Feliz Naughty Dog - Roxanne St. Claire Page 0,28

searching the crowds.

“Oh dear.” Finnie grabbed her arm and pointed. “’Tis Tor!”

“I don’t see…” She sucked in a breath at the sight of the toppled pile of wrapped boxes and Tor running down the mall through the crowds with a giant gold ribbon in his mouth. Behind him, Lucas tried to catch up, calling his name.

Next to the presents, Pru stood with the doxies on leashes, both of them barking, all of them watching helplessly.

“We best go down there,” Finnie said.

“Yes, but, Finnie, look!” She pointed to the entrance to the food court, where the two FBI men from earlier came marching out, side by side. The big one had his hand in his bulging pocket, like he would draw out a gun at any minute.

“And there’s Aldo,” Finnie said, gesturing to the wide, curved stairs they’d just climbed. He was walking slowly, but then he froze and stared across the crowded mall, and instantly his whole body changed.

“He sees them,” Agnes said.

“But they don’t see him.”

Aldo pivoted, darting up the stairs with surprising speed and agility for a man of his age. But then, fear of the law could probably do that to someone.

He made it to the top, then blew right by them, the phone at his ear.

“FBI Mayday,” they heard him say. “Would you please get these knuckleheads off my back before I kill someone?”

Agnes squeezed the railing, taking a steadying breath.

“Come on, lass,” Finnie said gently. “You know what we have to do.”

Chapter Nine

If Pru hadn’t noticed that both the grannies looked flushed and upset as they approached, she would still have known something was wrong by the way Gala reacted. Pyggie was unfazed, as always, sniffing around the mall floor for a random morsel of food.

But sensitive little Galatea began to whine even before Gramma Finnie and Yiayia reached them, tapping her paws on the tile, anxious and stressed at the sight of them.

“You’re not going to believe what happened,” Pru said as she bent over to lift the doxie and give her a kiss before handing her over to Yiayia.

“We saw, lass,” Gramma Finnie said, looking around as if she was more interested in the crowd than anything else. “Where did they go?”

“Tor took off, and Lucas followed.” Pru pointed down the wide mall corridor, packed now with last-minute shoppers. “We were trying to come up with some kind of Random Act of Christmas Kindness so we didn’t completely waste the day. We got closer to the workshop, and Tor started sniffing around the boxes, then he dug into the pile, knocked it over, and almost took half the tree with him. Then he grabbed a ribbon off a box and took off like, well, a racing dog.”

“No!” Yiayia said, still looking around.

“Yes,” Pru replied.

“I don’t mean what happened to him.” Yiayia finally focused on Pru, her dark eyes as desperate as Tor’s when he’d launched at that pile of presents. “I mean the FBI men. They were headed to the stairs. Did they go up?”

“I don’t know.”

“You were supposed to watch. Did you forget?”

Gala lifted her little snout and gave Yiayia’s chin a comforting lick, recognizing that raised voice of panic and reminding Pru not to snap back.

“I’m sorry,” Pru said softly.

“’Tis fine, lassie.” Gramma Finnie came around Pru’s other side to give her a great-grandmotherly hug. “You were distracted. Agnes is just upset.”

Yiayia’s shoulders dropped as she heaved a sigh. “Nothing about today is going as planned,” she admitted.

“Well, what did you think was going to happen, Agnes?” Finnie asked. “You’d lock eyes with the man, and he’d go down on one knee? I told you his reputation precedes him, and now we have a new mission. To get him behind bars where he belongs.”

Pru threw a look at Gramma Finnie. “You’re not entirely sure of that,” she said, slipping into her automatic role as peacemaker on the rare occasion things got tense between these two.

“Not to mention that you insisted poor Pru get a boyfriend out of what should have been a day at the mall.” Gramma Finnie’s cheeks grew bright with two patches of red. “And the boy is nothing but trouble, along with his dog.”

“Gramma!” Pru drew back. “What is wrong with you?”

Gala felt it, too, squiggling to get out of Yiayia’s grip to turn her sympathetic kisses to her other owner.

“I’m telling you, she’s jealous,” Yiayia said.

“And I’m telling you…” But Gramma Finnie couldn’t finish the sentence, looking from one to the other, finally letting out a sigh