Rottweiler Rescue (11 page)

How often did the kennel workers witness a scene like this, I wondered. For that matter, how often were they subjected to Lee Stander’s temper? I abandoned any thought of any of my dogs ever staying at Bear Creek Kennels and felt sad for Dorrie.

There didn’t seem to be the slightest chance that Stander would calm down enough to answer any question of mine on any subject, and definitely not on the subject of Jack Sheffield. Rather than risk making things worse for Dorrie, who stood as if turned to stone, I mouthed a thank you to her and made my escape.

As I drove back toward the highway I decided to do some research on colored contact lenses. Lee Stander had the dark brown eyes one would expect in a man with his olive complexion, but he was the right height and build to be the man I was looking for. He certainly exuded the kind of violence I expected from the man who had killed Jack and attacked me, and the way he had ignored me.... For Dorrie’s sake I half hoped he was the one. She’d be better off without the jerk.

Shadows were lengthening, but the
sun was still a comforting distance above the mountains when I got home. A message from Susan on my voice mail gave early warning that she was so eager to hear about my day she was going to drop by in hopes that I would be home and ready to chat.

I might have enough time to satisfy my curiosity about contact lenses on the Internet before she arrived if I hurried. Apologizing to the dogs for leaving them home alone all day, I let them out into the yard, and raced upstairs to my office in the spare bedroom to start my search.

Half an hour later, I let Susan in through the front door and the dogs in through the back. The dogs bounded into the kitchen in a herd, but at least they were willing to wait politely for attention. Susan was not.

“So?” she said.

“So I have a salmon fillet ready for the oven that will make dinner for both of us. Salad first, rice with, is that okay?”

“I’m not inviting myself to dinner. I want to hear how your visits went.”

“I’ll tell you over dinner. Call home and tell your husband you’re keeping me company. He’ll have to fend for himself.”

Susan called while I finished the salads and poured iced tea. As soon as she hung up, I started telling her all about my day.

“So you didn’t get the carry permit,” she said with a frown.

“No, but I started the process,” I assured her. To my relief, she let the subject drop and didn’t force me to tell her what stood between me and the permit.

“Do you really think Lee Stander could be the one?” Susan asked.

“He’s still angry enough about that lawsuit and Jack, and he seemed to be — I don’t know how to describe it — bottled up fury. I can picture him hitting her, and I don’t have to stretch to picture him attacking me, but it’s hard to believe he’s married to her and they have the kennel as a business and he’d be that afraid of the dogs.”

“You’re putting too much into that. Most people would be afraid of the dogs running at them like that.”

“In the parking lot, yes, but he was afraid of Robo that day at Jack’s, and Robo was just standing there looking at him.”

“Mm.” Susan didn’t sound convinced. “What about his eyes?”

“They’re brown, but I just did some research on colored contact lenses on the Internet. Carl’s eyes made me think of it — they’re too blue to be real. I found a site where you can pick the color of your own eyes from a list and then choose the color you want, and an image comes up that shows what different brands of lenses would make your eyes look like. And what’s more interesting is, at least on this site, most of the lenses that make dark eyes light give them kind of an unnatural look. Some of the blue lenses were downright eerie looking.”

“So that’s it!” Susan said excitedly. “Lee Stander covered himself all up with black clothes and only his eyes showed and then he changed the color of his eyes and nothing was recognizable.”

“Well, it’s a possibility. Except I always thought the mask and all that black clothing was to keep from leaving any trace evidence, not for a disguise. He must have known Carl Warmstead wasn’t home. If someone did stop by to visit that morning, he could expect that they’d come to the front and ring the doorbell.”

“But even if he took off the ski mask when he left the house, he had all those black clothes on. Anyone who saw him dressed like that in August would remember,” Susan said doubtfully.

“He was coming out the back door when I saw him. I think he planned on killing Jack, pulling off all that black clothing in the yard and slipping right on to the jogging paths in shorts and a T-shirt. A big fanny pack would hold all the black stuff — and the knife. Changing your eye color seems extreme. No one could identify a person from their eyes. If someone were that careful.... Stander didn’t seem careful, he seemed — explosive.”

“Have you told anyone about the contact lenses?”

“No, not yet.” Explaining to Lieutenant Forrester that I had been out investigating on my own was not something to look forward to. “I’m going to talk to the others on the list first. Jack really was a rotten person, you know. Maybe everyone on the list will turn out to have been violently angry at him.”

“He wasn’t all bad,” Susan said, “and you may believe Standers’ version of events, but remember a jury didn’t. What if someone from the kennels did let the dog out? Maybe Dorrie Stander doesn’t even know it and doesn’t want to believe it could happen. Jack wasn’t evil.”

“Do you think what he did with Maida’s tail was good?” I said.

“Of course, not,” she said sharply. “I think it’s despicable, just like you do, but what if taking too strong a stand against docking the tail just lost him the Feltzers as clients? What could he have done?”

“Oh, I don’t know, told them to take their business elsewhere, stood on principle, done the right thing, something like that.”

Susan gave me a hard look.

“You’re being naive. He would have lost them anyway, and they would have gone to someone with less scruples and the dog would have been worse off, not better.”

“You’re assuming Jack had scruples. Tell me about a scruple he had.”

Susan was quiet for a long moment, then sighed.

 “All right, I can’t. He was charming and fun to be around and he helped me in minor ways from time. He’d lend me equipment, carry things for me, things like that, but I can’t say I ever saw him stand on principle. I can’t say that about a lot of people I know casually.”

“People who knew him pretty well describe a first-class manipulator, ethically challenged to say the least.”

“That doesn’t mean he deserved to have his throat cut.”

“No, but it may mean more than one person hated him enough to do it.”

We discussed the people on the list I’d seen and the ones I was going to see the next day and what to do about it right through dinner and were having coffee when the dogs ran to the door to let me know someone was arriving.

The doorbell rang a minute later. The deputy on the doorstep was checking to see if the strange car in my driveway was a sign of trouble. Susan was pleased to see that Lieutenant Forrester was keeping his promise to have his deputies drive by as often as possible. Yet after she left, as I double checked my door and window locks, I wondered if Jack Sheffield’s murderer was going to leave his car in sight in my driveway if he came calling.

My appointment the next day
with Harry Jameson, Jack Sheffield’s main competitor in the area, was for late morning at his kennel. There are only so many dog owners who can and will pay a professional handler to keep, care for, train, and show a dog, and Harry and Jack had been long-time rivals for the same customers. I didn’t know Harry but had seen him at shows. My recollection was of a hatchet-faced man with thinning brown hair, thick through the chest and maybe not quite tall enough to be the killer.

After her morning training session, Millie once again had to settle in her crate with a chew toy, but even though the fall day was going to be too warm to leave dogs in the car, Sophie, in paroxysms of joy, and Robo, in calm indifference, were coming with me. Harry lived closer to Colorado Springs than to Denver. After a quick stop at my computer to print Mapquest’s directions, I headed for I-25 and turned south.

The drive to Colorado Springs is one of my favorites. The highway runs past vast tracts of undeveloped land, some of it state owned and protected. At first the land beside the highway is rugged. Rocky hills dotted with scrub brush poke out of grasslands cut with ravines. The looming flat-topped formation from which the town of Castle Rock takes its name is just one of the more distinctive of these geographical features. For a while, snow-capped Pikes Peak seems to be straight ahead.

Further south the land gentles, and open shortgrass prairie rolls away from the road. That morning the mountains to the west were a deep blue-black, clearly outlined in the early autumn sky. For a little while, I gave myself over to the wild beauty and pushed away thoughts of the threat behind me and the interview ahead of me.

After more than ninety minutes of such simple pleasure, I exited the highway and began driving east. The area became more and more rural, and Harry’s house turned out to be a pretty older home with natural wood siding. I drove slowly up the long driveway, trying to mentally prepare for anything that might be waiting.

Harry, a plump blonde woman, and two girls about ten and twelve who favored their mother, were doing fall cleanup work in the flower beds bordering a small patch of green lawn. Two Rotties stopped supervising the gardening long enough to run to the waist-high chainlink fence between the yard and the driveway and give several deep barks to warn me to behave myself and to let Sophie and Robo know who ruled the territory.

West of the house and perhaps a hundred feet behind it dogs in chainlink runs zoomed back and forth, barking with excitement. The runs had shade cloth covering their tops for six or more feet close to the building. In spite of the distance, I could see that not all the dogs were Rottweilers. Harry worked with several other breeds.

After a few words to his wife, Harry left his family and dogs in the yard and came out to meet me. “You’re not planning on leaving those dogs in the car, are you?” he said critically, looking at Sophie and Robo through the car windows.

“No. I was half afraid to make such a long drive without them, and I figured you wouldn’t mind them around. I’ll keep them leashed.”

“All right,” Harry said. “In fact, let them stretch their legs if you want. We’ll talk in my office.”

I jumped at the chance to bring the dogs along, but wasn’t willing to let them loose to really “stretch” their legs. Robo, I knew, couldn’t be bothered running over to the house dogs or the kenneled dogs and starting a barkfest, but Sophie would be happy to urge every dog on the place to greater vocal heights. I leashed both dogs and followed Harry along the worn path back to the kennel.

The room Harry ushered me into was strictly utilitarian and not an office in any way. The floor was bare concrete. Everything necessary to groom and care for a dog of any breed was positioned conveniently close to the raised bathtub, extra large grooming table, and powerful dryer. When clients visited Harry at home, hospitality must be provided in the house, not here, where the only furniture was a tattered stuffed chair, and the scent of wet dog lingered in the air.

Harry leaned against the tub with his arms crossed and his face still set in a scowl. Maybe he cared enough about dogs to make sure mine weren’t waiting in a hot car, but he plainly wanted me gone and gone quickly. I was still stiff and sore enough that the chair looked good but too stubborn to sit if he wouldn’t. I propped myself against the grooming table, imitated his position, and looked straight in his unfriendly eyes, whose dark blue color no longer seemed crucial.

“As I told you over the phone, I’m trying to find out enough about Jack to have some idea who killed him because whoever it is has gotten it into his head I can identify him, and he attacked me the other night.”

“Jack was killed weeks ago. Why would you think someone trying to steal your purse now has anything to do with it?”

“He wasn’t trying to steal my purse. My purse was sitting right there in the grocery cart and he never tried to take it. He tried to drag
me
into a van.”

“Oh, come on. Admit it. You had your fifteen minutes of fame, and you liked it and you’re looking for more. Maybe I don’t blame you, but that doesn’t mean I have to spill my guts while you play amateur detective.”

Harry had been uncooperative over the phone, agreeing to see me only when I wouldn’t take no for an answer, but he hadn’t actually been rude. Evidently since then he had decided he really didn’t want to talk to me. Too bad for him.

“Does this look like something I was
looking
for?” I said, pulling the turtleneck of my knit top away from my neck and raising my head so he could see under my chin. After a few seconds, I let go of the collar and forced my chin down from unnaturally high to merely a belligerent tilt.

“He tried to kill me, and the only reason he failed was my dogs went right through a car window and came running. I know it was Jack’s killer, and the sheriff’s investigators agree.”

At my tone, Sophie stopped exploring the room and returned to my side. Robo stayed where he was by the door.

We stared at each other for another few moments before Harry sighed, his expression softening slightly.

“All right, you’re not crazy, and I owe you an apology. I’m sorry for jumping to conclusions. But why are you sure it’s the same guy? Why would it be, what, more than a month later?”

“He probably crawled out from under his rock again because I helped Susan McKinnough in the rescue booth at the specialty show, and a lot of people wanted to hear about the day I found Jack’s body. I think he heard a second-hand version of what I said with embellishments added about how I could identify him. I didn’t start
playing
amateur detective until
after
he attacked me.”