Read Barking Detective 04 - The Chihuahua Always Sniffs Twice for Free Online Page A

out to be some butt sniffing and cavorting with the friendly cockers as they barked greetings to their returning pal, Henry, whom I was still carrying.
    A winding stone path led from the driveway to the house through an English cottage garden overflowing with peonies and snapdragons, hollyhocks and foxgloves, and edged with neatly trimmed box hedges.
    As we got closer to the door, we saw a golden cocker spaniel sitting on the stoop. She was different than the others. For one thing, she had a certain regal presence. For another, she was calm. I don’t know how I knew it, but I was sure this beautiful animal was female.
    Pepe realized the same thing. He swaggered up to her, stopped just a few feet away from her, and said, “Ah, nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered.”
    I’d forgotten that my dog knew some Shakespeare. He’d quoted something from the bard when he first met his Pomeranian love, Siren Song. And it had gone pretty well for him with her after that.
    But there the similarity ended. After uttering his come-on line to the cocker spaniel, he sauntered up to give her a friendly butt sniff and got a growling snap at his shoulder for his efforts.
    He jumped away from her faster than I’d ever seen him move.
    “Pepe!” I called.
    “Do not worry, Geri,” he said, returning to my side. “She is just playing hard to get, that is all.” He said this nonchalantly, as if it was no big deal, but I did notice that his tail was between his legs.
    A woman in her fifties stepped out onto the stoop. She had dark hair, pulled back from her face, with just a few hints of silver around the edges. Her neck was long and swan-like, her eyes dark. She wore a dark, rather understated dress that set off the caramel color of her skin.
    “I see that someone has just met the Queen,” she said, looking at Pepe, then at the cocker spaniel who was still sitting at the bottom of the steps. She had a faint accent, but I couldn’t quite place it.
    “The Queen?” I said.
    “Yes,” said Boswell. He stepped out onto the porch beside the woman. “Her name is Mary,” he continued, giving a nod toward the golden cocker. “We call her Queen Mary.”
    “Because she doesn’t stand for any monkey business,” said the woman on the stoop. “Like what your dog just tried, for example.”
    “I am no monkey,” Pepe told me, sounding offended.
    “How did you get here?” I asked Boswell, puzzled.
    Boswell put a protective arm around the woman’s shoulder. “I wanted to apprise Yolanda of recent developments in person, rather than over the phone.”
    “What is she talking about, Barry?” Yolanda turned to him.
    “Let’s go inside,” he said.
    We followed Yolanda through a dark-paneled vestibule and into a large room with a low-beamed ceiling. There was a massive stone fireplace with a beam for a mantel and a fire lit within it, despite the heat of the day. All the windows were open, admitting the scent of hot dust and lavender. The floor was dark, polished oak. The dogs’ nails made little clicking sounds as they raced around in circles.
    All except Queen Mary, who padded over to a wicker basket near the hearth and settled down in it, her golden head lifted, surveying the scene. Eventually the two other dogs settled down as well: one jumped up on a sofa, while the other curled up in a basket placed along the wall.
    I set Henry down, and he wobbled over to another basket, circled around, and lay down, as if he had just been on a long, weary journey. I noticed that each of the baskets bore a silver nameplate above it; there was one for each dog: Mary, Henry, Victoria and James.
    “Lucille always named her dogs after English royalty,” Boswell explained.
    The sofas and armchairs in the room were covered in purple and pink floral chintz. We all found our places, just like the dogs, and then Yolanda sent her niece, Clara, to fetch tea.
    “Hugh says that he wants to see Henry again on Tuesday for some oral surgery,” I