by Beth Byers
I sighed, looking towards the house where Simon and Carver still were. I dug my fingers into the space behind the dane’s ears and watched his tail flop around. He was such a lovely fellow. I hoped that whoever he belonged to was someone we could easily find. He deserved to go home.
“I think he got away,” I admitted, furious at the idea. “I’ll call you when we’re done here. Do whatever you need to. Even if we have to rent a place or…something.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Zee said. “This isn’t a long-term thing. People who wouldn’t foster will step in for a few days. Especially for stolen dogs. I’ll get calling around.”
I hung up on Zee and headed towards the building at the back of the property. I almost didn’t want to see how many dogs were in there, but my biggest worry was that the three dogs Gary had taken home with himself were still with him. I slowly opened the first of the double doors and then dragged the second door open. The lights were high, dirty, and far too dim.
I could see several stall kind of enclosures with dogs inside. I squatted down. I didn’t like the look of the dogs. I growled under my breath and pulled out my phone calling the vet’s office. They put me through to one of the doctors who agreed to come get this batch of dogs. I suspected, after using the flashlight on my phone, that the dogs hadn’t been eating enough and hadn’t been exercised—or even necessarily let out of these stalls at all.
The enclosures hadn’t been properly cleaned, and too many of them seemed like they could be sick. The closer I looked, I could see ribs on a lab, and one of the little ones flopped a very slow tail as I talked to her. She didn’t seem to have the energy to wag her tail any more than that.
I wanted to scoop up the little one, but I didn’t want to hurt her or scare her. I made my way to the doors, leaving the dogs even though they yelped and whined in objection. I promised them I’d be back. They couldn't understand me, but I felt better making the promise. I wasn’t leaving a single dog on this property.
Simon was crossing the yard as the Great Dane and I left the shed. He raised his brows in question, and I said, “There are several dogs in there. Maybe ten? I think they’ve been there for a while.”
“Here’s hoping,” Simon muttered, “that those are the dogs who didn’t get successfully ransomed back.”
I nodded. He better have just put them in stalls and not hurt them. If he’d hurt them, I was going to make Gary pay myself.
There weren’t any dogs in Gary’s house. There were, however, two dog runs on the other side of his house, and the gates were flopping open. He’d let the dogs out on us, on purpose, I thought. To distract us while he got away. It had been effective, but it wouldn’t be enough.
“Carver put out a call for people to be looking for Gary’s car.”
I frowned. I wanted him found now. Or at least the dogs to be found. I told Simon what I’d arranged, and he didn’t counter me.
While Carver and Simon searched the house, I started scanning the dogs for microchips and reading the numbers to Jenny at the shelter. The pit bulls, the Great Dane, and one of the little dogs weren’t registered. The problem with microchipping your dog was that you had to update the system with your information or the microchip didn’t necessarily help. We would try finding who had put the microchips in and identify the owner through the shelter or vet office that inserted the microchip.
Jenny started calling about the dogs that had been registered. As she did that, I messaged Az and asked him to come with his big truck. There was so much to do. The dogs that had been adopted out needed to be pulled in and scanned for microchips. We needed to attempt to find the owners of all of the dogs.
I helped load up the dogs after Az arrived and then rode with him back to the shelter with the Great Dane in the cab of the truck. Every time I’d tried to get him to leave my side, he flopped stubbornly down.
“Well now,” Az said with his deep honey voice that was bitter with anger, “What do we know about Greg, and how are we going to find him?”
I grinned my evilest grin at Az.
“We need Zee,” I told him. “She knows everyone and everything.”
“I am going to slowly slaughter that fool, Gary,” Zee said when we pulled into the shelter lot. She sniffed.
“That’s a job I can get behind,” Az said. “Now what do we do with these dogs?”
Zee already had several cars of volunteers at the shelter to take dogs. I glanced over the family vehicles and a few of Zee’s knitting friends.
“Where did Jenny go?”
“She left,” Zee said, “She had a date.”
My brows rose and I slowly asked, “Are you kidding me?”
Zee shook her head. I bit my lip before I pulled the first of the dogs from the back of Az’s truck. We handed a crate to the first volunteer, wrote down the microchip information, and took several pictures of the dog. It took the better part of the evening to get the dogs sorted out and that was with Simon and I keeping the Great Dane and Carver taking all of the pit bulls. The vet’s office was housing all of the dogs from the shed in the back and making sure they were healthy. They agreed to start finding those owners while we did what we could with these ones.
When we were done, I flopped onto the devil chair and it toppled over. The Great Dane’s face appeared above my own and then he licked my chin as I slowly pushed myself up.
“How many times have you fallen out of that chair?” Zee asked.
“At least three,” I admitted.
Az lifted me to my feet and we stared around the shelter. The extra dogs were gone, even the ones from earlier, so there were no more double-stacked dogs in the stalls.
“You have good friends,” I told Zee.
She grinned and nodded before she said, “This is what comes from knowing everyone’s dirty secrets.”
“At least you use your power for good, Zee my friend,” Az said.
I dug my fingers into the dane’s fur and glanced over at Zee. Carver had already left with the pit bulls while Simon was still working at the police station. I had seen the look on Carver’s face as he left with the pit bulls. He was a dog lover like myself. I glanced down at the sweet gaze of the Great Dane and realized that both Carver and I were going to end up crying over an empty dog bed by the time this was over.
Chapter SIX
It took the entirety of the next day to call on all of the dogs and track down owners. Far, far too many weren’t properly registered. At least this time we had Jenny. I took over as boss, but she didn’t struggle too much even though she was officially employed at the shelter and I wasn’t. I gave her the job of looking up and contacting shelters around the state with the information on the stolen dogs on the off chance that someone had come in looking for their stolen dog.
I looked at the list and then at Zee who had stopped helping several of my calls ago.
“Gary wasn’t stealing these dogs alone,” I said. “There’s no way. That little poodle mix was from Astoria. The microchip information for the golden retriever that Az has was from Bandon. The pit bulls were from Ashland. It doesn’t make sense. But there was no way that Gary was getting these dogs alone.”
I messaged Simon and Carver what I thought about the crime ring. That evening, when I went home, Simon hadn’t arrived yet. He almost always made dinner since we nearly always had breakfast and lunch together at the diner. I took the chance to make jerk chicken. I’d been playing with the recipe even though it didn’t match The 2nd Chance Diner menu. It took me too long to remember that Simon and Carver were talking to the town council.
Managing this many dogs was exhausting. And the fury that had been riding me hadn’t dissipated. Being angry was exhausting. I fired up the grill for the chicken as I got a call from a number I didn’t know. It turned out to be the owner of the German shepherds. I hid my dismay as the owner started crying in sheer, unadulterated joy. I was going to have to tell Carver that Abbott and Costello were, in fact, Fred and Paulie.
Three days lat
er, the first of the dogs were going home. Of the ones from Greg’s house, we’d been able to contact the owners of eleven of the dogs. Still, however, Greg was missing. Even Zee’s resources hadn’t been able to turn him up. The town council hadn’t made any decisions about the shelter, but I had been appointed interim manager.
I yawned ferociously as the Great Dane, and I arrived at the shelter. When we went in, Jenny opened the door. I handed her the giant thermos of coffee, and she moaned with happiness.
“No word on Gary?” she asked. Her ponytail bounced as she opened the door for me.
I shook my head. A police car pulled up outside the shelter as I stepped through the door. I paused, waiting as Carver got out of the car, opening the back door to let out the two German shepherds he’d adopted. I gave him a commiserating glance as my hand fell to the top of the Great Dane’s head.
“No word on Gary?” I repeated Jenny’s earlier question.
Carver shook his head. He was upset, and I didn’t blame him. I’d be crying after I found my sweet Great Dane’s family. Where had Gary gone? He didn’t seem to have family around here. Clearly, he was scum, so who was hiding him? Had he just left the area entirely? With Philip? If not, what had happened to those dogs?
While Carver made himself a cup of coffee, I took the German shepherds to the yard area. I just didn’t have room for them inside right then. When I started back into the shelter, I frowned. I had been out in the yard a lot. And the door had not had those scratch marks around it. I called Carver as I went back in. I was almost positive that someone had tried to break into the shelter. But why?
Carver went to look at the door as the first of the dog owners arrived. The Golden Retriever that Az had taken care of over the last few days went to a retired couple who lived in Salem. Next, the little poodle mix went to a woman in her 60s who’d driven down from Longview with her son. She wept as her dog licked her face frantically.
I cried along with her owner as Simon came in. Another family arrived for one of the labs from the shed. He’d recovered quickly, so he had the feistiness to bark out his owner.
The man dropped to his knees and said, “I’m sorry, buddy. I’m sorry.”
I hadn’t quite dried out from the poodle, but I was crying again as the lab rubbed his face on his person’s leg.
The next person to arrive was Tom, Philip’s owner. Simon came in after Tom, standing to the side as I met Tom face-to-face.
“Tom…” My voice trailed off as I faced him, shaking my head. “We don’t have Philip. I told you…”
“I know,” he said. “I know. But I promised my daughter I’d look for him.”
I bit my lip before I was able to stutter out a reply. I just didn’t know what to say, so mostly I spewed a jumble of meaningless syllables.
“I’m sorry,” I finally said. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” Tom said, sounding exhausted. I handed him a cup of coffee and gave Simon another.
Simon took the coffee and headed to the back of the office with Jenny. I could hear him ask her if anything had been disturbed. She said no and I hadn’t seen anything either. I guessed that changing the locks had been enough to keep Gary out. Why would he come back though?
As soon as Jenny was back in the front room, I went back to Simon. He wrapped me up in a hug, squeezing me close.
“Why would Gary come back?” Simon asked. I shook my head. We didn’t have money here. There was no reason to break into the shelter. Breaking and entering wasn’t worth it for off-brand dog food and dogs that we were already struggling to home. The shelter literally had nothing of value.
“I’m going to look through the office and see if I can find why he’d want to break in, assuming it was Gary.”
“What can you tell me about Gary?” Tom asked when I returned to the front room. Jenny eavesdropped as I told Tom what I knew. It wasn’t much, but I did know the make and model of Gary’s car. I didn’t see any reason to not give it to Tom, so I handed it over and told him where to get a map of Silver Falls. The poor man was going to drive Silver Falls street by street just so he could tell his daughter that he had.
After Tom left, Jenny and I reunited another dog with their owner and then sat down to delivered Chinese food. Sure, it was still breakfast time, but we didn’t care. Some days you just needed some chicken lo mein stress eating.
“We’ve been getting weird calls,” Jenny said as I shoved a forkful of food into my mouth.
“What do you mean?” I asked around my noodles.
“I answer, someone hang’s up. Sometimes they drop an f-bomb first, but…they hang up.”
I sat in the dangerous office chair as I ate my noodles and thought about it. Finally I asked, “Do you think that it’s a kid pranking you?”
Jenny’s head tilted as she considered and then she shook her head, “No. When they curse, they sound super, super angry.”
I rubbed my brow and then called, “Simon…”
He came out and Jenny told him what she told me. His expression said he was concerned which heightened my own worries. The thing was…whoever it was must be calling for Gary. Was it someone who was trying to get their dog back or one of Gary’s accomplices? Perhaps his accomplice didn’t know he’d fled? I probably wouldn’t tell my co-conspirators if I were taking off.
I tried sorting paperwork after we’d eaten, but I wasn’t getting anywhere. My head pounded, and I wanted to go home and nap. I wished that I had it in me to dump this problem on someone else, but there wasn’t anyone else. The phone rang, and I answered it absentmindedly. “Silver Falls Dog Shelter.”
There was a far too long pause before there was an answer. Finally a man said, “I’d like to talk to Gary.”
“He’s not in,” I said brightly, my mind barely catching up. Was this Gary’s possible partner? “I’d be happy to take a message.”
As I spoke, I wrote down the number that came in on the caller id.
“When will he be back?” The deep voice sounded furious.
“Oh,” I said. “Well…”
“Look, he’s a friend of mine,” the man said when I hesitated.
Friends, I wanted to say, had cell phone numbers, but I didn’t. I pretended to hem and haw before I said, “I could give him a message on the side. I don’t know what’s going on,” I tittered and hated myself a little bit for it as I added, “But the police have been around here. I could try messaging him for you?”
“Just tell him Johnny called,” the man said and hung up.
Jenny’s gaze was wide as I looked up from the phone.
“Was that the guy?”
How could I know? I shrugged and called Simon. Then I went back to trying to contact the phone number I’d found for the pit bulls’ owner. All three of them belonged to the same person.
“Hello?”
I explained why I was calling and the person asked, “They’re ok?”
I confirmed and the emotion poured through the phone followed by the most unexpected comment, “I can’t take them.”
“Excuse me?”
“I…I moved. The dogs were gone. I…” the person cursed. “They were gone. I…my new place doesn’t let you have dogs.”
“Ok,” I said. “They’re safe. They’ll be all right.”
The man was fighting emotion as he asked me, “Promise me?”
“I promise,” I said.
When I hung up the phone, I pressed my fingers to my temples and breathed deeply. We would figure this out.
“You know,” I said as Jenny handed me a bottle of ibuprofen. “I’m not a violent person. But Gary should avoid me in dark alleys.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” she replied.
Chapter SEVEN
No one could find Gary, but there wasn’t really time to search for him. The police force in Silver Falls was tiny, and even with Zee calling everyone she knew and having them keep an eye out, no one had seen him.
“He must be gone,” Simon said a
s Zee handed Carver a chicken fried steak with extra everything. I had yet to ask him to keep the pit bulls, because I wanted to do it when Zee wasn’t around. I avoided her gaze. I suspected she’d be able to see my plan if our eyes met.
Az brought me his new flavor of waffles, it was a triple chocolate waffles and delicious, but even I felt it was a bit too sweet. I finished about four bites, before I couldn’t eat anymore.
My appetite was off. The stress of this many dogs was killing me. Jenny was more and more useless. The weird guy, Johnny, had called five more times as though I could somehow make the missing Gary call him.
We’d been able to return to home quite a few of the dogs between us and the vet’s office, but there were still more than we could logistically handle.
“So that guy drove down from Tillamook and is personally looking for Gary?” Zee asked. She slurped her chicken noodle soup as she leaned into Carver.
I nodded. We were waiting for Tom to show up and feed him, but he was late. The diner was about to close, and I wasn’t sure if I should worry about him. He was a full grown man, I told myself. And he was just driving around looking for a car. That was hardly dangerous.
“It’s weird that he’s here,” Carver said.
“I guess he promised his kid,” I told them.
“But,” Zee said, “If you include all the countryside, there’s a lot to search. Let alone, how close Neskowin and Lincoln City are. Gary could be anywhere.”
She was scowling at the customers who were lingering over their late lunch. Carmen was in the back singing and washing dishes while Roxy was clearing tables.
“Rosie luv,” Az called from the kitchen, “I think I hear your phone.”
I checked my pocket and realized that I’d left it in my bag when I’d put the Great Dane in the office. I hopped up, bussing my still full plate and then went back to the office. I missed the call, but when I grabbed my phone, I was shocked to see that I’d missed 17 calls from Tom and nearly as many from Jenny. Before I’d even made it back to the dining room, my phone was ringing again.
