Sick Puppy (Maggie #2)

by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

  Maggie flips Ava off again. Her finger is going to stay nice and limber with her nemesis visiting. She turns toward Michele. “Gonna try to bribe Leslie to check out early.” And escape this damn love nest as soon as humanly possible.

  “You should quit stressing about it. You’re welcome here.”

  “I know. Thank you. But I need to get back to my life.”

  “Good luck, then.”

  “Need some muscle?” Collin asks. “Rashidi and I could crack some heads.”

  She offers a tepid smile and a wave of her fork. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Suit yourself.” He swats Ava on the tush. “I’m hitting the showers, with or without you, woman.”

  “Without? Bite your tongue.” Ava takes his hand and they disappear down the hall.

  “Jesus.” Maggie slugs coffee, welcoming the tongue scald.

  Rashidi laughs. But he takes Michele by the hand. Maggie hears him whisper to her. “Separate hot-water heater on the other side of the house.”

  “Get a room,” Maggie mutters.

  Rashidi and Michele disappear into the master suite. The silence in the kitchen turns deafening. Half the food is left on her plate, but Maggie scrapes it into the trash and puts her cutlery and plate in the dishwasher. The coffee is coming with her. She doesn’t see her bag, but she knows just where she’ll find it, no matter where she left it—the coat and purse rack Michele keeps by the door. Michele enforces order on her world and the people in it. Maggie grabs the bag, lets Gertrude in, and joins Louise outside, rubbing her bouncing head on the way out to her truck, until they pass a furry mound in the yard.

  Collin is correct. The possum is dead.

  “Oh, Fucker. What have you done?”

  The spring in Louise’s step grows springier. Maggie ushers the dog into the truck. Inside the cab, it feels like a swamp. Midmorning in mid-September, and no humidity or temperature break yet.

  The leather seats are damp on her thighs. She pulls her homemade blue-jean miniskirt down—formerly her favorite pair of jeans, until they sprung too many holes—and levers her butt and legs up by pressing her back into the seat. She turns on the truck, rolls the windows down, and sets the vent to full blast to push out the heat. Louise’s tongue lolls out as she pants, and Maggie tries not to think of the dead possum it’s been touching. Or the other things she’s seen in the dog’s mouth. Nasty.

  The familiar drive between Michele’s Nowheresville and her own Flown the Coop isn’t lovely this time of year. The summer sun has long since burned the grass to a crispy brown, the flowers died in June, and the heat shimmers off the asphalt like it’s a desert instead of central Texas. It’s truly hotter than she imagines hell to be. Hell. The thought of it brings Gary back into her mind. She hopes he made it up to the good place, even though he always claimed he wanted to spend eternity with the fun crowd down below. That makes her smile, which makes her eyes leak.

  She lets the tears drip, lost in memories. The two of them had met in rehab. A recipe for disaster if there ever was one. But he’d been a bright spot. A brash young performer defusing bad press from a DWI and near-disastrous traffic incident under his manager’s orders. Tom was protecting his future, but Gary met falling-star Maggie. After her release, she spent a week with him at the decrepit farmhouse he was renting near Round Top—the one she’d later helped him restore, and the same one that had burned to rubble two days before. At the end of the week, Gary hit the road and they kissed goodbye. Her record label went belly-up. Of all the crazy coincidences, the owner owned a compound of buildings nearby in Giddings and offered them to her in lieu of royalties on her last album, which he sold to another record company. Speculative future royalties on a tanking career or a few acres, buildings, and contents? She chose door number two.

  Giddings. Close to her parents in La Grange, but not too close. She found Bess and other treasures in the ramshackle barn. She discovered a knack for repurposing. Not too many months later, she opened Flown the Coop, named for her escape from addiction and rehab. Gary came back from touring straight to her new doorstep nine months later. For the next decade, their relationship followed an easy pattern of on-when-he-was-home and off-when-he-toured.

  She smiles and makes a turn from one gravel road onto another. Gary had shot to the top, like she had once upon a time. He’d never understood why she refused to go back to the life. Why she insisted he keep her a secret. Why she refused to go on tour with him, which he swore would have been the saving grace of their relationship. Maggie didn’t want a saving grace. She got what she needed from him, and when she didn’t, she got it from someone else. And he’d loved every minute of his stardom. She envied him that. Hers had chewed her up and spit her out in the wake of Hank.

  Her smile disappears. Hank.

  The sun glints off the hood of Leslie’s car. She parks behind it. “Ready for this?”

  Louise follows her out of the truck and around to the house. On a deep inhale, Maggie knocks. This time, Leslie answers the door quickly, almost as if she’s expecting her. Her hat and glasses are gone, revealing thick sandy hair and tight facial skin with a scar beneath one eye.

  She pins Maggie in place with her eyes. “Yes?”

  Louise makes a break for the inside of the house.

  Leslie blocks the dog with her knees. “Control your animal.”

  It’s my damn house. Maggie grabs Louise’s collar and hauls her back a few feet. “Louise, sit.”

  The dog’s bottom hovers over the ground.

  Close enough, Maggie thinks. “We need to talk.”

  Leslie’s shoulders lift and fall with no change in her expression.

  Maggie takes a step toward the door, but Leslie doesn’t let her by. “All right, Leslie. How about a hundred and fifty dollars to vacate my place today?”

  Leslie holds out a sheaf of papers to Maggie. “We have a contract and extension.”

  Maggie takes the papers. It’s a set of printouts of the contract and some emails. Well, damn. “I’m offering new terms.”

  “A refund, then?”

  “I guess.”

  “No.”

  Maggie grits her teeth. “On top of the refund?”

  Leslie shakes her head.

  Maggie hears a noise inside. A person or an animal? She tries to see in, but Leslie is blocking her view. “What would it take, then?”

  Leslie shuts the door in Maggie’s face. Louise yips, a loud, shrill bark that surprises Maggie.

  She nods. “I know. Total bitch.” Standing on the steps, Maggie flips through the papers, then texts Michele an update. Leslie refuses to leave but gave me a copy of the contract and the missing email about an extension. Dammit. Dropping both on your desk later.

  Maggie and Louise walk to the truck, only to find themselves blocked by a Tahoe from the Lee County Sheriff’s Department. Junior waves. Maggie meets him halfway, working up her ire along the way.

  “Please tell me you’re taking my renter to jail so I can get back in my house.”

  “Huh?” He lifts off a Lee County Sheriff’s Department ball cap and scratches his scalp through his buzz-cut hair.

  “Never mind. If you’re here to harass me, you’ll have to do it through Michele from now on.”

  “She made that quite clear when she called. But it’s not about Gary or the Coop. I hate to do this, but I have to let you know I’m this close”—he holds his hands a few inches apart—“to citing you for animal neglect.”

  Maggie glances down at Louise. The dog looks fat and happy to her. “What are you talking about?”

  “Your goats keep getting out. They’re going to get run over, Maggie.”

  “That’s impossible. Lumpy has them.”

  “He may have, but they’re not with him now.” He thumbs toward his vehicle. “They’re filling the back end of my ride with pellets.”

  “Oh shit, Junior.” Literally. “I’m sorry. I had no idea. Give me a hand, and we’ll tie them in the back of my truck.”

 
Louise high-steps beside them to the Tahoe. Junior puts his hand on the rear hatch.

  “They’re fast. How about we each catch one as they make a break for it?” Maggie moves to the right.

  Junior nods. “One, two, three.” He opens the door.

  Two goats leap into the void. Maggie catches seventy-five pounds of black flying fur. “Oomph. Gotcha, Omaha.”

  Nebraska and Junior hit the ground. Nebraska scrambles with three legs, but Junior doesn’t release his grip on the fourth. After he hauls the reddish-brown goat in, he squats, then hefts. Louise helps by barking her fool head off and nipping at the heels of the goats.

  Maggie holds Omaha tight. The goat struggles, freezes, then struggles again. “Stop it, Louise.” The dog continues barking. “I have halters and leads permanently tied into the front corners of the truck bed.”

  “I didn’t go to police academy for this.”

  “You’re county law enforcement. Livestock are in your jurisdiction.”

  Junior grumbles and uses one hand to drop the small gate on the truck bed. Maggie backs her butt onto the lowered gate, then swings her legs around until she can rise up on her knees, then her feet. She clamps Omaha between her legs while she wrestles him into a halter.

  “So close, and yet so far, you little monster.” She ties the halter and releases her leg grip.

  He shakes his body from his shoulders through to a tail wiggle, then he butts her knee.

  “If you can’t have freedom, you’ll take loving, huh?” She scratches behind his horns where he likes it best. “I missed your stinky butt. And your brother’s.” Over her shoulder, she watches Junior. He’s clumsier than she is, but successful. “Thanks, Deputy.” She uses her other hand to give Nebraska some scratches and loving, too.

  Louise jumps into the truck bed with them, bringing the body count in the small space up to five. She snuffles along the floor, until Maggie realizes she’s hoovering up goat poop.

  “Stop it, Fucker.”

  Junior hops off the gate. “What did I do?”

  Maggie considers laying into him about their last conversation at the sheriff’s department. “Not you. The dog.”

  “Her name is Fucker?”

  Louise wags her tail at him.

  Maggie shrugs. “It seems to fit.”

  “No comment.” Junior gives Maggie a hand down. He slams the gate. “Next time, I ticket you.”

  She salutes him. “I’ll find a way to pen them up at Michele’s, unless you want to evict my tenant.”

  “Bring me the right paperwork, and I will. Until then, you’re on your own.”

  On her own. Alone. Yep, more than he can possibly know. “Until then, I guess I can count on you for illogical insinuations and animal cruelty charges.”

  “There’s nothing illogical about following where the evidence leads.”

  “I hope you remember that when you actually get some.”

  Fifteen

  Maggie sticks her head through the door of the Coop. She wants to make sure it’s okay, but that’s ludicrous. Clearly it’s not okay. It’s a wreck. Exactly the same as yesterday.

  Why would someone do this to her things, to her? It feels so personal. For a brief, guilty second her mind goes to Gary. Personal. He’s the only one that has—had—a personal stake in her around here. She’s a junker, for God’s sake. Unless someone is pissed off for paying too much for repurposed vintage farm and industrial junk, whose feathers does she ruffle? Well, not counting her liaisons. But that brings it full circle back to Gary, since she hasn’t romped with anyone but him since before Hank’s reentry into her life. Except in Wyoming, and the romper in question was already dead by the time the damage was done to the store.

  But if Fayette and Lee County law enforcement personnel are right, it may be someone who also had a beef with Gary. And while she can’t think of someone out to get her, she wonders if it’s time for her to share her growing fire suspect list with law enforcement, to get them off her tail.

  But that can’t take precedence over getting her business in order. She shuts and locks the door. She has to jump-start her cleanup and repair. That and fulfilling web orders, of which there’s a few days’ backlog, since her part-time employee quit coming in after the vandalism and store closure. She’s eager to get started. Good hard work is cleansing and a great distraction. She’ll tackle the store as soon as she deals with Omaha and Nebraska.

  From the Coop, she drives to Lumpy’s little ranch. Well, actually, she drives past it and makes a U-turn in front of Gidget’s old place first, just to eyeball things. Thank the Lord for good renters, she thinks, watching a thirty-ish man in a dirty ball cap, jeans, and long-sleeved plaid shirt mow in even rows across the pasture with the tractor. Two kids and a rangy tan dog are playing in the front yard of the little white house. Cows are grazing in a separate pasture on the other side of the drive.

  She creeps up the lane back to Lumpy’s and drives to his house, where she parks under a tree for the shade. If she’d known she would be coming, she could have brought him his pie. She stops, remembering the night before. Pie. They’d eaten all the Royers pies. And the Steak OMGs. Dammit. No pie left for Lumpy. She’ll have to think of a new thank-you gift for him later.

  Leaving her bag in the truck and goats in the bed, she heads for Lumpy’s door. Louise makes a hasty reconnaissance while Maggie bangs on the door off and on for a full minute. No one answers. Lumpy lives alone. His truck is home, which is weird, since he’s not coming to the door. But from time to time, a former–Texas Ranger buddy will pick him up for a fishing trip.

  She gives up and returns to Bess, whistling for Louise. The dog races back, her body nothing but a black streak, straight for the goat-pen fence. Maggie expects her to jump it, but instead, the dog doesn’t alter course. Maggie braces for a horrible collision.

  None happens.

  One moment Louise is on one side of the fence, the next she’s on the other. She barrels into Maggie’s knees for praise and a hug, but Maggie steps around her. She examines the spot the dog went through and finds the mesh cut cleanly at the corner of every square, from the bottom of the fence to the top two squares. The cuts create a triangular door into and out of the pasture.

  Maggie steps back, arms crossed. “Some bastard cut the fence. At Lumpy’s.” Random vandals? To let Omaha and Nebraska out? Or targeted at Lumpy? It’s impossible to say.

  After a minute to think about it, her skin crawls. She feels watched. She scans the property, but sees no one. She can’t fault Lumpy’s absence. He provided solid fencing in a pasture with a pump-fed water tank and float and lots of good forage. The goats should have been fine. Someone had done this on purpose. Lumpy had made lots of enemies during his years as a Ranger, and he still monitors the police scanner 24/7. As a result, he keeps his stick in too many pots, stirring up trouble. Maybe this is someone getting back at him.

  She fetches her phone from the truck and types him a message. Where you at? Someone cut your fence. I took my goats. Before she hits send, she thinks about the logical next step. Lumpy has calves in the pasture, too, and even though they’re still a hundred yards away and not the sharpest animals on God’s green earth, they could wind up on the road. There’s a spare stack of goat panels leaning against the barn.

  Before she gets to work, she can’t resist reading new texts in the string with her Amarillo friends.

  Wallace: So, you and Ava, BFFs?

  Emily: Not funny, Wallace.

  Maggie replies: What she said. ;-)

  She stuffs her phone in her back pocket and gets to it. The panels are unwieldy, but she pries one away from its pals and lifts it from the middle. She walks it over to the ruined panel, first with one end digging up the grass, then with the other end dragging through it. She props it against the fence and returns to the barn for baling wire, cutters, and pliers. Once she has the right materials and tools, she makes fast work of removing the clipped panel and replacing it with the intact one. She secures th
e new panel on each end with twisted wire.

  When she finishes, she gets her phone out and adds to her Lumpy message: I fixed your pasture fence. Then she hits send and wipes her brow with her forearm. The sweat leaves a muddy track on her arm. She suspects it has a match on her face, so she uses the inside of her tank top to clean her forehead. The dirty streak on her shirt confirms her hunch.

  Her stomach growls. She decides it’s lunchtime, but she’s got a load of animals. It only takes her a minute to decide whether to go to Tractor Supply for goat panels or pay Lumpy back his materials later. She reverses the truck up to the panels. As she scoots each one into the truck bed, she coaxes Omaha and Nebraska to step into the open squares. She borrows the roll of wire and cutters, too.

  She sends Lumpy one more text: I owe you goat fence

  Back at Michele’s, she pulls the truck into the shade on the side of the house. Since she doesn’t have T-posts or a post-hole digger, she leans the corners of the panels upright against slender-trunked cedar trees. Rashidi had cleared all the lower branches off the trees near the house, God bless him. She wires the panels into place on the tree trunks, creating a rough circle. Really rough. More like an octagon with whiskers, given that a few panel ends stick past the tree they’re joined to, but it works. She leaves the end of one panel unwired to make a gate. Finally, she gets the biggest tub she can find from Rashidi’s gardening shed and links hoses together to reach all the way to the near edge of the jury-rigged pen. She fills the tub with water, adds two goats to the pen, and voila, Michele has a goat ranch.

  Louise jumps into the tub for an impromptu bath.

  “Out.” Maggie remembers Louise outside Royers. Before the fire. The dog likes water.

  Louise dunks her head, then jumps out and shakes the excess water off on Maggie’s legs.

  “Fucker.”

  Louise grins up at her. Maggie takes a picture of the new goat pen and its contents and texts it to Michele. Sorry? I hope this is OK. Lumpy’s fence got cut. He wasn’t home.

  Maggie is feeding the goats their new treats when she hears crunching gravel from the front of the house. The sound of an engine, too.