“I didn’t get nothing either,” said Rufus. “And now we missed a whole day of training for our show.” He didn’t look happy, and neither did Fifi, though the latter wasn’t overly concerned about the show, it seemed. And as she drew me aside, she explained why this was.
“I’ve decided not to take part in the show,” she said.
“But why?” I said. “I thought you were so excited?”
“I was, until I saw one of those shows on TV. It’s just a bunch of show dogs, isn’t it?”
“Well, yes,” I said. “That’s the whole point.”
“I don’t want to be a show dog. Being primped and prepped, and having to jump through hoops like a moron? No, thank you very much. It’s just so degrading, Max. As if all we’re good for is to look pretty in front of a crowd. Now if they’d ask me about the books I like to read, or the songsI like to sing, or even my political views or my personal philosophy. But no, it’s all about good looks. Yuck.”
She returned to the rest of the pack, who were delivering their progress report to Harriet, who dutifully translated everything to Odelia. It soon became clear that there actually wasn’t all that much to report. And so the briefing was over very quickly, and then it was time to head on out and return home.
As Dooley and I rode in the car with Odelia and Chase, and so did Harriet and Brutus, along with Fifi and Rufus, we talked about the bum we’d caught in the woods, and how we’d almost ended up in his pot. And as Dooley related the story in vivid detail, I couldn’t shake the feeling this meeting meant something.
But what? And why?
CHAPTER 32
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“I’m worried, Scarlett,” said Vesta as they traveled back in her car—or rather her daughter’s car, which she had more or less confiscated. “And I’m troubled.”
“Me, too,” Scarlett said as she checked her feet. She turned to Tex, who was riding in the back. “Can you give me something for these, Tex, sweetie? I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to walk again.”
“I’ll take a look at them later, if you want,” said Tex, who seemed a million miles away.
“My mind is not at ease,” Vesta continued what practically amounted to a monologue, since Scarlett was only concerned with her painful feet, and Tex might just as well have been on a different planet for all the attention he paid her. “Odelia acted as if she didn’t know what I was talking about, but I’m not fooled. No, sir, I am not.”
“Did you just call me sir?” asked Scarlett as she massaged her feet.
And then it hit her.“You know what we should do? Go straight to the source! Yes, sir!”
“Again with the sir,” said Scarlett. “And what source are you talking about?”
“The source of trouble, of course. Clearly Odelia has been seduced by this billionaire, and so he can just as easily disseduce her, or is it unseduce?”
“Neither, I would say,” said Scarlett.
“What do you think, Tex?” asked Vesta.
Tex once again emerged as if from a dream.“Mh?” he said.
“I said we should go straight to the source of the problem. Root it out.”
“Excellent idea,” said Tex. “Chop off their heads, you think? Smush them?”
“I wish,” said Vesta. “But Alec wouldn’t take kindly to his mother chopping off the head of a billionaire. No, we just have to find something we can hold over the guy.”
“Blackmail, you mean?” asked Scarlett, who’d fished a toffee from the glove compartment and was sucking on it with visible delight.
“I wouldn’t call it blackmail, exactly. So what do we have on the guy?”
“Nothing,” said Scarlett. “As far as I can tell, Edward Dexter is squeaky clean.”
“Wasn’t there a scandal of some kind? Something about insider trading?”
“I wouldn’t go there, if I were you, Vesta,” said Scarlett. I don’t even understand what that is all about, much less use it to make the guy break up with Odelia.”
Tex once more emerged as if from a trance, shaking his head like a dog.“Wait, what? Who’s breaking up with Odelia?”
“Oh, do pay attention, Tex,” said Vesta. “We’re trying to find something we can use to make Dexter break up with Odelia. Only we don’t know him well enough.”
“No, I guess we don’t,” said Tex, and once more returned to la-la land.
“Which is why we need to do some digging,” said Vesta, following her train of thought to its logical conclusion. “Which means…” And then she got one of those brainwaves you always read so much about, but which so rarely happen to ordinary folk like her. “I’ve got it!” she shouted, causing Tex almost to hit the ceiling, and Scarlett to give her frowny looks.
“Will you please keep your eyes on the road?” said her friend. “If you keep this up we’ll end up in a ditch.”
“All we have to do is find something incriminating. Doesn’t matter what. Anything that this Dexter fellow doesn’t want the world to know.”
“I think we already established that we don’t know him well enough to have that kind of dirt on him.”
“No, but we know where to find it, don’t we?”
“We do?”
“Of course! Where do people keep the stuff they don’t want anyone to know about?”
“Um… buried in the backyard?”
“Oh, please cooperate, Scarlett,” said Vesta, “and use that brain of yours.”
“I am using my brain. Only it’s very hard to focus when your feet are killing you.”
“In his safe, that’s where. So we break into his house, burgle his safe, find something incriminating, and then we pay him a visit, promising not to tell anyone about what we found, on the condition that he never darken our doorstep again.” She beamed at her friend, who immediately grabbed the wheel and yanked it to the right.
“Phew,” said Scarlett. “Almost one less cyclist in the world. And what was all that about burgling a safe?”
“You and I are going to break into Edward Dexter’s house tonight. We find what we need and get out again. Easy peasy!”
“Easy peasy, my ass. I’ve never burgled a safe in my life, and I’ll bet this guy has a world-class alarm system.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” she said, not having foreseen this snag. Alarm systems were a nuisance. Unless… She glanced in the rearview mirror at her son-in-law, who once again had disappeared in his own mind, such as it was.
“Tex!”
Tex jumped.“Eh?”
“I have a very important assignment for you.”
“You have?”
“Yes, so listen very carefully. I want you and Marge to pay a visit to Edward Dexter tonight.”
“Dexter? Who’s Dexter?”
“Your daughter’s secret lover, and possibly your future son-in-law if we don’t put a stop to this nonsense right speedily!”
Tex grimaced.“I’d totally forgotten about Dexter.”
“So you and Marge pay a visit to Dexter tonight. You tell him that you want to meet your daughter’s new boyfriend.”
“I can’t tell him that!” said Tex.
“Okay, so then invent some other story. The important thing is that you leave the front door open, so Scarlett and I can easily walk in. And while you keep the guy occupied in the living room, or one of his rooms at any rate, we’ll go and look for his safe, and burgle it!”
“You still haven’t told me how we’re going to get into the guy’s safe,” said Scarlett, as she had transferred her attention from her painful feet to the fingernail that had gone AWOL.
“Oh, don’t worry about that. We’ll figure it out as we go along. I mean, how hard can it be, right?” When Scarlett gave her a look of utter incredulity, she said, “We’ll google it! YouTube is probably full of videos on how to burgle a safe.”
“Oh, sure. We’ll watch a YouTube video while we break into the safe of one of the richest men on the planet. Easy peasy.”
“Sarcasm,” said Vesta. “Not a good look, Scarlett.”
“I don’t care how it looks. I don’t want to end up in jail again.”