He needed to check on a few things, and he needed to find the police officers and see what they were doing about the missing museum curator. To Albert’s mind, the longer Alan stayed missing, the more likely it was something had befallen him.
Cursing himself for not pushing Alan to reveal what trouble he was in sooner, Albert called for Rex. ‘Come on, boy!’
His shout got a collective, ‘Awww,’ from half a dozen firefighters who were bored standing around at the public event. It was one of those things that fell into their scope of duties and sounded way more fun than they actually ever turned out to be. Today they got to watch a giant tin get turned into the world’s largest Yorkshire pudding. Whoopee.
Rex spun around to see his human beckoning. ‘Already? I was having so much fun.’
Seeing how disappointed the firefighters were gave Albert an idea. ‘I can leave him with you for a while if you like,’ he offered. ‘He could do with the exercise if you want to run him around for a bit.’
The firefighters turned their collective eyes toward Station Officer Hamilton who chuckled. ‘Maybe he’ll stay out of trouble if he’s with us.’
It was a sly dig at how many times they had rescued the dog in the last twenty four hours but Albert took it in the spirit it was intended and held out Rex’s lead to the nearest fire fighter.
‘Take good care of him, please. He shouldn’t run off, but it would be wise to keep him on the lead when you stop playing just in case.’
Rex saw the lead change hands and heard what his human said. Filled with excitement, he darted over to the old man’s legs, almost jumped up at him, but stopped himself in the certain knowledge he would just knock him over if he did, and then hared back the way he came just in time for the firefighter holding the frisbee to send it on a fresh break for freedom.
Rex ran and ran, tracking it with his eyes because this wasn’t a job for his nose, and watched it land on the grass. When he turned around to run back, his human was gone from sight, but Rex was with humans he knew and felt safe enough to remain with them until his human returned.
Frisbees were great because there was more than one game involved each time it was thrown. He got to chase it and bring it back, sometimes he even got to catch it by leaping into the air depending on how it was thrown. Then, he could run around the humans and have them try to catch him - he couldn’t do that with his human - and when they caught him, he got to play tug with it, pitching his jaw strength against their grip.
He did that this time, feeling proud that three of the firefighters had to club together to tear it from his mouth. Then he got to chase it again.
There was a cry of dismay from behind him as the frisbee sailed over the hot pudding pan. The bakers were doing something with it that was getting them excited and Rex could smell something cooking in it now. The frisbee, which the humans seemed to think was going to land in the batter mix, sailed on over it to land on the far side. He was well away from the part of the marquee where the bakers were working, and closer to the stage in the middle of the tee now.
Rex leapt into the air and landed with his front paws pinning the evil object to the ground. However, his triumphant bark of, ‘I’ve got you,’ died in his throat when his nose picked up a scent.
It was the scent from yesterday, the truly evil one the cat’s human had all over him after Rex knocked him down. Rex hadn’t forgotten about the cat, but he hadn’t seen it or smelled it since yesterday so maybe it was gone. The nasty chemical medicine smell was back though. Faint, but undeniable. It made him shudder once more at the memory of being given it himself.
Yesterday, he’d tried to tell his human about the medicine scent and what he thought it meant when the human in the suit got ill. He hadn’t been able to make the old man understand though and that bothered him because he thought it was important. He couldn’t work out what was going on, but there were two dead humans and he knew that was bad. Maybe this was something to do with it and maybe it wasn’t. Either way, he let the frisbee drop from his mouth and sniffed the air.
The firefighters, who were having a great time playing with the dog, not least because it allowed them to move around and warm up a bit, were now watching the dog wander off. The frisbee had been getting thrown farther and farther each time so now the dog was almost a hundred yards away and his decision to not come back created a problem: no one wanted to tell the old man they had lost his dog.
It’s a Fix, I Tell Thee!
Albert was inside the marquee where he was starting to look for any of the police officers. He couldn’t even see his son. He picked his phone from his pocket, but holding it in his hand, he decided to climb onto the platform by the mixers to get a look over the crowd. The two sweaty men were no longer there, their buckets abandoned as they went to join everyone else for the pour and the anxious time that followed.
There was something going on at the big stage
