While she was gathering the supplies Tricks would need for the day—food, water, a chew toy, a soft blanket—Morgan came back inside with Tricks. “You ready to leave?” he asked.
“Almost.” She put the food, water, and toy in a small cooler and set the cooler on the blanket. “Now I’m ready.”
He tucked his Glock inside his waistband, in the slim-carry concealed holster, and pulled a blue shirt on over his tee shirt, leaving it unbuttoned. “So am I.”
A little taken aback, she said, “Why the weapon? You’ve never taken one to town before.”
He lifted his brows. “There’ll be a crowd there, right?”
“Well, yeah. Most of the people in town try to show up.”
“That’s why I’m armed. The probability of trouble goes up exponentially, the more people there are.”
“We’ve never had any trouble before—not anything that required firearms anyway.” She paused, then smiled. “I take that back; someone had to shoot down a helium balloon year before last.”
“Escaping, huh?”
“With some car keys tied to it.”
He chuckled. “Wish I’d seen that.”
“Watching a grown man jump up and down like Rumpelstiltskin and scream ‘Get it! Get it!’ was definitely the highlight of the day.” She paused, then sighed. “I suppose I should get my weapon from the Jeep. I hadn’t thought about it.”
“Firearms are like hospitals. If you have ’em and don’t need ’em, that’s a good thing. If you need ’em and don’t have ’em, that’s a very bad thing.”
She grumbled inwardly because the pistol would have to go in her bag and would get heavier and heavier as the day wore on. She’d never bothered getting a holster that could clip to her waistband, rationalizing that she was just administration instead of a real police chief, but this last month had made her realize that for better or worse, she was the police chief, a real one, and she had to accept the responsibilities that came with the job. She could have used better training when it came to the Kyle Gooding incident, and the “mob” scene could have turned out much worse if the people had been different. She’d been lucky; now she needed to be smart.
Morgan stuffed Tricks’s leash in his pocket, then took the cooler and blanket from her. While he was putting everything in the Tahoe and loading up Tricks, she retrieved the pistol from the Jeep and stowed it in her bag, which was now as heavy as she’d anticipated.
The main street had already been blocked off in anticipation of the parade. Morgan had so quickly learned the area that she suspected he’d been studying Google Maps, and without asking for directions he took secondary streets that led them to the staging area along the park where the parade floats and marchers were lining up.
“Holy shit,” he said as he got out of the Tahoe and surveyed the scene. “I didn’t expect it to be this big.”
“I think there’s thirty-something entries, but not all of them are from Hamrickville. The Shriners aren’t; they’re based in another town, but they do all the parades.”
The local VFW led the way, followed by the Shriners on their motorcycles, then the Ladies’ Club on a short-trailer float that looked as if they were having a tea party because all the ladies were seated on delicate chairs around an ornate wrought-iron table. One year Mayor Buddy had ridden a Segway at the head of the parade, but it had gotten away from him, dumped him on his ass in the middle of the street, and mowed down a trash can. That was before he’d broken his ankle skiing. After the broken ankle, Mayor Buddy had decided riding the Segway was like asking for trouble so that idea had gone away, to the disappointment of the townsfolk.
The high school seniors’ float was seventh in line, and the kids came running when they saw her and Tricks. “This is going to be so awesome,” said one of the girls. She was wearing a floaty summer dress and a tiara and had glitter all over her face. They were all dressed in their party best, boys and girls, and the whole bunch wanted to get Tricks “dressed.” Despite efforts to get her accustomed to a tiara, no way was Tricks having any part of it, but they’d prepared for that possibility by having a glittery pink bow with long dangling ribbons that they stuck on top of her head. At least it matched the pink boa they draped around her. Bo swallowed her laughter; she glanced over and saw that Morgan had turned his back, though there was a betraying shake to his shoulders. The kids were laughing too, so she didn’t think their feelings would be hurt. Tricks’s expression was blissed out; all that attention was right up her alley.
“We tried to hide a chair for you to sit on,” one of the boys told Bo apologetically, “but that would make your head stick up out of the decorations, so we put a cushion on the floor for you. Is that okay?”
She smiled. “A cushion is fine.” Truthfully, she’d expected to be sitting on the trailer floor, so the cushion was a big step up.
“Want me to take your bag?” Morgan asked.
The thought of him with a purse hanging from his shoulder was entertaining, but she shook her head. “Thanks, but I’ll keep it with me. I’ll be sitting.”
They all trooped to the float to take their places because the parade organizer had blown a whistle and bellowed “Five minutes!” through a bullhorn. Bo prepared to climb onto the trailer, but Morgan forestalled her by clamping his hands around her waist and swinging her on board as if she were a child. While her heart was still pounding in reaction, he picked Tricks up too and placed her on the trailer because all the tissue-paper flowers meant she didn’t have a clear shot for jumping up. Tricks darted to Bo and indulged in some excited licking because she was going for a ride. Bo found her place on a fat cushion in front of the raised dais where the male and female class favorites were standing. She could even lean back against the plywood dais. The decorations completely hid her from view on both sides though she could still see what was going on directly in front of her. The closeness of the decorations stopped any breeze from reaching her, but she’d asked to be as hidden as possible. The parade wouldn’t last that long anyway, maybe forty-five minutes—an hour if they stretched it out.