Саманта Сильвер - Barking Up The Wrong Tree

“Hey Sprinkles,” I told him, gently stroking his soft fur. I spoke softly, knowing how he reacted the night before to this kind of questioning. “Are you up for answering a few questions? It’s important.”

“If it’s important, I’ll try,” Sprinkles told me. “Of course.”

“Thank you,” I told him, smiling. “What can you tell me about when Andrea was… hurt?”

Sprinkles suddenly began to shake violently.

“No. No, no. No. I can’t. I can’t. I don’t know. I don’t remember. I can’t.”

“Ok, ok,” I told him, patting him again. “It’s ok, you don’t have to say anything. It’s ok.”

“I’m sorry,” Sprinkles told me, looking up at me with his big brown eyes. “I can’t. I can’t remember. All I remember is fear.”

“Ok, that’s alright. Don’t worry about it,” I told him with a smile. I looked up to where Sophie and Charlotte were working on dinner and shook my head. Sophie came over and started patting Sprinkles as well.

“You’re a good boy, aren’t you,” she asked him, earning a hiss from Bee on the other side of the room.

“You don’t even like Sophie,” I shot at my cat.

“Well that doesn’t mean she’s allowed to like dogs,” Bee replied, and I rolled my eyes.

“Angela?” Sprinkles asked, and I looked over at him. At least now he was calling me by my first name instead of ‘ma’am’.

“Yes, Sprinkles?”

“Would it be alright if I went to bed now? I’m still quite tired.”

“Of course!” I told him, and led him back into my room, settled him in on his temporary bed – I made a mental note to go to the pet shop a few towns over and get him a bed on my next day off – and told him to sleep tight as I closed the door behind him.

“He’s a little sweetie, isn’t he?” Sophie asked me as I came back into the kitchen and washed my hands before grabbing plates for the homemade veggie supreme pizza she and Charlotte had just made.

“ I’m a little sweetie,” Bee complained as she jumped onto the counter, walking along the ledge.

“You are not in any way a little sweetie,” I replied, picking her up off the counter and setting her back down on the ground. “For one thing, you’ve known for years you’re not allowed up on the counter.”

“I’m acting out because I’m being replaced.”

“You are not being replaced. I love you, Bee. But I need to take care of Sprinkles too for a little while. Plus, Sprinkles might have information to help us catch a murderer. It’s important that he feel comfortable here.”

I turned to Sophie and Charlotte.

“I asked him, but he’s too scared. He says he doesn’t remember anything, only being scared. My guess is he’s repressed whatever happened.”

“Awwww, poor thing,” Sophie muttered. “Do you think he’ll remember with time?”

I shrugged. “I hope so. It certainly would help. I also think possibly telling him that whoever killed his owner has been arrested might help.”

“Oh no,” Charlotte said. “Absolutely not. The last time you decided to hunt down a murderer yourself you almost died.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t?” I replied, shrugging my shoulders. “And we did catch the murderer. Zoe Wright’s going to be spending the next 30 years in jail thanks to us.”

“Was it really worth it though? What if this time we do die? What then?”

“Oh my God Charlotte, you’re such a baby,” Sophie chimed in.

“Of course you agree with her,” Charlotte said, crossing her arms. “You’re both insane.”

“Fine, well, you don’t have to have anything to do with it,” I told her.

“That’s ridiculous. If you’re doing this, I’m in too. One of us has to be smart enough to keep you from killing yourselves.”

“Well, we’re doing it. For Sprinkles,” Sophie said. “I don’t want that poor dog being so scared anymore. If we can use him to find the killer, great. If we can’t, well, we’ll find the killer on our own and hopefully that will help him heal. He’s too sweet a dog to go through this.”

Charlotte sighed. “I hate both of you.”

I supposed that meant she was in!

Chapter 9

The three of us were so busy the next couple of days that it wasn’t until Sunday, when the vet clinic was closed and Charlotte had no classes, that we really managed to start trying to figure out who could have killed Andrea Dottory.

It was a beautiful, sunny mid-June day, so we decided to settle ourselves on the deck overlooking the backyard. Sophie made fresh squeezed apple juice while I worked on some French toast and maple syrup while Charlotte attended to Bee and our canine visitor.

“You can come outside, Bee, but you have to promise you’re not going to catch any birds, mice, or any other living creatures. If you do, no more sushi, EVER.”

“Fine,” Bee muttered, and I opened the balcony door. She found a nice spot on the deck and curled up into a little ball, letting the rays of sunshine heat up her body.

Sprinkles, on the other hand, was almost afraid of the backyard. I supposed after his time in the woods, the backyard must have been a bit intimidating.

“You don’t have to come out,” I told him gently. “You can stay in the house if you feel more comfortable.”

“I think I might, thank you,” he replied, and walked back towards my bedroom.

“Such a sweetie,” Sophie said, a smile on her face as she piled maple syrup on her pancakes, then covered them with whipped cream and fresh strawberries I’d bought at the farmers market the previous afternoon.

“I’m like eighty percent sure you’re going to get diabetes from eating that,” Charlotte observed.

“Whatever, science will have cured that by the time I get it,” Sophie replied, and Charlotte just shook her head, looking exasperated.

I grabbed a couple slices of French toast myself, added the toppings, and dug in. It was a heavenly treat after what had been a pretty stressful week. So stressful that we hadn’t even really had an opportunity to complain about Lisa’s new boyfriend together; everything was about Sprinkles and the murder.

I took a long sip of the fresh squeezed orange juice and let the sun’s rays warm and heal my bones. No wonder Bee loved doing this so much. It felt like I was a character in a video game who’d just hit the magic potion to re-energize them completely. A couple squirrels were calling to each other in the trees, and birds sang in the woods around our property. This was truly the kind of Sunday morning I loved.

When we’d finally eaten all the French toast, Charlotte pulled out a notebook and pen, and opened it to the first page.

“Ok. Since we’re apparently doing this, I figured we should start off with a list of people who should be mad at Andrea Dottory. Anyone who might have a reason to kill her. Then we can organize it by likelihood of wanting to murder the woman, and then we can see if any of those people have alibis.”

“Leave it to Charlotte to do everything by the book and super logically,” Sophie teased.

“Do you have a better idea?” Charlotte asked, and Sophie was forced to admit she didn’t.

“Good. Then we’re going with this. Who had a reason to hate Andrea?”

I closed my eyes for a second. Was “virtually everyone in town” a good answer?

“Antonia deLucca, for one,” Sophie replied. “She and Andrea were really good friends for ages, and then they had that falling out and pretty much hated each other for years.”

“That’s right,” I said, remembering back. “And it wasn’t like either one of them were prone to keeping things a secret, so it must have been something big between them to never tell anyone. Plus Antonia didn’t exactly look upset when she came to Bella’s and announced that Andrea had been murdered.”