Free Guard Dog? by Phoebe Matthews Page B

the time of that security company phone call to the arrival of the police. If Rock had a new girlfriend, I wanted to see her because, gotta admit I am incurably curious.
      When we reached the car, instead of opening the door, he pointed through the side window.
      “That’s Skippy,” he said.
      Weird name for a girlfriend. And then I leaned toward the window and she pressed her nose on the other side and I must say, and did say, “Oh, she’s so cute!”
      A large scruffy dog with floppy ears started bouncing up and down and slobbering all over the window, and then she did a regular doggie dance, circling, jumping over the console to the driver’s seat, jumping back, jumping over.
      “When did you get a dog?”
      “Yesterday. I decided I need a watch dog and she’s a big one.”
      A watch dog to protect a thief’s house? Maybe he had better stuff in his house than I did. Living on my miniscule salary, gotta tell ya, I don’t own anything anyone would want to steal.
      While I watched and laughed at Skippy’s antics, the car let out a BEEP! and a HONK, HONK! followed by a whole lot of those other horrible car alarm noises.
      “What’s going on?”
      “Oh, damn, she jumped on my key tag.”
      Key tag? Right, those automatic buttons people have on their key chains for locking and unlocking cars from a distance and for turning the alarm on and off.
      “How could she do that?”
      “I left the keys on the seat.”
      It took me a second but I got there. If he’d left the keys in the ignition and then tried to exit or enter the car, it would make all sorts of noise. And if a noisy burglar alarm had gone off when he’d smashed the back door, he didn’t want to have to dig in his pocket for his keys. Instead, he planned on being able to cancel the break-in and make a fast getaway, with the keys on the seat where he could scoop them up and be off.
      While I tapped the window and grinned back at the grinning dog, Rock went dashing out in the street and yanked on the door handle.
      Well, you know how that went, don’t you?
      Skippy not only managed to hit the car alarm, she’d also stepped on the button that locked the car up tight.
      Rock howled.
      “You can smash the window,” I suggested helpfully.
      He glared at me over the car roof. “Are you insane! This is Darryl’s car! He’d kill me!”
      As I couldn’t think of any reason to stand around being insulted, especially as I could hear sirens approaching, I turned and headed back toward the alley. As I turned, my toe hit something and I looked down. It was the bank deposit bag. If I left it on the sidewalk next to the car, it could be a few decades before Mudflat got its smash wizard back. I wouldn’t miss him but probably someone would.
      Besides, if he got tossed in jail, what would happen to Skippy?
      In one swoop, I picked up the bag and walked quickly away. About the time I was adjacent to the broken door, the siren drowned out the noise of the car alarm, and as carrying stolen stuff seemed a good way to get in trouble, I ducked through the door and into the office and across to the far door and holy gee! It opened to a closet that was mostly filled with a humongous metal safe with its humongous metal door shattered into a mountain of metal bits.
      I tossed the deposit bag into the yawning cavern of the doorless safe. And then I walked calmly to the broken outer door, stuck out my head, saw the back end of the police car angled on the other side of Darryl’s car, and heard a whole lot of voices, one of them shouting something about, “Stupid dog!”
      Seconds later I was out of the alley and walking calmly down the next cross street. Rock wasn’t my responsibility, but if he got tossed in jail, I might offer to adopt Skippy.
      END
      
      A Mudflat descendant tries to break the tie. His attempt opens some odd doors.
      BOOKSTORE GEEK
      A steep flight of cement stairs edged by a black iron rail