laughed, shaking her head. ‘No, he sure didn’t. Or if he did, I didn’t catch it. I thought you’d locked some kid up in here!’ She put her hand to her chest, inhaling and exhaling dramatically.
Mick grinned, but his eyes were wide. ‘Cripes! I wouldn’t do that, ma’am. I felt bad enough locking this poor little thing in here. See? I gave her a towel over there for her t’lay on, and my old bear, Mr Snuppy. But she’s still scared silly, poor thing.’
Shelly looked at the dog. ‘What did you say her name is? The dog’s?’
‘M.J. Well, that’s what they call her. She’s got some fancy long name, but I can’t remember it.’
She was kind of pretty, but also kind of ugly, thought Shelly. She had a beautiful charcoal-gray coat, with four white paws, each looking like it had been carefully and exactly dipped into a can of white paint, a matching thin blaze of white down her nose. Her best feature, in Shelly’s opinion, was the tiny white tip on her tail. But she was so skinny, such a wisp of a thing, her features so pointy and bony, from snout to tail, ears to toenails, that she looked like she was only part dog, the rest of her genes contributed by a lanky rat. The poor thing had plastered herself into the corner, her bony narrowness seeming expressly made to fit neatly into a corner. She had the kind of ears that looked as if they were turned inside out, pushed flat against the back of her long, thin neck. She was hiding behind the porcelain pedestal of the toilet, her feet tightly together under her, her tail wrapped securely around them, every part of her quivering, as if she was experiencing her own personal earthquake.
‘C’mere, M.J.’ Mick was squatting now, snapping his fingers lightly, which only made the dog turn her head toward the wall.
Shelly’s heart constricted. Well, maybe they could take this little thing to her owner. Her ‘mother’. Shelly chuckled, shaking her head. Candy wasn’t a porn star! Tailhound, for crying out loud, referred to her love of dogs. Whips4us. Of course! Shelly realized that the dog must be a Whippet. But Shelly’s neighbor in New York had had Whippets, and this dog seemed too small. She wondered if it was a puppy, or maybe there was a sub-breed, Miniature Whippet. Either way, maybe they could help the little dog out. She was sure Meg and C.C., both being gaa-gaa over babies and animals of all kinds, would be willing.
‘So when the suitcase guys finally figured out the kennel door was open, M.J. had skedaddled,’ explained Mick to the assembled group in the restaurant. ‘She was prolly just so scared, she didn’t even know where she was running to. Just ran and ran. Kirby found her in the bushes next to his shop.’
‘Kirby is the guy who brought the alternator,’ Shelly explained to C.C. and Meg.
By the time she and Mick had brought M.J. over to the restaurant, the two women were on their second cups of coffee and just starting in on their breakfasts. As Shelly had guessed, a dinner-plate-sized waffle with an egg on the top, both awash in syrup, for C.C., and a small fruit plate for Meg. Shelly was sitting next to C.C., Meg opposite. Mick and Purdy had each pulled up a chair. C.C. pinched off a tiny corner of her waffle and fed it to M.J., who had been on C.C.’s lap from the moment she’d seen her. ‘Cookie? Yummy!’ C.C. whispered, as the trembling dog tentatively took the treat and ate it.
Shelly continued explaining: ‘So when Mick mentioned to Kirby that the three of us needed to get on the road again as soon as possible because we were headed to Tennessee, Kirby offered to bring the part over himself. He figured he’d found a ride home for M.J.’
‘Kirby’s delivering parts to Coryville today, but says he’ll stop back by for M.J. tonight if you ladies can’t take her,’ said Mick. ‘But if you can, he’s willing to split the reward, sixty-forty, with you ladies getting the bigger half, since you’ll be driving her home. That’d more than cover the cost of the alternator and labor. You’d have half your share left over.’
Shelly caught Meg’s teacher’s grimace at ‘the bigger half’. Meg smiled at being caught, then poked her fork hard into a grape she’d been chasing around her plate. Shelly patted M.J. in C.C.’s lap. The dog was clearly enjoying her perch on C.C.’s ample lap, though Shelly wondered how comfortable she could be in the leash and harness that Mick had fashioned. It appeared he’d used yards of twine, making M.J. look like something on which a very small and very inept cowboy had practiced calf-roping. C.C. held the end of the twine leash tightly in one hand, her fork in the other. No one wanted to take a chance on M.J. running away again. But Shelly winced, looking at the harness. The loops and knots of twine looked scratchy. They would have to stop and buy her a proper harness and leash as soon as they hit civilization again.
‘But how did she get loose in the first place?’ Meg asked.
‘This here explains. Kirby gave me this.’ Mick pulled a neatly folded newspaper clipping from his jumpsuit pocket and smoothed it on the table. As Purdy left to tend to some other customers, Mick read the article aloud.
‘Greyhound Takes Off Ahead of Schedule.’
‘A four-year-old Italian Greyhound [Ah-ha, thought Shelly] dog escaped from her kennel on the tarmac of the Quad City Airport on Saturday afternoon, prior to flying home to Kentucky after a local dog show. The dog, called M.J., but registered under the name of “Mary Josephine Fair Maiden Made-You-Look,” belongs to Candy Suddle of Lexington, Kentucky. Suddle and her dog were returning home after competing in the preliminary rounds of a dog agility competition. The kennel was about to be loaded into the aircraft when employees noticed the dog had somehow escaped. “I checked the door not twenty minutes before that, and she was in there and it was shut tight,” said Javon Cutch, an airline employee who was loading cargo that day for Mid-America Air.’
Mick stopped reading to take a sip of his very white coffee, and then bit into his cheese Danish. Shelly reached for the news clipping, asking, ‘May I?’ Mick nodded, pushing it toward her, and took another slurp of his coffee and another large bite of Danish. Purdy reappeared with the coffee pot, and refilled everyone’s cup, starting with C.C.’s. Shelly continued:
‘Suddle owns both Italian Greyhounds and Whippets, and shows them in various competitions around the country. “I can’t believe this happened,” said Suddle, in a phone interview. “I don’t know how she got out if someone didn’t let her out. The airline didn’t bother to tell me my dog wasn’t on the flight till we landed in Lexington.” Suddle said she is considering a lawsuit against the airline, and is offering a reward of five hundred dollars for the return of her dog. The airline said it would match her reward. There have been several unconfirmed sightings of the dog, each one at increasing distances from the airport. “It’s likely it’s her,” said Tanya Dean, spokeswoman for the Linn County Sheriff’s Office. “The descriptions all match hers, gray with white socks.” Dean urged area residents to keep an eye out for the dog, and to call the sheriff’s non-emergency number with any possible sightings.’
Shelly looked up. ‘And then it gives a phone number.’ She looked the little dog in the eye. ‘That is one helluva name ya got there, girl.’
‘What is it again?’ asked Meg, smiling.
Shelly traced her finger over the clipping till she found it. ‘Mary Josephine Fair Maiden Made-You-Look. Damn! For a name like that, I’d even consider getting married again.’
Meg laughed. C.C. leaned down, kissed the top of the little dog’s head. She spoke in a high-pitched voice. ‘Yesh she is, isn’t she? She is a verr-wee fair maiden! Aren’t you, widdle girl?’ The dog’s seemingly naked little tail thrummed against C.C.’s stomach. M.J. lifted her snout and licked her chin, making C.C. giggle. Still in a baby-voice she added, ‘Oooo! Tank you for da kisses, widdle girrr!’
Shelly sighed loudly, placing her palms on the table. ‘Well, for six hundred bucks I’m willing to take the dog with us and drop her off in Kentucky.’ She wagged her finger playfully at C.C. ‘But we’re dropping you off too if you talk baby-talk the whole way.’ C.C. laughed with everyone else, then stuck her tongue out at her, making them all laugh again.
Shelly knew it was crazy, but she would swear