by Peggy Webb
“Callie, just find a new Santa, and Lovie, you quit worrying. Now, I want everybody to go back to the mall and help salvage the charity event.”
I can tell Uncle Charlie wants to say more, but he’s worn out. There’s no telling what all the electricity passing through him fried and messed up and rewired. I can’t bear to think of the Valentines without a hundred-per-cent-functional Uncle Charlie. If Elvis were here, he’d be a calming influence, but he couldn’t come in because of hospital rules.
“Flitter, Charlie, if you think I’m leaving this hospital room you’re full of malarkey.” Mama shoos us out of her way then drags the chair closer to the bed. “I’m staying right here to make sure nobody kills you. And that includes Nurse Ratched.”
He doesn’t argue, which just proves his weakened condition. I’m glad she’s staying, though. As much as I protested that this was only an accident, I feel cold all over. Not a good sign. The last time this happened, Lovie was in the jungle kidnapped and a killer was planning to deprive me of my last breath.
When Lovie and I get back to the parking lot, Elvis is waiting in my pickup truck, a Dodge Ram with a big bad hemi engine, my alter ego. Lovie and Mama rode in the ambulance with Uncle Charlie, and my cousin’s van is back at the mall. Fortunately, Mama carpooled this morning with Fayrene, so I don’t have to worry about getting her car back to the farm.
Lovie scrunches herself into the passenger side of the truck, hefts Elvis onto her lap (much to his delight), and proceeds to give orders.
“Drive by my house.”
“Uncle Charlie said go to the mall.”
“I’m spending the night with you, and I don’t want to be in my house trying to get my stuff in a suitcase in the dark.”
I don’t ask if she thinks a killer’s on the loose. I don’t want to know.
“That’s great, Lovie. You don’t need to be by yourself. Besides, I’m having dinner with Champ tonight, and you can play nursemaid to Jack.”
“Should I throw in my French maid’s uniform?”
Considering it has no top and very little bottom, my answer is an emphatic no.
My cousin’s house on Robins Street is a pink, doll-like cottage with stained-glass windows. It’s the last kind of house you’d expect for Lovie. With her big personality and ostentatious red hair, you’d expect her to live in a place that matches. But she loves this confection of a house, and I do, too. It’s in a charming little gentrified neighborhood surrounding Milam, the school where Elvis set teenage hearts aflutter. The King, not my dog.
And speaking of dogs, I tell mine, “You have to stay in the truck, Elvis.” Lovie’s postage-stamp yard is filled with ancient magnolia trees teeming with busy-tailed squirrels. We have too much to do for my basset to sidetrack us chasing his favorite target.
I follow Lovie into her house and down the hall to help her pack. Her bedroom is royal purple because she’s the Queen of Everything, according to her. Of course, Mama claims the same title, so it’s a toss-up who is currently wearing the crown.
Lovie, it looks like, because I spot one hanging lopsided from her bedpost. While I’m still catching my breath over the amount of bling in her room—sequined picture frames and mirrors, rhinestone jewelry overflowing the top of her dressing table, plus the honest-to-gosh tiara—she grabs a big pink suitcase from the top shelf of her closet and starts tossing in clothes.
“Maybe we could ask Bobby to fill in for Daddy.”
Lovie’s not thinking straight. Who can blame her? I’m not thinking much better myself.
“Somebody has to man the Eternal Rest booth.” I pull open a bulging drawer and put an assortment of socks into her bag. “Besides, Bobby will have to be at the funeral home when they bring Steve Boone’s body in.”
“I guess the reindeer wins the free jazz funeral.”
I throw a pair of purple fuzzy sleep socks at her. Still, laughter through tears is the Southern way, and I’m glad to see she’s coming back to her old perky self.
“Uncle Charlie’s going to be all right, Lovie.”
“I know. Daddy’s indestructible.”
We hope. The doctor still hasn’t told us the extent of his internal injuries.
“Listen, Lovie. I’m certain Steve’s death was an accident, but I don’t want to ask anybody to be the new Santa till we find the manager and make sure he unplugs the power to the throne.”
“We’ll find him if I have to hunt him down and hog-tie him.”
Lovie heads to her state-of-the-art kitchen. She never goes anywhere, even my house which is only fifteen minutes away, without packing a goodie bag. With enough snacks to sustain small countries through a three-week siege, she locks up, then tosses her suitcase into my pickup.
Meanwhile, Elvis is giving me the cold shoulder and I’m trying to get back in his good graces. He turns his plump backside to me.
“Listen, this is not personal, Elvis. I’m in a hurry, that’s all.”
“For Pete’s sake.” Lovie pulls a doughnut from her goodie bag and has him eating out of her hand. Literally. “You just have to know how to treat a man.”
“Speaking of which . . . have you talked to Rocky yet?” Her silence says it all. “You need to return his calls. He’s crazy about you.”
“Too late. Somebody else is on a quest for the Holy Grail.”
“Good grief, Lovie.”
I’m not even going to ask. Her Holy Grail is her you know what, and if somebody is trying to claim it, he’s just one in a long line of bad men who’ve been on the quest before him.
With Uncle Charlie in the hospital, Jack in my bed, Mama crying murder, Elvis overloading on sugar, and Lovie mixing up sex with religion, I’m lucky I have enough sense to drive. I barrel down Gloster Street toward Barnes Crossing Mall determined that one thing will go right today. I’m going to find the manager if I have to crawl on all fours through the mall and sniff the floor like Elvis.
Elvis’ Opinion #3 on Foolish Rules, Sugared Doughnuts, and Old Sparky
If it weren’t for the mellowing effect of Lovie’s sugared doughnuts I’d be back down at the hospital putting a few karate moves and some serious hurt on a certain eagle-eyed guard.
Lovie was in such a hurry to get inside to see Charlie, she didn’t shut her door hard enough to engage the latch. All I had to do was nose it open.
I’d have been home free if the uptight guard hadn’t caught me tying to sneak inside and break the hospital’s foolish “no pets allowed” rules. Don’t they know rules don’t apply to the King?
That silly, misguided guard read me the riot act. I shot right back at him with a howling rendition of “Baby I Don’t Care.” He hustled me out of there, anyhow. A lesser dog would have taken a chunk out of his leg, but being the gentlemanly hound I am, I restrained my baser urges. I didn’t want my human mom to get tossed out alongside me. Listen, she’s got enough trouble on her hands keeping everybody in line now that the Valentine godfather is down.
Now I nose over and offer Callie half of my doughnut, but she says, “Not now, Elvis.” If I were that wimpy Hoyt, I’d think I was in the doghouse. But, listen, this is yours truly. Without me, Callie would be a bundle of nerves and uncertainties. Fortunately, she knows it. When I sit in her lap at night and she rocks me in that big old rocking chair she’s hoping to use with future babies, I call tell she understands that my mission in life is to help her find her true self, and as a result, her true happiness.
Another mission is to help her solve her problems. Currently, that’s replacing Charlie as Santa Claus. While we whiz past blazing Christmas stars on the light poles along Gloster Street at a speed that’s going to get my human mom a speeding ticket unless I can sweet-talk our way out of it, I try to figure out how I’m going to approach her to suggest I take his place on the throne. I’m a natural. The kids adore me, and I already have the Santa suit.
This is going to be harder than you’d think. She and Lovie are batting names back and forth, while I bide my time.
> “I’d ask Champ, but he did some major surgery on a chow and two Siamese cats yesterday. He’ll have his hands full at the clinic this weekend.”
“Jack would be fabulous.”
“You always think Jack is fabulous, Lovie. You’re as bad as Mama.”
“Well, he is.”
“I could say the same for Rocky.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Then leave Jack out of this conversation.”
The very mention of my human daddy’s name makes my human mom go all melty-voiced and sad-eyed. I put my handsome head in her lap and my sugar-coated muzzle against her belly. Absently, she rubs my head with one hand. Always a good sign.
“Besides, what kind of Santa has to hobble on a crutch?” When my human mom says that, I know the direction of her mind. And her heart.
“I didn’t say anything, Cal.”
“Good. Don’t.”
Lovie eats a doughnut and offers me another one, but a dog with a hidden agenda knows when to decline forbidden sugar.
“I’d suggest Jarvetis,” she says, “but take him away from his redbone hound dog Trey and Gas, Grits, and Guts, and I don’t think he could get up enough nerve to say ho, ho, ho.”
“You’re forgetting his mambo with Fayrene in Memphis.”
“That was an aberration, Callie. He’s usually so quiet you barely notice him.”
“Okay. So you’re right this time. But not about Jack.”
Lovie just grins. She knows the lay of the land between those two. And she’s pulling for Jack as hard as I am. I’m glad she’s going with us to Mooreville.
We arrive at the mall in the nick of time. There’s a line of hungry folks at Lovie’s booth and they’re getting surly. Meantime, over in Santa’s Court, there’s a sign that says, TEMPORARILY CLOSED. SANTA’S FEEDING HIS REINDEER.
Callie hurries over to relieve the security guards, who have been pressed into service to hand out candy canes. I don’t know who made that mistake. The guards’ scowls are enough to give little kids nightmares about lumps of coal in their Christmas stockings. Fortunately, Callie and yours truly hurry to the rescue.
While she soothes the little kids with sweet talk and a little something for a sweet tooth, I mosey my splendid Santa self over and climb onto the throne. This takes Herculean effort and four attempts. But when Callie sees me sitting there in my natural royal glory, she says, “Get down from there, Elvis.”
Well, so be it. What does a King need with another throne? Besides, I have a nose for trouble, and there’s plenty afoot at the mall. Let somebody else risk sitting in a throne that turned into Old Sparky (the state penitentiary’s electric chair). I have other plans for my many talents.
Finding the mall manager, for one. That’ll be a snap for a King in a basset hound suit. Listen, my nose is more than a noble proboscis on a handsome face.
And who needs surveillance equipment when they have a set of mismatched radar ears. Somewhere in this crowd is somebody who knows what really happened in Santa’s Court today. And yours truly—dog detective extraordinaire—intends to find out.
I get my chance at sleuthing when Jarvetis Johnson comes over to Santa’s Court with his grandson, a little person named David. Otherwise known as my second-best source of forbidden treats (Lovie being the first). Now that Darlene is doing nails, her son is a fixture at Hair.Net. I’m happy to report he doesn’t mind sharing his ice cream cone with a famous dog.
While Callie’s occupied with her favorite cherub, I slip off down the mall, ears and nose at the ready. The only thing of interest I find is a bite-size chunk of hamburger bun that still smells of meat, plus Bobby Huckabee in the food court drinking a latte. He’s all eyes for his companion, none other than Darlene.
When I say all eyes, I’m talking about his green eye as well as his psychic blue eye. It figures. She consults the stars and he consults the dead.
Darlene whistles at me and I trot right over, mainly because she’s taken the top off her drink and is offering me a lick of cream off her fingers.
“This is our little secret,” she says. “Okay, Elvis?”
Wild horses couldn’t drag her tête à tête with Bobby out of me. Fayrene thinks Darlene’s had too many husbands, but personally, I say, go for it, girl. Nothing’s more fun than a
“Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.”
Anyhow, Darlene doesn’t have to worry about me. I’m a loyal-to-the-bone dog who knows how to keep a secret.
Unless somebody bribes me with a ham bone seasoned with just the right amount of Mississippi mud. Now that’s my kind of eating.
“Elvis!”
What’s this I hear? My human mom calling my name.
Busted.
I hurry my ample self out of the food court. But I don’t show my face right away. First, I hide behind a garbage can till I can get my mojo working and do a little judicious eavesdropping.
“Poor Cleveland,” Callie is saying to Lovie. “He’s beside himself that he threw the switch to the throne.”
“I hope he believed us when we said we don’t blame him for what happened to Daddy and poor old Rudolph.”
“The main thing is that he’s promised there will be no power to the throne tomorrow.”
Sounds like the coast is clear. Putting on my cutest basset grin (which, I’ll have to say, is a poor doggone substitute for the smile that in my other life sent fans into a fainting frenzy), I sashay out from behind the garbage can, then act all surprised and hound-dog-eyed to see Callie and Lovie packed up and ready to go home.
“Elvis, is that cream on your muzzle?”
I lick Callie’s ankle then do a little swivel-hipped turn and howl a few bars of “If Every Day Was Like Christmas.” You might think distracting her is a naughty thing to do, but if you could hear her laugh, you’d change your tune. It’s a cross between sleigh bells and jingle bells.
She picks me up and totes me out to her Dodge Ram like I’m the most important dog in the world. Which I am.
“Let’s get you home, boy, before everybody in the mall mobs you for your paw print.”
She waves at Lovie, who is heading to her van, then calls out, “See you in Mooreville.”
I wonder if Jack is waiting with a little snack of Pup-Peroni.
Chapter 4
Home Cooking, Unwanted Safety Tips, and Murder
Thank goodness, I get to dress for this date in peace. Elvis is outside playing with Hoyt and the Seven Dwarfs while Lovie is in the kitchen with Jack playing poker. It feels so good to have my cousin and my almost-ex both in the house that for a moment I forget who I’m dressing for.
I put on the final touches, a spritz of perfume, just the perfect shade of lip gloss, and a cute pair of Sesto Meucci boots I got on sale after Thanksgiving, then head down the stairs to tell them goodbye.
Jack does a double take. “You’re not wearing that top, are you?”
“Why? What’s wrong with it?”
“The way to the vet’s heart is not a tight red sweater. It’s some good chicken and dumplings.”
This from the man who only yesterday advised me to lure Champ with more cleavage.
“You’re just angling for a home-cooked meal.”
“No.” He tips his chair back, looking every bit as cocky as he is handsome. “I’m just trying to get you out of that sweater.”
I might have to kill him. And Lovie’s being no help at all. She’s sitting there laughing.
“Don’t encourage him, Lovie.”
Fortunately, her cell phone rings. She snatches it up like her National Treasure is on fire and whoever is on the other end of the line is fixing to fan the flames.
“Wayne.” She’s all but cooing. She’s only mentioned Wayne Hunter to me once, and in a way that always spells trouble. You couldn’t get me out of this kitchen if man-eating African lions were roaring my way.
“That sounds wonderful,” she says into her phone. She makes four syllables of wonderful. This is bad.
Even worse, she races up the stairs, moving faster than I’ve seen her move since we crash-landed the hot-air balloon and got chased by a bunch of mad pigs.
“What next?” I ask, and Jack says, “Let her have her fun, Cal. Maybe it’ll take her mind off Charlie.”
Mama told him about the accident, of course. Or maybe it was Uncle Charlie. He and Jack are closer than father and son. And I think it’s more than bonding because of a mutual background with the Company.
I sit down opposite Jack, then put my hands in my lap so I won’t be tempted to smooth back the lock of dark hair that won’t stay out of his eyes.
“Do you think what happened at the mall was an accident, Jack?”
“Maybe. I just want you to be careful.”
“Careful is my middle name.”
“I thought it was trouble.”
His crooked grin gets me every time. Fortunately, Lovie is back. Unfortunately, she is carrying her French maid’s uniform.
“Holy cow, Lovie. What are you doing with that thing?”
“My fiancé likes it.”
“Since when has Wayne been your fiancé?”
“Since I decided to push him in that direction.”
“Lovie, maybe you ought to slow down. You’ve been out with him, what? Five times? When you’re on the rebound, it’s no time to be getting serious with somebody else.”
“Speaking of rebound . . .” Lovie raises one eyebrow, and I blush to the roots of my glossy, natural brown hair. I’m not about to admit that I’m on the rebound or that my situation with Jack and Champ is anything like Lovie’s with Rocky and Wayne. Because it’s not. She goes through bad boys like bags of popcorn, and I’ve only ever in my life been in love with one man. And he happens to be sitting across the table from me keeping his mouth shut for once. Thank goodness.
When the doorbell rings, I almost faint with relief. It’s Champ, looking really, really appealing in a cashmere coat that sets off his shoulders to a tee. My mouth ought to be watering.
When Jack comes up behind me and says, “Come on in,” I realize I’m standing there like a doorstop thinking about who my mouth waters over and why.
