The Disappearing Dog Dilemma (The Gabby St. Claire Diaries)

by Christy Barritt

  Pocococo danced around on his spindly hind legs when he saw me. We took a quick walk, because neither of us were fans of the cold, then headed inside so I could feed him and Wendell, the invisible cat who never poked a whisker out when I was there.

  The only evidence of Wendell was the “presents” he left in the litter box. Still, I congratulated myself on my powers of observation and deducing the cat was still alive and well.

  “Pocococo, I gotta go, but I’ll be back tonight and tell you all about how things went with Pete.” Having to discuss my love life with a dog and a diary named Dr. Watson just wasn’t going to cut it long term, so I hoped Becca would get off restriction ASAP.

  As I hustled home, I tried to figure out what I could wear that would a) look cute, b) make me look cute, and c) not be an obvious attempt to look cute.

  An hour and fifty outfits later I settled on an emerald-green pullover sweater and my newest jeans. I pulled on my dress boots—warm brown suede ones with no heel. For good measure, I dabbed some perfume from one of the almost empty drugstore-brand testers my mom had brought home for me. The scent of Fragrant Fields, a mixture of Granny Smith apples, jasmine, and bamboo, wasn’t in-your-nose obvious, but I hoped it would prove subtly alluring.

  Pete beat me to the vet’s. When I pulled up, he was kneeling beside his bike, and I couldn’t tell if he was trying to adjust the chain or put it back on. I tried to think of some catchy greeting, but when nothing came to mind I settled for “hey.”

  Pete straightened, smiled, and jerked a thumb toward the gate to the run behind the clinic. “New padlock. Not much security, if you ask me, but I guess it is something.”

  The chain-link fence was only waist high. The lock wouldn’t stop someone from getting in or out, but it might slow them down if they were carrying a cocker spaniel like Fluff.

  Pete must have been thinking the same thing, because after quick glances right and left, he vaulted over and back.

  Our minds are really in tune!

  “I’d like to get a closer look at the back door. Becca’s dad mentioned something about thieves getting in with a credit card, but I don’t see how that would work,” I admitted.

  Pete just chuckled.

  “That’s because you don’t have snoopy siblings. Suzy has a bunch of those fake card things our parents get in the mail. She carries them around in her My Little Pony purse. She figured out how to slide one between the door and side of the doorway to get into Lana’s room. Lana blew a gasket when she found Suzy sampling all her makeup.”

  “So the thief could have gotten through the back door that way?”

  “Maybe so,” Pete began.

  The back door to Oceanside Vet opened, and Counter Woman from Monday let six dogs out. She spotted us and charged over.

  “Just what are you doing here?” The accusation in her voice left no doubt she thought we were up to no good. With her hands on her hips, she glared back and forth between us.

  Pete pulled a reward poster from his back pocket and held it up. “Just came by to see if you guys had any more information on my sister’s dog. That you guys lost.”

  “No, we don’t know anything new.” She frowned and turned away, dismissing us to clean up after the pooping pups.

  I was glad I only had one dog to poop scoop for. I would hate cleaning up after the forty or so Oceanside could have if they were full. It sounded like an awful job.

  “Let’s go before she accuses us of being dognappers,” Pete whispered.

  I nodded and followed him, my heart skipping a beat at the thought of spending more time with Pete.

  Suddenly, I had more than one reason to get involved: I wanted to find the missing dogs in case they were in danger. But I always looked forward to having an excuse to spend more time with Pete.

  CHAPTER 9

  Pete and I ended up near the Seaside Mall just after noon. It wasn’t a real mall, just one of those touristy strip malls that seemed as dormant as the leafless trees in winter. Several of the places had Closed signs in the windows, and business crawled at the ones that were open. The guy at the Seaside Surf Shop recognized me from when my dad brought Tim and me to work there on Saturdays, and let us post our last flyer.

  Pete kicked at his bike in disgust. “Either Dad is going to have to fix it or I need a new bike. This one is for the birds.”

  “I’m thinking about buying one with my pet-sitting money,” I said. “It might be fun to ride some of the trails around here. Have you done any?”

  I was hoping Pete would suggest cycling some together.

  “Nah. Not with this piece of junk.” Pete ran his hands through his wind-tousled blond hair, then stuffed them in the front of his Captain America hoodie. He cleared his throat and shuffled his feet. “What do you say we grab some lunch?”

  My mouth went bone dry, as dry as a Bedouin’s flip-flop. In the Sahara. During a drought. I felt a sudden overwhelming urge to sit down because my heart had stopped beating. I couldn’t think of a response.

  Gabby, get a grip. Answer him.

  “Umm, uh, I didn’t bring my purse,” I stuttered, mentally kicking myself for sounding like a dorkina.

  “No prob. I gotcha covered.” Pete’s voice came from a million miles away.

  I barely managed a nod. My heart thumped like a rabbit’s leg on steroids. I wanted to say something cool and eloquent and funny, but both my brain and my lips locked into shutdown mode.

  Is this a date?

  “It can be, if you want it to be,” answered Pete.

  Twenty bazillion thoughts flooded into my mind like Christmas shoppers storming a mall the day after Thanksgiving. Two clamored the loudest for immediate attention.

  Did I just say that out loud?

  I’m on a date!

  But these were quickly swept aside as the others, some only fragments, shoved and elbowed for attention.

  I am the world’s biggest blabbermouth. How could I have let that slip?

  Do I have windblown hair? Working deodorant? Will something get stuck in my teeth?

  How can I talk if my mouth won’t work? I don’t know how to go on a date. Can I find a restroom, fix my hair, and call Becca? Dairy King.

  Dairy King? Why am I thinking about Dairy King?

  I wasn’t. Pete had said the words aloud. I took a wild guess that was where he wanted to eat and nodded, following him on Jell-O legs.

  CHAPTER 10

  Twenty minutes later, my tongue still smarted from biting into my hot-off-the-grill hamburger too soon. I figured it was some sort of weird justice for betraying me when I blurted out, “Is this a date?”

  What kind of mindless moron asks a guy if he’s asking her on a date? Only a certified dorkina, that’s who.

  While I cooled my still-burning tongue with chocolate ice cream, I gave mental thanks that I had paid attention when Becca and I read in Teen Time that the best thing to do on a first date was to get the guy to talk about himself. I would never have guessed Pete could talk so much about Pete. I couldn’t even remember the exact question that had unleashed his tongue, but I was beginning to feel like I was Pete’s psychotherapist rather than his date.

  “If it’s not all about Lana, then it’s Suzy, because she’s the baby. I just wish for once they’d decide a weekend would be about—” Pete paused for a millisecond, not nearly long enough for me to add to the conversation. “No, I could live with just a day, for them to have a day that was all about Pete.”

  Pete’s untouched sundae had melted into a gooey jumble of sprinkles, gummy bears, and Red Hots drowning in a vanilla sea. He drummed his spoon on the surface, submerging four gummy bears. I hoped it was just coincidence and not some unconscious desire to drown his family.

  “One day I’m going to do something, something big, and they’ll actually notice I exist.”

  Pete finally lifted a spoonful of his vanilla soup, so I cleared my throat and spoke, hoping I didn’t have lettuce stuck between two teeth. “I think it is awful that parents
say they love all their kids the same, but when it comes down to it, they all have favorites.”

  I didn’t add that I had to compete for attention with a sibling who hadn’t set foot in our house for four years. Pete might think I was nuts. I finished the last bite of my waffle cone.

  “Yeah, you got that right. I mean, I’d get it if Lana or Suzy had cancer or something. Then I think it’s okay for a kid to be center stage all the time, for whatever time they had left. It sucks being in the middle, ’cuz it’s, like, never gonna be your time.”

  Not knowing what to do with my hands now that my cone was gone, I reached for the toothpick stabbed through my unwanted pickle. Pete reached out and took my hand in his.

  He’s holding my hand. The panic started up again, but at least I was sitting this time.

  Did he think I was reaching for his hand? Is my palm sweaty? What do I do?

  Noise burst through the glass doors as a ginormous herd of little kids poured off a YMCA of Richmond bus and into the fast food joint.

  Pete squeezed my hand and let go, saying, “Time for us to blow.”

  I was both disappointed and relieved: disappointed because my first date was ending too soon, and relieved because it was ending before I’d done something incredibly stupid.

  If this was absolutely, positively, a genuine, authentic first date.

  CHAPTER 11

  “You didn’t!” Becca practically shouted on the other end of the phone.

  “It just slipped out. I didn’t mean to say it.” I mentally kicked myself again for blurting out my dopey question. When would I ever learn to think before I spoke? “But he said it could be if I wanted it to. So what do you think? Was it a date or not?”

  Please, please, let her think so. Please let it be real.

  “I can’t believe you said that,” Becca persisted. “Although it’s good to know the advice about getting the guy to talk worked out. He seemed pretty torqued at his parents, though.”

  “Becca!” I interrupted, my patience frayed and frazzled by the suspense. “Was it a date or not? Is Pete my boyfriend? Inquiring minds want to know.”

  “Okay, okay. Let’s think this through logically. Pete isn’t dating anyone else that we know of.”

  “Check.”

  “He paid.”

  “Check.” I smiled, realizing things were looking up.

  “Half a check,” Becca corrected. “You told him you didn’t have any money, so he might have paid since you were helping him out with the flyers, like when teachers buy chips and stuff for students who help clean their rooms at the end of the year.”

  “This is so not like a teacher bribing kids to help clean.”

  “He didn’t ask you ahead of time or use the word date, but he held your hand. For how long?”

  “Less than a minute,” I admitted. “Why the YMCA had to pick Dairy King for lunch after the Virginia Aquarium has to be the worst possible coincidence ever.”

  “Yeah. Because if he’d held it for, say, three minutes or more, I think that would qualify.”

  I thought about asking if the three-minute time span was arbitrary or from a magazine, but Becca plunged on. “I’d give it an 85 percent probability.”

  Eighty-five percent? Where did she come up with that number?

  “Gabby, just consider something, okay?” Becca’s voice sounded strange, like she was going to deliver some bad news like “You have cancer” or “You have detention until you’re twenty-one.”

  I waited, scrunching my eyes shut like they could filter out bad news.

  “I’m just asking,” Becca said.

  That worried me even more. Sentences that started out that way were never ones you wanted to hear.

  “Had it ever crossed your mind that Pete had something to do with the missing dogs?”

  It was not the bomb I’d been expecting; nevertheless I found myself sitting on the floor, my earring between my fingers instead of in my ear. I had no idea where the back had gone.

  “Why in the world would you think that?” I asked.

  “Sounds like Pete is desperate to get his parents’ attention and make life hard for Lana in the process. That might qualify as motive. Plus, he brought up the credit-card-entry theory. Maybe because he used it.”

  “That’s preposterous! Pete wouldn’t do that. Besides, it was his sister who broke into Lana’s room that way, not Pete.”

  “So he says. But be logical for a minute. His sister is seven or eight? Where would she learn that trick, except from, perhaps, an older brother?”

  This conversation was not going anywhere I expected, not anywhere I wanted. I searched for something to say that would unequivocally prove Pete innocent of any wrongdoing. I came up empty.

  “Gabby, you won’t be the first girl that got taken in by a guy. My dad says serial killers fool people all the time. That’s how they keep getting away with stuff.”

  “You think Pete is a serial killer?” I screeched. “Besides, your dad just got out of cadet school. He’s no expert.”

  “He was military police in the Marine Corps for years,” she snapped back.

  Our heart-to-heart was turning mean. We never talked this way. I wanted a do-over on this conversation. I wanted to press “rewind” and start again, but I had to settle for “stop.”

  “Becca, I gotta go pet sit. Let’s finish this later, gator.”

  “In an hour, sunflower.”

  “Maybe two, kangaroo.” I hung up the phone and headed to Wrangleys’, hoping the walk and affectionate Pocococo would help me sort through and eliminate some of my new problems.

  How could I have guessed it would make things a gazillion times worse?

  CHAPTER 12

  Thirty minutes later I found myself staring in horror at the crippled, homeless bum leaning on a cane on the Wrangleys’ porch. Except for Pocococo, who was wiggling to get down, I was utterly alone. The street was as unoccupied as a ghost town, and I couldn’t just run away, leaving my keys dangling from the front door.

  The mysterious stranger might notice them and be able to figure out where I lived and break in, even with his bad leg. If he was a crazy, he might kill us all in our sleep.

  On the other hand, if I didn’t leave, I was never going to get to a phone and call for help.

  “I’ll call the cops if you try to dognap Pocococo. With that red hair you’ll be easy to pick out of a lineup.”

  I had to figure out how he knew Pocococo’s name! That could be an important clue for the police.

  “Who are you and how did you get in? How do you know this is Pocococo?” The fact that Poco had been sitting on the man’s lap finally registered in my brain. It was possible he knew Poco and Poco knew him, but I wasn’t taking any chances. This bum couldn’t possibly be legit. The Wrangleys would have mentioned him. Or my mom. It wasn’t like she could clean their entire house and not notice that scuzzball.

  I swallowed. I was starting to perspire and, since the March weather was still lionlike, I knew it was fear that pulled it from my body. A gust of the wind tugged at my hair. Poco whined and tried to claw his way out of my grip.

  What should I do? Why did I ever take this job?

  “Look, girl.” The bum’s voice dripped with derision.

  I bristled like an irate porcupine. The way he said girl was obnoxious, like I was a little kid or a weakling or both.

  “I’m going inside out of this wind to call my sister,” he continued. “Then I’m going to come back out and put the phone on the porch for you to talk to her. Then you’re going to bring Pocococo back in the house.” He stabbed his finger in the air, pointed right at me.

  My mouth had gone dry, so instead of shouting something stupid, I had to summon up some moisture. In that split second, a brilliant plan coalesced in my mind.

  While he’s getting the phone, I’ll get my keys and then make a run for it. I may not be a track star, but I can outrun a crippled bum.

  I was a genius!

  “Okay,” I shou
t-squeaked.

  The long-haired vagrant limped inside, closing the door behind him.

  Yes!

  I sprinted across the street, Pocococo tucked like a football in the crook of my arm. I hoped a car would round the corner or a neighbor would check their mail. Any sort of witness would be welcome right now.

  No such luck. With the still-wiggling Pocococo squirming to get down, I glided up the steps and crossed the porch silently. I had almost extracted the keys when the door flew open and a steely hand latched onto my wrist like handcuffs.

  I was off kilter, so trying to keep hold of Poco, regain my balance, and wrench myself out of the iron-fisted grip was impossible. Before I could even summon a scream, I found myself righted, Poco snatched out of my arm, and a cordless phone plopped into my now empty hand. The human handcuff let go.

  I stepped backward, nearly falling down the three steps that led up to the house. A voice from far away was calling me.

  The phone. The voice is coming from the phone.

  “Gabby? Are you there, Gabby?”

  It sounded like Mrs. Wrangley, but I wasn’t sure. Cautiously, I put the phone to my ear and backed up a few more steps, still keeping my eye on the obnoxious man in front of me.

  “Gabby?”

  “Yes?” I finally said.

  “Gabby, this is Mrs. Wrangley. Everything is fine, dear. Just relax.”

  Right. Relax, I thought sarcastically, racking my brain for a surefire way to determine if the caller really was Mrs. Wrangley or some henchman of the homeless burglar.

  “Gabby, that’s my brother, Amos, you just met. It’s okay. I’m sorry if he gave you a start. We didn’t expect him to drop by either.”