The Money Bird (An Animals in Focus Mystery)

by Boneham, Sheila Webster

  “Whatcha doing, Leo mio?”

  He hopped into my lap, sprawled across my torso, and pushed the top of his head into my chin. The rumble that rolled out of his little body sounded like a motorcycle trying to rev up.

  “I have things to do, Mr. Cat.”

  He squinted at me as if to say, “What’s more important than this?”

  I scooped him around and cradled him, and he snuggled against me, then reached with one paw and laid it, soft and warm, against my cheek. He was right. Everything else could wait a while. Or at least until the phone rang. I might have let it go to voice mail, but Leo scrambled out of my lap at the sound, so I went ahead and answered.

  “Do you want to go to Michigan the end of the week?” It was Tom.

  “Is this a rhetorical question?”

  “Puppy search question.” I swear I could hear the grin in his voice. “I talked to a breeder near Ann Arbor. She says she has the perfect obedience prospect, eight weeks old.”

  I couldn’t think of a single reason not to tag along to see eight-week-old puppies.

  “I wasn’t really planning to get a puppy quite yet, but if this little bitch is as nice as she says …” The excitement in his voice made me want to run right over and hug him. “We can take the dogs with us. She said she has shade we can park in and we can open the van …”

  “You don’t have to convince me, Tom,” I said, laughing. “I’m in.” I thought of my plans to visit Treasures on Earth. You mean snoop around, whispered the prissy little voice in my head. “Not tomorrow. I have something I need to do.”

  “No, too much going on this week, and Dr. Crane is coming in. I’m thinking Friday.”

  That settled, I told him about the thumb drive and the photos.

  “You called Jo, didn’t you?” Tom’s question irritated me even though I knew he was just looking out for me, and I didn’t answer right away. “Janet?”

  “Yes, Dad.”

  “Aw, come on. That’s not fair.” Now he was the one who sounded irritated.

  For some reason, my eyes filled up with tears and my nose started to run. I decided to blame it on hormones and took a deep breath in hopes of a counterbalance. “Sorry.”

  Silence on the other end.

  “I called her. Left a message.” Then I told him about the bouquet she had sent, and her note. “I wonder if she’s getting a puppy, too?” If she was, I wondered when she would ever have time for it. Not that I’m the boss of other people’s relationships with their pets.

  “See you tonight?” Tom asked.

  “Ha!” I couldn’t remember the last time I had missed Monday night obedience practice at Dog Dayz. Then I asked, “Hey, what color is she?”

  A non-dog person might have wondered what I was talking about, given the nonlinear direction of the conversation, but Tom didn’t hesitate. “Yellow.” I knew it was said with a smile, and, picturing a baby yellow Labrador Retriever in my mind made me smile, too.

  Jay woke up restored. Bouncing off the walls, really, so I took him out back for a game of “tennis ball that way, frisbee this way” in hopes of taking the edge off before Dog Dayz training. Goldie waved at me from her kitchen window, so when Jay’s tongue seemed to hang reasonably far out of his mouth, I refreshed his water bowl and walked through the two gates, mine and hers, and up the steps to Goldie’s back door.

  “Come in, come in! Just making iced tea,” she called. “Want some?”

  “What’s in it?” Goldie’s summer teas nearly always feature fresh herbs from her garden, and love Goldie though I do, some of her concoctions don’t appeal to me.

  “Green tea, fresh spearmint, and johnny jump ups.” She plopped ice cubes into two jelly jars and, when I nodded at her, poured the tea.

  We carried our glasses out to her covered porch and I told her the summary version of what was going on. She peered over her glasses at me. “You’re at it again?”

  “I’m not at anything.” I tried to out-stare her but knew right away that it wouldn’t work. “Okay, yes, I want to find out what happened to Anderson and what the heck is going on out there at Treasures on Earth. And I don’t like being threatened by creepy guys.”

  “You don’t know that he’s connected to Moneypenny’s place,” she said.

  I hadn’t mentioned the photos Anderson had taken of the man and the dead bird. For a moment I debated whether I should, because I knew that any mistreatment of animals would light a fire under Goldie, and she was no stranger to taking a stand on issues. In the end I told her about the photos of the man, but left the bird out of my story.

  When I had finished, Goldie took a long drink, set her glass on the table, and said, “You’re not telling me the whole story. That’s okay. I’m sure you have your reasons.” In anyone else, I would take such words as pure peevishness, but that’s not what I heard, and when I looked at Goldie and saw the love in her eyes, in the soft lines of her cheeks, something almost tangible drained out of me. I thought back to my conversation with Tom and my hurt feelings when I learned that Goldie had lied when she said she wasn’t ill. What was it he had said? That I wouldn’t need to know she was sick to be there for her, because I was always there for her.

  Fear. That’s what left me in that moment. I had been terrified and hadn’t even known it.

  thirty-six

  Dinner was an English muffin with cream cheese and grape jelly, which I calculated to cover my grains, my dairy, and my fruit. All my dishes were in the dishwasher but I’d forgotten to turn it on, so I ripped off a stretch of paper towels and made that my plate. I grabbed a bottle of diet root beer and plunked myself down on the couch to watch the six o’ clock news, which was the usual uplifting mess. When the national news finished, I went to brush my teeth, and sat back down to put my running shoes on just as the local news got rolling. I stopped mid-tie of my right lace and stared at the screen.

  The reporter was talking about Anderson’s death; the backdrop was Twisted Lake and a bunch of wet dogs and their mucky owners. The reporter led her cameraman toward the shore and asked one of the dog owners to explain what they were doing. Tom. And behind him, hanging back from the group, was the creepy man whose face was becoming much more familiar than I wanted it to. He was looking toward the camera, at Tom, it seemed to me. Don’t give your name, I thought, just as the reporter asked, “What’s your name?” Of course he answered. He explained that it was an informal meeting of the Northern Indiana Hunting Retriever Club, and the camera panned toward the water and zoomed in on one of the Flat-coated Retrievers bringing back a bright orange bumper.

  Jay was hopping around in front of me. I swear he checks the calendar for dog-training nights. “Yeah, yeah. Let’s go.” As I loaded him into his crate in the back of the van, I said, “I really wish he hadn’t told them his name.” Jay replied brrffff. “I don’t know. Just makes me nervous.”

  Tom wasn’t there yet, but I spotted Giselle and Precious as soon as I walked into Dog Dayz. I still couldn’t get over how great Giselle looked. Made me wonder if I might be able to wangle a photo assignment at the fat camp she went to, but I dropped the idea in about three seconds. I would never go away for a month without Jay and Leo. Even a week was a stretch, although I did that occasionally. I started toward Giselle, but a voice calling my name changed my course.

  “Sylvia!”

  “Hi, Janet. Long time!” Sylvia Eckhorn pushed a blonde curl out of her eyes and gave me a quick hug. We both executed body blocks to keep our dogs apart while we greeted each other, then let Jay and Tippy, Sylvia’s lovely multi-titled champion Cocker Spaniel, say hello. They’ve played together many times, so we were careful to keep the greetings subdued so they didn’t rile up any less mannerly dogs—or owners—with their antics.

  “Mama!”

  “Mama Mama.”

  Two little voices piped up from behind Sylvia. Meg and Liz, Sylvia’s twin daughters. They were playing on a quilted comforter spread out and anchored under an exercise pen, the dog-person’s
equivalent of an old-fashioned play pen.

  “Wow, Syl, they’re getting big!” I had Jay lie down and took a step closer to the twins. “Hi, girls.” Meggie giggled and said, “Ha.” Lizzie blew a raspberry and threw a teddy bear in my direction.

  “Yeah, they are. Fourteen months almost, if you can believe that. Lizzie is walking, running almost, all over the place. Meg’s happy to crawl.” She sighed. “Guess I should be glad for an extra week or two with just one on her feet!”

  There was a time when I desperately wanted kids, but now I was exhausted just thinking about keeping up with these two. I said, “They’ll be showing in Pee Wee Handlers pretty soon.”

  “What’s that?” Sylvia had the full attention of Jay and Tippy and a few other dogs nearby as she filled the treat pouch she wore around her waist.

  “Oh, right, I always forget that’s pretty much an Australian Shepherd Club thing. It’s a handling class for kids under five. Mostly with really kind dogs that take charge of their peewee handlers.” Also the cutest, funniest classes I’ve ever had the pleasure to photograph.

  “How fun! But we don’t have an Aussie, so …” She looked genuinely disappointed.

  “The dog doesn’t have to be an Aussie.” I told her a bit more about that and promised to get her information on Pee Wee classes when the girls were ready.

  “So how’s your mom, Janet?” Sylvia was a nurse and had helped deal with my mom when we checked her into Shadetree Retirement Home. It was no longer safe for her to live without supervision and care, but that didn’t mean she wanted to leave her home.

  “Off and on.” I told her the latest, and then she shifted to a direction I didn’t expect.

  “I saw Tom on the news tonight.” Sylvia suddenly looked very serious. “He isn’t hooked up with that Treasures on Earth bunch, is he? Because if he is …”

  “Heavens, no! Why would you think that?”

  “Oh, thank goodness.” Sylvia’s face relaxed slightly. “It’s just that I saw, well, oh, never mind.”

  “Oh no no no, Syl,” I said. “You can’t get away with that. Why did you think he was?”

  “There was someone in there, in the news clip. He seemed to be with Tom, but maybe he was just interested in the reporter and camera.” She pushed her treat pouch around to the small of her back so Tippy wouldn’t be staring at it during training. “I just, well, I kind of know him. Not a … Never mind.”

  “I know who you mean, Syl. The creepy guy in the background.” I told her about my encounter with him, but stopped short of mentioning the photos.

  “Be really careful, Janet,” she said. Her bright blue eyes were open wide and a little wrinkle drew a line just above her eyebrows.

  “What do you mean?” I laughed when I said it, but felt a chill set in at the base of my spine.

  She shook her head, checked that the twins were okay, and gathered the leash’s slack in her hand. “Just be really careful.” Then she and Tippy joined the group already heeling around the ring and I was left staring at the moppets. Lizzie was sprawled on the comforter, sound asleep. Meggie was trying to feed a plastic ball to her teddy bear. And I was wondering what in the world Sylvia was talking about. More to the point, who was that guy and what was he up to?

  Jay was getting antsy so I pulled myself back into dog training mode and we stepped into the heeling mob just as Marietta Santini, Dog Dayz owner and drill sergeant, called, “FAST!” I couldn’t have chosen a more effective way to clear my thoughts and focus on the task at hand. More than one bruise in my past bore witness to the need to pay attention when running with a dog on a leash and twenty other dogs and people doing the same in a confined space. Jay was delighted with the chance to move a little faster, even if it only lasted a few seconds.

  Tom and Drake showed up just as Marietta called out “Normal!” to bring us all back to a brisk walk. He set his training bag down, changed Drake out of his every-day collar to his training collar, a lovely tooled black leather job with no tags to get in the way. Tom draped his leash over his neck, told Drake to heel, and stepped into the ring behind Judy Herschel and her well-behaved Boxer, Corey, and in front of Elmer Bruebaker and his not-well-behaved Lab, Beeswax.

  It’s not the dog’s fault. Elmer rewards her for every behavior. Bark bark bark, says Beeswax, and Elmer strokes her head, tells her she’s a good girl, and shoves a treat in her mouth. Pull pull pull, Beeswax drags Elmer across the room to jump all over someone else’s unamused dog, and Elmer says, “She just wants to say hello,” strokes her head, and pops another treat in her mouth. She’s been snapped at a couple of times, but Beeswax is nearly as oblivious to the unhappy reactions of the dogs she accosts as is Elmer, so most of us have learned to just watch for them and body block Beeswax to protect her, and our own dogs, from her lack of social graces. I was a little surprised that Tom chose to step into the crowd in front of the blonde bombshell, since she’s particularly fond of Drake.

  Marietta directed us to halt, then to line up for stays. Tom looked at me and lifted his eyebrows, and we moved to the mat where people were setting up their dogs and found an opening big enough for Drake and Jay. I removed the leash and set it down behind my dog, as we would do in an obedience trial, and pulled a large folded index card from my training pouch and unfolded it.

  “What’s that for?” asked Tom.

  “Remember when he,” meaning Jay, “got up and grabbed my arm band during stays in the last two trials?” In obedience trials, each handler wears an armband with an entry number. When we do the stay exercises, we take off our armbands and set them behind our dogs so that the judge can see who is who. I had come back into the room at our last two trials to find Jay where he should be, holding my number. That meant that he had moved out of position to pick up the card-stock armband and then had returned to the place and position I had left him in. Clever little trick, but it meant a non-qualifying score. “This is a set up, ” I told Tom as I set the card behind Jay and slightly to one side so he could see it if he turned his head.

  “This will be a five-minute stay. Position your dogs.”

  All along the line commands could be heard to “sit” or “down.” The more experienced trainers chose the position most challenging to the individual dogs, or created a challenge of another sort. As we often

  do, Tom and I gave our dogs different commands, so when we walked away Jay was sitting and Drake was lying down. I noticed that Rhonda Lake had her lovely Golden Retriever, Eleanor, facing the opposite direction from the rest of the dogs. Pilot, the Golden I had met with Rhonda at the practice session on Saturday, was lying down next to Eleanor but oriented like the rest of the group and wearing an ear-to-ear doggy grin. I wondered whether I could sneak out to my van for my camera. Pilot’s smile was definitely photo-worthy.

  “Are you going to hide?” asked Tom, meaning go somewhere the dogs couldn’t see us.

  “I can’t. I need to see that he doesn’t grab the number.” I’m working on out-of-sight stays, but Jay finds them a bit stressful.“We need to fix this if he’s going to get his CDX,” I said, referring to the mid-level obedience title. “You can go. We can talk later.”

  “Nah, doesn’t matter. Rather be with you.” He winked at me.

  “Wow. I win out over a musty storage room,” I said, referring to the glorified closet where the out-of-sight handlers crowded together and stressed out over whether their dogs were staying put. Then I shifted to more serious things, telling Tom what Sylvia had said about the man in the news clip and in Anderson’s photos. “I’m more interested in what she’s not saying, but this didn’t seem the time and place to ask her.”

  “No, she doesn’t get to spend quality time with her dog very often anymore,” said Tom. “Cute kids, those.” He nodded toward the x-pen where both of the toddlers were now asleep on the comforter.

  I agreed, and fought down a twinge as an old, painful memory tried to surface. “I don’t think she gets a lot of help with them, but I can’t think of a more
cheerful, competent person to manage two lively little girls. So, any news?”

  “Funny you should ask. George Crane called. He got an earlier flight to Indy and is driving in from there.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  Marietta called, “Back to your dogs,” so we had to shut up for a moment. We repositioned the dogs so that Jay was lying down and Drake sitting, and walked away again when Marietta called, “Leave your dogs.”

  Tom picked up the conversation again, saying, “Tonight.”

  “What’s tonight?”

  “Bird guy is tonight. George.” He looked at his watch. “Should be here any time. He called from north of Anderson just as I pulled into the parking lot.”

  I knew that he meant the town of Anderson, but Anderson Billings’s young face seemed to hover before me and that sense of loss that had been simmering inside me burst into flame. Tom usually picks up on my little shifts, but he was watching Elmer try to get Beeswax back into the line of dogs. Again.

  “Think I should offer to help him?” Tom asked.

  “He won’t listen.” I paused. “Then again, you’re a guy, and you have a Lab who complies with your every whispered wish. Elmer might think you know a little something.”

  Tom turned to me with his here-comes-trouble grin and waggled his eyebrows at me. I couldn’t help but laugh, and said, “Uh oh.” He leaned toward me and whispered, “How about we get together later and see if you will comply with my every whispered wish.” Then he turned with a throaty chuckle and left me for Elmer and his cute and wild Labby girl.

  thirty-seven

  After we finished the stays, Tom took Drake to the other ring to practice directed jumping. Maybe it’s all the retriever training, which requires Drake to work at a distance from Tom, but they make it all look easy. As I watched them, I wished again that I had brought my camera in with me.