Shepherd's Crook
Page 22
One of the black-clad figures ran toward Marietta and swung what looked like a plastic squeeze bottle in circles in front of her. The center of Marietta’s sweatshirt blossomed in bright blue squiggles. She looked down and ran her fingers across the mess. Then someone else screeched, “They’re spraying something on us!” and Marietta shouted, “Paint! It’s paint!” People and dogs were running every which way, some leashed to one another, others on their own. My view of the ring where Tom has been working with Drake was blocked. So was my view of Winnie’s crate and the others near it.
I reached for Jay’s collar and started to guide him toward the back door, a hazy plan forming to lock him in the van and come back to help. As I turned, I heard a pop, close and loud. Something hit my head at the hairline and warm liquid ran down my forehead and cheek. I swiped wildly at my eye and watched something thick and red drop onto the back of Jay’s neck.
At first there was no pain, but I knew that the adrenaline rush could mask it. Everything had happened in a matter of seconds. Maybe the pain just hadn’t hit yet.
Voices were frantic around me. People were yelling their dogs’ names, yelling slogans, yelling yelling yelling. And then someone yelled above the cacophony, “They’re letting the dogs loose! They’re letting them out the door!” Oh, God! Winnie! Not until that instant did I realize how much I loved that puppy already.
The pain where I’d been hit kicked in just as a hand reached for Jay’s leash. He pulled away, eyes wide and ears back as if startled. I tried to look toward the front of the building, toward Tom, but a body shoved up against me and a woman’s voice hissed, “Give him to me! Set him free!” I tripped, and my knee hit the floor and sent a bolt of pain howling through my leg in both directions. I closed my eyes against the liquid still dripping from my hairline and tried to wipe my eye against my sleeve. I could smell it now, like fish soaked in dish soap. Jay’s leash slipped from my hand, and as I grabbed for it, the blurred image of my attacker came into view. She was leaning toward my dog, reaching for him. I swung at her and connected. The impact against her cheekbone sent a scream of pain racing from my wrist to my elbow. Another scream erupted, and her voice—a voice I now recognized—yelled “Get him off me! Get him off me!” I swiped my eyes clear with my clean sleeve and saw that Jay had a firm, unfriendly grip on Councilman Martin’s sweetheart.
“Jay, leave it,” I said. He hesitated, rolling his eyes to look at me, but he let go.
She pulled her sleeve up and I could see that he had not broken the skin, although she’d probably have a good bruise. She was going to have a shiner, too, judging by her cheekbone where I’d clocked her.
“I’ll sue you!” Chelsea was still screeching. “I’ll have your vicious dog impounded!” She took a step backward. Her foot slid forward in a puddle of her own paint and her arms went into windmill mode in an effort to keep her balance.
“Let me help,” I said, and pushed my palms against her chest just enough to finish the job the slippery spot started. She went down with a loud oof. “Roll over,” I said, staring at her. When she didn’t move, I said, “I’m not talking to the dog. Roll onto your stomach.” She stared at me, then shifted her gaze to my hand, and I realized it was clenched into a fist. I squeezed it tighter and she slowly rolled over. I signaled Jay to straddle her, front feet on one side and back on the other. “Down,” I said, and he dropped his body onto her midsection. “Stay!” To her I added, “If you try to get up, he’ll go for the back of your neck.”
I ran toward the chaos at the front of the room in time to see two of the invaders run out the door. The sulky young man I had seen sitting near Winnie’s crate earlier was backed up against a wall, whimpering under the unflinching stare of Mel Able’s protection-trained Dutch Shepherd, Hans. The dog didn’t appear to have touched the guy, but there was no question he would if Mel gave the word.
So that was two of the terrorists out the door, Chelsea caught under Jay, and this guy. I was sure there had been five. Where was the fifth? I kept moving toward Winnie’s crate, dodging people and dogs. Tom was nowhere to be seen, and a crowd had gathered in front of the row of crates where Winnie and Lilly and Spike and the others should be. My feet seemed to be caught in swamp-goo but I finally pushed my way to the front of the crowd just as Jim Smith shoved the fifth invader into Eiger’s giant crate and latched it. “You can wait there for the police,” Jim said, snapping a padlock onto the door for good measure. Eiger snuffled at the side of his crate and growled.
The rest of the crates were empty.
sixty-seven
I spun around and scanned the room. No sign of Winnie or Lilly or Spike. No sign of Tom. Jean had gotten to her crate just ahead of me, and I saw her run out the front door. I raced back toward Jay and Chelsea. I needed Jay to find little lost Winnie. I figured the police could locate Chelsea easily enough if she escaped, but I pointed her out to Jim Smith and he hurried toward her, a man on a mission. “Jay, come!” I called. I was grabbing for the end of his leash when Giselle came through the back door, took in the crowd near Spike’s crate, and started to run.
“Giselle, he’s not there. He’s loose. I’m on my way out to look. Win—” I felt as if a choke chain were yanked across my throat, but I found my voice and said, “Winnie’s missing too, and Lilly. You need to go out and call Spike!”
“Ohmygod, ohmygod.” she said, each repetition pitched an octave higher. She pulled her cell phone out as she ran beside me to the front of the building. “Did anyone call the po— Hutch! Something terrible’s happened!”
We heard at least two sirens in the distance, coming closer, filling the night. Someone had already called. I left Giselle and ran through the parking lot, hoping the loose dogs would head for familiar parts of the property—the exercise area, the agility field, the trees and shrubs that edged the parking area. Please don’t let them run to the road. Not in the dark. Not ever.
I saw Tom walking the tree line, a dark shadow in front of him that had to be Drake, and I ran to him. Tom had a flashlight, and he was calling in a voice honed by many years of training dogs to remain upbeat in the worst of times. “Winnie, come! Puppy puppy puppy!”
“Should I get Jay’s tracking harness?”
Tom turned toward me and the distress written into the muscles of his face stirred a strange cocktail of pain and fury and love in my heart. “We’ll find her,” I said. “Jay and I will check the agility course while you do this.”
Then I’ll go back inside and Chelsea and her friends better hope the police already have them in protective custody.
“Spike!” Giselle’s voice came from behind me. “Precious Spike! Come! Cookies!”
There were other voices, too, and then Marietta’s. “Folks, too many people out here in the dark will scare some of the dogs. If your dog is not missing, please stay in or near the building and let the owners call their dogs!”
Paranoia must have had me in its grip, because when I started for my van, I thought I saw someone standing by the passenger door. Heavy-set, dressed in dark clothing. I broke stride and squinted into the shadow, but by the time I opened the back of my van, whatever it was had disappeared, and Jay didn’t show any interest in anything other than getting his tracking harness and longline on. I had him sit and looked into his eyes to be sure he was listening. “Find Winnie. Find the puppy.” I had no idea where to start him looking for her scent, but I had a hunch she might follow the big dogs, and they would, I was pretty sure, head for the outdoor agility field. It was where they had a lot of fun.
Marietta had turned the lights on around the field, so visibility was decent. Jorge had gotten the equipment out of winter storage a couple of weeks earlier, and had brought out the portable bleachers as well. I let Jay’s longline play out to about thirty feet and just followed and watched. Working a dog on a track is pure mystery. We have no idea what they experience, what they smell, how they find one scent among all
the others. But we’d been tracking regularly for more than two years, and I had some sense of when Jay was following a solid track. His body language suggested he was still looking for Winnie’s scent. I crossed my fingers and whispered a prayer to the universe.
Jay took off at a run and nearly yanked me off my feet. I held the line tight and followed, trying to slow him down to a safer speed. Safer for me. My peripheral vision picked up motion on both sides. Tom and Drake were coming up on my right. Tom must have seen Jay lean into his harness, a sure sign he was on a scent. I just hoped it was Winnie’s. I glanced left. Someone was there, outside the agility field, almost beyond the reach of the lights, moving in and out of the shadow. I tried to get a better look, but Jay sped up again and I had to look where I was going. He seemed to be aiming for the A-frame at the far end of the field. It would be a good place for a frightened puppy to hole up.
Giselle’s voice was still behind me. “Spike, come!” Her tone was turning desperate when suddenly it changed. “Spike! Oh, Spike!” A white speedball shot out from under the A-frame and ran straight past me. I turned in time to see Giselle scoop him into her arms and bury her face in his fur.
Jay whined and started to pull again, and I turned to follow. Tom and Drake were beside me now. “Maybe she’s under there too?” Tom inflected the words as a question, and I knew that was the sound of hope.
But Jay stopped for no more than two seconds to sniff under the obstacle, and then turned toward the bleachers. I tried to shorten the length of line between me and him, knowing he could easily get tangled if he climbed the risers, but he was moving too fast. The line burned through my fingers and I let go. Then I heard a sharp yip. A puppy yip.
“It’s her!” Tom had no sooner said the words than Drake yanked the leash out of his hands and rushed forward with Jay. Tom and I sprinted to catch up, but they were way ahead of us and light-years faster. They had almost rounded the bleachers when Winnie appeared, her leash pulled taut behind her as if she were out for a walk. For a moment, I wondered if she was caught on the structure, and then I saw that she had been in good hands. Or paws. Lilly stepped into view, her lovely muzzle clamped tight to the puppy’s leash.
sixty-eight
Thursday morning Goldie came over, newspaper in one hand and fresh-baked muffins in the other, for an eyewitness account of the evening before. She looked around the kitchen and raised an eyebrow at me.
“What?”
“Where’s Tom?”
“Home, I suppose,” I said, trying to hide my face in the refrigerator. “His home.” For a little longer, at least.
“I’d have thought you’d both need a good hug after all that.” She tapped a headline with her finger, but all I could see was “o Let the Dogs Out?”
“We hugged when we found Winnie,” I said. Goldie hadn’t known Winnie was one of the loose dogs, and the puppy’s misadventure and rescue by Lilly the Aussie distracted her from pressing me about Tom’s absence. And she was right, I had needed a hug when I got home just before midnight. I had crawled into bed and hugged Jay and Leo until I fell asleep sometime in the wee hours. Pixel had even put up with some hugging before she went off to bat her ping-pong ball around its circular track.
“Were all the dogs found? And safe?”
Just as I confirmed that they were, my phone rang. It was Sylvia Eckhorn. After we rehashed the events of the previous evening, she said, “I asked my husband about livestock insurance, and when I mentioned the Winslows, it turns out he actually knows them. He’s their agent. Isn’t that weird?”
“Maybe not that weird. How many insurance companies around here handle livestock insurance?”
“Not that,” she said. “I mean, he doesn’t insure their sheep per se. Just their property and vehicles.” I didn’t know what to say to that, and Sylvia picked up the slack. “If the sheep were covered for ‘special use,’ like a herding trial off the property, it was with someone else. But that’s not the interesting part.”
“No?”
“No! The interesting part is that Summer modified the policy to exclude the loss of livestock or crops. She told Ron they couldn’t afford the premiums and would just have to take their chances.”
“So that means she and Evan weren’t trying to defraud the insurance company.” So who had removed the sheep from the event, and why, and how did they end up back at the Winslows’ farm?
“Not Ron’s company, at least,” said Sylvia. “But get this. She called and cancelled the policy that Thursday, you know, two days before the sheep went missing.”
I thanked her and was trying to pick the threads apart as I hung up. Could Summer have cancelled the insurance without telling Evan? Could Evan have staged the theft, thinking the sheep were still insured? Even if they collected on the lost animals, the payment would cover only a quarter of his debt. And how was Ray involved? Or was he? Maybe his death had nothing to do with the missing sheep. My head was spinning when Goldie picked up our earlier conversation where we had left it.
“Thank God the dogs are all safe. Now let’s hope the prosecutor follows through with charges.” She leaned into the newspaper to read, then let out a hoot. “Oh my! I bet Councilman Martin will be holding a press conference today. Damage control.”
“What?” I picked up a muffin and took a bite. “They mention him?”
“Apparently he sent an aide into the police station to collect ‘a friend’ for him last night, but a reporter recognized the guy and followed him out to Martin’s car.”
“The Councilman is lucky there was anything to collect,” I said. “A lot of people were ready to lynch our friend Chelsea last night.” As soon as I said it, Ray Turnbull swung into my mind and I lost my appetite. Goldie didn’t seem to notice.
“It says here that the councilman claimed ‘Chelsea Donovan is a family friend.’”
“Wonder what his wife would say about that.”
“Hang on! Here we go. ‘Dorothy Martin, the Councilman’s estranged wife, claimed not to know anyone named Donovan.’”
“I guess they caught her off guard.” I got up and poured the coffee. “Or Dorothy is puttin’ the screws to the Councilman. Does it say anything about who they were, or the charges?”
“Let’s see.” Goldie was quiet for a moment before starting to read again. “Members of an unnamed organization that advocates to end, and I quote, ‘the slavery of pet ownership.’ They were arrested and charged with trespass, vandalism, assault, and animal cruelty and endangerment.” She whistled and Jay jumped up and shoved his head up under the newspaper. Goldie bent and kissed him. “This is about those bad people, my love. Listen to this.” He cocked his head and waited. “‘An unnamed source added that officials are also considering filing federal conspiracy and terrorism charges.’”
Goldie laid the newspaper on the table, broke a muffin in half, and said, “Do you have any honey?”
“No. There’s some raspberry jam in the fridge.”
She smeared the jam on her muffin and then sat back and watched me until I blurted the whole story of Winnie’s rampage and my argument with Tom, ending with, “It’s just not going to work.” To my surprise, she didn’t press me and didn’t offer any advice. She just ate her muffin and said, “There’s another short article in there about the murder behind Blackford’s. They quote Detective Hutchinson.”
“What does it say?”
“Not much. Just that they’ve interviewed several people, and are looking for a possible witness.”
I thought about that, and as I realized what it must mean, my heart sank. Joe, the homeless man. He had been drifting around the general area for a while. Was he living behind Blackford’s? What did it mean that they were looking for him? Was he hiding? Had someone threatened him, or worse?
Goldie dipped into the jam jar again. “What happened to your little honey bear?”
“Winnie.”
I told Goldie about Joe, and we drove to Blackford’s with a quick stop at Firefly for a sandwich, coffee, and two bottles of water to go. A delivery truck had the alley blocked, so we parked and walked. The alley ran between the back of the building and a strip of scrubby vegetation that edged a drainage ditch.
“He lives back here?”
“He moves around,” I said, and then pointed to a refrigerator-size packing crate tucked into an alcove behind the dumpster and recycling bin. A blanket hung over the open end, and a mildewed green shower curtain was tacked over the blanket, its length flung back onto the box.
“Joe?” The only sign of life was a pair of sparrows hopping along in front of the box. “Joe, it’s Janet. I brought you a cup of coffee.”
Goldie walked around to the store’s front entrance to buy dog food while I strolled up and down the alley, peering into the brush along the ditch and checking the lot at the far end of the building. The delivery truck left and still I waited, hoping Joe might reappear.
“No luck?”
Goldie’s voice made me squeeze the top off the to-go cup and slosh not-so-hot coffee over my hand. “No.” I tucked the sandwich box under my arm and re-settled the lid. “He either isn’t here, or he wants his privacy just now.” I had raised my voice, hoping Joe would hear and feel safe, whether he came out or not. “I’ll just leave the sandwich and coffee inside the door to his house for when he gets home.”