Shepherd's Crook

by Sheila Webster Boneham

  “You’ll love it,” I said, “and you couldn’t have a better dog to learn with.”

  “Is it okay for me to stay and watch you masters of the art for a while?”

  “Absolutely, although I wouldn’t call myself a master. But there are some great trainers here,” I gestured toward the far end of the training room, “including that man down there.”

  Tom stood ninety or so feet down the building from us, surrounded by our fellow dog nuts and a few of their four-legged friends.

  “What’s going … Oh!” She pulled me toward the group. “Did he bring the puppy?”

  As we got closer, Giselle circled the crowd and pulled me aside. “Janet, what’s going on with Summer?”

  Who knows? Then again, a lot could have happened in an afternoon. Maybe Summer had surfaced and Giselle knew something I didn’t. I wasn’t sure how much I should say and bought a little time by petting the little white dog snuggled in Giselle’s arms. “How you doing, Precious?”

  “Spike. He’s officially Spike now. Janet! What about Summer?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been trying to reach her all day.” Giselle pulled me toward the wall farthest from the ring and lowered her voice. “I found a little notebook that I think must be hers. Actually, Spike found it when we were looking for the dog. I just glanced at it, looking for the owner’s name. It has a lot of notes about sheep, you know, individual sheep? And some notes about money. I didn’t really read it, you know, just glanced enough to figure out whose it is. I think it must be Summer’s. I’ve been trying to call, but no one answers at her house or her shop.”

  At that moment a big man came through the front door and headed toward us. Hutch. Giselle smiled and turned as Hutchinson wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pecked her cheek. Spike pushed himself up and licked Hutchinson’s chin.

  “Could you give me and Janet a few minutes?” His voice was tender, but when Hutchinson turned to me he was all business. “We need to talk.”

  My throat tightened a notch, and Jay must have sensed a change because he pressed himself into my leg as if to say, “It’s okay, I’m right here.”

  When Giselle had returned to the puppy klatch, Hutchinson spoke again. “Good news, sort of. We couldn’t ID the heavy guy in the photos, but my connection in Reno recognized the other one.”

  So Skinny is from Reno? Like Ray? My wheels started to turn as I pondered how two—no, three, with Summer—Nevada transplants wound up in northeast Indiana.

  Hutch continued. “Name’s Mick Fallon. He’s not local to Reno, but he got into a little trouble out there a couple of years back. Roughed up a woman who pulled a con on his boss, a thug from Cleveland named Barry Cucinelli. She managed to get away, and security grabbed Fallon when he chased her through a casino full of people.”

  “Knowing he has a history roughing up women, or anyone else, doesn’t make me very happy.”

  “No, but you’ll love this.” His mouth twisted into a half smile. “She nailed him. Pulled off her stiletto and walloped him right in the face.”

  “I figured the scar was from a knife fight.” A smile grabbed my mouth. “That’s even better.”

  Hutchinson chuckled. “He probably doesn’t do much bragging about how he got it.” Then he turned serious. “Anyway, the guy works for some hood in Cleveland. His buddy probably does too. I’ve reached out to the Cleveland police, so we should have an ID on him soon.”

  Tom was watching us, Winnie cradled in his arms, her mouth agape in a huge yawn. I smiled at him, thanked Hutch for the information, and started to move toward Tom.

  “Janet, the photos helped a lot,” said Hutchinson, placing a hand on my arm. “And that’s what those guys were worried about.”

  He didn’t have to tell me to be careful, but he did.

  forty-four

  Dog training is a bit like meditation with movement, noise, and fur. It’s all about the moment. Becoming one with the dog. Calming what the Buddhists call our monkey mind, the one that flings one thought willy-nilly on top of another. At least that’s how training feels when I focus, which wasn’t easy after my chat with Hutchinson. Once Marietta started calling commands in the practice ring, though—forward! slow! about turn!—my monkey mind settled down and my dog-handler brain kicked in. Jay was attentive as usual, and feeling him prancing beside me pushed scar-faced thugs and dead bodies out of my consciousness.

  Our training community is fairly stable, so when a new dog-and-handler team shows up for anything other than basic obedience classes, they stand out, especially when the dog is as gorgeous as the one I spotted in the ring. Her person was warming her up with a series of tricks—sits, downs, spins, paw waves—and the grin on the dog’s face showed how she enjoyed the game. Maybe those nuts who think owning and training animals is abusive should see some of this. As I watched, I realized that I’d seen this pair before. It was the cute black tri-color Aussie I’d seen at the herding event wearing sunglasses and a pink floppy hat with her name embroidered across the front. Lilly, if I remembered correctly.

  Lilly’s owner spotted Jay and smiled, then shifted her attention to my end of the leash and walked toward us. Her reaction was not unusual. Dog people are a bit tribal, and people with the same and similar breeds tend to pack together. Conversations often begin with reference to the dogs, as this one did.

  “Nice Aussie,” she said.

  “Ditto!” We introduced ourselves and our dogs, who were busy wiggling and sniffing as well as they could through the accordion fence that edged the ring. Lilly and her owner, Jean, were in Fort Wayne for a four-month work assignment. I added Jean’s phone number to my contact list and we promised to get the dogs together soon for some Aussie fun.

  Aside from an occasional loudly voiced opinion from a couple of canines and a few squeals from human members getting their first glimpses of Winnie, it was a quiet session. No “loose dog” alerts, no knocked-over ring barriers. There wasn’t even much gossip, which surprised me in light of Ray’s death. Granted, most Dog Dayz members were not involved in herding and hadn’t known Ray or the Winslows, but a death at any sort of canine event was news.

  It wasn’t until we were lining the dogs up along one side of the ring for the stay exercise that I realized I had forgotten to tell Hutchinson what I had seen at the Winslows’ farm. In my own defense, my chat with Evan seemed days rather than hours earlier. I considered skipping the stay practice, but Tom moved Drake into the line next to me and Jay, winked, and said, “This sit taken, ma’am?”

  On Marietta’s drill-sergeant bark we told our dogs to sit and stay and walked the forty feet to the other side of the ring. Members of the group ranged from novices fresh from basic obedience to dogs with advanced titles and handlers with many years of experience. As a result, some people stayed in the ring to supervise their novice dogs, and six of us left the ring to hide behind a barrier set up for that purpose. At least we said we were hiding, but since the dogs watched us with the focus they’d give frolicking squirrels, we all knew it was a shared fiction.

  “Winnie is quite the hit,” I said, picking a clump of black hairs off Tom’s sweatshirt.” “Where is she?”

  “In her crate. She’s worn out.”

  “She’s very quiet for a puppy in a strange place,” I said.

  “For now,” Tom said. “Don’t jinx it!”

  We whispered with the rest of the out-of-site dog owners and, after a long three minutes, returned to the ring on Marietta’s command. Five of the dogs were right where we left them. The sixth, Sandy Braun’s Wire Fox Terrier, Diva, had chosen to confirm her breed’s reputation for being fun-loving free thinkers. She was in the middle of the ring, on her back.

  “Don’t laugh at her,” Sandy said in a stage whisper. “It just encourages the little devil.” But Sandy was smiling when she went to get her dog.

  As soon as
we had finished the down-stays, I found Hutch. He was sitting outside the ring with Spike, formerly Precious, on his lap.

  “I see you have a new buddy.”

  He grinned. “He’s a cool little dog.”

  “What does Amy think of him?” Amy was the calico litter sister to my Pixel and Goldie’s Totem. Hutch had fallen head over paws for her when the kittens were about five minutes old.

  “They get along great.” He looked at me with wide eyes. “I’m amazed. I always thought, you know, dogs and cats—” Jay poked Hutchinson’s arm with his nose, and Hutch looked at him and said, “You’re right, Jay. The joke’s on me.”

  “So, Hutch,” I said, watching Giselle approach from the back of the building. “If you have a minute, I forgot to tell you something.”

  He gave me an uh-oh look but held his tongue. Giselle took her dog, and Hutch and I found a relatively private place to talk. I told him first about the number of sheep in the Winslows’ pasture. “I’ve never counted them, you know, but I have a sense of how big the flock was. It looks like it always looked. I mean, not like a quarter of the sheep are missing but—”

  “Jeez, I know nothing about sheep. How would we even tell one from another? I mean, they all look alike.”

  I stifled a laugh. “They don’t, actually, but more importantly, they all have ear tags that identify them. So I guess that could be checked.”

  “I’ll get somebody to look into it.” He started to turn away.

  “Wait! There’s more.” I told him about watching the Bouvier open the pasture gate.

  “But it’s not their dog?”

  I shook my head. “Evan said Summer had it there for training.”

  “Okay, I’ll get up there first thing in the morning and talk to her. If she’s the one training the dog—”

  “That’s the thing, Hutch. She’s not there.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Evan hasn’t seen her since Monday. At least, that’s what he said this morning. But her truck and her cell phone are there, and her dog.” Now I had his attention. “And then there’s the notebook …” I knew as soon as it was out of my mouth that Giselle hadn’t told him about finding Summer’s notebook. She probably didn’t think it was important. Well done, whispered my inner nag. You’ve set up their first lovers’ spat.

  forty-five

  Winnie had her second wind by the time we arrived home, so in the interest of getting some sleep when the time came, we all went outside for a game of tennis ball. I had installed lights halfway down the backyard after a break-in the summer before, so visibility was no problem.

  Despite her size, Winnie was game. Tom or I would throw the ball, the three dogs would chase it, and the boys would stand aside and let the puppy win almost every time. When she tried to engage one of us in a game of keep-away, we ignored her, and she was quickly learning that if she wanted the game to go on, she had to deliver the ball to one of our hands. By the fifth race down the yard and back, her battery seemed to be running down a bit, so we put the ball away and just enjoyed the brisk spring air and starlight.

  We were ready to go in when Goldie’s back door opened. Bonnie woofed once when she saw us, glanced back, and when she saw that her new mistress was right behind her, trotted to the fence to greet our gang.

  “I’m so excited!” said Goldie. “Bonnie and I start class next week. Janet, do you have any good books I can read about basic training?”

  I promised to get her set up with reading material and videos, and added, “Bonnie’s used to having a job, you know, and unless you plan to put a few sheep in your garden, you might want to try agility after you get the basics down.”

  We chatted a few minutes more, but when Winnie lay down and curled up to sleep, we said goodnight to Goldie and Bonnie, took the dogs in, and settled in to watch a movie. The first few minutes were chaotic as Pixel reached from my lap to bop Winnie on the nose, and Winnie tried to squirm free of Tom to respond with a wrestling match. Drake didn’t want any part of that nonsense, but Jay hopped onto the couch beside me and started to lick Pixel. By the time the previews had finished, Pixel had slid from my lap and curled up between Jay’s lovely white paws, Winnie was snuggled against Tom’s chest, Leo was purring behind my head on the back of the couch, and Drake was sprawled across the big round dog bed.

  I tried to lose myself in the movie, but it was no use. My mind wandered first to Ray and then to Summer. Summer, who had created a fiction about herself in Indiana. She and Evan weren’t married, and Winslow wasn’t her name at all, and her diploma from Purdue was a forgery. What had she been running from in Reno, and what else had she made up? More to the point, why? And why had she been frightened by the two goons from Cleveland? They were there to collect from Evan, not Summer. Or were they?

  “What’s the matter?” Tom’s voice broke into my reverie.

  “Nothing. Why?”

  “You’ve been fidgeting since the movie started.” He picked up the remote control and hit pause. “So what’s up?”

  I gave him the abbreviated version, and when I finished, he said, “Okay, let me put Winnie to bed and we’ll do a little research.” He turned the television off.

  “You’ll help?”

  He gave me a one-armed hug in reply, then carried Winnie to her pen. She barely opened her eyes when he laid her up against her giant teddy bear. I got up as carefully as I could, leaving Jay and Pixel where they were. I set my laptop up on the kitchen table and Tom sat next to me. Drake traipsed in and thunked down on the floor beside him.

  We started with Summer Winslow, and several references came up to her yarn shop and herding lessons. I had never seen her website before, and it was lovely, illustrated with lots of great photos, including a few that I had taken of her herding students and their dogs. When we had clicked through all the internal links, Tom pointed out that there were no photos of Summer herself.

  I returned to her “About Me” page. “Her bio begins with her studying at Purdue, which she didn’t.” And Tom was right. There was no photo of her.

  We tried again, this time looking for Summer Smith and adding and subtracting search terms as we went—Nevada, weaving, wool, sheep, Reno. Nothing came up. Then we tried “Summer” with the other terms in various combinations. That brought up the kinds of page links I could get lost in—Basque shepherds and cowboys of Nevada, sheep farms and weaving workshops, herding and guardian dogs. But nothing about the woman we knew as Summer Winslow.

  We were scrolling through a list of links to weaving workshops much like the ones Summer offered at the farm when Tom stopped me. “Wait! Go back a page.” I did, and he pointed at a listing for Summertime Woolens in Winnemucca, Nevada. “Didn’t you say Summer was from Winnemucca?”

  The link led to a bare-bones site. The home page showed a storefront with a dark-haired woman standing in front with a basket of colorful yarns in her hands and a Border Collie at her feet. I clicked the About Us link and found two more photos. In one, the same woman sat at a loom. The second picture showed a flock of sheep in the distance, and the back of a little girl with her hand on a different dog, this one a blue merle Aussie. The girl had her back to the camera, and the only clue that she was female was the pink boots she wore. I leaned into the screen for a glimpse of the girl’s hair. Her straw hat hid it, but something in her build and stance, even though she appeared to be about ten, was familiar.

  Tom and I looked at each other, and we both said, “That’s her.”

  forty-six

  Winnie got us up before dawn on Thursday morning. Normally I’d have burrowed under a pillow and let Tom deal with his baby, but I’d already been awake for what seemed like hours. I’d been thinking about the web photo I was sure showed Summer, or whatever her name was, as a little girl, and about Ray Turnbull. What were the odds that two people from Nevada, both of them involved with sheep and herding dogs, would
end up in this little corner of northern Indiana? Even more incredible, if they had both been working with livestock and competing with sheepdogs in the sparsely populated land north of Reno, how could they not have known each other?

  I pulled on some sweats and started down the hall to the kitchen. As I passed the room I’d been clearing out for Tom’s new office, something moved on top of a stack of boxes under the window. Pixel’s tail. It was twitching as if possessed, but the rest of the kitten crouched perfectly still as she watched the activity in the backyard.

  “Good morning, Ms. Pixel.” I picked her up and she butted my chin with her forehead and let me hold her for two seconds. Then she tried to turn back to the window, protesting with long, squeaky meows. “You’re right, the dogs are more interesting than I am this morning,” I said, setting her back on her perch.

  In the kitchen I set four eggs on the counter, told Mr. Coffee to get busy, and opened my laptop. But before I could type “Ray Turnbull” into the search engine, Leo hopped onto the table and sprawled across my keyboard. We bumped noses and I stroked his soft marmalade fur. “Leo mio,” I murmured. He squinted at me and purred. I know there are people who find such animal behaviors annoying, but I’m thankful that my furry friends think enough of me to ask for attention. Cats and dogs are here such a short time, and that time passes so quickly, that I find it hard to begrudge them a few minutes of petting or play. They seem to feel better for it, and I know I do.

  The back door opened and the three dogs exploded into the kitchen, little Winnie in the lead. Jay and Drake stuck with Tom, knowing he’d be dishing up breakfast. Winnie didn’t know the morning routine, and when she saw me and Leo she tried to change direction. Still at full speed, her feet scrabbled one way while her plump little body slid the other, and she came to rest up against my foot. Half a beat later she had her wet paws on my knees and her wet mouth on Leo’s leg. Leo pulled his ears halfway back and opened his mouth, but Winnie missed the warning. At eight weeks, she barely spoke Dog, let alone Cat. She poked her nose at Leo, yipped, and grabbed his leg again. Leo arched back from her, flattened his ears, hissed, and socked her in the snoot. Winnie froze for a second, then seemed to decide it was a game. She came back for more, grabbing Leo’s tail. He leaped from my lap and I tried to grab the bouncing puppy, but she was too quick for me. She made another grab and Leo whirled on her, all patience gone. Winnie bowed at him, tail spinning, and pounced. He hissed and spat and whacked her little black nose. Yip yow! Winnie rolled over backward, recovered, and sat looking at Leo but not moving.