Barking Detective 04 - A Chihuahua in Every Stocking Page 2

  I took the puffy pink coat off the hook and held it close to Pepe.

  “Aha!” he said after a few sniffs. “It is just as I thought. It bears a most pleasant, perro scent that must surely belong to the bonita Chiquita.”

  “What is he doing with my coat?” asked Sophie.

  “Pepe has picked up the scent of Chiquita,” I said.

  “That makes sense,” said Tim. “The coat was in the backseat with Sophie and Chiquita.”

  “I let her use it for a pillow,” Sophie said. Her mouth drooped.

  “A muy thoughtful thing to do,” said Pepe, looking at me. I always complain when he curls up on my clothes—his favorite place to sleep.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “We must take the coat and go outside,” Pepe told me. “I will see if I can pick up Chiquita’s scent and follow it.”

  “We have to take the coat?” I asked Pepe.

  Tim thought I was talking to him. “It’s OK with me. If it will help, you should take it.”

  “Pepe will use it to find Chiquita,” I told Sophie.

  “I want to go, too!” shouted Sophie.

  Tim knelt down beside his daughter and put an arm around her. “You can’t go out without your coat, sweetie. It’s too cold. They will bring it back.” He stood up. “You will bring it back?”

  “Of course,” I said. I could see where he would be a little nervous after losing everything. “Can you tell me more about where you last saw your car?”

  “Sure!” Tim went out on the balcony and pointed to the gas station on the other side of the highway. “I pulled over because Sophie needed to use the restroom. That’s why we left Chiquita in the car. We were only going to be gone a few minutes. But then Sophie saw Santa.”

  “You saw Santa?”

  “He was smoking a cigarette!” said Sophie indignantly.

  “Sophie marched right over there and told him it was bad for his health. He was so”—he rolled his eyes a little—“grateful for the advice that he invited her over to the store to find out what she wanted for Christmas.” He pointed to a purple building with a big sign that read YE OLDE GIFT SHOPPE.

  Sophie nodded, her eyes big and brown. “I asked him to bring my mommy home.”

  “Um, sweetie,” said Tim, “you know that Mommy isn’t coming home again. And you know there is no such thing as Santa Claus.”

  I was surprised that he would discourage her from believing in Santa Claus. Surely that was a harmless belief at her age.

  Pepe spoke up. “Geri, what is he talking about?”

  “You’re wrong, Daddy!” Sophie said firmly. “Everyone knows there is a Santa Claus. And Santa Claus can do anything.”

  “Ah, wisdom from the mouth of a child,” said Pepe, seemingly relieved.

  “You believe in Santa Claus?” I asked him.

  “Of course. Only a fool would not,” said Pepe.

  “I don’t believe in confusing children with the idea that mythical creatures are real,” said Tim.

  “Of course I believe in Santa,” said Sophie. “And Santa promised me he would bring Mommy home. He wanted to know where we lived. I told him we were moving to Seattle and I didn’t know our address yet.” Her face got sad. “I hope he figures it out.” She bit her lip.

  Tim looked at me and shrugged. “We were only gone about fifteen minutes. When we got back to the gas station, the car was gone.”

  “Poor Chiquita!” said Sophie. “She will be so worried about me!”

  “Andale, Geri!” said Pepe. “We have work to do!”

  Chapter 3

  “Brrrr!” said Pepe as we walked along the highway toward the crosswalk. “It is cold enough to stop jumping beans from jumping,” he added, dodging the patches of snow that still remained here and there.

  “Do you want to wear your doggy sweater?” I asked him. “I’ve got it in my purse.”

  “Gracias, but no,” he told me. “The chill keeps me alert.”

  “With all the snow, do you think there will any smells left for you to find?”

  “Fret not, my dear Sullivan,” he said, going into his Sherlock Pepe mode. “Where there is a scent, there is a way.”

  At the gas station where Tim had left the car and trailer, I could still see the imprint of tire tracks in the slushy snow. The police had marked off the spot with orange cones, but there was no other evidence of the crime.

  Pepe sniffed around the edges of the melting snow and evidently picked up Chiquita’s scent.

  “Sí, she was here at this very spot,” he said, looking up at me. A few flecks of snow stuck to his nose. “Follow me. The scent leads this way.”

  He headed across the street, toward the main part of town. The sidewalks were thronged with people, all bundled up in coats and hats.

  Pepe led us straight to the front door of Ye Old Gift Shoppe. The name of the store was painted in Gothic letters on a shield-shaped signboard hanging from a metal bar over the front door. The two windows were framed with tiny white lights.

  “Chiquita must have been following Sophie,” Pepe said.

  A sign in the window said TALK TO SANTA, and there were photographs of a jolly red-and-white Santa flanked by two elves. But the store seemed to be closed, which seemed odd on such a busy day. The lights were off. A sign hanging on the door said BACK IN FIFTEEN MINUTES.

  Pepe snuffled along the edges of the building. “Then something happened, something that caused her much distress.” He looked up at me. “She went this way.” He darted off down one of the side streets, then doubled back up an alley, toward what might have been the back door of Ye Old Gift Shoppe. “Yes, something happened here. Chiquita was quite angry.”

  “Is she inside?” I asked, trying to peer in the window, but I couldn’t see much. Just a back room that seemed to be empty except for a few cardboard boxes.

  “No, someone picked her up and carried her off. Her scent is faint, but I can still follow it! This way!” Pepe kept going down the alley. It ended at the entrance to a little park. I could hear a river flowing but couldn’t see it.

  Pepe trotted down a concrete path that descended in meandering curves toward the river. Posters of Chiquita the Chihuahua were already taped to the posts of the street lamps that lit the path. There was no one else around.

  “Do you really believe in Santa?” I asked Pepe. I had been wondering since our earlier conversation.

  “Of course,” he said. He stopped in the middle of the path. “Why do you ask? Do you not believe in him?” He looked disturbed.

  “He’s an imaginary being,” I said, “a combination of old myths and modern advertising.”

  “I suppose you think I am imaginary,” said Pepe.

  “Well, no, I don’t,” I said.

  “Case closed,” said Pepe.

  I really didn’t see how that settled the Santa issue, but it was clear he didn’t want to talk about it.

  Pepe kept his nose down to the path, zigzagging back and forth. Suddenly he froze. “¡Ay caramba!” he said. He was looking at what appeared to be a log, lying in a snowbank, under the boughs of an evergreen tree.

  “What? Have you found Chiquita?” I asked, dashing forward. “Is she OK?”

  “No, it is not Chiquita,” said Pepe. “I found an elf! And he is not OK.”

  “What?” But he was right. As I got closer, I could see that Pepe was standing beside the body of a young man. He wore a forest-green elf suit, light green tights, and pointy-toed velvet shoes. He lay on his back, with his eyes staring up at the sky above, unseeing. His face and hands were as white as the snow. The snow around him was stained pink.

  “A muy muerte elf.”

  “Oh my God!” We had seen dead bodies before on previous cases, but we had never seen a dead elf. I pulled my cell phone out of my purse and dialed 911.

  “What should we do now?” I asked Pepe as we waited near the tree for the police. “And where’s Chiquita?”

  “I do not know,” said Pepe. He sniffed all arou
nd the body and under the nearby bushes. Snow fell off the branches. He shook it off.

  “This elf was holding Chiquita. I smell her scent on him. But then she ran off. She hid in the bushes. Someone picked her up. A woman who smells like many other dogs. I smell a miniature collie. Some kind of poodle. Maybe a corgi. Perhaps a dogcatcher?”

  He began to shiver. Pepe had been picked up off the street in Los Angeles and put into a shelter for many months. He was terrified of dogcatchers, who he called the dog police. They are one of the only things he fears. Besides cats.

  “Do you think the person who took Chiquita was the murderer?” I was horrified at the thought.

  “I do not know,” said Pepe. “It is possible.”

  Just then a silver car bearing the logo of the Chelan County Sheriff’s Department pulled up at the edge of the park. A tall, lean man in a tan uniform emerged from the car and headed toward us. He had olive skin, a sheaf of dark hair, and a bushy mustache.

  “Drew Baker,” he said, flashing a badge. “And you are?”

  “Geri Sullivan,” I said. “And this is my dog, Pepe. He’s the one who found the body.”

  The deputy bent over the body, shaking his head as he peered at the boy’s face. “I warned him,” he said. “I told him this is how he would end up.”

  “You know him?” I asked.

  Drew straightened up. “Yeah.” He shook his head again. “Local kid. Repeat offender. Dropped out of high school. Started hanging out with the wrong crowd. Got into drugs.”

  He went back to his car and we followed him. He picked up the microphone attached to his radio and spoke into it. “Got a 187. The victim is Trevor Edwards. Get the coroner here and the CSI techs. And someone’s got to notify his mother.”

  He hung up and shook his head again. “Tough for a mom to learn her boy is dead the day before Christmas,” he said.

  “Very sad,” I agreed, thinking of Sophie and her dual losses: her mother and her dog.

  “Especially since she’s a single mom and he’s her only child,” Drew said. “Now tell me what you and your dog were doing here.”

  I explained that we were helping Tim and his daughter, Sophie.

  “You mean you are investigating the theft of the car and trailer?” the deputy asked with a frown.

  “Not really,” I said. “We’re looking for the Chihuahua.”

  Drew gave me a stern look. “We’ve identified a person of interest and have him under surveillance. No need for civilians to get involved. In fact, it’s dangerous. You could ruin our investigation.”

  I wanted to tell him about what Pepe had learned, but that’s one of the problems of having a talking dog. You can’t really explain how you know what he told you.

  Meanwhile, two other official vehicles arrived: an ambulance, though it was too late to render aid to Trevor, and a shiny black Cadillac. A few people had wandered over from the shops and were gathered at the edge of the park, pointing and whispering. Drew took my contact information and let us go as more deputies rolled out crime scene tape, and someone threw a gray tarp over the body of the unfortunate elf.

  Chapter 4

  “Are you sure you don’t want to wear your sweater?” I asked Pepe as we headed back into the little town. The trail had gone cold, literally and figuratively. Pepe was shivering. He shook his head impatiently. His long ears actually flapped a bit at the ends.

  He put his nose to the ground and led me back to Ye Olde Gift Shoppe. It was still closed. In one window, a toy train chugged through a lighted village of porcelain English cottages. The other window was filled with a white Christmas tree covered with silver glitter-crusted globes and candy canes.

  I studied the photo of Santa in the window, this time looking at the two elves in the background. One was a young woman with long dark hair and a pointed chin. The other was a young man with a long, pale face.

  “Look, Pepe!” I said, scooping him up so he was on the same level as the photo. “Trevor was one of the elves!”

  “Good work, Geri!” said Pepe. “We must find the other elf. And Santa. They may know the connection between Trevor and Chiquita.”

  He headed down the sidewalk and stopped at the door to the neighboring restaurant, which bore the name The Bratwurst Factory. Looking through the leaded windows, I could see that most of the tables were full. A red-faced man in lederhosen was wandering along the aisles, playing the accordion.

  “We are in need of refreshments,” Pepe said firmly. “Let us go in.”

  “They won’t let you in,” I told him.

  “Barbarians!” said Pepe. “In France—”

  “Yes, I know.” We had been through this before. According to Pepe, in France dogs were allowed in all the best restaurants. “I’ll put you in my purse.” He hated this, but it had served as a good way to hide his presence in the past, so I always carried a big leather purse, about as tall as Pepe. I plunked him in, then gripped the handles firmly. I could hear him muttering inside, but the noise was covered up by the sound of the accordion playing “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”

  The hostess seated us at a tiny table for two in the dim recesses of the restaurant, right by the kitchen door. I peered at the huge menu, which was full of food I considered barbaric: sausages and goulash, schnitzel and sauerbraten. There was only one vegetarian option for me: egg noodles tossed with cheese and peas. But Pepe was excited as I read him the options. “This is truly a feast for a beast,” he said proudly.

  I pulled out my cell phone and called Felix. He said he had just finished up with his last client and would see me in an hour.

  “I wish that was true,” I said with a sigh. “But I’m not home.”

  “Where are you?” he asked. “I hear accordions.”

  I quickly filled him in about my impulsive trip to Leavenworth with Pepe and how we had just stumbled upon a body in the snow. He was a little bit shocked, I could tell, by the fact that we had gone directly from finding a dead elf to eating in a German restaurant. I blamed it all on Pepe.

  But the truth was, I was hungry, too. I hadn’t eaten anything since my breakfast oatmeal and coffee. I was just promising Felix that I would be home soon when the waitress showed up at our table.

  She wore a short dirndl skirt, an embroidered vest that cinched in her waist, and a frilly white blouse that showed off her cleavage. She had a pale face and a pointed chin. She looked familiar.

  “You’re one of the elves!” I said suddenly.

  She seemed startled.

  “You work next door at the Gift Shoppe,” I said. “With Trevor.” I hesitated.

  “Yeah, in the mornings,” she said. “Then I come over here and work the lunch and dinner shifts.”

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Sarah,” she said. She pointed to her name tag. “Can I take your order?”

  “Why is the store closed?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Who knows?” She pulled a notebook out of her apron. “So what can I get you?”

  “Really, I want to buy one of those cute little lighted houses for my niece,” I said. “Do you know when Ye Olde Gift Shoppe will reopen?”

  “You can get those little houses anywhere in town,” she said in a bored voice. “They have them for a dollar cheaper over at the Quainte Parlor at the other end of town.” She tapped her pen on her little notebook.

  “You should ask her when she last saw Trevor the elf,” Pepe said.

  “Speaking of Trevor,” I asked Sarah, “when did you see him last?”

  She looked startled but recovered quickly. “Santa sent him off on an errand. I haven’t seen him since.”

  She looked around the crowded restaurant. The accordion player had moved on to “Silent Night.” “If you’re not ready to order, I’ll come back.”

  “Order the food, Geri,” said Pepe. “She is obviously too busy to talk right now. We should question her when she is more at ease.”

  “You’re right,” I told my dog.

  �
��I am?” asked Sarah, thinking I was talking to her. “So does that mean you want me to come back?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m ready to order.”

  She put her pen to the order pad, asking, “What would you like?”

  I ordered the egg noodles and a side of bratwurst for Pepe.

  When Sarah left, Pepe said, “I suspect she knows more than she is telling us about Trevor the elf.”

  “We’ll have to find out,” I said.

  “Sí,” he said, then sniffed at the air, happily enjoying the aromas that filled the restaurant. “But on full stomachs.”

  The place was still packed when we finished our meal. Another waitress brought us our check. I didn’t see Sarah. Perhaps she was on a break. Perhaps she had taken off.

  By the time we left the restaurant, it was getting dark outside. Night comes early in the Pacific Northwest in winter, especially in the mountains. Carolers dressed in costumes—forest-green coats and shiny black boots for the men, long green dresses and mantles for the women—sang in the gazebo.

  We needed to report back to Tim and his daughter and return Sophie’s coat. And I wanted to see if any rooms were available for the night at the Black Forest Inn. It didn’t seem likely we would find Chiquita tonight. The good news was that she was probably inside, rather than lost in the snow.

  On our way back to the motel, with Pepe snuggled inside my coat, we passed Ye Olde Gift Shoppe again. I stopped to study the photo of Santa and the elves.

  “Geri,” said Pepe. “There is a light on by the cash register.”

  He was right! One rather dim recessed lamp over the main counter illuminated that area. The sign on the door still read CLOSED.

  “And the door is ajar,” Pepe told me. “Is that not strange?”

  It was ajar—open about three or four inches.

  “I smell danger,” said Pepe. “Look! There is a red pant leg and black boot on the floor. See it? It is sticking out just past the counter.”

  My heart sank as I saw what my dog saw.

  “Santa!” yelled Pepe, squirming out of my grasp and falling into a snowbank outside the front door. He scrambled to his feet, dashed through the door, and disappeared into the shop. “We must help Santa!”