Good afternoon. It is I Gigi the parti poodle and this week our novelist abandoned us.

I am Tucker. I am a Maltese. Gigi and I were left with a babysitter.

Babysitter indeed! I am perfectly capable of fending for myself. You don’t even know how to open the dog food cans.

Neither do you.

On the contrary, I know exactly how to curb my hunger.

How?

By ordering from Doordash.

Really?

Absolutely. I must say I have had a hankering for crepes lately. I must order some soon. I simply would have to jump up on my novelist’s office chair and start striking keys. Then someone would come to the door, and I would bark at them until they left the food and went away.

How would you open the door and retrieve the food?

You and your logistics! I would find a way.

How?

This is my blog! No one wants to hear about your thoughts. Leave now, please.

You don’t know how to open the door, do you?”

Balderdash! I am a poodle. We are highly intelligent.

I have never seen you open a door.

Ignore him! And please enjoy my seventeenth chapter of What I Found in the Trunk.

What I Found in the Trunk

by

Gigi the parti poodle

Chapter Seventeen

Gary returned to the suite with Rune’s coffee. “Alright,” he said to her. “Here’s your triple raspberry mocha. Explain this thing you took.”

“I still don’t think you’re going to get it,” Rune said.

“Try us.”

Rune sighed and took a sip from the paper cup. “Let’s say you were a boy who grew up in the middle of nowhere. Let’s say you got bored easily. One day you are searching around your dad’s shop or whatever and you find a tin container. And you pick up the tin thinking it was empty and you find money in it. A lot of money. And at first the money interest you but after awhile you get to wondering what your dad might have done to amass all that cash.”

“Moonshine,” Rusty said.

“No. But something illegal.”

“Shrooms,” Bennet said.

“No, not shrooms. Let’s say dad was into something bigger.”

“Government secrets.”

“See,” Rune said to Gary. “I can’t explain this to you and your buddies.”

“Try,” Gary growled. Then he turned to Bennet and Rusty. “Shut up and let the lady talk.”

“So,” Rune continued. “You’ve found a large tin with a lot of money in it in your dad’s shop, and you know it’s not from moonshine and it’s not from drugs. At first you think he’s great at saving money. But then you start to wonder if he stole it. Or maybe he’s been skimming money off the family budget.

“But dad’s always been a good man. He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, and he doesn’t cheat on your mother. He’s just a guy with a shop who makes a decent living.”

“He’s like that guy in that movie who didn’t tell his wife he was an assassin and then the bad guys came to town,” Bennet said.

“Gary,” Rune said. “My understanding of our deal was I was to tell a parable about what I took from the trunk and yet I keep getting interrupted.”

“Let her finish the story,” Gary snapped. “After all we’re stuck here for at least a couple of days, and I could use the entertainment.”

“Thank you,” Rune said. “So, you decide to see if the bills are marked. Maybe you were wrong, and you can’t trust dad after all. Maybe he stole it from a bank, and you want to check to see if the bills are marked. You open the can up and take out two or three bills and slip them in your pocket, put the can back where you got it and leave the shop. “You ask yourself how do you go about finding out if the bills are marked? You can’t just walk into a bank and ask, “Hey, are these bills marked?” or “Hey, is the law on the lookout for these serial numbers?” So, you decide to spy on dad.

“You start making a diary of any time dad leaves the house. Then you realize that every Wednesday he goes to get supplies at the same time every week. After a month goes by you see he does it like clockwork.

“Then early one morning you hear something. It’s nearly dawn, and you sneak downstairs and look out the window at your father’s shop. There’s a strange truck parked outside. You scurry over to your dad’s desk where he keeps his binoculars. You look outside with them, and you watch a man and your father step out of the shop. You see your father hand the man the tin with all the money in it. The man looks inside the can and closes it. You wonder what your dad has bought from this stranger who upon closer look does not seem friendly. You become concerned this guy might hurt your dad. But then he hands your father an envelope. Your father looks in the envelope and shakes hands with the stranger. Then the man gets in his truck and drives off. Your dad puts the envelope in his shirt pocket and returns inside his shop.

“You set your alarm for this same time every morning, but the lights in your dad’s shop stay off and no one comes…until two weeks later. Then the stranger returns. And then two weeks later he comes back again. And every time your dad hands him a can full of money, is given an envelope and returns to the shop.

“You start to think whatever your dad is buying may not be worth what he’s spending. I mean he is keeping a lot of money in those tins. He must be getting ripped off. You decide when the stranger comes back this time, you’re going to get a better look. It’s summer now and you won’t freeze to death when you go outside. You’ve saved up for a pair of small compact binoculars and a digital voice recorder. You put them into your jacket pocket and head out to dad’s shop.

“When the stranger comes, you sneak along the side of the shop. You listen and when they greet each other you start the recorder. But they don’t say much. They talk about yesterday’s ballgame and the weather. Then your dad goes inside, and you can’t hear anything. There’s only a small window to look in but it’s mostly obscured except for a tiny piece of a corner. You look through the glass with your binoculars but all you see is your dad retrieving the new can from the shelf. He leaves the shop, and you look around the corner with your binoculars and your recorder going. The stranger tells your dad that his work is the best around, takes the can and hands him yet another envelope. But this time you see your dad open the envelope and with your binoculars you can tell what’s in it.” Rune took a sip of her coffee and looked at Gary.

“That’s it?” Gary asked.

“That’s all you need to know.”

“Is he laundering money?” Rusty asked.

“Like I said,” Rune replied. “That’s all you need to know.”

My Books

You can check out my books Chicane and the five installments in my Musicology book series Musicology: Volume One, Baby!, Musicology: Volume Two, Kid!, Musicology: Volume Three, Twist!, Musicology: Volume Four, Sweetie! and Musicology: The Epiquad on Amazon in Kindle and Paperback editions. You can also check out Musicology’s web site at www.musicologyrocks.com and vote for who you think will win Musicology!!!

STREAM OF THE WEEK: LET HIM GO (2020)- HBO Max

It is difficult these days to find a new thoughtful film. In fact, some of the experts say cinema is bad, gone or even dead. And they are not entirely wrong. Both Martin Scorsese and Riddley Scott discuss it in this article and Barry Diller discusses it in this article. It’s essentially what happens when a pack of executive SPs backed by a bureaucratic SJ army tell artistic NFs and NTs what to make. Nothing good ever comes of it. However, sometimes a flower breaks through the concrete and thus I present week’s riveting sleeper from 2020. Based on the novel by Larry Watson the story takes place in 1951 Montana where retired sheriff George Blackledge (Kevin Costner) and his horse trainer wife Martha Blackledge (Dianne Lane) lose their only son James (Ryan Bruce) to an accident. James leaves behind his wife Lorna (Kayli Carter) and an infant son Jimmy (played at different ages by Otto and Bram Hornung), the Blackledge’s only grandchild. But when three years later Lorna decides to get remarried and the couple runs off in the middle of the night taking Jimmy with them, Martha decides to make a voyage across state lines to bring the boy home.