Not when dogs just might end up saving the aquarium, he thought.
“So you’ll come?” Molly’s entire face lit up.
Max hadn’t been expected to be included. When he’d told her he was turning the entire project over to her, he’d meant it. The plan had been to stay away and let Molly do her thing, lest she think he was trying to micromanage things.
He liked that she wanted him there, though. He liked it more than he wanted to admit, even to himself.
“I wouldn’t miss it,” he said quietly.
The rest of the day passed in a blur. A speed boat in the intracoastal waterway accidentally hit a three-hundred-pound loggerhead and called the hospital for help. The animal needed emergency surgery, requiring Max to go down his list of volunteer veterinarians until he found one who could make a trip to the island right away. After a harrowing afternoon, the turtle was finally resting comfortably in an open-air tank in the warehouse. Max had to rush to get to the dog beach in time to collect the sand sample before Molly’s training class was scheduled to begin.
He yanked off his tie, stuffed it into the glove box of the Jeep, and made his way across the beach access and onto the shore. A group of dogs and handlers—most of whom were clearly residents of the senior center—had already begun to gather closer to the water. Molly and Ursula stood next to a Turtle Beach firefighter and a stoic Dalmatian with their backs to the sea.
The black and white dog lookedexactlylike Sprinkles, but according to what Molly had told him this morning, she was a specially trained fire safety dog named Cinder. Max still half-expected the Dalmatian to make a beeline for him and grab onto his pant leg like Sprinkles still did if he tried to sneak out of yoga before murder victim pose was over.
Cinder stayed put, though, while Max knelt down at the edge of the sea turtle nest that they’d just marked off yesterday. Since this one had been the telltale nest where Molly’s puppy had sat down at his feet with the egg in her mouth, Max liked to think of it as “Ursula’s nest.”
He used his hands to sift gently through the sand to prevent damage to the eggs with a shovel. When he felt the packed sand begin to give way, Max knew he was close to the chamber, so he scooped a fistful of sand into a sandwich baggie and sealed it shut. With any luck, it would reek of turtle eggs.
“Great, you’re here,” Molly smiled down at him as he made his way to his feet. “Come on over and you can meet Sam and the others.”
Sam and Cinder made an impressive pair. The Dalmatian’s focus on Sam never wavered, not even when Ursula snuck up behind Cinder and pounced on her tail.
As for the other canine students…
Max tried his best not to let his spirits sink. He pasted on a smile and made every effort to imitate Molly’s bubbly effervescence as she introduced him to each potential search team. But as he shook hands and smiled, a nagging question kept spinning round and round in his head on a loop.
These are the dogs that are supposed to save the aquarium?
It was a ragtag bunch, to be frank. Mavis was there with Nibbles, of course. For once, the Chihuahua wasn’t perched in Mavis’s walker basket, and the poor dog acted as if she’d never set foot on the actual ground before. She couldn’t seem to keep all four paws on the sand at once, but kept hopping into the air and jerking her paws up as if the shore was made of lava.
Next in line was Hoyt Hooper with his googly-eyed pug, who at least appeared to be a cohesive unit in their matching Hawaiian shirts. But the pug, named Bingo, was wearing aviator-style goggles that fogged up every time Bingo panted.
“I worry about him getting sand in his eyes,” Hoyt said.
Max was at a loss.
“There’s certainly a lot of it out here.” He looked right and left. The shore stretched for miles in either direction. “But it looks like Bingo is well protected.”
“Max, this is Hoyt’s son, Hoyt Jr., and his Golden Retriever, also named Hoyt.” Molly rested her hand on Hoyt Hooper’s broad head—the dog, not either of the humans named Hoyt, obviously.
The dog’s face had gone completely white with age, but still, weren’t Golden Retrievers supposed to be highly trainable? Maybe Hoyt would be their star pupil.
Max clung to that tiny shred of hope as Molly led him down the line, introducing him to Clover, Ethel Banks’s corgi, and a giant white poodle named Betty White. Then they reached the final handler/pet team and Max blinked. Hard.
“Hello.” Larry Sims, who Max remembered from the SandFest pancake breakfast, held out his hand. “Skippy and I are thrilled to be part of this effort to save sea turtles.”
Max went numb as he shook Larry’s hand. He frowned down at Skippy. “But that’s a—”
“A cat.” Molly nodded. Her smile went a bit strained around the edges. “A cat on a leash. Yes. Yes, he is.”
Larry puffed out his chest. “Skippy’s a Persian, and he can do anything a dog can do.”
Max opened his mouth to respond, but he seemed to have lost the ability to speak. He glanced at Molly.
A cat? Really?
He’d definitely missed this significant detail when she’d shown him her neatly typed proposal this morning.