The Case of the Invisible Dog

by Diane Stingley

  Shirley pointed to the window and then imitated herself jumping from there to the ground. I shook my head. She repeated the gesture as if trying to get me to understand a game of charades. I then took my hand and pointed it straight overhead, then straight down, and then hung my head to the side as if I had a broken neck. Which is what would have happened if we had tried to jump out of that window onto the cement patio below.

  There was only one place left. I didn’t like the idea; I hated the idea, as a matter of fact. But the voices were starting up the stairs. I pointed to Matt Peterman’s bed, and without waiting for her to respond, I got down on the ground and rolled underneath it. A few seconds later Shirley rolled under the bed from the other side. We definitely needed more room under there for my comfort level, but we were stuck, and there was no alternative. The voices were almost here. I was on the side closest to the door that led to the hallway. A light came on in the room across from Matt’s—the one with all the junk and boxes stored in it. I saw a pair of cheap stilettos, and then a pair of cheap black boots, enter the storage room.

  “I’m telling you, it’s up here in one of these boxes.” That was a woman’s voice. It was harsh and deep, laced with bitterness, and just a tiny bit thick but not quite slurred. “I lived with the guy for ten years, and I know how he thinks. If you could call it thinking.”

  Shirley nudged me in the side. “It’s Patty!” she gasped. “The ex.”

  “Got it,” I whispered.

  “Shhh,” she hissed. “We don’t want them to hear us.”

  “You sure it’s still legal?” the man asked. “ ’Cause if it’s not still legal then it won’t hold up in court.”

  That was a man’s voice. He sounded about ten years younger than the woman. And also like a dumb ass: the guy in the bar who doesn’t actually know anything, but thinks he knows everything, and talks the loudest, and won’t shut up.

  “Really, Einstein? Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “I’m just saying—”

  “You’re always just saying. Look, for the millionth time, I’ve got this covered. Matt was a moron, okay? And lazy as hell. I’m the one who went online and got the forms and filled them all out. All he did was sign them. The guy didn’t have anything, but I always keep my bases covered. What if he won the lottery or something? You never know. But I guarantee you that it’s still sitting in one of these boxes from when he moved. I’ll start with this stack and you start with that one.”

  “What will it look like?” the man asked as I heard the sound of tape being ripped off of a cardboard box.

  “It should be in a big white envelope with Will written on the outside. W-I-L-L,” Patty spelled out, enunciating each letter with a sharp staccato. “Knowing Matt it’s probably got beer and taco stains on it.”

  “Why don’t you have a copy?”

  “ ’Why would I? When we split up he didn’t have anything. Who knew he’d end up getting this house?”

  “You sure he didn’t change it?”

  “I’m sure. Take it from me, Lou, the guy was so lazy he used to make a bowl of instant oatmeal and take it with him in the car on his way to work so he could sleep fifteen minutes longer. One time he got rear-ended, and that bowl of cereal went flying everywhere…” Patty started laughing. She sounded a little bit like a hyena.

  “What?” Lou asked.

  “…and…the cops showed up, and Matt had big blobs of oatmeal dripping all over him. God, I wish I could have seen that.”

  “I feel kind of bad for him.”

  “Don’t,” Patty snapped. “The guy was just taking up space. Dammit, it’s not in this one, either. I told you we should have stayed for one more drink. We’re going to be here all night.”

  More tape was ripped off of cardboard, and I could hear things getting thrown around. I sincerely hoped that they weren’t in there all night. And not just because of the dust bunnies, and Shirley, and her porno nurse uniform. The minute we crawled under that bed my bladder started sounding the alarm.

  “I still don’t get it,” Lou said in between rips and tears. “One day the plan was going along great, and then all of a sudden you decide you can’t go through with it. All you had to do was get him drunk and fly to Vegas and find one of those Elvis guys,” Lou whined. “Then you would have been married to him and sitting pretty now.”

  “Look, I tried. But just the few dates we had were the longest nights of my life. He thought I’d be thrilled to sit out on his stupid patio and grill hamburgers, like that was really living. When we first met he used to be kind of cute at least. But now…God, the gut on him. And then when he started going to that tanning salon…It was all I could do not to laugh in his face the first time he kissed me. Having to sleep with him…ugh. Not enough margaritas in the world. Even for half of the house I couldn’t go through with it. And I would have had to stay for a while before I filed for divorce, to make it look real.”

  “Yeah, but we knew that going in. Then all of a sudden you change your mind and—”

  “I said drop it! I told you, if I had to live with the guy, I would have been puking all the time, I swear to God. And it all worked out anyway, right? Matty dying is the best thing he ever did for me.”

  “Yeah. You keep saying that.”

  “So?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I told you I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  Shirley let out a little snort then, and I held my breath, hoping the sagging mattress that wasn’t more than an inch or two above our heads had muffled the sound.

  “Okay, okay,” Lou muttered. “So you’re sure it’s here?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. After we had both signed that will he stuffed it in the desk with all the rest of his quote–important papers–unquote. Every year when he did his taxes it took him forever to find what he needed. So trust me, when it came time to leave that dump he used to live in and move over to this place, he opened the desk drawers and dumped all his papers into boxes. And since we already checked the desk and all the drawers are empty, I guarantee you he never unpacked those papers. It’s got to be here. And once we find it then I get the title to the house. And I can go back to his office and show it to that bitch of a secretary of his, the part where it says that I get everything, and then she can’t stop me from looking through all his stuff. Who knows what I might find.”

  “Like what?” Lou asked.

  “Matt was always buying lottery tickets. And every year there’s, like, twenty million dollars in winning lottery tickets that go unclaimed. What do you want to bet one of them was his? That’s the kind of loser he was.”

  The sounds grew more frantic as the minutes passed. I could hear tape and cardboard ripping and things being dumped onto the floor. Then papers and whatever else was in those boxes would get tossed and thrown around. Some of the stuff they threw ended up out in the hallway. I was growing hot under the bed, and I was convinced that Shirley’s squirming and heavy breathing would be our undoing.

  Patty began to sound more frantic, too. She kept saying that it had to be there. It had to.

  “Damn him,” she shouted after another round of ripping and tearing, and I heard something thrown against the wall. “That stupid son of a bitch. That was my last box. I can’t believe he even managed to screw me over from the grave. Without that will I won’t get nothing.”

  “I’ve still got a few more papers in this box. Let me get the rest of the tape off.”

  That last box was torn open so loudly that it sounded as if they were clawing at it with their hands and teeth like a pair of hungry lions.

  “Nothing in that pile,” Lou said.

  “Damn! Damn! Damn!” Patty shrieked and another pile of papers came flying out of the room and into the hallway. I closed my eyes and tightened every muscle in my body, praying that the two of them wouldn’t come out of that room to pick those papers up. If they bent down and happened to look over I would be right in their eyesight. At least Shirley was, for on
ce, quiet.

  “It’s got to be here!” Patty’s stilettos marched around the room and more piles of things were thrown around.

  “Come on, baby, that won’t help.”

  “Shut up and let me think.”

  “I’m just saying—”

  “Don’t say anything. If you want to do something helpful start putting that crap back in the boxes. I don’t want anyone to know we were here.”

  “Fine. But just so you know, I hate it when you get like this. It’s—”

  “Whoa. If the next words out of your mouth have anything to do with me getting my period you’re about five seconds away from feeling the heel of this shoe stuck in the middle of your eyeball.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  I had opened my eyes by then and could make out the pair of stilettos standing in the center of the room across the hallway. I saw the pair of black work boots moving around. He would stop and bend down, scooping up papers and other junk, and then dump them into a box. Then he would start moving again.

  After a few minutes my heart stopped when I saw those boots headed toward the hallway.

  “I’ll get the rest of the stuff out here,” Lou said, but Patty didn’t say anything in reply.

  I closed my eyes—waiting for the worst—but when all I heard was him dumping more papers back into a box, I opened my eyes again and breathed a sigh of relief. He had his back turned toward me. I had a very unpleasant view of the top of his large hairy butt hanging out of his blue jeans. If I still had a sex drive, that would have killed it for the next six months.

  He scooped up another handful of papers, and I heard the stilettos moving again. Patty was blocked from my view by Lou’s backside, but I knew she was headed this way.

  “I guess we’ll have to tear the place apart,” she said after coming to a stop. I could see the heel of one of her stilettos to his left. “We’ll start with the dresser in his bedroom. Maybe he put it in his underwear drawer. That would be just like him.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “I don’t know. Why did Matt do any of the stupid shit he did? Maybe he dumped his papers in with his tighty whities. But I’m not leaving until I’m absolutely sure that— Uh, hey. Dumb ass?”

  “You talking to me?”

  “You see anyone else here?”

  “No,” Lou said, but it took him a few seconds.

  “What does that envelope say? The one you have in your hands?”

  “Uh…it says w-i-l-l,” he told her, but again, it took him a few seconds. “Oh. But you told me it was in a white envelope. This is a yellow envelope.”

  “It’s called manila, not yellow. And really? That’s what you’re going with?”

  “Well…yeah. You said white envelope. I heard you loud and clear.”

  “You didn’t think that big and envelope and will were the important things to look for? You thought white was the key fact? Oh my God. What if I hadn’t just happened to walk out here…Never mind. Give it to me.”

  I saw Patty’s arm thrust forward into my line of vision as Lou handed her the manila envelope. She grabbed it and her long, fake, red fingernails curled over that envelope like a drowning woman reaching for a rope. “Throw the rest of that crap in there and we can get out of here and celebrate. Margaritaville, here I come.”

  I started to relax a little until I saw those stilettos come around Mr. Hairy Butt and start toward the bedroom. I hoped to God that Shirley was tucked completely under the bed on her side and that she didn’t have one of her toes or part of her brown cane sticking out.

  I braced myself, but the stilettos went around the bed and then kept going without any sudden shriek or scream. I still wasn’t relaxed, but my lungs started working again. I heard those shoes hit a tiled floor and that meant Patty had reached the bathroom. I hoped maybe she was just looking for some aspirin to get rid of the headache she must surely have by now from all that shrieking. I know I did. But no such luck. She had gone into the bathroom for the usual reason people go into the bathroom. And my bladder had to sit there and listen, and listen, and listen…What was she? A camel? How many margaritas had she consumed? She could have done the sound effects for Niagara Falls.

  “Hey, babe,” Lou called out from the hallway. “I’ve got it all put back. I think we better roll.”

  “Coming,” Patty told him over the sound of running water. If she ever needed a character witness, my bladder and I could both testify that after using the restroom, Matt’s ex-wife did a very thorough job of washing her hands. Very thorough. I was starting to wonder if she had decided to scrub each individual talon when the water went off. A few seconds later she clicked out of the restroom on her precariously high heels, probably not the most practical choice for a night of burglary. She was halfway across the carpet when she stopped. “Oh, look. Here’s that stupid Oktoberfest beer mug I got him for his birthday that one year. He kept it. What a schmuck. What the hell. I’ll take it for old times’ sake. I can toast Matt with it when I get this place sold. At least he did one thing right.”

  Patty snickered and I heard the beer mug sliding across the dresser before she resumed walking across the carpet. “Good enough,” she said after stopping in the hallway for a moment. “Let’s hit the road.”

  The second that I heard the door close downstairs I rolled out from under that bed like it was on fire and ran into the bathroom. I probably should have waited to make sure they were gone for good. And I definitely should have closed the door.

  “Well, well, well,” Shirley’s voice boomed.

  I looked up and there she stood in the doorway, leaning on her cane.

  “Uh, Shirley, could I have a little privacy?”

  “Privacy? It is just the two of us here. Oh, I see. I do apologize. I got so carried away now that the case has been solved. Do you know that the desire to relieve oneself privately is almost completely universal? A bodily function that every single human being shares, and yet this strange desire for privacy persists. You might think that it was only as humanity started to form civilizations and cities that this desire for privacy arose. But even in those tribes that still hunt for their food out in the jungle and wear little in the way of clothing, you will find that they relieve themselves behind a bush. At least when releasing the solid form.

  “And yet—and here is another irony—men in the civilized world, who are relieving themselves in the liquid form, stand in rows next to one another. I have often wondered if they are embarrassed, but feel they must pretend not to be. Any thoughts?”

  “Absolutely none.”

  “Unfortunate. I shall adjourn to the other room, and wait for you to rejoin me when you are through. We have much to discuss.”

  Chapter 17

  Once we made it safely out of Matt Peterman’s house and started across his yard toward the Pittfords’, I noticed that the lights were on at the Browns. They hadn’t been on when we arrived.

  “Come on,” I whispered to Shirley. “The Browns are back home. We better hurry. The last thing we need is for them to call the cops again while we’re still here.”

  “The Browns?” she asked. “Oh, yes. I should know better than to let myself get distracted in the world of thought—interesting as my thoughts might be—while I am walking. An occupational hazard.”

  We darted across the street and then did our usual routine—no headlights, coasting down the driveway, and not starting the engine until I was almost to the end of the street. It wasn’t until we were safely out of Matt’s neighborhood that I felt as if I could breathe again.

  “And so, Tammy,” Shirley said, staring out the window with a pensive expression as she cupped her chin, “the Case of the Invisible Dog appears to be coming to its inevitable conclusion. The ex-wife has been caught unawares and implicated herself beyond all reasonable doubt. Ah, the dramas and pitfalls of romantic love—such high hopes in the beginning, only to descend into hatred, invisible dog machines, and eventually murder.”

  I suppose that
was one way of putting it.

  “Food for thought, Tammy, food for thought. Speaking of which, it suddenly occurs to me that I am in need of nourishment. I became so absorbed in the task of creating my disguise this evening—without strict attention to the tiniest of details a disguise becomes nothing more than a silly costume—that I neglected to obtain any dinner. I believe I should rather enjoy a return trip to the humble establishment of Waffle Barn. My treat, of course. For some peculiar reason I have developed a great fondness for their quite ordinary, one might even say mundane, and yet somehow completely satisfying, food.”

  —

  Cora came over to our table a few minutes after we were seated. She was wearing her hair in the same braided style as before, this time with a sparkly gold butterfly clip pinning back the loose ends and an orange butterfly earring clamped onto each earlobe. I waited a lot of tables in between acting jobs when I was in L.A. so that I wouldn’t wipe out my Rainy Day Fund. Upon seeing us Cora’s expression was anything but festive, and I could imagine what she was thinking as clearly as if she said it out loud.

  In order to make the best money, a server always wants to develop a set of “regulars.” I moved around so much—quitting every time I got a bit part or an audition that I just couldn’t pass up—that I never really did. I’m also not so good with the small talk. But the career servers—the good ones—know how to look fascinated as they hear about grandkids, family vacations, and the hilarious antics of the new puppy. But even the best of servers has a limit; and Cora had already reached hers with Shirley.

  Seeing the expression on her face, the one she quickly tried to hide, I wanted to reassure Cora, to let her know that it was merely a coincidence Shirley and I had been seated in her section again. We hadn’t asked for her by name. She didn’t have to face the horror of Shirley and me becoming her “regulars.”

  But there was no diplomatic way to do that. I would just have to make sure she got a generous tip. Anyone who has to wait on Shirley Homes deserves at least that much.