She keeps dogs in there?
“Those cages look a little small for dogs,” I said, wondering if maybe she kept toy poodles or Chihuahuas or something.
Debbee shot me a withering look. “Those cages are for the care and rehabilitation of raccoon and fox. It’s important to have metal instead of wood so they can’t chew through their cage.”
As she said it, I looked more closely. Sure enough, it looked like a pile of gray fur was sleeping in one of the cages.
“Don’t go near it,” Oliver mumbled to me. “You can get all sorts of nasty diseases from those animals.”
“Don’t worry, you don’t have to tell me twice,” I said. I had no desire to get near a wild animal with sharp teeth, especially an animal that might be angry at having to be in this hovel of a yard. Really, weren’t there supposed to be inspectors or something to make sure home businesses like this were clean? The whole place made me want to go home and take a shower.
As we neared the barn I could hear yips and yelps coming from the side. Craning my neck, I could see a small, fenced in circle filled with a wiggling mass of puppies.
Puppies. Not dogs, but little baby dogs.
“I thought they were full grown,” Oliver said.
Debbee didn’t even bother looking at him when she answered. “I do have full grown dogs. They’re not for sale. The puppies are.”
One of the puppies stopped playing and came to the fence, wagging his butt as we approached. He was all white, with a black patch over his eye and two black spots on his back. I thought maybe he’d been waiting for me.
“I don’t think a puppy is really what we’re looking for,” Oliver said. “We wanted a full grown dog.”
I leaned over and picked him up, feeling warm puppy burrowing into the crook of my arm. Next thing I knew, he was sniffing my head and neck, and gave me one little, tiny kiss on my cheek. Just one.
“It’s a boy! We’ll take this one,” I told Debbee.
“A puppy isn’t going to help you,” Oliver said. “I was thinking more along the lines of a full grown dog, one that can protect you or at least bark. Puppies yip, dogs bark. This one is only going to chew your furniture, and that won’t do you any good.”
The puppy was staring into my eyes, and I swear I knew exactly what he was thinking.
“He can’t wait to go home,” I said. “He’s going to love living with us.”
“Us?” Oliver asked.
“Me and the aunts,” I said. “Let’s go, we’ve got toys to buy.”
“Not so fast,” Debbee said. “Do you know how to care for an animal? Are you ready to make a commitment? Do you have any idea what a puppy needs? Do you have a vet?”
“Yes to all your questions,” I said. “How much for the puppy?”
“He’s some kind of hound dog, right?” Oliver asked.
“Yep, he’s a walker hound,” Debbee said, “known for being stubborn. Sure you can handle him?”
There was no way I was leaving without my dog. “How much?” I said.
“Three fifty,” Debbee answered.
“No,” Oliver said. “You told me on the phone all your dogs were strays and mutts. Nobody pays that for a dog of indeterminate origin.”
I looked around the yard, littered with debris and the sagging barn with peeling paint. The whole place was not only messy but dirty. I couldn’t leave this puppy to whatever fate this bizarre woman had in store for him. “I’m not leaving without my puppy.”
Oliver took his wallet out, starting to count cash. In the process of doing that, his badge could be clearly seen. “How about fifty?” he asked.
For the first time, Debbee looked nervous. “Sure, that’ll work. Don’t tell anyone I gave you a discount, though. I’ve got bills to pay in order to feed and house these animals, and they don’t come cheap.”
As Oliver was counting out the bills to her, I couldn’t help peeking into the barn. After all, the door was open, so it wasn’t as if I was snooping or anything.
I could see rows and rows of barrels with labels that said things like regular, rye and wheat. Must be flour. Although from the looks of it, she’s got enough barrels in there to get her through Armageddon.
Debbee saw me looking into her barn. “You sure you don’t want some bread? I can give it to you at cost.”
I tried to keep my face neutral and not let that ick look show. “No, thank you, we’re fine.”
Once we got in the car, I wrote Oliver a check to cover the cost of the dog. He wouldn’t stop complaining that I’d made a mistake.
“That dog is not what I had in mind,” he said.
“Sometimes that’s how life works,” I told him. “Besides, what you had in mind and what was supposed to happen are obviously two very different things. What happened to your big speech about stray animals and puppies dying in the street?”
“I never said anything about puppies dying in the street,” he said. “I was trying to …”
“Relax, I’m kidding,” I said. “Let’s stop at the pet store. I want to get some chew toys for Sparky. I have a feeling this little boy is going to need lots of toys to keep him out of trouble.”
“His name is Sparky?”
“What else would it be?” I said. I couldn’t hear what Oliver muttered, but maybe that was for the best.
The fun part about the big box pet store is that you can take your dog inside with you. While Sparky and I shopped, Oliver told me he had something to take care of. “I’ll be right back. I’ll meet you out front,” he said. We didn’t care, Sparky and I were having fun looking at leashes and collars and chew toys. With his paws on the front edge of the cart, I steered our way through what was essentially a toy store for dogs.
After paying for our purchases, I waited outside the store. Clipping his new collar and leash on him, I picked Sparky out of the shopping cart and put him on the ground in case he had to do his business.
The next thing I knew, someone attacked me from behind.
Chapter Thirty
My dog bowed, butt in the air, tail wagging, and barked at my attacker.
Oliver’s voice was disgusted. “That’s dog-speak for ‘let’s play.’ I told you he won’t do you any good.”
“Great,” I said. “Can you let go of me now?”
His grip around my neck loosened, and I felt his arms move off me. Oliver had come up and grabbed me from behind, putting one arm around my neck and the other around my body, pinning me to him. An old woman stopped in her tracks, assessing Oliver, and said to me, “Are you all right, dear? Do you need help?”
Oliver let go of me, and I shook my head. “No, thank you ma’am, we were just playing. I’m fine.”
The woman, probably somewhere in her eighties, sniffed at Oliver before walking away. I could hear her muttering something about boys not acting like gentlemen anymore.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked.
“Trying to prove a point,” he said. “This is why you need a different kind of dog. I walked up and grabbed you from behind, and your goofy puppy wanted to play instead of defend you. How is that going to help?”
“You’re right, I’m going to have to train him to bite you. Come on, let’s get in the car,” I said, walking away. I might have to rethink my original opinion of Oliver. I’d thought he was a buttoned up, by-the-book kind of guy, but apparently not so much when it came to animals. Or maybe it was just that something about me brought out the craziness in him.
We got in the car. “Anything new on Ethel?” I asked.
“You’re not going to distract me with that,” he said, “and no, there’s nothing new other than the fact that anyone in this town could be a suspect.”
“What do you mean?” I knew what he meant, but I wanted to keep him talking about something other than Sparky.
“Nobody liked her,” he said. “I’ve never seen one person have such a negative effect on so many people.”
“That’s not necessarily true,” I said. It wasn’t t
hat I wanted him to keep talking. I wanted him to understand Ethel’s strange relationship with most people. Most of us had had some sort of run-in with her in the past, but that was because she was passionate about what she believed in. She was just as passionate about defending others, too. She just didn’t let everyone know.
I remembered running into her at the post office several years ago. Literally. I was in a hurry and wasn’t watching where I was going, and the next thing I knew I’d bumped into a woman and knocked her and her stuff onto the floor.
When I looked down to see who it was, Ethel sat surrounded by hundreds of envelopes. I apologized profusely, and bent to help her retrieve her mail. As I was gathering the envelopes, I couldn’t help but notice the return address on each one of them: The North Pole.
Each year, Ethel took the time to answer children’s letters to Santa, put stamps on them, and mail them back. At the time, she’d brushed off my questions and wouldn’t look me in the eye. I’d like to believe it was because she didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, but now I’ll never know. The thing is, if we don’t grab an opportunity to talk with people in the moment it happens, we can lose that chance forever.
You never know when you’ll lose someone, and you never know when your own time is up. I didn’t share those morose thoughts with Oliver, but I did tell him about Ethel and the Santa letters.
“She had a lot of good in her. She just didn’t let everyone know what she was up to,” I explained.
Oliver was silent, and it wasn’t the kind of silence that was comfortable. Finally, he spoke. “Do you think she could have been up to something nobody knew about and gotten someone mad?”
“I think anything is possible with her,” I said, and it was true. If there was one thing I’d learned, it was not to make assumptions about anything anyone did, said or thought. You just never knew with some people.
Oliver cleared his throat, glancing over at me sitting in the passenger seat with my arms wrapped around Sparky. “Are you sure you know what you’re getting into with a puppy? Have you ever trained a dog or dealt with puppy messes? It’s not too late to take him back, you know.”
My eyes narrowed at him. “Take him back? You don’t take a living creature back like it’s some kind of unwanted birthday sweater your old uncle who can’t see two feet in front of him bought you for your seventeenth birthday.”
“That’s not at all specific,” he commented drily.
“Yeah, I’ve got quite a family. Anyway, you don’t have to worry. We always had a dog when I was growing up, and the aunts are really excited to have this little guy around. Besides, my parents live on a farm.”
The silence in the car had a weight to it, something I’d never experienced before.
“What does your parents’ farm have to do with anything?” he said.
I knew I had to be patient with him. “I visit my parents all the time, you know. So it’s like having animal experience by osmosis, because I’m around the animals.” Seriously, did I have to explain everything to this guy?
I could see Oliver grinding his teeth. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
“No, it’s not, and you shouldn’t grind your teeth like that, it’s not good for you. You’ll need a lot of dental work later in life. Or maybe soon, I don’t know how old you are. The point is, I’ve got people I can rely on when something comes up, and I’m a responsible person. So don’t worry. Besides, this was your idea in the first place.”
“What happens when he chews your favorite pair of shoes? Or destroys your new comforter that you got on sale at the mall? Are you going to dump him at the nearest shelter?”
I was horrified that he would even ask that question. “No, I’ll go shopping and replace it all and probably buy him some new toys, because if he’s causing that much trouble, he’s obviously bored.”
We pulled in front of my apartment building. Oliver put the car in park. “I don’t understand much of what you just said about the farm thing, but I suppose it doesn’t matter. Good luck, and remember our deal. Call me if you hear anything, and I mean anything at all.”
I started to get out of the car, but Oliver’s voice stopped me as I was closing the door. “Do not, under any circumstances, do anything foolish. Your job is to listen, that’s it.” We’d been over this already, and he didn’t deserve an answer. I started to close the door again and stopped when he leaned across the seat. “And for the record, I’m not that old.”
As I watched my new puppy sleep in his bed later that night, I realized Oliver had never said exactly how old not old was, but it didn’t matter. I had a feeling I’d be learning a lot more about the detective in the near future, since I was now part of his team. Unofficially, of course.
Chapter Thirty-One
Sundays were made for sleeping in, and I had the excuse of a new puppy to stay away from morning Mass at the Catholic Church on the corner. I hadn’t been to church in about ten years, but I still tried to come up with fairly reasonable excuses for the aunts. I knew they were probably worried about my soul, and I tried to ease their minds a bit every now and then to let them know I wasn’t going to hell when I died.
The thing with me and this one particular place of worship was that we didn’t exactly see eye-to-eye. I might have wanted to have a spiritual community to connect with every week, but that wasn’t going to happen at our local church. The truth was that about ten years ago I’d been asked by the church elders to stop attending, another small fact I kept from my family. I was the only person I knew who’d been uninvited to church.
The reason they asked me to stay away was because I’d started getting really vocal about accusing the priest of being a thief. Back then, I had a habit of sitting in the church, quietly meditating and sorting through the mysteries of the universe in my mind. During one of those meditations I saw the priest doing a couple of things. He was swigging the communion wine like a dehydrated soldier while putting the candlestick holders in a jacket pocket. The wine part was expected, since everyone knew the priests at that church drank wine whenever they could. How the heck else could they do their jobs without a little extra help? It was the candlestick holders that made me angry. Sure, he could have been taking them home to polish them or something, but since he gave the congregation a big lecture on stealing the following Sunday and accused someone in the congregation (not a specific someone, mind you) of stealing them, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. I saw it as my duty, morally and spiritually, to tell everyone what I knew.
The next week the candlestick holders were back on the altar. The priest thanked the thief for bringing them back, and the elders called me into a room in the basement to have their little talk with me.
Basements have never been a good place for me to be.
Although my family knew about my accusations, they never knew I’d been asked to leave, and I never told them. I knew it would stir up trouble, and I wasn’t interested in ruining Sunday mornings for everyone. Besides, sooner or later that priest would leave; they always do. I just had to wait it out.
But I got used to sleeping in on Sunday mornings and having a huge cup of coffee while I watched the news shows. Later I might make myself a brunch or have dinner with my parents or aunts. Not going to church sort of made my schedule easier, and I saw no reason to change that.
On this particular Sunday, getting my laundry done had gotten interesting. Like most puppies, Sparky had a real love of socks, and he kept taking them out of the laundry basket and trotting through the house with them. I patiently replaced each sock he took with a chew toy, but apparently the toys were not nearly as much fun.
I sat by the front window, nursing my third cup of coffee. Looking out over the green, I noticed a group of four people I didn’t recognize, dancing around the grass. At least it looked as if they were dancing. They were doing some sort of spastic-movement thing. Maybe it’s a new type of yoga. I looked again, noting that I did know them. They were all part of my brother
’s ghost-hunting group. Hmmm. I wonder if maybe they’re all taking a little extra communion wine this morning. Whatever they were up to, they didn’t look quite right.
With the laundry done and the house cleaned, I decided to focus on the case. I sat at my desk and turned on the computer, pulling out a new file folder and a pen. Since this was the first time I was attempting to investigate, I knew I had to be organized. I would start by making a list so I would have a clear vision of where I was going. I thought for a moment before writing:
1. Ethel’s recent fights (ask family and neighbors, check minutes of Homeowner’s Association Board meetings … public?)
2. New owners of house. Background?
3. Other area crimes
At least it was a start. Although number one might take a while, given Ethel’s ability to piss people off, numbers two and three should be easy enough. I made my first phone call to my friend Jackie, who was a realtor. Jackie put me in touch with the Vice President of Ethel’s homeowners association. Our conversation was a bit awkward, but it got me what I wanted, which was the minutes to the last few board meetings.
“Why are you so interested in our association?” the woman asked, her voice tinged with suspicion.
“I’m thinking about buying a home there,” I said, keeping my fingers crossed, “and my father told me that the best way to get a sense of a neighborhood is to get involved in the association.”
I waited a moment, wondering if she would buy my story. I could hear her hesitation on the phone, so I hurried to add, “I’m the sort of person who likes to get involved, you know, help out with neighborhood events and stuff like that. I just want to get a sense of how you all function.” That should do it, I thought. Organizations loved it when you told them you wanted to get involved.
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