Bear the Great – Chapter One-Hundred-Nine.
The Pet Psychic started out in banking, if you can imagine. Well, at least she worked for a bank, mostly doing marketing and PR. It wasn’t until much later in the game that she dropped out of the corporate world entirely and decided to stay home doing whatever it was she’d be doing for the rest of her life.
Her first post-bank venture was writing children’s books. She loved kids, though she couldn’t have any of her own. And she’d always been a pretty engaging writer. Even if it was mostly aimed at getting people to open a Six-Month Jumbo CD.
“If I Could Fly” was the heart-warming tale of Aria, a spunky little chimpmunk full of wild imagination and big dreams. It was published by a mom-and-pop press that specialized in kids’ lit. It did okay, but not well enough that she could retire on the royalties. And it was A LOT of work. Her agent wanted her to write another installment, but no publisher was offering an advance. Thanks, but no thanks.
With the help of some PR contacts at the local iHeart affilliate she’d cultivated while working for the bank, she next tried her hand at talk radio. She only ever agreed to interview those guests she found interesting. That ruled out most politicos, all preachers, and the latest local sports hero. You know, the tried-and-true staples of small town broadcast journalism. That gig lasted a few years and was fun enough. But ultimately the station manager told her one day that they needed something different for her time slot. Something that would drive ad revenues higher than a 1-book children’s author with 5 dogs at home could ever hope to provide. At the door, he handed over a souvenir WGAL coffee mug, wished her the best, and that was the end of that.
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The one-two punch that ultimately prompted a midlife course correction came after her beloved aussie, Darwin, was hit and killed by a car speeding down the two-lane blacktop near the end of their driveway. On the same day, she recieved a diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis from her GP who had been working up some abnormal lab results. She couldn’t figure out why she was always dropping things and gradually losing strength in her fingers. Now she knew. MS could be managed, the doc said. But it was unlikely to improve over time. Crap.
For a while she wandered the house in a tattered bathrobe wondering what in the actual fucking hell. What’s a spunky little chipmunk with big dreams and a background in banking PR to do? Eventually she picked herself up off the mat, got certified in Reiki, then finally decided to hang out her shingle as a pet psychic. I mean, c’mon: Conversing with dead animals? That would be a piece of cake compared with trying to make an interview with some bottle-blonde air-head Dairy Princess sound interesting. And imagining that animals could talk in the first place? Well, Aria the chipmunk had already given her a leg up on that one. If she got to speak with Darwin from time to time in the process? Bonus.
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She closed her log-book on the case of Bear The Great Pyrenees with a satisfied “thwack.” Another success story. Another fat fee in the account ledger for Pet Psychic Services, LTD. And she hadn’t even needed to go all Nancy Reagan to get there this time either. Just a little Google Earth street-view, plus the tried-and-true treats-from-home trick. Oh, and also, a generous dose of empathy, sprinkled with just the right amount of questioning curiosity. It sure was a whole helluva lot easier than marketing Jumbo CDs.
The clients were certainly pleased with the outcome. And it looked like the entire family was going to hit the trail and get themselves in better shape, Bear included. Just what the doctor ordered. But something nagged at the edge of her consciousness….
How could the cops let this thing with the missing neighbor drop ? I mean, this wasn’t just a case of some teenager in a hoodie taking the five-finger discount on a tube of spf50 plus some Baby Ruths from the display rack by the cashier at the local Walgreens. This was premeditated murder. Did local law enforcement really not give a damn? Or did they lack the necessary research skills? Hell, give her a week or two with Bear in tow and she bet SHE could figure it out. Ah well. Not her monkeys, not her circus. Let the police do their job. Right?
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OK, yeah, sure: Julianne the whack-a-doodle dog groomer lady next door turned out to be a dead end. Away at an out-of-state dog show at the time of murder? Man, you couldn’t ask for a better alibi. And her husband apparently had passed the detectives’ smell test when they interviewed him. He said he had no animus against his neighbor, none at all. It was his wife who had the problem, not him. The pet psychic wished she could get Chris in an interview room one-on-one and sniff him out. Though if it was the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office that was investigating, she doubted they’d ever be able to do much besides catching scofflaws speeding past Roxborough Intermediate when school let out.
Security tapes for the day of the murder were all blank because somebody had been messing with the cameras’ wiring again. Not once, but twice! Chris said he suspected the HOA Board Chair, @RampartsBob. But nobody in their right mind would ever believe that. Chris was probably just being vindictive because of all the grief the HOA had given him and Julianne. Hell, Bob was too fat and feeble to make it up three rungs of a step-ladder to change a dang light bulb, let alone to snip four camera wires.
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The deceased’s wife had also been a likely suspect early on, especially after she admitted to following the victim into the Park on the day of the murder. But after police sweated her long and hard, her story – that she was “just curious” as to her potentially unfaithful husband’s whereabouts, and that she only used the Visitors Center restroom briefly before returning home – held up.
Well, it held up with the backing of Aelin the Park Ranger, who admitted – on second thought – that she DID notice a black Accord leaving the Visitors Center lot that day. And that leaving occured way too soon for the wife to have had enough time to hoof it all the way up to the top of South Rim and conk poor hubby on the noggin with a hammer. It was ironic in more ways than one, too: Jealous wife of hapless victim is exhonerated by sworn testimony of transgender Ranger? Man, you just couldn’t make this stuff up. Never in a million years.
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When he goes out to pee in the yard these days, Bear misses his early-morning neighborhood walking-buddy. He still can’t figure out what’s become of that guy. He always had the best treats. Bacon! Too bad mom hasn’t discovered the wonders of bacon. But now they go over to the dog park at Chatfield for walks, and there’s this poodle over there Bear’s been looking forward to sniffing again. No, it’s true that loyalty has never been Bear’s strong suit. But he does know what he likes.