Aretha Moon and the Dead Hairdresser: Aretha Moon Book 2 (Aretha Moon Mysteries) by Linda Ross (reading books for 7 year olds .TXT) 📗

had on clean tan slacks and a long-sleeved blouse when I came back out.  I’d run a comb through my hair, but that was the extent of my grooming.  I grabbed the plate of French toast, gave Nancy a reassuring pat, and trotted after Jimmy.

“What’s going on?” I asked when I got in the car.

“Not sure yet.”

I figured that was all the information I was going to get at this point.  And my head was still throbbing too much to push the issue.  As soon as I got out of the car at the office, Jimmy turned the car around and headed in the opposite direction.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Lorenzo pounced on me the minute I walked in the door.  “Here,” he said, handing me a note with a name and an address.  “Write this one up today.  Great human interest.”

I looked at the name.  “Joan Larkin.  So what did she do?”

“Won the lottery.  Well, not the big prize.  But she got fifty thousand dollars.”

“And that’s news?”

“The news is that her dog picked the numbers.”  Lorenzo practically rubbed his hands together.  “Go meet the dog.  Get some photos of him at work, then really play it up.”

“Actually, I have a headache this morning.”

“You’ll feel a lot better after you talk to the dog.  Get moving, Moon.”

I sighed and shot Thelma a glance.  She was watching from her desk, looking over her reading glasses.  I gave her a feeble wave and headed out the door.

Joan Larkin’s house was on a cross street before the Highway 79 overpass.  I wouldn’t want to be the mailman in her neighborhood.  The yards rose straight up from the sidewalk like miniature cliffs, retaining walls struggling to hold the dirt in place.  The yards looked like a line of fat men, their bellies barely restrained by their pants.  I climbed the steps to the top of the mini cliff at Joan’s house and followed the sidewalk to the porch.  The house itself looked like something from an animated Disney movie.  The siding was yellow, the shutters green, and the porch posts a shade of orange this side of queasy.  The color scheme did nothing for my headache.

I looked to the side and saw her neighbor standing on his porch watching me.  He was about forty with a ponytail and the kind of beard that looked like the stuffing from an old dog bed.  The sounds of a game show blared from inside his house, and I was pretty sure he wouldn’t know the answers to the questions.

Joan answered the door right away with a cheery hello that was almost singing.  In her arms was the dog I was there to interview, a chihuahua with bared teeth who snarled and tried to lunge at me.

“Now, Stewart,” she said, patting his head.  “Be nice to the company.”

But Stewart was having none of the niceties and the snarling alternated with ferocious barking.  He snapped his jaws together every time he looked at me as though gauging how much meat he could get with one bite.  It made me long for Puddin’.

“Here, have a seat,” Joan said, gesturing to a chair that was as multicolored as the outside of the house.  Stewart continued to menace me.

I pulled my notebook out of my purse and flipped it open.  “Is this the first time Stewart has picked winning numbers for you?” I asked.

“Oh, no, he does it all the time.  I’ve won smaller amounts several times.  He just has a flair for it.”

He looked like he had a flair for biting the heads off mice too.

I wrote down the other times Mrs. Larkin had won various amounts of money on the lottery and got a basic history.  She was widowed and Stewart was companionship for her since she lived alone.  They liked to watch TV together, and her favorite show was America’s Got Talent.  His was Dr. Phil.

I told her I’d like to get a photo of Stewart in action, so she took me into her bedroom, which was basically a shrine to all things crocheted, and showed me the set-up.  There were two small baskets of ping pong balls on the dresser, and she dumped one of them onto the crocheted spread, then dropped Stewart onto the bed.  He went to work.  He would grab a ball at random, shake it and growl, then drop it on the floor.

I knelt near the bed and got my cell phone out of my purse.  Stewart paused when he heard the click of the camera and looked over his shoulder.  Then he went back to work.  When I clicked the second picture he dropped the ball in his mouth, turned with flattened ears and threw himself at me like Wonder Woman on a Nazi.  I swear to God that dog could fly.  All I saw coming at me were bug eyes and teeth.

I dropped the phone instinctively and pulled my purse up in front of me.  Stewart slammed into it, pushing it back against me and nearly toppling me over.  How could such a small dog be so strong?  He was like the Ironman of dogs.

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Larkin said.  “Stewart, you let go of that purse.”

I dared a look over the top of the purse and saw Stewart’s teeth buried in it.  He was snarling, but it was muffled by the mouthful of purse.  The purse was leather, and thanks to Stewart it was now aerated.

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Larkin said again.  “He almost never does this.  Although he did go for the mailman’s bag one day.  The poor man did the rest of the block with Stewart hanging onto it.”

“Do you think you could remove him?” I suggested.

“Oh, yes, of course.”  She knelt down beside me and grabbed Stewart around his middle.  “Now, Stewart, you let go of the nice lady’s purse.”  She pulled, and Stewart