Play Dead (Allie Babcock Mystery Book 1) by Leslie O'Kane

Author:Leslie O'Kane [O'Kane, Leslie]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: mystery, mystery & detective, amateur sleuth, dog mystery, crime, cozy mystery, pet cozy, women sleuth, crime fiction, suspense, pet mystery, cozy mystery series
ISBN: 9781625172051
Publisher: NYLA
Published: 2013-11-06T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

By the time another half hour had passed, I was all but frantic. I’d called her four times. I’d also called every friend I could think of whom she might have dropped in to visit, all to no avail. What was this? Get-Even-with-My-Daughter-For-Scaring-Me-Last-Night Time?

Leaving the office unlocked and my answering machine on, I took Doppler on a walk to check for any signs of Mom wandering around lost. No luck. I was sitting on the top concrete step of my entranceway when she finally drove up in her covered pickup and parked next to my car in Russell’s space. She didn’t seem to see me sitting there, but both Sage and Pavlov greeted me with great enthusiasm the moment she opened the door to the truck bed.

Her jaw was clenched and her lips pursed. She marched with such evident anger that even her braid seemed to be taut.

I rose, still petting both of my big dogs. Doppler, too, was so excited at the sight of his canine friends he tried to engage them in a game of tag, despite the leash I still had a hold of. Surmising that this was not the time to go on the offensive with my mother, I merely greeted her and asked what had happened.

“Some dog hater who thinks he’s a big deal police officer gave me a ticket for having the dogs in the mall.”

“Well, Mom, dogs aren’t allowed in the mall.”

“It’s a stupid rule!”

“Not really. It’s a pedestrian mall, period. They’ve got all this expensive brick, and they have to have certain rules to protect that and the pedestrians, such as ‘No animals, no bicycles, no vehicles.’”

“I was just walking the dogs. It’s not as though I were riding through on a horse-drawn cart constructed out of bicycle wheels! The ticket was for fifty dollars. Fifty bucks! The city of Boulder has it in for dogs.”

She put her hands on her hips and glared at me.

“There was somebody walking a black lab right in front of us and she didn’t get a ticket. The officer singled us out because Sage started barking at him.”

“Was he wearing an officer’s cap?”

“Of course, but that hardly makes his ticketing me, and not the labrador owner, any more acceptable! It wasn’t fair, Allida! I went down to the courthouse to make a formal protest.”

I was so tempted to repeat her oft-heard refrain, “Who says life is fair?” that I had to bite the inside of my lip.

“You can’t just ticket one dog owner and let the next one stroll on past without a word! And did I happen to mention that the unticketed dog owner was a pretty young girl? I’ll tell you, Allie, I am not going to pay this. I’ll fight them with my dying breath, but I refuse to sacrifice my ideals for an arbitrarily enforced law.”

I couldn’t resist leaping on that last remark as I ushered her into my office. “Just because the enforcement of the law is arbitrary doesn’t give you the right to ignore it.

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