Animals I love.
Because right now I am too grumpy and miserable to force my company on another human.
I know something’s wrong the second I open the door to my house.
It’s quiet. Totally and completely silent.
My house is never quiet.
Usually the dogs start barking the second they hear the key in the lock. And that’s on days I come home earlier than normal and they’re not already circling their kennels in anticipation. And as soon as the dogs bark, Iago starts in on his pathetic stress plucking. Poor guy is still hoping his previous owner will come home. Maybe someday I’ll be able to afford parrot therapy.
A silent house is not a good thing. I drop my purse and computer bag by the door and all but run for the kitchen, where the dogs are usually crated. I hit the light switch on the way in and then skid to a halt at the sight before me.
The crates where my dogs usually spend their days are gone. The dogs too, for that matter.
Someone stole my dogs.
What the hell?
I run back to the living room to dig my phone out of my purse. Clive’s phone is already ringing as I turn and stare at Iago’s cage.
Or rather, the spot where Iago’s cage normally sits in the corner of the living room.
The cage is big. Like, coffin big, because African grays need a lot of space. I don’t know how I missed this on my first dash through the living room, but the cage is gone.
In its place is a fancy brass perch, with a bird swing hanging from an arched pole. On the swing sits a stuffed parrot.
Not a dead stuffed parrot—thank God—but a brightly colored stuffed animal.
My steps slow as I cross to the plushie.
“Holly?” I hear Clive’s voice as if from afar.
I’d lowered my hand as I walked toward the perch, and now I bring the phone back to my ear.
“Sorry, Clive,” I tell him. “I can’t talk right now.”
“You called me,” he says, sounding a little annoyed.
“Yeah. Sorry about that. It was a mistake.”
My first thought when the dogs were missing was that Clive had them. After all, according to the divorce settlement, he had the right to take them for the weekend twice a month. He never did, but that seemed like the only logical explanation.
But he hates Iago. And Iago cusses nonstop when Clive is around, because Iago is magically capable of reading my mind and giving voice to my thoughts. There’s no way he’d take my bird.
I hang up on Clive and reach for the stuffed animal. There’s an oversize pet tag on the collar around the bird’s neck. Iago’s name is etched on a tag in big letters. In smaller letters under that are two words, “so I.”
I stare at the words for a long moment, then tuck the stuffed parrot under my arm and go look for the other animals. I find one stuffed dog under the kitchen table. He’s a normal-sized stuffed animal, but one of his legs has been removed and the spot clumsily sewed closed. His tag reads “Skip” followed by the words “You took.”
In the bathroom I find a stuffed bunny, with a tag that reads, “Whatever the fuck this is,” above the words, “took yours.”
On my bed is the biggest stuffed dog I’ve ever seen. That tag reads “Lou” and “my pets.”
I line them up on the bed—small dog, big dog, parrot, and rabbit—so that the tags read, “You took my pets, so I took yours.”
What the hell . . .
I took his soil samples. Not his pets.
