“Why are you holding a lump of dirt?” Her brother moved in closer, caught a whiff, and backed off again. “Jesus, are you carrying a load of shit?”
“Oh, this old thing? This is just the puppy your pig saved,” Shelby said.
I slapped George on the shoulder and shook out my arms to get the circulation moving again. “Your pet pig is a hero. She led us right to him.”
He ushered us in through the back, this time securing the door behind us.
Mellow the bunny hopped into the kitchen.
“Now, listen, Katherine. You and Mellow have to be friends. There are no other options. Got it?” he explained.
The pig wiggled, and George set her gently on the tile floor. She tiptoed toward the fluffy bunny. The bunny took a tentative hop closer. Katherine’s nose twitched as she leaned in for a sniff.
“Huh. Guess you’re not scared anymore,” George observed.
“Aren’t pigs highly intelligent?” Shelby asked from the kitchen sink where she was preparing the disgusting puppy for a bath. “Maybe she knew this little guy was in trouble?”
While Mellow hopped off with Katherine on her heels, George flopped down in a kitchen chair next to the totaled table that lay crumpled on the floor. “You’re my fucking heroes.”
“You’ll be June’s hero when she gets home from the office today,” Shelby promised him.
I joined her at the sink and dug around for the dish detergent. “This should be safe for him.” I turned the water on and let it warm up. The puppy scrambled against the stainless steel, but Shelby kept him contained.
“This is for your own good, little man. You smell like a porta potty,” she warned him.
We washed and dried the little guy. And tried to keep him from drinking the filthy bathwater and eating the soap bubbles. He was getting cuter by the minute.
He had patches of brown and black and white with huge velvety ears.
George stopped chasing Katherine around with the big red bow he was trying to affix to her long enough to share some ground chicken and rice with the puppy. His tail wagged while he ate, and the tips of his ears dipped into the bowl.
Shelby interlaced her fingers with mine. “What are we going to do with him? And before you say look for the owner, I’m going to stop you right there. Whoever tied him around the neck with a rope deserves to be run over by a pickup truck and pecked to death by Mona Lisa.”
“Agreed. Let’s get him to the vet, have him checked out. Then we’ll go from there,” I said, watching as the little guy fell asleep in his food.
“We can’t keep him,” she said, staring at the dog with hearts in her eyes. “Can we?”
“Of course not. How would we decide who keeps him at the end of the summer? It would be a custody disaster.”
“Right. Of course,” she agreed. But the hearts were still there.
The pup sneezed in his sleep, and the sound was just about the cutest thing I’d heard in my entire life. “We’ll keep him for now,” I decided. “Until we can find him a good home.”
“Fostering. Okay.” She nodded and squeezed my hand. “Thanks for carrying my brother’s pig all the way back.”
“Sentences you only hear in Bootleg Springs.”
She laughed and released my hand. “GT, we’re going to take Katherine’s puppy to the vet,” she called as she walked into the living room. “What’s all this? Is June getting a doctorate, too?”
I followed her into the room. It was a comfortable space despite its over-the-top tidiness. Bookcases jammed with books flanked both sides of the brick fireplace. In front of them were stacks of boxes and a whiteboard with notes scrawled across it.
“That’s Scooby June’s Callie Kendall research,” George said, adjusting Katherine’s bow and giving the pig a scratch. “She was convinced there was something wrong with Fake Callie’s story and did some digging.”
“That’s a lot of digging,” Shelby observed. I could tell she was impressed.
“When she gets focused on something, she doesn’t stop.” He grinned, flipping the lid off the top box.
“I need to learn her ways or I’m never going to finish my dissertation,” she complained, peering into the box.
Mellow hopped over to me and sniffed my shoe. I leaned down to stroke the bunny’s soft fur.
“Don’t get her started on research,” I warned him. “You’ll have two Scoobys in the house.”
“What’s this file about Constance Bodine?” Shelby asked, her interest piqued.