Summer of the Spotted Owl (3 page)

Under his sandy hair, Jack's brow furrowed. “You mean, you're
backing
us? No kidding?”

“I never kid, kid,” Councillor Cordes chuckled —though without humor in his beady eyes. “So?” he challenged the crowd. “Are you pleased with the Rock, or what?”

Jack glanced round. Being short, I couldn't tell what at, but he muttered to me, “tv news cameras are being set up. Cordes wouldn't dare make this up, no matter how badly he wants to get rid of us.”

Into the megaphone Jack said, “Yeah, that
is
great, Councillor. Let's hear it for what a small but caring group of people can do — and let's hear it even louder for the spotted owl!”

Afterward, to Councillor Cordes's
annoyance, the reporters mostly rammed microphones in Jack's face. On the evening news, the perky, helmet-hair-sprayed anchorwoman, Mary Lou Burke, would coo about “this cute up-and-coming activist, Jack French.”

“You're not even a fellow resident of the area,” Councillor Cordes pointed out to Jack, through a gritted-teeth smile, as the cameras whirred.

“I'm a fellow resident of the planet, though,” Jack responded pleasantly.

I ducked a corner of a protest sign. “What's next for you guys?” I asked the dark-haired girl holding it.

“Soak,” she said.

“Ah,” I nodded, thinking of the Urstads' pool. “Me too. Unfortunately my inflatable turtle got stolen —something I'm going to have to investigate.”

The girl regarded me strangely. “Not
soak
. soac. As in, us. The Spotted Owl Advocacy Committee. We'll continue with our protests elsewhere. There's still so much work to be done on behalf of the spotted owl. I myself volunteer at the soac office as a receptionist. I certainly don't take time off to
swim
.”

She gave a righteous sniff, which would've had a dramatic effect except for a sudden, eardrum-cracking splinter. Then an equally deafening yowl from Councillor Cordes.

The crate he'd been standing on had buckled and broken under his weight.

“Let's just say, the event then
bottomed out
for Councillor Cordes,” Mary Lou Burke would twinkle later, on the evening news.

Chapter Three
Rowena Pickles
and One Very Disappointed Reporter

“
S
OAC wants to work with developers, not against them,” Jack explained.

Sprawled in one of the Urstads' deck chairs, Jack was discussing with Madge, who of course was sitting daintily in
her
deck chair, ways to plan neighborhoods without threatening wildlife.

A worthwhile idea, I thought. Therefore, I decided not to aim a large
splash
! at them, as I usually did when I jumped in the pool.

“Every kind of life in the forest, whether it's a spotted owl, an ant or a pine needle, is part of the whole,” Jack was saying. “If you destroy one, you start diminishing the health of the whole forest.”

This was getting theoretical, which I wasn't really into. Madge, however, regarded Jack with solemn intensity. “More logging companies just
have
to listen to groups like yours, Jack. You certainly forced that horrid Councillor Cordes to pay attention!”

Jack managed a crooked grin. “I don't want it to seem that way — that soac forced itself on anyone. It sounds too confrontational. I just want environmentalists to work together with loggers and developers. As for Cordes, yeah, that was something. He caved in to us almost too easily.”

Madge gave him one of the adoring looks that the two of them were so fond of exchanging. If I hadn't been blowing bubbles and pretending I was a manta ray, I'd have made barfing noises.

She said, “Councillor Cordes had no choice. He saw how much you and your friends care about wildlife.”

Then she passed a slim hand over her forehead in resignation. “I care about wildlife too— yet for the life of me I can't paint any that I'm satisfied with for this mural. This morning I wiped out an entire family of happy-faced deer,” she added melodramatically.

Now it was Jack's turn to look adoring. “Don't worry,” he assured her. “All artists struggle with ideas. You'll find inspiration.”

Having finished being a manta ray, I called across the pool helpfully, “Hey, Madge, maybe you could get inspired if you cut off your ear, like Van Gogh. That's a
slice
of art history I've always enjoyed.”

I laughed at this witticism until noticing the disapproving frowns Jack and Madge were directing my way. Uh-oh, a lecture in the works, for sure. I grabbed the Urstads' mask and snorkel from the side of the pool and spent the next while below surface, pretending I was an electric eel.

When I finally
came up at poolside, a pair of slanting green eyes stared into my mask. A pair of green eyes belonging to a marmalade-colored cat.

I reached out to pet him. I missed my own cat, Wilfred, who'd stayed at home with Mother in East Van.

But the marmalade cat withdrew with a scornful look that my cowardly Wilfred would never have been able to muster.

I got it. My hand was wet and therefore unacceptable.

The marmalade cat then yawned at me, the ultimate insult. He trotted off to the edge of the Urstads' garden, where privet hedge met canyon. Was he going to plunge down the canyon, as Itchy had?

But this guy had more sense than Itchy. He whipped round the end of the privet hedge.

Huh. I hadn't realized there was an edge to be whipped round. I glanced at Jack and Madge, too involved in conversation to have noticed our visitor. I hoisted myself from the pool, pulled off the snorkel gear and padded over to the spot where the orange cat had disappeared.

Sure enough, there was a well-worn dirt ledge leading from the Urstads' yard into the neighbors'. I followed it. As I say, I'm curious about things.

The next yard was even bigger than the Urstads'. More like a field. A messy field. Broken lawn furniture stuck up from the unmown grass, clover and dandelions like pieces of wreckage.

That wasn't all that stuck out, though. A half-dozen little pink noses were busy sniffing over the blades of grass. Every once in a while a paw would lift to swat at a butterfly or bee.

“Relatives of yours?” I asked the orange cat. He'd settled on a broken chair to clean his right paw.

A shriek of laughter startled all of us. Paws halted in their swatting. The half-dozen cats and I stared at the rambling, paint-challenged house.

A lean woman with long, flyaway gray hair flew out of the house, flapping a much-patched apron toward the unkempt garden. “You see?” she proclaimed to a reedy young man carrying a steno pad. “No hang glider! You'll have to find some other scandal for your readers today, I'm afraid. It's just me, the cats and—” she peered across the long grass at me—“a visitor with glorious red hair.”

This was such a surprising compliment that I just gaped at the woman for a moment. My hair was often pointed out to me as being unwashed or uncombed—but never glorious. “Hi,” I gulped out at last. “I'm Dinah Galloway.”

The woman waded through the grass to me for a firm handshake. “Rowena Pickles. And that,” Rowena added, grimacing, with a toss of her long hair toward the young man, “is Sylvester Sloan of the
North Vancouver Bugle
. The
Bugle
is very fond of doing stories about what an undesirable citizen I am.”

Sylvester's prominent Adam's apple bobbed unhappily. “Not undesirable, Rowena. Just — er, eccentric.”

“Because I take in stray kitties that people dump in the canyon when they don't want them anymore,” Rowena retorted. “Because I heal them — I used to be a vet, once upon a time — and let them live with me, rather than dumping them on the already overcrowded public animal shelters.”

“Um,” said Sylvester, looking more miserable than ever, “actually today it wasn't about your increasing number of cats, Rowena. Somebody left a tip on my voice mail yesterday morning about a hang glider crashing in your backyard. I would've headed over here then, but I was busy visiting my mother. I always visit her on Tuesdays,” he explained sadly.

Rowena stared at him. “There's no hang glider here.”

Sylvester sighed. “I can see that, but what was I supposed to do? If my editor sends me out for a story, I'm supposed to find one. As it is, she says I'm the poorest story finder on the
Bugle
staff.”

Rowena responded to this with a loud snort. “You have your problems, I have mine. Do you know, Dinah, that I've woken up to find signs posted on my lawn, saying I'm a disgrace to the 'hood? Somebody wants me away from Marisa Drive.”

“That's terrible,” I said and made my mind up not to tell Sylvester where the hang glider had really landed. I wouldn't help him out one bit, no matter how much he needed to impress his editor. “Don't let them force you to move, Rowena.”

“Never fear,” Rowena smiled. “This is the house where I raised my beloved son, Sean. I won't leave my house, not for all the money in the world. And I've been offered a lot: Realtors keep coming by. No,” she sighed, her eyes growing misty, “there are too many wonderful memories here. Why, my late husband Chester and I
built
this place.”

“No hang glider, no story,” Sylvester said sadly, closing his steno pad. “See you another time, Rowena.”

He slunk off. Rowena rummaged among the broken patio furniture until she found a couple of somewhat sturdy chairs and invited me to sit down. A few minutes later she produced milk and nummy oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies.

Rowena told me
about her cats. She had eight so far, plus neighborhood ones that dropped by for visits. Cats were her best buddies, Rowena confided, ever since her husband died and her son went back East to write novels. Serious novels, Rowena explained. About life, death and the meaning of existence.

No one had complained about the cats — until a couple of weeks earlier. “Somebody, or some
bodies
, I'm not sure, phones the
Bugle
regularly with tales about how weird I am. ‘The mad cat lady of Marisa Drive' is what the
Bugle
calls me.

“I get anonymous phone calls. Somebody with a high-pitched voice, urging me to leave. Sylvester says his anonymous tipster has a high-pitched voice too.” Rowena shook her head slowly; her long, gray strands tickled a nearby clump of tall dandelions. “Somebody really dislikes me. It's as if, since I can't be bought out, somebody's trying to harass me into leaving.”

“Let this Somebody stew,” I advised. “So what if they call the
Bugle
? Let 'em!”

Then I paused, a fourth fresh oatmeal-chocolate chip cookie partway to my mouth. Rewind, Dinah. What had Sylvester said?
Somebody left a tip on my voice mail
yesterday morning about a hang glider crashing in your
backyard.

Itchy had crashed into the Urstads' pool yesterday at lunchtime.

I'd heard of keeping up with current events — but forecasting them?

Who
was
this Somebody?

Later that afternoon,
my friend Pantelli Audia showed up. I filled him in on Itchy the inept hang-glider rider and Rowena the cat lady. I spoke extra loudly because I enjoyed hearing my voice echo around the Urstads' marble foyer.

“Wow, dueling mysteries,” said Pantelli, impressed. “Why'd Itchy steal your turtle? Who's hassling Rowena?” He began an invisible duel using an invisible sword.

Pointedly, Madge closed the dining room door on us. She was busy whitewashing some happy raccoons.

Pantelli, who had crisp black hair that fell messily all over his head like cabbage leaves, had grown up a few houses down from me in East Van. For the next few weeks he was visiting his aunt in North Van so he could hang out with a) me, and b) the canyon trees.

Pantelli was really into trees, even carrying around a pocket magnifying glass so he could study bark and leaves. This got mildly embarrassing, but I didn't mind. Pantelli never minded when I got into, er, creative difficulties— what grown-ups would call “trouble.”

I joined him in his invisible duel. “Take that!” I shouted— then, through the window, I spotted a head of carrot-topped hair bobbing along the other side of Rowena's hedge. I wouldn't have thought anything about it, except that a pale, long-fingered hand shot up to give the scalp a good scratch.

Itchy!

“Oof!” yelled Pantelli.

Uh-oh. Still flailing about in our invisible duel, I'd bashed him in the eye with one of my elbows.

Bent double with pain, Pantelli cradled his injured eye.

“Sorry,” I apologized.

Whipping outside, I tore across the Urstads' lawn and round the hedge to confront Itchy.

By then Itchy was setting a cardboard box down on Rowena's front steps. He had large sunglasses on, so he still reminded me of an insect. In fact, at the sight of me he actually flapped his arms.

“Out of my way, Pee Wee,” he snapped.

Pee Wee! He couldn't have said anything more insulting. Why, just that morning Madge had measured me, and I'd topped five one. Talk about your breakthroughs.

I planted myself on the path, blocking Itchy's escape. “Why'd you steal my turtle? It doesn't make sense. The turtle was wrecked.”

Itchy's watery eyes skittered left and right. “I — I had to,” he mumbled. He scratched madly at his legs.
Bzz
,
bzz
!

I stepped closer. “Whaddya mean, you had to? And you owe me a new turtle, buddy.”

Mother was always telling me about responsibility. About owning up to your mistakes and making them right. It's a rule of life, she'd say.

Rules were important.

Besides, if I was stuck with obeying them, so should Itchy be.

“Scram, Pee Wee,” he sneered.

Itchy dodged left. I dodged with him. He dodged right. I dodged with him.