Shepherd's Crook (6 page)

fifteen

Tom brought me sweatpants
and a T-shirt, so I pulled them on and scampered off to the bedroom to get properly dressed. When I returned to the kitchen, Goldie was in full snit about something, but she got up and gave me a hug. “Congratulations! I understand Mr. Jay did you proud at the roundup.” She seems to envision herding events as something akin to John Ford films, albeit heavier on sheep and dogs than cattle and horses.

“He did that,” I said.
We'll ignore the part where he ran a flock of sheep over me. Twice.
The message light on my phone was blinking, but I ignored it and peered into the fridge. “I'm starving,” I said, half hoping Goldie would invite us over for one of the fantastic concoctions she's so good at whipping up.

I turned to her. “What are you so sore about?”

Goldie snorted. “Your new neighbor.” The last word came out in a tone I'm not used to hearing from Goldie. Pure sarcasm.

“They've moved in?” I glanced at Tom and he shrugged.

“He. Just one, and believe me, he'll be more than enough if today was any indication.” Goldie rocked the bottom of her Ol' Woody pale ale at Jay and Drake where they sprawled on the floor. “He's not happy about them.”

Pixel sauntered into the room, jumped onto Goldie's lap, and relaxed into her arms. “Totem is such a wiggleworm, the only time he does this is late afternoon. He's too wound up the rest of the time.” Totem was Pixel's
litter-brother
. Goldie and I, and Detective Hutchinson, had adopted the
three-kitten
litter after a friend took in their feral mama and her brood, and we loved to compare notes as they grew. Goldie sat back and sighed. “We had just a quick encounter this morning, but it was enough. He's a jerk.”

Tom and I exchanged a glance, and Tom asked, “Totem is a jerk?”

“Heavens, no! The new neighbor, what's his name. Martin. Yes, that's it. Martin.”

“So what makes you say this Martin is a jerk?” I asked.

“First of all, I never trust a man who hides behind reflective sunglasses. They seem sneaky to me, and they give me flashbacks.”

Goldie marched for civil rights and against the war back in the sixties, and she had spent more than a few nights “in the pokey,” as she put it. I wish I'd known her then, but I knew my mother, and that was pretty close. Mom hadn't been doing so well for a couple of years, but Goldie still burned with a soft and steady flame. She took the name Golden Sunshine back in the day, and as I watched the light from the window dance in her silver hair, I thought again that she chose the right name, especially back when her hair was still blonde.

“He asked me how many pets you have, and when I told him two dogs, two cats, and a new puppy coming, he said something like, ‘We'll see about that.'”

“What the heck does that mean?” I asked, and thought about the protesters at the herding clinic. Is there no end to people wanting to keep us from having animals in our lives?

“Maybe he's talking about that bill that's rumored to be coming up in the city council,” said Tom. “Wait a minute—is Martin the guy's first name, or last? That bill is the brainchild of Phil Martin.”

“What bill?” Goldie hadn't heard the rumors.

“If what we're hearing is true, and the bill passes, it will limit the number of pets in any one household. We haven't heard a solid number, but probably three to five.”

“But if they pass that …” Goldie didn't finish the thought, but we all knew where she was going. If they passed a number on the low end of the range, Tom and I would be in violation once his house sold and he moved in with me. And now we'd have a neighbor who, based on what Goldie said, would probably report us. The number chosen was, of course, entirely arbitrary. Our three dogs and two cats would be zero nuisance to the neighbors, unlike the single Dalmatian at the other end of the block who barked for hours on end, or the little terrierpoo on the next street who ran loose several times a week and used the neighbors' yards as his personal relief stations.

Tom patted my hand and said, “We'll figure out a solution if we need to.”

Goldie sat up straight and said, “You know, it could be Phil Martin. He said he was in insurance, and I think the councilman works for Farm Bureau or State Farm or one of those. I didn't recognize him in the shades and baseball cap, but as I think about it …” She paused, and her mouth twisted into a wicked little smile. “He's not going to be very happy here,” said Goldie. “He's surrounded.”

She was right. The Washingtons two doors down had three vocal little spaniel mixes named Flo, Mary, and Ross because, as Bill Washington liked to say, “they're the supremes!” Mr. Hostetler across the street had Paco the Chihuahua, and the Machados behind Martin's house had an enormous Golden Retriever x Newfoundland cross named ChaCha. There were cats in the neighborhood, too, but most were indoor pets who stared out their windows at the dogs and people walking by.

“I thought he had one of those beautiful old mansions on Old Mill Road?”

“His wife does. I mean, she inherited it. Her family owned the Three Rivers Brewery.” She looked at me. “You probably don't remember it.”

I had a vague memory of several huge old brick buildings somewhere along the river, but they were long gone before I was old enough to pay attention.

No one said anything for a moment, until Goldie changed the subject again.

“We really should go find that dress soon, Janet.” Goldie held her beer to her lips and peered at me over her readers. “Wedding day will be upon us before you know it.”

There are few things I hate more than shopping for clothes, and I knew this particular quest promised to be fraught with stumbling blocks and hazards. I glanced at Tom. He shrugged and said, “You can't go nekkid.”

“Okay, okay. Tomorrow afternoon.”
I can hardly wait.

sixteen

Stress makes me hungry
for things I don't want most of the time, and although finding Ray's body had made me skip lunch, by the time Tom and Goldie finished their pale ales, I was ravenous. The problem was compounded because I'm not much of a cook, or shopper. Tom is, but he hadn't moved in yet, so there weren't many raw ingredients in the fridge or cupboards to assemble into a meal. If I had been alone, I might have settled for the stuff I did find—crackers with peanut butter, a freckled banana, some chocolate chips, and popcorn. Goldie's a great cook, and she offered to thaw some homemade soup from her freezer, but Tom nixed that idea.

“How about Indian?” he asked. “All three of us. My treat.”

He didn't need to ask twice. I shut Pixel and Leo into my guest room, checked the litterbox, ran a brush through my hair, and we were out the door.

“Should I lock Totem up when I leave him?” Goldie asked as Tom cleared his backseat.

“Not if he can't get hurt,” I said. “I just don't like to leave a baby loose with the dogs. They'd never hurt her on purpose, but play can get out of hand.”
Face it, you're
over-protective
. “I won't lock Pixel up once she's bigger.”

“Jerk.”

For half a second I thought she meant me, but Goldie was looking past me. I turned, and there he was, the new neighbor. He had a
point-and
-shoot camera hanging against his chest and a notebook and pen in his hand, and he seemed to be examining the exterior of his house inch by inch. That seemed a little tardy, since he'd already moved in. It also seemed an odd time for photos since it was almost dark out. Then again, he was an insurance agent. What do I know?

“No time like the present,” I said.

Goldie clucked and got into Tom's van, and I crossed the stretch of lawn between me and Mr. Martin and said, “Hi there. I'm Janet MacPhail. Welcome to the neighborhood.”

“You live right there,” he said, gesturing toward my house with his chin. He didn't smile, and he didn't tell me his name.

And that pushed my pushy button. I held out my hand to force the issue, and said, “Yes, right there.”

He was tall, close to six feet, and had a long, jowly face. He slowly shifted his writing tools to his left hand and offered me his limp right one. “Phil Martin,” he said. His voice seemed familiar, but of course it would. He was in the news from time to time.

My skin was in contact with his for only a second, but that was enough. His hand was cold and clammy and shot me straight back to those
god-awful
square dancing sessions in
fifth-grade
gym class. With
boys
. And I always seemed to get matched with Herbie MacFadden. He had limp, clammy hands like that.

“We're just on our way out, but I hope we'll have a chance to chat soon.”

I was turning away when he said, “Understand you have a lot of pets.”

“A dog and two indoor cats,” I said.

Martin shoved his clammy hands into his pockets, rocked his shoulders back and his belt buckle forward, and narrowed his eyes at me. “I saw two dogs out there just a little bit ago.”

I almost answered, but a little voice whispered that I didn't have to defend myself or our dogs to him. Actually, the little voice wasn't that polite, but I decided to keep what I really wanted to say to myself. I found a smile somewhere in my
over-taxed
resources, pasted it on, and said, “We'll talk soon.” I rejoined Tom and Goldie.

Tom winked at me and drawled, “That looked right friendly, pardner.”

“Nice crotch thrust.” Goldie patted my shoulder. “Good for you not to engage.”

I cranked my head around to look at Goldie and echoed her opinion of Phil Martin. “He's a jerk.”

“Unfortunately,” said Tom, backing out of the driveway, “he's a jerk with some juice, so proceed with caution.”

seventeen

A cold front swept
in during the night, and Monday morning brought us a vicious wind and glowering sky. April is, as T.S. Eliot said, “the cruellest month,” or at least it can be in northern Indiana when you think spring has sprung and suddenly there's ice on the birdbath and you need fleece and Gore-Tex. The eastern sky was bleeding a narrow slash of crimson light beneath a dark bank of clouds when I went out with Jay to police the backyard. I was wearing a long-sleeved T and the light jacket I'd worn over the weekend, and by the time I went back in I had my jaws clamped tight to silence my chattering teeth. Weather that made me want to crawl back into a warm bed turned Jay into a bouncing bundle of enthusiasm for, well, anything more fun than crawling back into bed, so we played an indoor game of “find the toy” to take the edge off. It warmed me up a bit, too.

Goldie was usually up early, but her windows were dark, so after I changed into warmer clothes I wrote a note to remind her about our shopping trip and stuck it on the window of her back door where I knew she'd see it. I found one leather glove and, after rifling through all my dresser drawers with no results, I gave up and took a pair of fleece mittens instead. They'd make handling Jay's longline more difficult, but I could always defy my own advice and wrap the nylon line around my hand for control.
Just don't break your hand for the wedding,
said that annoying voice of caution. I would have traded a broken hand, though, for finding Bonnie safe and sound.

The
six-thirty
news led off with a story about yet another insane cut to school funding, followed by one about a proposed new tax break for corporations choosing to set up shop in Indiana.
Because they'll want to come here for the uneducated work force
. I was about to turn the radio off when the next story made me turn the volume up instead.

“A Nevada man, Ray Turnbull, was found dead at a property belonging to Collin Lahmeyer of Fort Wayne on Sunday morning.” I registered the owner's name even as I listened to the rest of the story. Collin was a member of Tom's retriever training club, and his family owned another property where the group trained frequently. It was also a property where a murder had occurred the previous August. Collin couldn't be happy about having another man die violently on his property.

The announcer's words brought my wandering thoughts to heel.
A Nevada man?
Until that moment, I'd had no idea where Ray was from, but that seemed odd since he had been working on and off for Evan and Summer for at least a couple of years. Surely he had a house or apartment or something near the Winslows' farm. Wouldn't that make him an Indiana man by now? “Police say that preliminary evidence suggests that Mr. Turnbull died of asphyxiation, and suicide is suspected.” The reporter, who sounded very young, went on. “Some sheep also disappeared earlier from the same location, but police wouldn't say whether the two incidents were related.”

I turned the radio off and thought about what I knew and didn't know. Ray was from Nevada. Some faint memory made me think
that Summer was from somewhere out west, but I wasn't sure where, or even why I thought I knew that. I did know that she came to Indiana originally to go to Purdue, where she had earned a degree in animal sciences. Her diploma, issued four years earlier, hung in her office at the farm. Evan was a Hoosier, born and bred. He grew up on a farm near Bluffton, about thirty miles south of Fort Wayne. Had Ray and Summer known each other before they landed in the Midwest? And who were the two goons in the sloppy suits who were hanging around on Sunday? They didn't fit in at a dog event, and the encounters I saw between them and Evan and Ray didn't exactly smack of friendships.

My thoughts were spinning like circus Poodles by the time I pulled into the field and parked my van near the arena, now free of ropes and tents and dogmobiles.
So this is Collin Lahmeyer's property
. I wondered whether Tom knew that. Surely he would have told me if he did. A black sedan and small red Honda sat side by side at the end of the arena, but no one seemed to be around. I got Jay out and attached the longline we use for tracking to his collar. No point using his tracking harness, which is designed to allow the dog to pull when he's following a scent. We would be searching, not tracking, because I had nothing with Bonnie's scent to get Jay started. If Drake or Leo or Pixel went missing, I could tell him to find them by name and he would track the familiar scent, but he knew Bonnie only for quick doggy hellos. I would have to trust that if he sensed her where I couldn't see her, he'd let me know, as he would with any animal. I shut the van, buttoned the top button on my jacket, and wished I'd brought a hat or earmuffs to cut the wind.

“Okay, Bub, let's see if we have any better luck today.” Jay bounced up and down a couple of times, and then trotted about twenty feet ahead of me, keeping the line loose. He had his nose to the ground and began weaving left and right and back again across the roadway, pausing to check occasional clumps of grass before moving on. He took his time with a large rock, hiked his leg on it, and moved on.

As we proceeded, I watched for places where a smallish dog might hide, but I didn't see any likely spots. If Bonnie were injured, she would probably try to hole up somewhere. If she were frightened, there was no telling how far she might have run. She could be in the next county by now. And if someone had picked her up, she could be anywhere. Jay rounded the end of the long pole building several strides ahead of me. He stopped, hair poofed away from his neck as his hackles rose, and scared me back to the moment with a loud
woof.