LITMIR.BIZ

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nothing about her brother.”

      The phone rang and I was back in reception in a flash. Shelby covered the receiver with her palm. “It’s chief somebody. He needs to talk to you.”

      “Huh?” I cocked my head from one side to the other, the way Abby does when she hears something she wants to understand but can’t quite make out.

      Shelby shrugged her shoulders. She didn’t know who it was either.

      “Is it something you can handle?”

      She looked around to be sure there were no pet parents in the lobby and answered. Then she put the call on speaker. “This is Shelby Ryan. Can I….”

      There was a roar over the line. “I AM CHIEF JOHN TURNER OF THE LEWES POLICE DEPARTMENT!” The man took a breath and I could hear dogs barking in the background. I had a visceral reaction to the distress I heard. “Your van was found abandoned in a line of cars leading to the Cape May-Lewes Ferry terminal parking lot. I am two seconds away from having the door forcibly removed.”

      “No!”

      “No!”

      “No!”

      “No!”

      Math’s never been my strong suit, but there were three of us and four no’s. I glanced up at Dana and Shelby. Their mouths were in O’s and they were fixated on something over my right shoulder. Slowly I turned.

      “Lady Anthea?” I reached my hand out to shake hers.

      This was our first in-person meeting. I knew from her bio that she was about my age. And, like the picture in my head, she wore a knee-length skirt with a blazer. These were blue, accessorized by the Hermès scarf tied around her neck along with sensible pumps. Her eyes swept over the three of us dressed in khaki Bermuda shorts and green tops with Buckingham’s logo. We were wearing our polo shirts, our summer uniform. In the fall we’d switch to button-down oxford shirts. I wasn’t prepared for the raised eyebrow, nor the mouth in a hard, straight line.

      Whatever. I ran to my office for my handbag—which is really a beach bag—and grabbed the keys on the plastic peg shaped like a dog’s tail. I yelled at the phone, “I’m on my way. I’ll be there in five.” It would take me ten minutes. I motioned for Shelby to disconnect the call. “Shelby, call the DRBA police desk in the ferry terminal. Ask for Wayne. Tell him I’ll buy him a drink if he stops this. Dana, keep trying Henry’s cell.”

      As I ran by Anthea, it occurred to me that she might be able to help. What’s the use of having a local celebrity if they can’t get you and your dogs out of a jam? Without slowing down, I grabbed her arm. “Come with me.”

      Chapter 2

      I pulled out of the Villages of Five Points community and, in one of those little gifts from the universe, caught a green light to make the left onto Savannah Road. My passenger was silent. Our two-year-old partnership was the result of a project by Global She, an international organization of female small business owners, to encourage collaboration among women from different cultures. I’m not sure we’re what they had in mind, but it’s worked.

      I was born and raised in Lewes but hadn’t lived here since I went away to college in Georgia. After graduation I worked as a dog walker, sitter, and trainer in one East Coast beach town after another. I had never stayed more than a couple of years in any of them. When I was thirty-six, I came home to Lewes. I was ready for the next phase of my life to begin. I wanted to open a pet daycare and boarding facility, with lots of frills. But mostly, I wanted to stay.

      I knew a lot about caring for dogs, but I needed something to make my business stand out. I needed help with branding. Lady Anthea Fitzwalter was offering her consulting services. I sent her an email with my proposal and offered a percentage of the profits. For years, I’d read about this or that royal being a charity’s patron, and that was what I had in mind. She wrote back right away with her approval and the “pet-ronage” began.

      To make conversation, I pointed to the local veterinary clinic, Lewes 24-Hour Pet Care.

      “That’s nice to have a surgery so close by. Does the veterinarian make house calls?”

      “Thankfully we’ve never needed him to. Our staff and his get along great.”

      “But you and he don’t?”

      Time for honesty. “Dr. Walton hates me. And our pet resort. A few months ago he stopped offering boarding and day care because we’ve taken 90 percent of his business.”

      I glanced over to read her reaction. She was smiling. “Why only 90 percent?”

      We both laughed. Then she said, “I appreciate your emails apprising me of all aspects of the enterprise. Why do you think it’s been such a success?”

      “We have something special. That’s you. And I try to provide extras the pet parents want. For instance, Lewes has its share of retirees, and when we bought the van, the non-drivers became a source of new business, both for camp and grooming. We charge for pickup and drop-off for day camp, but not for bringing the dogs in for boarding or grooming.”

      She nodded and then leaned back and seemed to enjoy the sights. We passed shops and restaurants as we drove through the first town in the first state. “Delaware was the first state to ratify the Constitution, and Lewes was the first settlement in Delaware,” I explained. I told her city was founded in 1631, and other historical particulars.

      “Lewes is in Sussex County, just like Lewes, England,” she said.

      “Someone’s done her homework,” I said.

      She didn’t respond, and we drove in an uncomfortable silence for a bit. Was even that gentle bid of teasing too familiar?

      We crossed the canal bridge and just before the Lewes beach, I turned right onto Cape Henlopen Drive. This street ends at one of the country’s first open spaces, the five-thousand-acre Cape Henlopen State Park. But we weren’t going that far.

      “You’ll give your driver a talking to when we get there?” she asked finally.

      “If he’s there. They found the van, not Henry.”

      She must have realized then that we wouldn’t need to unlock the vehicle if Henry was around because she murmured an apology. We were going to get the dogs out and back to their homes. We still had to locate Henry.

      In a few minutes, she spoke again. “Do you think he may have, to quote some of the young people we’ve employed at home, done a runner?”

      I shrugged. Truth was, because it was Henry we were talking about, I had no idea.

      Sure enough, the Buckingham van was on the street, in line to turn into the parking lot and go through a ticket stall. Just waiting there surrounded by the white Lewes police cars, parked at a respectful distance, like suitors and a debutante. A Lewes police officer directed traffic headed farther down Cape Henlopen Drive to the far-right lane. Wayne waved me around to enter the ferry parking lot through a closed ticket booth, and motioned for me to park at the curb. As I passed, he gave a lazy salute, then mouthed Gilligan’s. I wondered why he had chosen that restaurant for me to pay up at, instead of On The Rocks, the outdoor bar at the ferry terminal he usually preferred. It was all good. Lady Anthea and I could have dinner at Gilligan’s after I’d settled my debt to buy him a drink.

      One of the ferries had docked and cars waited to drive onto the ramp. Their passengers gawked at the hive of police activity back on the street, but the drivers had to pay attention. There was another delay before the cars could drive onto the ferry for the seventeen-mile, eighty-five-minute crossing. The cars were stopped at a spot farther along the route to the waiting ferry, where a bomb-sniffing dog, a powerful and attentive German Shepherd, walked up and down the line, and an officer with a mirror checked undercarriages. Almost everything had changed at the fifty-year-old ferry after 9/11. The Delaware River and Bay Authority operates the Cape May-Lewes Ferry, among other transportation links between Delaware and New Jersey. Both the DRBA Police Department, made up

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