Page 63 of A Spot of Trouble
Sam knew all of this, obviously. He quite literally could have written a book on it after all the time and effort he’d put into training Cinder to be a working fire safety dog. His failure to replace making the bed and turning on the coffee maker with another action had clearly been a mistake.
His motives had been pure, though. He’d wanted Cinder to relax, not perform—which he now realized was about as ridiculous as Violet’s assertion that Sprinkles didn’t need obedience lessons because she was “naturally sweet.” Cinder enjoyed learning new things. Dalmatians, in particular, were very high-energy dogs. A bored Dalmatian could be a disaster. Sam’s initial encounter with Sprinkles on the dog beach sprang quickly to mind.
Again, none of this was new information to Sam, which was why he shouldn’t have been surprised to find that his very bright, very trainable Dalmatian had apparently decided to choose her own replacement behavior in the absence of specific direction from Sam. But why oh why did the replacement behavior have to involve his socks?
Cinder pranced past him with a sock dangling from her mouth as Sam jammed at the button on the coffee maker. He’d already rescued one sock from her jaws, and within seconds she’d somehow swiped its mate.
Sam needed caffeine. Immediately. Forget making the bed. Rumpled bedsheets were the least of his worries at the moment. He still hadn’t responded to his old chief about the job offer, and the texts and voicemails were continuing to pile up. Murray had started showing up at the batting cages for practice in the evenings to remind Sam and the other players how fantastic it would be if they could beat the police department in a sweep. Sam was beginning to wonder if turning down the Chicago job was really such a smart move. What would happen if the TBFD failed to win the tournament? Would Sam even have a job in Turtle Beach anymore?
Surely he didn’t need to worry about such a remote possibility. The Hoses were already up 2–0. Odds were definitely in their favor. And it was hard to imagine that he could actually befiredfor losing an extracurricular ball game. But stranger things had certainly happened in Turtle Beach. In fact, stranger things happened on a daily basis in this wacky town—the sock thing, for instance.
“Cinder, you need to be on your best behavior at work today. We have the fire safety demo for the surf camp kids.” Sam wrestled the sock away from her.
The Dalmatian cocked her head as if she were listening, but Sam wasn’t entirely convinced.
“Do you hear me? This is serious,” he said.
Cinder huffed, and Sam sagged with relief. Then the Dalmatian collapsed on the floor to writhe around and give herself a prolonged back-scratch.
What had happened to his serious, competent dog?
Sam had no idea, and while a small part him (so small that it would have been invisible to the naked eye) enjoyed seeing his Dalmatian act like a puppy again, he was starting to worry about their presentation.
Sam gulped the majority of his coffee down in one giant swallow. Then he pulled on his damp socks and his carefully pressed uniform, telling himself all the while that he had nothing to worry about. Cinder was the best fire dog he’d ever seen. True, she’d been acting up at home, but at the fire station she’d been business as usual. She’d never embarrass him on the job. Cinder was his partner, and that was an unbreakable bond.
By mid-morning, however, Cinder appeared to be challenging that notion. The setting for the presentation—the beach—seemed to further complicate things.
“Hello, boys and girls. I’m Marshal Sam and this is my dog, Cinder. We’re here today to teach you about fire prevention.” Sam glanced down at the spot beside him that his Dalmatian typically occupied and saw nothing but a ghost crab scurrying toward its hole.
His audience, comprised of about a dozen children between the ages of nine and ten years old wearing wet bathing suits and long-sleeved rash guards, collapsed into giggles. One of them pointed toward the water’s edge, where Cinder was trailing a sandpiper scurrying in and out of the shallows. The bird poked its narrow beak into the sand, and Cinder imitated the sandpiper, doing the same with her muzzle. When she lifted her head, her black heart-shaped nose was covered in sugary sand.
“Cinder,” Sam said in what he hoped sounded liked a firm-but-kind voice. “Come.”
The Dalmatian swiveled her head in his direction, as if surprised to see him there and then bounded toward him. When she took her place by his side, she sneezed three times in rapid succession, spraying the children with wet sand.
Every black spot on Cinder’s body could have fallen off right before Sam’s eyes and he would have been less surprised than he was at seeing his beloved Dalmatian behave this way. Astonished didn’t begin to cover it.
Was he dreaming? Was this some sort of strange Dalmatian hallucination?
“Gross!” a little girl on the front row wailed as she wiped sandy sludge from the front of her rash guard.
A boy next to her laughed as he smeared the wet sand Cinder had slung at him more fully into his hair.
The camp counselors—a group of young twenty-something surfer types with sun-bleached hair and noses slathered with white zinc oxide—exchanged concerned glances. Sam’s gut churned. How awful did you have to be in order to crack the chilled-out composure of a surf instructor?
He took a deep breath. They’d gotten off to a rocky start, that was all. The beach was full of distractions. Sam could save this presentation. They still had half an hour to go.
“Cinder,” he said, waiting a beat for the Dalmatian to meet his gaze. “Let’s teach the children what phone number they should dial if they smell smoke.”
Sam waited for Cinder to bark out 911, like she’d done countless times before.
And waited.
And waited some more.
“Cinder, you know the answer. What number should the kids dial if they smell smoke?” he prompted, taking great care to enunciate in case the Dalmatian was having trouble hearing him over the roar of the Atlantic Ocean.
Could she have an ear infection? That would explain a lot.
