“Oh, yes,” said Bart. “Sometimes I think she loves those animals more than her own family. Then again, I can’t blame her. At least the corgis never give her any trouble.”
“Have you ever driven the Duke and Duchess of Essex?”
“Can’t say that I have, Ma’am. I have a friend who does, though.”
She wondered how to formulate her next question.
“Any issues?” asked Chase, beating her to the punch.
She gave him a grateful nod.
“You mean, has something like this ever happened to them?”
“Uh-huh.”
The driver thought for a moment.“Well, Fluffy was never kidnapped as far as I know. My friend did witness an incident shortly after they were married. A reporter who came to the house and made a big fuss about wanting to talk to the Duchess. He wasn’t allowed to come anywhere near her, though.”
“Who was he?”
“Well-known bloke. Otis Robbins? He does one of those morning shows. Personally I never watch him. Too full of himself. My mum loves him, though. She’s a big fan.”
“Why did he make a fuss?”
“I reckon he wanted to interview her for his show, and when she refused he blew his top. You can’t just walk up to a royal and shove a camera in their face the way you can with regular folk on the street. He should have known that. Another fork in the road coming up, Ma’am.”
She closed her eyes and was about to say left when Chase said,“Hey, isn’t that a dog collar?”
The driver pulled over and Chase quickly got out. In the middle of the road, a fancy dog collar lay. It was velvety red with a gold medallion.
When he brought it back to the car, he held it up.“Sweetie,” he read.
“That’s one of the Queen’s corgis,” said Bart excitedly. “Good catch, sir.”
“So they definitely came this way,” said Odelia. Her heart lifted and did a happy little dance. Her intuition wasn’t leading them astray. Instead, it was leading them closer to her beloved pets.
“Let’s keep going,” said Chase. “Maybe we can catch up with them.”
And as the car eased into traffic once more, Odelia found herself thinking about the driver’s words. The reporter. Could he have something to do with this whole thing? Somehow she doubted it. Why would a reporter try to murder the Duchess? He could simply kill her with his sharp tongue.
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The car was still zooming along the road, and I found myself thinking about Odelia. If I had to spend the rest of my life with this crook, I’d miss her very much. Odelia was the only human I’d ever owned, and so I didn’t have a large frame of reference, but my instinct told me that I’d hit the jackpot when I’d landed on her doorstep. And that it could only go downhill from there.
“They’ll probably sell us to the highest bidder,” said Sweetie. “I wonder how much I will fetch.”
“A thousand pounds,” said Fr?ulein.
“A million, rather,” said Sweetie.
“Maybe a billion!” Molly said.
“Maybe they’ll sell us to someone in the Middle East,” said Sweetie. “And he’ll treat us like royalty.”
“You’re already treated like royalty,” I said.
“Yes, but this time we’ll be treated like oil sheik royalty, which is always a step up from those old and dusty European royals.”
“I think the European royals are the best,” said Fr?ulein. “New money simply can’t compete with all that style and class.”
“It can,” said Sweetie. “They’ve been buying up so much of London soon they’ll own the entire town, the Queen and all the other royals included.”
“I miss Odelia,” I announced, deciding to change the topic. I found all this talk of being sold off to the highest-bidding oil sheik frankly depressing.
“And I miss Gran,” said Dooley.
“I miss Marge,” said Harriet.
“I miss them all!” said Brutus, who possessed a sentimental streak I never even suspected he had.
“Oh, stop whining, you lot,” said Sweetie. “You’ll be adopted by a nice family, who’ll feed you and give you plenty of cuddles.”
“It’s not the same,” said Harriet.
“Yeah, you don’t know our humans,” Dooley chimed in. “They’re the best.”
“Look, it’s not that I don’t like the Queen,” said Sweetie, “but mostly I like the lifestyle. You know? The best food, the best pillows, the best clothes, the best dog walkers… What I won’t miss is the weather. London is so dreary.”
“Oh, so dreary,” said Molly with an eyeroll.
“The weather. Oh, don’t get me started on the weather.”
“Horrible weather. Simply ghastly.”
“Some days I don’t even want to get up.”
“A lot of days.”
“And then there’s Dubai. Sunny and bright. My kind of place.”
“My kind of place, too.”
“Dubai is, like, a hundred degrees on a cold day,” Fr?ulein pointed out.
“So? They have air-conditioning. It’s all about the lifestyle.”
“The lifestyle is the thing,” Molly chimed in.
“Give me Buckingham Palace over some nondescript air-conditioned luxury condo in Dubai every day,” said Fr?ulein.
“They probably don’t even want you in Dubai,” said Harriet, who seemed to have tired of the incessant inane jabbering. “Probably you’ll be sold to someone living in some hellhole in the middle of nowhere.”
“Like Chechnya,” said Brutus with a smirk. “Or Moldova.”
“Or maybe some African warlord will buy you so he can roast you over a slow fire and eat you,” said Harriet. “And then he’ll post the picture on Insta.”
The three corgis stared at her, then Sweetie and Molly shook their heads, smiling indulgently.“Don’t talk rubbish, cat,” said Sweetie.
“Yeah, don’t talk rubbish,” Molly said.
“Why would anyone want to eat us?”
“Some people eat dogs,” I said. “The Chinese, for instance. They consider dog meat a real treat.”
Their smiles vanished and their eyes turned to the driver.
“Hey, Mr. Kidnapper!” Sweetie yelled. “You’re not going to sell us to the Chinese, are you? Mr. Kidnapper!”
But the diver ignored them. He probably didn’t speak dog.
Soon the car was slowing down, and then turned off the road, gravel crunching under the wheels until it pulled to a stop.
“I think we’re there,” said Sweetie. “I think this is it.”
“Oh, I do hope it’s Dubai and not China,” said Molly breathlessly.
The window zipped down and a man looked in on us. I couldn’t see his face, but I could tell he wasn’t happy. Partly from the colorful curses he uttered and partly from the way he slammed his fist against the roof of the car, making us all jump up. “You’ve got to be kidding me!” he cried.
“Don’t worry,” said the driver. “I’ll get rid of the cats.”
“You took the wrong dogs!”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You took the Queen’s corgis!”
“So?”
“You idiot! You were supposed to take Tessa’s dog—not the Queen’s!”
“Who cares? You told me to snatch royal dogs so I snatched royal dogs. And I’m throwing the cats in as a bonus. Except for the fat one. That’s mine.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sakes. Take them back.”
“Wait, what?”
“Don’t you realize what you’ve done? The entire country will be looking for those dogs. And I don’t even want to describe what they’ll do to the man who took them. You, sir, are an idiot. A moron!”
“Hey! Sticks and stones, mate!”
The man was walking away.
“What about my money?!”
“Return those dogs!” the man yelled back. “Or you’ll be sorry!”
“We had a deal!”
But the man got into his car and drove off.
“He wanted Fluffy,” said Sweetie. “Can you believe it? He prefers a stupid mongrel over us!”
“Why would anyone want to steal Fluffy?” Harriet asked.
“Probably another Tessa-hater,” I said. “Wanting to get back at her for some perceived slight or offense she caused.”