by Teri Wilson
The Dalmatian paced back and forth in the dugout, rising up to plant her front paws on the chain link fence when the bat made contact with the ball. As Sam’s teammate rounded the bases, Cinder jumped up and down on her back legs, as if she were on a pogo stick.
Violet laughed out loud. She looked like a little doggy cheerleader out there.
“Nash!” Chief Murray yelled toward the dugout from his position near third base. “I can’t believe I’m having to say this, but you need to get that dog under control.”
“Well, well, well,” Violet said, grinning at Sprinkles. “Look who’s the best-behaved Dalmatian now.”
Sprinkles had indeed been extra sweet lately. Not that she wasn’t always Violet’s favorite dog in the entire world, because she definitely was—no matter how many chewed-up shoes and stolen cupcakes might be sacrificed to Sprinkles’s naughty streak.
That naughty streak had been somewhat subdued lately, which only proved Violet’s point that a dog would behave just fine as long as you heaped loads of love and affection onto the canine in question. Respect too, obviously.
Finally, Violet thought. At long last, she was getting her life in order. Her Dalmatian was starting to settle down and her cupcake truck business was booming, thanks to her spotted black-and-white culinary creations. Even her love life was looking up. It was almost too good to be true.
“Can I get three of those Dalmatian cupcakes?” A customer slapped nine dollar bills onto the counter. “That fireman’s nutty Dalmatian is stealing the show out there.”
But what was good for Violet’s cupcake business wasn’t so great for Sam. Obviously distracted by his dog’s antics, he almost struck out when it was his turn on deck. With two strikes down, he hit a bloop single that, fortunately for Sam, landed in no man’s land between the infield and outfield. Rattled by the sight of their star player’s weak hit, the rest of the Hoses’ batting line-up promptly fell like dominoes. Every player up to bat struck out, one right after another. At the end of the inning, the police department was still up by one run. The game was officially over.
“Yes!” Violet screamed from the confines of her cupcake truck.
The Guns team celebrated as if they’d won the World Series. Violet had never seen Island Pizza so packed. Players, locals, and tourists alike jammed inside the pizza parlor to celebrate the continuation of the tournament. The Hoses players didn’t seem quite as disappointed as Violet would have imagined they might. She didn’t get to talk to Sam, because by the time she closed up the cupcake truck and got the Charlie’s Angels—plus Larry Sims, resplendent in a cardigan with red embroidered trim reminiscent of the stitching on a softball—to Island Pizza, there wasn’t an empty table in sight. But Sam’s fellow players kept slapping him on the back and vowing to take back the tournament next Saturday, and when Sam’s eyes met Violet’s across the crowded restaurant, he didn’t look at all like a man who’d just lost a championship game.
You win some, you lose some, he mouthed. Turtle Beach was in the throes of softball madness, and no one seemed to want to see the season come to an end.
Violet grinned, warmth spreading through her.
“You seem awfully happy about your team finally winning a game,” Ethel said above the din.
“What?” Violet said, tearing her attention away from the fire department’s table to glance at her friends. “Oh, right. The game. Yes, I’m thrilled, of course. Go TBPD!”
She snagged Mavis’s blue foam finger in the air and waved it around, bopping about half a dozen people on the head in the process.
“Violet, dear, do you mind if we skip pizza this time? It’s going to be hours before we’re served.” Mavis glanced at her watch.
“There’s a two-hour wait,” a passing server said. “And that’s once you get seated.”
Larry went pale. Jeopardy! started in an hour and a half. Opal and Ethel were fine leaving early, they said. The chef at the senior center was preparing fresh crab for dinner, an annual summer treat they didn’t want to miss. So Violet snuck Sam a flippy wave goodbye, hugged her brothers around their necks, and piled back into the cupcake truck with her friends.
They made it back to the senior center in record time, considering the journey included loading, unloading, and reloading four aluminum walkers and eight obnoxiously huge foam fingers. Violet had just gotten each senior citizen matched with the proper ambulatory assistance device when a police cruiser pulled up beside her sleek silver food truck in the retirement center’s parking lot.
“Dad?” Violet peered into the squad car as the driver’s side window rolled down, revealing a very weary-looking Ed March. “Is everything okay?”
She’d expected her father to be beside himself with joy in the wake of the TBPD’s softball victory. In fact, she was pretty sure she’d seen him being doused with a big orange cooler full of Gatorade near the police department’s dugout as she’d sold her last remaining Dalmatian cupcakes.
“I followed you here from Island Pizza,” he said, as if that made any sense whatsoever.
“Why? Was I speeding?” Violet laughed. The fastest she’d ever driven her cupcake truck had been a tame fifty miles per hour, and that certainly hadn’t been on the island.
Violet was a cop’s daughter. She never sped, just as she never rode in a car without her seat belt firmly fastened, never ran red lights, and never made rolling stops at any of the stop signs along Turtle Beach’s sandy streets. The rules of the road had been hammered into her before she even knew how to drive.
Similarly, Violet had never shoplifted a thing in her life—not even as a child. The closest she’d ever come to committing a crime had been joining a group of kids who’d toilet-papered the house of a baseball player from a rival high school when she’d been a teenager. Even then, Violet had been so guilt-stricken the following day that she’d shown up on the baseball player’s doorstep to help him clean up the mess.
Violet just wasn’t built for a life of crime. She knew this about herself. It was a rather convenient truth since she shared a home with half of the island’s police force.
“No, you weren’t speeding,” Dad said without a trace of humor in his tone. “But…”
Opal, Ethel, Mavis, and Larry glanced back and forth between Ed and Violet March in obvious concern.
“But what, Dad? Am I in some sort of trouble?” Violet laughed again, but it felt forced this time.
Something was definitely wrong. She could see it in the deep furrow in her father’s forehead.
He opened the door to the car and stepped onto the pavement, and that’s when Violet realized that he wasn’t wearing his softball uniform anymore. He was dressed in his police uniform, which seemed odd. He usually didn’t go in to the station on Saturday afternoons.
“Dad?” Violet had a sudden urge to hug her Dalmatian, but she couldn’t.
Sprinkles was waiting for her in Mavis’s room, like she always did when they went to Island Pizza. She was probably sprawled on the sofa, glued to DOG-TV right this minute, oblivious to Violet’s panic.
But why was she panicking? She had nothing to feel remotely guilty about—except yes, she’d accepted Sam’s invitation to the Fireman’s Ball. Her dad couldn’t possibly know about that yet, though. And besides, what was he going to do when he found out? Throw her in jail?
“I’m sorry, Cupcake.” Her father’s gaze shifted to the gravel parking lot. He suddenly couldn’t seem to look her in the eye. “But you’re under arrest.”
Chapter 17
Violet’s head spun. Everything around her went fuzzy and she was vaguely aware of Opal, Ethel, Mavis, and Larry gasping in horror as her dad said something about a warrant and fines and started reciting the Miranda warning.
You have the right to remain silent, blah blah blah. Violet knew it by heart. She’d heard Joe and Josh practice it so many times back when they were in the police aca
demy that she could probably recite her rights in her sleep.
Still, it was beyond unnerving to have them read to her by her father while he was standing next to a squad car with that terrible expression on his face.
Was this some sort of horrible joke? What was happening?
“Dad, stop. What is going on?”
She had the right to remain silent. Ha! As if.
“Dad! Talk to me, please.”
“Violet, get in the car.” He opened the door to the back seat. Seriously? She had to get back there, behind the cage thing? “I need to have a word with your friends for a minute. Wait here.”
She did as he said, mainly because she was afraid if she balked, he might slap a pair of handcuffs on her. Just the thought of it made a hysterical burst of laughter rise up her throat. The one and only time she’d worn handcuffs was when her dad had come to her middle school classroom for career day. The kids had all taken turns trying them out.
But Violet wasn’t in middle school anymore. She was an adult, and apparently she’d gone and gotten herself into adult trouble.
Arrested.
She squeezed her eyes shut tight and tried not to hyperventilate. This was Turtle Beach. The island’s jail consisted of a single cell just a few steps away from her father’s desk, and it was rarely occupied. Certainly never by Violet.
This cannot be happening.
The driver’s side door swung open, and her father slid behind the wheel.
“Where’s my dog?” she asked, and she wasn’t sure if the tremble in her voice was caused by fear or fury. Probably a little of both. The only thing she was more concerned about than straightening out her humiliating legal predicament was her Dalmatian’s welfare.
“Mavis, Opal, and Ethel assured me they’ll take care of Sprinkles. And don’t you worry. I just need to take you down to the station and get you to deal with some paperwork. Your friends can come pick you up as soon as that’s done. Once the fines are cleared up, you’re free to go.” He shifted the car into park. “That’s how the department handles local code violations. Standard procedure. You’re my daughter, but you still have to follow the rule of law. How would it look if I made an exception?”
Local code violations? Was it possible that this whole ordeal wasn’t a mistake at all?
Dread settled into the pit of Violet’s stomach. She stared blankly at the back of her dad’s head. He still had a dent in his hair from the ball cap he’d worn to the softball game just a few hours ago.
“Dad, can you please tell me the nature of the fines that I owe?” She glanced at the rearview mirror, where her father’s gaze met hers.
“Cupcake, you have unpaid fines from a number of fire code citations.” He sighed and resumed staring straight ahead. “Quite a few actually.”
Violet dropped her head into her hands. Sam had showered her with enough pink tickets to wallpaper the entire inside of her cupcake truck. And they’d all been real?
Panic flared inside her chest, and she remembered something Griff had said a few days ago when she’d gone to Sam’s office to thank him for not throwing her friends in “fireman jail” for their sprinkler stunt.
Yeah, that’s not a thing. Violating the fire code is the same thing as breaking the law. Same fines, same penalties, same jail.
Oh, no. No, no, no. She’d balled all those tickets into tiny pink wads of paper in defiance. She’d thought she’d been taking a stand. She’d thought they’d just been part of the silly Dalmatian war she and Sam had been engaged in for the past few weeks. The loser was supposed to have to do something mildly unpleasant, like dress as a cupcake or take their Dalmatian to obedience classes.
Not go to prison.
The squad car pulled to a stop in the driveway of the Turtle Beach police station, and Violet tried to tell herself this wasn’t a huge deal. It was jail, not prison—more along the lines of The Andy Griffith Show than The Shawshank Redemption.
Still, her father was the police chief. She should never have allowed herself to get into such a humiliating predicament, no matter how infuriatingly attracted she’d been to the fire marshal who’d been writing her all those citations.
“Dad, can we talk for a second before we go inside?” Violet sniffed. She would not cry. No way. She’d gotten herself into this mess, and she was going to handle it like a grown-up.
Oh, the irony! She’d just been patting herself on the back for having her act together and—boom—almost instantaneously she’d ended up in the back of a squad car.
“The sooner we get this started, the sooner we can get it over with,” her dad said, reaching for the door handle.
“Wait, though. Please.” Violet leaned forward, clutching the bars that separated the back seat from the front seat. “I’m sorry, Dad. I should have taken all those citations seriously. I just thought—”
“Cupcake, you and I talked about this just a few days ago. I tried to make sure you knew you had to pay the fines. You assured me you were taking care of things.”
What? When had they discussed her fire code citations? Violet didn’t even know her dad knew about them.
“Dad, what are you…” Violet’s voice drifted off as she realized the conversation he was talking about. They’d been in the dugout at practice. She’d tried to get him to tell her about the newspaper photo of her mom and Polkadot, and all he’d wanted to do was warn her away from Sam—or so she’d thought.
Wow. She and her father really needed to work on their communication skills. And they would. Violet would make certain they did, but first she probably needed to get fingerprinted or whatever lovely step came next in this mortifying ordeal.
“Joe tried to tell me. You asked him to talk to me and he tried, but I told him I didn’t want to hear whatever it was he had to say,” Violet said quietly.
She’d been so mad at him because he and Josh had cornered her about taking Sam cupcakes. Her fault, yet again, because she’d refused to listen. But another common denominator seemed to be popping up with every misstep she’d taken lately.
And that denominator was Sam.
“Come on, Cupcake. Let’s get this done.” Dad hauled himself out of the car and held her door open for her.
Violet did the walk of shame or perp walk or whatever it was called into the station, where she was officially charged, booked, and taken into custody. Mercifully, the police station was practically a ghost town since everyone in the department was still living it up at Island Pizza. But the reality of Violet’s regretful circumstances hit her hard when the door to her tiny cell clanged shut and her dad locked it with a huge skeleton key.
Old-fashioned as it may be, the Turtle Beach jail was still jail. She wasn’t sitting in a cute pink wire crate like Sprinkles had to do during the baseball games. This wasn’t a field trip to her father’s office with her Girl Scout troop. Violet had gone and gotten herself into a major pickle.
“I called Mavis and told her you can get bailed out anytime now. She’s on her way,” her dad said. He looked as though he’d aged ten years in the past two hours. Again, totally Violet’s doing. “I’d do it myself, but it wouldn’t be proper. You understand, right?”
“Of course, Dad. I get it.” She was actually relieved that her father couldn’t be the one to pay her bail. That would only add insult to injury.
After Mavis took her back to her cupcake truck, Violet would pay her back every last dime from the proceeds of today’s cupcake sales. Violet didn’t care how broke she might be afterward. She was ready to turn over a new leaf. From here on out, she was going to be the most responsible person on the entire island. No more letting her Dalmatian run amok at the dog beach, no more bringing home random canines to bathe and spritz with her favorite bath products, no more setting firemen ablaze.
And absolutely no more kissing the most inappropriate man on the entire Eastern Seaboard. Violet had
learned her lesson the hard way.
Her father reappeared, swinging his set of keys as Violet was adding up all her citations, late fees, penalties, and arrest costs in her head. She would need to sell a lot of Dalmatian cupcakes at the next softball game, or Sprinkles might have to start eating generic dog food.
“You’re free to go.” He frowned as he opened the cell door.
“Thank goodness.” Violet threw her arms around her father. “I’m so sorry, Dad. Nothing like this will happen ever again. I promise.”
He gave her a cursory pat on the back, and Violet chalked his standoffishness up to the fact that she’d disappointed him in a major way. She vowed to do better. She didn’t know how she’d make this up to her dad, but she definitely would.
In the meantime, Violet couldn’t wait to see Mavis. She hoped she’d brought Sprinkles with her. Violet couldn’t wait to wrap her arms around her beloved Dalmatian and have a good cry into the dog’s soft spotted fur.
But when she reached the entrance to the police station, Violet suddenly understood why her father had seemed less than pleased to let her go. Her heart wrenched. Sprinkles was there, waiting for her with a wagging tail, just as Violet had hoped. But Mavis hadn’t come to collect her, after all.
The keys to Violet’s freedom had been secured by none other than Sam Nash.
***
“I’m going to kill Mavis.” Violet’s gaze flashed quickly from Sam to her Dalmatian as she grabbed Sprinkles’s leash and walked right past him.
Cinder glanced up at him and let out a mournful whine as the ice cream cone in Sam’s grasp began dripping down his hand.
The ice cream had been a bad idea. Clearly. He wasn’t picking up a child from summer camp. Violet had been in jail—because of him. But he’d wanted to do something nice for her besides paying every last dime of her bail, her fire code fines, and the accompanying penalties. Ice cream seemed like just the sort of whimsical surprise Violet might like. He’d even had the cone topped with a generous portion of sprinkles in honor of her Dalmatian.
