Barking Detective 04 - The Chihuahua Always Sniffs Twice (20 page)

Jimmy G had been flattered when Jillian took him by the hand and led him away from the booth, after asking the vendor next door to keep an eye on her merchandise. He was keeping his eye on her as she threaded her way through the crowds, through the barn, and through the garden behind it, looking back over her shoulder frequently as if she was afraid they were being followed. He assumed she was interested in a roll in the hay, but he didn’t see how they were going to manage that with all the people around. Even behind the barn, a few tourists had gotten separated from the hordes in front and were wandering around, like lost ants off the trail, poking their noses into the greenhouse and peering into the henhouse.

“Where are we going, doll?” Jimmy G asked.

“Shhh! It’s a secret,” said Jillian, putting one finger to her lips.

Well, fine. Jimmy G didn’t have anything to do except be led around by a gorgeous dame. He saw they were heading toward the back of the property along the fence line, which was planted on the other side with bamboo. But then they reached a little gate, which swung open and permitted them entry into the yard next door. He could see the back of a big house, designed to look like an English cottage, only on a grand scale, and a formal garden bordered by trimmed hedges.

“I just discovered the gate today,” Jillian said, “while watching Clara.”

That didn’t mean anything to Jimmy G, but he could see the logic: why not sneak into the next-door neighbor’s yard for a romantic rendezvous. This was one bold chick, but Jimmy G liked that! He probably wouldn’t admit it, if anyone asked, but Jimmy G liked dames who took charge.

Jillian ducked down behind a hedge and motioned for Jimmy G to join her.

“Here goes!” thought Jimmy G, sliding in beside her and tumbling her down into the soft grass. He tried to kiss her but, to his surprise, she hauled off and punched him in the nose

“What?” he sat up, holding his schnoz, which was bleeding.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked, rearranging her top. Jimmy G’s enthusiastic embrace had caused a wardrobe malfunction.

“I thought that’s what you wanted,” he said, wiping at his nose with his handkerchief.

“No, stupid. I just want your weapon!” And Jillian made a lunge for the gun in his shoulder holster.

Jimmy G pushed her back. “No one touches Jimmy G’s weapon!” he said.

“Fine!” she said, with a pretty pout. “Then you will have to shoot the dogs!”

“What are you talking about?”

“Those stupid dogs. They’ll be coming out the door any minute now. Yolanda has them trained like clockwork. They go out right after lunch. And I want you to shoot them!”

Jimmy G worked that out in his mind. “So you’re the one who’s been trying to attack the dogs,” he said.

“Yes, and it hasn’t worked. I tried putting poison in some cookies, and the stupid dog walker noticed the cookies and wouldn’t let the dogs eat them. How was I supposed to know that chocolate is dangerous for dogs?”

“Jimmy G wouldn’t have known that either,” he said, trying to be sympathetic.

“And then I tried shooting them with a rifle, but I missed.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I’m not very good with guns.”

Jimmy G remembered the conversation in the bar the night he met Jillian. “That was you? You told me someone got shot.”

“Yes, some stupid farmworker got in the way while I was trying to shoot the dogs.” Jillian tossed her hair back. “So you can see why I need you, Mr. Dangerous.” She looked at him coquettishly. “When I get the fortune, I’ll pay you. I’ll pay you a lot.” She ran her hand along his arm.

Jimmy G hesitated, trying to buy time.

“Why are you so angry at the dogs?”

“First, they got all my mother’s love. Then they got all her money. It’s not fair!”

Jimmy G tried to think. He was aware of the clock ticking down. The dogs would be coming out any minute, and Jillian expected him to do something. Jimmy G was willing to do a lot of things, but shooting dogs was not one of them.

He came up with an idea. “Well, Jimmy G can handle this assignment,” he said. “But you shouldn’t be anywhere around. So how about you go back to your booth to establish an alibi, and Jimmy G will meet you there.”

Jillian sulked but finally agreed when Jimmy G pointed out that the fortune would not do her much good if she ended up in jail. He was shaking by the time she wandered off. What now? He couldn’t shoot dogs. He had to get out of there. He waited for three minutes, five minutes, ten minutes. Then he figured enough time had passed. He would make up a story, tell Jillian that he had taken care of the dogs, and then figure out what to do next.

He tiptoed out of the yard—the dogs still had not made their postprandial appearance—and made his way back to Jillian’s booth. And to his shock, Jillian wasn’t there. Instead he saw his girl Friday holding a huge nude portrait of him. He had to admit, just for a second, that he looked pretty darn hot.

Then he ordered her to put it down and cover it up! “What are you doing here?” he asked. “Where’s Jillian?”

“We haven’t seen her,” said Geri, nodding at Felix, who nodded at Jimmy G. It was weird to see his operative without her little dog.

“Where’s the rat-dog?” he said.

“Over at the house next door, with the other dogs,” she said.

Jimmy G got a sinking feeling in his stomach. “Jillian is trying to kill the dogs,” he said. “She wanted me to shoot them.”

“I know!” said Geri. “I just figured that out. We’ve got to call the police.”

“What we have to do is find her!” said Felix. “Before something happens to the dogs!”

Felix and I looked at each other. We both realized at the same moment that our dogs were with the cocker spaniels Jillian was trying to kill.

“Where was she the last time you saw her?” I asked Jimmy G.

“By the gate,” he said, pointing toward the back of the property.

“We’ve got to find her!” I told him.

And Felix and I took off running. But we were a bit late. Before we had even pushed our way through the crowds on the lawn, we started hearing screaming and barking, and we caught glimpses of cocker spaniels running by, their ears flapping, their tails wagging. They seemed to be having a marvelous time.

The confusion they caused was mammoth. People were dropping plates of food, and cocker spaniels were stopping to chow down. Mothers were snatching up children, who were being licked in the face by the rogue dogs.

“Geri! Geri! Geri!” Pepe came running up to me, doing jumping jacks against my shins. “The dogs are loose!”

“I know!” I said. “How did it happen?”

“Well, Yolanda let the dogs out after lunch,” Pepe said. “And I took Phoebe aside for a little romantic interlude. Suddenly we heard all this barking, and when we untangled ourselves, we saw that Jillian had opened the gate and was luring the cocker spaniels through it with strips of chicken. We went running at them, telling them to stay put, but they didn’t listen.”

“Where is Phoebe now?” I asked.

“She is trying to round them up. And so must we!” he yelled. “They are going off like popcorn in all directions! They might get hurt—there is no time to lose!”

It was hard to get a good idea of what was going on because of all the people in the way. You could get a glimpse of the havoc only by the way it rippled through the crowd, in a wave of yelling or people scattering.

When I ran out onto the driveway, I finally had a better understanding of what was going on. The cocker spaniels were now loose in the lavender fields, being chased by various people and various dogs.

I saw the golden cocker, Queen Mary, cornered by Phoebe in the U-Pick section of the lavender fields, but only momentarily, because Queen Mary suddenly changed direction and almost tripped a woman and her kid who were in the way. The kid, no more than three, dropped his ice cream cone and started crying. But he cried even louder when his mom’s ice cream cone also went airborne and landed splat on top of his head.

Making matters worse, every one of the dogs suddenly came tearing up out of the fields and went pell-mell through the line of booths, zigzagging as they darted in and out of them. One booth, constructed like an open tent, came crashing down, causing a few choice epithets from its occupant, a guy selling different colored bottles of lavender oil that went caroming around like so many loose marbles.

Even worse, Jay chased one of the dogs—it looked like James, the black cocker spaniel—toward the chicken coop, only James ducked under it at the last minute. This caused the coop’s door to fly open, and a dozen or more chickens got loose and joined the wild scene, all clucking and squawking and flapping as they dodged people and dogs. That’s when we noticed Fuzzy; she was almost nose to beak with a big rooster and had an “I’m hungry for KFC” look in her eyes.

“Fuzzy!” screamed Felix, striding toward her. “Leave that chicken alone! Come!”

The rooster changed Fuzzy’s mind by giving her a couple quick pecks to the snout. She yelped and made a beeline to Felix.

Meanwhile, Pepe and Phoebe had managed to get all the dogs headed in the same direction. The problem was that said direction was straight out toward the road. To make matters worse, Jillian had joined Pepe and Phoebe as they went after the cockers. She was red in the face and screaming as she waved her arms at them.

“Stupid dogs!” she hollered. “I’m going to get you!”

“Do something!” Pepe told me as he and Phoebe went running past me. “She is making them head for the highway.”

“Jillian!” I yelled, almost catching up with her. “Stop! They’ll go into traffic and get hurt!”

“Yes, stop!” It was Felix. He and Fuzzy were just behind me now.

Over to my right, I saw Clara and Jay chasing after the dogs. Lionel and Kevin were not far behind them.

“That’s my plan!” shrieked Jillian as the cockers neared the road and began to spread out, no longer in a tight pack.

Everything was utterly frenzied. Barking, yipping, and screaming—the long fur of the cockers flying as they ran—not to mention my leaping heart, since it looked like the dogs would surely run into the cars that were speeding by the long line of buses.

Speaking of the buses, all four of them were starting their engines and had both their front and back doors still open.

“Get the dogs on the buses!” I yelled at Pepe. They would be safer there than running in the street.

He must have conveyed the message to Phoebe and Fuzzy because suddenly each of them singled out one of the dogs and herded it toward a bus. James jumped on the first bus and Queen Mary got into the second bus. That left just two dogs on their own. Jillian made a beeline for one of them, trying to scare it into the street. The first two buses closed their doors and pulled out onto the highway.

“Can you stop her?” I asked Jimmy G as he went galloping by.

“Jimmy G will try!” he said.

In my haste, I tripped and almost fell down, but Felix caught me. As I looked up, Jillian followed Henry onto the second-to-last bus. The driver closed the doors and drove off.

“Oh, no,” I said as the last of the cocker spaniels, Victoria, jumped through the rear door of the one bus still there. “We’ve got to get her off the bus!” I told Felix and Jimmy G.

“
No problema
,” Pepe told me. He hopped aboard the bus. I could hear the bus driver yelling something. He got up, and I could see him heading toward the back of the bus. He must have been trying to shoo the dogs off the bus.

And he was successful. Pepe and Victoria ran off the bus through its back door, the driver right behind them. But Victoria ran straightaway to the bus’s front door and reboarded it, Pepe following her right back aboard, yelling, “No!
Perro estupido!
”

As the driver stood scratching his head at the rear of the bus, I said, “We’ve got to catch up with those buses!”

“Follow Jimmy G!” said my boss. “He drove bigger than this in Iraq.” Moving faster than I thought he could, Jimmy G jumped in and took a seat behind the steering wheel. “Come on!” he told me.

There was no time to think, and Pepe and I got in with him. But Jimmy G closed the doors just as Felix tried to join us.

“Hey!” said Felix, looking in at us and pounding on the closed door.

“Hey!” yelled the bus driver, also looking in and pounding on the door. “That’s my bus!”

Jimmy G was waiting for no one. As he pulled out, Felix yelled, “We’ll take my car and be right behind you!” He and Fuzzy ran off as we merged into traffic.

Jimmy G gunned it, and we picked up speed.

“Follow that bus!” Pepe yelled at our boss, the bus that left before us barely visible far ahead. Then my dog turned to me. “I have always wanted to say that, Geri,” he said. “I know the phrase is really ‘Follow that car,’ but it is close enough.”

I sat in the jump seat across from Jimmy G, holding Pepe up so he could see the road ahead. Victoria sat in the seat behind us, looking out the window as the scenery went by, her ears flapping in the breeze.

“Love this automatic transmission,” said the boss. “Wish Jimmy G had had one during the war.”

“
Vamonos! Vamonos!
” Pepe told him.

“He wants you to go faster,” I said.

“Who? The rat-dog? Tell him this tub’s going fast as it can.”

“There are three buses that left ahead of us,” I said. “I wonder where they’re all going.”

“And those crazy dogs are on all of them,” said the boss. “Well, all we can do is follow our noses. Right now, Jimmy G’s nose is glued to the one ahead.”

The road we were on was a little curvy and had a few up and downs. At one of the rises, we saw two buses ahead of us, and the one in the lead turned off when it came to a Y in the road.

“Which one to follow?” asked Pepe.

“We’ve got to follow the one with Jillian on it. She’s dangerous to dogs!”

“She called Jimmy G Mr. Dangerous,” said Jimmy G. He sounded wistful.

“What were you doing with her anyway?” I asked.

“Some investigation,” said Jimmy G. “Just trying to get the lay of the land.”

“Everyone tells me you’re working for the judge,” I said.

“That’s what Jimmy G wanted them to think,” he said.

Another lavender farm came into view. A crowd of people stood at the edge of the road, waiting to be picked up to continue their tour.

The bus we were following just passed them by. When we also passed them by, I looked behind us and saw a few people shaking their fists at us.

We came to another Y in the road, and the bus we were after turned off to the left, just as the other bus had done. We took the turn with too much speed—I could feel the bus hunker down on the driver’s side tires and was afraid we were going to roll over. Thank goodness we righted ourselves just in time.

“Ah,” said Pepe. “That was
muy
exciting! I had a chase like this when I worked with the
federales
going after the drug cartel.”

I took a deep breath and looked out the rear window. I’d almost forgotten that Felix said he’d follow us in his car, and I hoped I’d see him. When I spotted his car a couple hundred yards back, I felt much better.

“We are heading back toward town,” said Pepe.

“How do you know?” I asked, looking around at the rolling, straw-colored fields.

“We
perros
have a keen sense of direction,” my dog told me. “How else do you think my wolfy ancestors tracked bison across the Great Plains?”

I had no answer for that but was soon relieved to see that Pepe was right. Hot on the tail of the bus in front of us, we took another hard turn, then looped around through a stand of trees, and the fairgrounds came into sight. There were banners everywhere and crowds of people walking toward the center of activity.

The bus we followed pulled up onto the grassy field in front of the fairgrounds and came to a stop. The other three buses were already there. We rolled to a stop beside them. As we all got out, we could hear the various bus drivers cajoling their canine stowaways to get off their buses.

“We must round those cockers up,
pronto,
” Pepe told me.

People started disembarking from the buses. I saw that Kevin had managed to get on one of the buses, and was clutching James, the black cocker spaniel. Queen Mary, the golden cocker spaniel, went running off another bus, pursued by a little girl who was crying, “Mommy, I want that doggie.”

Felix drove up just then and got out with Fuzzy.

“What a wild ride,” he told me.

“What now?” asked Jimmy G, poking a cigar in his mouth.

Jillian got off one of the buses, dragging Henry by the scruff of his neck.

“Hey!” said Pepe. “Unhand that dog!”