Maximum Security (A Dog Park Mystery) (2 page)

“Nerd.”

“That’s just mean.”

“But you’re real cute for a nerd,
Buttercup.”

“Gee, you say the nicest things,
George
.”

“Still mad?”

She blinked, aware her disagreeable
mood had evaporated. “No, why?”

“Because.” He tugged on a lock of
her hair, pulling her closer to him, then leaned in to bridge the
gap between them and closed his lips over hers. Kitty’s world
tilted. She fell through stars, kept falling as fireflies lit her
up from inside. She felt like a pop-bottle rocket with a lit
fuse.

She wrapped her arms around his
neck to save herself, anchoring to the warm reality of his tongue
in her mouth. He lowered to the blanket, taking her with him.
Burying his face in her neck, nibbling his way up to her ear and
sucking on the lobe, hot breath sending frissons of pleasure
through her. She made little mewling noises that had him smiling
against her skin.

Kitty lowered her arms and placed
her palms against the hot skin of his chest, tentatively exploring.
Joe leaned over her, his hair a curtain around his face, shutting
out everything except his gleaming eyes. As his hand slid up under
her top and the heat arrowed down inside her, she realized he was
right. She wasn’t going to do a thing that she didn’t want to
do.

Kitty never told anyone about that
Friday night. She spent the rest of the weekend cherishing the
sweet, secret ache between her legs. She lied to her friends and
said Joe had just given her a ride home. They thought it was bad
enough that she’d gotten into his truck. She was not about to admit
she’d given him her virginity.

Tom called her a whore for leaving
the party with Joe. She called him a drunk pig and broke up with
him. After she slapped him.

She played imaginary scenarios in
her head where she presented Joe to her friends as her new
boyfriend. These went badly, so she stopped.

She waited for Joe to
call.

The following Monday, she looked
for him at school. She found herself walking by the smoking area
when her classes were on the other side of the building. She stole
looks at the parking lot, searching for his truck. On Tuesday, her
mood sank.

She finally saw him as she arrived
for school on Wednesday. He was leaning against the building with
one foot propped on the wall, talking to his buddies. Her heart
lifted as she drew near and she sent him a tentative smile. He gave
her an inscrutable look and turned his back on her. She walked on
by, her face burning, mortified.

She didn’t let herself cry until
she got home and was able to shut herself up in her room, refusing
to come out until the following morning. She worried about
pregnancy for two weeks until her cramps came. And she hated Joe
with all the animosity shame could muster.

Lia Anderson unclipped her furry
trio in the dog park corral and hung their leashes on the fence.
She pulled a coiled training lead off her shoulder and attached it
to Max’s collar.

“Ha! Try getting away now,
Girlfriend.”

The Beagle-Boxer mix turned her
nut-brown eyes toward Lia and gave her a hurt look.

“That won’t work on me, so forget
it.” She leaned over the horde milling in front of the gate and
lifted the latch. Honey nosed the gate open and all three dogs
bolted. Twenty feet away, Max stumbled, halting at the end of the
lead. She did a one-eighty and glared at Lia.

“Sorry, Max, you’re on
lockdown.”

“Poor Max,” a willowy redhead
said, joining Lia.

“Bailey, don’t you start. She’s
been driving me crazy. She stays on the lead until I find the hole
in the fence.” Lia looked out over the park, morning sun piercing
the surrounding trees and shooting long shadows across the
grass.

“How are you going to do that?”
Bailey asked.

“Max is going to show me. Keep me
company while I walk the perimeter.”

The pair strolled along the back
slope of the four acre enclosure, parallel the fence separating the
dog park from the rest of Mount Airy Forest. Honey, a Golden
Retriever, stayed by Lia’s side while holding a convo with Bailey’s
Bloodhound, Kita. Lia’s silver Miniature Schnauzer, Chewy, sniffed
at Max, jumping up on her and provoking a game of chase. The game
was short, over when Max hit the end of the lead. Chewy quickly
discovered Max’s limits and stayed just beyond. He barked and
cavorted while Max pretended she didn’t care.

“Little Brat, you should be
ashamed of yourself,” Lia called, laughing.

“Can’t blame him for using every
advantage he’s got. All the other dogs are bigger than he is.”
Bailey punctuated this assessment with a long, graceful hand that
flitted like a bird when she talked.

“I suppose so, but it’s mean. Even
if Max does deserve to be kept tied up.”

Halfway along the fence line, Max
stopped and looked oh-so-casually over her shoulder, grinned and
bolted for the barrier. She succeeded in wiggling her forequarters
under the wire before Lia pulled the lead up short and stopped her
progress.

“Ha! Found it.” Lia reeled the
lead in as she approached the fence, keeping tension on it so Max
couldn’t complete her escape. Bailey lifted the bottom edge of the
field fencing while Lia knelt and pulled straight back on the lead.
Max rumbled in disgust and slowly backed up. Back in custody, she
gave Lia an affronted look, then lay down and sighed audibly as she
settled her head on her paws.

“She’s so expressive,” Bailey
commented.

“What she’s expressing now can’t
be repeated in polite company.”

“I see you found her way out,” Jim
said as he walked up. The retired engineer was a slight, grizzled
man with a large nose and a beard that defied all attempts at
grooming. Kind blue eyes floated in the rumpled bed of his face. He
always carried a walking stick that he’d made from a honeysuckle
branch.

Stumping along with his stick and
accompanied by his Border Collie, Fleece, he could have been Saint
Francis. Today he was also accompanied by a small Norfolk Terrier
mix named Chester who resembled an ambulatory dust mop. Chester
waddled up to Lia, sat up on his hind legs and licked her
nose.

Lia gave Chester a scratch and
stood up. “Her latest one, anyway. This was hidden by the grass.”
Keeping Max on a tight rein, Lia moved closer to the fence and
peered over. “Look how the ground drops away on the other side. How
are we going to fix that?”

“
Looks like Max
found another way out. You got some wire?” Jose asked, joining the
group.

“I gave it to you to fix the last
hole she found,” Lia said. “Then she got out yesterday and came
back with the carcass from someone’s turkey dinner. Jim had to
steal it away from her before she started a riot. Who eats turkey
in October?”

Jose considered the gap. “We could
pin it down somehow, maybe pile some wood in front of it so she
can’t get at it.”

“I’ve got camping gear in the
car,” Lia said. “How about tent stakes?”

“We can give it a shot. We’ll look
after Max while you get them. Got something to hammer them in with?
If you don’t, I think I’ve got something in the van,” Jose
said.

“I’ve got a rubber mallet,” Lia
offered.

“That’ll do ‘er.”

Lia handed Max’s lead to Jim, then
made a quick trip to her car trunk. She returned with a tote bag
containing a variety of tent stakes and her mallet. She clipped
Max’s lead to the fence using a carabiner. Max lay down and settled
her head on her paws with an offended huff. Honey and Chewy sniffed
at the prisoner. She refused to look at them.

“Poor Max,” Jim said. “She should
be free. Look at how sad she is. You won’t try to get out again,
will you, Max?”

Max lifted her head at her name,
then gave Lia a dirty look.

“Ha. That’s what you said the last
time.”

“We found the hole. She can’t get
out while we’re all standing here.”

“Wanna bet?”

“She can’t get out, can she,
Jose?”

“Leave me outta this,” Jose said.
“I don’t want to have nothin’ to do with it.”

“You really want me to let her go,
Jim?” Lia asked.

“I do.”

“It’s on you, then. She gets out,
you find her.”

“Agreed.” Jim leaned over and
unclipped the lead from Max’s collar. Max stood up, stretched, then
looked around, suspicious of her sudden freedom. She took a
cautious step, then another, then trotted off without looking
back.

“See how happy she is?” Jim
said.

“Uh huh. I’m just waiting to see
how happy you are when she’s gone again.”

“Children,” Bailey interrupted,
“no squabbling.”

“Yes, Mom,” Lia and Jim said in
unison. They turned to watch Jose as he sized up the mismatched
array of tent stakes.

“Lose many of these, Lia?” Jose
asked.

Lia shrugged. “Is there anything
you can use?”

“No problemo. Jim, you’re the
engineer, What do you think is the best way to stake
this?”

“I say we pull the bottom of the
fence inward, then go straight down.”

“I’m with ya.”

The pair put their heads together,
deciding to cover their bases with two styles of stakes: shorter,
U-shaped, wire stakes and longer, plastic stakes that looked like
railroad spikes with a hook on the top. Bailey and Lia watched as
they selected five stakes and positioned them.

Honey nudged Lia’s hand. Chewy
barked, bouncing against her shin. “What’s up with you guys? Why
aren’t you playing?” She looked around. “Where’s Max?” She scanned
the park, spotting a tan and white blur racing for the far
corner.

“Oh, no, not again!” Lia moaned as
she watched Max sprint down the hill toward the fence.

“It’s a four foot fence. She can’t
make the jump,” Jim insisted.

“I wouldn’t put it past her,” Jose
said.

The four of them watched as Max
built up speed on the grass. She leapt across the last bit of
slope, boosted herself on the horizontal corner brace and went over
the top. Her tail high, she disappeared into the woods.

“Smart dog,” Jose said. “We keep
plugging the fence and she keeps finding new ways out. You could
hire her out as a security consultant.”

“What am I going to do?” Lia
moaned. “I’ve got a meeting at Renee’s in a couple
hours.”

“She always comes back,” Tom said.
“You just need to wait.”

“I just need to wait? What
happened to you being responsible?”

“I just promised she wouldn’t get
back out of the hole. I didn’t say anything about her jumping the
fence.”

“Well, that’s a weaselly way to
get out of it. I thought you were an engineer, not a
lawyer.”

Repair finished, Jose stood up and
handed the tote to Lia.

“Thanks a lot,” she
grumbled.

“Any time.”

They turned away from the fence and
headed for a picnic table.

“Maybe she’ll bring you a present
this time,” Bailey said.

“Like I needed that turkey carcass
she stole yesterday,” Lia groused.

Lia climbed on top of the picnic
table. Leaning her elbows on her knees, she dropped her head in her
hands. She blew out noisily, sending a stray wisp of hair flying.
Honey walked up and nosed her arm. Chewy propped his front paws on
the bench and head-butted her leg. She ruffled the fur on Chewy’s
head absently.

“You guys don’t run away. Why does
your foster-sister have to be so bad?”

Honey whuffed sympathetically, as
if to say such a thing was incomprehensible to her.

“And why aren’t you getting along
with her?” She asked the dogs. “Maybe if you were nicer, she
wouldn’t run away. The one time I agree to foster a dog, and I wind
up with a kleptomaniac Houdini. ‘I’ll take that one,’ I said. ‘She
has such sweet eyes.’” Lia snorted. “Looks like we’re stuck here
until your delinquent sister comes back.”

Honey and Chewy looked at each
other.

“Too bad it’s not winter,” Jose
said. “If there was snow we could track her.”

“Gee, yeah, too bad it’s not
freezing outside,” Lia groused. She got up off the table and the
quartet headed to the front of the park, trailed by their pack of
dogs.

“Don’t you worry,” Jose said.
“She’ll be back. She knows where her kibble comes from.” In his
forties and balding, he looked like someone who had played ball in
high school, or spent time in the military. Jose claimed Italian
ancestry, despite his name. “I gotta get to work, but I’m sure Jim
will stay with ya. C’mon, Sophie,” he called to his Mastiff. “We
gotta go.”

“I’ve got an appointment at the
optometrist,” Jim mumbled, following Jose. “Gotta go. Fleece!
Chester! Home!”

“Way to abandon a sinking ship,”
Lia called after the retreating figures.