The Nose Knows (21 page)

Sweetie interrupted her. He stepped onto her lap and rubbed up one side of her face and then the other. His purr motor kicked in and got louder and louder. He purred and rubbed, and purred some more. You see, Joyce wasn’t the only one who wanted this reunion. Sweetie had needed to connect with Joyce one more time. When you have the gift of compassion, you can’t just turn it on and off like a light switch.

Sweetie would always have a very special relationship with Joyce even if they never set eyes on each other again. When you touch someone’s soul— the bond is for life.

T
hat night Mom was restless. She tossed and turned and finally she just lay there talking to herself. She spoke about her anxiety over tomorrow’s court appearance, but that wasn’t her primary focus. She spent most of the time wondering aloud why she’d gotten so involved in the first place. She’d dealt with abuse cases before. They’d been difficult, but she’d never gone to such lengths. Why had she chosen to get so involved this time? She said a therapist had to stay detached if she expected to stay sane. She reviewed her rules about not getting too close or too personally involved. She reminded herself that long ago, she’d drawn a line, and she hadn’t crossed it. Until now . . .

At about two a.m., I hoisted myself up and snuggled up beside her. I would’ve done it earlier but I sensed she wasn’t ready for the matter to be settled. Sometimes you humans have to go over and over the same question until you get sick and tired of it. Finally, you’ll take a deep breath and say, “Okay, enough is enough. It’s time to go to sleep!” That’s when I made my move.

As I lay beside her, she stroked me and told me how much she loved me. As her focus shifted onto the feel of my fur and the rise and fall of my breathing, her own breathing quieted. She relaxed and her words of love for me were soft and tender, and then she drifted off to sleep.

Morning came much too early for all of us. Mom was up before the sun. She said she wanted to be sure she had plenty of time to get the morning routines completed. She didn’t want to be late for the nine a.m. court date. I’m not sure why she thought any of us would want to eat breakfast at that ungodly hour. Even Sweetie looked at her like she was crazy. But, we tried our best, and Mom was on her way with a whole hour to spare. The mood in the house improved greatly after she left.

We settled in to wait. When the sun was straight up, we began to wonder what was happening. As it moved further toward the west, the boys began to fuss. And by late afternoon, I really had to pee!

The cats have a definite advantage—the litter box. I couldn’t go outside because Mom locks off the doggie door when she leaves, so I was now seriously considering the litter-pan option myself. But I knew I’d tip the pan over and spill all the litter. I crossed my legs and waited. It’s difficult to enter the zone with a full bladder.

Needless to say, I was thrilled when Jacob came through the back door. Mom may lock the critter door, but to make sure a human can get in when needed, she hides a key under the back porch. She must have told Jacob where it was. I pushed right past him to get out to the yard. I could apologize later for being rude, but I had no choice. He came out on the back porch and saw for himself that things had become desperate.

“Spunky, that’s one of longest pees I think I’ve ever seen. I’m sorry you had to wait so long, girl. Your Mom thought she’d be back long before this. When she realized it might be hours before she could get home, she called me at work and asked if I’d come by on my way home. She told me where to find the key. You take your time; I’ll stay out here a little while so you don’t have to rush.”

Jacob sat down on the steps and waited patiently while I took care of matters. Once I was able to refocus on my brain and not my bladder, I trotted back to the steps, hoping he’d spill the beans and tell me if he knew what had happened in court. He didn’t. He just silently sat there like bump on a log. He did, however, scratch behind my ear. He was a good at scratching, but it wasn’t helping my curiosity any. Apparently, Jacob didn’t process his thoughts the way Mom did. Mom’s way made things a lot easier. She often spoke her thoughts out loud as she processed them. Not Jacob. He said what he needed to say then, he stopped talking.

Then I thought of good old Quincy. Laid-back labs do that too. Very little talk. Not the hyper ones—they can talk a blue streak. But the calm ones, like Quincy, can be content to lie there for hours without saying a word. He and Jacob were a good match. Maybe that’s why men like big laid-back Labs. They don’t babble. If our families ever merged, it would be useful to know—Jacob likes to be quiet.

Since I wasn’t going to get an update on Mom out of him, I let go of it and enjoyed the ear-scratching.

After a few moments, Jacob said, “Okay, girl, let’s go in and see about dinner for all of you.”

That sounded good to everyone. We hadn’t eaten since our sunrise breakfast. Once we had our food, Jacob sat down to relax and poured himself a glass of ice tea. It was then that Mom called. As soon as we heard him say, “Hi, Hannah, what’s the story?” we all stopped eating and listened, except for Fancy. Nothing ever distracts that boy from the dinner bowl. In fact, he tried to use the occasion to steal Bobby’s dinner. He stopped after Fearless scolded and Bobby butted him.

Jacob listened for long time with a lot of “Hmm . . . Hmm.” I sighed. We weren’t getting anything out of this conversation.

But then he yelled, “Whoopee!” and started dancing a jig. Looked like good news to us. Luckily, he elaborated on his “Whoopee!”

“I knew you could do it. You did it! You did it! Congratulations! You worked so hard for this one. How about that. . . . The prosecutor actually changed his mind. . . . Oh, that’s grand, just grand. . . . Where are you now? . . . Hmm. . . . Okay . . . Yeah, I can meet you there . . . Hey, honey, once again, congratulations . . . Yeah . . . See you soon.”

You heard him say “honey,” right?

“Hey, guys, they won the case. Joyce is free. The prosecutor changed his mind and agreed to reduce the charge to justifiable manslaughter. Joyce waived her right to a trial and pleaded guilty. The judge sentenced her to one-year probation with a slew of community service and mandatory counseling for abuse victims. Then he released her. Yup, Joyce is back home. Isn’t that grand? I sure wonder why the prosecutor changed his mind. Hey, maybe his wife really did threaten to . . . who cares? I’m just glad he came to his senses. Okay, I’m off to meet your Mom and take her out for a celebration dinner. You guys have all been fed. Spunky, you’re fine now, right?”

I wagged my positive response. For a non-talker, Jacob had done a great job on the update. Maybe all that excitement couldn’t be contained in his head. He had to share it with someone and there we were— ready and eager for the news.

After Jacob left, we held our own celebration. To the untrained eye, I’d guess it looked like Fearless was chasing his tail, Sweetie was jumping high into the air and then pouncing on Bobby, and I was chasing Fancy—but in our world, it was party time! After the jocularity subsided, we settled down and toasted Sweetie around the water bowl.

I didn’t know that a cat could blush.

I
t had been two weeks since Joyce had been arrested. It had also been two weeks since Mom had thrown Mr. Johnson out of the group. Of course, I’d told Fearless the threatening words Fancy had heard Mr. Johnson say. There was no way I was going to keep that piece of information from Fearless. I needed him to be up to speed so when Mom was home one of us would be watching her all the time. In my younger years, I could’ve easily managed all of it by myself with just a catnap, here and there, but these days I needed a lot more shut-eye. It wouldn’t do if I nodded off on my watch. Fearless was only four years old, so he could easily handle the bulk of the assignment and still have energy to spare.

It took an additional two weeks for the group to settle back into a routine where they no longer needed to talk about Mr. Johnson. We were now back to the more mundane stuff including Cynthia and Alan sniping at each other. I returned to sleeping through most of their sessions, while Fearless stayed ever vigilant.

Things changed the day Donny was late. At first, we thought he might be sick. Given his heightened desire not to upset anyone, the fact that he had not even called made me concerned that maybe he was very sick.

Even though Mom said that Donny being late could be a breakthrough, she was worried. A few minutes tardy would be great, but he was already twenty minutes late. We were all relieved when he finally signed on. When his video stream came into focus, Fearless said, “Whoa! Hey, Spunk—
breath—
you’d better take a look at this!”

I jumped up and put my paws on Mom’s chair so I could get a better look. Donny’s face was there all right, but not the usual face of Mr. Neat and Clean. He looked like he had run a marathon. He was out of breath and all sweaty.

I’m not sure who spoke first, but Mom’s voice was the clearest.

“Donny what the heck happened to you? Were you in some kind of accident? Are you all right?”

“Dr. Richards, I wasn’t sure I was even going to be able to sign on. Not after all the weird things that have been happening here.”

Donny might panic but he was not one to exaggerate. Mom’s voice got serious. “What weird things, Donny?”

“Well, my apartment was broken into several days ago. The door was unlocked when I got home and I never, ever leave it unlocked. That alone was very upsetting, but then things got even weirder. Nothing was stolen. In fact, the credit cards I had on the kitchen table were exactly where I’d left them. The place was still neat and tidy. Nothing was trashed. But I knew someone had been in my apartment. I also knew they had accessed my computer.”

Mom interjected, “Donny, did you call the police?”

“Yeah, and they came out. But since nothing was trashed or taken and there was no evidence of forced entry, they thought I was just being a weenie and had forgotten to lock the door when I left. They said I must have gotten scared and imagined that someone had been in here. I will tell you this, the police may not believe me, but I
know
someone was in here. I don’t know how they got in, but someone was in my apartment.”

“Hey, Donny, maybe it was your landlord,” Melanie said. “My creepy landlord is always trying to steal stuff from me.”

“I don’t think so. My landlady is a real sweet elderly woman who doesn’t even like to climb the stairs to collect the rent. So of course I always make sure I pay her three days ahead of time so she won’t have to worry about it.”

Mom interrupted, “Donny, please stick to the point.”

“The point is, Dr. Richards, I know it wasn’t her. Besides, she doesn’t even own a computer, let alone know how to turn one on. She certainly wouldn’t know how to activate our therapy software program.”

All of our ears perked up. I glanced at Mom; her frown lines were significantly deeper, and her respirations had increased. “Donny, how do you know they activated your program?”

“Simple. When I got home, my laptop was open. Now, the police didn’t believe me, but I know I’d closed it. I always close it. I like things orderly, which is one of the reasons I like my job as an accountant. Endless columns of numbers might not make most people happy, but to me, they’re a thing of beauty, all neat and straight. I keep the things on my desk and in my apartment the same way, straight and neat. I always leave my computer in the center of the desk blotter, and I always close it. So when I came home and saw it open and moved to the side, I knew someone had touched it. I didn’t touch it until the police had dusted for prints, but when I turned it on then I had more proof. I had to wait while it rebooted. This shouldn’t have happened. I left it in “sleep” mode. In addition, the icon for our program was out of alignment from its designated column. The police thought I was just a wacky geek, but hey, I know what my columns look like. I activated the program and sure enough, the log showed someone had logged on two hours before. It was not me. I was at work. When I showed the police the log data, they paid more attention. But, bottom line, they’re convinced since nothing was stolen or trashed I must have left the door unlocked and a friend stopped by, let himself in, and fiddled with my computer. They said, ‘Who else would even want to mess with a therapy program? It’s not like it is a video game or something special.’ So, they left and said they’d run the prints and file the report, but I know they didn’t believe me.”