by Julia London
“You bet there is something you can do for me, Mr. Sheffington. You can give—” The woman suddenly gasped and her eyes lit with delight in such a stunning change of pace that it jolted him. “Baxter!” she cried, throwing her arms so wide that one of her sleeves slapped Max in the shoulder.
Max looked back as Dog gallumphed to the front door.
“Oh my God, you’re alive!” she cried, and went down on her knees, wrapping her weird sleeves around the dog’s neck.
Well, then. He would not have guessed she was here for a dog. “I take it he is yours?” he asked dryly as Baxter’s happy tail banged against his leg.
“I have been so worried about you,” the woman said to the dog, and buried her face in his fur. “Are you okay, Baxter?” Dog responded with a sloppy lick of her cheek. She rubbed Baxter’s sides vigorously with both hands, but Baxter wiggled out of her embrace and hurried back inside.
“Well,” Max said as he watched him go. “That’s the most energetic I’ve seen him. He’s been kind of mopey.”
“He has some issues, and of course this little stunt hasn’t helped matters.”
“Okay, for the record, I didn’t do the stunt,” Max said, holding up both hands. She was trying to gain her feet, but she couldn’t find her hands. “Do you need some help?”
“No, thank you. If you can’t do for yourself in high fashion, then you shouldn’t wear high fashion.”
He didn’t know what kind of fashion she was wearing but he could definitely agree with high, because whoever had come up with that costume had been as high as a kite.
She managed to come to her feet, and when she did, she spent a moment trying to do right all that was wrong with those gargantuan sleeves, then said, “I can’t believe I found him!” And she smiled with delight, and the effect was very confusing and very pleasing. For one, Max didn’t fear being punched in the face anymore. And two, she was really pretty. He preferred pretty. He was much more on board with the idea that a pretty woman had shown up to claim her dog, because it was a damn sight better than looking at Brant’s mug.
Max stuck out his hand. “Can we start over? I’m Max.”
“Hi, Max. I’m Carly. Sorry about all that, but it says Tobias on the list, and, honestly, who can you trust these days?” She pushed the sleeve back and took his hand with a surprisingly strong grip and gave him a couple of firm shakes as she looked him in the eye.
“Hello, Carly. I think I speak for both Dog and myself when I say we are very glad you found us. Just how did you find us, anyway?”
“Well that’s a story.” She folded her arms, and those weird sleeves bunched up in the crooks of her arms. “I have spent the last two days tracking down one Mr. Brant Reynolds, with whom I believe you are acquainted?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Guess where he is?”
“If I knew that, I’d have killed him by now.”
“No, seriously—guess.”
“Well, I thought maybe a—”
“Jail!” she shouted, and threw open her arms, hitting him in the shoulder with a sleeve again. “He’s in jail!”
Jail. Huh. That hadn’t actually occurred to Max for some reason. He’d imagined Brant getting himself killed or hospitalized . . . but not jailed. But as Brant didn’t seem like the most upstanding citizen in town, it did not come as much of a surprise. “What did he do? Wait—where is my dog?”
“I’ve got her. What happened to Baxter?” she asked, trying to see past him into his house.
“I think he headed back to the couch.”
Carly with the blue eyes blinked.
“He’s watching a little Dog TV,” Max said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.
She laughed. “I don’t think so.”
“Yeah,” Max said with a shrug. “He likes it. Have you never had it on?”
“I’ve never even heard of it. I don’t know TV. Baxter and I don’t have time to watch. What is Dog TV?”
Max was always very suspicious of people who said they didn’t watch TV. Generally, they said it like they were so much busier than anyone else, like they were too busy solving world hunger or designing an affordable health care system to kick back and watch a little tube. “You don’t watch TV?” he asked dubiously.
“Nope.”
“Nothing?”
Carly shook her head. “Too busy.”
Uh-huh. “Do you have a TV?” he asked curiously.
She blinked. She shrugged a little. “I have one. But I don’t watch it. I have no time to watch TV.” She shook her head, as if that was a given.
Oh yeah, she watched TV. Maybe even a lot of it. “But if you don’t watch—”
“So, like, what is Dog TV?” she said, interrupting him before he could make his totally logical argument.
He gave her a smile with the teeniest tiniest bit of smugness to it. “Come in. I’ll show you.”
He led her down the hall to the living room, where Baxter had resumed his place on the couch and was busy licking his paws. On the TV, two French bulldogs were romping in a field. Off-screen, a child laughed and intermittently whistled to the dogs or whispered, “I love you” or gaily called, “Come!” to the dogs.
Carly stared at her dog and then the TV. “That’s it? That’s Dog TV?”
“That is it,” Max confirmed. He felt bad for Baxter, deprived of something so basic.
Carly turned those lovely blue eyes to him, and her brows dipped, and she said, “You have to be kidding me.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but maybe you shouldn’t be too judgy since it’s clear your dog is very happy with it.” He gestured to said dog, who looked very comfortable in lounge mode.
“I am judgy,” she agreed, and folded her sleeves. “Because dogs don’t watch TV. It’s a scam.” She looked back at her dog and pointed a sleeve at him. “Also, what is he doing on the couch?”
Max didn’t understand the question. Baxter was lying there, his head propped on the armrest now that he’d finished licking his paws. What did any dog do on the couch? She didn’t know Dog TV, she didn’t know about couches? Maybe she really didn’t know dogs. “Dogs like being up high—”
“No.” She shook her head.
“Yes,” he said, feeling slightly irritated. “It’s a proven fact. It’s like an observation point.”
She stared at him. “Are you seriously explaining dogs to me right now?”
“Well?” he said. “You’re asking dog questions.”
“My question was obviously rhetorical.”
Her question was obviously not rhetorical.
“Baxter, get down,” she said. Baxter didn’t move. “Down, Baxter.” Baxter thumped his tail a time or two to indicate he’d heard her, but he did not move. He was comfortable.
“Oh my God, what has happened to my dog? He’s not allowed on couches!”
She said this as if Max had done something really vile, like chained her dog to a tree. It felt a little as if she was taking aim at his dog skills, and he didn’t like it. He knew how to handle dogs, for fuck’s sake. “There is nothing wrong with dogs on couches,” he said defensively. “And there is nothing wrong with Dog TV. Why do I feel like I’m being pressed to defend my very good care of your dog before I even get to know where my dog is? I am happy to talk about couch philosophy, if you could just—”
“Baxter, get down from there!” she commanded again.
Baxter shifted his gaze to her as if he’d just noticed her, found her uninteresting, and then shifted his gaze back to the TV.
She lunged forward as if she intended to drag the dog off the couch. But then she stopped and made a sound of alarm so loud that had Max not been standing there, he would have thought she’d accidentally run into a pitchfork.
She was staring down at the dog food bowl, which Baxter had cleaned out. Mo
stly. She gasped again, this one more of a whimper, then squatted down and peered into the bowl. “Is that . . . was that mac and cheese?” she asked almost weepily, pointing at the telltale remnants that Baxter had left around the bowl.
Max briefly debated claiming the bowl was his, but wisely opted for silence.
She slowly rose up and pinned him with a look. “You fed my dog mac and cheese? And before you deny it, I know what the unnaturally orange remains of boxed mac and cheese look like.”
She said it like she’d discovered arsenic in the dog’s food. Like she was Columbo and had worked out the attempted murder in her head. Max put his hands on his hips. “Just so I have this straight . . . your main complaint is that the mac and cheese came out of a box? Or that it’s unnaturally orange?”
“My complaint is that mac and cheese is not good for a dog. It’s horrible for a dog. The manual says dogs metabolize food completely differently than we do, and besides, processed food isn’t good for anyone.”
Okay, that was it. Max didn’t know what manual she was talking about, but he’d taken very good care of her dog. “Yes, Carly, it is mac and cheese. You know why? Because your dog wouldn’t eat. But he has now, thanks to the mac and cheese, and you are welcome. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to know where is my dog?”
“At a photo shoot,” she said, folding her arms.
Whatever Max was going to say flew out of his head—the words photo shoot walked up to a counter in his brain and banged on the bell for attention. “Wait, what? What does that even mean?”
“It means someone is taking photos. Can we just back up here to the moment before you got upset?” she asked, making a whirring motion with her finger.
“I’m upset?”
“Do I have this right? You come home to an imposter basset hound,” she said, holding up one finger, “and instead of taking him to the vet to have his chip read, you invite him to eat that in the living room,” she said, pointing at the bowl, then holding up another finger. “While he couch surfs, and watches Dog TV,” she said, holding up two more fingers. “Yes?”
“Couch surfing and Dog TV are the same thing,” Max shot back. “But, yes, you have it exactly right. What have you been feeding my dog, if I may ask?”
“Organic kangaroo and lentils like the manual says!” she nearly shouted, as if that was some written rule of what you were supposed to feed a strange dog that showed up in your house. It also sounded outrageously trendy and expensive. She’d spoiled his dog. And then, in a moment of sheer irony, she said, “Oh my God, let’s everyone calm down here.” As if she were the sane one in this room begging for cooler heads. She held out her arms in a way that he thought signaled to calm down, but he wasn’t sure with those sleeves. “I just need to absorb what has happened.”
“What has happened is that I’ve made sure your dog was comfortable. And frankly I think I’ve helped him come out of his shell, because that is one depressed dog,” he said, pointing accusingly at Baxter, who gave them a couple of thumps of his tail in acknowledgment before carrying on with the cleaning of his face.
“Why didn’t you get his chip read? I’ve been worried sick about him.”
Well, she had him there. “Because I didn’t think of it, okay?” Max said, tossing his arms out in the universal mea culpa. “And before you complain about that and Baxter’s improved personality, where is my dog?”
“I told you.” She was looking at his kitchen now, her nose wrinkled with disapproval. Okay, all right, he wasn’t a great housekeeper, and he shifted so that he blocked her view of it. She looked up at him. “Photo shoot.”
“So when you say photo shoot, what exactly does that mean?”
“You don’t have to say it like she’s been forced into hard labor. She’s at a photo shoot where a photographer takes many pictures. I’d be there, too, but Brant’s friend,” she said, putting air quotes around the word, “finally called me back. Like, where is the sense of urgency with these people? You just toss a strange dog into someone’s house and think you don’t have to answer your phone?” She leaned around him and looked at his kitchen another moment, then pressed her palms to her cheeks. “I guess you can’t blame Brant for not answering, given he’s in jail. I don’t know, I honestly don’t know anything because I’m kind of in shock.”
Max still couldn’t figure out the photo shoot thing. And she was making it sound as if Brant had murdered someone. “What did he do?”
“What?” She dropped her hands. She stared at him. Then her brows dipped. “I mean, I’m in shock because my perfectly behaved dog is on the furniture and eating his dinner in the living room like some sort of animal. And that bandanna!”
Baxter was wearing one of Hazel’s pink bandannas with yellow ducks on it.
“Baxter doesn’t like bandannas,” she said mournfully, as if something terrible had happened to her dog.
Baxter thumped his tail.
“Okay, all right,” Max said impatiently. “Will you please fill me in with what is going on? With my dog or Brant—either would work at the moment.”
Carly planted the giant sleeve cones on her hips. “Oh, I’m going to tell you, all right. But first, you would not believe how long it took me to figure it out. And it’s not like I have the time to go chasing after stoned dog walkers, you know. I have a life. A very busy life.”
Right. World peace and lobbying-for-equal-pay kind of busy life, he had no doubt. He gestured for her to continue.
“Anyway, when I came home and found an imposter dog in my house who had destroyed my couch pillows . . .” She paused here for the dramatic effect and to give him a look that suggested she thought he had purposely trained Hazel to do that.
Max held up a hand. “I will replace your couch pillows.” Because it was true that Hazel would, from time to time, let her separation anxiety be known.
“Thank you,” she said pertly. “They were not cheap pillows.”
“Fine.”
“Anyway, I did some digging. First, I took your dog to a vet to have her chip scanned, which would have cleared this all up right away, but guess what?”
“Yeah,” he muttered.
“Your dog doesn’t have a chip! How can you not have chipped your dog?”
Max glanced guiltily at the floor. He’d meant to do that, but he hadn’t had time. He was busy, too. “Well? Your dog doesn’t have a tag on his collar,” he said, as if that evened things out.
She folded her sleeves again. “No, he doesn’t. Because he’s chipped.”
“Nevertheless, I would recommend tags.”
“Your dog didn’t have tags.”
Okay, obviously he was not going to win this game. He let dogs on couches and he didn’t get them chipped on day one, and it hadn’t occurred to him to check if Baxter had one. He cast an accusatory look at that dog, as if he should have reminded Max to have him scanned for a chip.
“Nevertheless,” Carly continued, “I kept at it. I called the morgue; I called the hospitals; and finally, at long last, I located that chucklehead in the county jail. I got a copy of the police report and, by the by,” she said, holding up a finger, “if you ever need a police report, I know how to get one. Anyway, I found out that Brant has been selling bags of marijuana under the Pfluger Bridge.” She paused, leaned forward and said gravely, “On the dog walks.”
“Wow.”
“It’s really disturbing, isn’t it? I keep trying to picture it. He just takes our dogs on a walk, then stops off and sets up shop under the shadow of Stevie Ray Vaughan and sells bags of weed? And then what, just moseys on home?”
She gestured in a direction Max assumed in her head was Lady Bird Lake, but was the wrong direction. As Stevie Ray Vaughan was dead, Max also assumed she was talking about the statue erected to the former Austinite at Auditorium Shores. “I agree,” he said. “That is disturbing. I’m actually surprised
that Brant has the mental acuity to pursue a criminal enterprise of any size. He doesn’t seem to have the sort of ambition I would think that would require.”
“Agree one thousand percent,” she said. “Anyway, Brant got himself locked up for a few days, and I finally got hold of the cop who arrested him. He’d allowed Brant to call a friend to come get the dogs. He pulled up his phone log and gave me the number.”
Wow. She had done a lot of detective work. He was grudgingly impressed and ashamed that he hadn’t thought to do half of what she’d done.
“His name is Kai.”
“The cop?”
“The friend. His name is Kai and he is Brant’s yogi. He teaches Brant yoga.”
“Huh. Wouldn’t have guessed that, either,” Max said thoughtfully.
“Same,” she said, nodding.
“What about my dog?”
“I’m getting there,” she said in the sort of voice a parent might use on an impatient child. “So. Kai went down to the park to get the dogs, and he got Brant’s list of the dogs and owners, and he delivered the dogs to their homes. But he mixed up Baxter and Bubbles, because, if you haven’t noticed, they look exactly alike.”
“What?” Max asked, trying to follow. Who the hell was Bubbles? “But where is Hazel?”
“Hazel?” Carly scrunched her pert nose and clearly fought a smile. “No offense, but I think Bubbles better reflects your dog’s awesome personality.”
Bubbles sounded like someone who danced on poles for a living, but he kept that to himself.
“Anyway, she’s at a photo shoot with a friend of mine. So I’ll just take Baxter and bring her home when she’s done—”
“No way,” Max said instantly. “And what is this business about a photo shoot? On the surface, it sounds a little exploitative.”
