Dog Daze (10 page)

A man of average height wearing a button-front plaid shirt looked up. He viewed the group without speaking. Then his gaze fell on the drawing of Wink. His face crumbled into unfriendly lines.

“I don’t want one of them posters.” He stood stiffly, arms straight at his sides.

Before she knew what her legs were doing, Aneta had stepped from behind Gram to the counter. She extended her hand and said, “I’m Aneta. Please tell me why.” Although softly spoken, it didn’t sound like a question. It sounded like she expected the man to answer her. To her surprise, he did!

“Well…” He seemed uncertain, as though he had once known but couldn’t quite remember. “It’s, um…” He paused again then spoke up loudly. “The pollution problem.”

“Pollution problem?” Sunny sputtered. Vee yanked her behind Zeff’s bulky body.

“Yes,” the man said, now speaking more quickly and confidently. “All them dogs doing their business in the park. People won’t like it. They’ll track it everywhere. It will affect my business.”

Having said more than she had ever thought she’d say to a complete stranger, Aneta now stood silent. Everyone knew that dogs went to the bathroom, didn’t they? Why would it affect his business?

Vee stepped forward and placed the poster on the counter. The man looked at it and then looked away. She said firmly, “We have volunteers who will scoop poop. Maybe you don’t know why we chose the Dog Waddle for our fund-raising project for Oakton Founders’ Days?”

The man shifted from one foot to another and rearranged a counter display of catnip toys.

Esther was the next to stand near the counter. Although she didn’t lean over toward the man, she placed her neatly painted nails of each hand on the glass top. “It’s to help dogs who don’t have homes. You own a pet store. I bet you love dogs.”

Within the next few minutes, the other three girls had started a tag-team relay of Wink stories, as well as what Nadine had told them about Paws ‘N’ Claws Animal Buddies’ rescue efforts. The man stood frozen. Aneta hid a smile. She wouldn’t know what to do either if those three girls were talking that fast to her.

As the girls carried on, Aneta heard several yips. Turning her head toward the sound, she noticed the corner of a wire pen sticking from behind a pile of Puppy Pellet dog food, stacked about waist high. With nothing to add to the very capable job the girls were doing, Aneta wandered away from the counter toward the wire pen. Bags of Puppy Pellets lay haphazardly stacked six high on three sides of the pen.

“Oh!” Aneta gasped. “Little Winks!”

The pen held six basset puppies; two lay on their sides, flanks heaving as though they were too hot. Two more rose to their feet but didn’t approach Aneta. They looked tired. “Poor babies. Are you hot, too?” She glanced at an overturned water bowl. “No water, huh? I will get you some.” A bunch of Winks who needed help. The last two bassets in the pen, however, stopped tugging on a dirty towel and watched her, tails looping up like question marks. Together, with their big feet stepping squarely on their long ears, they stumbled across the pen toward Aneta.

Distracted from the water mission, she dropped to her knees, leaning against the pile of Puppy Pellets. “So cute,” she murmured. She couldn’t wait until Wink was at her home. She hoped all these puppies would find forever homes, too. Funny how there were so many bassets about Wink’s size. She stuck her fingers through the wire pen.

“Hi, puppies.”

At the same moment, the two stumblers collided with the pen and promptly sank sharp puppy teeth into her wriggling fingers.

“Ouch!” She jerked her fingers away. The action pushed her against a bag out of order in the stacking. One began to slowly slide. Aneta fell farther backward, kicking the pen with her flailing feet while she tried to balance herself.

“Whoa!” she cried.

“Ai-ai!” the puppies cried.

The dislodged bag pushed the one nearest it out of the stack. The entire wall of Puppy Pellets cascaded toward Aneta’s head. She pushed at the bags, but they were too big, too heavy, and gaining speed.

“Help!” she cried, throwing up her arms to ward off the heavy bags. They pushed her over, and faster than the breath to cry out, she lay half-buried in dog food. The yelping puppies increased their volume. Her cheek hurt from scraping the cement floor.

“Oh, ow.” She opened her eyes. “Help.” The logo of the bag scrunching her nose looked familiar.
Later
, Aneta thought.
I will think about it later when I breathe
.

A Clue to the Crocs Killer!

D
azed, she heard the girls approaching. “Aneta! He’s going to put the poster back up. Aneta? Aneta!”

Esther shrieked. “Aneta! Lord, help her!”

Yes, please, Lord
, Aneta thought, speaking to Him for the first time. Her cheekbone began to throb in beat with other parts of her body awkwardly twisted under too much puppy food. Puppy Pellets did not smell good. Especially when one of the bags had split open and she was nearly swimming in Pellets. Some were in her ear. Trying to push herself up while everyone pulled off bags, several Pellets crushed under her elbow.

Finally, she was free of Puppy Pellets. The girls helped her up and brushed her off. All but two of the puppies, still delighted at the entertainment, had settled down to a lower-voiced grunting and grumbling. The quiet pair raised their heads briefly, appearing too tired to care.

The pet-store man pushed past Gram and the girls to regard the mess. “I hope you’re not thinking to sue me,” he said to Aneta, who was touching her pulsating cheekbone. “You owe me for forty pounds of Puppy Pellets!”

How much does forty pounds of Puppy Pellets cost?
Aneta felt her face grow hot, hot, hot. Her Christmas money was long gone. “I am sorry,” she said, backing up. Zeff’s long arm slipped around her. She leaned against him. “I heard the puppies. They did not have water. One of them bit my finger. I jerked my hand back. It hit one of the bags. I fell.”

Cousin Zeff cleared his throat. “Good thing it was you, Aneta, and not one of those tiny little pups.” He inspected the two remaining walls of Puppy Pellets. He nudged one with his toe. That side began to slide. With a quick move, Zeff stopped them from tipping over the wire pen. “Anything could have tipped them over to squash the puppies.”

The pet-store man shook his head. “You dog people.”

Aneta found that curious. Wasn’t he a dog person if he owned a pet store?

Zeff reached for his wallet, gazing at the two quiet puppies, the overturned water dish, and the dirty towel. “I’ll pay for the food,” he said. “No problem. Then I’ll come back later to day and expect to find this pen clean and the water fresh.” He pointed to the quiet puppies. The lawyer tone Aneta knew well entered his voice. “They look sick. What kind of place are you running here?”

The lawyer tone ran in each of The Fam’s voices. Except hers. Each of The Fam were involved somehow in making things right. Gram’s husband and Aneta’s grandfather, “Grand,” was overseas right now, helping a refugee agency deal with some legal thing. Zeff attended college to become another Jasper lawyer. Laura volunteered as a victim’s advocate. Uncle Luke was a retired policeman. He now stepped toward the front of the group.

“There’s not a problem, is there?” he asked mildly. With his short gray hair, Hawaiian shirt, and his big chest that made it hard for his arms to lay flat against his body, he looked like a private detective in a movie. No matter what he wore, everyone listened to Uncle Luke.

Now the pet-store man’s tone changed from mad to fake nice. “Not a problem. It’s just been busy here this morning. These pups just arrived, and then you folks came and I wasn’t able to come back and check on them. Our puppies are well taken care of.”

After making sure Aneta wasn’t bleeding anywhere and suggesting a stop at the The Sweet Stuff for an ice bag for the cheekbone and a caramel sundae for her tears, Gram ushered the group toward the front.

The girls petted the puppies one last time. Esther ran to get fresh water. Near the front door, Gram favored the pet-store owner with a big smile. “Thank you so much for putting the poster back up.” She eyed the poster on the counter. “You will be putting the poster back up? Today?”

“Okay, okay,” he said, throwing up his hands. “I’ll put the poster back up.”

“And keep it up and in a highly visible place until the day of the Oakton Founders’ Days Dog Waddle?”

His eyebrows slanted over his narrowed eyes while his shoulders slumped. Aneta marveled at how her grandmother had known the man had no intention of keeping his promise. Gram was amazing.

He sighed. “Yeah.”

“Great,” Gram continued in a voice that sounded as sweet as a warm baked peanut-butter cookie. “I walk, run, or scooter past here at least once a day. I’ll be happy to see the poster each time I pass your store.” The emphasis on
each time I pass your store
was unmistakable.

Once they were all by the curb and the scooters, Vee wrinkled her nose. “I don’t like that place. It smelled so bad. I know dogs do their business in there, but shouldn’t he clean it up right away?”

Gram, Uncle Luke, and the cousins were tossing glances back and forth. Aneta watched them.
What do they know that we do not?
Aneta thought of the puppies and the Puppy Pellets that had trapped her. Gingerly, she touched her cheek. Then her hand flew to her mouth. The bags.
Puppy Pellets
.

“A clue!” she whispered, staring at Sunny, who was watching her with a question in her blue eyes. Vee and Esther gathered around her. Gram and the cousins stood behind. “The Puppy Pellets! It is a clue to the Crocs Killer!”

Esther wrinkled her brow. “There wasn’t any dog food by the lake that day.”

“No.” Aneta laced her fingers into a tepee and pressed them to the neckline of her turquoise shirt. “The Crocs Killer wore hat with Puppy Pellets sign on it! I see them on the wall near the Puppy Pellet display.” Again her English was botched, but she didn’t care.

Cousin Zeff shook his head. “She could have gotten it anywhere.”

Vee whipped out her notebook and clicked her pen. “No, I saw that same hat display. It had a sign on it that said, ‘Exclusive commemorative hat for our favorite Frequent Buyer customers.’ Something like the twenty years Puppy Pellets had been in business or something.”

“Something about frequent-buyer customers got the hat,” volunteered Uncle Luke, squinting up into the sky as though his memory were up there. “Now I remember, too.”

“I say we go back and ask the man if he knows anyone who wears that kind of hat,” said Esther, placing her hands on her hips.

“Uh, I don’t think that man wants to tell us
anything
now,” Sunny said.

Aneta wrinkled her face. “I make him mad by tipping over the Puppy Pellets.” She patted her bruised cheek.

“He wasn’t happy with us before that,” Gram said, her mouth tightening. “He just wanted us out of there. Did you notice the entire time we were by the puppies, he acted awfully nervous?”

“Yeah, and awfully annoyed for a spilled bag of cheap dog food,” Zeff said.

“You know what the hat and the Puppy Pellets promotion means.” Vee flipped the notebook shut and returned the pen to her pocket. Her eyes widened.

Esther rolled her eyes. “Don’t keep us in suspense, Vee. What does it mean other than people who wear the hats buy a lot of Puppy Pellets?”

“It means,” Vee said smugly, tapping the pen against her chin, “there’s more than Wink at the Crocs Killer’s place.”

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