Shepherd's Crook

by Sheila Webster Boneham

  “See you tonight?” I asked Giselle as she started her car.

  “Yes, I get out of class at five, so I’ll have just enough time to run home, change clothes, and grab Pre …, er, Spike.” She glanced at her watch. “Eeek! If I don’t leave now I’ll have to speed, and I don’t want any trouble with the police.” She winked at me and started to back out of her space, but stopped and said, “Janet, could you call Homer and tell him about what we found? I won’t have time to call before class.” And you don’t want to tell him you’ve been snooping around.

  Joe was sitting on a boulder concrete retaining wall next to the parking lot, and I waved and walked over and said hello. “Say, I bought this to take home for supper, but my friend just said he’s cooking. These sandwiches aren’t very good reheated. Would you like it?” He smiled and took the sack and coffee from me.

  When I parked in my driveway, something moved in my office window and Leo’s lovely face peered out at me. I had planned to call Hutchinson and then slump on the couch and ponder the many mysteries of Summer Winslow and Ray Turnbull, but Leo gave me a better idea.

  The call to Hutch took about ten minutes, and by the end of the conversation I wasn’t sure whether he was glad to have the lead on Ray and Summer, or miffed that I was corrupting his girlfriend by encouraging her to, as he put it, “poke your nose in police business.” Apparently we hadn’t ditched all the baggage of our early relationship.

  When that was finished, I went outside and set up some agility equipment. Three jumps, a tunnel, four weave poles, and the obstacle I’ve come to call the “dog-and-catwalk” since I started doing feline agility. To be accurate, Leo and I have competed in exactly one trial, but the little guy loves training with me and has no problem with the canine course.

  Within minutes, we had an audience. Goldie was cheering us on from her yard, while Phil Martin glared at us from his. This time, he wasn’t alone. A woman who looked to be in her mid-twenties and borderline anorexic stood beside him, and judging by the matching frowns on their faces, I guessed she was his daughter. I waved at them but kept going with my cat. He soared over two jumps, raced through the tunnel, ran up one end and across the dog walk and trotted down the other slope. He hopped onto the pause table, where he sat and waited. I wanted to pick him up and smooch him, but restrained myself. I counted down ten seconds, then off we went again. He carefully wove himself through the poles and flew over the final jump. I said, “Good boy!” and opened my arms, and he leaped into them and bumped my chin with his head.

  Goldie was clapping and cheering, and I grinned at her. I turned to see what the reaction was in the Martin yard and found both watchers still frowning. I walked to the fence, smiled, and said, “Lovely afternoon, isn’t it?”

  “It was.” The woman with Councilman Martin was a little older than I had thought at first, maybe early thirties, and she looked familiar. I have an eye for faces since I photograph so many of them. I’d seen this one before. “It’s shameful to force an animal to perform just to feed your ego.” She tilted her head toward the man beside her. “See, Daddy. You need to pass a law.”

  I had it. She had been with the protesters at the Dogs of Spring event over the weekend. I met her scowl and held it until she shifted her target from me to Leo. Phil Martin wouldn’t meet my eyes. In fact, he was looking at the ground and his face had reddened.

  “You want to make it illegal for people to play with their pets?”

  “You’re forcing that creature to perform for your pleasure.”

  I couldn’t help myself. I laughed, even knowing that people with such extreme views can be terrifying. “Lady, first of all, this ‘creature’ is a cat, and his name is Leo. Second, is your head too far …” I started to make an anatomical reference, but forced myself to change direction. “… into extremist propaganda to miss how much fun he was having out there?”

  Something nudged me gently from the right and I realized Goldie had joined me. “Hello, Chelsea,” she said.

  “You know each other?”

  “Chelsea is in my yoga group.” Apparently Goldie made the same assumption I had, because she said, “I didn’t realize that you and the Councilman were related.”

  Chelsea hooked her arm through Martin’s and her voice changed to little-girl vamp. “We’re friends.”

  But you called him “Daddy.” Demon Janet jabbed me and whispered, “Oh, too weird.”

  “Ah,” said Goldie. “You should know that Janet is devoted to her animal companions. As am I.” There was a challenge in the last three words, and Chelsea took a half step back.

  “Speaking of animals,” I said, turning to Goldie. “Jay needs a nail trim before class.” I turned back to the couple across the fence. “You should pop into Dog Dayz training facility sometime and watch the human-animal bond in action. You might learn something.”

  Goldie followed me into my kitchen. “I guess we know why he moved out of the mansion on Old Mill.”

  “And where the pet limit bill came from.”

  “‘Oh, Daddy, make this law for me,’” I said, imitating Chelsea as well as I could. We were still wiping the laugh-tears away when Tom arrived with the pizza.

  fifty-two

  “This is a light bite to eat?” I asked, lifting a piece of pizza onto my plate.

  “Depends how much you eat,” Tom said. He punctuated by stuffing half a slice into his mouth, rolling his eyes, and moaning.

  Goldie had declined our invitation to join us, so Tom and I had a few minutes alone. Goldie and I had already told Tom about my encounter with Councilman Martin and his friend Chelsea, so I moved on to Giselle’s discoveries and conviction that the people in the article were in fact Summer Winslow and Ray Turnbull. “If they really were—or are—con artists, I wonder if they staged the theft of the sheep to defraud the insurance company.”

  “But it seems like Evan was the one most in need of money,” Tom said. “He’s the one in debt to the loan shark, right?”

  “Maybe they were all in it together.” I thought about that for a moment and backtracked. “No, I don’t think so. The arguments I overheard didn’t sound very cooperative. And unless Evan is a better actor than I think he is, he doesn’t know that Summer and Ray knew each other in Nevada.”

  We had to get moving to make the seven o’clock practice session, so we tabled our speculation for later. Tom ran home for Drake and Winnie, but it was more or less on the way to Dog Dayz. I changed into my running shoes, put Jay’s leash on him, and started for the door, but backtracked to the dryer for his crate pad, which I had washed. He sniffed it and I thought I detected a little ewww nose wrinkle. I imagined him thinking the dryer sheets made it smell funny, and just when he’d gotten his own scent plus a bit of grass and mud nicely worked into the fabric.

  I opened the side door of the van and told Jay to sit and stay while I leaned in to squish the crate pad into place. Whoever designated these pads to “fit” crates must never have tried to install one. It was at least half an inch too long and too wide, and I had to crawl halfway into the crate to flatten the thing to the floor. As I backed out, a reflection in the rearview mirror caught my eye, but disappeared even as I looked. When I had both feet on the ground, I told Jay to hop in. I had just started around the front of the van when I sensed movement again on the street. I turned my head and my breath caught.

  A gray sedan was creeping past my house, the passenger side to me. I couldn’t see the occupants through the tinted windows, but the Cleveland thugs had been driving a gray sedan. Was this the car? I can tell a Shih Tzu from a Lhasa Apso and a Birman from a Ragdoll, but one gray sedan looks like another as far as I’m concerned, and I’d been wrong before. Still, seeing the car sent a chill through my bones. I jumped in behind the wheel and grabbed my tote bag from the floor, thinking I’d call Hutchinson. I rummaged for my phone and listened to the blood pounding in my ears. The gray car was vi
sible in my rearview mirror and seemed to be barely moving now.

  For an instant I thought I might open the garage door and pull in, but that wouldn’t work. The garage was half-filled with boxes Tom had moved from his place. I could still run in, but no way would I leave Jay unprotected in the van.

  The only sounds I could hear were Jay’s soft panting and the pounding of my heart. I don’t think I was even breathing. I turned in my seat to watch the sedan and felt a lump between my thigh and the seatbelt. My phone. I squirmed around and reached into my pocket, still watching the creeping car, and froze as the passenger-side window opened a couple of inches. Every gangster movie I’d ever seen came rushing back. Would they shove a shotgun or an Uzi through that window?

  I didn’t have time to call Hutchinson. I pressed 9-1-1, held my breath.

  fifty-three

  Two things happened simultaneously. A voice asked through my phone, “What is your emergency,” and the gray sedan made an excruciatingly slow right turn into Goldie’s driveway. They’re lining up for a clear shot! screeched my inner fraidy cat. “Hello? What is your emergency?”

  I almost had my tongue moving when the front doors of the sedan opened and two women got out. The one nearest me, the passenger, wore emerald green slacks and a marigold sweatshirt. She opened the back door and pulled out a huge flower-print tote bag, walked around the front of the car, and, with her friend, disappeared in the direction of Goldie’s front door.

  “Is anyone there? I’m dispatching police—”

  “No! Sorry! I’m sorry, I dialed by accident. Very sorry.”

  “Police are on their way, ma’am. I can’t cancel until they confirm that there is no emergency.”

  I disconnected the call, gripped the wheel, and leaned my forehead against my hands. Jay sat up and turned around in his crate, and I looked back at him. “I’m losing it, Bubby.” He cocked his head and closed his mouth, catching his upper lip on a canine tooth. The combined effect looked as silly as I felt when the police cruiser pulled up four minutes later. “Accidental speed dial,” I said, and the officer assured me it happened all the time.

  When I arrived at Dog Dayz, Jorge was walking across the parking area, a pooper scooper in his hand and two calico cats on his heels. He waved and signaled me to park on the short gravel driveway that snugged up to a sliding door in the side of the building. I rolled my window down and he said, “You park here, Mees Janet. Best spot.”

  “Are you sure, Jorge? Marietta parks there.”

  “No, ees good. Her truck ees in shop.”

  Tom was already there, taking advantage of the few minutes before the seven o’clock sessions began to let Winnie see the agility tunnel, which was collapsed to about six feet. Sylvia Eckhorn was holding the squirming puppy at one end of the tunnel and Tom crouched at the other end, calling “Winnie! Winnie!” Winnie let out a sharp yip! Sylvia let go, and Winnie shot through the tunnel into Tom’s arms. He scooped her up, and she licked his face and squirmed to be put down again.

  “I think she wants another turn,” I said from the sidelines.

  Tom turned the puppy so she faced the tunnel again, and this time Sylvia called her. She raced back through, ears flapping like Dumbo’s, and Sylvia caught her and gave her a treat.

  “One more,” said Tom. When he caught her that time, he gave her three little treats and a full-body rub-and-scratch, snapped her leash to her collar, and stood up. “That’s it, little girl.”

  Sylvia stepped over the ring barrier and gave me a hug, then scratched Jay behind the ear. “I hear you had quite the weekend and more,” she said.

  “Where did you … Giselle?”

  She nodded. “I met that guy, what was his name? Ray? Met him once at the hospital.” Sylvia was an emergency room nurse, and had been an angel when my mother needed care a year earlier. “Came in for stitches. Said he walked into a rake in the barn, but it looked like someone hit him …” She stopped, and grabbed my arm. “Wow, look at my big mouth. Don’t repeat any of that, Janet. I could lose my job.”

  “I’m sorry, did you say something?” I removed Jay’s collar and slipped a kennel lead over his head. I always run him “naked” in agility, meaning without a collar, and the slip-lead works as a leash outside the ring.

  “Say, Sylvia,” I said, remembering something. “Your husband is in insurance, isn’t he?” It was embarrassing, but I never could remember the man’s name. I was sure it started with “J.” John? Jason? Jim?

  “Ron?” Right, Ron. “He works for his dad’s agency. Eckhorn Home, Farm, and Business. Why? Are you shopping?”

  “No, nothing like that. I’m just curious about the missing sheep.”

  “They were stolen, right?”

  “They were reported stolen,” I said, picking my words. “But what if …” I couldn’t find my way to the end of that thought, at least not out loud.

  Sylvia got it. “You think the owners might have staged a theft to collect insurance?”

  I nodded. “They’re worth about four hundred a head, so the missing flock could go for almost five grand.”

  “Wow. I had no idea lamb was so pricey.”

  I thought of sweet Rosie and cringed. “No, not for meat. For their wool.”

  “Ah.”

  “But I don’t know whether a flock could, or would, be insured.”

  “I can ask,” Sylvia said. “I do know that animals in other kinds of performance events can be insured. I think it’s pricey, but if they knew they were going to be ‘stolen,’ it might be worth it.”

  “Don’t spread that theory around, okay?”

  “I’m sorry, did you say something?” She winked at me and promised to ask her husband and get back to me.

  Agility practice went great. Fewer people were there than usual, and we each got three practice runs. On his first two, Jay was fast, accurate, and responsive to my signals, and I was reasonably coordinated other than one stumble over my own feet. Tom and Drake had two and a half good runs, and then Drake hit the bar on a jump and came down limping, so they quit. Tom brought Drake to where I was watching. He sat on the floor and ran his strong fingers up and down the dog’s leg, feeling for heat or tenderness, massaging as he went. When he let Drake up, the limp was gone.

  “I’m going to do the contacts, and then quit,” he said. When his turn came, he dropped all the jump bars to the ground, and ran the course contacts—obstacles the dog walks on or through. Drake seemed fine. When they finished, Tom took Drake out to relieve himself and put him in his van. Jay and I went into the ring for our third and final run. I set Jay up at the start line and turned to walk toward the first obstacle when I saw the front door open and my heart jumped into my mouth. This time I wasn’t imagining things. It was the two thugs from Cleveland. Are they stalking me? The fat one just stared at me. The skinny one—Mick Fallon, if I remembered correctly—gave me a mock salute.

  “Janet, do you plan to run?” It was Marietta.

  “No, I don’t,” I said, gathering the leash in my hand and walking out of the ring with my dog. No one but Jay heard my next words. “I can’t say they don’t scare me, but I don’t plan to run.”

  fifty-four

  When Marietta asked if I was planning to run, she meant the agility practice. I had planned to do it once more, but the appearance of the goons in their rumpled suits changed my plans. When they walked into Dog Dayz, fear was my first response. Fury was next. Fury born of fear is a powerful emotion, and I knew even as I stomped toward them that reasonable caution was being smothered by my urge to shove the guys back out the door and out of my life.

  “Are you stalking me?” I stood about six feet in front of them, staring first at one, then the other, my heart thumping. Several men were sitting in chairs nearby, spouses of Dog Dayz members, and they turned their heads our way. Jay placed himself between me and the goons, and a quick glance showed me
his hackles were up, giving him a lion-mane look.

  “We got a puppy,” said Fallon, a slap-me smirk on his thin lips. “We wanna see about training it.” He looked at Jay. “Nice dog you got there. Looks real healthy.” He turned colorless eyes back to me. “Hope you keep him that way.”

  I can’t say Jay understood the words, but he took some meaning from the man’s tone and his muzzle wrinkled into a lupine snarl. I laid a hand on his neck and he stopped the threat but stayed alert.

  The men both smiled at the canine warning as if to show their bravado, but they edged back a few inches. “Say, your friend Summer here?” It was the fat one. “Know where we can find her? Got something for her.”

  His buddy, Fallon, looked into my eyes and lowered his voice. His next words were just for me. “We want those pictures you took, too. We want to know you’ll keep them private. Sort of a health issue, know what I mean?”

  A cold tickle started down my spine. I thought maybe I wanted to run after all, but Tom’s voice close on my right held me in place.

  “What’s going on here?”

  Two of the men who had been watching their wives and dogs in the practice ring stood and turned toward the strangers, and another shifted in his seat to face them. Fallon raised his palms and let out a whiny laugh. “Nothin’, man. Just talkin’ here.”

  “I don’t know where Summer is, and I was photographing dogs.” I glared at them. “I’m not remotely interested in taking your picture, so leave me alone.”