The More the Terrier (4 page)

She stared from the cop, to Matt, to me, looking confused. “My niece, but—”

“What’s her phone number?” I withdrew my BlackBerry from my pocket, ignoring the glares from both men.

“I . . . I’m not sure.”

I got her name, at least, from Mamie, did a search on my smartphone, and made the call—noticing, as I pushed in the number, that Bethany still stood near one of the media vans. She was pointing in our direction.

Obviously, she’d noticed the uniformed cop standing by Mamie, too.

Fortunately, I reached Janice Spelling immediately. I told her what was going on with her aunt. “Are you local—in L.A.?” I asked, since her law firm had a couple of offices.

“Yes, but I haven’t seen my aunt in . . . Never mind. I’ll be there in half an hour. Please tell her not to answer any questions.”

“Okay,” I assured her, then hung up. “Don’t say anything till she’s with you, okay, Mamie?”

“Okay, but—”

“Fine. Let’s wait over here.” I’d spotted a cement bench in what had once probably been Mamie’s garden and led her over to it. We both sat.

I suspected what was coming. It was entirely appropriate. Psych evaluation and likely probation or not, Mamie might be questioned about whether this was her property, how long the animals had been under her care and control, and whatever else it might take to determine whether there was enough evidence to arrest her for animal cruelty.

I was certain what the answer would be.

Chapter 4

There wasn’t much I could do after that, except to worry about the situation . . . and the animals. Would they all be okay?

And what about Mamie? What would happen to her now?

Did I care? Despite what she had become, yes, I did. I supposed it was because of our history.

A short while later, the woman I assumed was Mamie’s niece arrived—a lady around my age in a business suit who hurried up to the gate, showed an ID, and was hustled inside by one of the cops guarding the entry.

I hurried over to her. “I’m Mamie’s . . . friend, Lauren Vancouver. Are you her niece?”

“Yes, I’m Janice Spelling.” She didn’t meet my eyes as she spoke. “Look, I’ll do what I can for her, but the thing is—well, the family has mostly lost contact with her.” She gazed at the activity, watching animals being shuttled off the property.

“You knew of her hoarding?” I asked in as nonjudgmental a tone as I could manage.

“That’s why we haven’t talked to her for a while.” Janice finally looked directly at me, and I saw the regret in her expression. “We saw what she was becoming, tried to get her help . . . but she got mad at us. Things continued to deteriorate between us, and—Well, I’ve read up on hoarders. What happened with our family isn’t unusual. But maybe now I can do something . . . although I’m not a criminal attorney, and I think she’ll need one. Can you tell me where she is?”

I pointed to the house, and Janice hurried in that direction.

In a bit, Mamie was ushered back through the gate. She shot me a frantic smile before being loaded into an official vehicle the way the animals had been—a cop car, not an Animal Services van. Her niece followed, a set of car keys in her hand. I figured she genuinely intended to do what she could for her aunt.

But what she’d said wasn’t a surprise. I’d heard of families trying hard but eventually giving up on determined, psychologically unstable hoarders.

Matt again assured me that Mamie was being taken to a hospital for a mental evaluation. The animal evacuation was pretty much over by then. The crowd had begun to disperse, and so had the media vans.

I’d taken a place on the sidewalk near the gate where the animals were brought out, a good location for viewing as much as possible while staying out of the way. I stood there now with my arms folded, hugging myself in solace.

After Mamie was gone, Matt joined me again. “This really sucks.” I didn’t even try to keep the dejection from my tone. He’d know what I was feeling anyway.

Matt is around six feet tall. He looks good in his uniform—khaki shirt, green slacks, and jacket, with a nametag and all the patches and badges to show he was highly placed within Animal Services.

Right now, he appeared as grim as I felt. “I agree,” he said. “At least none of the animals looked too ill or malnourished. With luck, they’ll all be okay.” At least he was confirming my initial impression and not making me feel like a foolish optimist.

“Isn’t this great!” chirped a perky voice from behind me. I knew who it was even before I turned. Bethany was smiling, hands clasped in a gesture that suggested she might start applauding.

“What do you mean?” My voice must have sounded as menacing as I felt, since Matt put an arm around me and squeezed gently.

“All those animals have been saved and the person who hurt them will be punished. I’m just so glad I was able to do this.”

I blinked at her. I’d never believed that attractive women were airheads, even those who used too much makeup. Plus, I’d gathered from the little I knew about her background that Bethany was probably a smart lady.

So what was she talking about?

“What did you do?” Matt’s soft words echoed my thoughts.

“Didn’t Lauren tell you? I’m a friend of Mamie’s. I was so worried about her and the animals that I started trying to help her. She wouldn’t let me, though, even when I pushed her a bit to join my network of rescuers.” A slight pout creased her brow, but she didn’t allow it to stay very long. Maybe it would stick and ruin her perfect looks. “But she did the next best thing and called Lauren. Lauren called Animal Services, I’ll bet.” She met my eyes.

My eyes are green, set in a mid-forties face that has weathered fairly well, but isn’t especially glamorous—and certainly not slathered with a lot of makeup.

Hers, on the other hand, could have been ready for a Hollywood camera operator to start filming the second she began to speak her lines. Her words definitely sounded enhanced with fiction.

“Since you obviously knew about this situation before,” I said between gritted teeth, “I’d still like to understand why you didn’t get help sooner for both Mamie and these poor animals.”

“I was just so hoping that Mamie would come to her senses herself.”

Liar! I wanted to shout. But I could only guess at her real agenda, and I was sure it had to do with garnering her lots of favorable publicity.

“Right.” I no longer wanted to try to be civil to this woman. “Would you walk me to my car, Matt?”

“Sure.”

As we started down the sidewalk, I heard Bethany call, “Nice to have met you, Lauren. You, too, Captain Kingston.”

I hadn’t parked far away. As we stood at the door of my car, I said to Matt, “Can you tell me now—I mean, what’s likely to occur with Mamie and the animals?”

“Well, basically, the animals are considered to be her property. The best-case scenario for them and for her would be if she decided to surrender them, but most hoarders don’t do that. If she wants, she can contest the legality of the seizure. She’s not likely to win. A seizure is considered legal if the officers conducting it believed that immediate action was necessary to protect the animals. After the hearing, assuming it’s decided against Mamie, she’ll start being assessed fees for the care of the animals, and if she doesn’t pay, she’ll be deemed to have abandoned them. With that number of animals, the cost will get pretty steep, so eventually she’ll probably have to stop paying and lose legal ownership of them anyway.”

“I see.” I wondered if I could convince Mamie to surrender the animals right away. She seemed lucid at least part of the time.

But as much as I found myself worrying about what would happen to Mamie, I was even more concerned about her supposed property.

“You’ll keep me informed, won’t you?” I asked Matt. “About how all the animals are doing? And you’ll make sure that someone—”

“Calls to let you know if any is in danger of being euthanized. Of course. That’s my main assignment from you these days, isn’t it?” Though his words were sarcastic, he sounded amused.

“Sure is,” I agreed with a smile. The truth was that I enjoyed Matt’s company. Enjoyed our relationship, whatever it was. Just friends with benefits? A prelude to something more? Not as far as I was concerned.

“I figured.” He glanced around, as if assuring himself that no other Animal Services folks were around, then bent and planted a quick kiss on my mouth. “I’ll be in touch.”

I drove back to HotRescues as quickly as I could, trying not to think too much about what I’d just experienced.

By then, it was late afternoon. I pulled into my designated spot in the parking lot and got out of my car—my dark gray Toyota Venza crossover. I loved this car, partly because I’d gotten it with a variety of pet-friendly accessories, which worked well for the director of a pet rescue facility.

The air, unsurprisingly, was filled not only with the usual sounds of a few barking dogs, but also by mechanical and hammering noises.

I smiled to myself as I got my purse from the car floor and used my key fob to lock the door. Those had been the usual sounds for a couple of months now. I was thrilled about the new building Dante was having constructed at HotRescues after buying the property next door.

After the terrible things that had gone on at HotRescues a while ago—including a murder—I’d been certain that, despite having a security company on call, we had to have someone here at night. Having better sleeping quarters would be wonderful.

The main buildings on the original HotRescues site consisted of our office at the front, a middle building containing other offices and some of the rescued animals, and a storage structure at the back that also contained our laundry facilities. There was no good place for someone to hang out overnight.

Hence, the new building. The existing center building’s second floor, where the overnight security people slept on a couch in an empty office, would be converted into an apartment. All the offices currently located there would move into the new structure when it was completed, and there would be room for more small animals downstairs. The new property next door would also be fixed up with more kennels for larger dogs.

HotRescues was growing.

I walked through the side door into the welcome area. Nina was there at the table behind our attractive leopard-print reception desk, working on the computer. She turned just as Zoey, from somewhere near her feet, dashed toward me. I knelt and gave my dog a hug, hanging on as she wriggled in my arms and licked my cheek. Under other circumstances, her enthusiasm at our reunion would have made me laugh. Not today.

“What happened?” Nina demanded. “Or shouldn’t I ask?”

With a final pat on Zoey’s head, I rose. My face must have reflected my angst. No matter what that egotistical brat Bethany was claiming, she hadn’t done anything to save those poor animals. She certainly hadn’t acted fast enough, once she suspected what was going on.

I’d been the one to call in the authorities. Not that I gave a damn about who received any public kudos. I knew I’d done the right thing. But I couldn’t help wondering about how all this would really affect Mamie.

“Do me a favor, will you?” I asked Nina.

“What’s that?”

“Check on the Internet to see all you can find about why people who care about animals become hoarders. And what usually happens to them after they’ve been found out. I know what’s likely to happen with Mamie officially, since Matt told me, but I want to know any unofficial scoop. Do they hoard again? Do they hurt themselves . . . ?”

“You found a hoarding situation there?”

I nodded and sighed. Putting my bag on the floor, I lowered myself into a chair beneath the window, at the small table where we asked people interested in pet adoption to fill out initial forms. Zoey lay down at my feet.

I glanced around at photos we had hung on the bright yellow walls—lots of happy pets with their new adoptive humans. That made me smile. It always did.

Nina joined me. “Tell me about it, then I’ll go online.”

I gave her a thumbnail version of who Mamie had been to me and what had happened that morning.

“I think you need a hug, Lauren,” Nina said when I was done, and I let her make good on the offer.

“Any visitors today?” I asked. “Potential rehomings?”

“A couple of real possibilities.” She described a young lady who had just gotten her first job and post-school apartment and had fallen for one of our kittens, and a couple whose dog had recently passed away and were looking for a new companion.

“Great,” I said, cheering a little. “I’ll talk to you more about them later.” I crossed the welcome room to the hallway with Zoey at my side, then turned back toward Nina. “No hurry about finding statistics on hoarders. Even if there’s something that can be done to help them, Mamie’s in the system now, at least, undergoing psychological evaluation.”

“I hope they hospitalize her forever,” Nina spat. “Or throw her in jail. Sorry, Lauren. I know she was your friend, but—”

“You’re absolutely right,” I told her, then headed toward my office.
But maybe you’re a little wrong, too,
I couldn’t help thinking.

I sat down at my desk. To help understand my own hypocrisy, I decided to call Dr. Mona but only got our semiresident shrink’s voice mail.

I still wanted to discuss this with someone official. The HotRescues vet tech, Angie Shayde, was sweet and young and would have an opinion, but I decided instead to call Carlie. As a veterinarian, she’s a wellness aficionado. Besides, her TV show is on the Longevity Vision Channel, a cable network that focuses even more on human life than animals.

I explained to her what I’d seen today, as well as my strange ambivalence.

“You poor thing.” Her immediate sympathy made me feel a little better. “I’m nearly done here for the day. Want to get together for dinner?”

“As long as it includes a bottle of wine.”