THE WITCH AND THE TEA PARTY (A Rachael Penzra Mystery) (4 page)

“As I said, a lot of people don’t believe it, but I’ve seen too many examples of excellent dog owners, with a lot of experience behind them, who have ended up with virtually un-trainable dogs. The dogs learn very slowly and it never sticks completely. I’m not talking about breeds like malamutes who are often difficult to train. That’s completely different. With those dogs, it’s a genetic survival quality. I don’t say that Binky is an extreme example by any means, and hopefully time and work will make her fully functional. I do think she’s going to need a lot of patience. And I guess I can now admit that I never for a moment thought you’d do other than keep her.”

We laughed,
she heartily, me weakly. “We’ll manage,” I said again.

“I’ll let you know the results of the tests, but I don’t foresee any problems there. You have a darling little dog and she’ll bring you a lot of happiness.”

Binky wagged her tail in agreement. Actually, she hadn’t stopped wagging her tail. She rarely did when there was anything going on around her. She wagged a lot in her sleep, too. I gathered her up in my arms (she didn’t walk too well on a leash, either, though she always quickly adjusted her pace when she was pulled back. Unfortunately, she soon forgot…). I could see that we had a lot of research and work ahead of us, one way or another.

Patsy was quite upset when I told her the problem. “Oh no, Aunt Rachael, she just needs more time. She gets plenty of exercise and walks, but she’s the product of a puppy mill. No wonder she has a few handicaps.”

“Meanwhile, I’m going to arrange to have the main part of the yard fenced in for her,” I said. “I’ve been planning on doing that for George, even though he’s usually loose. Right now Binky stays right with him, but that could change at any time, especially if he goes to sleep and she gets bored.”

“I suppose we can have a professional work with her,” she grumpily conceded. “But I intend to be there for the lessons. If there’s something we’re doing wrong, I want to be sure we learn how to do it right.”

I left her to research a good trainer and to look up the information online. Bless the Internet for things like that. I intended to pay a long overdue visit to David’s. It had been five days since we’d been to the pound and while we’d talked a lot on the phone, things hadn’t worked out for us to be together. We’d planned on my bringing my two dogs to meet his.

The meeting went well, except that I did notice that I didn’t get my usual warm physical greeting from him. A quick hug as I got to the house and then all attention focused on the dogs. “Should we wait and let you put George and the puppy in the fence and then I let mine out? Or the other way around?” he asked.

“I think if you can handle them both on leashes, that might work best. George should be fine, but the puppy has a hard time keeping from being tangled. She won’t be a threat, though.”

He agreed and hurried back into the house to leash his dogs. I let George and Binky out. George happily marked everything as usual. The puppy followed and even peed. I was so proud. Maybe the vet was wrong after all.

“Chloe could smell the dogs right through the door,” David said. “She’s so smart. I can’t tell if Speckles could, or not.” Both dogs followed him out, the smaller one hanging back, but Chloe (he’d named his dogs almost immediately) moved forward to meet George confidently. She didn’t show any sign of aggression, and of course George was all friendliness. Speckles endured a thorough sniffing by him, but remained passive and didn’t return the favor. Binky was thrilled to see new potential friends and Chloe accepted his excited kisses with patience. Surprisingly, it was the submissive Speckles who was most interested in her. Her head came up and she even wagged her tail. It was the liveliest I’d seen her.

Even David was impressed. “Isn’t that strange?” he said. “Look at her
. I thought she’d be afraid of the puppy’s wildness. I wonder if she wasn’t a mother at some time.”

We decided that was the case. It suited
our sentimental sides.

It was a beautiful spring day so we sat outside on lawn chairs while the dogs played in the fenced area. Speckles froze whenever George was too close to her, but tried to play with Binky and Chloe. Only Chloe seemed to understand the concept of canine play. George bounced around, usually in circles
, while Binky spent her time trying to kiss whoever was closest. Speckles actually barked in what must have been excitement. The sound she made was raspy. We wondered if she’d ever let herself relax that much for a long time, if ever.

Binky was delighted to get in the car, delighted to be home, and proved it by urinating the minute she got inside. I sighed and got out the now-familiar equipment.

All in all it was a great day and we were glad to have grabbed it. The store opened the next day, Saturday, so fun and games time was over. The grind had begun in earnest.

I had actually had the store open for several weekends, so most of the small annual kinks had been worked out. Things had been moved,
the door bell replaced when it didn’t work half the time, and an unpleasant smell tracked down to a dead mouse carefully concealed under a couch cushion. It could have died of natural causes, but we’d had prior experience with Alexander’s hoarding instincts. The results were rarely pretty. Nobody seemed to have ever heard of a cat who hoarded, but while cats are
supposed
to be self-involved, he carried self-interest to new heights. Only one thing mattered in life, and its name was Alexander.

The tourists were out in full strength. The weather was beautiful and the recession’s effects, while still in strong evidence, had weakened as people fell back into their old habits. They didn’t spend as much or as readily, perhaps, but being human, they made up for not making as many large purchases by buying more smaller-priced items. I understood how fortunate I was in owning the building outright. So many small businesses, which are the backbone of our dying middle class, were floundering. It seemed, though, that optimism still was rampant, as new businesses replaced the old ones. A local antique dealer told me that while store sales were down, he’d established himself on the internet and did well there with an international clientele. People generally seem to manage, despite our governments.

David was a little worried about leaving his pets at home all day, even running out to his house on his lunch break. “They seem to be fine,” he said, sounding just a little disappointed. “They were glad to see me, but otherwise they hardly seemed to notice I was gone.”

“That’s wonderful,” I enthused, hoping to channel his outlook. “It shows how comfortable they are with you. You’re the master and they know you won’t desert them. That’s exactly how they’re supposed to feel.”

He agreed, sighing a little. “I’m glad they’re contented.”

“Did you notice the
fortune telling sign in Dora’s window?” I asked, changing the subject before he became too melancholy. “I’ve seen quite a few people looking at it. Some have gone inside.”

“We’ll have to get over there and take a peek,” he said. “I’m curious to see what they’ve done.”

Dora ran what she called an antique shop. “Collectibles” might be fairly accurate, but for the most part it fit the saying, “One man’s junk is another man’s treasure”. Surprisingly, she did pretty well off it. My main concern was with her tendency to steal from people, although to her credit, she seemed to have her kleptomania under control since she started hanging out with her new buddies. Since she always left something in place of the purloined item, she probably hadn’t stocked her store with any of her five-finger discount merchandise. The trouble was that often when you found what she’d left, it was in some obscure spot and difficult to pinpoint exactly when it had been left behind.

She and Aunt Myrtle and Moondance often took off to hit the yard sales or auctions. Mac, Dora’s brother, was called into service with his old truck if they bought too many, or too large, items. If the mood struck her, Dora would close her store without regard for any potential loss of customers. Surprisingly, this seemed to enhance the value of her items. Everybody thought he or she would be the one to find the secret treasure in the midst of her goods. Fat chance. While she left most of the things in the shop, she and her cohorts carefully checked out questionable things on EBay. “Word of a good bargain
being unearthed off and on gets around,” she assured me. “Even amongst the tourists. So it’s worth letting a few things go cheaply to get customers in the store.”

And now they had a new calling card. I really was curious to see the setup, and had only restrained myself from running over there sooner on the theory that I didn’t want to encourage them in any way. Ha. As if they needed my input one way or another.

David went first, using his afternoon break time to run over for a quick once-over. “They’re really busy,” he told me when he returned, sounding a little awed. “I know none of them has an ounce of psychic ability, but it’s uncanny how convincing Moondance sounds. I eavesdropped by going to the back of the store, the big addition area, and listening through a small hole they have conveniently drilled as a listening post. Your aunt showed it to me, quite proudly. I hope you don’t mind my interfering, but I warned her to keep her mouth shut about it. She said I was the only one they’d told, but…”

“They’ve probably kept it a secret
,” I assured him. “They have a strong sense of self-preservation that pops up now and then. You would have known if she’d been lying. She isn’t very good at it.”

“Oh, I don’t think they ever mean to really lie,” he said, naively. Intelligence, even street smarts,
don’t necessarily mean a man is always invulnerable to everything. Somewhere, based on who knows what, he’d decided that my three problems were sweet little old ladies who were thrown into chaotic situations by unkind chance. I knew better. They not only went looking for trouble, they’d create it if it wasn’t handy.

I just smiled in response. I don’t want him thinking that I’m some sort of vicious monster, picking on the elderly. But they weren’t elderly. They were seniors, but well able to get around and get into as much mischief as possible. Somehow, “elderly” struck me as a title for people who were incapable of functioning rather than a particular age. Even those who were physically impaired don’t strike me as necessarily being elderly. It seems to be more a state of mind.

David was right. Business was booming at the fortune telling room. There was a line of people chatting happily as they waited. I wandered over and eavesdropped. “Janice said that she’s marvelous. She mentioned Janice’s dead cat and understood that she was still in mourning,” one woman said to the lady behind her. “And Elaine said she guessed about the divorce and told her it was all for the best. That was a real comfort, because she’s not handling it well.”

The others in line listened avidly. Hmm, I thought. That wouldn’t be a bad way to advertise your work, setting up an undercover shill. I skirted the crowd and approached Dora who was sitting by her till (an old shoe box) listening to a customer rave about how wonderful her reading had been. I jerked my head toward the
curtained area behind the fortune booth and Dora nodded to show she got the message. I slipped through the bead curtain after unlatching the rope across the doorway. The rope might not stop anybody, but the beads gave plenty of warning. That was made clear when Aunt Myrtle popped into view from behind a pile of boxes.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said, relieved. “People pay no attention to the rope sometimes.”

As if a little rope would ever have stopped
her
from getting somewhere she wanted to be.

“Dora didn’t use to have that problem, did she?” I asked.

“No, it’s just since we started up the fortune telling. They seem to think we’re hiding some mind-reading device back here or something. You wouldn’t believe how snoopy they are.”

“Can’t they hear us talking?” I dropped my voice to a whisper. “Through the peephole?”

“David told us not to tell anybody, and then he goes and tells you?” She sounded like she was disappointed in a naughty child.

“He thought I probably knew already,” I hurriedly rescued his reputation. “He was worried that someone might get upset and complain. Can they hear us or not?”

“No,” she said. “Besides, we have a cover we put over it when we aren’t using it. We can only hear them because of the hidden recorder that plays in here. You have to use earphones to hear it anyway. And there’s some mystic music playing that keeps people in the outside line from overhearing anything. Did you see how we roped it off so they couldn’t stand too close to the door? Kind of like the airport lines. That’s where we got the idea. Then the client leaves and Moondance calls for the next person. We’re really busy.”

“I see that you are,” I congratulated her. “What are you doing about charging them?”

“Oh, it’s free,” she smiled with great cunning. “But we have a big jar for tips. It’s right in plain view, so they see it immediately and can’t pretend they didn’t realize they should pay. Some of the strangest people are tightwads, some of them wearing clothes that obviously cost enough to feed a family for weeks. Then they don’t tip, or they leave a dollar or something. We’re taking pictures of them, so we can look them over later and try and keep them from returning. If they show up again, Moondance intends to give them either a terrible fortune or make it short and boring. Most people, though, are pretty generous.”