by Tempe O'Kun
Looking up from the entry, her whiskers brushed his. She shivered, then managed to climb back aboard her train of thought. “I read that back in the winter, so I didn’t go out to see if it existed. I’ve only seen a couple of the outbuildings, but it’s a big property.”
His broad shoulders rolled a shrug. “I’m not sure the satellite maps’ll show us much through the trees, but we can still do it the old-fashioned way.”
“That works.” The otter bounced to a more hopeful posture on the sofa. She looked out the window to a world aglow with afternoon light. Her muscles ached from investigating and helping her mother clean. “It’s getting late. But we’ll start looking tomorrow. Maybe walk the back acres.” She patted his paw. “I’m gonna see what the dinner plan is.”
Max nodded, watching her go. His gaze caught on her hips as she sauntered to the pantry, swaying with a sensual rhythm. Blinking, he made himself turn away. He’d found himself staring at her at lot lately. He’d missed her while they were apart, sure, but she seemed even prettier now than she’d been on the show. And had she always touched him so much? He shook his muzzle, clearing his thoughts. Maybe his sisters had a point in teasing him about crossing the country to see a girl. He must already be pretty desperate if he was imagining his best friend flirting with him. Furrowing his brow, he forced his attention to the map and started breaking the property into a grid so they wouldn’t miss anything.
The husky got up and deposited the array of used water- and mold-testing supplies in the garbage. He contemplated the kitchen’s trash can for a moment, then decided it was full. He tied up the bag and carried it out to the bins.
The canine stood staring at the garbage enclosure for a moment, nonplussed. It wasn’t that the cans were small, or that there were only two of them; up till now it had just been Kylie and Laura in the house, and they wouldn’t produce much waste. What made him grin was the haphazard, amateurish construction of it, slapped together from slabs of plywood and store-bought lattice with clusters of nails hammered in at odd angles. He pictured Laura, flummoxed by wild animals digging in the trash, taking matters into her own hands and grabbing whatever was at hand. With a wry shake of his head, he wondered if the handyman had seen this.
Something moved in the corner of his eye.
A dark shape raced from the bins.
He turned to the edge of the clearing, barely in time to see something, or several somethings, leap the stone wall, flash through the woods, and vanish in the inky black. A feral raccoon? Several maybe? Had to have been—too small to be people, and people couldn’t move like that. He really needed to brush up on the local wildlife.
Staring into the night, he waited, watching, hand on the doorknob, but nothing else stirred in the windless night. He clicked the garbage bin shut, then headed inside and locked the door against the darkness. Just to be safe.
— Chapter 7 —
Searching
Late the next morning, they walked back to town, with the hope it could offer more information than the house had. Sunlight steamed away the morning dew; the wet sea air danced over Kylie’s pelt. Shane had scheduled her for a half-day to cover him going to the dentist. Max, being a sweetheart, had offered to walk her into town and research at the library until she got off. They’d even stopped at the convenience store on the way, where she’d discovered anchovy potato chips. Not a bad morning, all things considered.
Until Cindy spotted them from another street over.
The two females spotted each other at the same time, across the single alley that separated Main Street from Windfall’s residential district. Then Cindy vanished, only to reappear in their path a few blocks down, leaning against the wall of a building like she’d been there all day and trying to disguise her panting. “Hey, Max…” The honey-coated spaniel flashed her sweetest smile. Her expression soured on the otter. “And you.”
“Oh hey, um, Cindy?” He gave her a polite, if distant sniff, then winced at her perfume. “How’s it going?”
The spaniel peeled herself off the wall and sashayed toward them, tail swishing. “Just another day in this stupid town with its stupid people.” She reached into the otter’s open bag of chips, made eye contact with her, and popped one into her mouth.
Ignoring her, Kylie closed the bag.
The bitch smiled and tried not to cough at the fishy taste. Turning to Max, she brushed back her long, silky ears. “Need some non-crazy company?”
“Nah, I’m okay.” Max shrugged and kept walking. “See you around.”
The spaniel stood, pouting at the exchange, as they continued past.
Once they passed out of earshot, Kylie touched his arm. “I think she’s wearing that perfume with the artificial heat scent in it.” Even as a non-canine, it’d been a carpet bomb of musk. The cheerleader must have been carrying it around and blasted herself when she saw Max coming.
“I noticed.” Max grumbled, walking a little funny. “That stuff’s supposed to be for special occasions. She’s going to have a lot of awkward conversations with other canids today.”
Kylie stroked her chin. “Or more than a conversation.”
The husky cocked his head. “You think she’s on her way to seduce someone?”
The otter resisted the urge to facepalm. “Yes, Maxie. I suspect she may have been.” She patted his shoulder. “She’s dressed like a boy-seeking missile, off to blow some poor dude’s clothes right off him.”
“Huh.” He adjusted his watch band. “How long has she been standing slightly taller than you and making sustained eye contact?”
“I dunno. Forever.” The otter shrugged. “It’s just a Cindy thing.”
“And you always just stand there, shoulders straight, tail relaxed?”
She looked him up and down. Did it mean anything that he’d been paying attention? “I…guess?”
“No wonder she keeps challenging you.” His bottle of root beer whispered open. “You haven’t given her anything she knows how to react to.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a canine thing.” He took a long drag on his soda, searching for the right phrasing. “Like, if you’d backed down, she would have known she was the boss of you. If you’d knocked her down a peg, she might have known not to mess with you. But just ignoring her?” He made a wavy, indecisive motion with his hand. “We don’t really have an instinct for that.”
“You canines and your body language and your hierarchies! How can anyone keep this stuff straight?”
He stepped over an encoded tile message embedded in the sidewalk. “I could get you a book—”
“I have the book! Mom got it for me when you came to live with us, but then you behaved like a completely reasonable person and none of it ever came up.”
That got a wry chuckle. “Thank you. When I got on the show, I was a fanboy doing a guest appearance, so I knew I was at the bottom of the totem pole.” He scratched at his jawline, pensive. “You and your mom never make rank matter, which I always found refreshing. Plus, most canines learn not to expect pack behavior from other species.”
“Okay.” She jerked a webbed thumb back at her adversary. “So why didn’t Cindy?”
“Can’t say. I just met her.” He checked for traffic so he and Kylie could safely jaywalk. “Being a jerk isn’t species-specific. She might just be one of those people who classifies everyone by whether or not she can push them around.”
“So all I have to do is deck her and I can get on with my life?” Good news at last. Kylie slapped her fist into her open palm with an air of anticipation. “Good plan.”
He shook his head, solemn. “Too late; you are now a walking chew toy. She’s having too much fun being your nemesis to accept you as her superior. From her point of view, you’ve been getting everything she wants out of life without trying and this is her payback.”
“Damn it.” Mutters and grumbles tumbled from her muzzle.
“Rudderbutt, you know I think you’re great, but you can be a little ob
tuse.” He dug out his phone and skipped through the screens.
Kylie glared, incredulous, at the back of his head.
Oblivious, Max took out his phone signed into Howl, a canine social app that sent out anonymous messages in a limited radius. It was half social media, half bulletin board, and it kept local dogs with their social natures from cluttering the more structured services with their chatter or, worse, actually just howling to one another between rooftops. Max had never been much of a participant, but he liked to keep up on what passed for important news among dogs.
He let her peek and she watched the recent entries syphon in.
Howl: {Bacon half price at supermarket!}
Howl: {Someone lose this tennis ball? Kind of small; apparently much beloved.}
Howl: {Fidough’s now has three kinds of sausage! Pizza time!}
Howl: {I have the best boyfriend! He bought me cologne AND ham!}
Howl: {New shipment of waterproof phone cases at Windfall Hunting Co.!}
Howl: {Hope these cases are sturdier than the last batch! Warrantee has a drool exception. D:}
Howl: {I got a Frisbee!}
Howl: {Frisbee!}
Howl: {New husky already attached to non-canid. Life is not fair.}
“Ha!” Max tapped a claw on the last message. “People think we’re dating.”
Kylie popped a chip into her mouth and crunched it. “Yeah, hilarious…”
“Hey, don’t worry about it.” He gave her a smarmy wink. “You and I know what’s really going on, and that’s what matters.”
Kylie glowered at the sidewalk, waiting for him to throw an arm over her shoulder and exclaim what good platonic friends they were. At least she’d have plenty of time at work to figure out how to be seductive without resorting to chemical warfare. And hey, maybe Max would get lucky and find something to lend credence to his Kylie’s-not-doomed-to-madness theory.
Max breathed deep, reassured by the musty tang of old paper. The Windfall Public Library stood silent around him, the only sounds the shuffle of carpeted strides and the rare rustle of pages. Down a hallway, the dog could see into the city courthouse. He liked small towns; they kept things simple; why have two buildings when you could have one? He carried an armful of surveyor records into the small study room and set the weighty volumes on a table.
The husky sat and started tracking down the holdings of the Bevy family since the town’s founding. At first, he struggled to stay focused. The endless rows of property holders and property buyers were painfully dry. Eventually, though, he started to see the narrative inside the numbers: the waxing and waning of a powerful family. Together, these maps were like a book. He liked books. Movies and TV insisted on their own frantic pace, but books allowed him to stop and think if he needed to, or even cross-reference it with something else. Diving muzzle-first into the volumes, he soon discerned their system of organization and pored over the yellowed lot maps. Tedious hours passed, but the husky mushed on. Finding answers would make Kylie happy. He liked making her happy.
Various Bevy and Bourn holdings bloomed and vanished over the centuries, but Bourn Manor sat like a rock; only the outermost parcels ever changed hands. As far as the city was concerned, the house lay at the center of a vast undeveloped tract. No houses were listed as being built nearby. So much for the shack being the remains of another estate absorbed at some point. One by one, he sniffed out answers between the musty pages and tangy old plastic.
The door creaked open. Kylie slid inside, eyes widening on the stack of books and microfilm, which probably weighed as much as she did. “Sheesh, Maxie, leave some for everybody else.”
Rolling his eyes, he pulled out the chair beside him.
She flowed into it, ample tail slipping out the hole in the back. “What’d ya find?”
He shrugged, not staring at her tail. He forced his eyes back to the books. “No surprises here.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” She pulled a battered three-ring binder from her satchel and presented it to him.
“What’s this?” The binder, thick with tagged and tattered pages, bore a nondescript black cover. The label: Sovereign Entertainment Studios - “Strangeville” Master Continuity Reference. Max’s heart and stomach suddenly switched places. He stared, incredulous. “The series bible?” Max blinked at it, then at the otter. Sudden horror gripped him. “Does your mom know you took this?”
“Of course she knows!” The otter, unable to keep from beaming, bounced in her seat. “Open it, open it!”
He flipped the binder open. Inside the front cover, Laura’s handwriting warned of bodily harm if this was altered, duplicated, or moved without permission. The bottom ring still had a length of chain where the older lutrine had bolted it to the writers’ meeting table. He glanced a question at Kylie. His paws lifted away from the text.
The curvy otter groaned. “It’s okay, Maxie.” She bopped him in the shoulder. “She trusts you. Enough to let you borrow it anyway.”
Thick canine fingers turned the page with care. “The studio let her keep it?”
Kylie quirked her mouth toward a grin. “She never asked.”
“I assumed some staff writer hacksawed it off the chain and sold it online.” In a show relying on plot twists, having a single physical copy limited spoilers getting out. It also meant every diehard fan on the planet coveted the binder. If Karl knew he was in the same county as this binder they would never get rid of him. “I always wanted a closer look at this. This is amazing. Thank you.” He pulled her into a hug, resisting a sudden, crazy urge to kiss her.
She giggled.
He blushed. “Hey, so I liked the show before I got on it. I can like things.”
“Yeah yeah, Maxie.” She placed a paw on her breasts. “I know you auditioned for the show to get to me.”
He shut his mouth with a smile.
Her hand and ears dropped. “What?”
He resisted speaking for a moment, then gushed. “Cassie was still the tagalong little sister in the first season. I actually found her kind of annoying.”
She squawked: “Hey!”
“Her, not you! And I liked her more from the second onward.” He squeezed her shoulders, then wagged down at the book. So many people he admired had put so much of their lives into this thing. “This is awesome. Very awesome.”
“You’re very welcome.” She patted his arm, making no move to end the hug. Otters were friendly like that. It was kind of nice.
“I remember this!” He pointed at the page. “We totally jumped the shark when it turned out dragons were aliens and we didn’t have the budget to show them, so they were also ghosts.”
“Umm, pretty sure we jumped the shark with the cyber-demon living in a used modem.” Her paw slipped along his back.
“I liked that episode. Terrible effects, but a solid story.” He smiled down at her, then returned to paging through the book, careful not to tear the worn pages. “This could answer so many questions about the Strangeville mythos; like this part, where it explains how the fish people and the transparent-skull aliens hated each other before they got to Earth. I wish I’d had this for some interviews.”
“Yeah, Mom wanted the surprise to inform our performance.” She grimaced. “We’ll have to do the DVD commentary someday. You can show off then.”
“Wow…” He read on. “Unused story ideas.” The back half of the binder contained sheet after sheet of scribbled-on looseleaf paper. “Including about a dozen scrapped sub-plots with you falling in love with guys who turn out to be monsters.”
“Ugh. Those must be from the other writers.” Her elbow bumped his ribs. “Mom barely even let our characters flirt on the show.”
His tail thumped once against the chair.
Kylie glanced at it, but said nothing.
The husky slipped into reading, already getting lost in the text, his arm draped over her shoulders. “This is really great.”
She smiled, relaxing against his fur. “Yeah, it is.”
&n
bsp; After an uphill trek back from the library, they emerged from the woods. Leaves fluttered on the sea wind to either side as they headed up the drive. A massive box sat on the porch, its scuffed cardboard out of place against the graying house and overgrown lawn. Taking up an entire shipping pallet, it was almost as tall as an otter.
Max tilted his head. “What is it?”
She nosed up to the shipping label, which bore Laura’s signature. “Oooh, it’s for me!” Her little caper of delight petered out. “Wait. …I don’t remember ordering anything.”
Wagging, he had to admit his best friend was pretty cute when excited. “Maybe it’s a spare Amphicar. We could play a deadly game of bumper cars on the lake. At least then I’d have a funny story to go along with the spinal contortions.”
“Har har.” Her sleek arms crossed. “Mailing info just lists some distribution company. Weird.”
“Weird timing too.” He sniffed at the box, but got only a muddle of shipping supplies. “This would be the point in the film when the main characters are warned off investigating.”
“What, like someone leaves us a horse head in bed?” Her claws played over the sides of the container. “Do we know any horses?”
The canine pondered that for a moment.
“Too late! Opening it.” Kylie’s teeth snipped through the plastic tension straps. “It’ll be like a present from myself!”
The cardboard sides of the pallet tumbled away to reveal pre-paid shipping boxes.
With a chitter of confusion, she clawed open the tape on one to find it stuffed with a sleek black DVD sets. Each bore the Strangeville logo. Her mouth hung open as she pointed at the stack. “Okay, I would’ve remembered ordering these.”
“Cool.” Reaching into the open box, he drew out a copy. “I haven’t seen the final season box art yet.”
Arms crossed, she shot him a narrow glance. “Don’t tell me you ordered them.”
He woofed a chuckle. “Why would I order a pallet of DVDs to your house?”
“There’s no note or anything.” She traipsed around the pallet, looking for clues, but found only an inventory sheet. “What are we supposed to do with 3,000 Season Five box sets?”