Page 68 of A Spot of Trouble
Chief Dodd’s voice on the other end of the phone barely registered. “Sam? Hello? Are you still there?”
“Barking…tree,” Sam said absently.
“What was that?” Chief Dodd said.
“Actually, something just came up.” Fresh energy filled Sam. If he didn’t act now, he’d probably change his mind. “Can we finish talking about this later?”
“Um, sure. Give it some more thought and—”
“Great. Talk soon.” Sam ended the call and tucked his phone away.
Violet and Sprinkles were coming more into focus as they drew closer, like a beautiful mirage somehow coming to life.
“What do you think, Cinder? Are you in the mood for a bike ride?”
Ten minutes later, Sam and Cinder were riding toward Violet and Sprinkles on the opposite side of the boardwalk. Violet didn’t see him at first, which meant Sam got to witness the moment when her face lit up at the sight of him. Backlit by the deepening sunset, her strawberry-blonde hair looked almost fiery red. The smile she gave him made Sam’s heart feel like it was being squeezed in a vise.
Sam lifted his right hand to wave at her, but just as he let go of the handlebars, Cinder launched into warp speed. Her leash, wrapped loosely around Sam’s left hand, went taut as she dragged him—bicycle and all—toward Violet and Sprinkles.
Violet’s eyes went wide and she called out for him to be careful, but no sooner had the words left her mouth than Sprinkles took off, barreling toward Cinder.
Sam took his feet off the pedals and tried to slow down by planting his feet on the pavement, but Cinder was moving too fast for him to get any purchase. Before he knew it, the bike bounced off the curb, through a thick patch of seagrass, and into the middle of the street. Cars honked, mopeds swerved, and an ancient VW van with surfboards tied to its roof slammed on its brakes to avoid running over him. Sam sailed past the van just in time to see the pile of surfboards fly off the roof and scatter in the roadway like fallen dominoes.
“Cinderrrrrrrrr!” he yelled.
At the same time, he could hear Violet screaming Sprinkles’s name, but neither of the dogs was listening. They just kept sprinting at one another in a flurry of spots and happy barks.
“Cinder, stop!”
Sam could barely look. They were barreling straight toward a full-on Dalmatian disaster of epic proportions. When they made it to the other side of the boardwalk, Cinder dragged him through a group of beachgoers walking out of the ice cream shop. People darted out of the way and ice cream plopped onto the ground with a splat.
Sam jerked his handlebars hard to the left in order to avoid plowing into a patch of grass where a few residents from the senior center had gathered to play bocce ball, and when he did, the two Dalmatians ended up running side-by-side. The dogs slowed down just enough for Sam to try planting his feet on the ground again, but it was too late. They’d reached the end of the boardwalk.
Sam’s bicycle slid right into the cool blue water of the bay, followed immediately by Violet’s cruiser bike. Their front wheels lodged into the wet sand, stopping the bikes abruptly while Sam and Violet tumbled into the shallows.
Sam scrambled to get to his feet. “Violet? Are you okay?”
“What wasthat? Your perfect dog just lost her mind,” she wailed, pushing wet hair from her eyes. Then a tiny silver fish leapt from inside the bodice of Violet’s drenched eyelet sundress and flopped into the water.
Sam clamped his mouth shut.Whatever you do, don’t laugh.She could have gotten seriously hurt. They both could have, plus the dogs. It really wasn’t funny.
But when the fish shimmied past him, Sam lost it. He laughed so hard that he nearly doubled over. And when Violet joined in, the sound of her laughter smoothed away his worries of what could have been.
So this was what it was like to live in the moment? It had been so long for Sam that he’d forgotten what it felt like. He wanted to bottle it like one of those messages that people wrote and tossed out to sea.
Violet splashed him, and he splashed her back. Sam’s fingertips were beginning to prune.
Meanwhile, their Dalmatians stood in a perfectly matched pair, peering at Sam and Violet from the edge of the boardwalk, heads cocked just so.
Dry as a bone.
***
“That wastotallyyour dog’s fault.” Violet glared at Cinder, resting in a heap of black-and-white spots with Sprinkles in the living room of Sam’s beach cottage, and then back at Sam.
Sam did his best to appear contrite, but it was awfully difficult when Violet March was standing in his home with her damp hair piled on top of her head and her graceful legs sticking out from beneath one of his favorite faded Chicago Fire Department T-shirts.
What kind of gentleman would he have been if he hadn’t offered up the use of his washer and dryer for her pretty dress while he changed the tire on her cruiser bike? As she said, the entire ordeal had definitely been his dog’s fault. It was the least that Sam could do, even for his sworn enemy.
