In about two weeks. Can you hold out till then?
Doreen replied with a happy answer in the affirmative. She still had a good $670 in the bowl which made her happy. If she were careful, that could last two weeks easily. But she had bills to pay too. One of them was a tax bill that she had sitting here and hadn’t even opened. She didn’t know what to do with it, but she knew it would be large. Somehow she was supposed to pay it, and she frowned at that reminder. Since the property had become hers, she’d learned there was more to owning property than just having a place to live. There was the maintenance, the things you wanted to change, and things that had to be changed.
Chapter 20
Tuesday Morning …
When she woke the next morning, Thaddeus was curled up at her shoulder, but his tail feathers looked limp, and his head definitely wasn’t nearly as perky and happy as he normally was.
“Oh dear,” she said, “what am I to do with you?” Immediately she got dressed, and, with him on her shoulder, she asked him, “Is it all about the big guy again?”
He leaned against her and said, “Big guy, big guy.”
“What about Isaac? Are you worried about Isaac?”
A weird sound came from his throat, but he didn’t say anything. “Oh, dear, we have to solve this.”
She didn’t know what to do. Maybe they should put a little camera or some tracking device on his ankle. She almost smiled at that idea. Could they actually track a bird these days? Well, of course they could, but that was for migration, endangered species, and things like that. She didn’t think it applied to pets, but she could be wrong. With the coffee dripping, she looked on the internet, somewhat surprised to find that she could even get a collar for cats that had GPS tracking in them.
She looked down at Goliath. “Something tells me that you wouldn’t take to that very kindly at all.” But she also knew that, if anybody tried to steal him, she would do whatever she could to get him one immediately. These animals were way too precious to her to have anybody else come along and take any of them like that. And, once she thought about it, the thoughts just wouldn’t leave her mind. It wasn’t that these animal GPS units were hugely expensive, but, when you didn’t have an income, any expense was huge.
She and the animals all headed downstairs, where she opened up the kitchen screen door—or tried to. When it wouldn’t budge, her heart sank, and she looked at Thaddeus. “Have we got a problem again, Thaddeus?” He just looked at her and peered over at the windows. “I think we have another problem,” she said. She couldn’t quite see again, even from the kitchen windows. She walked through the house and out the front door, then around the house, with Thaddeus on her shoulder, Mugs bouncing at her side. Goliath hadn’t even bothered getting out of bed yet.
At the kitchen door, she looked at another large rock from her garden. As she stared out at the mess of rocks in her garden, she could easily see the footsteps. She walked over to the garden, took a closer look, and realized the footprints were large, most likely a big adult male, and, from the depth of the prints, he was probably quite heavy. She placed her own foot close to the side of one footprint and deliberately stepped beside it, as if walking, but she didn’t sink anywhere near as much.
“Large and heavy,” she said. Immediately she took a photo of the footprint and sent it to Mack, then returned to the kitchen door and took another picture of the rock itself. She added a text message. For the second night in a row.
She didn’t get an immediate answer but decided to move the rock. Carefully using a paper towel and her foot, she nudged it away from the door and opened it up, so they could at least have their coffee outside. She sat in the new glider, with Mugs settled beside her, and Goliath, who finally decided to get up, in her lap. Thaddeus sat on her shoulder. She glanced over at him.
“I don’t know what to do for you, Thaddeus.” He just sat slumped on her shoulder, and she worried and fretted over his behavior. “Maybe I should take you to a vet,” she said, then winced, because, if one thing was guaranteed to kill her bank account, it would be vet bills. But still, Thaddeus was worth everything to her. She’d even ask Nan for help, if it came to that. She knew Nan would immediately assist financially for something like that, just because Thaddeus had been hers first.
Thinking about that, she picked up the phone and called Nan. When her grandmother answered, she said, “Nan, have you ever seen Thaddeus really depressed? He is acting very odd these days, ever since he disappeared and came back with that message.”
“I hadn’t very often, except when somebody he really liked used to come by and then didn’t come visit anymore,” she said. “I once had a friend named Larry, but he died. Thaddeus got really depressed that time too.”
“Interesting,” she muttered. “I was thinking it might be whoever it was who put the message on his leg, but I don’t know how to help him.”
“No,” Nan said. “We’ll have to find out who it was that he saw.”
“And how do we do that?” Doreen asked.
“Well, I’d say Isaac, but we’re not even sure he was involved.”
“No, but maybe we should put an ad in the paper,” Doreen said suddenly.
“Oh, now that’s a great idea,” Nan said. “But what would you say?”
Doreen winced. “I know. It sounds foolish. Hey, folks, my bird is sick. Anybody know why?”
Nan chuckled. “What if you put something at the cemetery? We haven’t found out what happened there either, have we?”
“No, not at all,” she said. “Talk to you later, Nan.”
With those thoughts on her mind, she said, “Hey, Mugs, why don’t we go back to the cemetery and see where you and Thaddeus go?” And, with Thaddeus on her shoulder, she quickly ate some toast, grabbed another cup of coffee, put it in her travel mug, then, with all the animals, she drove out to the cemetery. She walked to the area where she had been attacked, groaning when she saw the spot where the lilies were and the added disturbance from all the footprints flattening the ground around it.
“Not exactly a good memory here, is it, guys?” Mugs barked and jumped around, sniffing underneath the plants and heading from one gravestone to the next. Goliath just lay in the middle of the lilies, looking like he was some kind of a diva. Doreen smiled, then took a photo and sent it to Mack. At least he’d appreciate it, or she hoped he would. With Thaddeus looking a little bit better, she put him down on the grass and said, “So, show me where you went, Thaddeus. Show me where you went.”
Thaddeus looked at her, cocked his head, and strode off.
She had no idea what direction he was going, but she was willing to follow. She also knew that anybody listening to her right now would think she was absolutely off her rocker, but she gave Thaddeus credit for an awful lot more brainpower than most people had. And for good reason. He had been a huge help in solving all kinds of issues, and she wouldn’t knock him if he needed a little bit of help on this one.
He did stop and get sidetracked by a few things but eventually kept wandering. It was more of an aimless wandering now instead of a directed stride, and that did worry her. Still, she kept watch and stayed behind, just sipping her coffee. It was a Tuesday, so everybody was at work, and this place should be more or less empty, at least of the casual family visits and funerals that occurred on the weekends.