The Money Bird (An Animals in Focus Mystery) by Sheila Webster Boneham

week.”
    “Him?”
    Kerry laughed. “Yeah. She’s not too steady on several details about her new pet. Ava is definitely a boy. I did suggest she consider changing his name.”
    We chitchatted for a few minutes, then I gathered up my camera and notebook and headed home where something was, once again, waiting for me on the porch. A bouquet. Another one. I went in through the garage, let Jay out back, and brought my flowers in through the front door. They were stunning—big white daisies, peach-hued roses, blue delphiniums, some kind of pom-pom looking things. I shoved some papers and books out of the way on the dining room table and set the vase down, then pulled the card out of the plastic holder and read, “Thank you so much for the beautiful photos of our Shadetree family. Jade, Percy, and the Rest.”
    Three bouquets in three days. I couldn’t remember when I’d gotten three bouquets in three years. I freshened the water in the other two, brought Jay in, took off my shoes, and linked my camera to my laptop. Only as I waited for all my programs to open did I realize that no one at the clinic had made any rude references to my bitten behind. Maybe I’d escape the ridicule after all. I downloaded the two photos I’d kept of Ava and started a Google image search. Persephone Swann might not know what kind of Amazon parrot she had, but I was determined that I would.
    nineteen

    Wednesday evening is one of the obedience practice nights at Dog Dayz, where Tom and I train Drake and Jay. I may forget to comb my hair before I go out sometimes, but I like my dog to look his best when he’s out in public, so in the late afternoon I put my laptop to sleep, set up my grooming table in the garage so Jay could watch out the door while I groomed him, and got my box of tools. Jay hopped onto the table and stood patiently while I ground the tips off his nails with a rotary grinder, trimmed the straggly hairs on his tail, ears, and feathers, and brushed him out. When I let him off the table, he shook himself and spun around several times.
    “Yep, Bubby, I know you look good.” He wriggled his butt like a belly dancer and gave me his goofiest grin.
    I still had about half an hour before I needed to leave so I tried to call Bill but got his partner, Norm, instead.
    “Hey little sister! Bill’s at the gym. Has to keep his girlish figure, you know. I’m here baking peanut butter chocolate brownies to sabotage him. Want to come lick the bowl?”
    Norm’s peanut butter chocolate brownies are the best worst things in the world. “I’m not coming anywhere near your place until those are all gone.”
    “I’m crushed.” He made little sobbing sounds.
    “Hey, I have to get going, but tell Bill I called, okay? I need to talk to him soon. Important.”
    “Mom?”
    Norm had gone through the failing parent thing a couple of years earlier with his dad, and he’d been an emotional rock and a fountain of sensible suggestions and solid information as Bill and I negotiated these waters. “Mom.”
    “Right. You be home?”
    “After about ten.”
    “Setting the alarm clock now.”
    “Thanks, Norm.”
    Twenty minutes later I pulled into the parking lot behind Dog Dayz, grabbed my training bag, and got Jay out of his crate. I spotted Tom’s car at the far end of the lot and felt a happy little tingle dance its way through my body. As I walked up to the back bumper of Giselle Swann’s beat-up green Yugo, I stopped and stared. Last time I saw that bumper, it was covered with stickers extolling the wonders of Wicca and the superiority of the Maltese, Giselle’s dog of choice. I ♥ my Maltese and It’s hard to be humble when you have a Maltese were still there, but all references to witches were gone, a new affiliation in their place. What the hell? I asked myself as I read “Treasures on Earth Spiritual Renewal Center” and took in the cross with half hearts dangling from its arms.
    Jay apparently decided that we had delayed our