Ivan whimpers and tucks his tail between his legs.
“It looks like he understands the word ‘butthole,’” I say.
“I’m thinking this isn’t his first rodeo,” Mr. French says.
“No, but it might be his first dog show,” I say. It’s a feeble attempt at a joke, and granted it wasn’t all that funny, but I still don’t think it deserved the tandem eye rolls I got from Travis and Mr. French. More of that gay boy synergy.
Mr. French clears his throat. “First, I need to undo what you did. A bath, shampoo and comb out should work. Then I will create a more sedate and conventional hairstyle. Something less… rooster-ish.”
“Sounds good,” I say.
“Stay here. I’ll bathe Mr. Ivan and be back before you can say Rock Hudson.” Mr. French picks up Ivan with more confidence this time and heads through a doorway covered by a curtain.
I look at Travis and deadpan, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Travis hisses. “You’re making a fool out of us.”
“I’m nervous,” I answer. “This is going to work, right?”
“There’s nothing to this, Jamie. It’s just brushing. Grooming isn’t hard. It’s not rocket science, you know.”
“I heard that,” Mr. French calls from the back room.
He returns with a wet Ivan who isn’t looking especially happy. Mr. French sets him back on the table and gives him a final fluff with a towel. Then he picks up a hair dryer and turns it on, blasting hot air at Ivan. Ivan sits very still and squints into the warm gust of air.
Mr. French speaks over the hum of the blow dryer to Travis, “Okay, now here are the groomer’s rules. In the grooming area there will be no unattended scissors, you must have a neat grooming table and floor, no electronics and no smoking. Be sure to take advantage of the Johnnie break.”
“Johnnie break?” Travis asks.
“That’s the break in the competition so the dogs can have water, a snack and run off excess energy,” Mr. French said.
“And probably do some butt sniffing,” I toss in.
Ivan tucks his tail and whimpers.
“I know, boy, I know,” I placate. “I don’t like to have my butt sniffed either.”
“The litt…I mean stature-challenged dogs, are very smart,” Mr. French says. “Their very survival depends on it. I knew a postman who set one of those heavy trays of mail on top of a Chihuahua and killed him. Dogs like Ivan live by their wits.”
“Is that so?” I ask. I get the feeling Mr. French is talking more about himself than about Ivan.
“It’s true. I swear on the grave of Liberace,” Mr. French says, holding up his hand and doing the Star Trek Vulcan hand signal for “Live long and prosper.”
“I’ll be sure to keep a close eye on him,” Travis says.
“And keep him away from mail men and those pesky trays of mail,” I add.
Mr. French squirts some mousse that looks like whipped cream into his palm. He applies the mousse to Ivan’s hair and in a flash Ivan is styled to perfection. By the time Mr. French is finished Ivan has his very own mature couture and looks stunning. Well, maybe not stunning, but he does look a lot better.
“Now all you have to do is not undo the magic I have created. You can do that, can’t you?” Mr. French asks.
I nod and smile. One does not contradict the great and powerful wizard. I know better.
Thirty-Three
Bright and early the next morning, I find Veronica the-woman-not-the-cat once again breaking and entering my office. Let me rephrase that: she has already broke and entered by the time I get there. I find her sitting at my desk in the dark, rifling through my drawers. She’s violating the sanctity of my personal space about fifty different ways and I’m not in the mood for her crap.
I toss my keys on top of my desk, place my feet in the superhero position and cross my arms. This is my fed-up pose. I’m sure Veronica will recognize it from the first three times I broke up with her.
“What?” she asks all smiles. She swivels around in my desk chair, making sure to exhibit plenty of thigh.
Can she not see how pissed off I am? What’s with her anyway? Does she have Asperger’s? I draw an imaginary big circle around my face and say, “See this face? See this upside-down smile? It’s called a frown. It means I am displeased. Do I need to get you some of those Asperger’s face recognition cards?”
“Nope. I still have the last ones you gave me.”
“Then what’s your problem, Veronica?”
“Oooh, somebody got up on the wrong side of the bed,” she says.
“I didn’t get a lot of sleep,” I say. I’m pretty sure I know why I didn’t get much sleep. Part of it is the stress of going undercover. The other part is that Ivan and I wrestled all night over possession of my pillow. The third part is that Ivan doesn’t like Veronica-the-cat so they growled and hissed at each whenever Veronica got close to the bed. I’m going to buy him his own pillow today and lock my bedroom door. “I’m tired and now I’m pissed off.”
She holds out a Starbucks latte. The aroma is intoxicating. My nose waters just smelling it. Okay, that didn’t quite make sense, but you know what I mean. I wave the latte away. No way I’m accepting her bribe. “No thanks. What’re you doing in here going through my personal stuff?”
She pops the lid off the coffee and holds it under her nose. “Ahhh,” she moans deliciously. “There’s nothing like a skinny latte with hazelnut and cinnamon sprinkled on top.”
“Cut the crap, Veronica. Why are you here?”
She sips the latte. “Can’t I visit my girlfriend at her office? I even brought coffee.” She glances around. “Seeing as you don’t have a coffee maker. I’ll have to remedy that asap.”
“I’m not your girlfriend. I broke up with you.”
“Wrong,” she says. “It takes two to begin a relationship, therefore, it takes two to end one. And I haven’t ended my part of our relationship.”
“You might be able to smooth talk a jury, but I’m not buying it.”
She leans over my desk and turns on the lamp. I flinch from the bright light.
“What the hell happened to you?” Veronica says looking at my face. “You have bags the size of dinner plates.”
“I told you I didn’t sleep much last night.”
“Who is she?” she growls, “I’ll rip her apart.”
I plop down into the chair in front of my desk. I slump over and groan. “It’s not a she. It’s a he.”
Veronica jumps to her feet. “He? You’re straight now? Please tell me you didn’t sleep with a guy! That’s disgusting! Another woman I can handle. That’s a level playing field, I can compete. But a man?”
“His name is Ivan,” I say. “He’s little and ugly and bald and drools a lot. He hates cats and fought with your namesake when he wasn’t trying to steal my pillow.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He’s a dog. Ivan is a dog I adopted from the pound and he’s slowly killing me.” I bury my face in my hands. “I’m so tired. My face is tired. My lips are tired. Even my hair is tired.”
Veronica walks up to me, takes my hand and wraps my fingers around the latte. “Here. You need this.” I sip at the creamy coffee and let its magic work its way into my bloodstream. I should be grateful for her kindness, but instead I’m wary. Veronica never does anything out of the goodness of her heart.
“Why are you here? What are you looking for in my desk?”
“What makes you think I’m looking for anything?”
“I’m tired, I’m not stupid.”
“Oh, okay. I was looking for that invitation I saw the last time I was in here. The Thanksgiving thing from Gloria.”
She says the name Gloria like it leaves a bad taste in her mouth. “And why would you be interested in that?”
“I thought I might go with you,” she says. She picks up my desk calendar. The card isn’t there either.
“You won’t find the invitation, Veronica. I destroyed it.”
“You destroyed it?”
I nod. “I committed it to memory, then I ate it. You know why?”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t want you to break into my office, find the invitation and then invite yourself along. Face it, Veronica. You’re not going with me.”
“Why not?”
“Since when have you been interested in an elementary school play?”
Veronica leans forward as she takes a seat on the edge of my desk so she can display her milky white cleavage.
She shifts her skirt and flashes me her Sharon Stone before crossing her legs. “I brought you a present,” she coos.
“I’ve already seen that present,” I say. “Lots of times.”
She chuckles. “You’ll love this gift. It’s something to go with your new trench coat.”
“Don’t buy me presents, Veronica. We’re not a couple. People who are not couples should not buy presents for each other without a special occasion. It’s considered creepy.”
“That rule only applies in the movies between straight men who are homophobic,” she replies with lawyerly arrogance. She leans over, giving me a 3-D boob shot, and picks up her briefcase. She pulls out a white box. It has a red ribbon wrapped around it. She holds it out for me.
I don’t take it. That would be like a rabbit voluntarily sticking his paw into the trap’s metal jaws. Veronica sighs and opens the box herself. She pulls out a scarf. “It’s a Hermes Contre Courant.”
I have no idea what she just said, it’s just a scarf to me. “Pretty,” I mumble.
She leans my way and loops the scarf around my neck. For half a second, I think she’s going to strangle me with the thing. Instead, she knots it up under my chin and says, “Gorgeous. Matches your coat perfectly.”
“Thanks.”
“You should be impressed, Jamie. It was expensive.”
“Why are you doing this?” I look down at the scarf. It is very nice. Soft, too. Do scarves have a thread count? If so, I wouldn’t mind sleeping on this one. I quickly look away and remind myself that I cannot be bought by pretty things. Veronica is a serpent, the scarf is an apple and I vow not to be her Eve.
“I just want you to know that you’re still a very special person in my life and I want to accompany you to the Fall Ball school thing,” Veronica says.
“You can’t be that interested. You don’t even know what it’s called. It’s a Thanksgiving pageant and features my nephew as the mashed potatoes.”
“That settles it! I wouldn’t dare miss Griffindorf as the mashed potatoes.”
“His name is Griffin and I’m pretty sure the mashed potatoes is a secondary role.”
“Are you kidding? Mashed potatoes is the foundation of Thanksgiving! Turkey without mashed potatoes is like… is like…,” she stumbles, obviously at a loss for metaphors. “It’s like plain turkey. Why, he’s the cornerstone of the entire play. This could be his seminal masterpiece of elementary school. No way I can afford to miss this.”
I stood. “Please leave now, Veronica. I’m worn out and I still have a parrot to feed.”
“Sounds like a full day,” she snips.
That’s when a light bulb goes on over my head. Maybe I could work out a deal with her. It’s definitely worth a try. “Say, Veronica… What’s that Latin term you’re always using?”
“Cunnilingus?”
“No, not that one. The one that means one hand washes the other?”
“Quid pro quo?”
“That’s the one! Maybe your quid could wash my quo. You do me a favor and I’ll think about taking you to the Thanksgiving pageant.”
She smiles like a shark with a full tummy. “Name it.”
“All you have to do is drive by the Friedman’s condo and feed their parrot.”
“Feed a parrot? That’s all?”
“Yep. Open the little cage door, shakes some birdseed into the dish, freshen up the water and you’re done. Five minutes tops.”
“Deal.”
I toss her the key to the Friedman’s place. “The address is on the key fob.”
I watch her strut out of my office like she won a big trial. She has no idea what she got herself into. I’d laugh, but I’m too tired.
Thirty-Four
Do I feel guilty for sending Veronica off on that fool’s errand? Kind of. But it was such a good opportunity for revenge. I know I should’ve resisted the temptation. So, I do what I always do when I feel guilty. I try to inflict pain on myself. It’s my way of receiving absolution. Oh yeah, I’m Catholic. Did I forget to mention that?
In the olden times my people used to kneel on rice and flagellate themselves with a whip. That’s been taken over by the S & M crowd, so now I do the next best thing. I go to the gym and run laps around the track until my muscles and lungs are screaming with agony.
God must have figured that wasn’t enough pain because Zelda appears at my side. She matches me stride for stride. She, of course, doesn’t even break a sweat. And even though I can’t seem to get enough oxygen to my lungs, and my face is red and I’m gasping, Zelda thinks now is a great time to have a conversation.
“Hey, Jamie. You still in the private detective business?” she asks.
I nod.
“I have a job for you,” she says.
I cock an eyebrow at her.
“You interested?”
I suck in enough air to say, “I don’t work for free.”
“I’ll pay,” she says. “I’ve been getting these weird phone calls.”
“What constitutes weird?”
“A man calls me on my cell. He breathes a lot, then mutters in another language. I think it’s Italian. It sounds like he’s beating off while talking dirty in Italian.”
I almost laugh. So the number I scrawled on the bathroom wall at Giovanni’s Gelato is paying off. Just the thought of one of the goombahs trying to make it with Zelda puts a little pep in my step. I increase my pace.
Zelda keeps up with me. “I want you to find out who it is, where they got my number and I want you to make them stop.”
“Oh, it’s probably nothing, Zelda. Some kid or something. Random dialing.”
“I think it’s more than that,” she says. “I think Tiffany is having an affair with an Italian man and he’s trying to scare me off with these phone calls.”
“Who’s Tiffany?”
“My girlfriend.”
“Oh.”
Let me back up here a bit and tell you about Zelda. She’s a womanizer. She has girlfriends coming out her wazoo. And all because she’s beautiful and athletic and has a great paying job. Tiffany is the latest in a long string of women. I always joke that when you want to date Zelda you have to take a number and wait your turn.
“Get rid of her,” I say. “Go on to the next number.”
“You don’t understand, Jamie. I think I love this woman,” she says.
I stop dead in my tracks. I put my hands on my knees and pant. Zelda stops running after about twenty feet and turns back to look at me. She runs back up to me and jogs in place while I try to catch my breath.
“You finished running?” she asks.
I shake my head. “I’m flabbergasted. You? In love?”
She laughs. “I know, right?”
“And you think she’s having an affair on you?”
“Yeah, I do. I think she’s having an affair with an Italian guy.”
This is rich. It takes everything in me not to burst out laughing. “What do you want me to do about it?”
“I want you to tail her.”
“You want me to follow Tiffany around?”
She nods. “Report back to me every move she makes. Don’t worry about money. I want to catch her red-handed.”
“Okay,” I say. “As soon as you get me a five hundred dollar retainer, I’ll start on it.”
We’re about to shake hands to seal the deal when I hear, “Jamie Bravo! I’
m gonna kill you dead!”
I turn and see a woman standing at the far end of the track. She’s blond and looks homeless. Her clothes look like they were once nice, but now they’re dirty and stained and ripped and wrinkled and smeared with a white, gooey substance. She’s wearing some kind of strange hat on her head. It’s green and blue and purple and looks like it might be made out of feathers.
“Hey,” Zelda says, “Isn’t that your ex-girlfriend?”
Oh my God! Zelda is right. That’s no homeless woman, that’s Veronica!
And that’s no feathered hat either. It’s what’s left of Lebowitz, the Friedman’s parrot!
Zelda trots over to a bench, sits down and fiddles with her shoe laces. She’s got a front row seat for the show.
I run up to Veronica. “What did you do to Lebowitz?”
“Who’s Lebowitz?” she spurts, throwing her arms into the air. Several feathers fall off her head and float to the ground.
“The bird! The parrot! What did you do to him? The Friedman's are coming back tomorrow!”
“You’re asking about the damn bird? That damn dirty rat with feathers that went all Hitchcock on me and you’re worried about him?”
She’s absolutely right. I should be more considerate. “How are you?”
“I’m going to kill you! You sent me over there on purpose! You knew he was going attack me!”
I’ve never seen Veronica this mad. She whips off one of her stiletto heels and holds it over her head like it’s a big, bad butcher knife. She limps toward me. I’m pretty sure she’s going to try to impale me with her shoe.
I jog backwards, staying just out of her reach. “Is the bird still alive? You didn’t tenderize him with your shoe, did you?”
“He’s gone,” she spits. She’s still limping toward me, faster now.
“Gone? What do you mean, gone? The Rainbow Bridge kind of gone?”
“I mean, he’s gone. He flew out the window and flapped away.”
“You opened the window? You lost Lebowitz?”
Suddenly, Veronica makes a sound like an enraged moose and charges. I turn and run. I hope the fact that’s she hobbled by a missing shoe gives me a chance to get away.
Worst In Show: A Jamie Bravo Mystery Page 15