Drop Dead on Recall (26 page)

83

Goldie went home with
a thoughtful look on her face, and I loaded Jay into his crate in the Caravan and slid in behind the wheel. I had a craving for a nice big salad, and Scott’s grocery on Stellhorn has a nice big salad bar.

I swung by the vet clinic thinking I’d stop in and tell Connie we passed the Delta test. They’re open Saturdays until 5 p.m., and Connie works a lot of weekends when she’s not at dog shows. There were no empty spaces in the parking lot, so I pulled to one side of the lot, behind a row of vehicles, and let the engine idle while I dialed my cell phone. The receptionist said Connie had left for the day. I tried her house and cell numbers and left “call me’s” on both voicemails. Odd for Connie to be completely out of touch. As a professional show-dog handler, she liked to be available for potential handling clients.

I tried for a three-point turn, but there wasn’t much room and I had to add a couple extra points to get the Caravan facing out again. As I maneuvered through the final backward leg, I noticed a battered red cargo van tucked into the corner space behind a shiny new conversion van. If it wasn’t the rust bucket Francine Peterson drove, the two of them were littermates. I backed up a little further for a better look.

Why would Francine come to Fort Wayne for a vet? Then I noticed the license, not a plate but a temporary paper tag sheathed in plastic and taped to the back door.

You really are paranoid. There are lots of rusty old red vans.
Janet Angel harangued me all the way to Scott’s grocery store and then home, reminding me that, among other things, it’s one thing to be careful, another to be obsessed, and I was treading darn close to the boundary. Then again, who wouldn’t be obsessed with finding answers with two acquaintances dead, another missing, not to mention my cat, and my dog poisoned.

I grabbed my tote bag and salad, unloaded Jay, and locked the car doors. I even remembered to relock the front door when we got inside the house.

On the drive home I’d decided that if anyone was likely to know where Greg was, it would be Giselle. Not that he would tell her, but she seemed to have an inclination for stalking so she might know anyway. I didn’t relish a conversation with her after our last one, but decided I had nothing to lose, so I looked up her number and called. Just as she picked up, I noticed that my answering machine was blinking at me.

_____

“I’ll tell you what I told your friends, the police.” Giselle’s delivery was stronger than usual. “I have no idea where Greg is. And if I did know I don’t think I’d tell you.”

Okay then
. For once she wasn’t speaking in the interrogative. Maybe the police interviews were building her confidence. Or maybe she was just pissed, a possibility she reinforced when she slammed the phone down without saying goodbye.

I pushed the playback button for my message. The voice was female, I was pretty sure, but pitched too high, like a fake voice, a cartoon voice, and a little fuzzy, as if she was speaking through a wool muffler. “Keep your nose in your own business and your cat will find his way home. Keep sticking it where it doesn’t belong and who knows …” The recording ran silent, and then the voice came back. “You might find more dead than toy dogs.” The ice in those words blasted like brainfreeze through my skull, but the taste in my mouth was definitely not ice cream.

I tried to wrap my mind around the threat as the machine whirred through the rewind. Then I replayed the recording, my gorge rising. I replayed it several more times, searching the voice, the inflection, for a clue to the speaker, but no bells rang. I hit the save button, and punched in Jo Stevens’ number on my cell. By the time I had left her a message, my eyes were stinging and my heart was doing aerobics.

I considered calling Goldie, but changed my mind. Why worry her? What I really needed was a nice stress-reducing lavender bubble bath, so I rechecked all the doors, then ran a tub full of water as hot as I could stand it with double the recommended bubble bath. What did I care if it left bubble marks on the tile around the tub? I dropped my clothes in a heap between the toilet and the vanity, pulled my hair off my face with two alligator clips and a headband, and sank into the hot water. I was leaning back into my inflated bath pillow when the phone rang.

I decided to ignore it until I heard Goldie’s voice. “I know you’re there, Janet. Pick up the phone … Tum tee tum … Come on, Janet, pick up the phone …”

Goldie never hangs up if she knows I’m here, so I climbed out of the hot water, wrapped an almost-big-enough towel around myself, and shivered and dripped my way down the hall and across the living room.
Good thing I closed the blinds
, I thought. I reached for the phone, and heard the answering machine click off. Bzzzz. Goldie had hung up.

_____

“You never hang up like that!”

“Oh, hi Janet. I thought you were in the bath or something.”

“I was.”

“Oh, dear. Are you covered?”

“Yes. With goose bumps.”

She giggled. “That’s not enough, dear.”

“Very amusing. So were you checking to see if I was taking a bath?”

“My, my, aren’t we grumpy.” She clucked a couple times. “No, dear, let me tell you why I called.”

Why didn’t I think of that?
I bit my tongue.

“You know,” she seemed to be thinking aloud, “if I had to guess, I’d say Leo was bound for the backyard when he saw someone or something. With food. Remember how Jay was licking the grass?” She started tapping something against the phone. “You know what a social butterfly and chow hound, if that’s the right thing to call a cat, he is. I think the trail ends because someone fed him something and picked him up.”

84

Jay and I were
out the door at four a.m. to search again for Leo before I left for my photo shoot near Culver. As I watched him work his nose along this end of whatever track he was following, Goldie’s hunch about someone feeding and grabbing Leo echoed in my brain, and it rang true. I knew I should tell Detective Stevens about the threatening message on my answering machine, but was afraid she’d tell me not to make the drive. I’d made the commitment a couple months earlier, and at least one litter of baby Labs was supposed to be there for portraits. There wasn’t much I could do at home, and Goldie had my cell number. Besides, I needed the money.

The Northern Indiana Hunting Retriever Club practices once a month at various ponds and lakes in a big rectangle from Michigan (the lake), south to Kentland on the Illinois side, east to the Ohio line around Decatur, and north to Michigan (the state). I enjoy the variety of terrains contained in those ten thousand square miles, from the flat, rich farmland of west-central Indiana that once lay deep under ancient Lake Chicago, to the rocky ravines and rolling hills laid out by glaciers in the northern tier ten millennia ago, to the fertile soils farther to the east, once the bottom of the malarial Great Black Swamp.

My destination was a small private lake not far from Lake Maxinkuckee. I loaded my equipment and my dog into the van. I hadn’t planned to take Jay, but I wasn’t about to leave him home alone after that phone call. Besides, no one would begrudge him a swim when the retrievers finished. A little more than two hours later I pulled onto a grassy berm and parked behind a white Suburban. The back doors stood wide open and two Labs, a chocolate and a black, watched me from their crates, tongues lolling and tails thumping.

The air shook off the chill of night as daylight took hold, so I chucked my jacket, pulled my sweatshirt off, and put the cotton jacket back on over my T-shirt. I grabbed my tripod and my camera, popped the back of the van and checked that Jay had water, then struck out across the uneven field toward the shore some hundred yards to the east. The sun had cleared the tops of a clump of young willows weeping along the far bank of the pond, but dew still lay heavy near the ground, and the shin-high quackgrass and foxtail soaked my pants and shoes. Several people waved or nodded as I reached the group of some dozen retriever fans and twice that many dogs, mostly Labs, several Goldens, one Standard Poodle, a couple of Tollers, three Chesapeakes, a Curly, and three Flat-coats.

I had no more than set my camera bag on a canvas chair offered by Collin Lahmeyer, president of the club, when a mass of wet, dripping black hair and solid muscle jostled me. I looked down into two sparkling eyes and gently took the sodden goose wing offered in welcome.

“Gee, thanks, Drake.” I examined the gift, and handed it back to the sopping dog. He liked it a lot better than I did.

“Drake! Come!”

The big Lab turned toward the voice, glanced back at me as if to apologize for leaving so soon, and ran to Tom. Together they came over, Drake at heel now, and Tom grinning. “Nothing so friendly as a wet dog, huh?”

I grinned back, running my hand down my faded T-shirt and my well-worn jeans with the fraying seams. “And me all dressed up, too.”

“Leo come home?”

“No.”

“He’s not in the habit of going awol?”

“Miss a meal of canned salmon? Not on your life.”

“Maybe someone took him in.”

“Or just plain took him.” I told him about the message, and was on to Goldie’s theory when we were interrupted by a sharp whistle. It was Collin, seeking everyone’s attention. He explained to the assembled handlers that I was taking photos for possible sale to magazines, calendars, and books, then let me say a few words. I handed out release forms and business cards with my web address for those who wanted them, and promised I’d have the proofs online by the following weekend. A little foolhardy, but I find that a short deadline gets my fanny in gear. Besides, the sooner I post the proofs, the more likely people are to buy prints and CDs.

As I slung my camera case over my shoulder and picked up my tripod, Tom took me by the arm and said, “Call the detective.”

“Okay, I will.”

“Now, Janet.” A flashback to Chet at his bossiest made me start to bristle at Tom’s words, but when I saw the concern in his eyes I knew that his tone was one of care, not command. I unslung my bag from my shoulder, pulled my cell phone from my pocket, and punched Jo’s number in, thinking I might as well put her on speed dial. She didn’t pick up, so I told her voicemail about the latest warning, then turned the sound off on my phone.

I spent the next three hours taking hundreds of photos of retrievers doing what retrievers do best—leaping into water, swimming, carrying training bumpers and birds, shaking water out of their coats and onto people, racing through high grass and brush, and generally being the happiest dogs on earth. Tom took Jay for a couple of walks so I wouldn’t have to stop shooting.

The Lab puppies arrived mid-morning, and their breeder fastened three exercise pens together with clips to let the little guys take care of the Three P’s of Puppyhood—play, pee, and poop—as nature dictated. There were eleven of them, six blacks, five yellows. They really were babies, only six-and-a-half weeks old, roly-poly, and utterly smoochable. I could hardly put them down long enough to take their pictures, but I forced myself and got some nice shots, singles and groups, and then the whole gang having their first swim outside a wading pool. People put their dogs in their vehicles, all wide open for ventilation, and came to enjoy the puppies. The breeder created a “buddy system,” with a volunteer assigned to keep track of each puppy so none of them would wander off when they were out of the pen. As we wrapped things up with the puppies, Tom recommended that she check everyone for suspicious lumps under their clothing before anyone was allowed to leave, especially himself.

I stowed my equipment in my van, got Jay out, and let him run ahead of me to the lake. He and Drake greeted each other with polite mutual fanny sniffing before they bowed at one another and took off in big, joyous loops around the field. Tom stood at the edge of the lake and called to get Drake’s attention, then pitched a fat stick far out over the water. Both dogs saw it fly, and hit the water running. Drake grabbed one end of the stick first and Jay got the other end, facing the opposite direction, and they swam in a spiral around one another.

Tom pitched another stick off to their side, and Drake let go of the first one in favor of the second. Jay made the bank, where he dropped his treasure at Tom’s feet and shook the water from his coat. Tom raised his left arm to shield his face, and flung the stick back into the water. Jay went for it, swimming out as Drake came in with his prize. Tom threw Drake’s stick far into the field this time, then did the same with Jay’s when he delivered his stick to shore. For the next ten minutes, Tom kept the two dogs retrieving, sometimes on land, sometimes in the water. By the end all three were grinning, panting, wet, and dirty, and supremely pleased with themselves. Male bonding at its finest.

Tom offered me lunch at a nice little café in The Village at
Winona, an artsy community south of Warsaw and about halfway home, but I took a rain check. I was hot, covered with muck and plant matter, and worried about Leo.

I should have stuck with Tom.

85

I left the retriever
club training session and headed north into Plymouth on U.S. 31, stopped for a red light, and glanced at the signs at the intersection. If I continued north, I’d wind up in South Bend. Behind me to the south was Rochester. Why did that ring a bell? The light changed and I turned east onto U.S. 30. They were working on this stretch, I remembered, on Wednesday when I met Ginny Scott in Valparaiso, and the new blacktop surface was a vast improvement over the old bumpity bump concrete that was there before. I’d been telling myself for years that someday I’m going to take the Great U.S. 30 Road Trip all the way from Atlantic City to Astoria, Oregon. Abigail and Suzette’s unexpected departures had me thinking that I should do the things I’ve always planned to do now, since we never know how long we’ll have, and I decided as I drove that I should plan this road trip and do it, right after I took the first aid class I’d been planning to take since who knows when. I also remembered why Rochester sounded familiar. That’s where Francine lived.

About five miles further east I found myself catching up to a semi that was actually sticking to the speed limit, probably because this stretch of U.S. 30 is notorious for its speed traps. Thinking I’d pass him, I glanced into my rearview mirror and my stomach contracted. The front grille of something big was barreling toward the back of my Caravan, closing the distance between us with alarming efficiency. I couldn’t speed up without ramming into the blue and gold Alphonse Trucking logo blazoned across the doors of the semi, and a pale-gold Toyota Corolla blocked the lane to my left. The shoulder was filled with orange barrels still waiting for the highway department to pick them up. There was no escape.

I lay the back of my head against the headrest on the off chance that it would save my neck, and hoped for the best. There was nothing I could do for Jay except pray, and vow to rearrange my van so the crates would be in the center, away from a rear-end hit, if we got through this without injury. At least he was in an airline-approved crate, which was better protection than if he’d been loose.

We were approaching a crossroad. Could I make the right turn at 60 miles per hour without rolling over? I had a cinematic image of my van skidding sideways in a too-fast turn and going airborne over the drainage ditch that surely paralleled the pavement. These county roads all have them. No reason this one would be any different. And at this speed, that’s where I’d land, in turtle position. We’d both be hurt. Or dead. I glanced once more at the mirror and realized that the turn option was moot. Whatever was behind us would make contact before we got to the corner.

I prefer not to close my eyes when I’m driving, but I couldn’t see that it would matter much under the circumstances. My shoulders curled toward my sternum and my arms petrified against the steering wheel.
Please let the crate hold up, please let Jay be safe
ran like a mantra through my mind. My fingers started to cramp, and I couldn’t stop my teeth from biting into my lip. Rubber squealed against concrete.
Please, please, please
. I murmured a slow count to give my spinning mind some traction, squeezed my eyelids tighter, and braced for impact.