“He’s not,” I said. “He’s - “
“I’m going to report this! If he thinks he can - “
“Quiet!” I shouted.
He stopped in mid-tirade.
“He’s not tinkering with the human mind. He’s going to tinker with him,” I said, hoisting Spike’s crate up and plunking it on the desk.
The therapist bunked, and Spike lifted one side of his lip and growled.
“Aggression-reduction therapy?” the therapist said. “I’ll show you aggression-reduction therapy!”
He mashed his face against the wire front of Spike’s crate and growled. Or maybe “roared” would be a better word; it sounded more like something you’d expect to hear when a lion was chasing you through the jungle than anything I’d heard come from even the largest of canine throats. And while both Spike and I were still startled into immobility, he opened the door latch, threw the Affirmation Bear inside the crate, slammed the door shut, and stormed out of the room.
“I take responsibility for my own destiny,” the bear proclaimed, as Spike pounced.
The bear continued to squeak affirmations at intervals after Spike dragged him to the back of the crate and began dismembering him, the optimistic chirp contrasting strangely with Spike’s savage snarls. I knew from seeing disassembled bears on various programmers’ desks that apart from the small sound box that played the affirmations, the bear contained nothing but cotton batting, so I wasn’t too worried that Spike would hurt himself. Destroying the bear kept Spike quiet and occupied for most of the afternoon, and all I had to do was open the crate door occasionally to brush out the accumulated shreds of plush and cotton.
Meanwhile, I pondered the question of how to investigate Doc. I could ask Luis to do it, of course, but when I’d asked him to snoop around for traces of Anna Floyd, Luis had sounded a little testy. I didn’t want to push him too far. Not to mention the fact mat Luis hadn’t yet brought me the lowdown on Roger’s porn operation, either. Not surprising, since Luis was working a more-than-full-time job, but still - I’m used to more speed and enthusiasm when I send someone off to snoop for me.
So, since investigating Doc’s background wouldn’t necessarily require the same kind of computer expertise needed to uncover Roger’s porn operation and Anna Floyd’s files, I decided to return to my tried and true method of snooping. I called Mother.
“Hello, dear,” Mother said when she recognized my voice. “Did you get the book I sent you?”
“Book?” I repeated, drawing a momentary blank.
“Living Graciously in a Single Room,” she prompted. “I mailed it last week; it should have arrived by now.”
“Oh, yes,” I said. “It came Monday. But I haven’t had time to read it yet.”
“You don’t actually need to read it,” she said. “Just look at the pages I bookmarked and let me know which idea you like. I can come up Friday to take measurements.”
“Measurements?”
“The seamstresses can’t very well start making the curtains and slipcovers without measurements.”
“What curtains and slipcovers?”
“If you’d read the book I sent… ,” Mother said, her tone dripping disapproval.
“Mother, I’ve been a little busy,” I said. “Didn’t Dad tell you about the murder?”
“Well, yes,” she said. “But it sounded as if he had that well in hand.”
“It’s been keeping him busy, all right,” I said. “Speaking of that, there’s something we thought you could help with.”
It took a few tries to get her off the subject of chintz and chair rails, but once she understood that what I wanted - what we wanted (I let her assume Dad was also interested) - she took down all the information I had on Doc. If the veterinarian cousin didn’t come through, odds were she could get what we needed from an aunt who raised show Pomeranians.
Of course, to get her to cooperate, I’d had to promise to consider letting her decorate the Cave with something called toile de Jouy. I had no idea what toile de Jouy looked like, but the name alone alarmed me. The Cave was, technically, Michael’s, going by the name on the lease, or Michael’s and mine, if you considered who was usually in residence. And if you could pin him down to an opinion on a subject as esoteric as upholstery fabrics, Michael, like many guys, would vote for something simple and unfussy. In my experience, simple, unfussy fabrics tended to have simple, unfussy names. Tweed. Plaid. Wool. Stuff like that. Toile de Jouy did not sound like the sort of fabric on which one could safely eat pizza, drink champagne, or do any of the other fascinating but untidy things one can do on a sofa.