Free The Money Bird (An Animals in Focus Mystery) by Sheila Webster Boneham

afternoon after I get some photos ready to send out. And Goldie just walked in, so I’d better go. Have fun.”
    “Will do. You be good.”
    I flipped my phone shut and set it down a bit harder than is probably good for it. “Why did he say that?”
    Goldie had pulled a pitcher from my cupboard and set it on the table. “Hunh,” she said, reaching for the card on the bouquet from the vet clinic. “Nice.” Leo hopped up for his share of the attention, so Goldie had to stroke him and then lift him off the table before she could arrange the glads. “I didn’t get you a card. Say what?”
    “What say what?”
    “What does who always say?”
    “‘Be good.’”
    She looked over her glasses at me. “Let me guess. The doctor called. The anthropology doctor.”
    “He shouldn’t assume that I’m always available.”
    Goldie stuck the last stem into the pitcher, filled it with water, and smiled at the flowers. “There you are, children. You look beeyooteeful.” She took her glasses off and set them on the table. “Why shouldn’t he assume you’ll be available? You’ve been available since you met him. You’ve been available for years.”
    “Goldie! You know what I mean.”
    “I do. But life’s too short for that silliness. Games. Just say what you mean and do what your heart tells you and the heck with the rules and shenanigans. And don’t pout.”
    “Not pouting,” I said, uncrossing my arms.
    sixteen

    The chaos of the morning gave way to a quiet afternoon, and I spent a couple of productive hours on the computer deleting bad photos and organizing good ones. When I had them filed away in folders, I pulled out about twenty shots to send as a sample packet to the editor at Splash , a new magazine about water dogs of all sorts. Then I started looking through the photos I had taken at Twisted Lake. Dogs, dogs, dogs. I deleted some and saved the rest into my “To Review” folder. Then I started on the non-dog shots.
    I hadn’t realized that I’d taken so many photos of the island. Must have been on autopilot. The light had been bad and most of them weren’t usable, but I wondered if I might see something new if I manipulated them a bit. I fiddled around with contrast and other elements, fading out shadows and looking for shapes that didn’t belong, but I didn’t find anything. What did you expect, I asked myself at one point, Colonel Mustard in the bittersweet with poison ivy?
    By mid-afternoon I was not only giddy but my attention had begun to waver and my butt had begun to ache, so I took Jay and Leo out back for a game of tennis ball fetch or, as I imagine Leo thinks of it, “whack the dog’s fanny as he races by after the stupid ball and then hide in the bushes.” There’s probably a word for that in Feline. By whatever name, we all had fun, but after twenty minutes or so I admitted to myself that I could put off my filial obligation no longer.
    Don’t get me wrong. I’d like to spend time with my mom. In fact, that’s the problem. When I saw her two days earlier, she had no idea who I was and was too busy thumbing through her newly arrived Fine Gardening to bother talking to me. The time before that she knew me too well and tried everything from tears to threats to get me to take her home, meaning not my house but her own home of sixty years. It hurts like hell when she doesn’t know or care who I am, but when she does, she’s unhappy enough to give me palpitations. As I pulled on a clean top and thought about my mother’s distress, my whole body wanted to topple onto the bed and curl into a fetal lump. As an alternative, I took a bit more care than usual with my makeup and stuck a couple of combs in my hair to subdue its curly rebelliousness.
    Mom was in the garden when I got to Shadetree. The semi-resident therapy Poodle, Percy, was lying beside her chair, but he ran to meet me as I walked toward the courtyard. When Percy’s previous owner was killed last spring, Jade Templeton,