The Snake Mistake Mystery Page 15
the aftermath
Renée tugs at my arm.
“Just a minute. My mother’s coming up the walkway!” I rush to open the door of the animal shelter. “What are you doing? You’re going to get sick if you come in here.”
“Hey, we vacuumed and cleaned every inch of this place,” Ms. Lacey says. “By we, I mean I got that kid Serge to do it.”
Mom comes into the reception area still wearing her navy-blue airline pantsuit. “I took some antihistamines. If I remember not to touch my face or rub my eyes, I should be fine.”
“Hey, I have something that will help.” While Mom and I hug, Ms. Lacey ducks behind the counter and pulls open a drawer. “Try these!” She brings over some goggles, and before Mom can say anything, pulls them over her head and adjusts the strap. “They have to fit snug.”
Mom looks like a crazy human fly. She smiles.
Even more people drift in as I introduce Mom to Renée’s mother. Dad’s still surrounded by people taking our flyers.
“I know you’re allergic and everything, so I hope you won’t mind,” Renée starts, “but my mom and I agreed we would like to adopt Minnie mouse over in the corner for Stephen. He’ll stay at our house and keep Mickey company. Minnie that is, not Stephen. Although Stephen can sleep over sometimes.”
“Wow. That’s generous of you. What do you say, Stephen?” Mom turns to me.
“Yeah! That would be great. My own pet!”
Ms. Lacey hurries over to us. “It’s going really well! A friend of yours is adopting Tripod!”
“Who?” I ask.
“Guy over there.” She points to Reuven and his dad. Then she waves her hand and calls out, “Coffee’s ready, everyone! Please help yourselves to more treats.”
Even with the goggle solution, Mom seems happy to step into the glassed-off refreshment area. Renée and her mom join us. Star and Attila step in the room, too.
Mr. Kowalski stands beside the brownies, sipping at a coffee, looking a little sweaty from his jog over. “I can’t decide whether I want the black kitten or the calico one. I wonder what colour Picasso’s cat was.”
“Oh, he owned several,” Renée answers.
“She’s right,” Attila says and shrugs. “My sister’s always right.”
“You should adopt at least two if you want to paint like Picasso.” Star winks at Mr. Kowalski.
“I like that idea, actually. Even though I don’t want to paint like anyone else except myself.”
Dad finally makes it into the refreshment area. “Nice glasses!” He squeezes in to give Mom a kiss. “How was your flight in?”
“Uneventful, good,” she answers.
Mrs. Bennett comes over and says hi to Mom. They work together sometimes, which is how we got her as a client.
Ping and Pong jump all over Renée and me. We crouch down and I pat Pong. He can’t get enough. Ping licks both of our faces and flips on his back for a belly rub.
Mrs. Bennett smiles. “I hope you two will continue walking them for me. I am so sorry about what happened. I never wanted to quit Noble Dog Walking. It’s just the police suggested I have no contact until they solved the crime.”
Dad chucks me on the shoulder. “Good work getting all our customers back. Noble Dog Walking has so many new clients, we may need another walker.”
“If you need a snake sitter, put us down!” Attila says. “I love the way their tongues flicker.”
“I’ll make a note of that,” Dad says. “Mrs. Irwin paid up for the dog sweaters, too.”
“Yay!” Renée says, and we all toast with our Empire cookies.
People learn from their mistakes, I think. Mouth full of crumble, I grab an apple juice box and pass one to Renée.
“It was amazing how you figured out that phone and laptop thing,” Dad says as he bites into a cookie. He takes a drink box from the table, too.
“Well, it helped that Ping found the phone in that corner hedge,” I explain.
“Good that my brother found the laptop, too!” Renée pipes in, smiling at Attila.
“It would have made an amazing piece in his art installation,” Star adds.
“I can’t believe people would ever suspect Noble Dog Walking,” Mom says to Dad.
“A mistake for sure,” I say. “But some mistakes are lucky.”
“Really?” Star says.
Ms. Lacey comes in, rubbing her hands. “We’ve found homes for every one of the cats. Someone’s looking at the dogs, too!”
“I guess we wouldn’t have handed out those Cat-astrophe flyers if Harry hadn’t made his snake mistake.”
“That’s for sure. And I really solved the laptop and phone crime because of someone else’s big boo-boo.”
“What do you mean?” Mom asks.
“Well, if Mrs. Whittingham hadn’t left her purse and diaper bag on the roof of the van while backing up, I would have never connected the missing technology with the truck cleaning.”
“Here’s to the great mistakes we all make!” Dad raises a juice box. Mom, Mrs. Kobai, Star, and Attila join him, quickly grabbing juice boxes of their own.
Renée and I raise ours, too. I squeeze a little too tightly and the juice dribbles down my hand. But I don’t care! We all touch our juice boxes together.
“To great mistakes!” Renée and I call out.
“And the mysteries we solve with them!” I cheer.
Copyright © Sylvia McNicoll, 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purpose of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cover image: © Tania Howells
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
McNicoll, Sylvia, 1954-, author
The snake mistake mystery / Sylvia McNicoll.
(The great mistake mysteries)
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-4597-3973-4 (softcover).--ISBN 978-1-4597-3974-1 (PDF).--
ISBN 978-1-4597-3975-8 (EPUB)
I. Title. II. Series: McNicoll, Sylvia, 1954- . Great mistake mysteries.
PS8575.N52S69 2018 jC813’.54 C2017-903395-6
C2017-903396-4
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