danceoftheheart

Title: Z is for Zoe
Author: danceoftheheart
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Anything up to currently Aired USA Season 8 is fair game.
Pairings: GSR
Disclaimer: I do not own CSI or its characters. Please do not sue. I don't think either of us would enjoy the experience all that much.


Z is for Zoe



Carianne Bennet was a busy woman.

She kept a tight schedule, an organized house and had an exceptional eye for details. She noticed everything and was always fascinated by the ‘new’. She read veraciously and had an interesting, intelligent take on almost any topic imaginable. She loved animals and early on had found she possessed a special affinity with dogs. She had decided then and there that she would devote her life to their nurturing and care. Since she couldn’t own as many canines as she would have liked, she opened up a dog sitting service so she could interact with as many dogs as possible. She treated each one as if it was her own and they all adored her. She was truly a treasure whom Gil and I felt we were blessed to have in our lives. She had our utmost respect and when she spoke, we listened, knowing that she was an expert in her field.

She came to the door one evening, just after dinner, asking if we had a minute to chat. Gil invited her in and served drinks while I finished getting ready for work. When I joined them ten minutes later they were discussing the latest mini mall development down the street and its pros and cons. Bruno was laying at her feet, panting happily at the unexpected company…a far cry from the moping posture he’d adopted soon after we’d picked him up this morning. I grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator, noting that Gil had already poured lemonade for our guest and himself. I joined them at the table, listening with some amusement as Gil tried to keep up his end of the rapid-fire conversation. Eventually, they exhausted the topic and Carianne got to the point of her visit.

“This won’t take long, I promise you. I know you’re both heading off to work but I wanted to fill you in on a little situation that’s developed between Bruno and a little dog named Zoe that I care for occasionally.”

“Is there a problem? Is he being aggressive or territorial?”

“Oh no, nothing like that, Dr. Grissom, at least, not towards her. Quite the opposite in fact. Bruno’s quite taken with Zoe. Maybe a little too much, if you ask me. He, um, I think he’s totally smitten with her.”

“Really? How sweet.” I was totally entranced. I’m such a sap.

“Yes. It is, really. And maybe a little comical. He’s so big and she’s just a tiny white ball of fluff, and it’s so precious to watch them interact. He sleeps beside her, walks beside her, waits for her to eat before he does. He even, um, brings her presents.” She reached down into her shoulder bag and pulled out a plastic supermarket bag. When she handed it to me, I opened it up and pulled out a handful of soft goods. There were socks and gloves and nylons and all manner of things, including some of the items we’d discovered a week ago in the crawl space. Gil and I both laughed when I upended the bag and spilled its contents onto the table. “From the looks on your faces, I’m assuming all of these things belong to you?”

“Yes, and I don’t mind telling you that seeing them and hearing your explanation will certainly lay to rest a mystery that we’ve been trying to solve for several months. I take it Zoe is a new member to your dog sitting family.”

“Oh no, not at all,” Carianne laughed. “She’s actually been with me longer than Bruno.”

“Well, that’s strange,” I told her. “Bruno only started stealing stuff from us a few months ago. What gives?”

“Oh, I might have an answer to that as well. I’ve had Bruno in my care for what, um, three years, right Dr. Grissom?”

“Yes…give or take a month,” my husband agreed.

“And while Bruno was certainly taken with Zoe from the start, these ‘presents’ only started coming into my house mid-Fall. Right about the time that you had your accident, Sara, and had to take time off work.”

As if someone had lit a thousand watt bulb in a pitch black room, my brain made a connection that it had failed to make before. “Well, no wonder Bruno’s been acting so odd. We disrupted his schedule completely, didn’t we fella?” I reached down to scratch the sweet spot behind his ear and he thumped his tail wildly from the attention. “I can’t believe I was feeling guilty the few times I dropped him off to you. You know what? When I took that hiatus from work more and more things went missing, didn’t they?” I asked, Gil who nodded in turn. “We were right. He was trying to tell us something but we just didn’t have a clue.”

“This would also explain the declaration of war on my socks. He was trying to let us know that he was a little perturbed at not being able to see his girlfriend.” Gil chuckled a little at the simplicity of the whole thing. “And here I thought we were dealing with some deeply buried psychosis.” Gil went on to tell Carianne about the hidey hole we’d discovered in the laundry room and Bruno’s defensive behavior. She nodded along wisely.

“Love is a very mysterious force; one that when it hits us often times controls our every action…our every thought. Why would it be and different with ‘puppy’ love?”

I had to agree with Carianne’s soft and romantic words. Lord knows I’ve been under the control of that mysterious force since the day I met Gil. “Okay, so we know the ‘why’…do we know the ‘how?’” I asked, turning to Carianne for an explanation.

“Well, near as I can figure, Bruno is slipping his treasures into his travel bag before he leaves to visit me and then transferring them to Zoe’s bag. Zoe’s owners, Deborah and Stan have a really erratic schedule. They both travel a lot on business so I sometimes have Zoe for a couple of days at a time, and it’s hardly ever the same person dropping Zoe off who picks her up. Anyway, neither Deb nor Stan thought too much at first about all of the strange things appearing in Zoe’s bag but eventually they realized they had quite the little pile growing and discussed it. When they realized that they weren’t responsible for Zoe’s growing collection of ‘new toys’ they talked to me and well…here we are. And I would have said something about it sooner to them but I never caught Bruno in the act of transferring the items from his bag to hers. Plus, Zoe’s always had a preference for soft, textured things. Whenever I would see new things in her bag I just assumed she’d brought them from home.”

Gil shook his head. “That’s still a little hard to believe. That Bruno was opening zippered bags and transferring items with deliberate intent.”

Carianne smiled brightly and spread her hands open, “But Dr. Grissom, what other explanation is there?”

Had to admit she had us there. “Okay,” I said, “if this is what everything boils down to, how do you suggest we stop it?”

“Well, he hasn’t been that bad lately, has he?” she asked.

“No, no he hasn’t. I suppose that’s because I started working again not to long ago and he’s back to seeing Zoe on a regular basis.”

“My thoughts exactly, but you’re going to be off again when the baby comes, at least for a little while. I would suggest trying to set up ‘playdates’ between Zoe and Bruno so that they can see each other on a regular basis. I’m sure Deborah and Stan won’t mind. Their schedule is still as crazy as ever and I’m sure they’d be pleased Zoe’s getting the company she prefers.”

“I’m willing to try it if it means my socks can exist in our condo without fear of disembowelment,” Gil said, dryly and held up a foot to display a sock with a shredded toe. “I’m down to my last pair…again.”

I turned to Carianne and muttered, “I think the score sits somewhere around Bruno twenty, Gil, two. The dog’s actually snatching them out of his drawer.”

“Dogs are just amazing creatures, aren’t they? Well, why don’t you move them higher up where he can’t reach them?”

Having had this debate several times with Gil, I turned to him and said, “Yes, why don’t you?”

My husband shifted in his chair and took another swallow of water before answering. “I’ve always used that drawer for my socks. It’s the principle of the thing.”

“And there you have it,” I said, pleasantly before shrugging it off. “I could say something here about old dogs and new tricks but I think that would be redundant. We’ll just have to make a point of searching the bag every time it leaves the house, and maybe put a couple of baby proof latches on some of the drawers. Oh, but wait, won’t that just frustrate Bruno?”

“Yes, but you could counter that by buying a few cheaper items and stashing them in his hiding place. He might be more than satisfied to use them as a substitute for your things,” she replied.

Satisfied that we had a plan of action, we sent Bruno off with Carianne and finished getting ready for work. A few minutes later as Gil was pulling the truck out of the garage, a wave of silliness hit me and I started to laugh. “What’s so funny?”

“We are.”

He paused in the act of easing the car around and held fast in the alley. “How so?”

“Some big investigators we are! This really wasn’t that hard a mystery to unravel but it kept us going in circles for quite a while. I’m still not really sure why.”

He half-turned to face me. “It’s been a helluva year, Sara.” Though his tone was light there was sharp edge lining his words.

“I suppose it has.” I reached over for his hand and brought it to my lips. “Good or bad, I wouldn’t change a thing for fear of losing the one thing that matters most.”

His lips were soft when the met mine, his hand gentle as it threaded my hair to find my neck. My mouth opened on a sigh, tempting him to take more and he did, leaving me wilting against his chest when we finally broke apart.

His lips followed my jaw line to my ear. “Sara?” he whispered.

“UM hhuhh?”

“Do you have the lab switchboard number on your phone?”

“What? Um, yeah…yes. Why?”

He reached up blindly to hit the remote on his visor and our garage door re-opened on the signal. “Because we’re going to be delayed for a while and I thought it would be good manners to let somebody know.”




A/N:

And so my friend
We come to the end
Of my little alphabetical trek

If you’ve accompanied me
From A down to Z
You have both my gratitude and respect

We shared laughter and pain
Again and again
And sometimes met ‘silly’ head on

But for each step of fun
Each hard battle won
Our heroes proved love labors on

So Argyle and Freddy
Jammies and Teddy
Our alphabetical journey is done

And though sorrow is bright
I must say goodnight
Other stories wait to be spun

Thanks to you all,
danceoftheheart

A/N 2: Before you go…uh uh, Bruno couldn’t do that let me tell what this storyline is based on. When she was younger, one of my sisters used to stay with me on dance nights because we’d get home too late to drive her back to her own home. She’d always have two bags with her…one for dance and one for the overnight stay. She would leave the overnight bag open for easy access by the foot of her bed in the guest bedroom. One morning I got up to see her frantically searching for her gloves. It was cold out and she had to catch the bus to get to school. No matter how hard we searched, we couldn’t find them. She ended up borrowing some of mine and ran out the door. Later on that day I got a call from the sister who lived with me asking why there was a pair of gloves stuffed into her boots. I couldn’t answer her. Our best guess was that it had fallen in there by mistake. We forgot all about it until it happened again two days later. At first we thought someone was pulling a fast one but it happened a third time when no one was home and we got really suspicious. The only possible culprit was my cat…or a ghost. Let’s just say our money was on the cat.

Well, we did what any normal people would do. My sister made sure to zip her bag tightly with all her belongings inside. This worked for the next couple of visits but on the third both her gloves and her socks had been removed; the zipper had been opened just enough to allow access to those items and the rest of the bag was closed tight. The kicker was that the gloves and socks didn’t end up in the other sister’s boots this time…they somehow found their way to second sister’s book bag (which by the way had been zipped closed as well).

Needless to say we were totally creeped out. Our theories about the cat kind of flew out the window…silly as it was we were back to thinking the house might be haunted until we began noticing teeth marks on the items. Simba (the cat) had always had a penchant for chewing on gloves; especially those little acrylic stretch gloves. No matter where you would tuck them away, he’d find them. We just didn’t think he was so talented as to be able to get into a zipped bag but he’d proven in the past that there was little we could do if he was determined enough to try. Since then, I’ve seen that cat force open doors that were ‘almost’ latched, throw ‘noisy’ toys down stairs to make them stop, nudge open drawers and cupboards with his paw or his nose…working on them patiently until he gets what he’s after…and a whole manner of other behaviors that just astound me. The other two cats are just as bad (or as clever).

This pattern has repeated itself whenever the first sister visited our place despite our best efforts to the contrary. The visiting sister used the bed in the open room so there was no door…only curtains that cut off that room from the rest of the house and that meant her stuff was always easy to access. We never ever figured out the reason why he was doing this except that maybe my cat felt the visiting sister needed to pay some sort of rent for using the guest bedroom. Sometimes it was gloves or socks, once it was her pencil case and again, I’m sure many of you are thinking – as we did at the time – that someone was having a ball playing little tricks on us. I probably would still be thinking that to this day if I hadn’t come down the stairs in the middle of the night and caught my cat in the act! Calm as you please, he grabbed the zipper in his teeth, opened it enough for his head to fit in, routed around in the bag and came out with a prize which he then carried in his mouth to the other sister’s boots and dropped inside. Mission accomplished, he lay down beside the boot and looked up at me expectantly, proud as a peacock. I’m such a sap! I praised him for being the smart kitty he was.