he thinks Boris was dognapped,” I said.

  “Hannah!” Lily and Mom said together, which got Elvis barking again.

  “Quiet, please,” I said nicely to Elvis. It worked. “Okay, he didn’t actually say dognapped, but he implied that he thought something was up, too.” Elvis was pulling his leash over to a bowl of water labeled “Fresh Dog Water.” The window above was painted with the store’s name, “The Perfect Pet: Grooming, Treats, Toys.”

  “Hey, I know that woman,” I said, pointing to the woman at the counter inside. “She volunteers at the animal shelter.” I waved. She looked right at us but didn’t wave back. Maybe the sun was in her eyes or something.

  “Um, Maggie, I need to go, too. My dad is picking me up soon. We have to go to this symphony thing tonight. My parents have decided we need some culture in our lives,” Lily said.

  We headed back to our building. Yellow flyers with Boris’s photo were in every shop window. Every window except The Perfect Pet, that is.

  CHAPTER 5

  “HERE YOU GO, Izzie,” I said, placing a fresh bowl of water in front of my new best friend the next morning. Mom had dropped me off at the Elliott Bay Animal Shelter on Sunday morning for my weekly volunteer job. “Actually, you’re one of my three best friends,” I said, scratching behind her ears. “I just worry the most about you.”

  A beam of sunlight came through the window and lit up a triangle of Izzie’s gleaming brown fur. I interpreted this as a sign that things were going to get better for this love muffin of a dog. Izzie looked at me and hesitated, as if making sure it was okay to go to the bowl.

  “Go ahead, it’s for you,” I said. She slurped the water eagerly. An enthusiastic head shaking after her drink sprayed water everywhere. She turned back to me and rested her chin against my thigh. My heart ached to think what kind of a life Izzie must have had. I have a pretty good imagination, but I just couldn’t understand how someone could mistreat an animal. “Especially you, Izzie,” I said, scratching her behind her right ear. The ray of sunlight was now hitting the exact outline of a white patch of fur on her nose. I decided to take that as an even bigger sign that things were about to get better for this dog.

  Izzie and I have a lot in common. We’re both technically homeless (I already told you about that), we’re both smart (if I do say so myself), and I’m adopted and she’s going to be adopted. I used all my positive-thinking energy about her getting adopted, and soon.

  Izzie had come to the Elliott Bay Dog Shelter last month. She brought along the equivalent of an entire city of fleas. The poor thing was an itchy, scratchy, miserable mess. Big chunks of fur were missing because she had hot spots, which is what happens when a dog has fleas and is supersensitive to them. I was there the day she arrived. We didn’t know much about her at first, except that she was itchy, sensitive (to fleas and in spirit), and timid. By the second week a litt
le more of her personality was showing through, and it was time to photograph her and get an ad up on the Web site to find her a new home. I asked Leonard if I could take a stab at writing her ad. Here’s what I wrote:

  Leggy, svelte, smart, sensitive, and sweet adult female looking for the perfect match. Loves long walks in the woods, taking scenic rides in your car with the windows rolled down, listening to all kinds of music, eating quiet dinners in the kitchen, snuggling on the couch, and relaxing by a fire.

  Leonard made me take out the “leggy” part because he said it was starting to sound too much like the ads grown-ups use to try to find true love on those Web sites that have words like harmony and love in their names. That, of course, was the whole point. I’d read in the newspaper about an animal shelter that placed a funny ad like that and got hundreds of calls for a Labrador puppy named Daisy. Of course, I’d also read that the Daisy story was an urban legend. Anyway, if there’s one thing I learned in the Cesar Chavez Middle School Writing Workshop, it’s that first drafts need to be rewritten. Here’s my revision:

  Meet Izzie, a smart, sensitive, and sweet adult female dog, approximately five years old. This large mixed-breed (Lab, maybe some rottweiler, and dogs from other diverse backgrounds) has good manners and is eager to please. Knows basic commands and is a fast learner, especially if there’s a tasty treat as a reward. Gets along well with the other dogs and cats at the shelter and is gentle with children. Needs regular exercise but is calm and quiet. She has a mysterious past and came to us with fleas, but she’s in good health now. Spayed, up-to-date vaccines, and ready for you.