Mystery #7: Dawn and the Disappearing Dogs
This book gets off to quite a shaky start. The first line is: “It’s not that I hate animals.” Um, what? That does not sound promising. In the next paragraph Save the Earth Dawn says, “I’m a vegetarian, but it’s not because I feel bad for the cow or anything… it’s just because I don’t really like the taste of red meat.” Excuse me? Is this really the Dawn I know?
“I’d hate to be thought of as Dawn, the Animal-Hater!” - Dawn, page 10
Of course, in the obligatory Chapter 2 BSC meeting, Dawn gets booked for a pet-sitting job for the Mancusis. Jessi pops over to help her on her first day, and when the girls take the Mancusis’ dogs out for a walk, they notice a creepy car circling the neighborhood. Then, the next day, Cheryl the Great Dane goes missing while Dawn is pet-sitting and despite searching all day with the other members of the BSC and their charges, they can’t find Cheryl anywhere. So I guess Dawn is now known as the Animal-Loser?
The creepy car appears again, this time at a Krushers practice to which some of the kids have brought their dogs. Ruh roh. And then, before the next BSC meeting, Kristy’s family’s dog Shannon goes missing while clipped to the run in their front yard. Now two dogs are missing from front yards where they were clipped or tied. A coincidence? I THINK NOT. Dawn sees an article in the newspaper that mentions dogs going missing at unheard of rates recently in Stoneybrook and other nearby towns.
The BSC does some sleuthing and is able to track down the license plate of the creepy green car, but the police officer she reports it to could not be less interested. When she eventually follows up, she’s told the car belongs to Karl Tate, a wealthy property owner in Stoneybrook. The police officer is like, “wHy WoUlD hE bE sTeALiNg DoGs, yOUng LaDY?” but if we’ve all learned anything from Scooby-Doo and real life it’s that a wealthy middle-aged white guy is usually the villain. And Dawn’s suspicions are confirmed when she goes to the new Stoneybrook pet store with Kristy and Mary Anne and sees Karl Tate having an intense (angry?) conversation with the owners. On the BSC’s next stakeout, Dawn and Mary Anne see the owner of the pet store driving the green car that’s registered to Mr. Tate, but they don’t really know what to do with that information. Dawn tries to plan a sting operation and what I think she’s starting to suspect (because it’s what I’m starting to suspect) is that when people request a certain dog breed at the pet shop, the owners take a hefty deposit and then go dog-nap the breed to resell at a high price to the customer.
The gang travels to a nearby town, New Hope, to watch Kristy and Bart’s all-star team (the Krashers) take on the New Hope team, and Dawn spots a woman walking a familiar dog - it’s Cheryl, the Great Dane who went missing from the Mancusis. Dawn runs and call the cops and it looks like this shit might finally be solved! Dawn’s right - turns out Karl Tate was rapidly losing money from his real estate holdings and was turning to harebrained schemes (including pet-napping) to make a few quick bucks. Luckily, the BSC was on the case and everybody got their dogs back - and the BSC got to be in the newspaper, natch.
