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

by Linda Johns

  If only Lily could see me now. I was in acting mode, playing the part of a confident detective who has all the loose ends tied up. Truth is, I was still guessing on most of it. It’d be pretty embarrassing if I was wrong.

  I didn’t think I was wrong, though. Meredith’s face was flushed red, and her jaw was set tight. I continued: “I don’t know why or how you kidnapped those dogs. But I know that you were the one who got the money for them. And I think you’re scrubbing this dog too hard.”

  She eased up a bit on the scrubbing. I didn’t ease up.

  “Once you made easy money with Boris, you just kept going. I just don’t know how you figured out that Mack had something to do with Jennifer’s reward.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “I don’t even know who to call to turn you in,” I said. “Most of all, I don’t know why you would do such a thing. If you love animals so much, why would you rip them from their safe homes and loving families?”

  She helped Newton out of the tub. I handed her a couple of towels, and she started drying him. “People don’t deserve the animals they have,” she muttered. “I would never hurt an animal. I borrowed those little dogs only to make a point. The reward money for Boris was a nice surprise.”

  “You might have treated the dogs kindly, but their owners were out of their minds with worry about them,” I said. “Ted, Jennifer, and Ben love their dogs deeply. They take good care of them.”

  She didn’t say anything. I had one last thing to say.

  “Meredith, I’ve made up my mind. I’m not going to turn you in,” I said. She looked relieved. “You’re going to turn yourself in.”

  I know I have no power to make Meredith do anything. I’m not even very threatening. Still, I was pretty sure she was going to do the right thing.

  “What makes you think she’ll admit it all?” Mom asked as we drove home late that afternoon.

  “Mack’s going to help me with that,” I said. “You’ll see.”

  CHAPTER 25

  BEN’S FAMILY INVITED my family to dinner that night.

  “My grandpa is going to order a bunch of Indian food from Tandoor,” he said when he called. “Dad says to bring Elvis, too. We’ve got some raw bones to keep the dogs occupied and out of trouble.”

  At seven o’clock, Mom, Elvis, Lily (she seems like family), and I entered the gate to the Mack Pappas, Thomas Campo, and Benito Campo yard. I wasn’t sure if we were supposed to go around to the back and upstairs to where Ben and his dad lived, or ring the front doorbell. As if in answer to my unasked question, the front door swung open and Scooter came bounding out. Mack stood at the doorway. “Welcome, welcome! Come in. The food just arrived, and we’re just setting up.”

  The first floor of the house was even more magnificent than upstairs. I didn’t get much time to ogle because Mack ushered us back toward the kitchen. You could tell that this part of the house is where people actually lived. The kitchen opened to a comfy area for reading, watching television, and hanging out.

  We helped set up a buffet with the takeout containers of Indian food. I piled my plate with vegetable pakora, eggplant bharta, and the most delicious spinach nan (yummy flatbread) I’ve ever tasted. We squeezed around the dining-room table, with Elvis and Scooter just feet away gnawing on their bones.

  “Is it all set up now?” I asked Mack.

  “Yes. As soon as we have the word that Meredith has contacted the police on her own, I’ll make a donation of twenty-five thousand dollars to the Elliott Bay Animal Shelter,” Mack said.

  “So that’s how you did it,” Mom said quietly, squeezing my hand. I could tell by the tone of her voice that she was pleased with my plan and how it was shaping up.

  “Wasn’t the money Meredith was donating yours to start with?” Lily asked Mack.

  “Just the money for Daphne and Scooter. Ted used his savings to be sure he’d get Boris back. But it doesn’t matter where the money came from: it wasn’t Meredith’s to give away.”

  “How did she figure out you were the benefactor behind Jennifer’s reward?” Lily asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe she figured it out the same way Hannah did,” Mack said.

  Everyone looked at me. I tipped an imaginary hat on my head.

  “How about that car she was driving this morning? Has she been doing this for a while and banking most of the money for herself?” Mom asked.

  “I think I can answer that one,” Ben’s dad said. It turned out that Tom Campo was a private investigator. He had done some digging around and had found that Meredith had a $4 million trust fund.

  “Wow,” Lily said.

  “I know. It’s a lot of money,” Tom agreed.

  “No, not that. I meant ‘wow’ that you’re a private eye,” she said.

  “Seems like I’m not the only detective around here,” he said, winking at me. “I may, however, be the only licensed private detective at the table tonight.”

  One of Tom’s friends at the police station was going to let him know when Meredith had held up her end of the bargain and admitted what she had done. As soon as that happened, Mack was going to write the check for the donation. Meredith had already returned Ted’s money to him.

  “I’ve already drafted the letter to go with it,” Mack said, holding up a business letter. “It outlines how this money is donated in loving memory of Elizabeth Pappas Campo and Brenda MacMillan Pappas.”

  “Thanks, Mack,” Tom said. He seemed a little choked up.

  Ben got up and went around the table to give Mack a big hug. “Thank you, Grandpa. Thank you for making sure that Scooter—and all of the other dogs around here—will be safe.”

  CHAPTER 26

  OUR FOURTH WEEK in Fremont was much more relaxed. So was the second month. My dog-walking business had picked up again, but I didn’t take on as many canine clients as I had earlier. I decided I needed more time to draw and read and play Frisbee.

  A few Saturdays later, Mom picked me up at three o’clock after my volunteer job at the animal shelter. “I have a surprise for you,” she said. I looked in the backseat, but all I saw was Elvis and an empty water bottle.

  “Tell me. Please.”

  “We’re going to see Izzie,” Mom said.

  “Izzie the dog? Now? Really? How?” I was so excited!

  “I got a call from Libby and Calvin, the couple who adopted Izzie. Leonard had already told them about you, and they wanted to make sure you didn’t lose contact with her. They invited us to come over today because it’s such a nice day. They thought Elvis and Izzie could meet each other and play outside,” Mom said.

  “I bet Elvis will love romping around without a leash on, won’t you?” I scratched him behind his ears.

  We drove across town to Capitol Hill. Mom parked just down the street from a park in front of a huge brick house.

  Izzie sat on the front steps, looking at me for a few seconds. Then she lunged toward me. I hugged her like I never wanted to let her go.

  “Do you know my dog?” a little girl asked.

  “Is Izzie your dog?”

  “Yes, Izzie is.” She giggled and kept repeating “Izzie is, Izzie is.”

  “I’m Libby.” A woman crossed the yard toward us. “You must be Hannah and Maggie. You’ve already met Rachel. And of course you know Izzie.”

  I was in heaven. Elvis was pretty happy, too. Libby invited us to the backyard, which was fenced in, so Elvis could, indeed, run free. I played with the dogs and with Rachel, who turned out to be darn cute and funny for a four-year-old. I’d tuned out the grown-ups’ conversation, until I heard Libby say, “Maggie, I didn’t know you were house sitters. How very interesting. I have someone I’d love you to meet.” Libby asked if I’d watch Rachel while she took Mom next door to meet the neighbors.

  Later, as we settled into the car, I asked, “What was all that about? You know, going next-door and all?”

  “Their next door neighbors are going to Switzerland for a couple of months. Some kind of b
usiness trip. It just might be a house-sitting opportunity for us,” Mom said. “We’ll see.”

  “Could anything be more perfect?” I asked. “You and me living next door to Izzie. Living in the big house. It’s just too perfect.”

  Elvis moaned a little. “Of course, living with Elvis in Fremont is going to be hard to top,” I said.

  Elvis put his drool-covered chin on my shoulder, and we headed back to our temporary home, the Center of the Universe.

  BOOK TWO

  HANNAH WEST on MILLIONAIRE’S ROW

  CHAPTER 1

  SOMEHOW I MANAGED to get out of most of the hard work the last two times we moved. Not this time. Neither did my best friend, Lily.

  “I thought you and your mom were minimalists,” Lily said, her voice a bit muffled as she struggled with an armload of blankets and a down quilt. “Free of possessions and all of that.”

  “I’m a collector now. I need room for my works of art and my bric-a-brac,” I said, trying to sound haughty. I was, after all, moving into a house on Millionaire’s Row. And at that exact moment I tripped.

  Lily giggled.

  “You’d trip, too, if you were walking sideways with a masterpiece like this,” I said, thankful that I hadn’t gone all the way down or damaged the corners of the three-foot-by-four-foot canvas I was toting up the walk to our new house. This massive masterpiece was a joint effort that my mom’s friend Nina and I had been working on for months in Nina’s downtown Seattle studio. We’d just finished it last week. I had to shuffle sideways instead of walking straight ahead because the painting was so huge.

  I couldn’t see Lily, my best friend in the whole entire world, but I could sense her eyes rolling at me.

  “I remember the good old days when you’d boast about getting all your possessions into your car,” she grumbled.

  Lily was kidding, of course. I may have tried to make a joke about how everything Mom and I owned fit into our old Honda Civic, but those kinds of jokes really never turned out that funny. Technically, you could say that Mom and I are homeless. But we really aren’t; we just don’t have our own home. Things had been kind of rough financially for Mom the past couple of years, but then Mom had a great idea. After we lost our house, we started lining up jobs house-sitting. People go on vacations or long business trips, and they hire us to take care of their homes and their pets. We’re lucky that it all works out for us. And Mom’s lucky she has me, I keep telling her, because I’m the one who actually does the most to take care of the pets. She, in turn, reminds me that she knows how lucky she is.

  So here I am, moving into a three-story house on Fourteenth Avenue East at the top of Capitol Hill in Seattle. I put the painting down in the foyer (that’s what people in big houses call their entryways) and stepped back onto the porch to look down the tree-lined street. I’d read about the houses here being “stately,” which, according to my dictionary, means “majestic; imposing in magnificence, elegance; dignified.” That about wraps it up, although I’d add “old, huge, and gorgeous” to describe the houses I saw on both sides of Fourteenth. Lumber barons and other rich businesspeople in the early 1900s built their houses at the top of this steep hill overlooking downtown Seattle and Elliott Bay. The street quickly got the nickname Millionaire’s Row. I wouldn’t mind being a millionaire today, let alone in 1906. My mind started mulling over how to figure out what the equivalent of a million dollars back then would be to today’s prices. It’s times like these that I need to shut off my brain. I’d already spent several hours on the tenth floor of the Seattle Public Library downtown researching Capitol Hill and our new street.

  I had a good feeling about this street and this job, especially when a woman across the street with short spiky hair waved to me. She was walking with a younger woman, and I assumed they were on their way to a yoga class. The younger woman had a long, thin tote—the kind that people use to carry their yoga mats—slung over her shoulder. The woman who waved was carrying a rolled-up purple yoga mat and a purple tote bag with a yin/yang symbol on it. She obviously had an excellent sense of sophistication and style. My purple T-shirt with the yin/yang symbol on it happened to be one of my personal favorites. I’m the kind of person who has a list of all-time favorite symbols, and yin/yang is consistently in my top three. You see it lots of places these days. It’s a circular symbol, half black and half white, with a small dot of white on the black side, and a small dot of black on the white side. It’s an ancient Chinese symbol that some people call the “tai chi tu.” The yin and the yang represent two opposing, but equal, forces. Lots of people say it’s male energy and female energy, but it’s more complicated than that. I like what I know about the concept. I also like that it’s something with deep Chinese symbolism that’s become part of American culture. I like to think of myself the same way: I’m Chinese, and I’m sure I have deep Chinese symbolism pulsing through my veins, but my American mom adopted me, so now I’m also deeply immersed in American culture. Ah, who am I kidding? I just like the way the yin/yang symbol looks.

  The women stopped so that the younger one could take off her apricot-colored hooded sweatshirt and tie it around her waist. Underneath, she had a lighter apricot-colored T-shirt that had a swirling design surrounding the word om. The yin/yang woman looked older than my mom (who is thirty-eight), but like someone my mom would be friends with. The om woman—whose long dark hair was in a thick braid that reached almost halfway down her back—looked like she was about ten years younger.

  As they started off again, both women smiled pleasantly at me. The older woman (aka Yin/Yang Woman) called out “hello” and “welcome to the neighborhood” when she saw my mom.

  “Looks like we scored a friendly neighborhood again,” Mom said to me.

  “We’re kind of lucky that way,” I said. We’d easily made friends with the neighbors at every house-sitting job we’d had.

  Mom turned back to the car. “Two trips this time. We need to scale back,” Mom said, winking at me and putting her arm around me. “Come on. Let’s get our last few things out of the car.”

  “I’ll just wait for you in the piano room,” Lily called after us. That’s right. Our house has a piano—and the piano has its own room. And that room has a curved outer wall with windows that look out onto the street. The piano is the only thing in the room, managing to show off just how stunning a Steinway grand piano can be. “The only thing cooler would be if it revolved,” Lily had commented earlier.

  Mom and I headed back to our Honda while Lily hammered out “Chopsticks.”

  I grabbed my favorite photographs and some more artwork out of the car, along with my two goldfish.

  “The cats are looking at Vincent and Pollock with a little too much interest,” I said, trying to shield my goldfish from the all-knowing eyes of Simon and Sport, the two cats watching us from the porch.

  “You’ll have to keep the bowl covered so that all the cats can’t go fishing,” Mom said. When she said “all the cats,” she wasn’t just talking about the two outside watching us now. This house was home to Reba, Dolly, and Jasmine, as well as Sport and Simon. That’s five, count ’em—five, cats.

  “It’s going to be different not having a dog around all the time,” I said. Our last few house-sitting gigs involved dog-sitting and some dog-walking in addition to house-sitting. As a result, I’ve built a fairly successful dog-walking business with plenty of referrals. But I liked the idea of getting to hang out with cats for a change. Every time I spend the night at my grandma’s house, her cat, Smiley, sleeps on my pillow, snuggled up to the back of my neck. Maybe I could get all five cats to sleep with me.

  I knew I’d still get a lot of canine time. We were staying next door to one of my favorite dogs in the world, Izzie. I met her several months ago at the Elliott Bay Animal Shelter. I volunteer there a couple times a month, and I was there the day that someone brought Izzie in. She had been horribly neglected. We cleaned her up and nursed her back to health. I got extremely attached to her ove
r the several weeks she was at the shelter. Luckily, she was adopted by Libby and Calvin. Even more luckily, my supervisor at the shelter had told Izzie’s new family how she and I had a strong connection. Libby and Calvin invited Mom and me over to their house to see how well Izzie was doing. That’s when Mom heard about the Parkers’ trip and that they were looking for house sitters. And that’s the happy story of how we ended up on Millionaire’s Row.

  “Maggie! Hannah! Welcome to the neighborhood!” Calvin, our new next-door neighbor and Izzie’s new owner, pulled up in his black Mini Cooper. I couldn’t see who else was in the car, but I could guess from the enthusiastic barks coming from the backseat. Calvin opened the car door and Izzie came bounding out. She rushed over to us, but used her good manners and sat expectantly, waiting for us to pet her.

  “I missed you so much, girl!” I said, crouching down to give Izzie the attention she deserved. It had been only a week since I’d seen her last. Calvin and Libby also had a little girl named Rachel. They’d hired me to babysit her a few times, usually just for an hour or two as a way to break me in and train me. Libby said she was especially pleased that I had taken the babysitting class at Children’s Hospital. We’d learned CPR, tips on safety, and ideas for keeping children entertained. I’d set up my own Babysitting Suitcase, full of art supplies, two lion puppets, a few little wood trains, and some of my favorite books. It was a modest assortment that paled in comparison to the books and toys lots of kids have. But the four or five kids I’ve babysat seemed superexcited to open what I called the “Special Day Suitcase.”

  “Libby and Rachel will be home soon,” Calvin said. “Rachel is so excited to have you living next door. She asks every morning if it’s finally the day when you’re moving in so you can babysit her more often.”

  “I can’t wait to babysit Rachel again!” I said. “I know we’re right next door,” I said to Calvin, “but here’s my card so you guys have my cell phone number.”