PICKED OFF

by Linda Lovely

  Mollye cleared her throat. “You seem to forget you can do one of the best exercises in bed. I’m sure Andy or Paint would be happy to help.”

  A backseat duet of “Amen” sounded as we rolled to a stop in the line of vehicles waiting to pay for parking. I groaned and handed Mollye the five-dollar bill Andy had entrusted to me a couple blocks back.

  Guess he didn’t want to give Mollye additional reasons to take her hands off the wheel. My friend couldn’t talk without gesturing, and the need to hold a steering wheel failed to inhibit her. When riding shotgun, my policy was to avoid looking at Mollye. I hoped she’d notice I wasn’t paying attention to her gyrations and would return her hands to the wheel. Too bad it didn’t seem to work.

  The air inside the convention center left no doubt we were attending a canine event. The place smelled like wet dog with a strong undercurrent of urine. Hairs—white, black, brown, short, long, microscopic—were so thick they almost colored the air. Though happy I wasn’t allergic, the soupy mix reminded me I’d best breathe through my nose.

  We walked around an outer ring, where dogs not on stage were fussed over by their owners. The doggie sweet talk made me giggle. “Now, sweetums, let Mommy brush your tail…I know baby doll. That Chihuahua was a real meanie.” I figured I’d hear less cooing at a cutest baby competition. Not that I wasn’t occasionally guilty of baby talk with my pup.

  Our mission was to locate George, Andy’s former Jack Russell patient. I figured we’d found our quarry when a cascade of excited yips greeted Andy’s approach. The vet stroked George’s head and introduced us to the owner.

  “We’re on in less than ten minutes,” the owner answered. “Go grab seats. I’m so nervous. I hope the crowd noise doesn’t terrify George.”

  “He’ll be fine,” Andy answered. “Good luck.”

  Stadium seating circled an agility course more than twice the size of a basketball court. Course obstacles ranged from flexible tubes that looked like oversized ducts for dryer lint to hurdles and teeter-totters. The one that puzzled me looked like a lengthy parking rack for bicycles. “What’s that?”

  “Weave poles. The dogs weave in and out,” Andy answered. “Miss an open space and they lose points.”

  “So how does this work?” Paint asked. “Are all agility courses the same?”

  “No,” Andy answered. “Courses have similar obstacles, but the real contest is to see if dogs follow their owners’ hand and voice commands to get around a course they’ve never seen before. Treats or bribes aren’t allowed.”

  “Doesn’t look fair to short dogs,” Mollye observed.

  “They reset the bars for each dog category.”

  The announcer’s voice boomed over the PA system as he introduced the next contestant.

  We cheered as the little Pug and her owner gave it their best shot. Unfortunately, the Pug was halfway through a final weave when she succumbed to an overpowering urge to poop. The audience hee-hawed as the owner’s shoulders slumped. The woman whipped a plastic baggie out of her pocket, scooped up the deposit, and gave the audience a jaunty wave as she exited with her pet.

  Were the owners certifiable? Who had this much time to train a dog? Luckily, I didn’t feel I was depriving Cashew. Hard to set bars low enough for a miniature to clear.

  “Hey, why don’t you train your goats to do this stuff?” Mollye chimed in. “I’ve seen videos on YouTube. They’re even cuter than dogs.”

  “They’re pretty awesome without human coaching. Think I’ll leave them to their own tricks.”

  “Here comes George,” Andy said. “Hope he does well.”

  With one tiny exception—George paused for a second to sniff something—his performance was flawless. Andy gave George a standing ovation. “Pretty good for his first time out.”

  As he sat back down, Andy frowned. “Paint, look in the aisle at the bottom of the bleachers. See that guy who’s scanning the crowd instead of the dogs. Is it Mick?”

  Paint looked. “What the hey? Yeah, it’s Mick. Think he’s looking for me? How would he know I’m here unless he followed Mollye’s van? What does he want?”

  Stadium lights reflected off the bald man’s head. His clothes looked dirty and askew, like he hadn’t quite matched his shirt buttons with the right holes. He looked up, and I recognized him. It was the man who’d come to Udderly yesterday morning, claiming he was looking for a lost business card. So that was Mick.

  I was about to tell my friends about Mick’s visit, when the cell phone in my pocket vibrated. Eva. I had to take the call. My aunt wasn’t a casual caller and she never texted.

  “Hello,” I whispered as I used my hand to muffle the conversation. I hated it when strangers carried on loud conversations that bystanders couldn’t ignore. Downright rude.

  A second later my “What?” screech betrayed my best intentions. My friends’ faces turned toward me like synchronized sunflowers seeking light. They didn’t speak until I ended the call five minutes later.

  “What’s wrong?” Paint asked.

  I swallowed hard. “Carol’s missing. Eva went to the hospital to deliver Zack’s phone. Not a soul beside Zack in his room. Eva questioned the deputy guarding his room and the nurses. They all said the same thing. Carol left the room, saying she needed a fresh dose of caffeine. No one’s seen her since. Eva searched every public area in the hospital.”

  “Maybe a friend dropped by and took her out for some fresh air,” Paint suggested.

  “Doesn’t fly. Carol’s car is gone. Eva called her about one to say she was headed her way. She’s not answering her phone either. Eva’s certain she’d pick up any call, thinking it could be an update on her son’s condition.”

  Mollye frowned. “I’d be freaked if I were Eva. I have an icky feeling. We ought to head back.”

  “Eva asked us to meet her at Carol’s house. She didn’t want to go there alone. Not after being greeted by two goons on her last visit. Sorry about the show, Andy.”

  Andy shrugged. “Not a problem. Eva and Carol take priority.”

  SIXTEEN

  I was so upset by Aunt Eva’s news that our sighting of Mick at the dog show fled my mind until we were speeding toward Ardon in Mollye’s van. I recounted Mick’s furtive visit to Udderly shortly after Zack’s attack.

  “You called the sheriff, right?” Mollye asked. “Phone him again and tell him Mick was the suspicious guy you scared off your property.”

  “Can’t believe he would attack Zack,” Andy said. “But desperate people can do things that are totally out of character.”

  I turned in my seat to look at Paint and Andy. “Could Mick be involved in Carol’s disappearance?”

  Paint shook his head. “Can’t see how if Carol disappeared a couple of hours ago. Mick had to be at the dog show or en route. He can’t be in two places at once, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have an evil twin.”

  Our speculation about Carol’s possible whereabouts turned to other possibilities. None made much sense.

  “Did Eva call the sheriff?” Paint asked.

  “Not yet. She’s reluctant to report Carol missing when she’s only been gone a couple hours. Maybe she just drove off to sit on a park bench. With all these news vultures hanging around, any hint Carol mysteriously disappeared would leak. Eva says her friend would be mortified if people launched a big search when she’d simply unplugged for a bit to scream into a pillow somewhere.”

  “You said Carol’s car was gone?” Andy looked puzzled. “I thought it was still at Udderly. Didn’t she ride to the hospital in the ambulance with Zack?”

  “She did. A friend swung by Udderly, picked up her car, and delivered it to the hospital. It’s nowhere in the parking lot.”

  Mollye turned onto Carol’s street. Instead of stopping at the neat one-story ranch she drove down the block. “Didn’t see Carol’s car or Eva’s truck,” she ex
plained, “just two good-sized goons. Looked like they were coming from Carol’s backyard.”

  “Couldn’t miss them,” I agreed.

  Though scraggly azalea bushes added a bit of greenery to the front entry, the evergreens weren’t large enough to provide two hulking males cover as they skulked from the rear of the house. The taller man could have won a Paul Bunyan look-alike contest with his thick black beard and tree-trunk arms. Thank heaven he wasn’t carrying an axe. His blond, clean-shaven sidekick was only slightly smaller. I was glad we had them seriously outnumbered.

  “Let’s wait till those dudes leave or Eva arrives,” I suggested. “We don’t have a house key, and they don’t look like big conversationalists.”

  I’d barely finished that sentence when Eva’s truck appeared in the van’s side mirror. Though we were half a block away, I figured Eva had spotted us, too. Mollye’s Starry Skies van was next-to-impossible to miss.

  Eva parked, but remained in her truck cab as the four of us exited the van and moseyed toward Carol’s house. When the burly dudes spotted us, they moved to block the front stoop. Guess they figured there was no point in hiding.

  Eva jumped down from her truck and nodded at us. “Glad to see you. Let’s go inside, shall we?”

  The two men maintained their front stoop blockade.

  “What are you doing back here?” Black Beard asked Eva.

  “Think I should be asking you the same, sonny. Like I told you the first time, I don’t see how my business is any of your business.”

  Having two muscular fellas in tow seemed to give my aunt extra moxie. Not that she needed a lot of added bravado.

  “Who’s with you?” the blond bubba asked Eva. My aunt’s message hadn’t sunk in: she wasn’t answering questions.

  When Eva started up the stairs, Black Beard lunged forward, going for her arm.

  Paint wrapped his own mitt around the guard dog’s wrist. “Let her go.”

  Meanwhile, Andy stepped in front of blondie, and Mollye whipped out her phone. “In one minute, I’m calling my boyfriend. Did I mention he’s a sheriff’s deputy, and he’s on duty? Get lost.”

  Whether it was Mollye’s threat or the prospect of duking it out with two strapping young men, the self-proclaimed Aces’ security contingent backed off. In fact, before we opened Carol’s front door, they’d hustled to a dark sedan parked two houses down. One had a cell phone pressed to his ear as he slid into the passenger seat. Were they really on the Sin City Aces’ payroll? Were they asking Sala’s permission to make us disappear?

  Like Dad, I read a lot of mysteries.

  Eva inserted her key and unlocked the door. Though I was still on the porch as she stepped inside, I had no problem hearing her gasp. The four of us practically trampled Eva as we stampeded inside to see what prompted her reaction.

  I gasped, too. Andy had the presence of mind to close the front door and lock it behind us in case the men outside changed tactics. My guess was they didn’t need to venture inside to know exactly what the interior of Carol’s house looked like.

  Chairs toppled. Cushions and pillows gutted; their fluffy innards creating snow-white drifts on the green carpet. Living room bookshelves emptied. Books, spines broken, pages torn, strewn across the floor in no discernible pattern.

  It looked like someone had set a giant blender on puree.

  Mollye sucked in a breath, most likely to steady her nerves. “Think those two thugs outside did this?”

  “Well, it didn’t look like this yesterday. Those hooligans would be my top B&E candidates,” Eva answered.

  Shocked by the ruins, she’d dropped her purse on the floor. She stepped right over it and strode to the center of the room.

  Paint carefully zigzagged through the debris to reach a front window. He pulled apart the slats in the window blinds to check the whereabouts of our suspected villains.

  “They’re gone,” he announced. “Whoever they phoned must have told them to book it before we learned what they’d been up to and called 911.”

  “That is our next call, isn’t it, Eva?” Andy asked.

  My aunt didn’t answer. She marched down the hallway that connected all the rooms in the house. Front room, dining room, and kitchen to the left, bedrooms and baths to the right. All were in shambles though the smallest, guest bedroom had been hit the worst. Zack’s suitcase sat empty; its silk lining ripped to shreds. His clothes were strewn across a dismembered mattress.

  Eva collapsed on the edge of the shredded catawampus bedding.

  “You didn’t answer Andy’s question,” I said. “Shouldn’t we get the sheriff?”

  Aunt Eva looked up. “Have to, though I feel queasy about making decisions for Carol. But she’s missing, so yes, I’ll call Sheriff Mason.”

  “Will you give him Zack’s phone?” I asked. “That may be what the maniacs who did this were trying to find.”

  Eva shook her head. “No. Carol told me she wouldn’t hand Zack’s phone over to anyone until she was certain it couldn’t embarrass her son.”

  My aunt stared at the four of us huddled near the bedroom doorway and locked eyes with each of us in turn. “No mention of the phone, okay? Not just yet. Not until we find Carol.”

  Andy cleared his throat. “But the phone might hold some clue about what’s happening. Maybe we should unlock it, look at any messages. If there’s nothing embarrassing, we hand it over to Mason for his investigation.”

  Mollye harrumphed and swept her arms wide to encompass the bedroom maelstrom. “Who’d tear things up like this searching for a phone if it didn’t hold some juicy secrets?”

  Paint nodded. “Agreed. That’s if they really were after the phone. We don’t know that. Still we owe it to Zack and Carol to find out if that cell offers any clues.”

  Eva looked about. “Where’s my handbag? My phone’s in it. Oh, the heck with it, one of you give me a cell. You all have ’em practically Velcroed to your tushes.”

  I tried to hand Eva my cell, which indeed had been nestled in my back pocket and was still warm from my rump. She waved me off.

  “Dial the dang number for the sheriff before you give that hunk-a-junk to me. You know how I hate those touch screens. I’d end up calling Keokuk or Timbuktu.”

  Once I heard the first ring, I handed the phone to my aunt.

  Eva identified herself and asked to speak to Sheriff Mason. We all listened as she dispassionately described the mess we’d found. She also told Mason about Carol’s troubling disappearance and her own encounters with muscle bound creeps. She failed to mention she entered Carol’s abode with four sidekicks.

  When the conversation ended, she tossed the phone to me. “You disconnect. I can never figure out which dang button to push.”

  “So what now?” Mollye asked.

  “The sheriff’s on his way, so all of you get going.” Eva made a shooing motion. “No reason to mention you were here. Doesn’t help a bit in finding who ransacked the place. Go, and take Zack’s phone with you. It’s still in my purse.”

  Eva sprang off the mattress, hustled back to the littered living room, and picked her purse off the floor. She unzipped the main compartment, stirred the contents with her hand, and plucked Zack’s phone out like it was a Crackerjack prize.

  She tossed the iPhone to me. “Now vamoose. All of you.”

  It felt as if Eva threw me a hunk of ice. The plastic and metal of Zack’s phone radiated cold. A shiver ran up my spine.

  Did I really want to know what secrets it held?

  SEVENTEEN

  We piled into Mollye’s van and she burned rubber as we zoomed off. I looked in the rearview mirror, scanning the street for any sign of the thugs’ dark sedan. I hated leaving Eva alone, not knowing if they were lurking about.

  Mollye took one hand off the wheel to reach over and pat my arm. “Don’t worry. The sheriff will be the
re in minutes. No time for the bad guys to accost Eva.”

  While I didn’t believe my friend could tell fortunes, she had an uncanny talent for picking up on other people’s emotions in the here and now.

  “So where are we going?” Andy asked.

  “How about Udderly?” I suggested. “That’s where Eva will head as soon as she finishes with the sheriff. I don’t think she’ll go back to the hospital unless Carol turns up.”

  I swiveled to speak to the men in the backseat. “You two have someplace else you need to be this afternoon or evening?”

  “Not me,” Paint said. “No Sunday liquor sales in Ardon County so Magic Moonshine is closed, and Lunar’s fenced in the back with plenty of food and water.”

  “Same for me,” Andy replied. “I’d planned to be gone all day. My baby sister, Julie, is animal-sitting the clinic. We only have two in-house patients right now—a parakeet recuperating from a plastic curtain eating binge and a hamster that broke a leg careening off his wheel. Julie will call if there’s an emergency.”

  “Might be a good idea to get our trucks though,” Paint added. “Mollye picked us up in the Bi-Lo parking lot. Let’s stop so we all have wheels if something comes up. We’ll follow you back to Udderly.”

  “Need any groceries?” Andy asked.

  “No, I have enough leftovers from our luncheon to feed everyone.”

  “Yeah, but are there chicken breasts?” Mollye scoffed. “You promised me all the fried chicken I could eat if I found Zack’s phone. In my book that means crispy, crunchy chicken breasts.”

  I saw no point quibbling over the fact that I found Zack’s phone while she stood nearby. After all, she’d driven us to Greenville, and we’d survived her hands-free chauffeuring. I bought a bucket of fried chicken, mostly breasts, at the store’s deli counter and dodged out of Mollye’s reach when she lunged for the hot, greasy takeout box. “No snacking en route. Keep your hands on the wheel.”