Today’s excerpt is from Monster’s
Palace, which introduces new hero Clyde Feegle. Thanks to his now retired bomb sniffing dog,
Greta, Clyde calls his boss to get a bomb squad to his home because Greta
warned him there was a bomb at the front door.
By the time an FBI bomb squad arrives, Clyde has found out there is
another bomb inside, at his back door. Enjoy
and have a wonderful day.
m.j.
Long before that
conversation took place, a bomb squad from the FBI arrived at Clyde’s
home. He stood up, grabbed Greta’s
leash, and went to meet one of the SABTs (Special Agent Bomb Technicians)
headed toward him. He held out his
hand. “Hi, I’m Clyde Feegle. It’s my house, with a bomb inside…make that two bombs.”
The man gave a
very brief shake to the proffered hand and introduced himself as an FBI SABT,
then asked, “What makes you think there are any bombs in your house?”
Quickly bristling
at the man’s attitude—which was anything but friendly—Clyde responded, “I don’t
think—I know. There is one at the front door, and one at
the back door, off the kitchen. As to
the door leading from the garage into the house, or the garage door itself, I
have no idea. There is a key to the
front door, under the doormat.”
“Who in the hell
would leave a key under their doormat?”
“Who in the hell
would think to look there? If you want my
help, I’m willing.”
“No—you just stay
here with your doggie. We’ll handle it.”
Clyde seriously
considered splattering the agent’s nose all over his face, as he spotted the
other agent walking toward his house and grunted, “You better go help your pal
out,” before he turned his back and walked off a few paces.
While the man
he’d been talking to turned and left to do so, Merrill arrived, with the other
CIA vehicles behind him. He walked up to
Clyde. “You okay? I can almost see steam pouring out of your
ears.”
“You’d been here
about a minute ago, you might have seen me deck that FBI jerk. ‘Stay here with my doggie’ indeed, crap.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
Clyde told him,
before he added, “That son-of–a-bitch blows up my house, I’m really gonna be
pissed. Why didn’t you call ATF?”
“Didn’t think of
it. You got something else in your
craw…give.”
Clyde groaned,
“Yeah, I guess he set me off. But I was
admittedly unhappy before he got here. I
got a phone message.”
After Clyde
explained about the message from Jo, Merrill shook his head. “So, a dame you met just last night—make that
night before last—wound up with the key to your place. Turns out she seduced you to get into your
place, and now you’re pissed at the world, right?”
“Shut up,
Merrill—or I’ll punch you. But yeah…something like that. Damn gal ended the call telling me she loves
me. I hate to admit it right now, but I
think I still feel the same way about her.
This whole deal sucks—except for how it was with her. At least with her message, I know Greta still
knows her stuff. You should’ve seen
her—just stopped on a dime, barked, then started backing away from the
door. You gotta know I didn’t dally
following her.”
“Good thing. Remind me to buy her some treats or
something. I’d hate to lose you, now
that I’ve got you trained to be of some use to me.”
“Nice, Merrill—I
needed your kind words. But you still
shoudda called ATF.”
The other four
agents who had followed Merrill smiled, but fanned out to cover the area.
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