The Silence of the Chihuahuas

by Waverly Curtis

  “So what were you doing here today?” Larson asked.

  “Well, I came here trying to find Brad.”

  “What made you think he was here?” asked Sanders.

  “I knew he was doing some work for Mrs. Fairchild.”

  “And why were you looking for him?”

  I stumbled to come up with something plausible. I had just told Jay to report that Brad was missing. Would the police connect the two events?

  “I haven’t talked to him for a while and his partner was worried about him—”

  “Another partner?” That was Larson, again with a leer.

  “Jay is his life partner,” I said. “His significant other. They’re getting married.”

  “I see,” said Larson, his expression betraying the same distaste for Brad’s lifestyle as he had for my dog.

  “And why did you think to look here?” Larson asked.

  “She was the last client he was working with,” I said, hating the way that came out.

  “And these are his invoices,” said Sanders, who had been sorting through the papers. “Looks like she hadn’t paid him for months.” He handed them to Larson.

  “Is it possible he came here to confront her about the unpaid invoices?” Larson asked.

  “And it got ugly,” Sanders went on. “Your friend Brad. He has a temper, doesn’t he?”

  I shook my head. “Absolutely not,” I told him. “Brad’s a sweetheart.”

  Larson rolled his eyes. “How can we get in touch with him?” he asked.

  “Um.”

  “Um is not an answer.” That was Sanders. He sounded like my seventh grade teacher.

  “The truth is . . .” I hesitated, then decided I had to be honest. Pepe was shaking his head at me. Too bad. “Brad is missing.”

  Sanders sat up even straighter. “Since when?” he asked.

  “I don’t know for sure,” I said. “Maybe a day or two? You’ll have to ask Jay.” I hoped that time frame would make it clear Brad could not have committed this murder. I hoped he really was on a buying binge.

  “We may need to talk to you again,” said Larson, closing his notebook.

  “Yes,” said Sanders. “We’ve got Brad’s business address here,” he continued, holding up one of Brad’s invoices. “We’ll go by there to look for him.”

  “There were other people she wasn’t paying as well,” I said, quick to defend my friend.

  “You don’t need to tell us how to do our job,” said Larson, getting up rather stiffly. “You stay out of it, this time.”

  “Of course,” I said, gathering up my dog and heading out the front door. But, of course, I wasn’t going to do that. I had to try to find Brad before the police did. I headed straight for the shop.

  I tried my key again, but it still didn’t work. How was I going to investigate if I couldn’t get into the shop? Luckily, the back door key did work. I was a little nervous as I entered the dim workroom, afraid of what I might find.

  “Pepe, I hope you will let me know if you smell muerte,” I said as he ran ahead of me. I couldn’t bear the thought of finding Brad dead. But what other explanation could there be for his disappearance? I didn’t buy Jay’s thought that he ran off with another man. Brad was totally devoted to Jay. Or, at least, he had been.

  Pepe disappeared into the gloom. I felt my way to the light switch and flipped the switch. No lights. Apparently the electricity had been turned off.

  Some light filtered through the high dusty windows along the sides and I could see some familiar items: the big red-tail hawk with his wings outspread, which seemed to soar suspended by cords over the work area; the stuffed owl on top of the grandfather clock (Brad loves taxidermy); and the armoire, which we had carried up the stairs at Mrs. Fairchild’s house. It was no longer painted olive green with red roses. It looked like Brad had stripped that off and was working on a new color scheme: sky blue with Pennsylvania Dutch designs of pink hearts and purple birds. Not Brad’s style at all.

  Pepe was standing in front of the armoire, his nose pointed at the doors, one leg lifted the way pointers do when pointing at a pheasant.

  “What’s in there, little man?” I said, coming over to him. Then I saw the note pinned to the door. It read “Dragon Lady.” As I looked around the shop, I could see other notes pinned to other pieces of furniture. Every one of them read “Dragon Lady.”

  What to do? It made Brad look like a suspect. “I don’t suppose the police will mind,” I said, more to myself than to Pepe as I went around collecting them. He seemed to approve. His tail was wagging. But suddenly his demeanor changed. He looked at the front of the shop and started growling.

  I poked my head through the velvet curtain that divided the front of the shop from the workroom in back and saw, through the big front windows, the big black sedan belonging to the two homicide detectives just parking outside.

  “Time to leave,” I said to Pepe. And we hightailed it out the back door. When we got home, I got another surprise. Felix was standing on my front porch, his arms full of bright orange gladiolas.

  Pepe’s Blog: Dealing with the Police

  Remember that as a private detective, the police are not your friends. Too often they are trying to investigate the same case that you have been engaged to resolve. Your best bet is to keep silent, as I demonstrated when the police tried to take over the crime scene that I discovered. My partner, unfortunately, did not follow my lead and ended up giving the police some valuable information.

  Intimidation may also work, especially if you are a fierce Chihuahua. But not if your partner picks you up and tucks you under her arm like you are some kind of small purse.

  So then your next course of action is to get to the places and people of interest before the police do. I found many interesting pieces of scent evidence at the shop. I was trying to get Geri to open the cabinet because I could smell a pheasant inside of it. Probably stuffed but one never knows. And the pheasant had the distinct smell of the dead woman. But Geri thought I was pointing at the little signs. So it goes.

  She went around removing the signs. That is one good thing about having a human partner as I am too small and do not have the opposable thumbs necessary to do some of the grunt work involved in detecting. On the other hand, humans are easily distracted. As soon as she saw the dog trainer with his arms full of flowers, well, that was the end of any investigating for several hours. Luckily, Felix had brought along Fuzzy, who had been my faithful assistant in a previous case, and I spent my time catching Fuzzy up to date on the elements of the case. While doing so, I uncovered a new detail I had missed. This is why it is essential to work in a team. I do miss being able to talk to Geri.

  Chapter 5

  I had never been so happy to see anyone. It seemed like nothing had gone right today. But I knew Felix would make it better.

  “Oh, Felix!” I rushed up and threw my arms around him.

  “I’m glad to see you, too,” he said, trying to return the embrace while keeping the gladiolas out of harm’s way. It wasn’t entirely successful. One of the stems broke.

  “I’m so sorry!” I wailed. “It’s all my fault! Like usual.”

  Felix looked into my eyes and said, “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”

  That’s Felix. So tuned in to my every emotion. Meanwhile, Pepe was scratching on the door while Fuzzy, so well-behaved, was merely sitting on the stoop, looking up adoringly at Felix. I thought that was a good idea.

  “Yes!” I sighed. “Come on in. I’ll tell you all about it.”

  And I did. He listened patiently while I rattled on about the trip to the vet, the mysterious phone call, the trip to Forest Glen, my conversation with Jay, and the discovery of Mrs. Fairchild’s body. I was too agitated to focus on anything practical so Felix took care of arranging the flowers in a vase, spooning out some food for Pepe and Fuzzy, and ordering a pizza when we both realized I hadn’t stopped to eat.

  The pizza arrived. Half goat cheese and pesto for me, half
sausage and pepperoni for Felix and the dogs. We took it into the dining room because Pepe and Fuzzy were in the living room looking at something on Pepe’s iPad, which sat on my coffee table.

  Pepe had ordered it without my permission a few months earlier and it was one of his favorite toys. He could spend hours swiping across the pad with his paw, but he was very secretive about his activities, always shutting down the screen when anyone approached. Felix and I sometimes joked that he was looking at porn.

  I snatched up the iPad before the dogs could protest. Pepe did, of course, with a sharp bark. Fuzzy just sat there quietly. She’s a fluffy little terrier-poodle mix Felix adopted after she was abandoned. I swear he adopted her just to prove to me that he is really good at dog training. The only dog he can’t train is my dog.

  “What do we have here?” said Felix, poring over the iPad, which contained a bunch of squiggles. Pepe jumped around barking like mad. If he had been talking, he would have been saying, “Unhand that, you villain! That is mine!”

  “I don’t know,” I said, bending over to look at it. The squiggles seemed to form some sort of random pattern: uneven rectangles connected by curving lines and interrupted by messy doodles. It reminded me of something, some place I had been recently.

  “You know,” I said, looking up at Felix, “I could swear this is a diagram of the grounds of the Forest Glen spa.”

  Pepe gave an excited, high-pitched yip.

  “But what’s all this crazy stuff going on here?” I asked, pointing to a messy section of the diagram all around the farthest rectangle. It looked like scribbling. I looked at Pepe and he looked at me with his bright eyes. Fuzzy looked at Pepe instead of at Felix.

  I sighed. “If only Pepe would talk to me,” I said to Felix, “I would feel so much better.”

  I headed for the dining room where the pizza waited. I set out my Fiestaware plates—the only good thing I got out of my marriage. Jeff didn’t want them. He thought they were old-fashioned. No doubt he and his bride-to-be have registered for some fancy china with gold monograms.

  Felix hesitated for a moment. I knew that believing my dog talked to me strained his credulity. Yet he had seemed to accept it. He set the iPad back down on the coffee table. Meanwhile, I dished up the pizza and Felix and I sat down to eat. We could see the dogs, both huddled around the iPad on the coffee table.

  “I swear it’s almost like they’re talking to each other,” I said, watching them with envy.

  Felix laughed. “That would be something! Fuzzy has never said a word to me!”

  “You don’t take me seriously,” I said.

  “It’s hard, babe,” Felix said. “I mean, dogs don’t talk.” He saw the look in my eyes and quickly added. “Most dogs don’t talk.”

  “But Pepe did!” I said. “And now he doesn’t.”

  “But otherwise he seems normal?”

  “Yes, but he’s not talking,” I told him.

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t you get it?’

  “Sure, but—”

  “But what?”

  “Well—”

  “Well what?”

  “Geri,” he said, then stated the obvious. “He’s a dog.”

  It took a minute for his meaning to sink in. “Are you saying he doesn’t talk? You said you heard him talk when we were at the ranch in Roslyn.”

  “I thought I heard him talk.”

  “So now you don’t believe me!” I got up, grabbed my plate, took it into the kitchen. “You’re just like all the others. You think I’m crazy!”

  “I didn’t say that,” said Felix, getting up and coming after me. “Look, babe, there are a million reasons why he might have stopped talking.”

  “Now you’re trying to humor me.”

  “Not at all,” he told me. “Dogs are a lot like little kids. Pepe might just be acting out.”

  “About what?” I filled the sink with soapy water.

  “Who knows? Could be anything. Maybe you’ve changed his food. Maybe he’s upset about a favorite toy.”

  “I’ve been giving him the same food all along. And he’s got his TV and iPad.” I peeked around the corner at him. He was still hunched over the iPad, Fuzzy at his side.

  “Maybe you’ve hurt his feelings somehow.”

  “I don’t know how.” I thought for a minute. “Well, I do tell him to be quiet a lot, especially when he tells some of his outlandish stories.”

  “That could be it,” Felix said, but he didn’t sound convinced.

  “What can I do, Felix?” I went back into the dining room and closed up the pizza box. There were still a few pieces left.

  Felix followed me back into the kitchen. “I think I know how to help.”

  “Really?” I slid the pizza box into the bottom of my refrigerator.

  “Yes, I know an amazing pet therapist in Laguna Beach. Her name is Caro Lamont. And she’s coming up here for the audition for—” Felix broke off.

  “Audition for what?” I asked.

  “Oh, we can talk about it later,” Felix said.

  “No, really, come on. What?”

  “Well, it just doesn’t seem like the right time to talk about it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, you’re so stressed by this situation with Pepe. But I think Caro might be able to help you with him. She’s really good.”

  “But you said she’s in Laguna Beach . . .”

  “She’s coming to Seattle this weekend.” He seemed sheepish.

  “What for?” I knew something was up by the way he was acting.

  “She’s the consultant for a new reality TV show that your friend Rebecca Tyler is producing.”

  Rebecca Tyler is not really my friend. In fact, I suspected her of murder for the first few days I knew her. Once we got it all straightened out, she invited me and Pepe to participate in her reality TV show, Dancing with Dogs. The first season hasn’t aired yet, but I hear the networks think it has a lot of promise.

  “What new reality TV show? And why would Rebecca be in Seattle?” The last I heard she was still down in LA working on the first season of Dancing with Dogs.

  “It’s called Pet Intervention,” said Felix. He actually seemed to blush a little. “They need an expert who can work with a lot of different kinds of animals that have behavior problems. And Caro recommended me.” Felix has a background in working with animals in the film industry. He started his career working with big cats, until an accident on a set shattered his confidence. I sometimes wondered if he felt his current situation as a dog trainer in Seattle was a bit of a comedown.

  “You’d be perfect for that!” I said. “That’s such great news.”

  “Well, yes,” he said, waving away my excitement with one hand. “I’m just one of many auditioning for the show. But if I got it, well . . .” His voice trailed off again.

  “Well, what?”

  “Well, I’d probably have to move to L.A. That’s where they’re filming.”

  “Oh.” That could be a problem. Our relationship was really too new for us to move in together. And I noticed he wasn’t asking me to move to L.A. And I wasn’t asking him to stay in Seattle.

  “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s amazing, Felix. I think you’ll do great,” I said, throwing my arms around him. And all the time I was thinking, I really need you here. I hope you don’t get the job.

  “Really?”

  “When did all this happen?” I asked, thinking about how distracted Felix had been the last few times we were together and how he wasn’t answering his phone.

  “Oh, I got the first call a few weeks ago. We’re doing the blocking tomorrow and shooting on Saturday and Sunday.”

  “And you didn’t tell me?” I was dismayed. Maybe we weren’t as close as I thought. I couldn’t imagine not telling Felix news that big. Kind of like Brad not telling me he was getting married.

  “Well, it didn’t seem likely it would pan out. I guess I just don’t think something’s w
orth sharing until I have something definitive to say about it.”

  “Like my sister maybe calling me from someplace that’s both a crazy hospital and a spa?” I asked. “I shouldn’t share that with you until I know for sure if she’s there and what it is that she’s doing there?” I realized I was getting a little overly emotional but it was that sort of day.

  “Geri, don’t get upset!” Felix looked worried.

  Pepe ran to the front door and started barking furiously.

  “No, really, I mean, would you rather I figure everything out before I bother you by talking about it?”

  “No, Geri, that’s not what I was saying—”

  Pepe’s barking got even more frantic.

  “What’s wrong, Pepe?” I asked, even though I knew he wouldn’t tell me.

  Then my phone started ringing. I got up and went over to where my purse lay on the table in the hallway. Pepe raced from the front door to the sofa. He jumped up on the back of the sofa, so he could see out the window to the street, all the time continuing to bark. I dug my cell phone out of my purse and flipped it open.

  “Geri Sullivan?” a man asked, his voice low and gruff.

  “Yes,” I said. I could barely hear him over Pepe’s barking.

  He said something else, but I couldn’t make it out. So I went over to the sofa thinking I would grab Pepe. That’s when I saw a large, black SUV with tinted windows parked directly in front of my condo. A man in a dark suit, with slicked back dark hair, was standing beside it talking on a cell phone.

  “Your sister’s name is Teri. Yes?”

  I hesitated. Then I realized that the guy I was talking to on the phone was the same guy outside my house who was talking on his cell phone. “What business is that of yours? Who are you?”

  “All I’m saying is: you need to stay away from her.”

  I swear he winked at me, then hung up and got into the driver’s side of the SUV. I watched in shock as the car pulled out and sped away. I was so shocked I didn’t even think to write down the license plate.

  Pepe’s Blog: Benefits of Not Talking