Page 31 of Every Little Kiss
CHAPTER 7
“I heard you had a magical touch with the ladies,” Dorothy Pines, current citizen in need, said, and Ford sighed.
He wanted to argue that it wasn’t the touch that was magical but which lady he was touching that was the game changer. But since he was on the job, and the lady in question was a fifty-pound bulldog named Bubbles who’d gotten herself stuck in an air vent, he let it go.
It was Thursday, his shift was coming to a close, and this was the most exciting thing to happen to him since running into Liv on the beach three days ago. Not that he’d seen her since. She’d been playing a one-sided game of Hide-from-the-Neighbor.
On Tuesday she’d been watering her flowers when Ford stepped out on the deck. Liv dove behind the planter, only giving him a reluctant wave when Bullseye sniffed her out for a morning high five to the backside.
Yesterday, he’d spotted her pulling up to get Paxton from camp. She took one look at Ford and bolted into the Bear Claw as if hellhounds were on her heels.
“I’d suggest waiting until she comes out on her own,” Ford said, repeating the same advice he’d given on the phone when Dorothy had asked to speak with the department’s new K-9 rescue specialist. Harris had sent her call Ford’s way, and Ford had thanked him with the finger.
Now he was ass up, with his head stuck in a wall vent, trying to sweet-talk a tank of a dog wearing a tealNAMAS-STAYtank top with matching booties to come out of her hiding spot, while a cluster of grannies in sweatbands and blue tips gathered around to watch the show.
“And here I thought you were the kind of man to take charge,” Dorothy clucked.
Ford straightened to find Dorothy right behind him—and Bullseye blinking longingly up at her. “I’m smart enough to know when a woman needs time to warm up,” he said. “And she doesn’t want me anywhere near her ham hock.”
“Well, if we leave her in there, she’ll keep gnawing on that ham hock until her rump is too big to squeeze back out of the hole.” Dorothy, relying heavily on the wall for balance, did some kind of front-bending yoga pose, then stuck the top half of her body inside the vent.
The bottom half had Ford averting his gaze. Covered in neon-green spandex and body glitter, Dorothy was showing enough saggy skin to make Ford shiver. Granted, she was the senior instructor at Downward-Facing Dog, a pet-friendly yoga studio on the west side of town. Senior in age, not experience, Ford suspected when she almost got herself stuck.
“Depending on how much she’s already eaten, you may have to grease her up to get her out,” an older woman in a leopard-print leotard and pearls said ever so helpfully from behind.
Bubbles had the body of a snow globe and the stubbornness of a pit bull, so Ford feared that if he didn’t do something to appease Dorothy, he’d be called back out to grease down the dog and owner.
“How about I call animal control?” Ford offered. “They have these poles with leashes on the end. Maybe we can drag her out.”
“She’ll take one look at that dogcatcher’s pole and dig her heels in,” Dorothy said, standing back up. “It would be like trying to pull an elephant through a straw! Can you imagine?”
Ford took in the older woman’s neon-green body suit and pink leg warmers and had a pretty good idea.
“You don’t want a hairless dog walking the neighborhood, do you?” she asked.
“Uh, no, ma’am.”
“Smart boy,” she praised with a smile and a pat—to his tush. “That’s why we called you and not animal control, right, ladies?”
Ten sets of silver halos bobbed in unison, and someone from the back said, “Also because we wanted to see if the town’s Best Buns were as tight as they looked on Facebook.”
Ford remembered the flash at the store the other day and ran a hand through his hair. “Like I explained to you on the phone, search and rescue doesn’t handle animal cases.”
“Well, Patty said you found her dog, LuLu, in record time, swore that it was a miraculous thing to watch.”
Ford looked at the Taser on his hip, because that would be less painful than his week. Ever since word spread that he had rescued Ms.Moberly’s dog, people in town had started referring to him as Officer Doolittle. Even the guys at the station had taken to hanging pictures of pets in costume on his locker.
“LuLu was hiding under Ms.Moberly’s bed, chewing on a chocolate bar,” Ford explained. “Bullseye here sniffed her out in two minutes flat. Nothing miraculous about that.”
“Doesn’t matter—it’s all Wag and Waddle can talk about,” she said, sounding put out. “Bubbles and I showed up to our weekly park date, and not a single person mentioned her new pageant outfit. They were too busy yapping about LuLu’s return, as if Jesus himself had appeared with a doggy biscuit to give her the strength to hold on.”
“That’s some story,” Ford mused.
“A winning story,” Dorothy said. “Then a few days later, my Bubbles, last year’s Wagon Days Darling runner-up, winds up in a grimy vent gnawing on a stolen slab of ham big enough to feed a whale. Which is what she’ll look like if we don’t get her out of there. This is her year, and Patty knows how hard Bubbles has been working to get her figure back after the last batch of puppies.”
Ah, Christ.Ford knew where this was going. In fact, the entire situation was making his head spin. Or maybe it was all the sweatbands and saggy breasts on display. Either way, Harris was in for a come-to-Jesus meeting when he got back to the station. “So you think Ms.Moberly stuck Bubbles in the air vent?”
“No,” she said on a sniffle, and Ford cupped the bill of his hat. “Bubbles went in there on her own to get a few minutes’ peace from the demands of motherhood. But I think Patty saw the human-interest angle, knew it would give us an edge with the mommy demographic, and threw in the hot ham hock when I disappeared to call you.”
