The Nose Knows (24 page)

He tried to pull Mom closer to him. “Hannah, why don’t you just come on over here and relax?”

“I’m fine, Jacob.”

“It’s all been a strain. Just lay your head here on my shoulder and relax a little.”

“I said I’m fine, Jacob.”

The fool should’ve known to let it go right there. But Jacob must’ve had a testosterone surge, because he kept going. His other hand began fiddling with the buttons of Mom’s blouse. He nuzzled her neck.

“Hannah, lately every time I try to hug you I get pushed away. Come on, girl, lighten up a little. Can’t we just have a little fun?”

Mom stood up fast and plunked her cup down firmly. “Listen, Jacob, I really appreciate all you’ve done. And you’re right it has been too much of a strain. Between the terrible two weeks with Joyce, Mr. Johnson’s hidden friend, the stuff with Donny, and now this stupid bug, I really have more than I can handle. I’ve no energy left to deal with your unfulfilled need for a hug. I’m sorry, I guess that’s selfish but I’m doing all I can to keep myself together. That has to be my priority. Maybe it’d be better if we go back to just being friends.”

“Hannah, what are you saying?”

“I’m saying—just friends who meet in the park— no hugging, no kissing, no expectations from each other except—just friends.”

“Hannah, I’m sorry if I got pushy. But there are two of us in this relationship, you know, and a man can’t go forever without some—encouragement.”

“Encouragement! Is that what you call it? Listen, Jacob I know some men believe in a three-date rule. Well, toots, I’m here to tell you I’m a
six-month rule
kind of gal, and even then there’re no guarantees!”

Now Jacob rose to his feet. “Hannah, I wasn’t talking about sex. I just wanted to fool around a little, for heaven’s sake!”

“Yeah, right! Your hand just wanted to ‘fool around a little’ with my buttons. Listen, Jacob, I’m too tired to be dealing with any of this. I think you and Quincy should just go home.”

“Hannah, you’re being unreasonable.”

“Maybe—but I think it would be
reasonable
if we took a break from each other for awhile.”

Quincy looked at me. “Whoa! What the heck happened? Is your momma losing it or what?”

“My Momma? Don’t you say nothing about my Momma! What about your idiot of a human? He wouldn’t know a subtle move if it fell on him!”

“Hey, what are you growling at me for?”

I regained control. “Listen, Quincy, we don’t have much time. Jacob just blew it. Mom’s real stressed out and tired. He shouldn’t have pushed her. Now she’s throwing you guys out. Listen, we’ll meet up in the park, somehow, and figure out what we’re going to do. I’m sorry I growled.”

Jacob attached Quincy’s leash. “Okay, Hannah, if that’s the way you want it. Fine. Quincy, come on, we’re going home.”

“I forgive the growl, Spunk. But boy, this isn’t good.”

“You’re right, Quincy, this isn’t good at all.”

A
fter Quincy and Jacob left, Mom burst into tears. I could’ve comforted her but she was too busy throwing the sofa pillows around.

“Damn it, Spunk, why do men have to be such idiots! The last thing I want right now is someone manhandling me. All he wanted was a little fun, yeah right. I know exactly what kind of fun he had in mind, and I don’t think it was canasta!”

She kept ranting and crying. Then she called Judy and ranted and cried some more. I don’t think I’ll tell you all the things she said. It wasn’t my Mom at her best. But I think tonight was what you folks call “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” There’d been a lot of changes in my Mom’s life in the last six months. Too many things happening too fast, with too many feelings. I saw the heightened anxiety level after this last thing with the computers. It scared her. She felt vulnerable. She needed to feel in control of her life again. So she opted to cut off one of the sources for those feelings—Jacob. It wasn’t all about Jacob, but he’d gotten the brunt of it.

I haven’t spent all these months attending Mom’s therapy sessions without learning a thing or two. After an hour on the phone with Judy, a hot shower, and two cups of chamomile tea Mom finally went to bed. Tonight’s emotional outburst had completely drained her. She quickly fell into a deep sleep.

I was the one who couldn’t sleep.

True, the boys and I weren’t at all pleased with Mom throwing Jacob and Quincy out. But we all knew humans can sometimes snap and growl at each other and then forgive very quickly. The boys thought that was all there was to it. However, I’d known Mom a lot longer and I doubted there would be any sudden reversals. She’d taken a stand, and now pride was involved.

But something else was gnawing at me, and long after Mom and the boys were well into dreamland, I was still wide-awake. I kept having a vague glimpse of something floating across my mind. Like when you hear something in the forest and you look, and see nothing moving. You can smell it. You know it’s there, but you just can’t see it, at least not until the flick of a tail shows exactly where the back end of white tail deer is. Then everything rapidly comes into focus, and the chase begins. I never do catch the deer, but I have a lot of fun trying.

Anyway, tonight was like that. I knew something was there. I just couldn’t remember it. Dang, but I hate getting old. My little grey cells aren’t what they used to be. But hey, I’m a terrier, and we aren’t easily deterred. I began to go over every fact one by one.

I’d gotten up to the part about finding that old bug in Mom’s computer. I realized I hadn’t studied that little tidbit closely enough. So, as if it were my rawhide, I kept gnawing on it. Cynthia said it was an old bug on a newer computer. I thought back to the great bargain Mom had gotten on that computer. She had to buy a new one after her old one had started acting funny.

Whoa! Wait one minute. Now I was up and pacing. Memories came rushing back. How long ago had that happened? None of the cats were here back then so they couldn’t help me. Dad was still alive. So was Moxie. Wait, if Moxie was still alive, then it had to have been over six years ago. I stopped right in my tracks. I thought of the day we got back from our trip.

Mom and Dad always took us along if it was a car trip. This time we’d only been gone a couple of days, but as soon as we came in the front door, us dogs smelled it. Moxie, Molly, and I all knew someone had been in the house while we were gone. The intruder’s scent was the strongest in Mom’s den. Of course, Mom and Dad saw we were acting weird, running around with our noses to the floor. They saw that we repeatedly headed back to her office. At first, they both stayed on high alert. They looked all around. But they didn’t detect anything out of place.

Mom couldn’t find any physical proof to justify her apprehension, so she muted her internal alarm system and tried to explain away our behavior. “Must have been a mouse wandering around while we were gone.”

Dad agreed. “Guess so. I sure don’t see anything wrong in here.”

I knew, despite his words, that Dad’s alarm system was still active. When Mom wasn’t looking, I saw him check both outside doors and all the windows on the ground floor. I led him to the back door and pawed at the doorknob. He paid me the courtesy of looking at it closely. I knew the stranger had broken into the house through this door. The door knob had the same scent on it that was in Mom’s den. Dad’s human eyes simply couldn’t discern the recent marks from the array of other scratches already on the door. They weren’t deep enough to leave a distinctive gouge that he could see. I could smell where the stranger’s hands had been—Dad could not. I think he sensed someone had tampered with the door, but he couldn’t prove it to himself. So he too let his alarm instinct fade. No reason to get Mom upset if he himself couldn’t prove anything.

On the other hand, Moxie, Molly, and I could prove it. We just couldn’t communicate it to them. We tracked the man’s scent through the woods and up to the roadway. Then it was gone. We tried our best to get the humans to pay attention. We kept going in and out, sniffing our way into the den. After a while, Mom got upset with us. She threatened to lock us out if we didn’t settle down. We decided there was nothing more we could do. We stayed vigilant and waited to see what developed.

Well, truth of the matter was—nothing did develop.

But now there was this new puzzle. I decided to go back and see if any pieces from the old mystery fit into this new one. I went through all the pieces one at a time. The only connection seemed to be Mom’s computer.

Shortly after the intruder had been in our house, Mom’s computer started acting funny. She took the machine to the store where she had bought it, and when she came home she told Dad the good news and the bad news. Moxie, Molly, and I listened in, of course. The bad news: they found that it was not worth repairing. The mother board was shot, and they recommended that she buy a new computer. The good news: the store had one on sale, and they offered to save all her files and documents from the old machine and install them on the new one.

She decided she didn’t have much choice, so she bought it. As I said, it had more bells and whistles on it than she needed back then, but later, when she started seeing patients via the computer, it turned out to be exactly what she needed. I never heard her complain once about the new computer. She loved it.

I now began to wonder if, in fact, she had gotten
more
than she’d bargained for. Cynthia’s words kept coming back to me, “Old chip . . .at least six years old. . . .”

Had someone planted that chip in Mom’s computer six or seven years ago so they could spy on Mom? If the person who broke into our house had tampered with Mom’s old computer, maybe that was the reason it had malfunctioned.

Maybe the fact that the planted chip had stopped working was the reason they had to put a new bug into Donny’s computer. With Mom’s new security system, breaking into the house wasn’t as easy as it had been before. Moreover, the house was never empty. All the cats were here. That told me no one had snuck in here while Mom and I were off somewhere. The cats would’ve certainly told me if anyone had even tried to get in.

Maybe the new security decals on the house had scared the spy off. Maybe that was why Donny had been chosen as the new target. Maybe it wasn’t about Donny at all.

Maybe it was all about Mom.

Slowly parts of the old puzzle began to fit together into this new one. But this puzzle still lacked several crucial pieces. Who planted the bug? Who wanted to spy on Mom? And why?

T
he next morning, I overslept. Fearless rudely awakened me by swatting at my ears.

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty,—
breath—
are you ever going to wake up today?”

“Leave me be. I was up real late last night.”

“Doing what? Why didn’t you wake me up?—
breath—
I could’ve done it with you.—What did you find?—What were you doing? ”

As I said before, Fearless has a whole lot more energy than I do. Once his motor starts running, his mouth follows suit. I opened one eye and gave him a cold stare. Translation: “Stop blabbing right now or else!”

Fearless stopped in mid-sentence. “Okay, I’ll go away.”

He isn’t stupid. He sauntered away with all the snooty tail he could muster. I wasn’t worried that he was offended. We’d been friends too long; neither of us sweats the small stuff. That thought led me to think, “Yeah that’s right. We’ve been friends now for about four years.”

The four-year reminder made me think of the all the new puzzle pieces I’d thought of last night. Pieces, which Fearless hadn’t been around to know anything about! Now, I was wide awake.

“Fearless, wait. I need to tell you something.”

“Oh, so now you want to talk to me, huh?—
breath—
What makes you think—I want to talk to you?”

I didn’t blame him for acting aloof. “Hey, buddy I’m sorry if I was grouchy. I was up real late remembering stuff that you’ve got to hear about.”

Fearless still didn’t get it. “What makes you think—I want to listen to one of your trips—down memory lane?”

I sighed. “Because this one is about the time someone broke into this house and messed with Mom’s computer.”