Barking Detective 04 - The Chihuahua Always Sniffs Twice (11 page)

Jimmy G sat in his ’62 Thunderbird half a block down the street from the Valentine Gallery. He was on a stakeout, surreptitiously watching his own operative to make sure she followed through on his instructions. Stakeouts were usually boring affairs, but he didn’t mind this one: Jimmy G thought this Jillian Valentine was a pretty hot number, easy on the eyes, even liked her retro-hippie style of dress. Of course, he wouldn’t include that in his next report to the judge. He knew that older brothers could get kind of wacko-overprotective of their little sisters, something he’d found out the hard way when he was dating Kimberly Haney back in high school and her brother, Chad, big linebacker on the Roosevelt Roughriders football team, had taken exception and boffed him upside the head.

Anyway, he could see Geri talking to Jillian on the sidewalk outside the art gallery and wanted to know what they were saying. So he took out the directional mike that had cost him plenty, took off his fedora and put on the headset, then pointed the mike at them.

All he got was static—snap, crackle, and pop!—like he’d put his ear next to a bowl of Rice Krispies. Blasted thing! It was supposed to pick up sound from exactly where you pointed it, with a range of a hundred yards or more, not make him listen to his breakfast. Jimmy G tried to adjust the mike’s receiver, but all he got when he tried it again was louder static.

He shut the thing off and tossed it on the seat beside him. Never should have bought it used, he thought, especially from those bums at Liberty Pawn & Loan.

Jimmy G lit up a stogie and puffed on it hard. He had to do something. He needed to get his mitts on a copy of the trust document. Somebody had to have another one besides the one he’d lost.

Just then, Jillian came up the stairs at the side of the gallery with another bunch of what looked like art prints in her hands. She said something else to Geri, then loaded the prints into the carrier on the back of a little baby-blue motor scooter and putted off down the street. Where was she going?

Jimmy G grabbed his cell phone and called Geri.

When she answered, he said, “What’s shakin’, doll?”

“Not much,” Geri said. Then she asked. “Where are you calling from?”

Jimmy G hesitated. Could she see his car? “At the office. Why do you ask?”

“The call is so clear. You could be right across the street.”

Jimmy G almost dropped the phone. Was she messing with him? He refocused. “Did you get a copy of the trust document?”

“No. I talked to Jillian, but she said she never saw it.”

“That’s what they all say.”

“What?”

“Jimmy G means that’s a sure sign of guilt.”

“We just finished talking to her. She’s heading off to Sequim.”

“Good. See if you can look around and find it. I bet she has a copy squirreled away.”

“You want me to break and enter?”

“Do what you have to do. Take the initiative.”

He hung up before she could say another word. While Geri was looking through the building, he needed to follow Jillian, just in case she could lead him to someone else who did have a copy of the trust document.

He could still hear the buzz of her little scooter (probably needed a tune-up) and caught up quickly, just as she pulled onto the only high-speed highway on the island, heading north. Jimmy G made sure to keep several cars between him and her, so she wouldn’t suspect she was being tailed.

She pulled off the highway at the exit for the Keystone Ferry. There was a long line of cars when he reached the ferry dock. Looked like they would have to wait for the next boat, which was an hour away. But what Jimmy G had forgotten was that motorcycles and bicycles got waved onto the ferry first. Jillian on her little blue scooter just breezed past the long line of cars and onto the ferry.

All Jimmy G could do was sit there and watch, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel, as the ferry sailed away.

“Clearly she has some issues,” said Pepe, as we watched Jillian zip away on her little blue scooter.

“Yes, and we didn’t learn much,” I said, mournfully.

“At least, we know where to find her,” Pepe said. “And I have the portrait of my love.”

The phone rang. It was Jimmy G.

“What’s shakin’, doll?” he asked.

“Not much,” I said. The call was so clear, it sounded like he was across the street. “Where are you calling from?”

There was a long pause. “At the office. Why do you ask?”

“The call is so clear. You could be right across the street.”

There was a clunk. Maybe he dropped the phone. Then I heard him ask: “Did you get a copy of the trust document?”

“No, I talked to Jillian, but she said she never saw it.”

“That’s what they all say,” he muttered.

“What?”

“Jimmy G means that’s a sure sign of guilt.”

“We just finished talking to her. She’s heading off to Sequim.”

“Good. See if you can look around and find it. I bet she has a copy squirreled away.”

“You want me to break and enter?”

“Do what you have to do. Take the initiative.”

But it turned out we didn’t have to. Jillian had left the door unlocked. I guess there are some advantages to living in a small town. Still, there wasn’t much to see in the studio, except for those disturbing paintings. A narrow flight of stairs led up to the gallery, which was pretty spooky with the dim light filtering through the yellowing newspaper on the windows. It was hot as blazes up there.

Pepe trotted around, sniffing in the corners. I studied the paintings she considered salable: the same disturbing mix of pastel seascapes and dogs with human faces.

A small gray metal desk sat in one corner of the room. The surface was bare except for a white plastic phone. The screen read 12 missed calls. I pushed the button to see who they were from. Several from J Valentine. One from the Floral Fantasy B&B. And the last was from my boss, Jimmy Gerrard.

“Odd,” I said, noting the phone numbers in my notebook.

“What is odd,” said Pepe, “is that she has no food fit for a dog.”

He was sniffing around the bottom drawer, which contained a stash of M&Ms. In a top drawer was a telephone book. Both Boswell and Bickerstaff were listed under the Bs, I noted. Beneath the phone book was a recent bank statement, which showed a negative balance and a sheaf of eviction notices. Also a collection of bar napkins, with male names and phone numbers scribbled on them.

“Nothing here,” I said to Pepe.

There was only one place left to look: the building had a lower floor. So we headed back down to the studio, past the creepy paintings of dogs, and down another set of narrow stairs to what appeared to be Jillian’s living quarters.

There was a gorgeous view out the windows of the dark waters of the bay and the distant islands, swathed in mist. But that was all that was picturesque. The room was covered with trash.

“Has it been tossed?” I asked. The bed was just a mattress on the floor. It was covered with clothes. Drawers were open. Beer cans and a few empty vodka bottles had been flung about. An ashtray sitting on the floor was full and spilling onto the carpet. A bong sat on top of the chest of drawers. The whole room reeked of tobacco, incense, and the somewhat sweet smell of marijuana.

The walls were hung with paintings of naked men. One thing I will say, Jillian seemed to have eclectic taste. There were bulked-up black men with gleaming abs. And tattooed biker types with long silver beards and big bellies. There was a large man with a hairy chest and a slim man with golden skin and a dancer’s physique. But the weird thing was that they all had the heads of dogs.

“The Egyptian god Anubis had the head of a jackal,” said Pepe, studying the paintings. “And Saint Christopher is sometimes depicted with the head of a dog.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“I watched a very interesting show on the Discovery channel about cynocephaly,” Pepe said. “Do you realize that the Greeks believed there was a race of dog-headed people who lived in India?”

“And did they ever find any of these people?” I asked.

“Fortunately, no,” said Pepe. He trotted through an adjoining door. “Geri, I think I have found something interesting.”

I walked into a narrow kitchen with a dusty window at one end. The counters were as cluttered and messy as the bedroom, with unwashed bowls and empty glasses and pans full of caked-on food lying about.

“What is it, Pepe?” I asked.

“I believe this pan was last used to cook chocolate-chip cookies,” Pepe said, standing on his little feet and sniffing a baking sheet on the yellow linoleum table under the window.

I came closer, but it was hard to see in the dim light. Still, I trust my dog.

“Do you suppose there are any more cookies around?” I said. I didn’t see any plates full of cookies or ceramic cookie containers. Perhaps in the refrigerator. I opened the door and immediately slammed it shut again. It was full of takeout containers, and it smelled like something had died in there.

“I believe there is a cookie under here,” said Pepe, scratching at a stack of newspaper that had been piled on the table.

Sure enough, I found a cookie—rather dried up, rather crumbly—under the edge of an overhanging paper.

“Yum!” said Pepe, licking his lips.

“No way!” I said. “Don’t you realize this is evidence? This could be one of the cookies used to poison the cocker spaniels.” I looked around to see if I could find a plastic bag to slide the cookie into and finally found a box of zip-top bags in a lower drawer. I slipped the cookie into the plastic and zipped the seal.

Just then we both heard it. Footsteps on the rickety stairs that led down the side of the building. They descended rapidly. Thud, thud, thud. Luckily there were three flights of stairs.

“
Rapido!
” said Pepe. “Out onto the deck!”

There was a flimsy sliding-glass door that that led onto a narrow deck, which hung out over the water. I yanked it open, and Pepe and I squeezed through the tiny crack, he a little more easily than I. Then I shoved the door shut, and we inched our way to a position at the end of the deck where we could not be seen from the inside. The deck was crowded with furniture: some flimsy canvas chairs, one of those loungers that looks like it’s made out of rubber bands, and a few crates being used as tables.

The footsteps reached the bottom floor, and we heard the rattle of the doorknob. I had a moment of relief when I realized that Jillian did keep the door to her personal space locked, but that quickly disappeared when we heard a loud thud and the slam of the door against the wall. Whoever it was had kicked in the door.

I had another moment of relief when I thought maybe it was the police. Maybe they were raiding the place, looking for marijuana. Of course, it would be hard to explain what we were doing crouched on the deck. And they had not identified themselves, which I thought was usually part of police procedure.

My hope vanished when Pepe whispered.

“Geri, I recognize his smell.”

“What smell?”

“The smell of the intruder,” he said.

“What about it?” I was getting impatient.

“This is the same person who broke into Carpenter Manor,” he said.

“Oh!” That wasn’t good.

“Should we not see who it is?” asked Pepe.

“I think not,” I said. “What we should do is get off this deck somehow.”

I looked around for an exit. The deck hung out over the water, which was about twelve feet below us. I could imagine jumping in, but what about Pepe? He’s afraid of water. Maybe I should throw him in, then dive in after him.

From inside the room, we could hear the sound of a room being tossed. Thumps as drawers hit the ground. A grunt as someone heaved the mattress up. The clatter of glass breaking.

A pile of rocks were ranged up along the side of the building, heaped against the foundations. They were huge and jagged. I knew I couldn’t land safely on them, certainly not with Pepe. But my purse, containing the cookie evidence and my cell phone, could not go into the water. I threw it down onto the rocks. It landed, perched precariously on a boulder.

Maybe it was the flash of the purse flying by the windows inside that caught the eye of the intruder. The next moment I heard the rattle of the sliding-glass door in the track.

“Time to go!” I said to Pepe. I picked him up and tossed him into the water below. He made a little splash. I heard a little yelp.

Then I dove in after him.

We got out of the water almost as fast as we got in, as soon as the footsteps that came out on the deck went back into the house. I grabbed Pepe and paddled to the rocky shore. We heard a door slam on the other side of the building and then the sound of a motorcycle taking off.

I grabbed my purse from the rock, and we squelched our way up to my car.

“Was that really necessary?” Pepe asked, as he stood in the passenger seat and shook himself off, spraying water all over me and the interior of the car.

“Was that really necessary?” I asked him, using tissues from my purse to wipe off the dashboard and interior passenger window on his side.

“Certainly it was,” he said. Pepe gave himself another brisk shake. “And I repeat my question. Was that really necessary?”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, though I knew very well what he meant.

“Throwing me into the water?”

“It was necessary to protect you.”

“I see,” he said. “And following your same logic, it was necessary for me to dry myself off. You should not be upset about that.”

“Oh, come on.” I hated it when my dog was sarcastic.

“
Sí.
You humans can change your wet clothes,” he told me. “We
perros
cannot change our fur.”

My dog always has an answer for everything. But in this case he was right. My dress was still wet as we pulled away from the curb, and I knew the dunking was going to coil my hair into tight ringlets. Still I thought I would dry out pretty fast as the temperature gauge on the dashboard indicated that it was eighty degrees outside. I had slipped out of my soggy sandals and was driving barefoot.

“Where are we going, Geri?” Pepe asked.

“To Port Townsend,” I said. “I want to check in at the B&B and change clothes. So we’re heading for the Keystone ferry.”

“Is there any way to get there without taking a ferry?” Pepe asked in a forlorn voice.

I had to laugh at the contrast between his earlier ferocity and his fear of ferries.

“Pepe, we’re on an island,” I said. “there’s no way off unless we take a ferry.” Technically, that wasn’t true. Whidbey Island is connected to the mainland by a long, narrow, high bridge over Deception Pass. But if we went that way we would have to drive east to Mount Vernon, then south to Seattle and farther south to Tacoma, then head west to the coast, and finally drive north up the Olympic Peninsula. All to avoid the Puget Sound, which gets in the way. And it would add about six hours to our trip, maybe seven, given that rush hour was approaching, whereas my current itinerary would get us there in half an hour. As long as there wasn’t a lot of traffic.

 

 

We were lucky! Reservations are recommended for that particular ferry, but we managed to get on at the very back of the line. Pepe shuddered when he saw that a metal chain was the only thing that kept my little Toyota from sliding across the deck into the choppy, gray-blue waters of the sound. That and the blocks the attendants slid under my back tires. I was tempted to open up the trunk and dig out some clean clothes, but we were too exposed on the ferry dock for me to change in the car, and I didn’t want to leave Pepe alone to go change in one of the restrooms. Anyway, the trip is so short. We were in Port Townsend in thirty minutes.

Jimmy G called while we were waiting in the ferry line. He sounded confused. At first he called me Boris. I hoped he wasn’t off on another one of his benders. He didn’t sound very interested in the news about the chocolate-chip cookies, but he did suggest that when I took them to Hugh, I should ask him about the trust. So I was heading to the vet clinic as soon as I changed my clothes.

 

 

The Floral Fantasy B&B was a Victorian-style mansion, similar to Boswell’s house, but in the heart of downtown: surrounded by a white picket fence, painted in a soft green with pale pink trim, and decorated with window boxes full of orange nasturtiums and white daisies. I parked in the driveway, behind a silver SUV, and headed up to the front porch, where a white wicker sofa was plumped with purple and orange floral pillows. A cheerful doorbell summoned a young man with fair hair and gray eyes. He looked me over with a worried frown.

I had dried off to some extent, but I knew my curls were wild and my sundress was wrinkled.

“Hello, I’m Lionel,” he said. “Can I help you?” he asked in a tone that made it clear he doubted that he could.

“I’m Geri Sullivan,” I said, extending my hand. “My boss, Jimmy G, told me he had arranged for me to stay here.”

Lionel looked alarmed.

“Do you mean the Lavender Room?”

“I guess. He didn’t say which room.” That sounded nice.

“Well, I’ll have to check with Julian,” he said. “You can come on in, while I call him.” He started to wave me into the hall. I could see that it was painted in a charming shade of olive green and hung with watercolor paintings of flowers.

“Come on, Pepe!” I said, turning to call my dog, who was sniffing around the edge of the fence.

Lionel looked horrified. “Oh, dear, you can’t bring a dog in here!” he said. He clapped his hand over his nose. “We don’t allow animal guests. I’m terribly allergic to dogs.”

Pepe came running up. “I am not an animal,” he said. “I am her partner.”

“What is it, Lionel?” Another young man came out from an adjoining room. This young man had strawberry-blond hair and a freckled face. His eyes lit up when he saw Pepe. “Oh, what an adorable little dog,” he said, falling to his knees and taking Pepe’s snout into his hands. “Look at those lovely long ears!”

“You must be Kevin Carpenter,” I said, holding out my hand.

He looked puzzled but gave me a big smile.

“My boss gave me your name. He was the one who suggested I could stay here,” I said. “But if it’s a problem—”

“Just this one time I think we could make an exception,” said Kevin to Lionel.

Lionel frowned. “You know I’m allergic to dogs. Just like you’re allergic to cats. Would you ever be OK with letting a cat stay here?”

“If I keep him in my room?” I suggested.

“Yes!” Kevin turned to Lionel. “You’ll never have to be near him.”

“Pet dander floating around through the air!” Lionel rolled his eyes. “And what about our other guests? They might have allergies!”

“What about the Rose Room? It has a hardwood floor and can be easily swept. I’ll personally clean the room.”

“Oh, fine! Just make decisions to suit yourself. You always do!” Lionel flounced off down the hall.

Kevin sighed. “He’s always so dramatic. I think the allergy to dogs is all in his head. May I?” He bent down and held out his knuckles so Pepe could sniff them.

“He won’t bite,” I said.

“Not unless you are a
malvado,
” said Pepe, giving him a good sniff, starting with his shoes. Kevin scratched his head. “I’ve always loved dogs,” he said.

“Despite the fact that one killed your father?” I asked.

He straightened up.

“I’m doing research for Boswell,” I said.

He winced.

“Or rather I was doing research for Boswell. Until he died.”

Kevin reeled back. “What?”

“Yes, he was poisoned late last night.”

“That can’t be!” said Kevin, shaking his head. He looked troubled. “Let me show you to your room. It’s just this way.” He ushered us down the hall and into a room at the back of the house with a view of a fantastic rose garden. “You can see why we call it the Rose Room,” he said, waving his hand at the view.

“Yes,” I said, looking at the rest of the furnishings: a rose-red damask spread on the four-poster bed, which was also dotted with small green pillows, a chaise longue covered in a pink fabric, and pale-yellow silk curtains. A vase of roses on top of the dresser was reflected in the mirror on the wall. The flowers scented the air and dropped petals onto the polished surface of the wood.

“I hope you’ll be comfortable here,” said Kevin. “Now you must excuse me,” and he went scurrying off.

“The news about Mr. Boswell frightened him,” said Pepe.

“I know,” I said, as I went out to the car to fetch my suitcase. “Obviously either he feels he is in danger or he thinks someone else is.”

“I do not believe he is a murderer,” said Pepe. “On the other hand, it was most peculiar, but I did not smell any other person on the body of Boswell. Just as I did not smell another person on the body of Bickerstaff.”

“Well, that’s because they were poisoned,” I pointed out. “The murderer did not have to be on the scene.”

“One of the advantages of poison,” said Pepe. “But we must find out how it was administered.”

While we were talking, I changed into a linen skirt, a navy dotted-swiss blouse, and a pair of espadrilles. Not my most professional outfit, as Pepe was quick to point out (he likes to give me fashion advice), but all the other clothes I had brought were for my romantic weekend with Felix.

“Partner, we must make haste,” said Pepe. “Although the sun remains high in the sky until late on these summer nights, we have miles to go before we sleep.”

“Robert Frost again,” I murmured. Pepe seems quite fond of Robert Frost.

As we tiptoed past the office of the Floral Fantasy B&B, I could hear Lionel and Kevin arguing.

“I told you not to steal that paper,” Lionel said.

“It’s too late now.” That was Kevin.

“What are we going to do with it?” Lionel again.

“I don’t know. I think I should call my sister.”