A knock at the door made me grab for a wad of tissues and blow my nose. Lucy marched in with a tattered comforter that had seen better days, followed by Sarge carrying Dandy. Hovering behind them in the doorway, Tanya had an arm around my mother, who was still in her nightgown. “Tried to take her back upstairs to get dressed,” Tanya whispered to me, “but she don’t wanna leave the dog.”
“That’s okay.” I slipped out of the tiny office so my mother could get in and supervise.
“He needs fresh water,” she fussed. “And food in his bowl.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Lucy muttered, and marched out with the water bowl. We all knew Dandy wouldn’t be eating or drinking anytime soon, but none of us were inclined to argue.
Sarge was next to leave. “Oh, Fairbanks, Mabel wants to see both of us soon as you get things squared away down here.” She looked at her watch. “Breakfast stuff is on the counter. But I’d like to get out of here by eight if you—”
I nodded. “It’s okay. I’m not hungry. Just let me get my mother settled and I’ll be right up.” If I didn’t fall over first.
Tanya promised to get my mother fed and dressed when she was ready. Sammy eagerly said he’d “dog-sit,” and I was surprised when my mother agreed. A lump caught in my throat. If my Paul knew that Dandy had been injured while protecting the shelter, he’d want to be the one sitting by the dog’s “bedside.”
Oh God! Did I make the right decision? Maybe I should have told the boys’ grandfather to send them back here anyway and let the chips fall where they may!
Couldn’t go there. I needed sleep. I needed . . . uhh, I was supposed to talk to Mabel. After pouring another cup of coffee from the carafe as I hustled through the multipurpose room, I knocked on Mabel’s door and peeked in. Sarge was already hunkered on a chair, elbows on her knees. Mabel got up and gave me a quick hug. “Are you all right, Gabby?”
I offered a weak smile. “Been better. But I’ll be okay.” I sat down before my legs betrayed me.
Unlike her usual careful outfits, Mabel looked like she’d grabbed clothes off the floor without bothering to fix her face—a black silk headwrap still covered her hair—which wasn’t surprising after getting a call from the shelter in the middle of the night. “We’re all tired,” she admitted, “so I don’t want this to take long. Sarge already gave me a brief overview, but I’d like to hear again what happened from both of you, to get our facts straight.” She jerked her head in the direction of the melee we knew was waiting outside. “I suppose we’ll have to make a statement to the media before they’ll go away.”
I wagged my head. “How did they even know about this? We didn’t call them!”
Sarge grunted. “Police scanners. Some reporters chase police stories like lawyers chase ambulances. If one of our residents had got cut up by the perp? The media couldn’t care less. But a dog playing hero?”
My hackles rose. “Dandy wasn’t playing! He knew something was wrong. I’ve never seen him act like that. He’s usually a teddy bear!”
Sarge patted the air with her hand. “D’accordo, d’accordo. I am not blaming the dog. He saved my life, for all I know.”
I stared at her. Frankly, I hadn’t given much thought to what Sarge had endured during the night. “How . . . I mean, what happened before Dandy got there?”
“All right,” Mabel interrupted. “Let’s back up. Sarge, tell me again what happened.”
The night manager shrugged. “The kid and I—Susan what’s-her-face—”
“Susan McCall, your assistant,” Mabel said.
Sí, the kid. Anyway, we did rounds at midnight, everything “was okay, capisce? Susan sacked out on a couch for a few z’s, not a problem. I might have dozed . . . then I heard a sound downstairs. Didn’t think much about it. Fairbanks, here, sometimes bends the rules and goes to her office in the middle of the night—”
I flushed but held my tongue.
“—but I decided to check. Made my way downstairs, and some tomfool is in the kitchen, rummaging around in the fridge. I thought it was one of the residents, helping herself to a midnight snack. So I yell, ‘Hey!’ Somebody turns out to be this big dude. He grabbed a knife—”
“Grabbed it?” Mabel asked. “He didn’t have it with him?”
Sarge shook her head. “Saw him grab it out of the knife block. Definitely a Manna House knife. Then it happened so fast—that dude jumped over the counter and had that knife at my throat. Uh-uh, no way baby, not going to argue with a knife. Saw too many slit throats in Iraq . . .”
I gaped at her. I’d been so wrapped up in my own personal drama, I’d never given a thought to what Sarge had experienced in the military.
“Anyway, the perp found some dish towels and tied me to one of those plastic chairs. He was just about to stuff a gag in my mouth when”—Sarge broke into a laugh—“when all hell broke loose in the stairwell. Next thing I knew, that fur ball charges into the room, barking and snapping. It was dark, you know, so I am not sure exactly what happened. But the guy must have grabbed up the knife and cut him—kicked him too—because the dog yelped and went flying. That’s when Fairbanks, here, showed up screaming bloody murder.” Sarge volleyed the verbal ball at me. “Your turn.”
I was so tired my memory felt blurry. But I admitted I couldn’t sleep last night, so Dandy and I had been in the lounge upstairs. “Praying,” I added. “Dandy heard something. I tried to stop him, but he was off like a shot . . .” I filled in the rest of the story as best I could.
Mabel had been listening intently and taking notes. When I finished, she jumped in. “Two questions. How did the intruder get in? And what did he want? Police said the side door off the gangway was unlocked when they arrived.”
Sarge got defensive. “That door’s always locked, except for deliveries. We don’t let residents use it for any reason.”
“Yes,” Mabel shot back, “but it’s your responsibility as night manager to check that all doors are locked every evening.”
Ha. Part of me would have loved to let Sarge squirm after all the grief she’d given me about Dandy. But the night’s events had been traumatic for her too—confronting the intruder alone, finding a knife at her throat, getting tied up.
“Uh, Mabel. I’m partly to blame as well. I saw the supper volunteers take trash bags out that side door and didn’t think anything about it. I was on cleanup, the last one to leave, and I should have checked that door. But I had big problems on my mind and just wasn’t thinking.”
To my surprise, Sarge shot me a look that seemed almost . . . grateful.
Mabel finally leaned back. “Well, obviously, we need to tighten the security. When something like this happens, we all have to learn from it. We can’t afford to make mistakes. We were fortunate this time. It could have been worse . . .”
I zoned out, impatient to talk to my mom, get some sleep, call the boys to tell them about Dandy, ask how they felt about staying another month in Virginia. But I tried to focus.
“. . . a lot to be thankful for. We need to give God some serious praise around here! And no doubt about it, Dandy’s the hero of the day. I’m so sorry he got hurt, Gabby. How’s your mother taking it?”
I shook my head. “Haven’t really talked to her. I’m not sure she understands. She gets confused when things get stressful. But I think she’s doing all right for now. I just hope those reporters don’t find out Dandy is her dog and shove those microphones in her face. She’d freak.”
“Good point. Right now I think they assume Dandy is your dog, Gabby. Let’s keep it that way.”
Not that I wanted any microphones in my face either. “Uh, I kind of promised we’d give them a statement soon, just so they’d let us get in the door.” I looked at Mabel hopefully. “Would you . . . ?”
Mabel made a face. “All right. Hopefully, this will blow over soon. Most of our guests don’t want—or need—media spotlight. Guess we should call a meeting of all the residents and make sure everybody has the straight story so we don’t start a lot of rumors.”
The three of us worked on a statement we hoped would satisfy the diehards still waiting outside. Finally Mabel stood up. “All right, while I’m giving our statement, would you two gather the residents in the multipurpose room? Sarge, can you stay a bit longer? Gabby, do we have anything scheduled this morning?”
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to think. “Uh, yes, Jodi Baxter is coming to teach a typing class at eleven.” I groaned inwardly. I’d had every intention of trying to talk with Jodi when she came this morning, thinking Mabel wouldn’t be here. I still needed help sorting out the options the Legal Aid lawyer had presented to me. But now, all I could think of was sleep.
“Fine. We’ll be done by then.” Mabel started out of her office, then caught her reflection in the glass windows around the receptionist’s cubby. “Oh, Lord, help me. You sure do have ways of keeping me humble.” Our shelter director gave a short laugh, then gave a shrug and marched toward the front doors, crowned with her bedtime hair wrap.
I had to smile. Was that a prayer? Mabel talked to God like He was just another person sitting in on our conversation.
While Mabel was out facing the cameras, Sarge started rounding up the residents and I checked on Dandy—stretched out on his comforter, eyes closed, the bandages wrapped around his shaved chest and shoulder rising and falling with each labored breath. Eight-year-old Sammy sat patiently nearby.
“You okay, Sammy? You want a book to read? Or here . . .” I grabbed some blank paper and colored markers from my desk. “Would you like to draw?”
Tanya’s boy nodded eagerly, took the paper and markers, and scrunched down on the floor. Then he looked up. “Some a’ the other kids wanted ta come in, but I told ’em nobody s’posed ta be in your office but me. Ain’t that right, Miz Gabby?”
“That’s right, Sammy. For now, anyway.” Smiling at his loyalty, I scurried back upstairs to the main floor, where residents were gathering just as Mabel came back through the double doors into the multipurpose room. I was glad to see my mother dressed in navy blue slacks and a clean—though wrinkled—white blouse, and her hair brushed. I slipped up to her, gave her a hug, and pulled a folding chair close.
Done with her statement, Mabel marched into the multipurpose room and clapped her hands. “Everybody here? Good. Ladies, quiet down . . . Hello! Ladies! We need to brief you about what happened last night, and—”
“’Scuse me, Miz Mabel!” Lucy’s hand shot up.
“We’ll have time for questions later, Lucy. First—”
“’Scuse me, Miz Mabel. We got somethin’ ta say first, right, ladies?”
Murmurs all around. Mabel sighed. “All right, Lucy. What is it?”
Lucy poked Carolyn. “You go. They gonna listen to you, ’cause you got all that book learnin’.”
“She would, si te callaras la boca, Lucy!” Tina hollered. Everybody laughed.
“Ladies, please . . .” Mabel looked frustrated.
Carolyn stood up. “Sorry, Mabel. We don’t mean to joke. We’ve been talking—all the ladies here—about what happened last night, and we have a proposition to make.”
Heads nodded all around the room. “That’s right” . . . “Sí” . . . “Uh-huh” . . .
Lucy poked Carolyn again. “Get on with it.”
“Lucy, if you poke me one more time, I’m—!” Snickers from the residents. “Anyway, we all know Dandy’s been living here on borrowed time. Sarge has been saying he’s got to be out of here by this weekend.”
Sarge threw up her hands. “Well, not today. The dog’s hurt.”
“Exactly. Gramma Shep’s dog got injured protecting all of us from an intruder. Hurt bad. So all of us here agree we owe him somethin’. We took a vote—”
Mabel’s eyebrow went up.
“—and we all agree that Dandy should be made a resident of Manna House Women’s Shelter as official watchdog.”
The room erupted with cheers and claps from the residents, even Sheila, the big-chested woman who’d screeched like a banshee the first time I brought Dandy and my mom to the shelter for a visit. Carolyn handed Mabel a sheet of paper with a ballpoint pen clipped to the top. “See? We’ve all signed a petition.”
Mabel glanced at the paper, a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth, then handed it to Sarge. The night manager shrugged. “Humph. I’m overruled, no? City inspector might not like it, but tell you what . . .” Sarge grabbed the pen, laid the paper on the nearest end table, and signed it.
Now the residents did raise a cheer, laughing and slapping Sarge on the back. I saw Mabel turn her head toward the foyer asif listening to something, then slip out as Sarge passed the list of signatures to me.
I showed the paper to my mother, who had a fixed smile on her face, as if aware that something good was happening but not sure what it was. “Look at this, Mom! Everybody wants Dandy to stay here at the shelter as the official watchdog. Isn’t that great?”
As I glanced over the list, I didn’t see Lucy’s name. But at the top, among the first few signatures, was a large, scrawled X.
My neck prickled. Was that why Lucy fussed about being asked to read Dandy’s dog tag in the back of the squad car?
Lucy couldn’t read!
A tap on my shoulder made me look up. “Gabby?” Mabel beckoned. “You’ve got a phone call. Take it in my office if you want to.”
Strange. Who would be calling me? The boys? Maybe their granddad had told them they were staying in Virginia, and they wanted to talk to me. Or—I picked up Mabel’s phone. “Hello? Gabby Fairbanks speaking.”
“Gabrielle!” My name was shouted in my ear like a cuss word. “What are you trying to do—ruin me?”
I recoiled from the phone in shock. Philip! But I took a deep breath and tried to collect my equilibrium. “What do you mean, ruin you? Why are you calling, Philip? This isn’t exactly a good time. I’ve got a lot going on—”
“Yeah, I’ll bet you do. Talking to reporters, splashing the Fairbanks name all over the news!”
I squeezed my eyes shut and pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to calm the voices shouting in my head. “Philip. I’m not—”
“Oh yeah? Turn on the TV! Of all the lowdown things to do, making a spectacle of yourself. I’m supposed to play golf in an hour with one of our new clients today—now this!” He swore right in my ear. “Don’t play innocent with me—I know what you’re up to, Gabrielle. My mother always said you’d drag down the Fairbanks name someday!”