1 PAWsible Suspects

by Chloe Kendrick

  “Della, will you be okay here?” I asked. The dog turned at the mention of her name, and her wise, dark eyes looked at me as one who had seen it all. The dark brown orbs were sage and sad at the same time. Scottie eyes often looked this way, and I love to gaze into them. They remind me of things that I would never know.

  I decided to bust the dog out of there, and I cleared my throat. “Della said that she really misses Perry and would like to be with other dogs. She’d like to go home with me, if that’s okay with you?”

  I wasn’t sure if Ida Jenkins believed in my abilities, or if she just wanted Della gone, but her response to the question was to hand me a huge bag of food, bedding, and medications. “Here. Just leave me a number where I can find you. You said that you know Ruby’s friends, right? That should be fine with her.”

  I nodded, thinking that it wasn’t what I’d said, but it was in fact the truth. My mother was friends with Ruby. I noticed my use of the past tense and wondered if I’d done that based on some subconscious thing I’d noticed, or if I just put people I didn’t know in a different tense. I took the bag and the dog and headed out to my car. Della sat on my lap the whole way home.

  Chapter Three

  Between taking care of Della and my other pets and trying to think of why a woman who never left her pets had gone out and not returned, I spent a fruitless evening. Della had little else to tell me. She was well-groomed. Her tags were up-to-date, and she’d had her rabies shot last summer. She had an attractive, if somewhat gaudy collar with a collection of baubles, including a large broach on it that clinked when she walked. Bruno was her best friend in less than ten minutes, and their constant game of chasing each other made it difficult to think. Finally I gave up and went to bed.

  I was still on my second cup of coffee when the doorbell rang. I opened the door cautiously, leaving on the chain. It was the woman police detective from the Jenkins house. She was wearing another pantsuit, but it was navy blue this time. The silver eyes were narrowed, and the flawless skin was puckered up around her frowning mouth. This was not a friendly visit. She meant business.

  “Do you have that dog in here?” she asked without a hello.

  “If by ‘that dog’ you mean Della, then yes, I do. Ida Jenkins asked me to take her until her sister is found.”

  “Oh what? The little Scottie didn’t ask to come home with you?” The sarcasm practically dripped from her voice. It did nothing to diminish my ardor. She still looked attractive, even as she ridiculed my work. It was hard to get too angry, when technically she was right.

  “Actually, she did. She missed Perry and wanted to be with other animals.” I gave her a big smile to see if that would lighten the mood.

  “Did she mention the part where this little stunt could be considered tampering with evidence?” she asked.

  “If this was evidence, why did you let Della go home with Ida Jenkins? Wouldn’t you have kept her in custody? A relative is a much stronger suspect in a crime than a random guy who talks to pets.”

  The woman growled, which made the dogs stop chasing each other long enough to stare at her. They weren’t used to me talking dog, either barking or growling. After a few seconds, they forgot about it and went back to chase.

  “We don’t take animals into custody. It’s not like they can be tried for a crime or held as a material witness. I’d remind you that they can’t talk, but look who I’m talking to.” Her face had grown a bit red, and she had leaned closer to me. “She’s evidence. We found blood on her.”

  “It wasn’t her blood, and she didn’t hurt anyone.”

  “It wasn’t even human blood. It was dog blood. So you might want to talk to Della again and see what she has to say.” The air quotes were back with a vengeance. “It looks like she was wrong because I’m guessing Perry got hurt, not Ruby Jenkins.”

  I chose to ignore what she had said. I wanted the time to process it before Della had anything else to say about the case. “So then what’s the big deal about where Della stays as long as you can get her when you need her?” I shrugged my shoulders. She was just angry and taking it out on me. I’d seen that happen before when I’d tried to help the police with my deductions about animals.

  “Because you keep popping up in this case, and I don’t like it.” Her tone was defensive and frustrated. I probably could have told her something about her own feelings, if I’d tried, but discretion seemed called for in this situation.

  “I’m just helping a –” I started.

  “I ran you through the system. I understand that you don’t have much faith in the police after what happened, but that whole situation was not my fault.”

  If blood really can leave your face, mine did in that moment. I felt entirely violated as if the NSA had actually knocked on my door and asked questions about my life choices. I left the room and didn’t come back. I heard the front door open and close again, but I still sat in the other room, being pissed at what had just happened. She hadn’t taken the dog, because Della came in a few minutes later. As if she could read my mind, she licked my hand and nuzzled it. I absent-mindedly stroked her fur as I thought.

  Back in the day, I’d been part of a happy family. Two parents, three kids, and a houseful of pets. I’d enjoyed my life back then. It had seemed innocent and carefree. However, when I was seven, my older sister had disappeared. One day she was there, and the next she wasn’t. She was 13 at the time that she disappeared. She’d be 36 years old this year.

  The police hadn’t been much help. They suggested that she’d run away. She’d been dating a boy at the time, her first boyfriend. They had talked about running away to elope, the way that new love always does. However, a quick check showed that the boyfriend was still at home and still living with his parents. The police suggested that maybe she’d run off with someone else, as if my sister could have been dating multiple first loves at once.

  I heard that word a lot back then. Maybe. Everyone had an idea about what had happened to Susan. Everyone had a conspiracy theory that they wanted to share with you, regardless of how much you hurt. They just didn’t care. A public police case meant that everyone knew your business, and everyone felt that they deserved a say in the matter.

  As for me, I knew Susan was dead, just as I knew that Perry was hiding out somewhere hurt. It was the obvious solution, and I always go for obvious. It may be painful to face, but it’s easiest in the long run. Susan was a pretty girl, the type who stood out in a crowd. She was talkative and vivacious, and everyone liked to be around her. My guess was that someone had liked to be around her too much and had snatched her away from us. Of course, I couldn’t tell my family what I thought. We didn’t really discuss what had happened to Susan. I’m sure that each of us had a particular theory about what happened that day, but no one ever talked about it.

  After that, the innocent times were gone. My happiness was gone. My dad drank himself into an early grave. My mom began to act much older than her age. My brother moved across the country to escape from the memories. I stayed here, but I undertook my own methods of hiding my thoughts and feelings. I hid me. I tried not to stand out in any way. I wore thrift store clothes. I took care of my house just enough not to have the county threaten to condemn the property. I hid behind sloppy and uncared for, thinking that a low profile would keep me safe. If I didn’t stand out – like Susan had, I wouldn’t be targeted for any crime or any unhappy occurrence.

  The few days after I was on the news for solving that murder were some of the most frightening of my life. I’d broken my mediocrity rule and gone so far out of the way to be noticed that I couldn’t sleep for days. I retreated back into my private world following those events. I established a business of talking to animals, but it was definitely outside of the public eye. It wasn’t until my mother had asked for help that I’d even bothered to work on a criminal case again.

  And here I was now, feeling even more exposed because some overzealous detective had decided to snoop into my life. I took a de
ep breath. Two things were clear. One, I had to solve this case fast so that I could step out of any spotlight headed my way, and two, I wanted to solve this case to show that detective that I wasn’t a fake, even if in reality I was one. Revenge for her indiscretion would make me feel somewhat better.

  That meant that I had to spend a few hours with Della, getting to know her. Bruno had made her feel at home, so I was able to observe more of her personality. Removed from the stress of strangers and loud noises, she was a remarkably calm Scottie girl. Typically, female Scotties are stubborn, but she seemed flexible to her circumstances and fairly friendly. I imagine that Ruby’s constant attention had made her more companionable than some Scotties, who could be extremely aloof.

  I wondered if the person who had taken Ruby knew Della. In watching her at Ida’s house, she’d been timid around strangers or people she didn’t know well. She would not have barked or growled at a stranger; she would have run. Since I’d found her hiding, I went with that assumption.

  I thought about Perry, the other Scottie. He had to be somewhere, and if the police were to be believed, he’d been hurt in whatever had gone down at the house. I watched Della play with Bruno. Only two scenarios came to mind. The first was that Perry had been hurt in whatever had happened at the house and had been taken away to be treated, most likely to a vet or animal hospital. This scenario indicated that Perry was not the main objective of the person who took him. The poor guy had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and someone had taken him to get help afterwards.

  The second is that Perry had been removed because someone wanted this particular dog. I discounted that theory immediately. Della was from the same breeder and only two years younger than her mate. So if the perpetrators had wanted one, why not the other? The pair were remarkably similar, according to my mother, so the only difference I could see was the dog’s gender. Since Della and Perry had never had any litters, my guess was that he’d been fixed. So it wasn’t for their bloodline.

  Since my second scenario seemed very implausible, I decided to go with the vet or animal hospital possibility. I pulled up a list of vets and animal hospitals from Google and started down the list.

  On my tenth try, I struck pay dirt. The vet had a Scottie on the premises that matched my description. A stranger had come in with the dog this morning. He’d given his name as John Smith, paid several hundred in cash to help and board the Scottie. The Scottie had a bad gash on his left hind leg, which might have been a knife or some other sharp object puncturing the skin. I asked if I could stop by and look at the dog.

  The tech told me that identification might be impossible. The dog had come in with no collar, no tags, and no identifying marks. It was a brindle Scottie with no tell-tale markings. I suspected that Ruby had micro-chipped the dogs, and so I was going to pull that suggestion out of my hat once we arrived at the vet.

  The tech described John Smith as tall with dark hair with a sprinkling of gray in it. He’d had a small scar on his left eyebrow and was clean shaven. All in all, not a bad description. I suspected that someone there had made note of his description, in case anything like this came up.

  I loaded up Della into the car again and headed to the vet’s office. I had to drive to Harvard Terrace to get to the vet. Another South Toledo neighborhood, its location made me feel more confident that I’d found the right dog.

  Harvard Terrace had been built almost a century ago, and the neighborhood is filled with gorgeous homes. If doggie chats ever became profitable, I’d love to live there. The area had been designated a historic area, so home prices were steep, and the neighbors would probably not like a new neighbor who worked with, and sometimes against, the police. Even so it was a neighborhood that I aspired to.

  The vet’s office was easy to find, and I pulled into the lot, put a leash on Della, and went inside. The same tech was working the desk, so I didn’t have to repeat my story for her. I only had to ask for the microchip to be read. I told her that the name which should appear for the dog was Ruby Jenkins.

  In less than five minutes for the read and the call to the pet locator service, she was back with positive confirmation. This was indeed Perry.

  I could have told her anyway. When Della saw Perry, she became immediately vocal. She barked, growled and whined at him. Perry was nearly as happy to see her. He peed on the floor, which seems to be a greeting ritual for some dogs. I cleaned up the mess with paper towels while the tech read the chip. Perry didn’t want to be any more than five feet from Della.

  Given that I’d made a firm identification of the dog prior to reading the chip, the tech had little doubt that I was in charge of Perry too. She gave me a list of the dog’s pain pills and antibiotics for the gash along with a schedule for taking them. I had to bum a collar from the vet’s office since Perry didn’t have his own. Since the man who had dropped Perry off had overpaid for the services, they didn’t press for payment from me.

  I was back home in less than an hour, now the possessor of two Scotties. Even so, neither one of them was telling me a thing that I didn’t already know. The blood came from Perry. Someone had taken the dog to the vet after Perry was hurt. Della had been frightened and hidden somewhere so the perpetrator couldn’t reach her. I was sure there was a perpetrator, because Ruby was still missing. I knew only too well that the longer a person is missing, the less likely it is that they’ll be found alive.

  This made me sad, because these happy little dogs would soon be homeless. Ida didn’t seem to want them, and I didn’t know about the rest of the family. I knew a few of the local rescue sites, but the nearest Scottie rescue was in St. Louis, six to seven hours from here. For the moment, I knew they’d be mine, but there was something I had to do first.

  Since I didn’t know the woman in the pant suit’s name, I just dialed the local station and told them that I’d located the second Scottie from the Jenkins disappearance. I explained that a detective and I had talked about the missing dog and that while I didn’t know her name, I was sure that she would want to know about it.

  Then I waited. It sounds dull, but I had three dogs and a cat in the house. So it was anything but uninteresting. The two Scotties had obviously never lived with a cat before and spent the better part of an hour tormenting The Countess until she took affront and climbed to a shelf in the office.

  Sure enough in less than an hour, the detective was there at my door again. This time I wasn’t glad to see her at all. I was still fuming about her stepping over the bounds into my personal life. My only goal was to solve this case to get away from the spotlight again. “Where did you find the dog?” she asked without preamble.

  I went through my spiel about how Della had told me that when she and Perry didn’t feel well, they went to the doggie doctor. Since Della had no idea of the man’s name, I had to call through the phone book until I found the vet who had treated Perry. She rolled her eyes a bit when I told the set-up for the story, but she looked impressed that I’d thought of calling vets. The police certainly hadn’t bothered with it.

  The basic truth that she didn’t want to admit was that some people are animal people and others are not. I was an animal person. Always had been. Pets had been my lifeline when my sister had disappeared. All the days when I didn’t want to see people, I still wanted to see my dog and cat. Even now, there were many days when my pets were better company than the humans around me.

  This police detective didn’t understand that level of devotion. She was thinking of a nice Fido who slept at the end of the bed and got fed twice a day. She thought of the family pet as a pet, not as part of the family.

  As long as that remained her perspective, I was going to have an edge on her in this investigation. Ruby Jenkins would no sooner have left her dogs with the front door open than I would let Bruno play in the street. If the police didn’t understand this mindset, then they’d be likely to think that Ruby was in the same place as my sister.

  “What’s going to become of the dogs?�
� she finally asked me when I was done.

  “I can’t keep them forever, but for now, they’ll stay with me,” I replied, watching the two Scotties eye the woman nervously. They were smart enough to recognize who liked them and who didn’t.

  She just nodded. “That’s fine then. We know where to find them if we have any more questions for them.” She flipped open the case with her badge in it and pulled out a piece of pasteboard. “Here’s my card. Call me if you find out anything else, though I really should remind you that this is an open police investigation, and you are legally bound to stay out of it.”

  I smiled at her. “I wasn’t looking for Ruby. I was looking for Perry. Don’t you see how much more relaxed Della looks with him here? She’s like a new dog.” Indeed, Della had curled up on the sofa, watching me as I spoke. Perry was still off somewhere investigating the house. Bruno was likely leading the tour of the place.

  “That’s a pretty fine distinction between the two. Just keep your distance. But if something happens, you can call me. Anytime.”

  I wasn’t sure how to take that last word. Had there really been something more than professional courtesy when she said that? I stood there, wondering what was going on. It had been a year or so since I’d had a real date, and frankly I was slow on the uptake regarding cues from the opposite sex.

  She smiled. “Yeah, it’s what you think I meant. Geez, maybe you should get your dogs to explain it.”

  “They’ve been neutered and spayed. They’ve missed out on the whole dating rituals thing,” I said flippantly. “They sniff a butt or two, and then they want to go home.”

  She nodded. “Looks like you might have missed out too.”

  She was probably right. I had missed out on some of the dating rituals. My parents had been overly cautious with me after my sister disappeared. Dates with girls whose families we didn’t know was strictly forbidden unless a parent drove. It made for many an awkward evening with girls who didn’t understand the mindset of my parents. Looking back, I wasn’t sure that I did either.