Minerva Clark Goes to the Dogs (4 page)

Casa Clark was big and old, but Chelsea's house was really big and really old. It was the dictionary definition of rich. Look it up and there you will see the big brick porch, the white pillars, and dark green door. It looked as if a president of something might live there. Her street was wide, with ancient trees shading the sidewalk.

Inside Chelsea's house it smelled like lemon and ammonia. Everything was matchy matchy. The two white sofas in the living room matched each other, and the coffee table and the end tables all matched. Even though there were genuine paintings on the walls—close-ups of the insides of different flowers—they also seemed to match.

You could tell that this was not a house where someone said “Hey, look at this cool poster of the Ramones” or whatever, and stuck it on the wall just because it was fun to look at. Maybe that's the difference between having a mom on the premises full-time and living in a house run by boys. Chelsea de Guzman did not have a life-size cardboard James Bond in his tuxedo in her entryway, like we did.

No one was home except the housekeeper, who was in the kitchen … doing guess what? … cleaning out the refrigerator. Chelsea introduced us.

“Minerva, Agata. Agata, Minerva. Do we have any
hand sanitizer?” Chelsea motioned washing her hands, and Agata nodded toward the corner of the kitchen sink. The kitchen was all white with a huge stainless steel refrigerator and stove. It looked both plain and fancy at the same time. It reminded me of a laboratory. There were no magnets of creepy critters on the fridge.

“Where are Louis and Jeanette?” asked Chelsea, squirting a worm of the clear sanitizer gel into her narrow palms. At the Clark house, we would have just turned on the tap, run our hands beneath whatever temperature water came out, and called it clean. I knew Louis was Mr. de Guzman and I assumed Jeanette was Chelsea's mom.

Agata shrugged. “Not here,” she said. Agata was about a foot shorter than me and from a foreign land. She didn't wear a housekeeper uniform, like you see in the movies, but a long-sleeved white blouse and black slacks. I didn't recognize her accent. She was cleaning a bottle of soy sauce with a towel and Windex, as if it was a window that everybody had to look through all the time.

“Excellent,” said Chelsea, sighing and suddenly relaxed, as though our problems were automatically solved, just because her parents weren't around.

I thought Chelsea would take me up to her room. I know if she came to my house I would have taken her up to my room, but instead she led me to another matchy room, with rows of bookcases and a flat-screen TV and white shag carpeting and more white sofas. This was
the equivalent of our TV room, I guessed, where the only available place to sit was Cat Pee Couch, or else the leaking blue beanbag chair.

“You can use that computer.” She waved her hand toward a small wooden desk in the corner, a flat-screen monitor and sleek keyboard positioned in the center. Even Mark Clark, whose business was computers, didn't have such a nice setup.

She left me there while she went to change. I could hear her flip-flops slapping up first one flight of stairs, then another, then another. From the kitchen I could hear Agata singing.

The computer was already on. I Googled Sylvia Soto and found an accountant in Orlando, a psychologist in Buena Park, California, and a social worker in El Paso. I didn't think any of these were our Sylvia Soto. Our Sylvia didn't sound much older than my brothers, and certainly not old enough to be a psychologist or those other jobs. Nor did whitepages.com have anyone resembling Sylvia Soto. For $9.95 one company would do a background search, but you needed a credit card, which I didn't have. Just as I was thinking Chelsea might have one, there was a sudden ferocious scrabbling sound.

The instant I recognized it as dog toenails scrabbling across wood floors, a pair of ginger and white corgis with pointed ears and foxy faces roared into the room,
leaping over the arms of the white sofa, wrestling and nipping at each other's heels. I could see why people say that corgis are big dogs in little-dog bodies.

“Hey hey HEY!” said Chelsea, clapping her hands to try to get them off the couch. She'd changed into a new small skirt and long-sleeved T-shirt. “Get off the couch. Bad dogs! Agata, where's Frank?”

Silence from the kitchen.

Chelsea sat on the couch and the two dogs piled on top of her, each trying to find the best spot on her lap from which to lick her neck. They were hilarious, funnier even than Jupiter, and if you know anything about ferrets, you'll know that for pure funniness, ferrets are about the funniest creatures around.

“Agata!” Chelsea sighed and shoved the dogs onto the floor. They scrambled right back up.

From the other room, yet another one appeared. He had more white on his coat than the others. He trotted over to me, turned, and sat down with his back facing me, the better to give him a good pet.

“Is this Frank?” I asked. I reached down and scratched him behind his ears.

Chelsea let out a sharp laugh. I recognized it as the same laugh that used to come out of her when she and the other Chelsea in our class (the lactose-intolerant Chelsea, not this one), used to make fun of me. I reached down to pet the dog-that-was-not-Frank. I scratched
him behind the ears. Every time I stopped, he backed himself up until he was sitting on my foot.

“Frank is our dog sitter. Really, he's more of like our dog nanny, except unlike a real nanny he only works about an hour in the morning and an hour at night. Winkin' and Blinkin' are champion show dogs. Their sire even won second place at the Westminster Dog Show one year. They need exercise and special care and stuff. That's Ned you've got over there. He's kind of a loser dog, not at all up to the breed standard. Doesn't have enough orange in his coat, or something. You'd have to ask my mom. She's a total freak over these dumb dogs. Did you find the phone number?”

“Nope.” I told her about needing a credit card for the background search. I patted my lap and Ned jumped right up. I didn't think he was a loser dog at all. I thought he was totally adorable.

“Well, now what?” Chelsea kicked her flip-flops off and stuck her tan legs out in front of her. “Do you like this color on my toes? It's called Suzy Sells Sushi by the Seashore. Do you think it's too lavenderish? We should go get a pedicure. Have you ever had a pedicure?”

“I thought you were so afraid of your dad grounding you off the computer that you'd do anything to get the ring back.”

“I am,” she said. “It's just … he only takes it away for a day or two. Then my mom tells him he's being a
control freak and they have one of those whispered arguments and we all wind up going out and getting Thai food. You know how it is.”

No, I did not know how it was. I took the receipt out of my pocket again and read it from top to bottom.

“Maybe we can call the credit card company and pretend we're Sylvia. The last four numbers of her card are on here,” I said.

“And then what do we do—ask for our own address?”

She had a point. “We could say we're calling to make sure they had our new address, and ask them to read the old one back to us.”

“We could. But won't we have to tell them the whole number? Not just the last four?”

“Yeah. Probably.” Whenever I heard my dad on the phone complaining about some bill, he was always rattling off a million numbers. “Do you guys have a phone book?”

“If you can't find her name on the Internet, it's not going to be in the phone book,” snorted Chelsea. But she pulled herself off the couch and pulled open a few cupboards beneath one of the bookcases. Winkin' and Blinkin' lunged after her, nipping at her bare heels. Ned stayed on my lap, as if he knew he couldn't compete. Poor Ned. He was such a sweetie. He did have a big ginger-colored blotch on his shoulder, but I guess that wasn't enough. I poked my nose into his neck fur. I love
the smell of dog. I've never had a dog. Jupiter was supposed to be a test run; if I could take care of him, then maybe my parents would consider a dog. But then they got a divorce, and everyone forgot about it.

Chelsea found the White Pages, sat down on the edge of the chair at the desk, and tucked her hair behind her ears. I watched her as she paged through. I could see why the boys thought she was one of the cutest girls in our class. She
was
cute, in that kind of regular way, straight dark blond hair parted in the middle, blue eyes, pug nose, small white teeth, and a pointed chin. Totally breed standard, like Winkin' and Blinkin'. I was more like Ned. Which is how I liked it.

“Hey!” She stood straight up. “Here's a Sylvia Soto on SE Albertine Crest. Apartment 1E. Do you think it's her?”

“Only one way to find out,” I said, standing up and setting Ned on the floor. He sat at my feet again, wagging the little stump he had instead of a tail.

Back down to the MAX station we went. Really, it was only six long blocks away. Still, Chelsea complained as if we were slashing our way through an equatorial jungle in the wrong shoes. My new friend was turning out to be the dictionary definition of moody: Look it up in the dictionary and there you will find her pouty face. I am moody; all we middle school girls are, but she'd already
sped through about six moods since she'd called earlier in the afternoon.

The second we boarded the light rail she said, “What IS it with this dumb train? It reeks in here. I can't believe I'm doing this.” She pinched her nose between two fingers, glared at the lady with the thick glasses across the aisle who was reading a small black Bible.

“How else are we supposed to get to Sylvia Soto's place?” I asked. “You got any spare jetpacks laying around maybe?”

“There's no need to be snotty, Minerva.”

I reached across her and pressed the plastic strip that ran under the window to request the next stop.

“Eeow. Do you know how many people have touched that thing?” She pulled a tiny bottle of hand sanitizer from her purse, squirted some in my hand. “I don't know why we couldn't have just called her.”

“We tried to call her. About ten times. Here, look, let's try it again.” I reached in my front pocket for my Bluetooth—the tiny wireless earpiece that came with my new phone. I clipped it over the back of my ear. We probably won't get flying cars in my lifetime, but my Bluetooth was almost as good. It fit in the palm of my hand. I pressed the small button in the center of the device and it redialed Sylvia's number. I sat there with my arms folded across my chest, wagging my foot, pretend humming, dum-de-dum-dum, while I waited for my
call to go to voice mail, as I knew it would. “Gosh, no one home, who'd believe it?”

“All right, all right,” said Chelsea.

“You said you needed to get your ring back before your dad got home and that's what we're doing,” I said.

“I know,” she sighed. “I just don't think I'm cut out for all this detective stuff.”

“It's better than sitting around doing nothing,” I said. “That ring is now worth millions, you said so yourself.”

“But I like doing nothing,” said Chelsea. “Doing nothing is good for your soul.”

I snorted.

Sylvia Soto lived in a small dingy pink apartment building that just about matched Chelsea's pinky-lavender nail polish. It was only two stories, and the front doors all opened out onto a wide alley. The back faced a used furniture store on a busy street. It wouldn't have looked so sad in California maybe, or Florida, with a swimming pool and some bright golden sunlight shining down. As it was, it faced the Dumpsters, which were propped open with bags of rotten garbage.

Sylvia's apartment was on the end. A cherry red mountain bike was chained to the railing by the front door. At the other end two little boys played with their Matchbox cars; their mother sat in a dining room chair behind the apartment's screen door and watched them,
while also watching the big TV on the other side of her small living room.

I knocked on Sylvia Soto's front door. From inside we could hear the electronic machine gun sounds of a video game. A dog started barking without much authority. The machine gun noises stopped and a boy pulled open the door.

He was one of those boys who was probably our age, but looked as if he'd been shaving for years. He was my height—five eight, give or take—and had chocolate brown hair that hung in his eyes, high cheekbones, and red lips. I could feel Chelsea beside me, taking in all of his fine qualities. In his arms, he was holding a black pug, who you could tell was glad for the company. He worked his little black nose like mad, trying to catch our scent.

“Yeah?” said the boy.

“Is Sylvia around?” I asked.

“Who wants to know?” he said.

I know we were two strange girls who showed up on his doorstep, but even so, his response seemed harsh.

“Well … we do!” giggled Chelsea. “Yup, we do.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder. Suddenly, she'd turned into a total flirt monster. “What's your name, you cutie-wootie, you wuffin pupplet, you doggin woggins.” She pursed her lips and cooed like a lunatic, tickling the pug under his chin. He ogled her with glee. His eyes were so far apart he looked like a very cuddly fish.

“I didn't know they had black pugs,” she said. “Did you get him from a breeder?”

“No, the pound.”

The pug was in heaven, but the boy just stood there staring at us, stone-faced. That's the thing about flirt monster mode—you never know when it's not going to work, and you wind up looking like you need to be on medication. Finally he said, “Who are you?”

“When do you expect her back?” I asked quickly. I didn't want to get into who we were.

“How do you know my sister?” he said.

“Eeps!” said Chelsea. “Oh, this sucks!”

The boy and I both looked over at Chelsea at the same time. She'd bent her head, had her finger against her eyelid. “I hate it when this happens. My contact floats up under my eyelid.” She looked up, blinked, and moved her eyeballs up to the left. “Can you see it?” she asked me.