The Silence of the Chihuahuas

Book 5: Barking Detective Mystery

by Waverly Curtis

Genres: Animals; Cozy Mystery; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

“This series is hilarious!” —RT Book Reviews
Includes a Bonus Story
“Savvy sleuths come in small packages…”
Pepe, aspiring P.I. Geri Sullivan’s muy clever Chihuahua, has stopped talking. But why now, with Geri’s best friend Brad missing and her ditzy sister in grave danger? Geri’s lost without Pepe’s dogged detective work, especially when a client of Brad’s expires under very murky circumstances.
Luckily, Pepe turns out to be an excelente blogger, and his nose for clues soon has the detective duo chasing down leads. But they’ll have to put a bite on crime quickly, because danger’s afoot – and it’s making tracks in their direction . . .
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Release date: November 1, 2015

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

The veterinarian was a short man shaped like an egg, with a rounded torso that narrowed at either end to a bald head on top and tiny feet at the other. He wore rimless glasses and a white lab coat.

“Hello, I’m Norman Dodd,” he said, holding out his hand. It was small and clammy. Nonetheless, I clung to it as he pumped mine up and down. I had never consulted a vet before about my Chihuahua, Pepe, but now I was really worried.

Pepe was one of a group of Chihuahuas who had been flown up to Seattle from LA, where they were being abandoned in record numbers. I had adopted him six months earlier and he had become my best friend and partner in my work as a private detective.

“Why are you here today?” Dr. Dodd asked, consulting the clipboard that the receptionist had placed on the counter in the exam room at the Lake Union Animal Clinic. Pepe sat on the metal table, his long ears perked forward, his dark eyes fixed on me. I wished I could tell what he was thinking. That was the problem.

“My dog stopped talking to me,” I said. “About four days ago.”

The vet had been running his pudgy fingers along the sides of Pepe’s white flanks.

“What do you mean?” he asked. “He used to bark a lot, and now he’s stopped?” He chuckled. “Some Chihuahua owners would celebrate!”

“No, it’s not that,” I said.

“Then what do you mean?”

“I mean he used to talk to me, but a few days ago he mysteriously stopped talking.”

The vet’s eyes narrowed. “Define talking!”

“He spoke,” I said. “Words strung together into complete sentences. A bit of Spanish. Mostly English.”

Pepe sat on the table, smiling up at me with those big dark eyes.

“What’s wrong with you?” I asked, addressing him as I had many times during the last four days. “Why don’t you speak?”

Dr. Dodd shook his head. “I think you’ve come to the wrong place, miss,” he said. “You don’t need a vet. You need a shrink.”

I didn’t tell him I had already consulted with my shrink. Susanna already knows about my talking dog, so when I told her he had stopped talking, she congratulated me. “So what do you think caused you to own your thoughts and feelings instead of projecting them onto your dog?” she asked with a happy smile.

“You don’t understand,” I said. “He was really helping me. I don’t think I could have solved any of those cases without him.” Pepe and I had been responsible for catching several murderers, kidnappers, and bad dogs while working for the private investigation agency run by Jimmy Gerrard.

“Geri, it has always puzzled me that you want to give credit to your dog. Why not acknowledge and celebrate your own accomplishments?”

“But that’s wrong!” I said. Meanwhile, Pepe just sat there, on top of one of the many pillows in Susanna’s office, seeming quite pleased with himself without saying a word.

“What’s wrong with you?” I turned to him. “You always want to take credit for everything we do.” My dog is a bit of an attention hound.

“Geri,” said Susanna, “if I didn’t think this was just a metaphor, I’d be very concerned about your mental state. If you persist in this delusion, I think you might consider in-patient treatment.”

I saw Pepe flinch at that. Thank God, he was still registering his reactions, if not actually expressing his opinion. And like many dog owners, I could read my dog fairly accurately. “You don’t want that,” I said to him. “You don’t want me to go away. They won’t let you come with me.”

“Do you want me to check into some possibilities for you?” said Susanna. “Or perhaps I should refer you to a psychiatrist?” Susanna had been licensed as a counselor in the state of Washington after she earned her MA, but she can’t prescribe medication. It takes someone with an MD to diagnose and write prescriptions.

“I don’t need a psychiatrist,” I said. “My dog does!” I glared at Pepe. He looked a little worried. One ear quirked forward.

“Do you have referrals to dog shrinks?” I asked a little loudly and defiantly, directing the words at Pepe, not at Susanna.

“I actually know several,” said Susanna. “Dr. Mallard was very helpful when my cat started hiding under the furniture. He gave her some anti-anxiety medication and that cleared up her symptoms.” She got up, went over to her desk and flipped through her Rolodex. She picked out a card and handed it to me.

“Thanks,” I said, getting up, “I think I will look into that.” I could tell by Pepe’s expression that he was upset. Good! I was upset too. Maybe it would upset him enough so he would start talking.

I couldn’t understand why he had stopped.

The irony is that I had spent the past six months trying to convince people, including my boss, Jimmy Gerrard, and my boyfriend, Felix Navarro, that my dog talked. They were just starting to entertain that possibility when he stopped. Now what? They would think I was crazy. Apparently everyone did.

The vet was talking again. “I’ll check his vocal cords. See if there’s anything causing problems in his throat. Perhaps he ate something . . .” He pried open Pepe’s jaws and peered inside, waving around a little flashlight. “Nope. That all looks normal.” He patted Pepe on the head. “I can’t see anything that would cause him to stop barking. Of course, if you want, we can take some blood and do some tests . . .”

I saw the fright in Pepe’s eyes, but I nodded. “Yes, I think that’s a good idea!” If he wasn’t going to tell me what was going on, I would do everything in my power to figure it out. But mostly I was terribly hurt. I don’t know if this has ever happened to you: your best friend suddenly stops speaking to you, won’t return your calls, won’t answer your questions about what’s going on.

It had happened to me just a few weeks earlier and it was still painful. I had been working with Brad for more than five years, ever since we both graduated from interior design school. He opened a small shop where he refinished furniture he picked up at auction sales and then sold it to his clients. He let me use the back of the shop for my own thrift store finds and loaned me pieces I needed for my short-lived career as a stager.

Then suddenly, I couldn’t get in contact with him. When I went by the shop, it was closed. When I called him, my calls went straight to voice mail. I was desperately worried about him and also confused. Had I done something wrong? I kept going back over the last conversation I had with him. We had been in the back of the shop surrounded by pieces of furniture in various stages of refurbishing. A stuffed owl looked over the scene from a perch on a grandfather clock. The skeletal remains of a Victorian sofa occupied one corner. A cracked blue-and-white Chinese vase sat on top of a mahogany drop-leaf table. Brad was at his sewing machine, stitching pink piping around an olive drab velvet pillow. It seemed like an ordinary conversation. We discussed whether or not he should agree to the color scheme his client Mrs. Fairchild demanded for her kitchen. Mrs. F wanted mint green and Brad recommended lemon yellow.

“Yellow can be such a harsh color to live with,” I had said. And that was the last thing I remembered from that day. Surely my opinion about paint colors had not been so outrageous as to cause the rift in our friendship.

I came back to the present. Dr. Dodd was staring at me, waiting for my answer.

“Yes, let’s go ahead and get some blood work!” I said.

Pepe just stared at me with his big eyes. He wasn’t talking but his message was clear: “Please don’t do this to me!” But I was desperate. I needed to know what was going on. If anything was going to get him to talk it would be getting poked with a needle. He hates it. He began to tremble but still he didn’t speak. When the vet sunk the needle into his little flank, he merely squeaked.

“We’ll call you if anything unusual shows up in the results,” the vet said.

We left the vet’s office and went out into a typical September day in Seattle. The sky was grey and the air was full of moisture. Some might call it rain but it’s more like a heavy mist. I had one more place to go. Since Pepe wasn’t talking to me, I thought I would go visit my other silent partner, Brad, and see if I could get him to talk to me.

The Animal Clinic is on Eastlake Boulevard, just a few blocks from my condo. And Brad’s shop is also on Eastlake, in the other direction down near the University Bridge. The drawbridge spans the man-made canal that connects Lake Washington to the east with Lake Union. It is Seattle’s most urban lake, surrounded by houseboats and restaurants.

Pepe trotted ahead of me. He doesn’t like rain, but he also refuses to wear the cute raincoat I bought for him. So he was just wearing his little turquoise harness as we headed down the street. His little white tail wagged from side to side, curved over his back like a comma. He seemed like just a happy little normal Chihuahua. If a Chihuahua could ever be normal. Maybe I would have to get used to the fact that my dog was no longer extraordinary. Maybe that was what was truly bothering me. It was either that or the distinct possibility that I was crazy.

We were still a block from the shop when I began to realize something was wrong. There was a piece of paper pasted to the front door. And as we got closer, I could see that it was a 3 DAY PAY OR VACATE notice. Not the sort of thing you want prospective customers to see as they go driving by.

Brad usually has a striking tableau in the window designed to catch the eye of passers by: maybe a chair covered in leopard print next to a red ceramic vase full of pampas grass on top of a black lacquered table edged with gold. Or a Victorian sofa upholstered in buttercup yellow underneath a chandelier made out of orange pill bottles. But it looked like he had been interrupted in the middle of changing the display. A purple armchair sat beneath a bare light bulb with a crate beside it. It wasn’t even industrial chic. Just sad.

I ripped the paper off the door. Then tried my key in the lock, but it wouldn’t turn. So I cupped my hands and peered through the window.

“What happened to Brad?” I asked Pepe, but he didn’t answer me. He just lifted his leg and peed on the tire of a white van parked in front of the building.

The telephone was ringing as we walked in through the front door of my condo. For a moment, I thought it might be Brad, calling to tell me what was going on. But that would be crazy, right?

I looked at the caller ID and it wasn’t a number I recognized. The cryptic ID said “Forest Glen Clinic.” I grabbed it up and said, “Hello?”

“Is that you, Geri?” said the female voice on the other end of the line. She sounded familiar.

“Who is this?” I asked.

“You’ve got to help me!” said the woman on the other end. Her voice was rising in pitch and intensity. “Someone’s trying to kill me!”

And then there was a brief scuffle on the other end and I heard the dial tone.

“That’s weird,” I said to Pepe as he poked his head out from the kitchen door, clearly curious about what I was doing. “I think that was my sister.”

What to do? I was so upset I couldn’t think clearly. I would have called my boss, Jimmy G, for advice, but I wasn’t speaking to him because of the way he had treated me on our last case. And of course, I usually talked things over with Pepe. He loves to give advice, whether I ask for it or not. But he wasn’t speaking to me.

I looked at him. He looked at me, with those big deep brown eyes. I looked at the phone in my hand. And then I saw the redial button.

“Aha!” I said. “Thanks, Pepe.” Although he hadn’t said a word. But I think perhaps I was inspired by his confidence in me.

I hit the redial button and I heard the phone ringing on the other end.

“Forest Glen Spa and Clinic,” said a female voice on the other end.

“Oh . . .” I said. “What sort of clinic?”

“We provide a variety of services,” said the woman in a cheerful voice. “How can I help you?”

“I’m trying to reach my sister,” I told her. “She just called me from your number.”

“I’m sorry, but we cannot give out any information about our guests.”

“Can you at least connect me to her room?”

“That depends. What is your sister’s name?”

“Teri,” I said. “Teri Sullivan.”

“Just a moment.” There was silence for a moment, and I was afraid we’d lost the connection. But the woman came back on the line. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but we do not have any guests registered by that name.”

“What?” I was stunned. “She just called me!”

“I’m sorry, but—”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “Maybe you checked under ‘Terry.’ She spells her name with an ‘i.’ Try spelling it T-E-R-I.”

I don’t think she even checked this time. “I’m very sorry, ma’am, but there is no one here by that name under any spelling.”

“But—”

“I’m sorry I was unable to help you,” she told me. And then she hung up.

There was no use protesting any further. I put the phone down. Pepe was still watching me.

“This is terrible,” I told him. “I don’t know what to do.” My sister had disappeared twice in my life. Once when she was just a teenager and again during an earlier case I was working with Pepe. I was not going to let that happen again.

I looked at Pepe. Pepe looked at me. And suddenly, I knew. If he could speak, he would tell me we should go investigate. In fact, he would say, “Andale, Geri! There is not a moment to waste.”

I turned on my laptop, and got the address for the Forest Glen Spa and Clinic. The website showed photos of what looked like a sprawling resort and said it offered “Holistic Healing in a Tranquil Setting.” It seemed to be a treatment center for addictions and psychiatric illnesses disguised as a spa. Luckily it was located in the lush valley between Woodinville and Duvall, which was about an hour drive northeast of Seattle.

I took the quickest route to Forest Glen that I could think of: east across the Evergreen Point floating bridge, then north on the 405 freeway to the Woodinville exit. Once we had driven through that town, we continued east through the forested hills taking the highway toward Duvall.

It got more and more rural the farther we went. As soon as we dropped down into the valley, it was nothing but farmland as far as you could see: fields and pastures, all glowing a lush green on a grey day. I am always amazed that such pastoral settings still exist so close to Seattle and its urban sprawl.

Just before I crossed the Snoqualmie River, I saw a large wooden sign that read: FOREST GLEN SPA AND CLINIC—NEXT RIGHT. I turned and followed a narrow road that ran along the river, until it took a big bend to the right and my destination came into view. The buildings were hidden from the road by a long row of tall poplar trees that had probably been planted as a windbreak many years ago. Now the grounds had been landscaped with leafy, deciduous trees, rolling hills of closely mown grass, and flagstone paths that meandered between the main building and some smaller satellite buildings, all of them done in white stucco with red-tiled rooftops.

I parked in Visitor Parking, next to a large and graceful weeping willow tree. “This place is just gorgeous,” I told Pepe. “It looks more like a luxury resort than a treatment center.”

He didn’t respond. That was beginning to seem normal to me. Sort of like my ex-husband right before our divorce.

I put Pepe’s leash on him. He usually protests, but because he wasn’t talking all he could do was give me a baleful look. Then we headed toward the main entrance at a slow pace as Pepe had to stop to put his mark on various tree trunks and shrubs. The big Spanish-styled main building had baskets of fuchsias hanging on either side of its rounded, oak entry door, their splash of vibrant scarlet-pink flowers contrasting nicely with the white stucco.

The foyer was dramatic with oak beam ceilings crossing high overhead and tiled stairs sweeping up to the upper floors on either side of a reception area, which was dominated by an ornately carved oak desk. The young man seated at the reception desk was in his mid-twenties at most. He had closely cropped blond hair that seemed ultra-blond set off as it was against his deeply tanned face and vivid blue polo shirt. He smiled as I approached, his perfect teeth almost blindingly white.

“Hello! I’m Justin,” he said, rising from his seat. “How can I assist you?” His crisply pressed slacks were also white. He looked like he’d be more at home at a tennis club than at a clinic.

I hesitated. I had not come up with a story yet. I looked at Pepe, wishing he would help me. The receptionist saw my gaze.

“Unfortunately, we don’t allow dogs in our facility,” he said.

“But this is my therapy dog,” I said. “I need him because of my”—I lowered my voice—“disability.” I knew that according to law they could not ask the nature of my disability. But they could ask to see the dog’s certification. And he did.

“Can I see your paperwork, then?” Justin’s voice was cool.

“I left it in the car,” I said. But that gave me an idea. “I just came out here to check out the facility because my therapist recommended it. She thought if I saw it for myself, I would be more likely to check myself in. But I can’t deal with any more stress. I guess I’ll just leave . . .” I turned as if to go.

I thought I saw Pepe give me an approving nod. Perhaps I had learned a little bit about acting from watching Pepe’s favorite telenovela, Paraiso Perdido. Although his favorite actr. . .