The Missing Dog Is Spotted

by Jessica Scott Kerrin

  “Loyola!” Trevor called. “Wait up!”

  “Ginger’s been a bad dog this week,” Loyola reported as soon as Trevor joined her. “She broke out of her backyard and ended up being captured by the neighbors. Apparently, she was digging up someone’s prize rose garden.”

  Trevor looked at Ginger, who smiled back and didn’t look at all traumatized about her foiled escape. If anything, it looked as if she was planning her next runaway adventure.

  “So I’m thinking,” Loyola continued, “that if an escape artist like Ginger can be caught, then there’s a good chance someone will find Buster.”

  “No, they won’t,” Trevor said bluntly.

  “Why not?” Loyola asked.

  “There is no Buster.”

  Loyola stopped in her tracks. “What do you mean?”

  “I just learned that Buster has been dead for a long time. Mr. Fester is confused and thinks his dog is still around.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Mr. Fester sold his used bookstore years ago, and Poppy’s owner just told me that Buster was an old dog, even back then.”

  “How awful,” Loyola said. “So what do we do now? Do we tell him?”

  “I don’t think I’d be very good at that,” he admitted.

  “Me, either,” Loyola said as if confiding to a friend.

  She looked as if she might cry. Trevor almost felt like giving her a hug.

  “Tell you what. Let’s talk to Mr. Fester together,” Trevor suggested.

  “And what should we say?” Loyola asked, grateful for his company for once.

  “We can remind him about how long ago he sold his bookstore. That might trigger his memory about Buster, and then he can piece it together himself.”

  “It’s still sad,” Loyola said.

  Trevor nodded. He surveyed the six dogs. They were all looking in the direction of the park and fidgeting with excitement. Except Duncan. Duncan just stood, unfazed by the growing franticness surrounding him, perfectly content not to move for the rest of the day.

  “Okay. Let’s get this over with,” Loyola said at last.

  Together, they headed to Mr. Fester’s front porch, Duncan grunting along. Trevor and Loyola tied the dogs to the railing. Trevor looked at Loyola. She nodded. He rang the bell. After what felt like an eternity, Mr. Fester answered the door.

  Trevor glanced inside. The piles of books were still stacked everywhere in the main entrance and on up the stairs.

  “Hello, Mr. Fester,” Trevor said in a voice higher than normal.

  “Oh, hello,” Mr. Fester replied, hope creeping into his voice. “Are you here about Buster?”

  “We’re here to learn more about Buster,” Trevor said, trying to trigger Mr. Fester’s memories like they had planned. “Did Buster go with you to the bookstore when you owned it?”

  “Yes, he did. I read to him every day. He was very good company. The customers loved him.”

  “Would you describe Buster as a calm dog?”

  “Calm? Goodness no. He’s full of beans.”

  “Is that why you used to read to him? To calm him down?”

  “Yes.”

  Trevor was steering the conversation exactly where it needed to go.

  “What type of books did he like best?”

  “Movie scripts. That’s why I named him Buster. It’s short for Blockbuster. Blockbuster movies.”

  “That’s a great name. When did you sell your used bookstore?”

  “Nine years ago. The year after my wife passed away.”

  That caught Trevor off guard. It was sad to hear that Mr. Fester’s wife had died. It was also unsettling that he seemed to remember everything very well. He didn’t appear to be confused at all. So why was he getting them to chase after Buster?

  “Oh,” Trevor said. “I’m sorry about your wife.”

  He paused for a respectable moment before continuing.

  “So then, you live by yourself?”

  “No,” Mr. Fester said crankily. “I have my books and I have Buster.”

  Trevor looked at Loyola, who looked as baffled as he felt.

  “You certainly have a lot of books,” Loyola interjected. “I’m going to be a librarian when I grow up. I love to shelve and categorize things.”

  “You should see her locker!” Trevor said, attempting to lighten the mood and keep the conversation going.

  “That’s admirable,” Mr. Fester said. He paused and turned around to face the stacks of books behind him. “When I sold the bookstore, I took home quite a bit of the stock. I ran out of shelf space long ago, but I’m glad that didn’t stop me.”

  “Because books are good company?” Trevor guessed. He had heard Mr. Easton say that to the Queensview Mystery Book Club on plenty of occasions.

  “There’s that, but also my late wife insists on playing cards with me.”

  Okay, so he is confused, thought Trevor. Dead wives can’t play cards. And dead dogs can’t be lost.

  “You look alarmed,” Mr. Fester said. “I’ve seen that look on my son. Don’t be.”

  Mr. Fester fished something out of his shirt pocket. It was a playing card. The queen of spades. Only someone had drawn glasses on her face in red ink.

  “See that?” Mr. Fester said, holding the card up for Trevor and Loyola to inspect.

  “Queen of spades,” Trevor confirmed.

  “That’s right. My wife was quite a card player. Bridge, mostly.”

  Trevor knew a little about bridge. He knew it was a complicated four-person game with many rules and many strategies. Partners played against partners, often in tournaments.

  “You two liked to play bridge?”

  “No, I wasn’t a good partner. I’d rather be reading. But she and Arno Creelman won many championships.”

  “Arno Creelman? Do you mean Mr. Creelman? The one who takes care of Twillingate Cemetery?” Trevor asked.

  “That’s him,” Mr. Fester said. “I still see him from time to time. Mostly at the grocery store. He was pretty mad when I sold the bookstore. He has quite a collection of his own books, especially about outer space and the solar system and such. He used to work at a planetarium.”

  “He came to our school,” Loyola said. “To the Queensview Mystery Book Club. He read from a book of epitaphs called Famous Last Words.”

  “From his cemetery-care collection,” Mr. Fester deduced. “Well, that’s understandable. He lost his grandson to a car accident last summer. Terribly tragic.”

  Once again, Trevor was caught off guard, because once again, Mr. Fester seemed to be very clear on his facts, even tragic ones. No confusion there.

  “I don’t understand about the queen of spades,” Trevor said.

  Mr. Fester gently kissed his card before tucking it back into his left shirt pocket, the one over his heart.

  “With all that bridge, I gave my wife a nickname. I called her the Queen. The Queen of Bridge. Before she died, she planted playing cards with queens all over the bookstore. Every once in a while, a customer would find one tucked into a random book. When you’re in the second-hand book business, you find all kinds of things in books that people have used for markers. But I knew the playing cards were hers. She drew glasses on them. Red glasses. She had a pair herself.”

  “Oh. So that’s how she’s playing cards with you,” Loyola said.

  Mr. Fester nodded.

  Trevor was baffled. He couldn’t figure out Mr. Fester. Was he confused or not? Maybe there really was a Buster. Maybe Buster was just an incredibly old dog. Maybe Mr. Fines had it wrong.

  “Well, time to fly,” Trevor said, anxious to talk over the case with Loyola. “The dogs need their walk, but we’ll keep a lookout for Buster.”

  “Please do,” Mr. Fester said. “I miss Buster terribly. He was a stray when I found him. I know
he can take care of himself, but still. I need to know that he’s safe and happy.”

  Trevor and Loyola backed out the door and onto the porch. As they untied the dogs, Loyola spoke under her breath.

  “What do you think?”

  “Who knows.”

  All the way around the park and back to the animal shelter, they speculated as to whether Buster was real or a memory. But by the end of their walk, they had seen no sign of Buster.

  Not one.

  With Trevor’s family move getting closer, talk around the dinner table was about all the good things to look forward to at the new place. Yet Trevor was often distracted. He remained troubled throughout the week. There was something about Mr. Fester’s story. There was something not quite right. Trevor couldn’t put his finger on it. So he continued to take different routes home, still looking for Buster and picturing Mr. Fester’s sad face.

  When he arrived at the animal shelter the following Wednesday, he and Loyola decided to stop by Mr. Fester’s house with their dogs to see how he was doing. Mr. Fester opened the door and surprised them with a stack of posters.

  “I made bigger ones,” he said, after barely a hello.

  He held up a poster for them to see. The words REALLY LOST were featured in big bold letters at the top. A new full-color picture of Buster lying beneath a park bench took up most of the poster. That was followed by details of who to call.

  “Can you put these up for me?” Mr. Fester asked.

  “Sure,” Trevor said, feeling lost himself.

  He and Loyola divided the stack in two and shoved them into their knapsacks.

  That week Trevor put up all of his posters but wondered the whole time why he was even bothering. He chose lampposts around Mr. Fester’s old bookstore, the children’s playground and the melted outdoor skating rink.

  And then it was May.

  When the first Wednesday of that month rolled around, and Trevor and Loyola dropped by Mr. Fester’s house, there was still no sign of Buster. There hadn’t even been a single sighting. They weren’t surprised. In fact, they were pretty sure there was no Buster. But it had become a habit to say hi and to chat with Mr. Fester, if only to keep him company for a little while. Even the dogs in their care knew the routine. All six of them would steer Trevor and Loyola to Mr. Fester’s porch for a final stop before heading to the park for their Big Walk.

  This time Mr. Fester handed them a box of dog treats.

  “Put a few cookies under the benches around the park,” he said. “Buster loves sitting beneath them. He might be getting tired of foraging for food, and I don’t want him to go hungry.”

  Trevor took the box of dog treats and did as he was told.

  “I don’t know, Trevor,” Loyola said, as he deposited the cookies underneath the first bench they came to. “This seems hopeless to me.”

  “It is hopeless,” Trevor said, trying not to dwell on what he was doing. “And we’re running out of time.”

  “What do you mean?” she stopped to ask.

  “I’m moving at the end of the school year,” he explained.

  “Are you going back to your hometown?” she asked.

  “Hometown?” Trevor repeated. “I’ve moved so often, I can’t say I have a hometown.”

  “What’s that like, moving so much?” Loyola asked.

  “I’m used to it. I’ve gotten good at making friends no matter where I am.”

  “But then you have to leave them behind.”

  “I don’t think about that as much,” Trevor admitted with a shrug. “I think about the new ones I haven’t met yet.”

  An awkward silence followed, so Trevor said what he always said to lighten the mood.

  “Time to fly.”

  “You say that a lot,” Loyola said.

  The truth was, leaving classmates behind hadn’t bothered him very much because he had never had time to get to know anyone all that well. It meant that goodbyes weren’t nearly as hard. And he had concluded a long time ago that it was better this way.

  But what if it wasn’t really better at all? What if he had gotten things wrong? That was not a happy thought.

  It must have showed, because Loyola said, as if to cheer him up, “I think you’re very brave.”

  Her praise worked. Trevor sat down on the bench and Loyola sat beside him. Then he gave a cookie to each of their six dogs, with an extra cookie for Duncan.

  They went on to talk about other things during their walk around the park — their speculations about starting junior high in the fall, the strange ideas their parents had, their favorite foods, their favorite books, their favorite games to play.

  Loyola even told him a hilarious story about her jokester great-grandmother who broke her hip and recovered in a hospital run by nuns. She went up and down the hallways with her walker wearing a hairband with red devil ears.

  And Trevor told her the incredible story about how his parents unknowingly bought the exact same print by a local artist for each other to celebrate their recent anniversary. Both prints now hung side by side in their bedroom next to his framed poem about airplane vapor trails.

  The only thing they didn’t talk about was their different heights. That topic was still taboo, and they both knew it without having to say a word.

  “So what do you really think is going on with Mr. Fester?” Loyola asked as they stopped at the water fountain so that the dogs could take a final drink before heading back.

  “I don’t think there is a Buster,” Trevor admitted. And then he added, “I’m worried about Mr. Fester.”

  “Me, too,” Loyola said. “It’s awful that he’s living alone.”

  Trevor remembered that Mr. Fester had mentioned a son who was worried about him. It would be a grownup son, given Mr. Fester’s age.

  “Maybe his son could take care of him,” Trevor suggested, recalling how his own parents phoned his grandparents on a weekly basis to make sure they were doing okay.

  “Maybe. Let’s see what we can find out the next time we drop by,” Loyola said.

  All that week, Trevor walked from school to home and back taking his regular straightforward route. By the end of the week, he realized that he had stopped looking for Buster without even knowing it.

  “Hello, Mr. Fester,” Trevor said the following Wednesday when Mr. Fester answered the door.

  “Have you seen Buster?” Mr. Fester asked immediately.

  It had become their sad routine.

  “No,” Trevor said, bracing himself for Mr. Fester’s look of despair, which was sure to come.

  It did.

  “Oh,” Mr. Fester said pitifully, bowing his head.

  “Mr. Fester,” Loyola cut in, putting their plan into play straight away. “You told us that you have a son.”

  “Yes,” Mr. Fester said, wiping his eyes.

  “Do you see him much?” she asked.

  “Not as much as I’d like. He’s busy with his three girls, and he runs his own business.”

  “What type of business?” Loyola asked.

  “He has a craft studio. He makes his own pottery.”

  “Where’s his studio?” she asked.

  “He doesn’t live here. He lives on the eastern shore in Lower Narrow Spit.”

  “I’ve been there,” Loyola said. “That’s where they have the annual lobster festival.”

  “That’s right. It’s this weekend. I’m going to visit him, and he wants me to check out the seniors’ residence named Sunset Manor while I’m there.”

  “How long will you be gone for?”

  “Hard to say. Will you keep a lookout for Buster while I’m away?”

  Trevor cut in.

  “Sure we will. Does your son know that Buster’s missing?” he asked.

  “No. Not yet. I was hoping Buster would come home before he f
ound out.”

  “Maybe it’s time to tell him,” Trevor said gingerly.

  He knew exactly what he was doing. If he could get Mr. Fester to confess about his long-dead dog to his son, his son would see that his dad was confused and shouldn’t be living alone. And Mr. Fester would get the help he needed.

  “You’re right. It’s time,” Mr. Fester said, his shoulders sagging, his arms hanging limply.

  “We better go exercise these dogs,” Trevor said. “And we’ll look out for Buster.”

  It was a lie. Trevor and Loyola both knew it.

  Mr. Fester waved them off and stood forlornly at the door for the longest time.

  “Do you think we did the right thing? Getting Mr. Fester to tell his son about Buster?” Loyola asked.

  “That’s the only way his son will see what’s going on,” Trevor said. “Besides, Mr. Fester must be really lonely. And that whole thing about finding playing cards with the queen wearing glasses that his wife tucked into used books? That’s just downright sad. I can barely stand to think about it.”

  Loyola nodded along, but Trevor still felt uneasy, as if he was snitching on someone he cared about.

  Poor Mr. Fester.

  When Trevor and Loyola reported for duty at the animal shelter on the third Wednesday in May, it was Isabelle Myers who spoke first.

  “Mr. Fester’s been calling here every day from his son’s house in Lower Narrow Spit, still looking for Buster. It’s pitiful. I can’t understand why we haven’t come across that missing dog.”

  “There is no Buster,” Trevor said flatly.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Buster died years ago. Mr. Fester is confused.”

  “Oh dear,” Isabelle Myers said. “Well, that makes sense. We have a very good record when it comes to lost dogs. Eventually, they all show up here. Even strays.”

  “Not this time,” Trevor said. “Does Mr. Fester’s son know that he’s calling you?”

  “I’m not sure,” Isabelle Myers said. “Perhaps I should ask to speak to his son the next time Mr. Fester calls, and then I can explain the situation.”