To Catch a Treat Read Online Free

him.
    â€œOkay.” Janelle kept her head down but started walking again, following Neal’s crowd, which had gotten a ways in front of us. “Here’s what happened. My dog is named Goliath. I call him Go. He’s a purebred black Labrador retriever. I’m a photographer by profession—and you can guess how many photos I have of him.”
    Her grin seemed full of irony as she raised her head and looked from Reed to me. We continued walking briskly.
    â€œI’d love to see them,” I encouraged her.
    â€œSure. Maybe. Anyway, I take—took—Go nearly everywhere with me. One of the most fun things was going to dog parks all over Los Angeles. There are even a couple in Beverly Hills and West LA, and several in Santa Monica.”
    I’d never been to dog parks in LA’s West Side, but figured those in affluent areas like that were probably quite nice, maybe even spectacular.
    â€œAnyhow,” Janelle continued, “I got to meet a lot of other dog lovers that way. Made a lot of friends for Go and me. Took a lot of fun pictures that I could sell to the owners, or even online or to media outlets. Then I started hearing really sad rumors of dognappings that were going on here and there. From what I gathered, it was mostly purebred dogs who disappeared, or designer dogs like cockapoos or labradoodles. I felt really sorry for the owners but … ” She stopped walking again, seemed to need to catch her breath, then continued both walking and talking. “I never believed that could happen to me. I mean, I’m an ordinary person with a wonderful dog, sure, but I’m not wealthy. I couldn’t really afford to pay a ransom—although from what I gathered, the people whose dogs were apparently stolen weren’t often contacted for money, at least not at first, so some assumed their dogs were being kept as pets or even being resold.”
    In some ways, the latter made more sense to me. If the pets truly were stolen, it might be easier for the dognapper to get away with it if no one knew what really happened, rather than contacting owners who might be able to bring authorities down on them.
    On the other hand, to resell purebreds and make money off them, wouldn’t they have to be able to prove to buyers that the dogs had pedigrees?
    â€œBut it did happen to you,” I prompted Janelle. “How?” I didn’t see her as the kind of person who’d let her dog loose without supervision in dog parks or at home, or leave him in a hot car, or do anything else careless enough to make me shudder.
    â€œIt happened so fast. And unexpectedly. Some of the dog parks have off-leash fenced-in areas so your dogs can get more exercise, usually by playing in packs. Of course, people who have animals with aggression issues aren’t supposed to let them loose in those areas. Go was anything but aggressive, and I always observed the dogs who were loose before letting him off his leash there. I’d done so that day, about a month ago, and as always I watched him carefully. But there was a dog altercation at one end of the fenced-in area, and it sounded pretty fierce. I wanted to make sure Go wouldn’t be affected, so I moved toward that location, hoping to help. He was loose, but I kept watching him, but then someone called frantically for help and I turned away. It felt like just an instant. And by the time I stepped in, the fight was over. All the people in the area seemed to have congregated there also to try to help. And when I moved away from them to get Go … I couldn’t find him.”
    She’d been doing so well with the story, just getting it out. But now Janelle sobbed. “No one saw what happened, but he was gone.”

three
    As sorry as I felt for Janelle, the first thing to cross my mind was that Go could have gotten distracted, as dogs do, and run off. His disappearance didn’t mean—necessarily—that a person had been