A Dog's Life

by Myra Love

       Chapter IV 

“What the hell?” I grumbled and looked up at Donald. He shrugged. “Someone obviously erased the message,” he said. “Probably your Uncle Jim.”

 “But it was right here when he closed down the computer. I saw it with my own eyes,” I protested.

“He could have erased it from another computer,” Donald said with a somewhat condescending smile. “You don’t spend much time online, do you, Andy?”

I shook my head. “No, my only computer time is on police databases.”

“With web-based email it’s pretty easy to erase something from any computer, as long as you have the password for an account.”

I shrugged. “Maybe Jim went to the shop. I know there’s a computer there.” I dialed Jim’s and Mattie’s home phone, and she picked up on the first ring.

“You again, Andy? I swear, either we don’t see or hear from you for days on end or else you’re in touch all the time. Have you figured out who sent that ransom note yet?”

“Not yet, Mattie. I need to talk to Jim. Is he home?”

“Yes, he’s down in the study. I don’t know why, since you took away his computer.”

“Maybe he has another computer down there.”

“No, I don’t think so. Of course, anything is possible.”

“Has Jim been there the whole time since I left, or did he go out?”

“Oh, he’s been down there the whole time, far as I know. Why all the questions, Andy? Shall I go get Jim?”

“I’d appreciate it, Mattie.”

Jim’s speech was slurred when he came to the phone. I didn’t tell him that the message was gone, just that we hadn’t been able to find out anything at the station and would be taking the computer to the state police in the morning.

“’Sperfectly awright, Andy,” he replied. “I can do wha’ I ha’ to in the shop tomorrow. Thanks for lettin’ m’ know. G’night.”

Donald had hoped that telling Jim the computer was going to the state police might scare him into admitting he’d erased the message, but I think Jim was too drunk to care. Donald had wanted me to say more to Jim to tell him that the technician could find erased messages, but I wasn’t sure that was true.

When the chief arrived, we reported what had happened, and Donald passed on his suspicion that Jim had deliberately erased the message after letting me carry off his machine. The chief listened and told Donald he could very well be right, but there was no proof. “Let the state police lab fellow do his job. Maybe he can find some trace of the message. In the meantime, let’s call it a night.”
I called the state police barracks in the morning and learned that the technician I knew was on vacation. “He’ll be gone for another week, but you can bring the machine in anyway,” the trooper on the switchboard said. “Somebody at the lab should be able to help you out.” I thanked him and decided there was no rush. I’d take the computer in later. First, I wanted to have a chat with Anita Carswell.

Anita invited me to drop by for lunch. “In fact, you can bring lunch for both of us, Andy. I haven’t been to the store all week and the cupboard is a bit bare.”

I found her puzzling over some paperwork, not repairing or writing with a fountain pen the way she usually was when I came by. “What’s up?” I asked, putting a couple of sandwiches and a container of soup on her kitchen counter. “You look perturbed.”

She grunted and put the paperwork aside. “Nothing interesting or exciting. I mediated a dispute a couple of months ago, and now the parties are battling again.” She shook her head. “I’m going to let this go to court. I really don’t like those people and dread having to deal with them again. She waved her hand in the air as if brushing the subject away. “What’s for lunch?” Opening the soup container, she sniffed twice and gave me the thumbs up sign. “Great. Eggplant sandwiches too.” She winked at me. “I should let you feed me more often.”

Lately Anita’s diet has taken a distinctly vegetarian turn. I’m a real carnivore myself. She wouldn’t have minded if I’d brought a roast beef sandwich for myself. I almost did, but the sauce on the eggplant sub just smelled too good.

After we’d eaten and she’d put water on for tea, I started to pick her brain about the dognapping case. I told her about the disappearing email and Donald’s suspicion that Jim had erased it remotely. “He didn’t leave the house and he hasn’t another computer at home, so I don’t see how,” I added as an afterthought.

“Jim may have erased it from his handheld thingy,” she said. “Or else one of his confederates did it.”

“What handheld thingy?” I demanded. “And what confederates?”

“Jim has one of those devices. I know you’ve seen them. A cross between a cell phone and a mini-computer.”

“You mean a PDA?” I asked. “How do you know he has one?”

She looked mysterious. “I make it my business to know things.”

“You mean you’re nosey!”

She shook her head. “No, but people tell me things because I act interested in what they have to say. In this case, however, no one had to tell me. I was a couple of places behind him in line when he paid for it.”

I scratched my head. “Where?”

“That big box electronics store that opened up off the highway out by the hospital.”

I had no idea what Anita was doing in an electronics store, but I figured that if I asked, the conversation would get off track. “Why?”

She frowned. “Why what?”

“Why did Jim erase the message—if he erased it?”

She sighed in exasperation. “So it couldn’t be traced back to him or his confederates.”

I held up my hands. “Whoa! What confederates?”

She sighed again, and I felt like I was a very slow student in one of her math classes. “The ones who helped him.”

“Helped him what?” I demanded, trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice.

“Why, take and hide the dog, of course.”

I’d started to stand up when the teakettle began to whistle, but I sat down again. Anita turned off the kettle and poured the water into her teapot. “I spoke with the next door neighbor,” she said. “He didn’t hear or see a thing.”

“Well, of course not. It was the middle of the night.”

“Jay Timmins is an insomniac,” she replied.

“So he didn’t hear or see anything, so what?”

She brought the teapot and two mugs over to the table and sat down. “There were other neighbors up at the time. Did you interview any of them?”

“No,” I replied, feeling defensive. “I’ve been off talking to possible suspects.”

“Possible confederates, you mean,” she grumbled, checking the tea. “That will need a little while longer, I suppose.”

“What are you talking about, Anita? What’s going on?”

“Talk to the neighbors,” she replied. “And if you can, get a warrant to check the interiors of Willard’s and Walsh’s cars for dog hair. I won’t tell you to check Clausen’s because he probably used one from the lot if he was involved. And I probably don’t need to tell you that you don’t have to bother with Marcus’ car. He had nothing to do with any of this.” As she poured tea in to my mug, she smirked. “Eat up. You have a lot of police work ahead of you.”

“Sometimes I wish that old woman would just mind her own damned business,” the chief grumbled. “Of course we interviewed the neighbors. In fact, I did it personally.  What does she think we are, a bunch of amateurs?”

I didn’t say anything. The chief already knew I’d gone to Anita to ask for her advice, so there was no need to remind him that she hadn’t butted in. Besides, he’d gone to her first.

“She’s not an investigator,” he continued, “she’s a mediator. She ought to leave the investigating to us.” He banged his coffee mug on his desk. “Damn it! Of course, no one heard anything. It was the middle of the night.”

I hesitated, then cleared my throat. “Jay Timmins, the guy next door is an insomniac.”

“So he’s an insomniac, so what?” the chief growled. “The street is right off the main road. Traffic goes by all the time. And the glass in the window wouldn’t have made all that much noise when it cracked. Especially since the sound was muted with flannel. We found fibers in with the shards.”

I nodded. When the chief was in this kind of mood, he brooked no argument.

Suddenly he grinned. “Sorry, Andy. I’m not angry at you. It’s just that Anita Carswell has gotten kind of strange lately, and I don’t want her messing up our investigation.”

“Strange?” I repeated the word and then wished I hadn’t.

The chief nodded. “Yeah, strange. Or maybe I should say even stranger than is usual for her. I’ve been wondering if her age isn’t catching up to her. The woman must be eighty if she’s a day.”

I knew she was older than eighty. Eighty-two, to be precise. But I hadn’t seen any signs of strangeness, except maybe for the change in her diet, and I spent a lot more time with Anita than the chief did. “I thought you liked Anita,” I protested.

“I do like her. But that doesn’t mean I don’t see her flaws,” the chief replied. “My cousin June is having a hard time with her. She and that fool Bill went to Anita… Oh, never mind. You just go ahead and take that computer to the state police lab, Andy, and we’ll see what they can come up with,” the chief ordered.

When I turned to go, he clapped me on the shoulder briefly. “Good work Andy. We’ll get this mess sorted out soon enough. Without any help from meddlesome old women.”

I wanted to believe the chief was right, but I knew Anita too well to disregard her advice. So, after I came back from the state police barracks I knocked on Mr. Timmins’ door.

Jay Timmins looked and acted old, though he was younger than Anita. He didn’t want to invite me in, so we talked out on his front porch. “If I was ever able to sleep,” he whined, “the night that break-in happened would have been the perfect night for it. Those damned dogs weren’t barking up a storm the way they usually do. I’ve called the police too many times to count,” he added with a vicious glare at me, “to complain about the noise, but you people didn’t do a thing about it. When ten o’clock came around and the barking didn’t start, I thought maybe you folks had actually done something to earn your inflated salaries for once.”

I pressed him to be sure that the night of the dognapping was, in fact, the night the dogs didn’t bark. He accused me of calling him a liar and taking him for a ‘senile old coot’. “Of course I know which night the dogs didn’t bark. It was quiet for once, at least until your chief made a racket pretending to investigate around four or five in the morning.”

I didn’t ask why he thought the chief was investigating or pretending to investigate. I just thanked him and left. When I rang the doorbells of the other neighbors near Jim’s and Mattie’s house, no one answered. No surprise there. It was the middle of the day and I supposed most of them were at work.

I started back to the station, wondering all the while what it meant that the dogs hadn’t barked. It seemed unlikely to me that a bunch of dogs that barked every night would choose the night of a break-in to fall silent. I was sure this was the detail that had turned Anita’s mind to thoughts of conspiracy and collusion. What if she was right and there was no break-in at all? I wanted to ask the chief to brainstorm the implications of that with me, but I sensed that he wasn’t about to give credence to anything Anita had to say.

If the dogs didn’t bark it meant they were drugged. That was the only thing I could come up with off the top of my head. Or maybe they weren’t even in the house. Maybe those confederates Anita hinted at had taken them earlier in the day and then returned them. No, that didn’t make sense. I shook my head to clear it. They must have been drugged. Maybe the intruder fed them meat with… No, wait a minute. If Anita was right, there wasn’t really an intruder. Maybe Jim had drugged them so there would be no noise. No, that didn’t make sense either. I sighed. I didn’t really want to go to Anita for more advice if the chief was against it, but I just couldn’t figure out what to do next.

By the time I got back to the station I’d convinced myself that I needed to ask the chief for a meeting to consider the possibilities. Only he wasn’t there. Lisa was, and my day immediately got a whole lot better. I hugged her, after looking around to make sure that her brother wasn’t watching us. He tended to hoot and holler whenever he saw us acting affectionate. He meant no harm, but it was annoying.

“Am I ever glad to see you!” I said once we’d stopped hugging. “This investigation is driving me nuts.” If Donald had been listening in, this would have been where he piped up with, “It doesn’t have to drive you ‘cause you’re close enough to walk.” Lisa didn’t make cracks like that, thank heaven.

“Have you talked with Anita?” she asked.

I felt stomach acid come up into my throat and go back down again as I swallowed hard. “Yeah, that’s the problem. She has it in her head that there was no dognapping. It was a set-up. The chief does not agree.”

Lisa nodded. “I see.”

I took a deep breath. “I don’t know what to think. Seems like he has it in for Anita these days, but he’s the boss.”

Lisa didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “Anita is usually right,” she finally mumbled. “But that doesn’t really help you, does it?”

I shook my head. “Wish I knew why he’s so down on her. He started to say something about his cousin June, but then he clammed up.”

Lisa looked perplexed. “What good would it do to know?”

“None probably, but I’d still like to.”

She grinned and tousled my hair. “Oh right, how could I forget? You like to know just because you like to know.”

I felt a little embarrassed because she was right. I do like to know what’s going on and why. I shrugged. “Well, maybe if I knew, I could figure out how to do something about it.”

It was Lisa’s turn to shake her head. “I don’t think that follows, Andy.”

“I said maybe, didn’t I?” I retorted a little more sharply than I intended.

“When you say maybe, that’s like a green light. Or like waving a red cape in front of a bull.”

“What do you mean?” I demanded. “I’m perfectly reasonable.”

“Andy Searle, you are totally convinced that there are solutions to every problem, if only you have enough information. But some problems aren’t problems because of a lack of information. Human beings just are not that rational.”

“Well they should be,” I grumbled.

Lisa knew better than to argue with my “shoulds” as she called them. “I’m on my way out to the farm. I promised I’d help Mom with the big clean-up. I’ll call you from there this evening, okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” I replied. “You coming back tomorrow?”

She nodded. “You’ll hardly have a chance to miss me.”

“Of course I’ll miss you. I miss you when we don’t have dinner together, even when we’re both here in town.”

“That’s sweet, Andy, so sweet that I’ll consider marrying you.”

“And taking my last name?” I added, unable to resist.

“Don’t push your luck.”

After I went off duty I really wanted to interview the neighbors who hadn’t been home earlier in the day, to see if any of them could corroborate what Jay Timmins had told me. But the chief said he’d already talked to them, and I didn’t want it getting back to him that I’d gone behind his back. I knew that if I called and told him what I wanted to do, he’d tell me not to waste my time. So instead, I went home and ate most of the half-gallon of ice cream that was in the freezer. It was vanilla fudge, Lisa’s favorite but a flavor I don’t particularly like. Still I finished it off and made a note to buy more in the morning before she came back.

After that indulgence, I really couldn’t sit still and think, so I went out for a walk. My walk led me towards Jim’s and Mattie’s neighborhood. I was halfway surprised when I found myself standing in front of their house. The windows on the first floor were dark, but there was a light upstairs and one in the basement. I figured that Mattie was watching TV with the dogs all around her, but I wondered what Jim was doing. Did he have another computer down there or was he drinking? I never showed up unannounced at their house. In other circumstances, it would have seemed rude. But this time I walked up the stairs and rang the bell.

The barking started immediately. In fact, my finger was still on its way to the bell when I heard the first sounds. It took almost five minutes before I saw Mattie looking at me through the window. I waved, and she came over and opened the door, a frown on her face. “What are you doing here, Andy?”

The dogs pushed past her and gave me a thorough sniffing, Judge Judy got up on her, I mean his hind legs and put his front paws on my shoulders, almost knocking me over.

“No you don’t, Your Honor,” I said, pushing him down onto all fours. “May I come in, Mattie? I’d like to talk with you and Jim.”

“Jim’s not home,” Mattie said and started to close the door on me. I pushed back with my foot, and she glared at me.

“The light is on in the basement,” I said gently. “Are you sure he’s not home?”

“He went out after dinner,” she said, her mouth forming a stubborn line once the words were out. “You can’t come in now, Andy. It’s not convenient.”

I tried to look into her eyes, but she averted her head. “Okay, Mattie,” I said. “You know though that this won’t look too good when I tell the chief, don’t you?”

She pouted. “I don’t care. Jim isn’t home, and I don’t feel like talking to you. That’s not a crime. I won’t be bullied by my own nephew.”

I sighed and turned around, letting her close the door behind me. After I’d heard her footsteps going up the stairs, I walked over to the basement window, knelt down, and peered in. Jim sat playing with a small, handheld electronic device. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure what it was, but it looked a lot like a PDA.

© 2015 Myra Love - All Rights Reserved