A Dog-Gone Christmas (2 page)

Not-Bella continued to shiver and seemed to be trying to hide her head in the crook of my arm. In her boot heels, Delia was a foot taller than me, but when I touched her arm and cupped a hand over my lips she realized I needed to tell her something in private. She promptly bent down so I could whisper in her ear. “Offer a reward for videos or photos with clues that identify the culprit.”

She straightened her shoulders. “Anyone who took a photo or video that helps me find my darling Bella gets a reward. It happened between the time that I was screened and when I arrived at the gate.”

Her announcement caused quite a din, as passengers clamored to get Delia’s attention, and Not-Bella now tried to burrow her way under my cardigan sweater. I dutifully buttoned my sweater over her. She was such a sweet, cuddly little pup.

Officer Grump shouted, “That is not a good idea. All evidence needs to go through me.”

“Right now,” Delia announced as if he’d never spoken, “I
only
want to see videos as I walked through security and the metal detector. No other time. Just while me and my things were being screened.”

The crowd quieted.

“I had my camera on you the whole time, Delia,” someone called. It was a man’s voice from the back of the crowd.

“Who said that?” she asked.

“Eddie Yarmouth.” A tall, gangly man stepped forward. He was wearing a Rockies baseball cap and a black parka, and was nice-looking, in a young-truck-driver sort of way. “I’m your biggest fan.”

“Possibly my tallest,” Delia said, charmingly.

“Ms. Gantry,” the officer barked, “we have video cameras in the security area. The police are examining them now.”

“That’s excellent, Officer,” she said. “Keep up the good work.”

While Eddie cued up the video for her to watch, he said, “I’m a country/western singer myself. Just small gigs, so far.” He grinned at her as he handed her his phone. “I’m also single, by the way. Do you happen to be seeing anyone these days?”

“Dude!” Tom said indignantly, spreading his arms.

Eddie raised an eyebrow and gave him a quick glance, as if he couldn’t care less that her current beau was standing right there.

Delia gestured to me and my mother to come closer. With Eddie looking on, the three of us watched the video. Judging by the angle of the camera, Eddie had apparently been going through the security line next to hers. The video showed Delia and her threesome loading their carry-ons in the bins. Stacy, Delia’s assistant, had been carrying Bella’s carrier and opened it for Delia, who was engaged in an animated discussion with Tom the whole time. Whatever they were saying was clearly upsetting Stacy, who visibly needed a moment to collect herself. The camera, however, stayed on Delia, and its microphone picked up Eddie saying, “That’s Delia Gantry.” The chant: “That’s Delia Gantry” rippled through the crowd.

As the video continued, Tom Adams went through the metal detector and emerged on the other side, his heated conversation with Delia continuing. The camera jiggled and then shifted its focus when Delia, holding a buff-and-white Chihuahua, emerged from the metal detector. I couldn’t see her inside the booth; TSA agents always insisted that you hold your hands above your head, and I wondered if she’d held Bella aloft.

On the audio of the video, someone shouted, “That’s not mine!” For a moment, the camera jiggled wildly. “I don’t even
own
a pocketknife. I live alone, so nobody else put it there. Someone at the airport had to have stuck it in my suitcase pocket.”

The contents of the conveyor belt were just visible in a bottom corner of the little screen.

“Wait!” I said. “That’s when the carrier gets switched.” The corner of the dog carrier appeared in the screen then disappeared, just as the passenger was pleading his case loudly behind Eddie. An instant later, the dog carrier reappeared.

“It doesn’t show who was back there,” Delia said, “mucking with my Louis V.”

“It must have been the new TSA agent,” my mom said.

“Look!” I cried pointing at the tiny screen. “That agent is acting as if he’s going over to assist the TSA agents deal with the mysterious pocket knife, but I’ll bet he’s really leaving the scene. After he puts Not-Bella in the second carrier.”

“But…that’s impossible,” Delia said. “Right after I got past the metal detector, the carrier came through on the conveyor belt. I put Bella in the empty carrier, Stacy closed the latch, and I carried it here to the gate. I never as much as set it down, until you noticed this dog’s brown eyes.”

“I need to replay this,” Delia said. We watched two more times, and then Officer Grump took Eddie’s phone to watch it himself.

By then, the police had finished taking Stacy’s—Delia’s assistant’s—statement. Stacy walked up to Delia and whispered, “The body guard must have nabbed Bella. Remember? He took the dog’s case from me. He probably stashed the counterfeit dog under his jacket. Then he switched dogs while we were putting our shoes and coats back on.”

“He could have gotten the phony TSA agent’s help to hide your actual carrier into the duffel bag and send it through another X-ray line,” I theorized.

Delia shook her head, clearly avoiding her assistant’s eyes. “But I’m positive it was
Bella
I was holding when I went through the metal detector.”

“I think you must be mistaken,” Stacy said. “I think—”

“Get Tom and Mario,” Delia interrupted. “I want the three of you to get the names and numbers of each and every person with photos and videos of me and my Louis V.”

Stacy looked crestfallen, but dutifully headed toward her male companions.

A pair of officers were conferring with someone over the radio, and one approached Delia, who was watching him with hopeful eyes. “We’re questioning a TSA agent with dog fur on his sleeves. This could be a significant lead.”

Delia merely nodded, her expression downhearted. My own spirits, however, were lifted simply by holding Not-Bella, whom I could tell had fallen asleep under my cardigan.

I was just about to offer Not-Bella to Delia, to help calm her stress, when I realized something and, instead, strode over to my mother. Mom was now seated nearby, having collected our belongings. “Mom, we need to approach this from a different angle, namely: Where did Bella’s impostor come from?”

“Good idea. How should I check into that?”

I pointed with my chin at her laptop carrier. Look on Craigslist. See if anyone in the Denver region has sold this dog in the past few days. If there’s no listing, search on: ‘Denver Chihuahuas for sale.’”

Mom promptly got to work on her computer. I turned and scanned the area for Delia, but caught Stacy looking at me with mournful eyes. Meanwhile Eddie had gotten his phone back from the officer and was chatting with Delia, while showing her something on his phone. His body English was saying that he was trying hard to impress her.

I introduced myself to Stacy, then asked, “Who put the outfit on Bella?”

“I did. Before we left the hotel for the airport. According to Delia’s instructions.”

“Does Bella have other Christmassy outfits?”

“Yes, but this is the only one she’s worn on this tour.”

“Are you certain that Bella’s cape had an authentic emerald?”

“One-hundred percent certain. About everything. It’s Delia who’s confused. I did have the carrier from the time we left the limo until we got off the train at Terminal B. But when we got to security, I was surprised when Mario, the body guard, took the carrier from me and put it on the conveyor belt. I was…offended.”

“Why?”

She hesitated and exchanged glances with Tom.

“It’s personal,” she said. “All I can say is, there was a lot of unnecessary confusion as we tried to get through the security screening. None of us was keeping a close eye on our belongings right then.”

What I knew about Delia’s personal life was that she had as much of a penchant for dramatic breakups with boyfriends as I had for finding canine clients that got me involved in dramatic criminal investigations. “I’ll talk to her and see if she realizes she could have made a mistake.”

Not-Bella had poked her way out of my sweater. We both looked down at her. “All I’m saying,” Stacy went on, “is that the Christmas collar covers up the section of fur that’s the most different from Delia’s, when you’re looking down at her.”

I nodded, thanked her, and headed toward Delia. Eddie stopped his conversation mid-sentence.

“My mother’s checking into some things online for me, Delia. Isn’t there a reasonable chance that you didn’t notice the difference when you got
this
dog out of her Louis V carrier?”

“I would have noticed!”

“But you were upset and arguing with Tom the entire time you were handling Bella. The shawl covers her shoulders, where most of the coloration differences in her coat would have been hidden.”

“That’s true. Come to think of it, my eyes were getting kind of teary. So I couldn’t see—” Delia froze and her eyes widened. She clenched her jaw, whipped her head around, and started marching toward Tom. “Did you do this to me, Tom? Did you keep me distracted deliberately so you could steal my precious dog?”

Tom stepped back, his jaw agape in not-quite believable shock. “What?! No!” He jammed his hands in his pocket. “That is cold, girl.”

Once again, Delia scanned the immediate area, and focused on her assistant, who was dutifully taking notes as she spoke with several people with phones in their hands. “Stacy. Come here. Now.”

Mario, too, stopped talking to people about their pictures and stared at Delia.

“You, too, Mario. Get over here.”

“We need to look at the recording from when you all arrived at the security line,” I said to Delia. “When the line was snaking around, all someone had to do was hide the second carrier containing the second dog in the line under a winter coat. It would be really easy to switch dogs and carriers as one person and their dog passes a partner in crime, snaking in the other direction. And, meanwhile, the shady TSA nobody knew could have been bribed to pass Bella through in the dognapper’s coat.”

“Then why not just leave the line, with my dog and my carrier?” Delia asked, logically. “Claim to have forgotten something, and leave the airport? Why would they send Bella’s dog carrier through one of the security lines, hidden inside a second bag?”

“I don’t know. Maybe to cause a bigger, more confusing scene? The dognapper might not have wanted you to fly out of Denver without realizing your dog had been stolen. So he could get the ransom money before the police launched a full investigation, maybe.”

Tom was growing edgy. I got the feeling he was on the edge of bolting from the area.

“One of you three swapped my carrier with another in the security line,” Delia said. “Or maybe all three of you were in on it together.” She glared at Stacy. “Now that you and Tom are a cozy little couple.”

“We
aren’t
a couple,” Stacy said. “I’d never do that to you! He flirts with everybody! Nothing he said or did to me was ever reciprocated.”

“Oh, now, that’s just not true, Stace,” Tom said. “You were always comin’ on to me like a house afire!”

“You were the one who carried Bella from the car, Stacy,” Delia persisted. “All the way to the security line.”

“No, I didn’t. We can find the truth by looking at airport security footage. You’ll see that
Mario
took the case from me.”

“Only to put it down for the machine to see through it. I would never cheat you! I am a loyal employee!

“For all of four weeks now,” Delia muttered.

“I’m a certified bail bondsman,” Mario said.

The police officers were now paying close attention to everything that was being said. Delia looked at the closest one and said, “Officer, I want all three of these people arrested. Immediately.”

“This is all a publicity stunt,” Tom insisted. “Don’t listen to her. She’s the one who knows where her dog is. She brought this dog her herself.”

“That is a lie! I get publicity when I sneeze! Not to mention when I break up with someone.” She glared at Tom with pure fury in her eyes.

He winced, and it was clear he got the message that his days with Delia were numbered.

“The last thing I would ever, ever do is put my little Bella in danger and expose myself to this kind of insanity.”

“People know you’re all about money,” Tom growled. “You won’t be happy until you’re number one. The only reason you love Bella so much is she asks so little of you. All you have to do is feed her and pat her on the head, and she’s adores you.”

“Miss?” Eddie asked Delia in a near whisper. “My flight’s boarding. I really need my phone back.”

“Can you send the video to me, and to the police first? I’ll give you my private phone number.”

“Allie,” my mother said, running up to me. “You were right. Look at this.” I was still holding Not-Bella but she supported her computer so that I could read the screen. It showed an online ad for a two-year-old female Chihuahua named “Ciao.” There was a phone number with Denver’s 303 exchange, followed by the words: “Call Ed.”

“Hi, Ciao,” I said.

Not-Bella immediately raised her head and looked at me.

Still cradling the dog in one arm, I grabbed my cell phone from my pocket and called the number. The phone in Eddie’s hand rang. He shut it off and jammed it in his pocket.

I shut mine off as well. “Hi, Eddie,” I said, staring straight into his eyes. “It’s Allida Babcock. You’ve just been busted.”

“Dude,” Tom said, shaking his head.

“It was his idea,” Eddie said, pointing at Tom.

“Officers, I want to file a complaint against Tom Adams and Eddie Yarmouth for theft and blackmail,” Delia said, trying again. “And Stacy Kilbride, as well.”

“I swear to you,” Stacy pleaded, “I had nothing to do with this. “Nothing whatsoever. I was every bit as in the dark as you were.” Clenching her hands together she turned toward Tom. “Tell them, Tom. Please. Tell them the truth.”

Tom rolled his eyes. After a lengthy pause, he said, “Stacy knew nothing,” as if the words were being pulled painfully out of him. “She’s telling the truth.”