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“She’s going to be devastated if something happens to her corgis,” said Odelia, biting her nails as her heart tapped a nervous pattern in her chest.

“Oh, yes,” said Bart. “Sometimes I think she loves those animals more than her own family. Then again, I can’t blame her. At least the corgis never give her any trouble.”

“Have you ever driven the Duke and Duchess of Essex?”

“Can’t say that I have, Ma’am. I have a friend who does, though.”

She wondered how to formulate her next question.

“Any issues?” asked Chase, beating her to the punch.

She gave him a grateful nod.

“You mean, has something like this ever happened to them?”

“Uh-huh.”

The driver thought for a moment.“Well, Fluffy was never kidnapped as far as I know. My friend did witness an incident shortly after they were married. A reporter who came to the house and made a big fuss about wanting to talk to the Duchess. He wasn’t allowed to come anywhere near her, though.”

“Who was he?”

“Well-known bloke. Otis Robbins? He does one of those morning shows. Personally I never watch him. Too full of himself. My mum loves him, though. She’s a big fan.”

“Why did he make a fuss?”

“I reckon he wanted to interview her for his show, and when she refused he blew his top. You can’t just walk up to a royal and shove a camera in their face the way you can with regular folk on the street. He should have known that. Another fork in the road coming up, Ma’am.”

She closed her eyes and was about to say left when Chase said,“Hey, isn’t that a dog collar?”

The driver pulled over and Chase quickly got out. In the middle of the road, a fancy dog collar lay. It was velvety red with a gold medallion.

When he brought it back to the car, he held it up.“Sweetie,” he read.

“That’s one of the Queen’s corgis,” said Bart excitedly. “Good catch, sir.”

“So they definitely came this way,” said Odelia. Her heart lifted and did a happy little dance. Her intuition wasn’t leading them astray. Instead, it was leading them closer to her beloved pets.

“Let’s keep going,” said Chase. “Maybe we can catch up with them.”

And as the car eased into traffic once more, Odelia found herself thinking about the driver’s words. The reporter. Could he have something to do with this whole thing? Somehow she doubted it. Why would a reporter try to murder the Duchess? He could simply kill her with his sharp tongue.

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The car was still zooming along the road, and I found myself thinking about Odelia. If I had to spend the rest of my life with this crook, I’d miss her very much. Odelia was the only human I’d ever owned, and so I didn’t have a large frame of reference, but my instinct told me that I’d hit the jackpot when I’d landed on her doorstep. And that it could only go downhill from there.

“They’ll probably sell us to the highest bidder,” said Sweetie. “I wonder how much I will fetch.”

“A thousand pounds,” said Fr?ulein.

“A million, rather,” said Sweetie.

“Maybe a billion!” Molly said.

“Maybe they’ll sell us to someone in the Middle East,” said Sweetie. “And he’ll treat us like royalty.”

“You’re already treated like royalty,” I said.

“Yes, but this time we’ll be treated like oil sheik royalty, which is always a step up from those old and dusty European royals.”

“I think the European royals are the best,” said Fr?ulein. “New money simply can’t compete with all that style and class.”

“It can,” said Sweetie. “They’ve been buying up so much of London soon they’ll own the entire town, the Queen and all the other royals included.”

“I miss Odelia,” I announced, deciding to change the topic. I found all this talk of being sold off to the highest-bidding oil sheik frankly depressing.

“And I miss Gran,” said Dooley.

“I miss Marge,” said Harriet.

“I miss them all!” said Brutus, who possessed a sentimental streak I never even suspected he had.

“Oh, stop whining, you lot,” said Sweetie. “You’ll be adopted by a nice family, who’ll feed you and give you plenty of cuddles.”

“It’s not the same,” said Harriet.

“Yeah, you don’t know our humans,” Dooley chimed in. “They’re the best.”

“Look, it’s not that I don’t like the Queen,” said Sweetie, “but mostly I like the lifestyle. You know? The best food, the best pillows, the best clothes, the best dog walkers… What I won’t miss is the weather. London is so dreary.”

“Oh, so dreary,” said Molly with an eyeroll.

“The weather. Oh, don’t get me started on the weather.”

“Horrible weather. Simply ghastly.”

“Some days I don’t even want to get up.”

“A lot of days.”

“And then there’s Dubai. Sunny and bright. My kind of place.”

“My kind of place, too.”

“Dubai is, like, a hundred degrees on a cold day,” Fr?ulein pointed out.

“So? They have air-conditioning. It’s all about the lifestyle.”

“The lifestyle is the thing,” Molly chimed in.

“Give me Buckingham Palace over some nondescript air-conditioned luxury condo in Dubai every day,” said Fr?ulein.