Bone Yard

by Ball, Donna

  BONE YARD

  A Raine Stockton Dog Mystery Novella

  Book #4 in the Raine Stockton Dog Mystery Series

  By Donna Ball

  Copyright 2011 by Donna Ball

  E-book edition published May 2011 by Blue Merle Publishing

  This is a work of fiction. All names, places, characters and events are a product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual places, events or persons, whether living or dead, is completely coincidental.

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  Praise for the Raine Stockton Dog Mystery Series

  “ An intriguing heroine, a twisty tale, a riveting finale, and a golden retriever to die for. [This book] will delight mystery fans and enchant dog lovers.”

  ---Carolyn Hart

  “Has everything--wonderful characters, surprising twists, great dialogue. Donna Ball knows dogs, knows the Smoky Mountains, and knows how to write a page turner. I loved it.”

  --Beverly Connor

  “Very entertaining… combines a likeable heroine and a fascinating mystery… a story of suspense with humor and tenderness.”

  --Carlene Thompson

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  Read more about Donna Ball’s books at http://www. Donnaball.net.

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  ONE

  It’s the kind of story the newspapers always love: family dog drags home human bones from the woods. Hunting dog sniffs out human remains beneath the autumn leaves. Beloved family pet digs up the bones of a murder victim in suburban backyard.

  Well, let me tell you, it doesn’t make for nearly such great reading when it’s your beloved family pet, and when the bones are buried in your backyard. And it’s even worse when that backyard has been in your family for over one hundred fifty years. I mean, it’s not as though you could blame the bones on the person who lived there before you.

  My name is Raine Stockton, and I have lived in the small Smoky Mountain community of Hansonville, North Carolina all my life. My father was a judge. My mother was a respected community leader and member of the Hansonville Methodist Choir for two decades . My uncle, up until his heart attack last month, had been the county sheriff for almost thirty years. I even married—and divorced—one of his deputies. I think it’s fair to say I come from a perfectly respectable, law-abiding background.I have had my share of run-ins with the bad guys—my volunteer work in Search and Rescue has put me in harm’s way more than once—but for the most part I live a quiet life. I work part time for the Forest Service. I train dogs. I run a boarding kennel. I do my best to stay out of trouble.People don’t, as a general rule, get buried in my backyard.

  As you can probably tell, I was a little irked about it.

  It all started on a gray cold November morning, and my mood wasn’t much better than the dripping weather outside. I was on the downside of my thirties and was starting to understand that things were not going to work out at all as I had planned. In the past month I had divorced—for the second time—the man I had been married to most of my adult life, I had almost died in a fire that had virtually destroyed my dog training and boarding business, and I had been laid off from the Forest Service due to a crumbling economy. I spent a lot of time in my pajamas. I let my hair grow out. I hardly ever wore make-up. I guess I was just waiting for things to get better.

  The kennel had been closed for remodeling since the fire—but don’t worry, no dogs were injured—and it was easy to fall into bad habits. After ten years of rising before dawn to feed and exercise the boarders, I now lazed around in bed until seven-thirty or eight, then lingered over coffee for an hour or so. I had no training classes to rush to, and I had grown a little lax about even working with my own four dogs. Most mornings I just turned them out into the fenced exercise area after breakfast, and even though the rain was going to make for a lot of wet, smelly dogs to clean up when I let them back in, I was enjoying the peace and quiet of my second cup of coffee and the weekly newspaper too much to rush them back inside.

  I should have realized it was a little too peaceful. A little too quiet.

  I always read the paper all the way through: headlines, classified, obituaries, community calendar. In a small community like this it’s really the only way to keep up.I twirled a curl of my overly long, light brown hair around my finger as I discovered in the classified section that someone had found a coon dog with a radio collar on Bear Gap Road. Two notices down I read that Jake Phillips had lost a coon dog while hunting in the Sorrowful Branch area, not far from Bear Gap. Hopefully the two had connected by now. I learned that the county commission had approved funds for an addition to the library, that a drive was being organized to bring Thanksgiving turkeys to the homeless—my Aunt Mart was on that committee, so I already knew about that—and that our community had lost three of its senior members over the past week: Thomas Jefferson Jones, age 92; Millicent Broadway,86, and Annie Mae Potts, 82.

  The Potts family was one of the oldest in town, like mine, and everyone knew them or knew of them. My Golden Retriever Cisco and I knew Annie Mae from our routine therapy dog visits to the nursing home, and I knew she had been transferred to the hospital several weeks back. The paper said she was survived by one sister, two brothers, several grandchildren, and a slew of nephews, nieces and cousins, as well as a son, Terrance Potts. It took me a minute to realize that Terrance was actually the real name of the man who had been known around here for all his life—heaven knew why—as Pepper Potts, a name that was almost impossible to say without smiling. Pepper himself was a jovial, easy going man who was rarely seen without his red “Dr. Pepper” baseball cap. He was also the head of my construction crew on the kennel project, often arriving before daylight to get set up for the day’s work, and sometimes even driving the bulldozer himself . I made a note of the time of the funeral home visitation, and decided to go pay my respects.

  I was just finishing the last of the obituaries—no one else I knew personally—when I heard my business partner, Maude, pull up and park in front. I have known Maude pretty much all my life. She clerked for my father, a district court judge, for almost thirty years, and became something of a second mother to me when my own mother died. She has raised and shown prize-winning Golden Retrievers all her life, and taught me everything I know about dogs. It was only natural that, when I decided to move back into the family home after my father’s death and open a dog training business that I should ask her to be my partner. It was my great good fortune that she had agreed.

  Maude had planned to come by to check on the progress of the kennel this morning, but I hadn’t expected her to be this early. I got up to fill the tea kettle – Maude is British and hasn’t managed to adjust to the coffee habit in the forty years she has lived in America—and I called out, “In the kitchen!” as I heard the front door open.

  Imagine my surprise when my collie, Majesty, who was supposed to be securely enclosed in the fenced run, came trotting in from the front hall. Her fur was soaked and her white feet were muddy, and she greeted me with a reproachful bark. Majesty lived up to her royal name in many ways, and she was not particularly fond of the rain.

  “Majesty!” I exclaimed, going to her quickly. “What are you doing here? How did you get out?”

  “I asked her the same thing,” Maude answered, coming in behind her. “She’s not talking. She was sitting on the front porch when I drove up. My suspicion is there has been a breach of security.”

  But I was already running toward the back door. I flung it open to the blanket of cold damp air and rushed out onto the stoop, calling, “Mischief! Magic! Cisco!”The rain was coming down harder than it had been when I’d first let the dogs out to play, but I could see from here that the gate of the chain link fence was half open. My heart sank.

  “Mischief
!” I cried again, half in frustration, half in despair. Mischief, a three year old Australian shepherd, was notorious for her ability to break out of, climb over and crawl under anything that got in her way. I thought I had locked the gate when I left, but I must have done a sloppy job. I blamed it on the rain.

  I was still in my pajamas and tattered fleece bathrobe, but I wasn’t about to waste time changing clothes when my dogs could be out there somewhere racing for the highway. I started to tug on the galoshes that were sitting by the back steps. Maude came out behind me, closing the back door on the cold .

  She stood calmly at the edge of the stoop and called in a firm, clear voice, “Mischief, here! Magic, here!”

  The thing that has always frustrated me about pet dog owners is that they will spend hundreds of dollars and countless hours training their dogs to do the perfect sit, stay, heel and come in obedience class, but outside of class they forget everything they know. I’m constantly reminding them, “It doesn’t matter how many times your dog comes and sits at your feet in training class. If he doesn’t come the first time you call him when he’s running toward the highway in front of a truck, you’ve wasted your time here.”

  I might call myself a dog trainer, my dogs might have more initials after their names than the average university professor and I might have enough title certificates to paper my walls, but at heart I am a pet dog owner. When it’s my guys who are missing, I panic. Maude, on the other hand, is a professional. Mischief and Magic had been trained to a perfect recall from the time I had found them as four month old puppies abandoned on the side of the road. She knew this because she had done most of the training, and they had never failed her yet.

  Sure enough, less than ten seconds later, two blue eyed, mud-caked, beautifully merled Australian shepherds came streaking around the corner, making it a point to splash through every puddle they could along the way. They dashed up the steps and skidded to a stop in front of Maude, dripping muddy rainwater, tongues lolling happily.

  She promptly rewarded them each with a liver treat taken from her pocket. “Well done,” she said. She took two leashes from the collection that hung on a hook by the back door, and snapped one on each dog. “Let’s get you cleaned up now, shall we?”

  That was clearly going to be easier said than done. The minute I looked at them I knew where they had been—in the mud pit that would one day be my indoor training room, where the rain had delayed the pouring of the foundation for over two weeks. I couldn’t help groaning out loud, because I knew that if they looked this bad, Cisco would be even worse. He was twice their size, twice as rambunctious, and twice as much trouble.

  Imitating Maude’s no-nonsense stance as best I could, I drew a breath, squared my shoulders, and called, loudly enough to be heard on the other side of the mountain, “Cisco! Here!”

  I crossed my fingers.

  Cisco is a two and three-quarters year old Golden Retriever, and for anyone who knows Golden Retrievers, that’s enough said. Goldens don’t really mature until they’re three years old. I’m counting the days. Meantime, Cisco is Mr. Personality: all bounce and energy, curiosity and blunder, with a knack for getting into trouble that would put most outlaws to shame. He is trained—or I should say, in training – as a search and rescue dog, is a certified therapy dog, an AKC Canine Good Citizen (barely), and a Novice Agility champion. In the obedience ring… well, let’s just say he tries hard.In a pinch, I’ll admit he has been a hero more than once. But when I call him, or ask him to stay or heel when he had rather be doing something else, I still cross my fingers.

  I could feel the eyes of Maude, Master Trainer, on me, and I drew a breath for a desperate repeat call. At that moment my hero appeared through the curtain of rain, drenched in black mud from toes to shoulders, caked in mud from muzzle to ears, splashing gaily across the yard with tail held high, butt wriggling with pride, and a foot long bone clenched between his grinning teeth.

  I shouted, “Cisco, drop it!” as he reached the back steps, and whether through rigorous training in that particular command, or because of surprise at my tone, he did. The bone clattered to the ground. My dog, tail swishing somewhat lower now, regarded me uncertainly.

  I held out my hand for one of Maude’s liver treats, for, even as annoyed as I was, I knew better than to forget to reward the “come”. I went down the steps in the rain, declaring “Good dog!” as I popped a treat in Cisco’s eager mouth.

  I caught his collar and hurried him back up the steps to shelter, trying without success to keep the mud off my bathrobe. I gave the bone only a cursory glance. I thought it belonged to a deer or another wild animal, which meant that he had probably scavenged it in the woods, which was really upsetting because if he had been wandering around in the woods while I sipped my coffee, oblivious, I was the worst dog owner ever. Seriously. If one of my clients had done that I would have put him in a remedial dog training class. I was starting to feel as though that was where I belonged.

  Maude said, peering through the rain, “What is that?”

  I grabbed one of the towels from the stack by the door—you don’t have four dogs without keeping a stack of towels handy by the door—and began to rub Cisco down. It was pointless, of course. The rest of my day would be spent with shampoo and doggie blow-driers.

  “Who knows? Just toss it over the fence. I don’t want them going for it again.”

  Maude, who was still in her rain gear, looped the Aussies’ leashes over the back door knob and started down the steps for a closer look. She picked up the bone, and returned somewhat more slowly. “You might want to wait a bit on that,” she said, frowning a little as she examined it, “until the police have had a gander.”

  I straightened up from my futile attempt to towel off Cisco, but did not make the mistake of releasing his collar.“What?” I was too harried to pay much attention to her expression, and too cold and wet to read the subtext. “What do the police have to do with a deer bone?”

  Holding the muddy, stained bone by either end between her gloved fingers, she studied it with a bemused expression. “It’s not a deer bone.”

  I started to get a really bad feeling. “Ah, come on.” I took a hesitant step toward her. “You don’t mean…”

  She looked at me. “My dear, I was an army nurse for eight years. I’ve seen more than an average share of bones. This looks a good deal like a human tibia to me.”

  _________________

  TWO

  I live in a beautiful old farmhouse with a white columned porch and heart pine floors, four fireplaces (only two of which work) and tall elegant windows. My mother and grandmother before me had furnished it with lovely antique furniture—which probably hadn’t been antique when they bought it—and gorgeous wool rugs. When I was a girl there were lace curtains on the windows and doilies on the velvet wing chairs, and everything smelled like sunshine.

  Nowadays there are dog crates in the parlor and dog show trophies on the mantle, leashes hanging from the hall tree and sheets protecting the good furniture. The battle with dog hair is endless, as is the fine coat of dust that settles over everything within mere hours after the last dusting. For years my father used the big room that opens off the front hall as his office, and I had tried to keep it dog-free as long as I could. Currently, however, it was temporarily crammed with everything that had been scavenged from kennel—grooming equipment, training supplies, manufacturer’s samples, filing cabinets, drying cages. Two of those drying cages were occupied by happy Australian shepherds, who loved the sensation of warm air from the driers blowing over their fur, while Maude worked on Majesty with the blow drier and coat rake at one grooming table and I put the finishing touches on Cisco at another. The room was warm and humid—which was probably not all that good for the wood paneling-- and my entire house smelled like wet dogs and shampoo.

  Cisco’s low half-bark and the sharp turn of his head toward the window alerted me to company just after ten o’clock—two hours after I’d dutifully called t
he sheriff’s office and reported the situation. I’d told the dispatcher there was no hurry. I glanced out the window and turned off the blow drier. “They’re here,” I told Maude.

  “Almost finished here,” she answered, fluffing up my pretty girl’s white ruff. “You go ahead.”

  Cisco was still a little damp around the paws and ears, but there was no question of leaving him inside when his favorite person—my ex-husband—was on the property. He refused to be crated, and he had been known to bound happily through closed screen doors to greet Buck. So I clipped a light leash on him and took him with me. By now the rain had slowed again to a cold ugly drizzle, and the temperature was a bone chilling forty-two. The sky was pewter colored. It was a perfect day for standing around an open grave.

  I put on my parka and kennel boots and reached the bottom of the steps as Lee Sutter pulled up in his black “Sutter’s Funeral Home” van, followed by the sheriff’s car. In our county, the mortician serves as both the medical examiner and county coroner—no special qualification required—and the Sutters had been taking care of the dearly departed for six generations. Lee Sutter was a tall thin man of about sixty with thinning hair and steel framed glasses. He always wore a suit, and today that suit was covered with a double breasted trench coat against the damp.

  “How do you do, Miss Raine,” he said as he got out of the car. “The deputy here wanted me to come by and have a look at what you found in your back yard.”

  Cisco swished his tail politely in greeting, but his real attention was focused on the sheriff’s car behind him. “I figured he would,” I agreed, and gave Buck what I hoped was a perfectly neutral glance as he got out of the car behind Lee’s.