“What if human beauty pageants were like dog shows? Think about it! The judges could check out any part of your anatomy. And they would make you jog around the ring, naked! You would have to prove you had the ‘right’ heritage to be considered beautiful. Could any of you be ‘best in show?”
Deely had a point. An obscure and irrelevant point as far as this crowd was concerned. She was still holding the megaphone to her lips when I tapped her shoulder and suggested she step away from the door before someone called Security. Someone like Perry Stiles.
Then I felt a tap on my shoulder. I spun around to face Kori Davies. She looked past me at Deely.
“You got cojones, sister! I like your style.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” replied Deely.
Hastily I made the introductions. “Kori, this is Deely Smarr, former Coast Guard nanny and founding Flegger. Deely, this is Kori Davies. She’s… um-”
“I’m a Bad Example,” Kori said. “But I have way more fun than those tight-asses.”
She indicated the people in the arena… who were moving rapidly toward us. Like a lynch mob.
“Silverado ran away,” I told Kori. “With Abra.”
“Yeah. I heard.”
Kori blew a whopping big pink bubble. Angry Afghan hound fanciers, led by Perry Stiles, were closing in on us; I could almost see the whites of their eyes. Standing between Deely the protestor and Kori the rogue handler suddenly seemed like a bad idea.
Deely spoke into her megaphone again: “We come in peace, but we stand in opposition! We see you for who you are: two-legged animals enslaving four-legged animals! Repent now! Set your fellow creatures free!”
“You don’t really mean that, do you?” I whispered. “If they set the dogs free, they’d be strays.”
“Not ‘strays,’” Deely corrected me. “Independents. Animals in possession of their full rights and privileges.”
“Yeah, well, Abra and her brand-new beau are ‘independents’ already. They set themselves free.”
“I know,” Deely said. “Dr. David and I saw them run by while we were setting up.”
Before I could ask which way they had gone, Kori tugged on Deely’s arm.
“Perry Stiles is gonna throw your ass in the slammer!”
“Not if I can help it, ma’am. I’m wearing running shoes.”
“Me, too,” Kori said. “Let’s get the hell out of here!”
I waved at Perry, and then I ran, too.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Over my shoulder, I shouted to Perry Stiles, “Meet you at the concession stand!”
I didn’t know if he heard me. Kori and Deely had set quite a pace. I was pushing hard to catch up. They had shot off toward the front of the exhibit hall, in the opposite direction one would take to reach the spot where Ramona was shot. The exhibit hall faced the RV lot and the back of the Barnyard Inn. Although the Midwest Afghan Hound Specialty was under way, a few off-duty show dogs were parked in outdoor crates near cottage-sized vehicles. They howled as we hove into view. Poor beasts. If they were anything like Abra, and somewhere under those perfect glossy coats they had to be, they just wanted to join in the run.
Deely and Kori reached the lot well before I did. Although I wanted to blame my lagging speed on my footwear, I recognized the real culprit: hunger. I’d hardly eaten since leaving Magnet Springs.
Who was I kidding? The true villain was age. Hunger was just an accomplice. Running behind Kori and Deely, who were in their early twenties, I felt more decrepit than my mother. Pumping my thirty-four-year-old legs as hard as I could didn’t promise speed. It promised sore muscles and a stinging dose of reality. I wasn’t young anymore. I was sliding toward middle age.
By the time I reached Deely and Kori, they’d already gotten their wind back-if they’d ever lost it. Deely was introducing Kori to Dr. David, who stood on a makeshift stage surrounded by Fleggers. I knew they were all Fleggers because everybody wore bright yellow shirts with black block letters that proclaimed
YOUR DOGS DESERVE DIGNITY.
WHY MAKE THEM COMPETE IN
AN EVENT YOU COULDN’T WIN?
BAN CANINE BEAUTY PAGEANTS!
I jogged up to the edge of the stage and promptly doubled over, gasping for breath.
“Hewwo, Whiskey,” said Dr. David with his signature speech impediment. Allow me to translate the rest of his remarks: “Told you we’d be here! Sorry to hear about Abra running away. Again. Wish we could help.”
“Oh, please help!” I panted. “Please, please help!”
Around Magnet Springs, Dr. David-in his Animal Ambulance- was the dogcatcher of last resort. I tried not to count the number of times he’d assisted me in looking for Abra.
The good vet leaned down from the stage.
“I don’t think you understand. Deely and I are here in an official capacity. We can’t retrieve the very dogs we admonish owners to set free!”
“Oh shit.”
This time finding Abra was going to be entirely up to me. And I didn’t know the territory.
“But we can tell you which way the dogs went,” Deely said helpfully.
She pointed toward the Barnyard Inn. We were looking at the back of the building, the section that housed my room. The motel faced Route 20.
“Did they cross the highway or follow it?” I asked without enthusiasm.
“Neither,” Deely said. “They’re in room 18.”
“What?”
“Yes, ma’am. Abra was chasing the big silvery dog, running loops around the RV lot-”
“Abra was chasing Silverado?” I interrupted. “When I last saw them, he was chasing her!”
“Not by the time they got here,” Deely said.
“That’s right,” Dr. David confirmed. “By then Abra had assumed her usual role as sexual aggressor.”
He pronounced it “sexuah aggwessah.” That made it sound even worse.
“The male dog-I think you called him Silverado?-left the RV lot and ran to the motel,” Deely continued. “Abra followed him in hot pursuit.”
No doubt.
“When Silverado scratched at the door of room 18,” Deely said, “somebody let them in.”
“Not room 18,” Kori said. “That can’t be right.”
“Yes, ma’am, I’m sure it is. Dr. David and I were both witnesses.”
The good vet nodded. So did the entire chorus of Fleggers arranged on the stage.
“Why couldn’t it be room 18?” I asked Kori.
“Because that’s my room. And I’m out here. Duh.”
“Somebody was in there ten minutes ago, ma’am,” said Deely. “We all saw it.”
Dr. David and his yellow-shirted compatriots agreed.
“The bitch set me up,” Kori muttered.
I assumed we weren’t talking about Abra anymore. Just to be certain, I asked.
“Who do you think I mean?” Kori snapped. “My favorite auntie! Susan wants to make damn sure everybody knows I’m a Bad Example. She’s getting back at me for winning that round!”
“Why would having Silverado in your room be wrong?” I said.
“Susan wants to make it look like I’m trying to steal him! First, I set him free. And then I hid him in my room. But she did it herself!”
“I don’t see how,” I said. “Even if Susan set him free, she couldn’t have been in your room to let him in. There was no time-“
“She got somebody to do it for her! Susan has ways of making people do whatever she wants.”
Kori narrowed her eyes and blew a bubble half the size of her head. I stepped back in case it exploded. No need. Kori deftly deflated it with her metal tongue stud and rolled the whole wad back into her mouth.