Who was this—the pod Dr. Blake?
“Yes,” I said. “There are also animal welfare and the responsible stewardship of the earth’s resources, but I don’t think I did anything today to further those causes, either. Or hinder them,” I added hastily.
“Well, what the hell did you do, then?” he asked.
Okay, that was closer to the real Dr. Blake.
“I went looking for my friend Karen again,” I said. “And found her estranged husband’s dead body.”
“Yes, that Jason somebody.”
“Jasper,” I said. “Jasper Walker. And then I had lunch with a friend and did some research in the library.”
A pause.
“That’s it?” he said.
I nodded.
“Then elaborate. Give me a little local color. You found a body. That must have been exciting. Did you check his pulse? Attempt CPR? Or just assume he was dead?”
“He’d been dead several days,” I said. “So no, exciting wasn’t exactly the word I’d use, and you couldn’t pay me enough to check his pulse, and as for CPR, let’s not even go there.”
“Several days? Did you check to see if he had any pets that might need rescuing?”
I knew there had to be an animal angle to this.
“I called the police,” I said. “And they took custody of his dog.”
Blake frowned.
“I fed the dog some cheese crackers,” I offered, just so he wouldn’t think I was completely stone-hearted.
“Cheese crackers,” he repeated.
“I didn’t have any nutritionally sound dog food with me,” I said. “And he wasn’t starving, and at the time I didn’t know the poor thing had been orphaned.”
He continued to gaze at me for a few moments, as if hoping I’d offer something more interesting.
“What kind of dog?” he asked, finally, though it sounded as if he was only asking to be polite.
“Big dog,” I said. “Maybe seventy-five or eighty pounds. Some kind of mixed hound. Very friendly.”
He nodded, then got up and strode off with a preoccupied look on his face. Just then Michael came out of the kitchen door and strolled over.
“He’s up to something,” I said.
“Your grandfather? Why do you think that?”
“He’s been asking me to tell him what I did today.”
“Egad,” he said. “I’ve been guilty of that a time or two myself, haven’t I?”
“Yes, but you’re actually interested in what I’ve been doing, or at least have a vested interest in pretending to be. Dr. Blake tends to ignore anything that doesn’t have an animal angle.”
“And your day didn’t?”
“Well, there was a dog. He seemed mildly interested in the dog.”
Michael nodded.
“If I go back there again, I’ll drop by and check out the canary farm,” I said. “Just so I can give him the lowdown. Though I can’t imagine why I’d want to go back. And odds are canaries are too mundane to intrigue him.”
“Dog fighting,” Michael said.
“What?”
“Maybe he’s investigating dog fighting. He’s got that show he’s working on about cock fighting—maybe he’s expanding it to include dog fighting. Illegal animal fighting in general. Was the dog a pit bull or a bulldog or something?”
I shook my head.
“Big, friendly hound dog,” I said. “The kind that just looks puzzled when Spike runs up and tries to pick a fight.”
“Still, if Blake is showing an interest in ordinary domestic dogs, you can bet it’s some kind of animal welfare issue,” Michael said. “And the show on cock fighting hasn’t aired yet, so maybe they’re still doing some filming.”
“That would make sense,” I said. “Of course, there’s another explanation.”
Michael cocked one eyebrow.
“He could just be trying to take an interest in what I’m doing,” I said. “Trying to build a relationship. You know what he’s like—brilliant as hell, but with absolutely no social graces. Maybe it’s not his fault that he does the whole relationship-building thing so oddly that I react with suspicion. Maybe I’m just too hard on him.”
“Maybe you are,” he said. “But much as I like the old guy, he has pulled some crazy stunts. Like that whole cock-fighting raid that landed him and your father in jail. Here’s a deal for you—you keep an open mind on whether Blake’s got an ulterior motive when he interrogates you. And I’ll see if I can use my irresistible charm to find out what he and your dad are up to.”
“Deal,” I said. “And if he is investigating dog fighting, or more cock fighting, see if you can get him to at least consider working within the system this time.”
“Definitely. Meanwhile, I’m supposed to tell everyone that dinner will be on the table in five minutes.”
“While you’re at it, remind Dad and Dr. Blake about the snakes.”
Since we were eating rather late, I took Timmy up to bed as soon as he’d finished dessert. We only had one difficult moment, when I had successfully wrestled him into pajamas and picked up the toothbrush to begin the battle over brushing. He suddenly stopped fighting and just looked at me.
“Mommy not coming back?” he asked.
“Of course Mommy’s coming back,” I said. “Soon. Just not tonight.”
He nodded, and didn’t put up much of a fight about brushing his teeth. Was he really reassured? Or had he given up on his mommy? Surely kids didn’t give up that easily? If this went on much longer, maybe I should find a child psychologist to help Timmy cope with it all. For that matter, if this went on much longer, I might need a shrink myself.
I shoved the thought away to concentrate on Timmy. I read him a story. Handed him a sippy cup of milk. Maybe I was starting to get the hang of this parenting thing after all. I tucked him in, turned the night-light on and the main light off, tiptoed toward the door, and was just stepping into the hall when he sat bolt upright again.
“Want Kiki,” he said.
I returned to the crib and checked. No, Kiki wasn’t there. And Timmy hadn’t thrown her on the floor beside the crib.
“Here’s Blanky,” I said, plucking the green blanket from the rest of the covers and toys. “You lie down and try to sleep, and I’ll go look for Kiki. I’m sure he’s just downstairs. I’ll be back in—”
“Want Kiki!” Timmy threw Blanky overboard and howled with such volume that everyone in the house came running to see what was wrong. Dad even brought his medical bag. Once I’d convinced everybody that Timmy was unhurt, I formed them all into a posse to search the house and yard for Kiki.
Who was nowhere to be found.
In between bouts of searching, various members of the family pitched in on the effort to calm Timmy down and lull him to sleep. Rob and Michael gave him endless horsie-horsie rides, all ending up in the crib where Timmy still refused to lie down. Dad brought in an awesome assortment of living creatures for Timmy to inspect and pet—snakes, prairie dogs, iguanas, ducks, small monkeys, bats, and a half-grown skunk that he swore had been de-scented. Rose Noire dabbed lavender and chamomile essential oils on the light bulbs, put Mozart on the portable CD player, and tried to demonstrate yoga breathing exercises. Seth Early—who had heard Timmy’s wails from his lurking post across the street and come running—even offered to bring in some sheep to help calm him down. I wasn’t sure whether Timmy was supposed to count them or cuddle them, but since even the smallest of them weighed at least 150 pounds and none of them had been washed in weeks, we passed.
“In my day, we’d just give the little brat a slug of bourbon in his milk,” Dr. Blake said.
“I think not,” Mother said, in such an icy tone that even Dr. Blake got the message.
I began to suspect that our efforts to calm Timmy were having the opposite effect, so I shooed everyone downstairs to see if he would eventually calm down if left alone.
As an experiment, it was a failure.
“There he goes again,” Michael said,
after yet another shriek. By this time, we were all clustered at the foot of the stairs, wincing at every noise from above—except for Mother, who was sitting nearby in the living room, reading one of her decorating magazines and frowning.
“KIKI!” Timmy shrieked. It was a heart-rending wail, slightly hoarse and quivering with pathos. We all flinched when we heard it. Well, all but Mother.
“Oh, for heaven’s sakes,” she exclaimed. She slapped her magazine down on the coffee table and began marching up the stairs.
“I thought we were testing Michael’s theory,” I whispered, as I hurried to keep up with her.
“Theory’s a bust,” Michael murmured, from the bottom of the stairs.
“I could try a massage,” Rose Noire suggested. “A drop or two of lavender in some baby oil—it works wonders with Seth’s sheep.”
“I’ve got a baby wombat we could show him,” Dad said. “Just let me run out and get it.”
“This is no time for wombats,” Mother said. “Or aromatherapy.”
She reached the top of the stairs and strode down the hall.
“Mother, what are you going to do?” I scurried into Timmy’s room behind her.
Timmy was standing in his crib, holding onto the bars and shaking them like a prisoner, and howling with more determination than energy. I could swear I saw a look of satisfaction cross his face when we entered. He had an audience again. Then again, the poor kid was tired and cranky and no doubt getting more and more upset by his mother’s absence. He still had a long way to go before we cast him in a remake of The Omen. And I was pretty sure the fuss wasn’t really over Kiki.
“Timothy,” Mother said. “This Will Not Do.”
Timmy paused for a moment and cocked his head to one side in puzzlement.
“You will go to sleep now,” she said. “And while you are sleeping, Meg will find Kiki and bring him back, so he’ll be here when you wake.”
She gave him her gracious smile, with a little hint of the don’t-push-it glance.
Timmy considered for a moment.
“Promise?” he said.
“I promise,” Mother said. “Now lie down and go to sleep. I will wait here with you for news of Kiki.”
She sat down in the rocking chair, turned on the reading lamp, and picked up several books from the floor. After inspecting them, she opened a Dr. Seuss book and began reading it. Silently. She was rocking very slowly and waving one graceful hand to the soft strains of Mozart.
Timmy stood in his crib, watching for a few moments, then lay down, pulled a blanket over his head, and fell silent. After a minute or so, I heard his soft, slow breathing, and then a soft snore.
Mother looked up from her book.
“Well?” she said.
“Are you going to help me hunt?” I asked. “Since you promised results that I have no confidence we can deliver.”
“I will supervise from here. And keep an eye on Timothy.” She lowered her eyes to her book and turned a page.
Downstairs, muted celebrations were taking place.
“Your mother is a wonder,” Dad said.
“I could use a nap myself,” Rob said, with a yawn.
“I think I’m going to try some of that lavender,” Rose Noire said. “It’s also very good for headaches.”
“We still have to find Kiki before he wakes up,” I said, to muted groans. Everyone scattered and resumed the search, though most of them were so tired and frazzled they were searching places they’d already searched two or three times. I’d have tried to convince them to go home and get some sleep, but I was too tired to think straight.
“Maybe Kiki isn’t even in the house,” Michael said. “I can go search some of the places you and he went today.”
“Some of the places will be closed,” I said.
“I’ll find night watchmen. Or break in.”
Something in me cracked, seeing the look of grim determination on his face. I burst out in tears.
“I’m sorry,” I said, as Michael swept me in a comforting embrace. “You’re being so great about this—everyone is. And it’s my fault he’s here and I should have been keeping a better eye out for Kiki and—I can’t believe I’m having hysterics, too, over a stupid stuffed cat.”
My tears mutated into giggles.
“It’s important to Timmy,” Michael said. “And the poor kid has been through a lot. If we can’t bring his mother back, at least we can find Kiki.”
“If you’re game to go driving around the county in search of a stuffed cat, I’m not going to argue with you,” I said. “Let me get my notebook—I left it in the car. Jasper Walker’s address is there.”
“I’ll change into something more likely to inspire confidence in a night watchman,” Michael said.
On my way to the car, I passed by the outdoor section of Spike’s pen. Damn! In our distraction over Kiki, we had left Spike out, which was dangerous. No matter how fierce Spike thought he was, to a fox or a large owl, he’d be easy pickings. We always made a point to take him inside before dark.
“Come here, Spike,” I said. “Time to come inside for dinner.”
Normally the D-word got his attention, but he was off in the far corner of the pen chewing on something.
Something black and fuzzy that was leaking cotton stuffing.
Twenty-Five
“Kiki!” I exclaimed. “Spike, drop it!”
Spike stubbornly refused to drop Kiki. Maybe it was just because I wanted the stuffed toy, or maybe Timmy had spilled enough food on Kiki over the years to make him downright tasty, but Spike had no intention of surrendering his prey. It finally took me, Rob, and Dad to pry the two apart.
“Come on, Rob,” Dad said. “Let’s go put antiseptic on these bites. Meg, did he get you?”
“No,” I said. “But he really did a number on Kiki.”
Back inside, things were still quiet upstairs. I fetched my sewing kit and sat down at the kitchen table to mend Kiki. Rob, Michael, Dad, and Rose Noire gathered around, looking as anxious as the family of a human patient. And after my preliminary examination, I realized that the patient needed more than surgery.
“There’s a good chunk of stuffing missing.”
“I could go out and look for it,” Rob offered.
“No, Spike will have eaten a lot of it, and the rest will be muddy. For that matter, half of what’s still here is pretty nasty. And so’s Kiki—she needs a bath, and then she needs a stuffing donor. Find me a stuffed animal, pronto!”
They all looked at each other and then scattered.
I spread some old newspapers on the kitchen table and began removing the remaining stuffing. The bits that were clean—very few of them—I put in a pile for reuse. The bits that were stained with mud and possibly dog poop went into the trash. Once I had emptied Kiki, I could throw her into the wash and—
Suddenly the finger I was using to pull out bits of stuffing hit something hard, stuffed into Kiki’s left hind leg. It took me a couple of minutes to tease it free. Michael came back into the kitchen while I was working on it.
“I checked all the stuff Karen left with Timmy, but there weren’t any other stuffed animals,” he said. “Your mother and father have gone back to the farmhouse and will let us know if your nieces and nephews have left any stuffed animals behind.”
“Unlikely,” I said. “Most of them had outgrown stuffed animals by the time Mother and Dad bought the farmhouse.”
“And I stopped Rob from taking the sofa apart for its stuffing. Rose Noire is driving back to her apartment—she thinks she might have a stuffed animal there. Do we—what’s that?”
I was holding my find up to the light to inspect it.
“I think it’s a thumb drive—you know, one of those tiny little computer storage things you can hang on your keychain.”
“Where’d you get it?”
I gestured at the disemboweled Kiki.
“Remember how Timmy kept saying that Kiki had a boo-boo?” I asked. “Maybe he wasn’t
just doing it for attention. Maybe he was trying to tell us about this.”
“This could be important,” Michael said.
“Yes,” I said. “Why don’t you put Kiki in the washer—delicate cycle. I’m going to the office to see if I can figure out what’s on this thing.”
“Shouldn’t we turn it over to the police?” Michael asked, as he picked up Kiki. “A data storage device that could be directly connected to a murder and an embezzlement case?”
“We will,” I said. “But not before I’ve checked it out. After all, if the only thing it contains is a backup copy of Timmy’s favorite musical selections, there’s no sense running to Chief Burke with it, is there?”
He shook his head as if he didn’t quite buy it, but didn’t argue with me.
In the office, I booted up my laptop and attached the thumb drive to it. I was able to see the files on the thumb drive, but I could tell figuring out the contents wasn’t going to be easy. The file names were cryptic and apparently random strings of numbers and letters, and my computer stubbornly refused to open any of them.
I had just finished copying the contents of the thumb drive into a directory on my laptop when Michael joined me.
“Any luck?” he asked.
“Clearly, this wasn’t intended to contain a top-secret message from Karen to us,” I said. “Because if it was, she’d have made at least some of the files in a format normal human beings could read.”
“Chief Burke can probably call on forensic computer analysts to unravel it.”
“No doubt,” I said. I could tell he was relieved when I picked up the phone and dialed the police station.
To my surprise, Chief Burke was still there. Caerphilly’s crime wave must still be going strong. And also to my surprise, he actually seemed interested in the thumb drive.
“Can you bring it down to the station?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said. “Now?”
“First thing tomorrow will do,” he said. “Good-bye.”
Rats! I was hoping he’d say that no, he wanted it now. Not that I was very keen on driving into Caerphilly just now, but I wanted to know that the chief felt a sense of urgency about it.
“I can drop it off on my way to the college,” Michael said.
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