The Artsy Mistake Mystery. Sylvia McNicoll

      DAY ONE, MISTAKE ONE

      Renée and I have an arrangement. In the mornings when I walk my clients Ping and Pong, I swing round to her place and pick her up. She then takes charge of Ping, the hyperactive Jack Russell, a former pound puppy Mrs. Bennett pays me to exercise. I continue with Pong, the taller, quieter greyhound she rescued from Florida.

      Renée doesn’t like to hang around her house alone, so she doesn’t mind leaving way early, the moment her older brother, Attila, takes off for class — he goes to Champlain High. If I were her, I’d want to leave even earlier.

      He’s scary. His name suits him: Attila, like the Hun. Renée says it’s a popular name in Hungary, where her parents were born.

      Right now I’m wondering if the arrangement with Renée isn’t a mistake. If it is, it’ll be the first one I make today, though, and not a big one. It’s important to make mistakes, my father tells me all the time. It means we’re trying new things, sometimes outside our comfort zone. Being friends with a girl is, for sure, outside my comfort zone, and Renée forces people to pay attention to her. From her sequined hair barrettes, through to her sparkly glasses, and all the way down to her light-up sneakers, everything she wears catches your eye. She’s also yappy, like Ping, always with one more thing to add or bark about. I’m more like Pong, tall and quiet.

      Just not quite as calm.

      Both Ping and Pong are white with black markings on the head and a black spot on the body. (Greyhounds aren’t always grey. Renée can explain all that to you.) They scramble ahead of me like mismatched horses pulling a carriage: Ping, a scruffy pony; Pong, a smooth-coated stallion.

      This morning I can handle them by myself. It’s a great fall day, leaves swish as we walk, the sunshine feels warm. Even the hundred-year-old jogger, all bent over at the shoulders and back, wears shorts as he runs past us. The dogs give him a friendly bark of encouragement. Neither makes a lunge for him.

      “Good boys!” I tell them.

      Today, though, I think the route to Renée’s is all wrong for us. Usually, I make the dogs walk to the left of me so that when they go to the bathroom, it’s not on someone’s lawn. But today is junk pickup day. Once a month the neighbourhood gets to put out any objects, large or small, that they don’t want alongside their garbage and recycling, and the city picks them up. Dad calls it redecorating day. He is out walking his five Yorkie clients right now, scouting for a previously enjoyed bookshelf.

      This junk slows us down, the large objects attracting the dogs’ attention. Sometimes, they bark at them; always, they like to pee on them. First Pong — with his long legs, he trots in the lead — then Ping. Brant Hills Park would be so much better for Ping and Pong’s exercise this morning.

      “Stop that!” I yank Pong back from someone’s recycling bin just as he raises his leg to salute its contents.

      Good thing. A banged-up white van pulls up beside us and a dad from our school jumps out to rummage through the recycling.

      I want to call out, “Hi, Mr. Jirad.” I don’t know his son, Reuven, super well, but I helped deliver his paper route last week with Renée. Mr. Jirad concentrates on pulling out liquor bottles from the box and doesn’t notice us.

      Maybe this is embarrassing for him. I’m going to pretend I don’t notice him, either, then. As he drives away, I see the big dent in the back of his van all caulked in with some kind of filler. A home repair that doesn’t quite work. Over the painted filler, wobbly black letters spell Pay the artist.

      “I didn’t know Mr. Jirad was an artist,” I tell the dogs.

      Ping growls, eyes intent on a teenager in a black hoodie and bright, flowered leggings. The sunlight glints off the diamond stud in her nose as she pulls the ugliest wall plaque I’ve ever seen from someone’s pile of junk. It’s a large grey fish, mouth open, pointy teeth drawn, mounted on a flat slab of glossy wood. Maybe Ping is growling at the fish, not the girl. In any case, I strain to hold on to both dogs.

      She smiles as she admires the fish.

      “It looks real,” I can’t help commenting as we get closer to the pile. The fish is bent as though it’s wriggling in a stream.

      “It is real! Taxidermy.”

      I wince. “And you like it?”

      “It’s perfect!” She looks from the fish to me. “Oh, not for me. The plaque is for my prof. They’re redecorating the staff lounge.”

      “Perfect,” I repeat, wondering about her professor.

      She nods and grins as she walks away with her prize.

      “Good dogs,” I tell Ping and Pong as we continue on. So far so good, anyway. Although, it’s not just the busyness of the route to Renée’s house that makes me wonder if our arrangement is a mistake. Does she expect me to share the money I’ve earned? I officially work for Dad’s company, Noble Dog Walking. Noble is our last name.

      Also, if she wasn’t hanging around me so much, would I have a chance to make a real friend? Like Jessie. We used to have sleepovers in his pool house before he moved away last summer. Dad’s never going to let me bunk in the same room as a girl.

      Ping and Pong pull hard now, Ping wagging his stub of tail like crazy.

      A couple houses ahead, I see Mrs.Whittingham loading up all the children in her shiny black van. She operates a home daycare and it seems like she stuffs about ten kids in that van. She slides the door closed and then gives a friendly honk as she drives past us. The kids point and wave at the dogs. The dogs wag back.

      That distracts me for a minute, and when Pong yanks toward the house near us, toward Mr. Rupert’s wishing well, I nearly miss what he’s up to.

      “Oh, no you don’t! Your wishes won’t come true that way.” I pull him back. Mr. Rupert is the neighbourhood grouch and he got scary mad when Pong went number two in his flower bed last walk, even though I was cleaning it up before he started yelling.

      Ping doesn’t like me scolding Pong and starts barking, sharp and loud. Ping, even though he’s a quarter of Pong’s size, likes to defend Pong when he’s not fighting with him himself.

      “Don’t worry, I’m not mad at Pong.”

      Apparently defending his bigger pal is not what Ping is up to today because he’s not looking my way. Instead, he strains at his leash toward Mrs. Whittingham’s house on the corner. When I don’t move quickly enough toward it, he bounces up and down on his hind legs like they’re bedsprings.

      “What’s up, boy?” I ask. “Do you see something?” He can get excited about the slightest thing. A small black bag of dog doo sitting in a tree set him off a week ago. I thought that was kind of weird, myself. As we draw closer to Mrs. Whittingham’s house, Pong pulls, too, and I see what they want to investigate.

      From the tree in Mrs. Whittingham’s yard, a yellow plastic swing moves slightly in the breeze.

      It