CHAPTER 19
Not only had I been late to pet sit and gotten reprimanded by Amos the SEAL, I’d also been late to math the following day.
“Looking for another detention, Miss St. Claire?” Ms. Lynnet snapped, arms crossed and beady eyes drilling a hole in my forehead. That woman might have had it in for everyone, even Miss Goody-Two-Shoes Becca, but she particularly delighted in torturing me.
The only tolerable part of being in the Nazi-witch-queen’s math class was Brandon. I was delighted when he passed me a note.
I was undelighted when I read it.
“Paulette’s in tears today. I think something happened to her dog.”
The bad news was confirmed at lunch.
“We were leaving Pampered Pets, where Puddles gets groomed, when this guy wearing black snatched Puddles out of my hands and took off. He kind of shoved me, and by the time I recovered, they’d disappeared.” Paulette’s bottom lip quivered, and tears pooled in her already red eyes. “Daddy told the police, but he didn’t think they’d find her. Please say you’ll try to find Puddles when you look for Lana’s dog.”
She looked at Pete and me with utter desperation.
“We’ll look high and low,” I promised, trying to mentally connect the dots between the Irish setter that had been found in the animal shelter, the missing cocker spaniel and pit bull, and now Paulette’s Yorkie. “What did this guy look like? Did you recognize him?”
“No. He had on all black and an inside-out hoodie pulled up over his head and a ski mask on his face.”
This was not good. Whoever had dognapped Puddles had not wanted to be recognized and had done an excellent job of it.
“Can you remember anything else? Height? Eye color, maybe?”
“Umm, about my height. I think he had blond hair. Some of it was poking out from the eye holes.”
“What color blond?” asked Brandon. “Platinum blond like yours or dirty blond like Pete’s?”
“My hair’s not dirty. It’s gelled,” Pete said. “Leave my hair out of it.”
I could tell he was in a bad mood, probably from having to wait for his dad in the cold, alone and wondering if he was going to get snuffed for witnessing a criminal transaction.
“Like Pete’s,” answered Paulette after scrutinizing my boyfriend’s face.
“Was the kid skinny or fat?” I asked.
“It’s hard to say. In between, I guess.” Paulette opened her notebook and pulled out several pictures of Puddles. “I thought you might need these.”
The photos showed Puddles relaxing on a prissy pink comforter, Puddles and Paulette lounging on a float in a pool, Puddles dressed in an angel costume. My eyes were drawn to the collar. It was wide enough to keep Puddles’s fur from blocking the display of rubies.
“Looks like your new friend has deserted us for the Cool Table,” Becca said.
I turned around in my seat to see Wanda sitting at the Diva’s table but on the outer edges with the wannabes. That was a change I hadn’t seen coming.
I wasn’t particularly fond of Wanda, but Becca was getting on my nerves. Without thinking I retorted, “Who knows, maybe you’ll be joining them tomorrow.”
“Trying to get rid of me? I see how it is.” Becca shoved away from the table and stormed off.
“I’m sorry, Gabby. I didn’t mean to make Becca mad.” Paulette burst into tears.
I put my arm around her and patted her back. Pete handed her an unused napkin.
“It’s not your fault.” I tried rubbing her back, but she only cried harder.
Brandon and Pete both decided to bail. Brandon handed me another napkin, and Pete signed “bikes” and pointed to his watch.
I hoped that meant meet him after school at the bike rack.
While Paulette cleaned up in the restroom, I looked at the photos of Puddles again and reviewed Paulette’s description of the dognapper. He was an average sort of guy with blond hair and an inside-out black hoodie. Maybe the black hoodie had some distinguishing features, like a school logo or personalized name, which had prompted the criminal to turn it inside out.
Pete had been wearing a black hoodie with Thor and Captain America just yesterday.
Pete knew about the valuable collar.
Gabby, stop this right now!
Lots of guys, like Pete, had blond hair and black hoodies. It would be ludicrous to suspect Pete, since he had been with me after school. Pete was a good guy. He wouldn’t be behind these crimes, no matter what Becca had insinuated. I was 100 percent sure of that.
But I couldn’t help myself.
I had to ask. Just to be sure.
“Paulette, what time did you pick Puddles up from the groomers?” I asked when she returned from the bathroom.
She sucked on her bottom lip for a moment. “I don’t know exactly, because we’d had dinner at the country club, and then Mom had Daddy swung by the Harrison Opera House.”
I mentally tried to figure out the timeline of events. Sometime after dinner and after swinging by a place in a neighboring city. This was not good. But maybe they’d had a really early dinner. It had been a school night, I rationalized.
I hated myself but had to ask; I had to know. “Best guess—before or after eight?”
“It was almost nine, I think.”
The PB&J in my stomach formed a rock. My knees felt weak. “Are you sure?”
Paulette shrugged and looked at me with her still red-rimmed eyes.
The realization nearly had me reeling.
Pete would have had plenty of time to get home, fix his bike, and kidnap Puddles. What if he was the dognapper?
CHAPTER 20
Instead of paying attention to behavioral adaptations in the Cnidarian phylum, I was worried about meeting Pete after school. What if he were the one behind these missing dogs? I needed to go over the evidence. Surely I’d find something to clear him.
Motives: the original dogs might have been taken related to competition in the marketplace (according to Becca, who may or may not be unbiased) or because someone was mad at one of the owners or because stud fees were so high or because Pollack Labs needed test animals or because Paws and Furballs was making a statement or because the moon was made of green cheese.
There were just too many options. I decided to put motive aside and check into opportunity.
Who would have opportunity to be at both Oceanside Boarding and Pampered Pets? Again, too many options.
I was getting nowhere, and now another dog was missing.
“With your group, compare and contrast your lists.” Ms. Shernick’s voice pulled me back to the present.
Students were scooting chairs, partnering up. I sighed. One of my group, Maria, barely spoke English and would have nothing to contribute, but I figured Hannah the Brainiac would have enough for all three of us. She did not disappoint.
“By the way, Mrs. Baker wants you to stop by after school today to talk to her,” Hannah said.
She was Mrs. Baker’s foster child and a mystery in her own right. I knew she’d been in court and her parents were in jail, but since I was already up to my ears in problems, I pushed that puzzle aside and tried to focus on jellyfish.
“Yeah, sure,” I said. I decided to tell her what Pete and I had seen at Animal Control just to see what her reaction was.
“Figures,” she said with a brittleness I’d never heard in her voice before. “Those people will do anything—test on animals, experiment on poor people in third world countries and mental patients who don’t know what they are consenting to. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to find out they grabbed these dogs. If they did, no one will ever see them again.”
Just then Raff sauntered over to our group.
“Check it out, Maria.” He stuck out his wrist so she could admire his new watch.
“Is that what I think it is?” asked Hannah. “A Rolex?”
“Si, si, senorita. Matches my ankle bracelet.” Raff raised his foot up so we could compare the two side by s
ide. His ankle monitoring bracelet was his pride and joy.
“Focus, people! Focus!” Ms. Shernick clapped her hands and scanned the class to see who was and wasn’t deeply engrossed in the riveting lives of sea sponges.
Where did Raff get the money for a Rolex?
By stealing something, no doubt. Relief flooded my entire body. Raff must have kidnapped Puddles and pawned her collar for his watch. It made sense. Raff’s character was shady, he hung with the wrong group, and he prided himself in breaking the law.
And, if that was true, that meant that Pete . . . was a free man.
I couldn’t wait to meet up with him after school.
CHAPTER 21
I pedaled against the wind, my hair whipping around like tiny lashes, whacking my face. It was more than annoying because the experience reminded me of my whole life: fighting against the wind, being beaten down by problems, swimming upstream. No matter what I did right, fifty bazillion other things would jump at the chance to go wrong.
But at least it occasionally interrupted my dismal train of thought chugging away on the question track.
Did having a boyfriend mean losing a best friend? Would Pete turn out to be a good thing or a bad thing? What could I do to keep both my BFF and my BF? How does a teenager know what to do to make things turn out right?
I’d been so lost in the muddle of my thoughts that I hadn’t seen the snarled stopped traffic and almost ran into Pete at the corner of Grove and Chestnut. For the fifty bazillionth time I brushed hair out of my eyes to get a better look. A mattress and box springs had spilled onto the pavement, tangling traffic.
Pete was able to balance on his bike without moving, but I hadn’t mastered that yet. I bumped the car beside me. The driver pounded his fist on his window at me. I mouthed “sorry” and set one foot down to balance. We had a mile or so to go to get to Pollack Labs, and I still had no idea what we’d do once we got there.
“Gabby! Is that . . . ?”
I turned to look in the direction Pete was pointing. Two cars ahead, a Yorkie had its head stuck out of the back passenger window. The afternoon sun’s rays reflected off of something gleaming around its neck.
My pulse started to race. Was it Puddles?
“We need to get closer,” I yelled over the din of stopped cars.
I edged my bike around a delivery truck in front of us. The driver behind honked at me. Pete pedaled onto the sidewalk and around.
“Kid! Get out of the road!” yelled a voice.
Traffic was starting to move, so I propelled myself forward. The dog stood on its hind legs and looked out of the rear window.
I maneuvered around to the driver’s side of the dog car. It was an older- model gray, a four door. I bent low. Someone pulled the dog into the front seat but not before I’d gotten a definitive look.
A Yorkie with a ruby collar. Just like the one in Paulette’s pictures.
Bingo.
We had our culprit.
CHAPTER 22
Had being the operative word.
The driver gunned the engine, and the gray car lurched onto Chestnut. Pete and I did our best to tail him, but between traffic and getting separated, it was a lost cause. I spent the next twenty minutes fruitlessly cruising streets that got less inhabited, dingier, and dirtier the further I went, hoping either the gray car or Pete would turn up.
Instead Raff turned up.
I had just turned out of an alley onto a side street when I saw him napping in a rusty folding chair, tipped way back to lean against the front of a seedy store. The lot next to the store was vacant except for empty plastic bags and fast food trash. The rest of the street seemed deserted of people, even though parked cars and a battered van lined either side.
Lying next to Raff, its leash looped under a back chair leg, was a pit bull. I froze, wondering if the dog would tear into me, wondering how badly Raff would be injured when the dog yanked the leash and toppled my classmate onto the cracked cement walk.
Flashing pink neon lights proclaiming Paradise Pawn splashed across the mostly white pit bull, making him look like someone had run him through the wash with red clothes. Raff’s hands were stuffed in the pockets of his leather jacket, head in a hoodie with wires coming out and disappearing into a pocket. I hoped both he and the dog were asleep or so into the music they’d never even know I was there.
I glanced around, hoping Pete would materialize. Joe’s Pool Hall. A washateria. A tattoo parlor. An ABC liquor store. A couple of other dull brick three stories. The pit bull and Raff might fit right in, but I was feeling as conspicuous as I would have at a formal dinner at the White House.
Pit bull? Could this be the missing pit bull? From the corner of my eye I noticed movement. I jerked my head right and felt relief wash through me like a cold slushie as Pete rounded a corner and pulled up next to me.
“Got ’em?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I lost ’em.”
“Me too.”
The pawnshop door opened and a figure in black, complete with sunglasses and a hoodie up over his ears, stepped out and started up the street. The pit bull followed the figure with his eyes, but Raff seemed blissfully unaware.
“What do we do now?” I asked, hoping Pete had an idea.
A car engine started up. The hooded figure cut in front of the rusted van and disappeared.
“I dunno. Do you think we have time to still go by the lab?” As Pete spoke, a car in front of the rusty van pulled into the street and roared away, coughing dark smoke from its tailpipe. It was gray, with a small dog in the back.
Pete and I exchanged a hurried glance as we sprinted on our bikes after it. We closed in. The Yorkie jumped up and down in the backseat. It was easy to see the collar was gone.
Then an all-too-familiar sound tormented me. The sound of Pete’s bike chain coming off.
CHAPTER 23
Dear Watson,
News on the case thus far:
Irish setter found.
Paulette’s dog kidnapped by guy in black with blond hair and a gray car driven by an accomplice.
Pollack Labs truck picked up German shepherd at Animal Control, after hours from the back. Pete was with me and could not have been involved.
I read over my entry and realized I was trying to prove Pete innocent more than I was relating the facts of the puzzling mystery.
Stick to the facts, Sherlock.
Great. Not only was I talking to a diary, it had started talking back. Was I going nuts?
I pushed investigating my sanity or lack thereof to a back burner and concentrated on the matter at hand. I steeled myself to be objective and started writing again.
Fact: Paulette’s dog missing, seen with collar on, then missing collar within minutes. Possible clues near Paradise Pawn.
Raff: Rolex watch, pit bull, Paradise Pawn.
The phone rang. I glanced at my clock radio: 7:45.
Must be Becca has finally come to her senses. A weight lifted from my soul.
“Telephone, Gabby,” my dad called.
I raced downstairs, picked up the phone, and slowed down so I didn’t sound out of breath and too eager. Becca still owed me an apology. I’d forgive her, but I wouldn’t grovel like the Diva’s Devotees did.
“Guess who turned up?” Pete sounded excited.
I mentally shifted gears to talk to my boyfriend. “Fluffnstuff?”
“Yup. Get this—someone turned him in to a Hampton shelter.” Hampton was a city about twenty miles away and accessible only through a series of bridges and tunnels. No way Fluff could have gotten to Hampton without human help. And no way Pete could have been the human help. Besides, I’d seen another figure wearing a black sweatshirt disappear into that gray car.
On the inside I was doing my happy dance. Pete was in the clear!
“Guess who drove me to the Cycle Shop while Mom and Lana went to Hampton?”
“Your dad?”
“Yup. And instead of just fixing my old bike, he bought me
a brand-new 820. Of course I had to pitch in some cash, but it’s worth it.”
Pete described the bike, going into detail just like Becca did about Brandon, but even after his report I couldn’t have identified an 820 from a UFO. I said “great” and “wow” in all the right places but remained clueless about “hardtail,” “two-niners,” and “full suspension.”
“So, what do you say we catch a movie this weekend? Celebrate finding Fluff and our one-week anniversary.”
I was so caught off guard, I sank to the floor. I couldn’t speak.
Our one-week anniversary! You had to have a boyfriend to have an anniversary. That meant I was for sure for sure somebody’s girlfriend. I wanted to break into my happy dance for real, but it was hard to do collapsed on the floor.
“Ya-uh.” A half squeak, half grunt emanated from my lips, and I squeezed my eyes shut at the absolute horror of it. I took a deep breath and tried again. “I’d love to.”
It still came out too high and too giggly girly-girl, but at least it resembled human speech.
“I thought we’d see Navy SEALs, ’cuz of your Navy SEAL. It’s at the mall at three. We could meet up at two and ride over?”
“Okay.” The words barely pushed past the loud throbbing of my pulse slamming against my ear, beating like a bass drum on steroids.
“Great. See ya at lunch.”
I sat stunned, sprawled in the hall for several minutes, soaking in the enormity of the situation.
I had a boyfriend. We had an anniversary. I was going on a date. A real date!
I started dialing Becca to share my good news, but stopped after four digits. I got up and peered at the kitchen clock.
Two minutes before eight. I had two minutes before the Chapmans’ calling-in deadline. I started and stopped again. Becca might try to talk me out of going because she suspected Pete might be behind all of this.
But did she really suspect or was she just jealous? I headed back to my room, letting the minutes slide by until it was too late to call.
The Disappearing Dog Dilemma (The Gabby St. Claire Diaries) Page 7
