The Call of the Mild

Chapter Twenty-Two

Babysitting. Decades on the force, a lifetime in detective work, and now Henry had become a professional babysitter. His sole job for the SBPD was to keep Chris Rasmussen occupied so the grown-ups could do the real work.

To make the day even more humiliating, every place Rasmussen had taken Henry felt like a stop any young child would want to make. They’d hit the local animal shelter to see if Ellen Svaco had tried to adopt a cat, and had to look through all the cat cages to see if there was a “Fluffy” there. They had been through half a dozen pet stores on a futile mission to see if anyone remembered the woman who’d had the name inscribed on all her cat implements. And to guarantee maximum embarrassment, wherever they went, Rasmussen would inevitably introduce himself by patting the badge printed on his polo shirt like a little boy with a tin star.

As they pulled up to one more useless stop, this one a veterinarian’s office, Rasmussen gave Henry a firm chuck on the shoulder with his fist. “The brainwork is the key, but it’s the leg-work that makes it turn in the lock.”

Henry sighed heavily. This whole day was like being trapped with a human fortune cookie-worse, because Henry had written all the fortunes himself. “I don’t understand how you know all these things I’ve said.” Henry got out of the car and waited for Rasmussen to join him at the vet’s entrance. “It’s not like I wrote a self-help book or anything.”

“That would be great,” Rasmussen said. “I’d love to own a complete collection of your wisdom.”

“Where did you hear the stuff you’ve been parroting back to me?”

“Isla Vista Junior High,” Rasmussen said as he pushed through the door to the veterinary offices.

Henry had never worked a case at any junior high school anywhere, let alone Isla Vista. And while it was flattering to think his collected works were being studied by eleven-yearolds, the fact was he didn’t have any works, collected or otherwise. This guy had to be playing with him.

But when Henry entered the waiting room, Rasmussen didn’t seem to be playing. If anything, he was even more serious than before. He stood at the waist-high counter drumming his fingers impatiently as a young woman in scrubs wrestled with a border collie who had no intention of letting himself be weighed.

Henry joined Rasmussen at the counter. “I have to admit, I don’t remember what case brought me to your school,” he said. “Are you sure you have the right guy?”

“Absolutely,” Rasmussen said. “Although you were there undercover.”

“You’ve got the wrong guy,” Henry said. “I never worked undercover at a school.”

“Sure, you did,” Rasmussen said. “You were going under the name Officer Friendly. But for me, you were Officer Role Model. Before I heard you speak, I wanted to design surfboards. Afterwards, I knew I was meant to be a cop.”

Now Henry remembered. Twenty years ago he’d gotten into a shouting match with his chief over a string of robberies, and as discipline he’d been assigned to travel to the area’s schools as Officer Friendly. It was a miserable assignment, and the only way he’d gotten through it was making sure to introduce Officer Friendly to Officer Bourbon every night as soon as he finished his daily lectures.

But this one kid had listened to every word. Listened and remembered. Remembered for all these years.

“I couldn’t have talked for more than forty-five minutes,” Henry said.

“It was enough.”

Henry thought of all the things he’d tried to teach Shawn, and how few of them actually took. If only his son had been this receptive to Henry’s wisdom, he’d be running a police department today. Maybe this kid wasn’t so bad after all.

The woman in scrubs managed to get a reading off the scale and sent the border collie off down a corridor with an attendant, then came up to Henry and Rasmussen.

“How can I help you?” she said.

Chris Rasmussen tapped the badge printed on his shirt. Oddly, this time Henry didn’t find the gesture annoying. Instead he saw the pride behind it. “I’m Officer Chris Rasmussen of the Isla Vista Foot Patrol,” he said. “This is Detective Henry Spencer of the Santa Barbara Police Department. We’re wondering if you have any record of a client by the name of Ellen Svaco.”

“I don’t know if I’m allowed to give out that information,” the woman said. “Isn’t there doctor-patient privilege?”

Rasmussen gave her a dazzling smile. “Only if we ask about her pet.”

She smiled back warmly. Henry had to admit, this kid had something going for him.

The woman went to a large filing cabinet against the back wall and started digging through a drawer.

As they were waiting, Henry glanced around the room. It was a standard vet’s office, with easy-to-clean linoleum floors, half-chewed waiting furniture, and, on the walls, pictures of grateful pets and posters warning of heartworm.

And in the corner was something Henry had never seen before. He nudged Rasmussen and pointed at it.

“Did I mention something to your class about looking too hard for information?”

“Sure,” Rasmussen said. “Don’t be so fixated on the thing you think you’re looking for that you don’t see what else is there.”

“Like that?”

It was a large cardboard standee of what might have been the cutest dog in canine history. A word balloon over its head claimed it was thinking, “Fluffy saved my life.” And at the bottom was a cartoon kitten and the slogan “When all else fails, Fluffy can help. The Fluffy Foundation.”

The woman came back up to the counter with a helpless shrug. “I’m afraid we’ve got no pet owners named Svaco,” she said. “Is there another name she might have used?”

“Who’s Fluffy?” Henry said, gesturing towards the standee.

The woman looked confused for a moment, then realized what he was talking about. “The Fluffy Foundation,” she said. “We love them. If your pet is sick and you can’t afford the treatment, they’ll pay for it.”

“That must cost a fortune,” Henry said. “Where does the money come from?”

“No one knows,” the woman said. “An anonymous donor. The only thing we know for sure is that whoever it was used to have a cat named Fluffy, and he died because his owner couldn’t afford treatment. So when she came into a lot of money, she donated huge amounts of it to start this foundation.”

“How huge?” Officer Rasmussen said.

“I have no idea,” she said.

“I do,” Henry said. “Enough to kill for.”