"Sp.a.w.n?" Sean repeated. "How many children does your stepmother have?"

"Two spoiled brats. Why?"

"Because sp.a.w.n implies lots." G.o.d, he thought as that sentence left his lips. He'd been infected by the Bernie virus.

Samantha shrugged. Sean noted that she seemed unimpressed with his linguistic differentiation.

"Whatever," she said as she zoomed into a parking s.p.a.ce in front of The Right Paws.

The Right Paws was a high-end pet shop that specialized in things like real pearl collars and cashmere sweaters for "companion animals," also known as pets in a less PC time.

"Why are we stopping here?" Sean asked once they came to a full halt.

Looking in the window, which featured a rhinestone collar, a mohair doggie bed, and an all-leather cat carrier, Sean couldn't help thinking that some people in this town definitely had way, way too much money in their bank accounts.

Samantha's eyes widened in astonishment. "To get Trudy a little something, of course. You wouldn't want to go there empty-handed, would you?"

Sean snorted. "Perish the idea. Trudy is a dog. Trudy won't care."

"Of course she will. Even dogs have feelings."

"Up to a point," Sean said "Only up to a point."

"What point? They get scared, they miss people, they get excited, they get depressed."

"Fine," said Sean, conceding the issue.

"They have birthday parties," Samantha continued.

"Not most of them."

"My mom always used to buy our ba.s.sett hound Victor two Big Macs and a large order of French fries on his birthday. And he liked to watch reruns of Sea Hunt."

Sean threw up his hands. "I get it. I get it. But then, what's wrong with Petco or Sam's Club?" he asked. "Why can't we get something there instead?"

Samantha shot him a disapproving look. "Most of the stuff in those places is made in China. Do you want Trudy to get sick?"

"No. But surely not all-"

"Do you want to take that chance?" Samantha said, cutting Sean off.

He decided it wasn't worth the trouble finishing his sentence. He wasn't having much luck in that department with Samantha. Actually, she was worse than Bernie in that way. Or maybe he didn't want to pursue the topic because he was having trouble thinking.

Every time he looked at Samantha's orange hair, bright pink T-shirt, red leather jacket, and pink-and-purple-striped mittens, he got a mild case of vertigo. That was another thing he liked about Ines. He could count on her clothes being...well...just regular clothes. They made her look nice without calling attention to themselves.

"Anyway," Samantha continued, "my friend in there will give us a discount."

"Super," Sean muttered as he began to extract himself from the Mini Cooper.

Now a box of dog biscuits would probably cost him only fifteen dollars instead of seventeen. When he was a kid, his mom had gone to the butcher and gotten the sc.r.a.ps. That's what their dogs had eaten. They didn't have any dog food. They didn't have any treats. They ate what everyone else ate and got along just fine. Now they had ninety-seven varieties of dog food on the market. It was ridiculous.

"You're doing better getting out of Esmeralda," Samantha said as Sean exited the car.

Sean grunted. He didn't say anything, but secretly he was delighted that that was the case. Either he was getting better physically or he was learning the technique of exiting a car built for a midget. Both were acceptable to him. His feeling of satisfaction, however, vanished when he got in the store and saw a poster tacked up on the bulletin board near the cash register. There was a picture of Trudy front and center. Underneath, in twenty-point type, were the words Lost Dog. Reward: $1,000 for information leading to her return. And then it gave a phone number to call.

Sean was about to ask who had put up the poster when Samantha started talking.

"Wow," she said to Sean. "A thousand bucks. That's a lot of money. Maybe we should start looking for that dog. Whaddaya think?"

Sean reflected that she did everything but nudge him in the ribs and wink at him. "Sure," he said as he gritted his teeth. "Why not?"

Samantha tugged at a lock of her hair. "I sure could use the money."

"Me too," the girl behind the counter said.

She has to be the friend Samantha was talking about, Sean decided. He knew this because the girl's hair was green, her nose was pierced, and she was wearing overalls and a black T-shirt. This is what made him a great detective. He noticed the details.

"Megan, this is Mr. Simmons. Mr. Simmons, this is Megan," Samantha said as she introduced them to each other. "Mr. Simmons used to be the police chief here."

"Cool," Megan said. "Did you arrest any bad guys?"

"Lots," Sean said.

"Do you carry a gun?"

"Not anymore," Sean said.

"Pooh," Megan said, making a face.

"Megan is my best friend," Samantha announced.

"Her only friend," Megan corrected.

"That is so not true."

"I meant here in Longely."

"There's Jenn," Samantha protested.

"Not since she's been going out with J.T."

"True," Samantha said. "She's gone over to the dark side."

She plopped her bag on the counter, knocking over a bunch of business cards sitting next to the register.

"Drats," Samantha said as they tumbled onto the floor.

She bent down and began picking them up and handing them to Sean, who glanced at them before handing them to Megan, who restacked them neatly.

There was a whole cottage industry here he wasn't aware of, Sean reflected as he watched Megan rearranging the cards. There were dog walkers and dog groomers and doggie dental hygienists. There were dog sitters and dog breeders, dog behaviorists, doggie psychics, and doggie daycares, as well as nutritional consultants and people who offered to cook meals for dogs and deliver them directly to your house.

"I think my daughters are in the wrong business," he commented as he handed Megan several cards.

"A lot of these people are deeply weird," Megan said. "They don't relate to people at all."

"Do they make a good living doing this?" Sean asked, thinking of Melissa, Trudy's dog breeder, and her trainer, Ramona.

Megan thought for a moment. "Some do, but not most," she said.

Samantha straightened up and began looking in her bag for some bubble gum. "The weird thing is most of them don't like dogs. Or maybe they do-maybe that's why they go into it-but they become kinda hardened...."

"Like doctors with their patients," Megan said.

Samantha nodded. "It's like their career and they don't think about what's best for the dog. Like Ramona with Trudy. Got it," she said, holding up her gum. "Want some?" Samantha asked Sean as she took out a piece of bubble gum, unwrapped it, and popped it into her mouth.

Sean was about to refuse the offer and then changed his mind. Why not? He was tired of saying no to things. He'd had a piece of coconut cake the other day, and he was riding in a Mini Cooper. He decided to experiment with saying yes more often.

As he tasted the gum's sweetness he realized he couldn't remember when the last time he'd chewed a piece of bubble gum was. He tried making a bubble. And succeeded. Evidently this was a skill one didn't forget. The bubble was small, but in this case small was good enough. Next time he'd blow a larger one. And the time after that it would be even bigger. For some reason, he felt absurdly proud of himself.

"Megan's going to live with me in Fort Green," Samantha announced after she'd blown her own bubble and popped it.

Megan beamed. "It won't be long now." She gestured at the poster. "I hope they don't find her," she said. "I'd never turn her in."

"Not even for the reward money?" Sean asked.

"Not even for the reward money," Megan said.

"Even if you needed it?"

"I do need it and I'm not doing it," Megan stated.

She looked him square in the eye, which got Sean to thinking that thanks to Samantha, Megan knew exactly where Trudy was.

"Why is that?" Sean asked Megan.

"Because no one in that place really liked her, not even Annabel, and no one, animal or human, deserves to live like that. It's too awful."

"See," Samantha said to Sean. "I told you so." She turned to Megan. "He didn't believe me."

"How do you know?" Sean asked. "After all, she gave Trudy this big birthday party. That has to mean she liked her."

"No," Megan said heatedly. "That means she wanted to throw a big party and Trudy was just the excuse. It's the whole Mommie Dearest thing. And believe me, I know whereof I speak. Annabel used to come in the store and buy stuff all the time. You could tell she was only doing it because she thought that Trudy had to have the best. She was like an accessory or something to her. And here's the weird part. She wasn't comfortable with her. I don't think she knew how to handle her. It's like she wasn't used to dogs or something."

"I don't understand," Sean said.

"That's because she probably wasn't," Samantha said. "When I was there working I was always the one who walked her. Or Ramona did. Or the groomer. Aside from an occasional pat on the head, Annabel never had much to do with her."

Sean frowned. "She brought her to the store when she talked to my daughters."

Samantha gave him a how-dumb-can-you-be look. "Duh. That's because that was in public. She was always very nice to Trudy in public. It's in private that I'm talking about. It's like Trudy was another one of her obnoxious stuffed animals. In fact, I think Annabel preferred those."

"Even in here," Megan said. "She never let Trudy pick out what she wanted."

Sean was about to observe that Trudy was a dog and that dogs don't pick out things, but he decided that would just get the conversation off on a different tangent. Instead he said, "Do most people let their dogs pick out their own toys?"

Megan gave an emphatic nod. "It's so cute. We just had a German shepherd and his human in and the dog picked out this sheepskin lamp. He carried it out to the car. And as for him-"

"Him?"

"The husband. Richard. He doesn't even like animals. Not one single bit."

"How do you know that?"

"Because the woman who grooms Trudy, she used to go to school with Annabel and Richard, and she said-"

Sean held up his hand. "Wait a minute. I didn't know Annabel and Richard went to the same high school," he said. Not that there was any reason he should know, but somehow he felt remiss that this bit of information had escaped him.

"And the same community college too," Megan told him. "My mom knew them both. He was a couple of grades ahead of her. My mom said he was a real turkey. Came from the wrong side of the tracks, so he had to prove to everyone how great he was. Now he's this big deal around here with this gigundo house. But he's just mean. The only thing he cares about is moolah." Megan made a rubbing motion with her thumb and forefinger. "And s.e.x. According to my mom, he screwed-if you'll pardon the expression-anything that moved. One girl tried to commit suicide when he broke up with her. I don't know why anyone would do that. Guys are so not worth it.

"Anyway," Megan continued, "my mom used to live across the street from him. And my mom and my uncle had this dog named Sparky, and sometimes Sparky would go sit on the Colberts' lawn. He didn't do anything. He just liked to sit under this big old red maple tree they had. And it was okay with Richard's parents. But not Richard. In fact, my mom said she saw him kick Sparky really hard one day when he thought no one was looking. They had to take Sparky to the vet because Richard broke something.

"He swore he didn't and everyone believed him, but my mom knows what she saw. And he was mean to cats. My mom saw him throwing rocks at this stray cat that used to come on his property and pee in the bushes. No one believed her about that either." Megan paused for a breath. "They got into this big fight and she never spoke to him again after that."

"Well, that was a long time ago," Sean said. "People change."

"Nope," Megan said. "Not with that kind of stuff. Either you're an animal lover or you're not."

"You could be indifferent," Sean suggested.

Megan thought that over for a moment. "I suppose," she conceded. "But all I know is that Richard came in here one day yelling about all the money that Annabel was spending on Trudy."

That was something Sean actually couldn't fault him on.

"He was really, really angry. I just thought it was weird, given all the money they had, that he would care about his wife spending two hundred dollars on a cashmere sweater for a dog."

"I would care," Sean said.

"Yeah, but two hundred dollars is a lot to you," Samantha pointed out. "To him, it was probably like ten bucks."

"You know," Megan said, "I bet Annabel was just buying those things to p.i.s.s Richard off. Jessica's mom used to do that to Jessica's dad a lot before they got divorced."

Sean pointed to Trudy's poster. "He's offering a thousand dollars' reward. That has to mean something."

"He's doing it for show," Megan said. "It's part of his shtik. Like this whole going-to-Westminster thing. That's a crock. She's never going to win. Not with those teeth."

"Then why is everyone so anxious for her to go?" Sean asked.

"Because it makes everyone look good. It gives Richard status. And it's a way for Ramona to make money. She knows Trudy doesn't have a chance in h.e.l.l. She just kept telling Annabel that so she'd have a job. None of those people know one end of a dog from another. Nor do they care. Westminster is disgusting. It's worse than human beauty pageants. It should be disbanded."