Excerpt: LIVING PROOF (that no good deed goes unpunished), Neighborlee, Ohio, Book 4
Felicity's dogs weregoing nuts, or rather, more nuts than usual, when we pulled into the drivewayan hour later. (For those joining the confession late in the game, Felicitylived in my three-car garage, which had been turned into an apartment, and hada bunch of dogs. We're talking rescued strays. Big, drooly, smelly mutts.Felicity was a dog person, part of her semi-pseudo-superhero talent, along withuncontrollable EM bursts.) Between the usual letdown after a performance highand the knots of hunger in my stomach from the smell of that heavenly pizza, Iwasn't in the sweetest mood. The big fence around my property kept the dogsrelatively contained, but it didn't keep them quiet. When they were noisy, itmeant someone had tried to break into my property.
Too bad security wasoften noisy. No lights were coming on in the houses around us, up and down thestreet. Translation: those dogs had been yammering and throwing themselves atthe fence long enough for everyone to go back to whatever they had been doingbefore the alarm went off. Which meant, oh joy, the cops would show up any timenow.
"Save a slicefor Gordon," I warned Pete.
He slid out of theback seat and headed for the ramp to the kitchen door, holding the pizza boxeswith all the care such treasure deserved. It was more important to get the foodinside and keep it hot in this weather, than it was to get me and my wheelchairinside, after all.
The dog clamor meantFelicity hadn't come home yet. Big surprise. As soon as Harry swung mywheelchair out of the back of the Jeep and unfolded it, they shut up. For alltheir noise and smell, those dogs were smart. They knew I was the boss. It wasmy house, and they knew who was the alpha when Felicity wasn't there. Too badmy brothers hadn't learned that lesson yet.
I got to the top ofthe ramp and paused to use the towel hanging by the door to wipe the ice-meltgrit off my wheels before going inside. The big black-and-white truck belongingto Neighborlee PD pulled up before I could go in. The dogs yapped once, thenslunk around the side of the house to their kennels. They understood whatpolice were for.
"Hey, Lanie." Gordon unfolded himself fromthe cab. There was a reason why the PD kept the truck they'd confiscated fromsome idiots who thought they'd set up a meth lab on the outskirts ofNeighborlee. Gordon didn't fit into regular issue vehicles. In fact, he madethis heavy-duty machine look a little delicate when he stood beside it. Andover it. One of these days, I knew I had to ask him who made his uniforms. Hadto be special order.
