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Have I ever mentioned that I love Zeke’s? Any place that allows dogs is my kind of place, especially if it also has burgers. So it’s great to be here with all the Franklins and Annie. The boss invited Miguel, too, who said he appreciated the offer but crowds make him itch. Not sure what he means by that. I take flea meds so I don’t itch. We’re all here to congratulate Molly—and me, and also Tanya and Kenny, as she keeps reminding everyone—for getting Kenny out of jail and Sid into it.
So we’re all sitting in the outside area at Zeke’s, around a long white metal table eating burgers. Me on the ground, of course, the rest in brightly painted metal chairs. And I’m happy because I don’t even have to wait for Molly to sneak me bites since Mr. Franklin ordered two burgers just for me.
“Thanks, Doodle, for clearing Kenny’s name,” he says, as he breaks the first one into pieces on a paper plate and then sets it on the ground. “You did more than any of those lawyers.”
“And cost a lot less,” Mrs. Franklin says, fervently.
Everyone laughs at that. “And Molly—don’t know what we’d have done if you hadn’t risked . . .” Mr. Franklin’s voice catches and he shakes his head. “Hard times,” he says at last, his eyes scrunched together as if he’s trying to shut out the memory. “You’re a brave girl.”
Molly sits at the end of the table with me on the ground on one side and Tanya at the other. “Don’t forget Tanya and Derrin,” she says again. “And Kenny totally paid me back.”
Her face glows with happiness, and her hands, when not putting food in her mouth, rest relaxed on her lap. She hasn’t twisted a strand of hair all evening. And she’s eaten almost all her burger plus an enormous mound of fries, and most of a chocolate shake. “After seeing the way he tackled Sid—I think he ought to do football as well as basketball.”
“Wouldn’t break my heart,” Mr. Franklin admits with a grin.
Mrs. Franklin shakes her head. “I’m not sure my poor heart can take basketball and football.”
Kenny, sitting next to Tanya, puts down his burger—his third, I can’t help but notice. “Couldn’t let him get away with all the evidence,” he says, looking pleased.
Mrs. Franklin wipes her face, sets down her napkin, and turns to Molly. “Just exactly what did happen? I’ve heard bits and pieces but never the whole thing. Only that Doodle flunked his test, but something shady was going on.”
“Shady as in fraud,” the boss says with some heat. “Sid got hired to manage the training operation at Smithfield’s. The owner had sunk tons of money into building the facility and wanted to see a good return both in terms of reputation and money coming in. So Sid was under pressure to get results. He decided to nudge things along a bit by ensuring that the teams that took his training passed, and those that didn’t failed.”
“How’d he do that? Bribe the judge?” Derrin dips an onion ring into some catsup.
“Not the judge,” the boss says, “the security guard.” He sighs and murmurs, “Who watches the watchers?”
Still don’t know what that means, and from the blank looks from those around the table, I’m not the only one.
“When Sid promoted the cert trials, he liked to emphasize that he only hired evaluators with vast experience using scent detection dogs, people with impeccable records in law enforcement. And he’d talk about how he kept the trial rooms locked in between the tests so there could be no scent contamination. All good and fine. But Sid’s security guard opened the room for the judges, and always did a quick ‘sweep’ when they’d finished. And he —”
The boss tilts a half-eaten fry at Molly. “But you tell it. You’re the one who figured it out. I kept saying the results had to be right because there was no way to skew them. But that wasn’t good enough for Molly.”
Molly blushes a little, and her fingers stray to a strand of hair, but she looks happy nevertheless. “I couldn’t believe that Doodle failed—he’s always had a great nose—and then, when Gunther passed, it was just like Annie said, just the opposite of what we expected. So I thought it had to be rigged. And it had to be through the judges or the security guard since they were the only ones with access to the rooms. I’d read about pseudo scents when I had to teach Doodle to find pot —” she takes a sip of her root beer and gives me a little pat on the head.
“Soo what?” asks Mr. Franklin.
“Pseudo scents,” Annie chimes in, spelling the word. “They’re training aids that mimic the scent of real things—different drugs, termites, bed bugs. Trainers use them to imprint the dog on a particular scent. But you didn’t use pseudo did you? To train Doodle on pot?”
Now Molly’s flush deepens and her fingers steal to her hair. “Um, no. I got a small sample from, um, a friend, who wanted to clear Kenny.” Tanya darts a glance at Derrin, but Molly keeps her gaze resolutely on the table. “That I gave to the cops as soon as we were done,” she says, the words tumbling out quickly.
“And she did a great job training him,” Annie says with pride. “Which is why Josh was so worried that Doodle failed because of scent confusion —” She touches the boss lightly on the arm with an apologetic smile. By the silly grin on his face when he looks down on her, he doesn’t mind. “Which, simply put, is when a dog isn’t sure which scent he’s supposed to be searching for.”
As if eager to move on, Molly says, “Anyway, I knew about pseudo scents, and the ones I’d seen on the internet were in little vials.”
“That cost $60!” Tanya adds. “So, no way we could afford it.”
Molly nods. “But after Doodle failed, I searched some more and found out that they make pens—like markers, really—with pseudo scents, including that of live bed bugs. And I read about how easy it would be to get a dog to give a false alert by simply swiping a pseudo pen over some object. It’d leave no mark. No trace, except to a dog, who could smell it. As Doodle did.”
She leans down and gives me a scritch between the ears.
“So I figured maybe that’s how Sid was fixing the results. But I still couldn’t see when. But then, Sid was so paranoid about cameras and photography, I thought that maybe it was something that could be caught on camera. Just like the video did with Gunther, when we saw how he always watched his handler before alerting.”
Molly pauses, takes a few more gulps of root beer. “That’s where Tanya and Kenny came in. They brought Mrs. Franklin’s video camera, and then —” She points at Tanya who beams back at her.
“Then we snuck it in, and Kenny hid it in his jacket and he taped a complete trial. But even better . . .” She points at her brother.
Kenny swallows, grinning. “Then I changed the battery and wrapped it in my coats, so it wouldn’t be visible to the guard at the door, and left it running, pointed at the TV, for the time that we had to be out of the room between sessions.”
“And what’d you find?” Mrs. Franklin asks, leaning forward with interest.
“That the guard—the thin one—stopped in front of the exact same spots where Doodle gave false alerts. His back was to us, but when Molly saw it . . .”
“I thought it’d be pretty interesting if Chloe gave false alerts at those same spots, also. And she did. And then Doodle kept sniffing at the guard in an interested way, so I gave the search command and he alerted on the guard’s coat pocket and then Chloe did and then the cell phone cover fell out.”
“Not one of those pseudo things?” asks Derrin.
“No, the pens were in the back room on a table with duplicates of the stuffed bear and phone covers that the judges used as distractors. That’s what Sid was trying to get rid of when I snapped a picture of him. And he went berserk.”
“He might have been able to talk his way out of it,” the boss adds, “if he hadn’t panicked and attacked Molly.”
A new scent suddenly makes my nostrils twitch. Miga? It can’t be. I look up to see Cori heading straight for our table. Didn’t know she was coming. From the catch in Molly’s breath, I gather she didn’t either.
The boss rises out of his chair. “Cori. Glad you could make it.”
Molly stares open-mouthed at her mother and then gives her father a quizzical look.
“I invited her,” the boss says, flushing a little. “Since we’re honoring you, and Cori helped with the Thatcher thing, I thought it’d be, um, appropriate.” He introduces Cori to the Franklins.
“Of course, I know Barbara,” Cori says.
“And this is Annie Harmon,” the boss says. If Molly notices how his hand lingers on Annie’s arm, she doesn’t show it. But one of Cori’s eyebrows lifts slightly.
“Pleased to meet you,” she says. “You’re a trainer right?” As Annie nods, Cori continues. “Sorry, to be late,” She gives an apologetic smile, biting her bottom lip just a little. “And like I said on the phone, I can’t stay. I’m actually on my way to the station now. Something’s come up. As it always does.” She rolls her eyes. “But since this is a celebration because of Molly’s work —”
“And Doodle’s —” Molly adds, for which I’m grateful.
“And Doodle’s,” Cori repeats with a smile. “I brought you a gift.” She holds out a small, slender box, the cardboard scuffed and worn and rich with an intriguing cluster of scents.
Wide-eyed, Molly lifts the lid and sucks in her breath. “It’s beautiful,” she says, holding up a small gold object on a thin chain. “A butterfly.”
“It was your grandmother’s,” Cori says, relaxing a little. “Her father gave it to her when she was about your age. He always called her his little butterfly. Mariposa. I thought you might like it.”
“I love it.” Molly’s eyes shine as she studies it. She holds it around her neck.
“Let me help you.” Cori bends over and clasps the chain, then straightens up.
“And for the rest of you—I thought you might like to know the detectives in Fairfax County say the case against Sid is looking good. Naturally, Sid swears he didn’t do anything wrong and all the evidence is circumstantial, but the cops had enough cause with his attack on Molly to get a search warrant. Guess what they found? The closed-circuit TV from the trials also went into a small set in Sid’s office. So he could watch the judges set up the course, text the guard, and manipulate the outcome. If he wanted a team to fail, he’d have the guard substitute a duplicate item for the distractor, one marked with the pseudo live scent. Then it looked like the dog was alerting on the dead bugs, but really it was alerting on live ones.”
“So that’s how the guard knew,” Molly says. “I wondered.”
“Well, you figured out most of it. And it turns out that Sid has a record, under an alias, for fraud when working with a termite company down in Florida. Add that to a full confession from the security guard—who, by the way, also has a record—and well, I think there’s good reason to be optimistic.”
This makes everyone smile and several people start talking at once.
Cori bends over to Molly, and in a much quieter voice, says, “I’m really sorry about . . . how things went on your visit. Can we try again? Maybe just an afternoon or something until things at work calm down? Maybe next Saturday?”
“That—that’d be great.” Why Molly’s trembling, but not from fear or sadness unless I’m totally incompetent at reading humans, which obviously I’m not. She fingers the butterfly.
“I’ll call your dad in a few days and work things out.”
Cori’s phone buzzes. She silences it. “I really have to go,” she says. “But Molly, you should be proud. Two different crooks trying to get away with something and you outsmarted them both.”
Molly flushes and smiles, and then leans over to pat me on the head. “Couldn’t have done it without Tanya and Kenny,” she says. “Or Doodle.” She runs a hand down my back.
“I only outsmarted them because Doodle outsniffed them.”