1 PAWsible Suspects Read Online Free PDF Page B

dogs, and so I was going to pull that suggestion out of my hat once we arrived at the vet.
    The tech described John Smith as tall with dark hair with a sprinkling of gray in it. He’d had a small scar on his left eyebrow and was clean shaven. All in all, not a bad description. I suspected that someone there had made note of his description, in case anything like this came up.
    I loaded up Della into the car again and headed to the vet’s office. I had to drive to Harvard Terrace to get to the vet. Another South Toledo neighborhood, its location made me feel more confident that I’d found the right dog.
    Harvard Terrace had been built almost a century ago, and the neighborhood is filled with gorgeous homes. If doggie chats ever became profitable, I’d love to live there. The area had been designated a historic area, so home prices were steep, and the neighbors would probably not like a new neighbor who worked with, and sometimes against, the police. Even so it was a neighborhood that I aspired to.
    The vet’s office was easy to find, and I pulled into the lot, put a leash on Della, and went inside. The same tech was working the desk, so I didn’t have to repeat my story for her. I only had to ask for the microchip to be read. I told her that the name which should appear for the dog was Ruby Jenkins.
    In less than five minutes for the read and the call to the pet locator service, she was back with positive confirmation. This was indeed Perry.
    I could have told her anyway. When Della saw Perry, she became immediately vocal. She barked, growled and whined at him. Perry was nearly as happy to see her. He peed on the floor, which seems to be a greeting ritual for some dogs. I cleaned up the mess with paper towels while the tech read the chip. Perry didn’t want to be any more than five feet from Della.
    Given that I’d made a firm identification of the dog prior to reading the chip, the tech had little doubt that I was in charge of Perry too. She gave me a list of the dog’s pain pills and antibiotics for the gash along with a schedule for taking them. I had to bum a collar from the vet’s office since Perry didn’t have his own. Since the man who had dropped Perry off had overpaid for the services, they didn’t press for payment from me.
    I was back home in less than an hour, now the possessor of two Scotties. Even so, neither one of them was telling me a thing that I didn’t already know. The blood came from Perry. Someone had taken the dog to the vet after Perry was hurt. Della had been frightened and hidden somewhere so the perpetrator couldn’t reach her. I was sure there was a perpetrator, because Ruby was still missing. I knew only too well that the longer a person is missing, the less likely it is that they’ll be found alive.
    This made me sad, because these happy little dogs would soon be homeless. Ida didn’t seem to want them, and I didn’t know about the rest of the family. I knew a few of the local rescue sites, but the nearest Scottie rescue was in St. Louis, six to seven hours from here. For the moment, I knew they’d be mine, but there was something I had to do first.
    Since I didn’t know the woman in the pant suit’s name, I just dialed the local station and told them that I’d located the second Scottie from the Jenkins disappearance. I explained that a detective and I had talked about the missing dog and that while I didn’t know her name, I was sure that she would want to know about it.
    Then I waited. It sounds dull, but I had three dogs and a cat in the house. So it was anything but uninteresting. The two Scotties had obviously never lived with a cat before and spent the better part of an hour tormenting The Countess until she took affront and climbed to a shelf in the office.
    Sure enough in less than an hour, the detective was there at my door again. This time I wasn’t glad to see her at all. I was still fuming about her stepping over the bounds into my personal life. My only goal