Barking Detective 04 - The Chihuahua Always Sniffs Twice (19 page)

When we finally arrived at Carpenter Manor, the entrance to the driveway was blocked with a chain. Someone had painted
NO PARKING
in bright red letters on a piece of wood and propped it up against the chain. I got out of the car to release the chain and move the board so Felix could drive through and up the driveway to the house. I followed him more slowly, looking over at all the merriment happening next door. It seemed Colleen had been able to attract a good crowd to her farm. I counted four buses parked below the lavender fields, so she must have been able to get back on the bus tour.

Felix was releasing Pepe and Fuzzy from their confinement when I reached the car, which was parked in back of a little scooter and an old Chevy. Pepe ran over to the door, his tail wagging furiously.

“Happy to see the cocker spaniels?” I asked him.

“No, it is Phoebe! My love is here!” he declared, turning around in circles of joy.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said, but, sure enough, when Yolanda welcomed us into the living room, I saw the sleek and slender Phoebe towering above the churning pack of cocker spaniels. She was the only one who did not seem excited to see us, although she did let Pepe go up and sniff her. Perhaps the gift of the bacon had helped him win a little favor. Fuzzy dove right in and started nipping at the cockers playfully. Felix had to call her off, which was difficult as I was trying to introduce him to Yolanda.

“I brought back the trust document,” I said, digging it out of my purse. I hoped it looked enough like the one Yolanda had loaned us that she wouldn’t realize I had lost that one. She took it in her hands and began examining the pages.

Clara came in, dressed in a purple T-shirt that read
LOST LAKES LAVENDER FARM.
She greeted us and explained she had just come over to borrow some masking tape.

“How are you two doing?” I asked, expecting to hear a tale of woe.

“Actually, great!” said Clara.

“Yes, I’ve already hired a new lawyer,” said Yolanda. “She comes highly recommended, and she lives in Sequim, so it’s more convenient than working with Barry.” A cloud passed over her face. “Have the police figured out who killed him?”

“No, but we have figured out how it happened!” Pepe said.

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. But we have a new theory. We think someone might have poisoned Boswell’s vodka.”

Yolanda and Clara looked at each other.

“He did like his drinks. What did he call that?” Yolanda asked Clara.

“A lemon drop?” she suggested.

“He even kept a bottle of vodka here,” she said.

Pepe and I looked at each other.

“Do you suppose someone has tampered with that, too?” I asked.

“I’ll fetch it,” said Clara.

“No! Don’t do that,” I said. “It might have fingerprints on it. Let my dog sniff it.”

Yolanda and Clara looked at each other again. Then they looked at Felix. He just smiled and shrugged his shoulders. I carried Pepe into the kitchen, where Caroline was whisking some cream in a stainless-steel bowl. Little slices of pound cake were set out in china bowls and covered with fresh strawberries.

The vodka was up in a cupboard on top of the refrigerator. Caroline said she hadn’t touched it since it was put up there. I set Pepe on top of the refrigerator, and he sniffed the bottle from a cautious distance.

“I smell nothing but Mr. Boswell,” he said, “and also the yummy grease from a steak that was cooked in this kitchen last night.”

“Did you have steak last night?” I asked Yolanda.

She nodded. “How did you know that?”

“Detecting skill!” I said.

“My detecting skill!” said Pepe.

Pepe sat down on top of refrigerator and nodded his head with a regal air. “I can see why cats like being up so high,” he said. “You feel superior!”

“I don’t think this bottle is contaminated, but I don’t know,” I said. “Don’t touch it until we find out from the police if the poison is in the other bottle.”

“But I am too far from Phoebe,” said Pepe. “Take me down, Geri,
por favor.
”

I lifted him down and carried him into the living room. Phoebe had stayed behind and was standing, gazing out the window at the scene next door.

“Why is Phoebe here?” I asked.

“Colleen asked if we could keep her during the weekend,” Yolanda said. “She thought it would be too chaotic to have a dog running around the farm. The festival organizers really frown on that. Some people are afraid of dogs.”

“But Phoebe is worried. She senses an evil force at work,” said Pepe. “She cannot relax while she is over here. She needs to be protecting her property and her person.”

“Poor dog!” I said, rubbing the top of her velvety head. She turned and gazed at me with soulful dark eyes. Believe me, I could almost hear her saying, “Take me back home where I belong.”

“I wish I could take you over there,” I said.

“She’ll be fine here,” said Yolanda firmly.

“Oh, I have one other thing I need to tell you,” I said. “I don’t think you should take Henry to the vet on Monday. I think Hugh is doing unnecessary surgeries on the dogs.”

“Why would he do that?” asked Clara.

“Well, he gets paid, doesn’t he, for any services he performs? And that kind of surgery can be dangerous, especially in an older dog.”

“Sure, I’ll cancel it,” said Yolanda. “I never really liked him. I thought he was a bit sleazy, to tell you the truth.”

“Yes, sleazy is the word,” said Felix.

I ignored him.

“Thanks for bringing me the trust document,” said Yolanda. “Now I can give it to Sheila and she can get started.” She flipped through the pages.

“Oh, this is interesting,” she said, stopping at a page near the front. Her eyes narrowed as she read the sentences over again and again. “Look at this, Clara!” She passed the papers to her niece.

Clara studied the line Yolanda was pointing out. “It looks all right to me.”

“But it says that the trust applies to all the dogs living on the property at the time of Lucille’s death and their issue.”

“Yes.”

“That would include the farm.”

“How do you figure that?” Clara asked.

“Well, the farm is owned by Mrs. Carpenter’s estate. Colleen is just leasing it.”

“A good point!” Clara said. “You’ll have to ask Sheila her opinion, but I don’t see how it makes much difference.”

“Phoebe,” said Yolanda, looking over at the graceful black-and-white dog. Phoebe looked up briefly, then returned to her vigilant posture.

“Was Phoebe living on the property when Mrs. C died?” Clara asked.

“I think so,” said Yolanda. “We’d have to ask Colleen.”

“Surely if that was true, Colleen would have noticed it sooner,” Clara said.

“Well, I don’t think she’s ever seen a copy of the trust document,” I said. “I don’t think any of the heirs have.” Except for the judge, and he had torn it up. And Kevin, and he had stolen it from Jimmy G.

“Does this mean what I think it means?” asked Pepe, his voice full of wonder.

“What do you think it means?” I asked.

“I think it means Colleen doesn’t have any more money troubles,” said Clara, reading a little farther down the page. “Because anyone who is caring for one of the dogs or one of their issue receives an allowance, plus expenses.”

“I think it means Phoebe is exactly my favorite type of bitch!” said Pepe. “Beautiful and rich!”

“So you’re heading over to the farm for the lavender festival?” Clara asked. “You can come with me the back way, if you want.”

“That would be great,” I said.

“But you can’t bring the dogs,” she said.

I looked at Fuzzy and Pepe. Fuzzy was wrestling with one of the younger cockers. I think it was Victoria, the chocolate-colored one. Pepe was gazing dreamily at Phoebe, who was still glued to the window.

“Could we leave them here?” I asked Yolanda.

“Absolutely,” she said. “It’s good for the dogs to have some company.”

As Felix and I followed Clara out the door, I commented on the change in her aunt. “She seems like a different person,” I said. “So take charge. So confident.”

“I know,” said Clara. “It’s amazing. She’s always had other people bossing her around—Boswell, most recently. But having the full responsibility for the dogs, and defending the trust—that’s really energized her. She’s already cleaned up the office and turned it into her command center. And she’s organizing a memorial service for Boswell. It turns out she just needed something more fulfilling to do than take care of a pack of yapping dogs.”

We followed Clara through the gate in the chain-link fence and approached Colleen’s farm from the back. The chickens squawked at us as we passed their pen. We picked our way over some hoses that were lying in the garden rows.

“Have you heard anything more about who shot at the dogs?” I asked.

“No, not a word. I think the police department is just swamped making arrangements for the festival.”

“And how’s Jay?”

“Oh, no problems there,” said Clara. “He’ll be fine.”

“It was very brave of him to run straight at the shooter,” I said.

“He is very brave,” she said, with a blush.

“So have you been over here today?”

“Oh, yeah, I’ve been here since six this morning.” Clara led us in the back door of the farmhouse. It was hot and humid inside. The ovens were going full blast, I guess, and the house was full of people: women in yellow aprons, volunteers in purple T-shirts, vendors wearing lilac-colored baseball caps. Clara handed off the masking tape to Jay, who was sitting at a table in the living room, ticking off the names of volunteers who were coming in to sign up for various tasks.

I looked around—I studied interior design, and I’m always curious about how people decorate their homes. It seemed like Colleen might have inherited the furniture from her father: a nubbly beige sofa, a dark brown Barcalounger, a boxy old TV on a wooden table, a rag rug on the scuffed hardwood floor. The wallpaper was a faded yellow-brown with vertical maroon stripes.

She could really use her new fortune, I thought. Maybe she would hire me to redecorate the place. Just then, Colleen breezed in the door, smelling intensely of lavender, and rushed past us.

“We have the best news for you, Colleen,” Clara sung out. But Colleen said, “Just a minute,” and hurried down the hall.

“Should we really tell her?” I asked Clara.

“Tell her what?” Jay asked.

“We haven’t had a lawyer look at it,” I pointed out.

“What are you guys talking about?” Jay wanted to know.

“Colleen might inherit a whole bunch of money, just because of Phoebe,” Clara said.

“What?” That was Kevin, coming out of the kitchen.

“Oh, hi, Kevin,” Clara said. “Yes, the trust document says that whoever is taking care of a dog that lives on Mrs. C’s property gets an allowance and the use of the property for as long as the dog—and its issue—lives.”

“I didn’t see that clause in the trust document,” Kevin said.

“When did you have a copy of the trust document?” Colleen asked him, coming out of the hallway and giving him a hug. She still smelled like lavender, but it wasn’t as strong.

Kevin looked a bit embarrassed. “A guest left a copy behind,” he said. “Actually, a private detective that Julian hired.”

“What did this private detective look like?” I asked.

Kevin narrowed his eyes. “He dressed like a forties cartoon of a detective,” he said.

“Fedora, suspenders, narrow moustache, bulging eyes,” I said.

“Yes! How did you know?” Kevin asked. “In fact, he’s here. I saw him just a minute ago at Jillian’s booth.”

“Jillian is here?”

“Yes, I told her she could have a booth here,” Colleen said. “I felt sorry for her. She didn’t have enough money to pay the deposit for a booth at the fairgrounds or in town.”

“I need to talk to that guy,” I said.

“How do you know him?” Colleen asked.

“He’s my boss,” I said.

“But he’s working for Julian,” Kevin said. “I thought you were working for Boswell and the dogs.”

“That’s what I need to figure out,” I said.

I went storming out the front door and plunged right into the crowd, with Felix close behind me.

The front yard was awash with people. They were forming lines outside the booth that sold the specialty cocktail of the day; they were standing and swaying in front of the stage, where a guitar player and accordionist played rancheras and polkas; they were thronging the aisles of the gift shop; they were gathering around the still as the brownish liquid gushed out of the copper tubing and squirted into a plastic bucket; they were sitting at picnic tables with plates of food purchased from the kitchen booth, where Lionel was dishing up skewers of lavender-marinated chicken and green salad dressed with lavender-honey dressing; they were wandering through the fields of fragrant bushes that stretched out in long purple rows and scented with air with their sweet perfume.

It took a while, but I finally found Jillian’s booth, at the end of the line of booths. But it was empty. She had boxes full of the plastic-covered prints we had seen at her gallery lined up on a table in front. A few larger pictures were propped on stands on a side table, and there was a large easel in the back that was covered with a cloth.

“Where’s the artist?” I asked the young woman who was selling lavender wands and lavender wreaths at the next booth over.

“Oh, she went on an errand. She asked me to watch it for her,” she said. “Do you want to buy something?”

“No, I’m just looking,” I said, shuffling through the prints right in front of me.

“This looks like Phoebe!” said Felix, pulling out a copy of the print that Pepe had wanted, showing the farm dog sitting by the Lost Lakes sign.

“I think it is Phoebe,” I said. “Don’t let Pepe know there are copies of it. He thinks he has the original.”

Something about the print bugged me, and then I realized what it was. For Jillian to have captured the scene so well, she must have been on the property earlier. And that meant she had been near the cocker spaniels. That, combined with the suspicious chocolate-chip cookie and her disturbing paintings, made me wonder if she was the one who was trying to harm the dogs.

“Is it OK if I look at these others more closely?” I asked the neighboring vendor, inching my way behind the table.

“Sure,” she said. “I don’t think Jillian would mind.”

I slipped between the poles of the booth and studied the pastels propped on the table. There was no way to tell exactly when they had been painted, but there was a little camera sitting next to them. I picked it up and found the buttons that would allow me to view the photos.

To my horror, the first photo that came up was one of my boss, completely nude and lying on a rumpled bed, with a silly grin on his face. The date stamp said it had been taken only the previous day. I rapidly paged back past that, only to be even more horrified by the sight of Hugh the Handsome, sprawled out nude on one of the steel exam tables in his vet clinic. And the date stamp on that one was the previous night, in fact, the evening of the day when I had first visited Hugh, the evening when his clinic was supposedly burglarized. Clicking back, I finally came to the photos that confirmed my suspicions: one of Phoebe outside the sign for Lost Lakes on the day when the chocolate-chip cookies were left for the dogs, and then, even more damning, a photo of a plate of chocolate-chip cookies, lying by the driveway of Carpenter Manor.

“It was Jillian!” I said, turning to Felix and waving the camera around. “She’s the one who’s trying to kill the dogs!” But in my enthusiasm I knocked against the picture on the easel, and it went flying.

I set the camera down as I bent to pick the painting up.

“Ack!” I was really sorry I did. I was staring at a large oil painting of my boss. The painter had established a point of view near his feet and painted him as he lay in a rumpled bed, every detail of his anatomy displayed in great detail. Except for the fedora on his head, he was completely nude.

“Oh my God!” I said, turning my head away and groping for the cloth on the ground to cover it up. I wanted to erase the image from my brain, but I feared it would stay with me forever.

“Is that who I think it is?” Felix asked.

“Please just let me forget I ever saw this,” I mumbled.

In my haste to cover up the painting, I knocked it off the stand. It landed facedown in the dirt. When I picked it up, some dirt and grass clung to the wet paint. I tried to brush it off and got flesh-colored paint all over my hands and my polka-dotted navy sundress.

And just as I was holding it, paint side out, to avoid further contamination to the painting, I looked up and saw Jimmy G looking at me from the other side of the booth, a look of horror on his face.