John liked to play dress up.
In ladies’ clothes.
Thirty or more outfits were stuffed into the wardrobe. One was an ornate ballgown that someone attending a ball two hundred years ago might have worn. On inspection, I found it came with a matching parasol. A pink PVC catsuit was next to it. I didn’t want to think about what purpose the zip running in a straight line up the cleft of the suit’s bottom might have.
Mindy held up another hanger. ‘I think this might be my favourite,’ she giggled.
It was a naughty French maid outfit with a black silk top, a matching black feather duster and a badge that bore the legend ‘I like to be spanked!’.
You might be questioning whether he had a girlfriend, and these were hers, but not unless his girlfriend was over six foot tall and had shoulders twice the width of mine. Also, most of the outfits bore the same label – Hers for Him – inside the collar. I thought that was a bit of a giveaway.
John’s dressing up habits were not germane to the case. At least, I didn’t think they were and though I needed clothes and had access to a wardrobe of items that were at least intended to be feminine, I doubted anything would even nearly fit me. It’s one thing to put a safety pin in a skirt when it’s a size too big. Another thing entirely when it will go around you twice.
We had already been in John’s house too long, which was a redundant statement considering we were not supposed to be in it at all.
Spying something that might work, I snagged a rainmac, the type a stereotyped flasher would wear. It swamped me, but if I cleaned my boots off, it might not look too strange. Using the belt it came with, I tightened it to my body and got back to what I ought to be doing.
Striding for the back bedroom door, I called, ‘Show me where the cream is, Buster.’
I got a woof in response and let him lead me through the upstairs of the house and into what had to be the master bedroom.
Mindy asked, ‘Did he just answer you, Auntie?’
I’d done it again! I would take Buster to the boutique most days, but I guess I am used to acting in a certain way in that environment, and now out of it, I was failing to hide my secret.
‘Because it sounded like you gave him an instruction and he replied,’ Mindy added.
We were in the master bedroom now where there was no way to prevent Mindy seeing my expression as I fought for something to say.
Buster wagged his tail. ‘Go on, tell her,’ he suggested.
‘Um, it’s just coincidence,’ I lied.
Buster nudged at a bedside cabinet with his nose. ‘It’s in here.’
Mindy’s sceptical frown changed not one bit when I opened the cupboard and took out a tub of corticosteroid cream. It was the same brand as Joanne had in her hands earlier at the hospital, just a smaller version.
What did this tell me?
‘Auntie!’ snapped Mindy, which startled me into meeting her eyes. ‘How did you know to look in there for the cream?’
Now I was caught. ‘Just a wild hunch,’ I lied again. ‘Buster was sniffing around so I followed him.’
She shook her head. ‘Oh, no you didn’t. You told him to show you where the cream was and that means you had to know it was here. How did you know that?’ Did Buster tell you because he could smell it?’
I forced myself to chuckle. ‘How could Buster tell me? He’s a dog.’
Buster woofed. ‘That’s right, I am. Not just a dog though, I am Adventure Dog, scourge of villains everywhere, harbinger of doom for criminals, the bringing of pain for any miscreants stepping outside of the law.’
‘We’re outside the law, Buster,’ I snapped. ‘We just broke into someone’s house.’
Mindy gasped. This time, on edge because I was wearing a transvestite’s rainmac, standing in the master bedroom of a house I had technically broken into, and deprived of sleep, I had talked to Buster right in front of my niece.
‘You just heard what he was thinking, didn’t you!’ Her eyes couldn’t get any wider without her eyeballs popping out.
My brain raced; there had to be a way to laugh this off as my little joke, but if there was, I couldn’t see it fast enough.
Flummoxed, I sat on the bed. ‘I can only hear him and Amber,’ I admitted. ‘It’s not all animals, just my own.’
‘Oh, my goodness,’ squeaked Mindy. ‘How?’
I snorted a wry laugh. ‘I have no idea.’ Buster stood on his back legs to snuffle my hand in support. I felt like I was at an AA meeting or something and getting the cathartic buzz of finally confessing my shame. ‘It started when I was little. I think I have always been able to do this but only with the animals closest to me. My parents got rid of our pets when I was very small because I used to talk to them all the time. They thought I was pretending. So did your mum.’
‘So mum can’t do this too?’
I skewed my lips to one side. ‘I don’t think so. If she can, then she has been lying about it for a long time.’
Mindy came around the bed. I thought she was coming to see Buster, but she jerked to a stop and darted to the window. The suddenness of her movements put me on alert.
‘There’s someone at the car,’ Mindy murmured, staring intently down the road.
I was up and
