Double Dog Dare Read online

  Vree said, “This one looks like a dog, acts like a dog, and smells like a dog. In a good way. Does that make sense? Do you know what I mean?”

  We were stuffed in the cab of a truck with it on a warm April day. The dog was straddling me, his long legs on either side of mine, his head out the window on Vree’s side, and Fantasy was trying to drive over his…other end. None of us were gagging. So we knew what she meant.

  “This guy’s fur is like wire.” Vree was petting his head from crown to neck in long smooth strokes, comforting him, and in the process, comforting herself. “Bubblegum’s fur is coarse. I mean, I go through the conditioner like nobody’s business, and if I don’t brush her out three times a day she gets—”

  Vree stopped talking for a second. It was glorious.

  “—there’s a collar in here.”

  “What? A what?” I reached for the dog’s neck too, but didn’t find anything but fuzz. “Get it.”

  “It’s way down in this fur ball.”

  “Find the hook thing,” Fantasy said. “Unhook it.”

  “From what?” Vree asked.

  “Unhook its collar. The hook, the clasp, the buckle, whatever.” Fantasy moved his tail out of her way.

  I dove in from underneath. I ran my hands along his chest—were dogs supposed to have way faster heartbeats than humans?—and hit pay dirt. “Got it.” I held up the second dog collar I’d removed in my life in as many days.

  “You’re so good with dog collars, Davis.”

  “I’ve been dressing babies for almost two years.”

  “Right,” she said. “Baby clothes.”

  “Read it.” Fantasy was trying to turn into the Bellissimo over the backend of a large dog. “What does it say?”

  “Harley.” The engraving was impossibly small. “His name is Harley.” I held it above his back. “There are three numbers. Short, medium, and long. The short one starts with the letters S and D. No owner’s name, and neither of the others look like phone numbers.”

  “SD means he’s a service dog,” Vree said. “That’s his service dog number. The other two numbers are probably rabies and microchip.”

  “Service dog? What kind of service dog?” Fantasy asked. “Is it a police dog?”

  He didn’t look like any police dog I’d ever seen.

  “There are so many kinds of service dogs,” Vree said. “There are guide dogs, seizure dogs, autism dogs, diabetic dogs, and emotional support dogs. There are even gluten dogs.”

  “Are you saying this dog has autism? Or he’s diabetic?” Fantasy asked. “How in hell do we take care of a dog with diabetes?”

  I was still nose to collar. “Tell us about the microchip.” Because that sounded promising.

  Vree took a deep breath to tell us a long story, and Fantasy stopped her before she could start. “You know what a microchip is, Davis. Finish with the diabetes, Vree. Is the dog diabetic?” She parked at an angle, spreading the truck out over two parking spaces, and batted Harley’s wagging tail out of her face again. “Do we look like we have dog insulin? Where do you even get dog insulin? CVS?”

  “How would Vree know if this dog is diabetic?” I asked. “And I’m not asking her to explain microchips to me, thank you. I want to know what we’re supposed to do with the microchip. I can’t see us taking the time to find a dog doctor, dragging in a dog we clearly don’t know, and saying, ‘Scan this dog, please.’ The vet would be questioned. ‘Yes, Detective, they were here,’ he’d say. ‘Three of them. Like Moe, Larry, and Curly. And not one of them said a word about a dead woman.’”

  Fantasy’s face said, good point.

  “You wouldn’t believe how many owners don’t microchip their pets,” Vree said. “You’d better believe Bubblicious is microchipped. Of course, I had to turn around and cover my whole head when they shot it in her, I’m squeamish like that—”

  “For real, Vree?” Fantasy asked. “You’re squeamish?”

  (Bubblegum had a microchip—another detail Vree didn’t think to tell me the day before when I was desperately trying to locate my sister.)

  “I know!” Vree said. “Go figure!”

  “Vree, you pass out every ten minutes,” Fantasy said. “We know you’re squeamish. Here’s some advice for you.” Harley’s tail pom hit her in the face again. She swatted. “Don’t even think about having kids. You won’t be able to take it.”

  Vree’s head dropped.

  “Let’s talk about your dog’s microchip later and this dog’s microchip now,” Fantasy said. “Can we get information about the dead woman in my bonus room with it? I have a husband, Vree, and three sons, who’ll be home tonight. As in my husband will park his car in the garage. And I’d like to get the dead body out of the bonus room before he does.”

  Vree sniffed. “I don’t see how the microchip will help get the dead body out.”

  Harley barked.

  * * *

  Fantasy’s car was equipped with Volvo’s On Call service.

  Bootsy, as far as we knew, was still alive, and had taken off in the Volvo. More evidence she was just mean and spooky. If she were a real witch, she wouldn’t have carjacked the Volvo. She’d have gone to the broom closet for transportation. Witch or not, we’d find her first. Kinda needed to know where she was before I got on the phone with Gully and started making demands.

  “How does Bootsy Howard know how to hotwire a car?”

  Fantasy and I were in my office. Vree was on dog duty in the living room.

  “I left the keys in it,” she said.

  “Why would you leave the keys in it?”

  “My plan was to send a tow truck after it, Davis. You have to leave the keys if you want it towed.”

  “How in the world did Bootsy start the car if you couldn’t?”

  “Maybe she witched it.”

  Surely not. “Call Volvo.”

  “We can’t call Volvo,” Fantasy said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because when an owner asks Volvo to find their car, Volvo assumes it’s for no good reason. On Call will only give the information to the police. The car owner has to get the information from the police.”

  Yeah, that wouldn’t work.

  “Plan B,” I said. “We’ll leave Volvo out of it and track down the car ourselves. What’s your VIN number?”

  “Are you kidding me, Davis? Who knows their VIN number?”

  “Your lips aren’t big.”

  In the course of finding a dead body, losing a car, and welcoming a second dog into my home, Fantasy’s lips had returned to normal.

  “My iPad.”

  “What?”

  “My iPad is in the car. We can track the iPad.”

  Five minutes later, we had a bead on Bootsy. She was near the Ponchatoula, Louisiana exit on I-12, pointed straight for Baton Rouge, on her way to Houston, no doubt. Which meant she’d made her escape after Fantasy left and before the hairy pierced housekeepers arrived. We didn’t know where or how the dead woman fit in, but we knew the timing was tight. The three events had to have happened almost simultaneously.

  Had Bootsy Howard actually killed someone?

  And if so, who had she killed?

  The website was www.petmicrochiplookup.org. I typed the fifteen-digit number in the box, hit enter, and the next screen was a search engine asking for the microchip’s manufacturer. Which I didn’t know. I searched for pet microchip manufacturers, thinking there’d be three, and as it turned out, there were three hundred. At least. The only way to the microchip registration information, and thus the dead woman’s name, was from a veterinarian, or by loading microchip manufacturers into the search engine until it found a match. Which we didn’t have time for.

  “Is Vree good with computers?” Fantasy asked. “Put her on it.”

  “Then who will watch the dogs?”
<
br />   “Not I.”

  We looked at each other over Bootsy’s phone—the lifeline to my sister.

  “I turned the air down to forty, Davis. The dead woman isn’t going to get any deader. Put the witch, the dead woman, and the microchip business on hold and make the call.” She pushed Bootsy’s phone an inch.

  While it was never a good idea to put a dead body on hold, I couldn’t take it one more minute, and with shaking hands, I clicked the Sharing and Caring icon on Bootsy’s phone and found Gully’s number. It rang three times.

  “Sister Bootsy,” he answered.

  “Wrong, Gully. It’s Sister Davis. And I want to talk to my sister.”

  * * *

  We slept in my bedroom that night. All over my bedroom.

  Bexley and Quinn had been toddling their way into our bed two or three nights a week since they graduated from baby beds to big-girl beds. When Bradley traveled, I didn’t want to sleep alone, and chances were high the girls would wander in anyway, so we skipped the preamble and had all-girl slumber parties. The girls were sweet little sleepers. Wiggly, I woke up feeling like I’d slept with baby octopuses, but warm and cuddly too.

  Fantasy’s oldest son’s basketball team won in the loser’s bracket, whatever that meant, and the last time she heard from Reggie, he said the wildcard game would end too late for him to drive home. They’d see her tomorrow. Unless the boys won again. In which case, they’d advance to the finals and see her whenever.

  Hopefully, we’d have the dead woman out by whenever.

  The dead woman was why Fantasy didn’t want to go home.

  I couldn’t say I blamed her.

  I slept on my side of the bed, she slept on Bradley’s, with Bex and Quinn between us.

  Harley, the big black poodle, slept at the foot of the bed.

  Princess wasn’t sleeping in her Pop N’ Play beside the chaise lounge.

  Vree was on the chaise lounge.

  One would think two twenty-month-old girls would keep the room awake, but having missed their afternoon naps because they were having too much fun with July, then the excitement of getting dressed up and going to the first round of the dog-show competition to sit on the front row with Aunt Vree while I, in jodhpurs and spurs, passed out Bianca-worthy low scores at the judges’ table, had worn them out. They fell asleep before their curls hit the pillow.

  It was Princess who kept us up.

  She was the noisiest dog in the world.

  Could she not get comfortable?

  “Toss her another thumbprint cookie, Vree,” Fantasy whispered.

  “She’s eaten a whole box already,” Vree whispered back. “Have you seen her stomach? Listen to this.” It sounded like Vree thumped a watermelon. “This dog will blow up if I feed it one more bite.”

  “Princess!” Fantasy loud-whispered. “You see Harley? This is how dogs do it. They lay down and go to sleep. They don’t gnaw on themselves and whine all night.”

  I said, “If we start talking about Harley, we’ll never get to sleep,” I said. “You two put pillows over your heads and try. We have a big day tomorrow.”

  “We’re going to have plenty of time to sleep when No Hair finds out we have this black dog,” Fantasy said. “Because we’ll be unemployed.”

  Vree said, “I wish we could call Meredith again.”

  We’d talked to Meredith four times. Twice at length, twice just to hear her voice.

  “We’ll call her again in the morning, Vree,” I whispered.

  “Right after we get the dead body out of my bonus room.”

  Fantasy spoke the words over my dreaming babies.

  I would talk to Bradley early tomorrow. He’d call before his symposium day started. I planned on telling him to find us a house in Nashville. Then buy it. Then move in. The girls and I would meet him there at the end of the week. After I helped hide the body of Harley Al Abbasov’s caregiver and returned him to his owner, Hiriddhi Al Abbasov, oil baron, blind from birth, and my neighbor.

  Hiriddhi Al Abbasov was the VIP next door to me on the twenty-ninth floor in the Jay Leno suite. His beloved dog Harley, a first-time contestant in the Southern Canine Association’s competition, was missing from the Bellissimo Resort and Casino. His beloved dog Harley’s caregiver was missing too. Al Abbasov’s secretary and spokesman, Rod J. Sebastian, announced Sheik Al Abbasov was offering a million-dollar reward—the exact amount of money we needed—half a million for information leading to the whereabouts of Harley’s caregiver, sixty-two-year-old Doris Harrington, and another half million for the safe return of his seeing-eye dog, Harley.

  Who was sleeping on my feet.

  ELEVEN

  It was a Bellissimo housekeeping supervisor who innocently let me know just how much trouble I was in. At first it didn’t register, how bad things were, because I’d finally spoken to my sister. I had to go through Pastor Gully to get to Meredith, and my first conversation with him the day before had gone as expected. He hung up on me.

  As if that would make me go away.

  I dialed him back immediately; he didn’t answer.

  “Give him a minute,” Fantasy said. “He’s processing.”

  A calling-all-cars email from Bellissimo Security hit my inbox with a click, and at the same time, a notification flashed across my phone. I ignored both. I was so far past ready to make contact with my sister. Give it up, Gully, I texted. I know where you are and I know Greene is sick. I want to help you, but only if you let me talk to Meredith.

  I put the phone on my desk where Fantasy and I could watch it. We could hear Vree in the living room, talking the dogs’ ears off. Five minutes later, nothing back from Gully, I texted again.

  Your brother has Idiopathic Thrombotic Demyelinating Polyneuropathy. He needs my sister’s plasma and you need a million dollars to pay for the procedure. I know all this, Gully. Let me talk to her.

  More clicks and Bellissimo notifications on both mine and Fantasy’s phones. Something was going on in the hotel or the casino. Something urgent.

  Finally, Bootsy’s phone dinged. Where is Sister Bootsy?

  I shot back, I’ll tell Meredith. Give her the phone. Let me talk to her.

  From Gully: Who else knows?

  Me: No one. Let me talk to Meredith.

  Gully: Who told you?

  Me: I figured it out. I want to talk to my sister.

  My thumbs were shaking. I dropped the phone. Fantasy’s nose was to hers.

  What did people do before smart phones?

  “Davis.” She looked up. “We have a problem.”

  Bootsy’s phone rang on the word “problem.” I grabbed it. “Gully.” There was a pause, then a breath. A breath I’d known all my life. My sister said, “Davis.”

  There were tears.

  In the end, she said, “All I have to do is lay on a table with a needle in my arm to save a man’s life. His whole life, Davis. You and Daddy are in the life-saving business. Look at the people you’ve dragged out of burning homes and wrecked cars. Look at Daddy’s long career. How many lives has he turned around? And even what you do now, you help. You make a difference. I don’t like how Gully ambushed me either, and Gina is about to drive me up the wall, but the fact remains I have a chance to help. To save a life. If you ask me, mine isn’t the hard job. Yours is. Because you’re the only person any of us knows with access to that much money. Money Gully plans to pay back. His plan is for every penny of tithes and offerings for the rest of his life to go to you. They’re going to sell Jesus Water to pay you back. So it’s more like borrow the money, if you can figure out how to loan it to him, because Davis, Greene is dying.”

  It was while I was on the phone with my sister that Atlanta oil sheik Hiriddhi Al Abbasov reported his black standard poodle and the poodle’s caregiver missing. With that, things went from bad to worse. Much worse. We were harb
oring a wanted dog. Wanted to the tune of a million dollars. The exact amount of money we needed. And all this went down at exactly three o’clock. Which was exactly when the front door burst open and the pitter-patter of two pairs of Mini Melissa Mary Jane flats raced my way, then my daughters dove into my lap. Bex said, “Mama, mama, mama!” while Quinn said, “Dog, dog, dog!”

  They pulled me into the living room to show me not one, but two dogs.

  I held them back. A very safe distance. “I know!”

  Harley, the nice dog with the crazy haircut, who we’d just learned belonged to the blind bazillionaire next door, wanted no part of Bex and Quinn. He eyed them curiously, then quietly stepped behind Vree. To hide.

  Princess, the yellow-eyed terror, sensing a change in the air, looked up from Madeleine Albright. She sniffed. She stood and turned in circles, accidentally stepping on the laptop and quieting Madeleine—a relief—until she found what she was looking for. She marched in our direction, then pressed a rolling yellow eye against the mesh of the playpen wall and zeroed in on my girls. Who I had a firm grip on.

  Princess did a little dance, whined, and yipped a greeting. She stretched as tall as she could, her long black fingernails curling over the padded edge of the playpen. She plopped her head between her paws. Then she smiled. I’d never seen Princess smile. I’m not sure I’d ever seen any dog smile. Her head tipped back, her mouth dropped open, she bared her crooked nubby teeth, then her black tongue flopped out of the left side of her mouth. Her eyes lit up, the black one and the yellow one. She pointed the yellow one at Bex and Quinn. Then the back half of her started twitching. Furiously. Princess was wagging her…body. From her thick neck down, she wagged her oddly shaped middle, whimpering eagerly the entire time. Black tongue flapping. Bex and Quinn strained against me.

  No way.

  I held on tight.

  “Would you look at that?” Fantasy said. “Princess likes little people.”

  * * *

  I closed the space between Bex, Quinn, and Princess in minute increments. An inch at a time. Even at that, it wasn’t long until their noses were pressed against one side of the playpen and hers against the other. Bex and Quinn didn’t judge. They were too young to see, care about, or smell anything different about Princess. To them, she had no…disadvantages. They saw little dog and they wanted little dog.