Shepherd's Crook (19 page)

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.”

A fifth man stepped up on my left. Hutchinson. He stared at the two goons for a moment, then showed them his badge and said, “Mr. Fallon, is there a problem here?” Fallon's face reddened, making the scar through his cheek more obvious. His buddy shot him a sidelong glance. They were surprised that Hutch knew Fallon's name. Hutchinson stepped toward the door, forcing Fallon to move out of his way. “Gentlemen, let's have a word outside.”

“We just came to see the dogs, officer, but we don't want no trouble.” It was the heavy one.

Hutchinson opened the door and said again that he'd like a word with the pair outside. Fallon looked back at me and said, “See ya 'round.”

I sat down and pretended to tie my shoe to camouflage the transformation of my knees to jelly. Jay shoved his head against mine, and I wrapped an arm around him and buried my face in his fur for a moment. The men I didn't know were talking, but I couldn't make sense of their words. Tom sat down beside me and I felt his hand on my back.

I looked at him and said, “How dare they?” I kept the rest of my thoughts to myself, but they were spinning like the vanes of a pinwheel. How did they know where to find me, if it was me they were looking for? A shudder rolled through my body. If they knew about Dog Dayz, they knew where I lived. My paranoia wasn't entirely unfounded.

Tom glanced out the front window, then looked into my eyes. “Hopefully Hutchinson will discourage them.”

We gathered our belongings and got up. I thanked the other men for their show of support, and turned toward the back of the building and the parking lot.

“I'll walk you out and we'll caravan home, okay?”

“I'm not scared.”

“I know.”

“Okay.”

“Wait here while I put Winnie in the car. I'll be back for her crate and then we'll go.”

Hutchinson came back in and said, “We had a little talk, and I'm checking for outstanding warrants.”

“So you got Fallon's friend's name?” I thought it might be time to stop thinking of him as a cartoon character. He wasn't that funny.

“Zola. Albert Zola. I don't think you'll have any more trouble from them. But call me if you need to. Any time.”

Tom insisted we take a roundabout route home in case the guys tried to follow us. He led, I followed, singing along as Bruce Springsteen belted out “Dancing in the Dark.” It was better than thinking. Tom signaled us into a Kroger parking lot about a half mile from my house and we pulled up window to window.

“Seems like a butter pecan sort of night.”

“Cookies and cream.”

Ten minutes later we pulled into my driveway and I raised the garage door. The porch light illuminated something stuck to my front door, but first things first. I took Jay and Drake into the house while Tom put Winnie on her leash, picked up his grocery bag, and walked around to the backyard for a pit stop. I let the boys out, then went to the living room. I looked out the window but nothing seemed to be moving other than the “Welcome” flag waving from Mr. Hostetler's front porch across the street. I scanned the street again for strange gray cars as I stepped out to grab the envelope that was taped to the door. My name was scribbled in the center, and the Fort Wayne Police Department's address was printed in the upper left corner.

I tossed it on the kitchen table. I figured it must be from Hutch, although why or when he had left me a note I couldn't imagine. He hadn't mentioned it at Dog Dayz. Before I opened it, I wanted to change into sweatpants and put moisturizer on my face. I felt dehydrated. The bathroom door didn't latch properly and the dogs burst in and jostled me into the sink, making me squeeze a quarter cup of moisturizer into my hand. I rubbed it into my arms and said, “Okay, you guys! Let's go!”

The boys ran back toward the kitchen, but Winnie was busy pulling the end of the toilet paper through the bathroom. I scooped her up before she got out the door, took the paper from her, and made sure the door latched behind us. I pressed my face into Winnie's warm blonde neck wrinkles and said, “You're a little devil, you know it?” She wriggled and licked me in agreement.

“What's that?” asked Tom, pointing the ice cream scoop at the envelope.

“Must be from Hutchinson,” I said. I set Winnie down, put the baby gate up to keep her in the kitchen, and tore the envelope open. “What the …” I read it twice before I shoved it at Tom.

It was a citation for allowing my dogs to run loose. According to the paper, the author of the citation had seen my dogs “at large” in the neighborhood at seven
forty-two
that evening, and “efforts to capture them were unsuccessful.” I was being fined seven hundred fifty dollars. That was
two-fifty
“per dog.” It was signed by an Officer Dave Jeffers.

“This won't be hard to dispute,” said Tom.

“Oh, I'll dispute it all right.” I took the paper from him and stuck it to the fridge with a magnet. I picked up the envelope and, after I ripped it to bits and threw it away, I said, “I need an extra scoop of that ice cream.”

fifty-five

Friday morning dawned gray,
cold, and wet. Tom was up early to take Winnie out, but I burrowed under the covers and declined to get up. Wet weather means wet dogs, so Jay, Drake, and Winnie were confined to the kitchen, and even the cats left me alone for another ninety minutes of welcome sleep.

Then my phone rang. By the time I found it in my jeans pocket in the hamper, the message indicator was flashing. I listened to my
brother-in
-law's voice. “Janet, it's Norm. Sorry to wake you. I wanted to catch you before you take off on safari.” It was Norm's term for my photo shoots, whether
non-human
animals were involved or not. “There's a bit of a situation with the cake, so call me this morning if you can. Love you!”

What kind of situation could there be with a wedding cake? I staggered to the kitchen in search of coffee and found Tom reading the morning paper with three dogs and two cats watching him. Dawn's gloom had given way to a dappled sky and promising sunshine, although the trees seemed to shiver in the wind. Jay, Drake, and Winnie made it all but impossible to step over the baby gate, and once I did, I had to go into “ignore the puppy” mode until she stopped trying to climb my leg. When she finally had all four paws on the ground, I gave her a good
shoulder-to
-butt scratch. I kissed Tom, then the doggy boys, and wrapped up the morning greetings with kitty nose bumps. Finally I poured my coffee and sat down. The first hot mouthful hit my stomach and I felt alive again.

“What's on your agenda this morning?”

“Cake, apparently.”

Tom raised an eyebrow at me. “You're baking a cake?”

“Heavens no.” I hit Norm's number on my phone and spoke as I waited. “Norm called. He says there's a ‘situation' with the wedding cake.”

Norm explained that he had taken Mom with him to look at cake designs and she had ended up insulting the baker. “I'm going to talk to a new cake lady at
ten-thirty
and wondered if you'd like to go with me.”

“Is Mom going to be there?”

“Not this time.”

I agreed to meet him there, and went to my desk to write down the address. The bakery was only a couple of blocks from the police station, so I planned to have a word with Officer Dave Jeffers or his supervisor first about the sham citation he'd left me the night before.

“Breakfast?” asked Tom.

I remembered the state of my larder the previous morning and said, “I haven't been shopping yet.”

“Not to worry,” said Tom, pulling a dozen eggs, butter, milk, and raisin bread from the fridge. “Raisin bread French toast, coming right up. How many slices do you want?”

Why don't you give up and marry the man?
asked my conventionally practical voice of reason.
Why buy the cook when you can have the French toast for free?
my fiercely independent voice countered.
Fiercely scared, you mean.
In reality, I was still caught somewhere in the middle, and having Tom move in with me seemed a big enough step for the moment. Maybe too big. As angry as I was about the arbitrary pet limit bill, a tiny bit of me saw it as a way out of the commitment I'd made. Not that I didn't want a committed relationship with Tom. I just wanted it without giving up my independence.

“A raisin for your thoughts,” said Tom, popping a raisin between my lips.

I looked around the kitchen. “How come it's so quiet in here all of a sudden?”

Tom chuckled and turned to the stove. “Winnie wore her little self out. She's asleep in her pen and the boys are out on the patio catching some rays. Last time I saw the cats, they were sacked out on the couch …” He set a plate of French toast in front of me and sat down. “See. The beginning of domestic bliss.”

An hour later I walked up to the desk sergeant at the police department and asked to talk to Officer Jeffers. The Sergeant asked my business, and I gave him an abbreviated version, ending with, “Officer Jeffers has made a mistake.”

He turned to his keyboard, mumbling “That's what they all say” as he typed. I bit my tongue.

“Jeffers wasn't on duty last night,” the sergeant said.

“Well, he signed this and left it on my door at seven
forty-two
last evening.” I handed the citation across the desk.

The sergeant picked up his phone, punched in three numbers, and said, “Jeffers there?” Pause. “Can you come out here and speak to a lady about a citation?” He hung up and said, “He'll be right out.”

Jeffers was not “right out.” Maybe he hoped I'd go away, but I was still there when he showed up twenty minutes later. He looked about fourteen, and I wondered briefly if he was some sort of police scout, but he had the
spit-polished
shoes and a badge that looked legit. “What can I do for you, ma'am?”

“Did you leave this on my door last night?” I held the citation toward him.

He glanced at it but didn't touch it, and said, “Yes, ma'am.”

“Then we have a problem. A couple of problems, actually.”

Jeffers crossed his arms over his chest. “How so?”

“Well, first of all, I have one dog, not three.” No need to complicate the matter by mentioning my frequent visitors. “And he wasn't running loose, not last night or any other time. Who told you he was?”

Officer Jeffers shifted his weight and there was the beginning of a catch in his voice when he answered. “I saw them, three dogs. They were running around.”

“Yeah? What did they look like?”

He uncrossed his arms and shifted again. “Well, one was gray, one was …,” he hesitated, as if trying to remember. “Right, and one was black, and one was, I don't know, sort of hard to describe. It was getting dark.”

The colors were close enough, but someone had obviously fed Jeffers the information.
Councilman Phil Martin.

“Who told you to write this? Because it's crap.”

“Ma'am, it's illegal to let your dogs run loose …”

“Janet? What's going on?” The voice came from my left, and the next thing I knew, Hutchinson was beside me. I handed him the citation and he read it.

“You write this?” His tone was not friendly.

“Yes, sir. The dogs were—”

“No, they weren't. They were at a dog training class. I know that because I know Ms. MacPhail and her dog, and I know her friend Tom's dogs, and I saw them at the
dog-training
facility right at the time you say you saw them. So, Officer Jeffers, is it? We have a big problem here.”

Jeffers squared shoulders seemed to deflate. “Sir, I …” He didn't finish.

Hutchinson asked to keep the citation and told Jeffers to meet him at his desk in ten minutes. Then he turned to me. “You have a minute?” Jeffers was still there, fidgeting. Without looking at him Hutch said, “Ten minutes, Jeffers,” and then guided me to a bench along the wall. “You have a neighbor out to get you?”

“Councilman Phil Martin moved in next door.”

Hutch's eyes widened slightly, and a funny little smile took over his lips. In addition to pushing the pet limits, Martin had been backing a bill to reduce overtime pay and benefits for the police. I didn't ask, but I had a feeling Hutchinson planned to hand this over to someone who could use it against the councilman, who must have
strong-armed
Jeffers into pinching me.

“I'll take care of it,” he said. “And I have some other information you'll find interesting.”