Doggone But Not Forgotten

Chapter One Excerpt

                                                                                                                                                                                                          To read an excerpt from Chapter Two click here

“This is Heavenly Doggie Kennel. When are you coming to get your dog?”

Dog?

Carrie Moore put down the scrub brush and gripped her cell phone with both rubber-gloved hands. As if her life weren’t in enough turmoil…now there was a dog too?

“Are you sure this isn’t a wrong number?” She asked DogLady.

“Don’t play smart with me Lady. You were supposed to pick it up yesterday. Today is tomorrow, and yesterday you didn’t come.”

Carrie tried not to wrap her brain around DogLady’s twisted time line and mentally swore instead. Damn Phelps. What kind of lawyer was he, anyway? “Mr. Phelps neglected to inform me that there was a dog…”

“Yeah, well, you or Mr. Phelps better get over here and get this thing. I’m not watching it one more day. And bring a check or credit card to pay for damages.”

Damn. Damages? “How much?”

“Five hundred bucks.”

Carrie hissed in a breath. Nana had left her plenty of money. She had her own money too, but five hundred bucks was five hundred bucks—not a small amount. Not when she had so many other things to spend it on, like repairs to Nana’s house. She needed to get it presentable and on the market so she could get home, get back to her life in Texas.

Nana had wanted her to stay in Rhode Island.

Carrie would have rather cut off her own head than stay there. Every moment she spent in the small town of Narragansett, she ran the risk of running into Jack Radigan. It was bad enough she had just buried Nana and was selling off her house and anything that wouldn’t fit in Carrie’s small apartment in Texas. Nana had been her last remaining family member, the woman who took her in and raised her, cared for her and loved her. Carrie didn’t need the additional blow of bumping into the man who—as a boy—had crushed her girlish heart.

After all, this was Rhode Island. It was only so big. You couldn’t swing a plastic lobster bib without hitting someone you knew. With her luck, she knew her someone would be Jack Radigan.

She needed to sell this house and get away. Fast.

“Lady, the clock’s ticking.” DogLady barked.

No kidding. “Oh. Yes. I’ll be there. As soon as I can.” Carrie bent, picked up the brush and dropped it into the bucket. So much for scrubbing the tile floor. She’d have to do that later. After she called Phelps, Nana’s lawyer and chewed him a new one.

“As soon as you can? If you don’t come and get this hound within twenty minutes, you’ll owe me another couple of hundred.”

“Twenty—I don’t even know where you are!”

 “I’m not watching this beast any longer than that. Not without compensation.”

“But—“

“Every minute you’re late after twenty minutes, I’m charging you an extra ten bucks.”

“Can you do that? Legally, I mean?” Carrie clutched the phone and watched her plans for a clean floor go up in a puff of dog-hair-scented smoke.

“Watch me, Lady. If I were you, I’d quit arguing—you just lost a minute.”

Carrie got directions and clicked her phone shut. She’d ream Phelps a new one after she picked up the dog. He should have mentioned the animal at the reading of the will, not just dropped it off at the kennel and forgotten about it.

She pulled Nana’s van into Heavenly Doggie Kennel’s lot eighteen minutes and thirty seconds later. If it hadn’t been for the giant sign for the drugstore across the street, she would have missed it.

As she put the van in park, Carrie wished she had missed it. In fact, she wished she had driven right past. Because a slight, pale-woman with messy hair floating about her head like a mist stood in front of the building, holding with a shaggy, gray pony on a knotted pink leash. The pony began to jump around and bark; Carrie realized in horror that the pony was a dog.

Nana’s dog.

“Nana, please tell me that is not your dog,” she prayed.

“Take your dog!” The woman called as the beast pulled her at the end of the leash like a kite on a string. In a very strong wind.

She got out of the van and peered up at the sign looming over them. Heavenly Doggie Kennel it read in loopy, dark-pink letters. A winged-pepto-pink poodle hovered over the words, supposedly looking angelic instead of absurd.

If the giant dog now racing toward her was heavenly, then…she was in Hell. The beast raced to her, leapt up and knocked her down. But instead of mauling her, the dog licked her face and wiggled with unmistakable joy.

Carrie hoped it was happy because it was a naturally cheerful dog and not because it thought she tasted delicious. She pushed, and with help from DogLady managed to get it off of her. The dog stayed down after that, but clung to Carrie’s legs like a tick.

“Her name is Ellie,” DogLady said. “She’s an Irish Wolfhound…she’s still a puppy.”

A puppy? Carrie stared down at the animal. “The top of her head reaches my navel. She’s enormous. Are you sure?”

DogLady nodded. She seemed rather pleasant now that she knew the dog was leaving. “Oh yes. Quite sure.”

“What could a seventy-one-year-old woman be doing with a dog the size of a pony? Her house is the size of a garden shed!”

DogLady shrugged and smiled, but she had no answer.

“She never even mentioned it.”

Again the woman smiled, making Carrie feel as if the woman knew more than she was saying. She opened her mouth to ask, but then Ellie spotted a squirrel in the tree behind the building and both women needed to wrestle the animal to stop it from racing away in pursuit of the rodent. “We’d better get her into the van.”

With the help of enigmatic DogLady, along with tugs, shrieks, pushes and—finally—a stale Lifesaver Carrie found in the console between the front seats, Ellie got into the van. Apparently, the dog liked Lifesavers.

She also liked everything else because during the ride home Ellie pulled up and shredded half the rug and ate a plastic Sacred Heart of Jesus statuette, then added to Nana’s van l’odeur du something gone bad with the smell of something done bad, depositing a runny poop the size of –well, Rhode Island—onto in the center bench seat. Way to go, Ellie. Carrie pulled over and did her best to clean up the mess with a handful of Dunkin Donut napkins and some dried out moist towelettes she had found in the glove compartment. Without gagging. Or passing out.
“I think I hate you,” she told the dog, who licked the side of her face and her ear with a tongue the size of a facecloth.

She hated her even more when a car-sick Ellie vomited on the other rear seat, blanketing it with half-digested kibble and pieces of plastic Jesus.

Great. I’ll never be able to sell this thing, now, even if I get it detailed. Twice.

Then again, the only way she’d be sure to be rid of the vehicle was to abandon it. It wasn’t like anyone would really want Nana’s minivan. It was old, dented, and on its last legs. Or tires.

Carrie’s eyes began to water—with tears of frustration or a reaction to the foul reek, she wasn’t sure. Nana, why did you do this to me? And why did you leave without saying goodbye?

Her life was going from bad to complete crap.

And then she saw the red lights flashing in her rearview mirror…