Chapter 10
“Murdered?” I say. “This was a car accident, Claudia. Of the sinkhole variety.”
“That’s just what they want you to think,” she murmurs, bending down and rubbing some grass between her fingers before smelling
them.
Ooookay.
The nice thing about living in a city is that you meet all kinds of people.
It just so happens some of those people will be crazy conspiracy theorists.
Don’t get me wrong, part of me wishes she’s right, because it would let me off the hook. But I’m going to be a grown-up about
this and take responsibility for my actions. Even when my actions suck and someone, uh, dies.
“It really wasn’t murder,” I say quietly.
“It was my fault. I was late to my shift. This guy—Cran, was it?—drives through every day at a hundred miles an hour. It’s the most predictable thing in the world.
And without me here to make him slow down, he drove straight into the sinkhole and hit his head on the steering wheel. Game over. And very much my fault.”
Claudia stands. “Then why weren’t the dogs hurt?”
“What?”
“The dogs. They’re all totally fine.”
I look down, where the sweet dog has curled into a ball at my feet. He gazes up at me lovingly. “Huh.”
“Exactly.”
I shake my head. “No, I’m sure it’s because dogs are bouncy or something.” But then I think back to yesterday, when Cran hit
the pothole, before it was a sinkhole, and was so convinced I’d given one of the dogs a concussion.
That dog wasn’t very bouncy yesterday.
Still. No way.
“Okay, then,” Claudia continues. “Why didn’t the airbag inflate?”
“I don’t . . . I’m not a mechanic, Claudia.”
“I’ll tell you,” she says. “It’s because the car wasn’t going fast. Not fast enough to kill somebody.”
“He always drives too fast,” I argue, feeling queasy all over again. “That’s his whole thing.”
“Nope,” Claudia says, shaking her head. “Look at the facts. We were the first people to arrive, so we had a pristine crime
scene. We know we got there immediately afterward, based on the amount of oil leaking under the car. His positioning indicated
that he vomited during the incident, not after, which suggests—”
I hold up a hand to stop her while I do my best to not sympathy-barf.
She shoots me a withering look, but gives me a second.
“What about his nose?” I carefully ask when my stomach has more or less settled. “It was bleeding, probably from hitting the steering wheel. How about that, hotshot? You trying to tell me that’s not from impact?”
“Fine, but my point is, no cuts or gashes or bruises like you might see in a blunt force trauma. Therefore, factually, he was disintegrating internally. You know what causes that?”
I want to know.
I also don’t want to know.
“Radium poisoning,” Claudia says triumphantly.
And this, right here, is how conspiracy theorists get you. They sound perfectly reasonable, and then they pull the rug right
out from under you.
“Now we’re in this together.” She’s suddenly on a roll. “You and me have to figure out who did it, and what their motive was,
and it’s going to be hard because I can think of about a dozen motives for killing Cran, and that’s without even trying—”
“You know what,” I interrupt as delicately as I can, because you never want to piss off a conspiracy theorist. “I have to
go. I’m sorry. I have a . . . mammogram.”
“Oh,” she says. “Well, yeah, that’s important.”
“I’ll, ah, see you around,” I say, as I back away.
She holds out three leashes with dogs at the end of them.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” she asks sweetly.
For the entire two-block walk home—which takes longer than usual since the three dogs have to smell every single thing—I’m in a state of shock. How did I let that woman convince me to take charge of these poodles? I don’t know anything about
dogs. They definitely aren’t allowed in my apartment. I can’t afford to get kicked out. And I absolutely do not believe a
word Claudia says about them being “important witnesses.”
So why did I take the dogs??
It’s partly because the sweet one won’t let me take two steps without following me and nuzzling.
And, well, that’s sort of melted my heart.
Claudia said it was unusual that he likes me; poodles are “handler sensitive,” and since I’m just not really a natural at many things (okay, anything), discovering that I might be a natural “Poodle Handler” has been the best part of a very bad day.
And then there’s the fact that it’s my fault they’re now orphans.
So yeah, I took them.
And now I am going to have to sneak these three enormous dogs through my front gate past Roy’s door.
Great.
We jog across the courtyard as quickly as possible, and I plaster myself against the bricks next to the door. We’re just under
Roy’s window, so I hope he isn’t looking out at this exact moment. After giving it a second, I peek through the front door
into the mailroom—everything is quiet.
We slip inside, and while the dogs try to tug my arm off and stick their noses in every dirty, spiderwebby corner of the tiny
room, I clamp my stop sign into my armpit and manage to unlock the little metal door of my mailbox.
Ugh.
How do I have an electricity bill already?
I try to shove it in my pocket, which is weirdly already full. I pull out whatever’s in there—and I’ve only just processed that it’s the breakfast pepperoni I forgot to eat, when the sweet dog vaults over the other two and devours the
entire handful with a huge sloppy chomp.
When he finishes chewing, he looks at me, and it is exceedingly clear that it was never me he wanted to nuzzle.
It was the pepperoni.
Welp. Too late to back out now.
I take a deep breath and aim all four of us toward the stairwell, hoping we can run past Roy’s door.
But the moment we’re in, the dogs are everywhere, smelling every inch of the faded brown carpet, and the jingle-jingle of their collars is really loud, so when I hear the click of Roy’s lock, I panic. I can’t outrun this.
I do the only thing I can. I let go of their leashes, point my finger toward the stairs, and whisper, “Fly like the wind.”
And stunningly, they sprint right upstairs and out of sight.
By the time Roy has the door fully open, the dogs are gone.
“Oh hey,” I say, casually, leaning against the wall.
“Did I hear something weird out here?” he asks suspiciously.
“It was probably me,” I say, holding up the mail. “That dang electric company is on my ass.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” Roy says. “If I had a nickel.”
There’s a pause.
“Okay, well, see you later,” I say.
“Okay,” says Roy with a nod. “Good talk.”
As I push open the door to 3C, the dogs burst inside and immediately make themselves way too much at home. The pepperoni lover heads straight for my tiny kitchen and starts licking the floor. Another one flops down in the
middle of the room, sneezing. The third one leaps onto my bed and starts wrestling with my comforter.
“You—” I point at the one on my bed. “Uh, down! No! Stop!” None of these things work. He shakes his head back and forth, growling,
and I can hear the comforter start to rip, and the electric bill flashes through my mind, and I should not be buying new comforters right now, but then I remember something I heard walking past the dog park the other day—
“Drop it!”
The dog freezes, drops the comforter, and looks at me. Yes. Yes. I’m a total dog whisperer.
“Okay,” I say. “Now just—stay right there. Don’t move.” I hold out my palm to him, like I do when my stop sign isn’t enough
and I need an extra hand signal to get a car to stop.
And suddenly, the dog pops up on its hind legs and starts walking around on my bed like a person.
Wait, what? Forget whisperer.
I am a goddamn dog wizard.
I put my palm down. The dog goes back on all fours. I hold my palm up again. Dog stands on two legs.
Am I imagining this? Are these circus dogs?? Why did Cran have circus dogs???
I turn and hold my palm out to the dog lying on the floor. Nothing. It just lets out a huge sigh. Too depressed for tricks,
I guess.
Then I turn around and hold my palm out to the dog who was licking the floor, and that’s when I notice he’s turned his full
attention to me. He is, in fact, making very intense eye contact with me. Weirdly intense. He hunches a little bit, and I
wonder if this is another trick.
And then, maintaining eye contact, he very slowly starts to hunch even more . . .
“No,” I whisper.
. . . as if he’s about to . . .
“Nononononono,” I plead.
. . . take a crap . . .
“Please no,” I say, trying politeness.
. . . right on my floor.
“Don’t drop it,” I say, trying dog-speak.
Desperate, I hold up my stop sign.
The dog just stares, wide-eyed. There is a delicate plop, and he leaves an actual turd right on the hardwood. He kicks his feet a couple times and sits down next to it proudly.
“You are never getting pepperoni again,” I whisper. The other two dogs start barking with abandon, congratulating the pooper,
I suppose, as I wave frantically for them to keep it down. Stopping Roy from seeing the dogs is one thing, but keeping him
from hearing them is something else entirely.
I quickly dispose of the evidence and throw open the windows, but the odor of stress-poop is still overwhelming in my little
studio. I’ve been a dog owner for five minutes, and already I do not see why anyone would voluntarily choose this life. I
must be missing something.
How do I get them to not poop on my floor?
The answer comes so quickly, I can’t believe I even had to ask: I’ll buy their love.
I hit the internet and place a DoorDash order for a few things: a weird toy you put peanut butter in, “bully sticks,” which
I’m thrilled to say are actual bull penises, and Himalayan yak chews, which look like string cheese for dogs, and which the
internet assures me will keep them occupied for at least a full hour. I realize with a sinking feeling that keeping these
dogs flush in other animals’ penises is going to be expensive. Hopefully this will be a one-penis sort of stay, just until I can figure out what to do with them.