Disclaimer: All familiar characters belong to Janet Evanovich. I am not making any money from this. All mistakes are mine. Spoiler for Lean Mean Thirteen.

Even the Pup is an Unmentionable by Debra8652

Chapter 12

Remy's POV

I sneaked into the conference room this morning where the Core Team was going to meet. We were waiting for Bobby, so Lester asked Mom's Man a question:

Lester: Primo, what's the dumbest thing you ever did to screw up your relationship with Beautiful?

Mom's Man: It's presumptuous of you to think that I've peaked.

Hmm. Poor Mom.

And you should hear Mom and Her Man discuss something. Lester says it's like being at the U.N. except no one gives you the headphones so you can understand each other!

Mom's Man: Babe, we may have to hire someone new to do distractions - you are getting too well known to continue doing them.

Mom: I'm not crazy about you spending 20 minutes to put a wire on another woman.

Mom's Man: It's not difficult - she could do it herself.

Mom: So can I.

Mom's Man: That's entirely different.

Mom: And when you say "entirely different", you mean exactly the same?

Mom's Man: Yes.

Mom: Glad you clarified that.

OK, so Mom felt it was necessary to make it up to Brett after the exploding taxidermied animal SNAFU. Then no one could decide if she should make amends by taking him with her on her apprehension or by not taking him with her. Anyway, he ended up going with her to pick up Mooner. Mom had Brett bring his laptop and work at Mooner's kitchen table with the windows open, plus told him not to accept any homemade baked goods from Mooner! Brett got caught up on all his outstanding reports since Mooner couldn't leave until after a 2-hour Gilligan's Island marathon. Everything went according to plan - Mooner got rebonded and Brett caught up on his reports. When Brett and Mom got back to fifth floor, Brett asked everyone why the castaways took all those clothes for a 3-hour tour but no one knew. And then Vince asked where Sweet Pea came from and why did Olive Oyl take care of her. No one knew that, either.

Dad Diesel popped in on Saturday morning so he could go with Mom and me to the pet food store to get my food. We skipped over supplies for Rex as he has plenty of hamster crunchies and Luis and Woody have been working in Luis's workshop to make homemade bedding from wood scraps.

Mom pushed the cart to the puppy food aisle and Dad D loaded my bag of food into the cart. Now comes the fun part - I get to pick out a stuffed toy! I already have a Mallard duck that Tank gave me after his kitty punctured my nose, plus I have a squirrel and a raccoon. I like that all the stuffed animals are at my eye level. I grabbed a stuffed turkey and dragged Mom, because I'm on a leash, to the cash register. Dad D thought I was going to run off with it before Mom paid for it. I'm not a shoplifter - I know I have to give my toy to the doot-doot lady first! Besides, the doot-doot lady was Shannon, the Store Manager. Mom was wearing a Rangeman jacket plus Shannon called both Mom and me by name. This isn't one of those stupid criminal stories the Rangemen laugh about! More about that later.

I held onto the turkey all the way back to Rangeman. Mom fastened the seat belt around me in the backseat. Dad D carried my food up to the breakroom cupboard and I carried my new toy so I could show all the guys. Mom's Man pointed out that I now had 2 birds and 2 animals in my collection.

Anyway, I heard some of the Rangeguys laughing about a stupid criminal, who was holding up a bank, but he wrote the robbery note on the back of his deposit slip which had his name and address on it. Duh.

Remy,

Smarter than the average dog