The Case of the Invisible Dog

by Diane Stingley

  “I tell you, everything has been arranged!” Shirley exclaimed loudly.

  “Arranged?” a woman shrieked with a sneering tone. “How many times have I heard that before?”

  Everything was arranged? What exactly did that mean?

  “You will lose this bet,” I heard Shirley say loudly and forcefully. “Your mockery is misplaced. This is not like the other times!”

  “And how many times have I heard that before, too?” The woman let out a short, bitter laugh. “These little games that you arrange always end in disaster.”

  “The joke has gone too far. This is not a game,” Shirley said in a lowered tone that I had to strain to hear. “I had hoped you would see the difference.”

  It was silent for a moment, and as I stood there wondering—again—what I had gotten myself into, and debating whether I should run like hell as far away from Shirley Homes as my legs would take me, I heard footsteps stomp noisily toward the door. Before I could turn around or back away the door was suddenly flung open, and Shirley stood there in the doorway waving her cane toward me.

  “Any moment now,” she exclaimed, “my assistant, Tammy, will be walking up these stairs and—” Shirley stopped abruptly midsentence and did a double take as she spotted me.

  “Hi,” I said as casually as I could, giving her a smile and a small wave. “I’m not late, am I?” I asked nonchalantly, trying to give the impression that I had just arrived and hadn’t heard a thing.

  “On the contrary,” Shirley said, as a triumphant smile spread across her face. “You could not have timed it any better. See!” she exclaimed, pointing at me with her cane and then looking back over her shoulder. “I told you she would be here. Come in, Tammy. I was just telling my sister, Myra, all about you. She seems to think that you sound too good to be true,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “And yet here you are, in the flesh.”

  Shirley stepped back and I went up the last two steps and walked into the office, curious to meet Shirley’s sister, especially after my conversation with Dr. Morgan and her reluctance to talk to Myra. And now it was my turn to do a double take. It was hard enough to believe that there was one Shirley Homes in the world; now I saw that there were two. The only noticeable difference between them physically was that while Shirley was model thin, Myra was extremely overweight. Shirley wore her standard dark pants, white shirt and plaid jacket, while her sister was dressed completely in bright purple, including a huge pair of lightly tinted purple glasses that made her flashing eyes seem twice as large.

  “Unbelievable,” Myra said with a sneer, looking me slowly up and down, and under her gaze I started to feel ridiculous for the way I was dressed, as if looking for an invisible dog in the middle of the night was a legitimate, serious undertaking. “You have actually found another person to help in this ridiculous charade. Unless this is all just…Tammy? Where is it that you and my sister are going this evening?”

  “Myra,” Shirley said with quiet severity. “Now you are beyond merely insulting me. I have never lied to you.”

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps I have just never caught you at it. I repeat, Tammy, where are you and my sister going this evening?”

  “To look for an invisible dog,” I said simply, because…well, there was really no other way to put it. And I had a sudden desire to put Myra in her place.

  “Amazing,” she said, peering at me through her glasses. “Well, I guess that explains the outfit. Myra Homes,” she added in a slightly aggressive tone, thrusting out her hand to envelop mine in a fleshy grip.

  “Tammy Norman,” I replied, wincing slightly as she squeezed my hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “Is it?” she asked with raised eyebrows. “We shall see.” Myra mercifully released my hand and after one last penetrating gaze and a shake of her head, turned back toward Shirley. “I guess I will leave you to it, then.”

  “Oh, you don’t get off that easily, Myra,” Shirley said with a much lighter tone as she closed the door. “I believe we had a small wager, did we not?”

  “Yes, we did,” Myra said, still looking at me like I was some kind of medical specimen. “You shall have your gift in the morning. A brand-new copy of Berringer’s Complete Guide to the Herbs and Teas of Ancient Mesopotamia.”

  “Not a gift, Myra,” Shirley said smugly. “A gift does not have to be earned.”

  “Touché. I’ll have your well-deserved reward here first thing in the morning.”

  “Better make it an afternoon visit. We might have a late night ahead of us.”

  “Not too late, I hope,” I said, trying to sound lighthearted but already feeling that sense of dread that was soon to become my constant companion.

  “We can always hope,” Shirley said with an impish grin. “But you should know that these little adventures of ours will often lead us down unpredictable paths. Come, Tammy, it’s time we were on our way. Myra, I trust you can lock up after us?”

  “Of course. And good luck with your invisible dog.”

  “It won’t be a matter of luck, Myra,” Shirley told her as she pulled a long black woolen jacket off the coatrack and put it on. “I have never relied on luck.” Then she pulled that plaid cap out of one of her coat pockets and straightened it with a flourish before placing it firmly on top of her head. It was the first time she had worn it in front of me, and it made her appear—there’s honestly no nice way to put this—absolutely ridiculous. Anyone looking at her would immediately know that she was some sort of Sherlock Holmes impersonator. As I watched her button her coat I was now very grateful that it was pitch black outside, and that she hadn’t also taken out a pipe to puff on. “Come along, Tammy,” Shirley demanded as she grabbed the brown cane out of the umbrella stand, “before our invisible dog disappears into the night.”

  “I hope you know what you’re getting yourself into,” Myra whispered as Shirley marched out of the office with her cane and started down the stairs.

  “I do,” I whispered back, feeling suddenly protective of Shirley.

  “You know she’s an absolute cuckoo bird, right?”

  “I’m not sure I’d put it quite like that,” I said, wincing at Myra’s callous words and attitude.

  “I don’t take any pleasure in saying that,” Myra added smugly. “But I hate to see you get sucked into one of her little games without knowing what you’re in for.”

  “Tammy!” Shirley yelled from the bottom of the stairs. “Are you coming?”

  “Coming,” I called back and then turned toward Myra. “And what am I in for?” I whispered.

  “Tammy!” Shirley bellowed impatiently from below.

  “Nothing. You’d better go,” Myra said, her look of condescension replaced by a more thoughtful expression. “And good luck,” she added, giving my shoulder an awkward pat as Shirley called out for me once more.

  I took a deep breath, and then made my way down the stairs as fast as I could.

  “Tammy!” Shirley barked, tapping her cane impatiently on the sidewalk. “You know how much I value your help, and I do appreciate the sacrifice you’re making this evening by missing your regular television viewing. But you cannot keep me waiting. When you are upstairs and I am downstairs calling for you, then you must hurry. People are depending on us. Sometimes the fate of a person’s life can change in a matter of seconds.”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled. It wasn’t easy to stand there being lectured by someone wearing that ridiculous hat.

  “We’ll say no more about it. Come. We must find some means of transportation, and it won’t be easy. The streets seem to be deserted this evening.” Considering her appearance and the way she kept twirling her brown cane, I was very grateful for that fact.

  “I have a car,” I said, pointing at my little white Camry parked in front of Hobson’s Bakery, inches away from where we were standing, and the only car visible in either direction.

  “Excellent, Tammy, excellent. Is it by any chance this little white car parked in front of Hobson’s Bakery?”r />
  “Yes.”

  “Exactly as I thought. Simply a matter of observation and deduction. While standing here I noted that the white car in front of Hobson’s Bakery had been parked in a somewhat haphazard manner, indicating the driver is either unskilled at parallel parking, in a hurry for an appointment of some kind, or both. Your flustered expression when I found you on the stairs outside the office, combined with your inquiry as to whether or not you were late, quite logically led me to the conclusion that this is, indeed, your car. I shall not presume, however, to make any assumptions regarding the skill that you may or may not possess as a parallel parker when given sufficient time to complete the task. And speaking of time, I think we need to be on our way. I believe our invisible dog shall find that he has interrupted the sleep of our Matt Peterman for the last time!”

  —

  Five minutes later we were on our way to Matt Peterman’s house. He didn’t live far from Shirley’s office. Springville is a small town, and, like much of North Carolina, it finds itself caught between the past, the present, and the future. There are still some family farms on the outskirts of town, but they’re starting to disappear as the population grows. Merilee Community College borders the northwest side of town. Built in the late 1800s, with ivy-covered brick buildings and two large white columns in front of the administration building, it has been used as the backdrop for a couple of movies that were filmed here while I was in L.A. The irony does not escape me.

  The downtown area is struggling, like most small downtowns, and the business owners do their best to bring in customers with specialty shops, cafés, and boutiques. The historic city hall building was refurbished before the recession hit, and a new recreation center was added. During the summer there is a farmers’ market three mornings a week in the town square, and on Friday nights they have concerts and art fairs.

  When I was in high school I could hardly wait to leave, but now that I’m back, I’ve started to grow very fond of Springville and I appreciate how it’s held on to many of its small-town roots. I got really tired of living in Archerville when I was with Wayne. It’s only about fifteen minutes away down the interstate, but growing so fast that it often took me twenty minutes to crawl through all the intersections once I got on the off-ramp to head home.

  Following the directions that Shirley gave me, I headed down Broad Street, toward the south end of town. We passed the Springville Voice office and a few small businesses before entering the residential area. The first three blocks on the left-hand side were taken up by the town cemetery, which is truly beautiful. Now that it was early spring, a lot of the grave sites were decorated with bouquets of daffodils instead of the plastic flowers many people use during the winter.

  “That is what gives me hope for humanity, Tammy,” Shirley said, pointing over at the cemetery as we passed by.

  The fact that sooner or later every member of humanity died? That’s what gave her hope? And I thought my outlook on life was bleak.

  “I am,” Shirley continued, “as you have probably realized by now, a person who values human intelligence above all else. Human emotions are, for the most part, puzzling to me. They are so often irrational and lacking in basic common sense. And yet I am aware that it is the emotions behind a case that will sometimes provide the most vital clues. That is where your assistance will be most valuable. Your mind may be commonplace and ordinary, but you are a person who understands the human heart. I use the word heart as a metaphor, of course, since its only real function is to pump blood through our veins.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, feeling my jaw start to clench. Besides the stress of having to pretend that her behavior was perfectly normal, I was also getting tired of Shirley telling me that I had a commonplace mind.

  “But flowers on a gravestone—take a right at the next street—the sight of them always moves me. I believe that I do understand the impulse that places them there. And I admire it. In spite of everything, no matter how much people have suffered, the human race has never lost its fundamental faith that there is a grand design behind the trivia of our daily lives. Some people mock faith; I believe having it takes courage. The case for God is one that shall never be supported by any solid evidence.”

  “Yes,” I said, caught up in the moment and memories of my own. “But maybe flowers are a nice little clue.”

  “Well put!” Shirley exclaimed. “My great-great-grandfather once said much the same thing while gazing at a rose. You have unplumbed depths, Tammy, and I anticipate further revelations. Here is our turn.”

  Stupidly, I found myself flattered by Shirley’s comments for a moment, until I came back to my senses and remembered who I was dealing with. Really, Tammy, I told myself. Get a grip.

  I returned my focus to the matter at hand and found myself surprised as we drove down Augusta Drive. I had expected Matt Peterman to live in a much more modest neighborhood. These homes were all large and spacious, sitting on one or two acres, with long winding driveways, tall oaks and maples, and well-tended lawns and shrubbery. I saw the edge of a private golf course on the other side of the neighborhood, and here and there I spotted golf carts parked on some driveways.

  As we made our way down the curving road the homes grew farther and farther apart, and it wasn’t until we were almost to the end of the road—which dead-ended into the back of the private golf course—that Shirley told me to take another right turn. That’s when I saw the cul-de-sac where Matt Peterman lived. The small road leading to the left on the opposite side was the back entrance to the Sturdy Oaks Country Club, which owned the golf course.

  “Drive slowly, Tammy,” Shirley told me as I turned into the cul-de-sac. “I want to get a complete view of the surroundings that have given birth to our invisible dog.”

  “Not as nice as the other properties,” I said, gazing at the five homes. Each of them was two stories tall, with brick exteriors, large windows, and good-sized yards. All of them were fenced off at the sides so that you couldn’t see the backyard from the street. But they were older and not as well built or designed as the homes on the outside neighborhood. And all of them were identical except in the landscaping designs and the colors of paint on the window shutters.

  “Yes,” Shirley said. “Not as nice as the others.”

  “Which house is his?” I asked.

  “The second one on the right. The first one on the left has been foreclosed on. The one next to it is for sale, as you can see. Chuck and Nancy Brown live next door to our Mr. Peterman, and over there the elderly couple, the Pittfords…Wait a minute. I think I see something—yes. A light. On the Pittfords’ front porch. I see a shadow. There is someone on that porch!” she exclaimed excitedly. “This could be the source of our invisible dog. Pull around. There, into their driveway. Hurry! Hurry! Now stop the car!”

  I hit the brakes even though I was only halfway up the drive, and before I could put the car into park, Shirley had pushed open the passenger door and leaped out.

  “You there!” she yelled, pointing her brown cane at the front porch. “Stop!”

  Shirley had been so busy yelling and ordering me around, I hadn’t had a chance to look and see what she was talking about. Once I parked the car and turned off the ignition I craned my neck around, but I still didn’t see anybody. So when I saw her running up the driveway waving her cane at the front porch, I wasn’t sure what to do. Should I call the police? Stay put? Get out and see what was going on?

  I immediately eliminated the option of calling the police. What would I tell them? My crazy boss, who believes that she’s the great-great-granddaughter of Sherlock Holmes, is trying to solve the case of the invisible dog?

  I really did not want to get out of the car. But I felt foolish sitting there while Shirley went running down the driveway. And yes—even though it made no sense—I also felt cowardly. Like I’d abandoned Shirley to fend off danger all on her own, even if it was a danger of her own imagining. So with grave misgivings and a growing fear that Shirley’s delu
sion was much deeper than even Dr. Morgan realized, I forced myself to open the car door and step onto the Pittfords’ driveway.

  “Aha!” I heard Shirley yell from the front porch. “You have been found out, madam. It is useless to hide.”

  “Who’s hiding?” a female voice snapped. “And who the hell are you? Hey! Quit jabbing at me with that thing!”

  Instead of getting back in my car and driving away, like a sensible person would, I went running down the driveway toward the front porch to see what was going on.

  “Hey!” I heard the woman’s voice say again. “Knock it off. I’m not fucking kidding. One more time with that thing and I’ll kick your ass.”

  I ran past the shrubs and up the steps, and as I did, I smelled cigarette smoke and saw curly white wisps billowing off the porch.

  “Unhand me, you villain!” Shirley shouted as I ran onto the porch. She was trying desperately to hold on to her brown cane, which a large young woman wearing scrubs was just as desperately trying to grab away from her. The woman kept darting back and forth, and I couldn’t see much of her features except for the brassy frosted-blond highlights shimmering all over her head.

  “What are you?” the woman shrieked. “Some kind of a freak?”

  “To someone of your low intelligence and limited vocabulary, it may indeed appear that way,” Shirley snapped back, tugging on the cane with all her might. “But I am a freak only in the sense that those who are blessed with uncommon brilliance may seem freakish to those who are not. Unhand me, I say! Ah, Tammy, there you are,” Shirley said with a—considering the circumstances—remarkably serene smile as she noticed me standing a few feet away. I stood there staring, most likely with my mouth hanging open. “Just in the nick of time, as always. I may require a bit of assistance.”

  “Do you know this asshole?” the woman on the porch demanded, huffing and puffing and still tugging on the cane while Shirley did her best to hang on, despite the woman’s superior size and strength. Now that she had stopped moving around, I took in her narrow eyes, already forming crow’s feet at the edges, the bitter shape of her large mouth, and the pug nose that didn’t fit with the rest of her face. “ ’Cause I think she may have a screw loose. I was just sitting here minding my own business, having a cigarette—which isn’t against the law, by the way, this is private property—and the next thing I know she comes running at me with this cane and poking it at me. What is she? Some kind of anti-smoking nut?”