by V. M. Burns
When I hung up, I was still miffed about the disagreement with the sour-faced grouch. In fact, whenever I thought about the altercation, it made my heart race and my muscles tense. It took several minutes, quite a number of deep breaths, and a spirited internal conversation that included quite a few witty responses I wished I’d had the quick wit to have delivered at the time, but eventually, I calmed down. When I finally looked up, I had walked quite a distance. I took a deep breath and shook myself like an Etch A Sketch to erase the bad memories of the altercation from my mind. It was a lovely evening, and I wanted to focus on enjoying it. I slowed down my gait and forced myself to concentrate on the beauty around me.
There was a path that provided a number of great spots for Aggie to sniff and leave her scent. Ultimately, the path led to a small wooded area that was yet to be developed. Aggie tugged at her leash, anxious to explore, but I wasn’t as keen on leaving the beaten path as she was. Even though she was only six pounds, she could be a determined force when she chose, and today was one of those days. She tugged and pulled, but I held firm. Initially, I tried to coax her by making the kissing sound Dixie suggested. When that didn’t work, I tried my forceful mommy voice. It had always worked with my children, David and Stephanie, but Aggie didn’t budge. In fact, she planted her feet, and I had to drag her. Eventually, I scooped her up and carried her home.
Once we were inside, I let her go and glowered at her. Aggie’s response was to walk to the wool rug in the living room, squat, and pee.
I stared openmouthed for several seconds. “Kennel!” I said through gritted teeth.
She stared at me for ten seconds, but when I took a step toward her, she ran into her crate.
I closed the door, none too gently, and locked it. I then proceeded to clean the rug and make sure nothing had leaked underneath to damage the floors. The good thing about wool was that it was super absorbent. The bad thing about wool was that it was super absorbent and expensive to clean. However, I located the handheld spot lifter Dixie had encouraged me to buy. It worked like a small carpet cleaner and sucked up the liquid and steam-cleaned the small area of the rug. By the time I’d finished, I looked over at Aggie as she lay in her crate with her head resting on her paws, and my anger subsided. She was so cute it was hard for me to stay angry at her for long. I suspected, as Dixie told me, that she was playing me like a fiddle, but then it wasn’t the first time I’d been played. In fact, my husband had been a fiddle master when it came to playing people, especially me. I sighed and let her out of the crate. She snuggled up next to me, laid her head on my leg, and then looked at me with big brown sad eyes.
I looked at her and sighed. “You are going to obedience class, and you’re going to learn to be a good girl. Aren’t you?”
Aggie released a sigh.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” I scratched her ear.
I don’t know how long I slept, but I was awakened when Aggie used my body as a walkway, traveled from my leg to my chest, and then used my chest as a diving board. She stood at the door growling.
“What’s going—”
There was a loud crash, and the motion detector lights went on. Aggie used her tough-dog bark and lunged at the door. The light went on in the living room, and I knew Stephanie was up. I rushed out of bed and hurried to the living room. As soon as the door opened, Aggie shot through and charged for the back door.
“What do you think it is?” Stephanie was dressed in yoga pants and a T-shirt.
I shrugged. “No idea. It could be a skunk or opossum,” I said hopefully. “Dixie warned me there are a lot of them down here.”
We heard a bark and then a loud yelp. Stephanie and I looked at each other. There was an animal in trouble. Stephanie headed for the back door.
“Wait.” I stopped long enough to grab a weapon, just in case the animal wasn’t the friendly sort. Unfortunately, the first thing at hand was a large spatula. I grabbed it and hurried outside.
Stephanie and Aggie were at the bottom of the deck. “Mom, can you get Aggie?”
I hurried down the stairs. “What is it?”
“It’s a dog.”
I picked up Aggie, whose bark had gone from Defcon 1, There’s a stranger, and I’m going to rip his face off, to Defcon 4, There’s another dog on my turf. She might be only six pounds, but she could intimidate when she wanted to, and apparently, this was one of those times.
Stephanie lay down on her belly and reached under the deck, all the time talking quietly.
“Be careful.”
There was a yelp.
“Mom, he’s hurt. Get a blanket.”
I hurried upstairs with Aggie in tow and found a blanket in the linen closet. I left Aggie in her crate and hurried back downstairs. The dog might be injured, but I knew that might make him even more dangerous. However, when I got back, Stephanie had coaxed the dog out and had him cradled in her arms.
We wrapped him in the blanket and hurried inside.
Inside, we could see it was a bedraggled golden retriever. I held Aggie’s water dish to his mouth, and he drank as if he’d just spent the last week in the desert.
“We’ve got to get him to the vet.” Stephanie headed for the garage.
I grabbed my car keys and followed her out, stopping to put on shoes and grab jackets for both of us.
One of the selling points of this area was that there were a lot of businesses nearby. Dixie had pointed out an emergency vet near the mall, and I headed in that direction.
The emergency vet was indeed open, and Stephanie carried the dog in while I parked the car. Once inside, Stephanie was immediately directed to an examination room. Memories of a similar incident when Aggie was hurt flooded my mind, but I pushed those thoughts aside and focused on the task at hand and the millions of questions the staff were throwing at us.
“We don’t know anything about him. We just found him hiding under our deck,” I said. “He’s limping and holding his paw, and we thought maybe he was hit by a car.”
The dog looked frightened, but Stephanie stroked him and whispered soft words of comforting nonsense, which he seemed to appreciate.
The vet was a large, burly man with kind eyes and a deep voice. He was gentle but thorough. There were two assistants, one with curly brown hair, named Dale, and a slightly older woman, named Tonya. Both were friendly and efficient.
They took our new friend to the back for X-rays while Stephanie and I waited in the exam room. Stephanie paced.
“What a way to welcome you to Chattanooga,” I said.
Stephanie shook her head. “This isn’t your fault.”
“No, but I won’t be able to stay. I’ve got to go to work tomorrow.”
“No worries. Just leave me here. I’ll call Aunt Dixie to pick me up when they finish, or I’ll call a taxi.”
“I hate to leave you here alone, in a strange city in the middle of the night.”
She stared at me. “Mom, I’m twenty-five, not seven.” She smiled. “Plus, you live in the suburbs, which is nothing compared to Chicago.” She hugged me. “Besides, Joe has taught me so many self-defense moves that I’d actually like a chance to try them out.”
The look on my face must have been hilarious based on the way she laughed. When she pulled herself together, she said, “Trust me. I’ll be fine.”
“I wanted to spend time with you. I shouldn’t have taken this job. Maybe I should call and—”
“Oh no you don’t. You’ve been talking about finding a job and starting over and finding your happy place for months. Go! I’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure?” I stared at my daughter.
She had always been a defender of the poor and downtrodden. She had a compassionate heart, but she seemed to have bonded with this dog, and I was afraid of what the X-rays would show. If he had been hit by a car, he might have internal bleeding, which wouldn’t bod
e well.
“Mom, I held him in my arms, and he looked at me with those big trusting brown eyes and...something inside of me melted.” She stopped pacing and looked at me. Tears streamed down her face. “I can’t let him down.”
I stood and hugged her, and we cried together until we were interrupted by the assistant, Tonya, and the vet.
“Well, it isn’t as bad as we thought.” Our burly vet marched into the room with X-rays; he pushed them into a square device on the wall and flipped a switch, which illuminated the box.
Stephanie and I crowded closer and Tonya gave Stephanie’s hand a reassuring squeeze.
“Thankfully, it doesn’t look like there’s any internal hemorrhaging. He has a badly sprained front right leg, but here’s the curious thing.” He quickly whipped out the X-ray and inserted another one in its place. “It looks like he’s swallowed something.” He pointed to an oddly shaped item on the X-ray. “That needs to come out. We’ll need to operate.” He turned and looked at Stephanie and then to me. “I know he’s not your dog, and there’s no microchip or tattoo, so we don’t know who he belongs to. The cost of the surgery will be—”
“I don’t care what it costs. I’ll pay.” Stephanie walked over to the chair where I’d left her jacket and pulled a credit card from her pocket and handed it to Tonya.
The vet smiled. “I better get scrubbed, and we’ll take care of him.” He patted Stephanie on the shoulder. “Don’t worry.”
The surgery was brief, and just as I was preparing to leave, the veterinarian returned.
He smiled. “Everything went well, and he’s recovering nicely. You’ll be able to take him home in a few hours.”
Stephanie released a heavy sigh, which had apparently held back a flood of tears. She was so emotional she was shaking. She stood and hugged the doctor and then excused herself as she hurried to the restroom.
Dr. Hamilton smiled. “I usually don’t have that effect on women.” He held up a small plastic bag.
Puzzled, I took the bag and held it up to the light. It contained a few small items not bigger than a quarter and a large piece of cloth. I stared for several minutes. “Is that a sock?”
He nodded. “You’re going to need to watch him. He apparently likes to eat fabric. We call it pica behavior. It’s a compulsive disorder that affects a lot of canines, some felines, and is also found in humans.”
Dr. Hamilton went on to explain pica behavior and its causes, but I wasn’t particularly interested and zoned out for most of it. Although he had attempted to clean the objects, there was a film and red stains, which I didn’t particularly want to think about. In fact, looking at the objects in that bag turned my stomach and made me feel queasy. I glanced at my watch and realized I needed to hustle to be able to make it to work on time in the morning. So I shoved the bag into my purse. Maybe I’d take a closer look inside the bag later, or maybe I’d just chuck it into the trash. After all, nothing in the bag belonged to me, and I doubted if anyone would want those things back, especially the sock.
“Thank you so much.” I shook hands with the vet and hurried back home to get whatever sleep I could before starting my new job in the morning.
Chapter 2
Between the anxious excitement associated with finding the dog and the nervous excitement of the new job, I couldn’t sleep. At five, I gave up trying. I got dressed and made sure everything was ready, or as ready as a woman who hadn’t worked outside the home in well over twenty years could be. I tried not to dwell on my age. Instead, I focused on making sure the address was programmed correctly in my cell phone and on the GPS in my car as well as the map on my laptop. All devices aligned. I didn’t want to get delayed by the notorious traffic on the interstate, so I gave myself close to two hours lead time. Aggie wasn’t crazy about being left behind. She really wasn’t happy about having to stay in the crate while I was gone. However, I wasn’t ready to take chances in the new rental. Stephanie would let her out and make sure she didn’t starve. In the meantime, it was the crate. I hardened my heart to her sad eyes and turned and marched out. Stephanie’s friend/boyfriend Joe Harrison was coming in later today. Before Dixie had left the previous day, we arranged that Dixie would pick up Stephanie and drop her at the airport to meet Joe. He was going to rent a car so he and Stephanie would be able to get around and sightsee without Dixie or me as chauffeur.
On my way out of the subdivision, I noted that the sign outside the community building included a notice of an association meeting that night. I made a mental note to attend as I headed my vehicle toward the downtown area. The morning traffic was light, and I made the trip to the museum with over an hour to spare. The museum was located on a bluff that overlooked the Tennessee River in downtown Chattanooga near the Walnut Street Bridge. I parked in the lot adjacent to the museum. The area was known as the Bluff View Art District. In addition to the Chattanooga Museum of Art, there were several smaller museums inside converted houses. There was a small coffee shop a half block away. I decided I would look less pathetic if I hung out there rather than standing in front of the museum, waiting for it to open. Besides, Da Vinci’s was a European-style café, with a wide assortment of coffees, artisan breads, and handmade pastries.
Dixie had taken me here during one of our sightseeing trips around town, and the café had been packed. Today it was busy too, but I managed to snag a small bistro table near the window and enjoyed a rich coffee with a buttery, flaky croissant. I savored the moment and enjoyed watching the variety of people who patronized the bakery. Men and women, young and old, all seemed to find something to like at Da Vinci’s.
At twenty minutes to nine, I headed to the museum. The time at the café had settled my nerves enough that, by the time I walked into the front of the museum and asked to see the executive director, as instructed, I was fairly calm, and my voice barely shook.
“May I help you?”
I turned around. “Are you the executive director?” I tried to adjust my face not to register surprise at the boy who stared back at me.
“Good Lord, no.” He rolled his eyes and smiled big. “I’m Jacob Flemings.” He extended a hand. “Linda Kay Weyman is the executive director. She runs this ship. I’m first mate.” He saluted and smiled.
He said Linda Kay as though it was one word. I wondered if her name was really Linda Kay or if her first name was Linda and her middle name Kay. Quite a few people in the South used both their first and middle names, far more than I’d encountered living in Indiana. Another common practice seemed to be people going by their middle name more than their first name. I decided to call her Mrs. Weyman to be safe. I smiled and shook the hand he extended. “I’m Lilly Echosby. Tatum Temp Services sent me. I’m the CPA.”
“Linda Kay told me you were coming. She’s running late this morning. Her kickboxing class went over. She’ll be here shortly, but she asked me to show you around and help you get settled, and then she should be in.”
“Great.” I smiled and followed him beyond a door marked Employees Only. There was an area with mauve panels and cubicles. We passed by and headed to the back to an elevator.
Jacob pushed the button, and the doors immediately opened. He stepped aside for me to precede him and then got in. He punched the button for the top floor, and we waited while the elevator ascended.
I took a moment to assess my young guide. Jacob looked to be in his early twenties. He was thin but fastidiously dressed in skinny jeans, a crisp white shirt, and a sweater you could tell was cashmere, even if you didn’t see the designer emblem. He had long, dark curly hair pulled back into a ponytail and dark eyes. He wore bright red rectangular glasses that made him look cultured and artistic.
On the top floor, the doors opened. Again, he waited while I exited before leaving and then directed me toward a wall with offices.
“This is my desk.” He pointed toward a large desk positioned outside a door with a plate indicating
the executive director’s office lay behind. We stopped at the next office. Jacob took out a key ring and unlocked the door. He waited until I entered and then followed me inside and handed me a ring with three keys.
“This is my office?” I looked around at the massive room.
Jacob nodded. “It is for the time being, anyway, until we hire a permanent accountant.” He looked around. “There’s a coatrack behind the door.” He closed the door so I could see. “One of those keys unlocks your office door. The other unlocks your desk, and the third is for the file room down the hall.”
“File room?”
He looked puzzled. “Yes, it’s where we keep the files.” He had a frightened expression, as though to say, What planet did you come from?
I hurried to explain. “I’m sorry. I know I must sound like a complete idiot parroting everything you say. It’s just a bit surprising to find that companies still have file rooms in this day and age.”
He nodded. “I understand completely. Unfortunately, the objets d’art aren’t the only relics in the museum. While most of the modern world is careening into the digital age of the twenty-first century, the Museum of Art is crawling into the twentieth century.”
I smiled.
“Why don’t you take a few minutes to get familiar with your office, and then whenever you’re ready, just step outside, and I’ll give you the grand tour.”
I thanked him and stood staring at the massive office for close to a minute after Jacob left.
The office was larger than the hotel room I had just moved out of. It had a wall of windows that overlooked the Tennessee River and let a lot of light into the room. I flopped down in the chair and swiveled around so I could stare out at the magnificent view. “I don’t see how you can ever get tired of that,” I said aloud and enjoyed it for a few additional minutes. “But I’m here to do a job, and I’d better get to it.” I put my purse in the desk drawer. I decided it might be a good idea to get my bearings before the executive director arrived, so I went outside and got Jacob, and we started our tour.
