Mystery on Magnolia Circle

by Kate Klise

  I sat on a bench and stared at the frolicking dogs. I was still thinking about Melvin Moss and all the people who lived at Victory Mission. Were they allowed to bring their pets to the shelter, and if not, what happened to homeless animals?

  That’s when I saw her: the dog who looked exactly like Lotty. She was with a girl about my age. I stood up from my bench and walked with my scooter the fifty yards or so over to the girl with the Lotty look-alike.

  “Hey!” I said. “What a sweet dog.”

  The girl looked at me strangely. “Oh, hi,” she said. She began quickly reattaching a red leash to the dog’s collar.

  I couldn’t tell if the girl was weirded out by me, my scooter, or both. But I couldn’t help myself. I kept talking.

  “Your dog,” I said, pointing. “Male or female?”

  “She’s a girl.”

  “I knew it! This might sound crazy, but she looks exactly like my best friend’s dog who died. Her name was Lotty.”

  As soon as I said the word Lotty, the Irish setter barked. Seconds later, Winthrop ran over. The two dogs sniffed each other, like dogs do.

  Winthrop looked at me with a puzzled expression on his face, as if to say, Do you see what I see?

  “I mean,” I said to the girl, “it’s just the weirdest thing. Your dog looks one hundred percent like Lotty.”

  The Irish setter cocked her head and looked at me.

  “Lotty?” I said. “Is that you?”

  The Irish setter whimpered. Then Winthrop began barking. I took a step closer. “Lotty?”

  It was Lotty. Her eyes were the same. Her bark, too. The only difference was this dog seemed a bit more sluggish. Maybe a little depressed.

  “I could swear that’s my friend’s dead dog,” I said.

  “She’s mine,” the girl said, pulling her dog away with the leash. “And she’s one-hundred percent alive, thank you very much. We have to go now. Bye.”

  * * *

  “Mom, can I borrow your phone?” I asked when I got back to the house.

  “No.”

  “Mom, please. It’s important. I have to take some pictures of a dog and send them to Teddy.”

  “I said no. You and Teddy have had enough fun with cell phones for a while.”

  Of course, Teddy’s mom had told my mom about the DriveMeThere rides. They told each other everything, which was infuriating but not entirely surprising. Teddy and I told each other everything, too.

  “Can I at least use your phone to call him?” I asked.

  “Use the landline,” Mom said. “That’s what it’s for.”

  She was still mad about the Mr. Hobart incident. It seemed like Mom was going to be mad at me my whole life.

  I left several messages on Teddy’s cell phone, hoping he’d call me the minute he got his phone back. Finally, he did, four unbearably long days later.

  “Sorry, Ives,” he said. “My mom and dad gave me back my phone early, but then I dropped it in the lake. I had to use rice to dry it out. It took a couple of days, but now it works like a charm. Isn’t that the most bizarre thing? Who would’ve ever thought to put a phone in a bag of uncooked rice when—”

  “Teddy, listen,” I interrupted. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but…”

  “But what?”

  “It’s just that I saw, I mean, I think I saw, well, I’m ninety-nine percent sure I saw—”

  “Spit it out, Ives,” Teddy said. “Who’d you see? Melvin Moss?”

  “Lotty.”

  “What?”

  “I saw Lotty.”

  “Where? When?”

  “In Forest Park. Four days ago. I’m sure it was her.”

  Teddy didn’t believe me at first. I didn’t believe me at first. But I knew what I saw. Lotty was alive.

  “You think Dr. Juniper cloned her?” Teddy asked.

  “I don’t know what to think,” I said. “I just know I saw her.”

  “If you’re lying to me, I will never forgive you.”

  “I might be wrong, but I’m not lying.”

  “Are you trying to break my heart?”

  “Teddy, how can you ask me that?”

  “My name is Ted.”

  “Sorry. But seriously, you think I would try to break your heart? I would never do that.”

  Then again, I might be doing that very thing if I was wrong about seeing Lotty. I was either going to be Teddy’s best friend or his worst enemy; there was nothing in between. But I had no option. I had to tell Teddy I’d seen Lotty in Forest Park. And together, we had to find out what Dr. Juniper had done with Teddy’s dog.

  Just when I’d put the Melvin Moss investigation on hold, here was another mystery nipping at my heels. I felt like the Sherlock Holmes of Magnolia Circle.

  What I learned from that:

  Being a neighborhood detective was turning out to be a full-time job.

  FIFTEEN

  The Bittersweet Vet

  When Teddy got back from vacation two days later, we made an appointment to see Dr. Juniper.

  “If Dr. Juniper is cloning people’s pets without telling them, we have to be careful,” said Teddy. “She could be dangerous. Maybe we should wear disguises and think up a fake pet name to use when we call to make the appointment.”

  I loved Teddy’s flair for the dramatic, but the disastrous ladder incident at Mr. Hobart’s house burned in my memory. I knew I was still on thin ice with my mom. Teddy had to be careful, too, because of the DriveMeThere rides.

  “Let’s do this right,” I said. “We can use our real names with Dr. Juniper. No sneaking around. No spying. If our parents ask where we’re going, we’ll just say we’re—”

  “On a mission!” Teddy said.

  “No, that sounds like trouble. We’ll say we’re doing research about veterinarians. That’s true. We’ll say we have to interview Dr. Juniper about her clinic.”

  “Dr. Juniper’s evil cloning clinic,” Teddy added darkly. “Okay, we won’t say that part, but I’m thinking it very loudly.”

  Teddy was jumping to all kinds of conclusions. Meanwhile, I didn’t have the heart to tell him I’d been back to Forest Park every day since my initial sighting and I hadn’t seen the girl or the Lotty look-alike again. Was it just my imagination? Was it wishful thinking? Heat stroke? I would soon find out. We had an appointment with Dr. Juniper for two o’clock the next day.

  * * *

  Teddy and I took the MetroLink train from Skinker Boulevard to Grand Avenue. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it’d be with the knee scooter. Teddy was nervous as we rode the elevator up to Dr. Juniper’s third-floor office.

  “I’m getting a bad feeling about this,” he said. “Are you sure you weren’t imagining it? Maybe it was a mirage. Maybe you were just hoping to see Lotty.”

  “You have to trust me on this. I know I saw Lotty in the park. I mean, I think it was Lotty.”

  Now I was getting a bad feeling, too.

  Dr. Juniper was all crinkly smiles when she greeted us in her office. She was as old as my grammy in Peoria, but not nearly as on the ball. Her white lab coat was covered in pet hair and yellow sticky notes with names and numbers scribbled on them.

  “I’m Ted Samuelson,” Teddy began. “And this is Ivy Crowden.”

  “I know who you are,” Dr. Juniper said in a friendly voice. She looked at my scooter. “That looks sporty. Have a seat, you two. You’re my only appointment this afternoon.”

  We sat on a clawed-up sofa. There was no receptionist or nurse. Dr. Juniper was a one-woman clinic: veterinarian, nurse, secretary, all rolled into one. You could see how many decades she’d been practicing medicine by the framed pictures of people and pets lining the walls of her waiting room.

  Looking at Dr. Juniper surrounded by all the old photos, I was reminded of the word our tour guide had used to describe Scott Joplin’s music: bittersweet. There was something both happy and melancholy about Dr. Juniper.

  She folded her hands on her lap. “I don’t see any pets. So wha
t brings you here today?”

  I was in no mood to beat around the bush. I told Dr. Juniper I’d seen Lotty in Forest Park.

  “I’m positive it was Lotty,” I said. “When I called her by name, she responded. She recognized my voice.”

  I glanced at Teddy sitting next to me. His eyes were already filling with tears. The seriousness of what we were doing was slowly dawning on me. The possible foolishness, too. I was already dreading the train ride back home. Teddy would never forgive me if I was wrong. I would never forgive myself.

  “Many Irish setters look alike,” Dr. Juniper said cautiously.

  “But I know it was Lotty,” I said, pressing on. “Winthrop recognized her, too. I can’t believe all Irish setters smell alike.”

  Dr. Juniper turned and spoke directly to Teddy. “Have you thought about getting a new dog? I know a breeder in Illinois who—”

  “I don’t want a new dog,” Teddy said through his tears. “I just want Lotty.”

  Dr. Juniper bit her lip. Then she tilted back her head and looked at the ceiling. A tear rolled down her cheek.

  “It’s hard for me, too,” she said.

  This surprised me. I thought an experienced veterinarian like Dr. Juniper would be used to the bad parts of her job, like putting down cats and dogs because they had incurable diseases.

  Dr. Juniper reached into the pocket of her white lab coat. She pulled out a nylon collar with ID tags.

  Teddy’s eyes grew wide. “That’s Lotty’s!”

  “Yes, it is,” said Dr. Juniper. “Would you like it?”

  “Mm-hmm,” said Teddy, nodding. He put the collar up to his nose and inhaled deeply. “She’s been gone fifty-four days.”

  Dr. Juniper cleared her throat. It seemed like she was getting ready to make a speech, but then she dropped her gaze to the floor. Her face slid into an upside-down smile.

  “I’ve thought about calling your parents many times,” she said, “but I didn’t know how to tell them.”

  “Tell them what?” I said, even though she wasn’t talking to me.

  Dr. Juniper took a deep breath. “I removed Lotty’s collar right before she—”

  “I don’t want to hear it!” Teddy said, throwing one hand over his eyes. “Please don’t say the word died.”

  “Ran away,” said Dr. Juniper.

  Teddy’s hand dropped to his side. “What?”

  “Lotty ran away before I could administer the injection.”

  “Ran away how?” I asked. “Where?”

  “I have no idea,” said Dr. Juniper. “I took off Lotty’s collar in the exam room. Then I turned my back for a second to grab the needle, and off she went.”

  Teddy was on his feet now. “Is there a window? A door? What?”

  “The door right there,” said Dr. Juniper. She was pointing to the glass office door we’d walked through five minutes earlier. “Lotty jumped from my exam room table and then used her front paws and the weight of her upper body to open the office door. I watched her get on the elevator.”

  Teddy’s face lit up with pride. “Lotty pushed the elevator button?”

  “No,” said Dr. Juniper. “The elevator door was open. She got on, going down.”

  “Did you follow her?” I asked.

  “Of course I followed her,” said Dr. Juniper, defensively. “But it was several minutes before I got down to the lobby. By that time, Lotty was gone. You’ve seen the lobby of this building. There are six doors. I had no idea which way she went.”

  Teddy was now pacing around the small waiting room, gripping Lotty’s collar tightly with both hands.

  “She had a GPS tracking device on her collar, but she wasn’t wearing her collar. Okay, so how else can we find her?”

  I turned to Dr. Juniper. “Did you implant a microchip under her fur?”

  “Microchip? Is that like a text message? I don’t do any of that high-tech stuff.”

  “Come on, Ives,” Teddy said. “We’ll find her.”

  I started to follow Teddy, but Dr. Juniper was holding up her hand like a stop sign.

  “Wait,” she said. “You’re forgetting one thing. Lotty has canine leukemia. It’s a terrible disease. I had another dog die from it last week. The family was expecting puppies, and then their beloved dog died without warning. So the chances of Lotty still being alive are not—”

  “I saw Lotty in the park a week ago,” I said. “She looked fine.” I reconsidered. “Well, maybe a little older and slower.”

  “Older and slower,” echoed Dr. Juniper, nodding sadly. “It happens to us all.”

  I didn’t know whether to feel sorry for Dr. Juniper or furious with her for being so careless with Lotty. I didn’t have time to think about it.

  “Let’s go, Teddy,” I said.

  But Teddy was already in the hallway, running toward the elevator. Just like Lotty.

  What I learned from that:

  Great minds think alike.

  SIXTEEN

  Group Project

  As soon as we got out of Dr. Juniper’s office, we started making a plan.

  “We have to go to Forest Park and wait for the girl to come back with Lotty,” Teddy said. “I’ll sleep in the park if I have to. I’ll camp out. I don’t care if it takes weeks. I don’t care if it takes months!”

  “May I?” I said, reaching for his cell phone.

  I tapped in a search request and read from a website.

  “Ninety percent of lost, stray, and unwanted pets in St. Louis end up at one of our four agencies. If your pet is missing, there’s a good chance you’ll find him or her at one of our shelters. Pets that aren’t claimed within thirty days are available for adoption.”

  I looked up from the phone. Teddy was making a hopeless face and rubbing his eyes.

  “No, this is good,” I said. “Lotty was probably adopted by the girl I saw in the park.”

  “But how can we find her? And how do we convince the girl to give Lotty back?”

  “One thing at a time.” I pointed to the phone. “We have to call all four area shelters and describe Lotty. Someone will be able to tell us who adopted her. You take two shelters and I’ll take two shelters.”

  We had to wait until we got back to my house so I could use the landline. Teddy used his cell phone. We read from the same script.

  “Hi, I’m looking for a three-year-old female Irish setter who ran away almost eight weeks ago. She might’ve ended up at your shelter. If she did, can you please give me the name, address, and phone number of the people who adopted her?”

  Five minutes later, all four agencies had told us the same thing: Pet adoptions are private and confidential. No one could confirm or deny if their agency had even sheltered Lotty.

  “We’re never going to find her,” Teddy said.

  He was too miserable and stressed to think clearly, but I knew there had to be a way. We’d been in this situation before.

  “Melvin,” I said.

  “What about Melvin?” Teddy asked.

  “Who knows more about shelters than Melvin?”

  “He knows about homeless shelters for people, not shelters for runaway animals.”

  “People are animals. Or would you rather I called you a vegetable or a mineral?”

  Teddy smiled weakly. He knew I was right.

  I called Mrs. Seifert and explained the situation. “My friend Teddy and I are working on a group project and we need Melvin’s help. Is there any chance we could see him, just for an hour or two? I promise it has nothing to do with the burglaries or the Trojan sofa. And Mrs. Seifert? A dog’s life is at stake.”

  Mrs. Seifert loved dogs. She had pictures of her golden retriever, Argos, on permanent display all over her classroom. I knew if I wanted Mrs. Seifert’s help, I had to play the dog-in-distress card.

  At seven o’clock that night, Mrs. Seifert dropped Melvin off at my house. His hair was still long, but now it was clean and styled. He wore an ironed T-shirt and smelled like Dial soap. Mrs. Seifert didn’t me
ss around.

  “I had my second meeting with the police today,” Melvin said. “But I’m not allowed to say anything more than that.”

  That was fine with Teddy and me. We told him we were working on another case. Melvin listened as Teddy recounted our visit to Dr. Juniper’s office and our unproductive calls to all four local animal shelters.

  “It seems like finding Lotty is harder than finding you,” Teddy said. “The worst part is, I don’t even know if she’s still alive. I wish the universe would give me a sign and let me know she’s okay. Just one sign—and I don’t want it to be a dead-end sign.”

  “A sign,” Melvin repeated. “We could make signs. You know, with markers and poster board? We could glue on pictures of Lotty and add your phone number for people to call or text if they’ve seen her.”

  “That’s an excellent idea!” I said. “We’ll make the signs and post them all over the park.”

  Teddy was up and rummaging through the drawers in my living room. “Ives, do you have any markers? Wait, I have some at home. I’ll go get them. What about poster board? My sister probably has some we can use.”

  “I have some poster boards left over from my Trojan War project.” I looked at Melvin. “I mean our Trojan War project.”

  Melvin laughed. “It was your project. I did my own, remember?”

  We spent the next hour making more than twenty posters. Teddy’s all said the same thing: HAVE YOU SEEN MY DOG? Under the words, he glued a photo of Lotty and wrote his phone number.

  I remembered the Latin phrase Dad had taught me: Primum non nocere. First, do no harm. On my posters, I wrote: Primum non nocere. Pet adoptions are great … unless you’ve adopted a pet who already has a good home. Please do no harm. If you or someone you know has adopted this dog (I glued a picture of Lotty here), contact this number (I wrote Teddy’s number here).

  Melvin’s posters were the simplest. He wrote one word in thick, dark letters across the top of each of his posters: WANTED. Then he added Lotty’s photo and Teddy’s phone number.