Doreen sat back and watched as Mack called the hospital. He had gotten in the habit of walking away from her when he was on the phone, probably so she couldn’t hear everything. She looked down at Mugs at her side. Thaddeus was wobbling around the garden but seemed to be more perturbed than ever. She groaned as she stood and walked over. “Thaddeus, what’s the matter?”
“Big guy, big guy,” he said, in a hoarse voice, no longer his big crying voice.
“Fine,” she said. “We’ll ask Mack as soon as he gets off the phone.”
At that, Mack spoke from behind her. “Ask me what?”
“What was that about the animal guy?”
He nodded. “I did talk to him. He did see Thaddeus. In fact, Thaddeus was at his place for a while.”
“Oh, good,” she said in delight. “At least we know where he was.”
“As far as he knows, he didn’t do anything to bring him to his place, but he admitted that he did have a vehicle with animals in cages and stuff, so it’s possible Thaddeus hitched a ride.”
Immediately her smile fell away. “Do you believe him?” she demanded. “Does that match what Abner said?”
“I’m not sure that I believe him,” he said. “I’ll go talk to him again.”
Immediately she smiled and said, “That’s perfect. Because, as you can see, Thaddeus is still pretty upset.” She looked at him and said, “What kind of animals?”
“A lot of species that he takes to schools apparently.”
“Was there another African grey, by any chance?”
“Oh,” he said, a puzzled look on his face, then he glanced back to Thaddeus. “I wonder if that’s what he saw.”
“It doesn’t explain the message on his leg though.”
“No …” Mack’s voice trailed off. He shocked her and said, “I guess it might be easier to keep you with me and out of trouble that way.”
She nodded. “Definitely.”
“Then let’s go. We’ll come back later and get you some rest.”
She was determined to appear as normal and as healthy as possible. She called Thaddeus to her shoulder, picked up her cup, walked back into the kitchen, placing it in the sink and filling it with water.
As Mack came through, he locked up the kitchen door. “Are you feeling okay in the house?”
“If you mean because I was attacked here, yes,” she said quietly. “Although I did have a few questions about the security system, wondering if I had set it correctly and if I opened the door when he was here, would that have set off an alarm that anybody would have heard?”
“It would have set off an alarm, yes. As it is, Richard called it in, when he realized you were in trouble.”
She looked at him in surprise. “Wow,” she said. “I was hoping he would do that, but I really wasn’t sure. I’ll need another lesson on this alarm system.”
“Okay. Actually several others called it in as well,” he muttered. He led the way through the front door with all the animals and helped her up into his truck.
“It would be really nice to solve this,” she said. “I’m pretty upset about Thaddeus here. That’s why I keep trying to track things down.”
“I know you are,” he said. “Let’s go see if we can at least solve one problem.”
She smiled. “You really are a good man.”
“Hey, what brought that on?” he said in alarm.
She looked at him in surprise.
He backed up the vehicle in the driveway and drove off and around the corner.
“Well, you’ve been chasing people all over the place right now,” she said. “Whatever happened with that horrible little bimbo lawyer?”
He frowned. “We caught her, and she was brought in for questioning. She did confess to threatening you but said it was an emotional breakdown and that it wouldn’t happen again.”
“Do you believe her?”
“No, not at all,” he said, “so we’re tracking her to see what’s going on.”
“Good,” she said. “I don’t really care to see her again.”
“You shouldn’t have to,” he said. “I don’t expect her to face any real consequences at this point.”
“Because she can do that legal-speak stuff or because it wasn’t that severe?”
“Unfortunately because it wasn’t that severe,” he admitted.
“Right,” she said, with a groan. “You really do have to get hurt before anything really happens, don’t you?”
“Not necessarily,” he said, but she didn’t believe him.
As they kept driving, she said, “Did you look up this guy’s website?”
“I did, and I spoke to him on the phone. I told him that I would come by and take a look, and he seemed quite amenable to it.”
“Good,” she said. “I still need to get to the bottom of why Thaddeus and the big guy are so important.” Surprisingly, Thaddeus remained silent at this mention.
“Oh, and I thought it was Isaac you had to get to the bottom of.”
“I suspect it’s both,” she said. He looked at her in surprise. She shrugged. “You know Thaddeus has a nose for trouble,” she said.
“You’re the one with a nose for trouble,” he muttered.
She grinned. “I learned everything from Thaddeus.”
“Great,” he said, “that’ll go down well.”
“Don’t knock it,” she said. “My animals have done a lot to help you out.”
“I’m not knocking it,” he protested. “I’m just trying to understand it.”
“Some things in life are just not meant to be understood.”
“That may well be true,” he said, as they pulled into the area that she recognized well by now.
“Did you talk to Randy?”
“I did. He said that it’s a fairly tight-knit community, but a few oddballs live there. Some people they just generally avoid. Others are good to work with, so they do more community stuff together,” he said. “As far as Isaac goes, he said he belongs to the neighbors, and everybody is quite happy to let him join in, but he’s a little bit off, and they let him be. Randy said he wasn’t sure quite what was going on, but that Isaac had experienced some bullying recently. Randy was just trying to be protective.”
“Poor Isaac,” she said immediately. “It’s just not fair that anybody would bully him.”
“But that’s the world around us.”
“Doesn’t mean it has to be the world around us,” she snapped.
“Oh, I agree,” he said. “But that explains that.”
“Maybe,” she said. “So if the note wasn’t anything to do with Isaac, who’s it got to do with?”
“Well, for that, you may have to just keep talking to Thaddeus here.”
At that, he cawed and called out, “Big guy, big guy.”
Doreen stared and looked all around. “What is he talking about?” They pulled into the driveway of what seemed to be a normal-looking house, but it had high fences all the way around. “I suppose that tall fence is for the animals?”