Rude Awakenings: A Novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club (Book 2)

Chapter Three: Lauren, Summer, 1978

The other two boys, one an East Indian boy a little taller than Alistair, and one a rather large boy with a head of hair the likes of which she'd never seen before, a kind of brownish red, cracked up. "Alistair," they said, as if the name were a joke.

Alistair's cheeks reddened, and the shy boy suddenly became angry. "You should talk, Jee-you-sep-pee! Soon-eel!"

They big boy seemed untroubled by Alistair's fury. "I go by Joe," he said. "My family's Italian, so my given name is Giuseppe. It just means Joseph in Italian."

"And Sunil is a fine name in India," the other boy said, grinning, "but there's no English equivalent, so I just went with something that sounded closest to it, which is Sunny."

Lauren felt a little sorry for Alistair and wanted to make him feel better about his name; she knew exactly how it felt to be the odd one out. "My uncle on my mother's side is named Alistair," she said. "My mom hasn't talked to him in a long time."

"See? Not so crazy a name after all," Alistair said. 

Lauren turned her attention from them to the object of their curiosity at last. It was a dog. It wasn't moving. "Is that dog dead?"

"Yeah, hit by a car," Rachel said.

Lauren stepped over and squatted down beside it. "It has a collar," she said, "so, not a stray." She fingered the collar to see if she could find the registration number.

"Ewwwwww!" the boys said, and she realized she'd done something weird again, but it was too late to do anything about it now.

"It has tags," she said. "Somebody owns this dog. Or owned it. Maybe someone is looking for it."

"How do you know?" Rachel asked.

"The tags have identifying numbers issued by the City. See?" She pointed to the numbers on the tags. The boys looked askance at it, and she knew she was starting to lose them. It wouldn't matter as long as she didn't lose Rachel. Maybe she could impress her with her know-how.

"Oh," Rachel said, "so, the City has a list of dogs and who owns them, so they can reunite them if a dog gets lost, like now."

"Oh, wait, my dogs have those!" Alistair said. "I just never knew what they were for until now." He snapped his fingers as a new thought occurred to him. "It's like the license plate on the car that hit the dog!"

Lauren looked up at him. "Did you get the plate number?"

"No," he said sadly.

"We were too shocked to think about it," Rachel said.

"Too bad," Lauren said. "We could have solved the mystery."

"Mystery?" Sunny said.

"The mystery of who hit the dog."

"Yeah..." Rachel breathed. "But, maybe, we can at least find out who owns this dog, so we can let them know it's dead."

"How do we do that?" Joe asked. "Do you know who to call?"

"Maybe my dad does!" Alistair said. "If he got the tags for Hunter and Duchess from the City, he can maybe let them know we found the dog, and the City can let the owner know."

Lauren stood up and walked over to him. "Good idea, Alistair," she said.

He swelled with pride. "Call me Al."

Suddenly a voice called out. "Yoo-hoo! Kids! What are you up to today?"

They all turned to see an older woman standing in her front yard, wearing a large sun hat and gloves, clutching some plant by the stem, its roots shedding dirt. She'd obviously been in the middle of gardening when she noticed them. Her house faced on to Ewen.