Shepherd's Crook (20 page)

fifty-six

“I can't tell you
much,” said Hutchinson, signaling me to sit on a wooden bench along the wall of the police foyer, “but I can tell you that Ray Turnbull, formerly known as Rex Turnell, among other things, and his wife are wanted for a string of cons involving tourists in Nevada and Idaho.”

“His wife?” It had never occurred to me that Ray was married. “What was her name?”

“Like him, she had a bunch of aliases. Hang on.” Hutchinson searched for something on his phone. “Okay, my contact in Reno sent me a list of known aliases, but her real name was Udane Zabala.” He pronounced the first name
ooh-dane
, and I couldn't imagine how to spell it.

“What kind of name is that?”

“I wondered that, too,” said Hutchinson. “The guy said it's Basque. Lots of Basques in Nevada.”

Of course, I thought, remembering some of what I'd read about the history of Jay's ancestors. Australian Shepherds are descended in large part from
sheep-herding
dogs brought into the western states by Basque shepherds who arrived by way of Australia with Merino sheep and their “little blue Australian sheepdogs.” How ironic.

Hutchinson's voice brought me back to the moment. “Ray or Rex, whatever, got into some trouble when he was younger, and was arrested about fifteen years ago for stealing some horses, but the charges were dropped.” He flicked his thumb against the screen. “Then he apparently hooked up with Udane and they were arrested for larceny and insurance fraud, but the case was also dismissed on some sort of technicality.”

The missing sheep
, I thought. “What kind of insurance fraud?”

“They filed a claim for a Rolex and a man's diamond ring they claimed were stolen.” He chuckled. “I don't have all the details. Apparently the stuff was stolen, but not from them.”

“You mean they stole the watch and ring, insured them, and filed a claim?”

“Something like that,” said Hutchinson, putting his phone in his pocket. “But the owner changed his story, said they weren't actually stolen from him as he originally claimed. That he gave them to the Turnell's as payment for ‘consulting.' The detective I spoke to figured they had something on the guy, maybe had set him up with, you know, compromising photos or video or something.”

“But if Ray stole the Winslows' sheep …” I couldn't finish the sentence because I couldn't finish the thought. I shifted focus. “Wait. What happened to his wife?”

“She disappeared. They both fell off the Reno radar about four years ago.”

I recalled that Summer's fake diploma was dated four years earlier, so the timeline fit.

I felt Hutchinson watching me. “What are you thinking?”

“Did they have photos? You know, of Rex or Ray and his wife?”

He pulled out his phone and opened the email attachment. I was afraid to look, but I did. A woman looked back at me. She had pale skin and very long, dark, curly hair. Her cheekbones were sharp above shadowed hollows, and I guessed she weighed at least thirty pounds less than the Summer I knew, but it was either Summer Winslow or her twin sister. I was sure of it, no matter what name she went by.

“Hutch, how do you spell ‘Oooh …' What was that name?”

He spelled “Udane” for me and I scribbled it on an old
dog-show
premium list in my bag.

My head was spinning when I left the police station and walked down Main toward Darling Confections to meet Norm. No wonder Summer hadn't married Evan. She was already married. Even so, it was a strange set up, and I had to wonder whether Ray's arrival in Indiana had been a surprise or whether she had known he was coming. Either way, it seemed that Evan was the ultimate mark in their con to get away from someone they had wronged in Reno. Unless he knew more than he was saying.

I turned my phone off to prevent interruptions and walked into the bakery. The scent of the place enfolded me, and I closed my eyes and inhaled the swirl of fragrances that filled the small space. Yeast and cinnamon, vanilla and lemon, cloves and almond, and burnt sugar. Aroma therapy at its yummiest.

“Don't swoon,” said Norm. I opened my eyes and saw him step out from behind a humongous wedding cake.

“Is that real?” The multiple tiers of the cake, each festooned with icing swags and doodads, reached from the top of the table it stood on to maybe six inches short of the ceiling.

“If it is,” Norm said, tapping his finger against the nearest layer, “it's past its
use-by
date.” He stepped forward and kissed my cheek. “Thanks for coming. I didn't want to do this all alone, and Mom did enough damage the last time.”

A woman bustled through the swinging doors behind the counter and smiled at me. “Good morning! Is this your sister, Norm?”

“
Sister-in
-law.” Norm draped an arm across my shoulders and hugged me to him. “I'll take her as my sister, though. Janet MacPhail, meet Doreen Darling, the cake lady.”

Doreen would have been chic if not for what looked like powdered sugar on her nose and chin and pink icing on her apron. She escorted us to a pair of pink metal chairs with ruffled pink cushions and pulled out a notebook with a fancy cake on the front. “Why don't you look through these and see if anything catches your fancy while I finish boxing up an order?” She pointed to the fancy coffee machine and told us to help ourselves.

Norm knew exactly what he, and presumably my mother, wanted, and I just nodded my head, tasted a few samples, and nodded some more. By the time we left, I was on a serious
sugar-and
-caffeine high. I hugged Norm and told him I owed him big for taking care of all the wedding details that made me hyperventilate.

My head spun all the way home with a collage of icing flowers, stolen sheep, marzipan fruits, threatening goons, and a thousand questions that could be summed up in just two—who knew what? and who did what? I wanted to get to my computer and look for a few things, including the meaning of Summer's real name. Somehow that seemed important. I also realized I hadn't asked Hutchinson whether anyone had checked the ear tags on the sheep now grazing in the Winslows' pasture to see if they were the animals Summer had reported stolen.

Hutch answered on the first ring and said he did plan to send someone to check the tags. “It's not high on the priority list, so it may be a day or two.” He paused. “And Janet, don't get any ideas.”

“I won't.”

“And don't take Giselle with you.”

“She does as she likes, Hutch.” If he knew anything about Giselle, he should know that by now. “Get used to it.”

I stopped at the grocery store for a salad and soup from their lunch bar. I was hungry, and needed some real food to counter Doreen Darling's sugar and caffeine. I pulled into my driveway and reached for the garage door opener without paying much attention. There was a pop and whir followed by a heavy thud, but the garage in front of me remained closed.
Oh, crap.
I'd opened the back hatch. I closed the hatch and opened the garage, slung my tote bag over my shoulder and my camera bag over my neck, and picked up the salad box and the soup. That thud I had heard must have been the dog food in the back. I glanced at my ring. Switching it to my other hand had not worked well as a reminder. I decided I'd come back for the dog food when my hands weren't full.

fifty-seven

Work called to me,
and for the rest of the afternoon I did my best to focus on the business end of photography instead of murder and mayhem. Leo and Pixel were curled up together in a shallow box next to my big monitor and the sound of their purring was like a mental massage. Still, my mind insisted on wandering, and try as I might, I couldn't keep the image of Ray's body out of my head. It came to me at unexpected moments and left me slightly nauseated each time. When I realized I couldn't push it completely away, I left my desk and lay down on the couch for, as my mother would say, a think. Jay was curled up at one end and his belly made a great foot warmer. I tucked one cushion under my head, hugged the one with the Aussie face embroidered on it, and returned to the scene of the crime.

I had been watching the sheep as they ate, and was startled by the clank of Evan's bucket hitting the concrete apron outside the door. When I turned around, Evan was bent forward and moving away from the door. He'd been sick in the grass, as I recalled, after finding Ray's body. If he was acting, the man had talent. Still, I could have overlooked something in the rush and horror of the situation, or he could have been responding to feelings of guilt rather than shock.

Jay lifted his head and cocked an ear toward the back of the house. It had been
three-fifteen
when I left my computer and I hadn't been on the couch more than fifteen or twenty minutes. It wouldn't be Tom. He had a meeting until four and then had to go home to pick up the Labbies and a few more boxes, so I didn't expect him until a bit after five. A burst of panic shot me off the couch and into the kitchen.
Did I lock the back door?
On normal days, I didn't lock it when I was home during the day, but ever since I'd met the boys from Cleveland, I had tried to remember to keep the house locked whether I was home or not.

The door was locked, and Jay was no longer interested in whatever had caught his attention. He was slurping water as if he hadn't had a drink in days, his tags clanking against the water bowl. I patted his shoulders on my way to the fridge and said, “Pace yourself there, Bubby.” I stared into the refrigerator for a moment, looking for something to drink. I'd had the last diet root beer the day before. “Great, Janet,” I said, taking stock. “Three beers and two hard ciders. And a partridge in a pear tree.” Jay sat and watched me. “I don't even have any milk. Can you believe it?” Judging by the look on his face, I'd say the answer was no.

As I was putting my shoes back on for a run to the store, I wondered whether Tom had anything planned for dinner. For about five seconds, I considered cooking something, but by the time I tied the second shoelace, I had come to my senses. I grabbed my tote bag, checked that all the doors were locked, and went out through the garage. A sharp wind had risen since morning, and the sidewalks were empty of
dog-walkers
and joggers.

As I backed up, something bumped under the back right tire and I heard scraping and grinding.
What the …?
I hit the brake and the back of the van slid an inch or two to the right. I stared at my ring, there on the wrong hand as a reminder.
Now you tell me
. The scraping and grinding was the sound of a
seventy-four
-dollar bag of premium dog food being pulverized into my driveway.
Cha-ching
!

I pulled forward to the sounds of more scraping and grinding and a
thup-thup
-thup
from under the van. Several raindrops tapped the windshield for emphasis. I yanked the gear shift into what I thought was park, jumped out, and scurried around to the passenger side. Kibble and raindrops were strewn like coins a third of the way down the driveway. I'd been trying to clean up my vocabulary, but it seemed like the perfect time to use a few of those words, and I did. I'd gotten several out of my mouth when I noticed that the bag seemed to be moving up the driveway's slope, toward the tire. At first, the image made no sense.

And then it did. My van was rolling backward. The tire
bumpity-bumped
again, tearing more paper and pulverizing more food. I hustled around the front of the van, raced beside it for a few steps, got past the open door, and jumped in. I hit the brake and jerked to a stop in the middle of the street. Something in my peripheral vision caught my attention and I turned just as a horn blared. A little red sports car waited for me to finish whatever I was doing. I mouthed “sorry” at the driver and turned to the gear shift indicator. The needle rested on N. I'd put it in neutral rather than park.
Way to go, Janet.

The sound from under the van as I pulled forward was like a giant playing card in a bicycle's spokes. In the spirit of closing the barn door after the horses had left, I put the van in park, turned off the engine, and removed the key before I got out to reconnoiter.
What was left of the bag was caught under the bumper and a river of dog food ran down the driveway into the middle of the street. The red sports car ground about twenty bucks worth into the pavement
before wheeling up Phil Martin's driveway and into his garage. The rain was serious now, and little rivulets were running down the driveway, rolling bits of kibble like edible river stones.

I got back into the van and tried to give the door a good therapeutic slam. Instead, it went
thuk!
and bounced away from the latch. I yanked the seatbelt out of the door and added more dog food to my list of errands.

fifty-eight

The next two days
were quiet, with rain showers scattered among periods of bright sun. It was also a rare weekend with no photo gigs or dog shows, no disasters, not even a phone call. Tom and I stopped to visit my mom for a few minutes on Saturday, and when Tom showed her a photo of Winnie, she insisted he bring her in. We left the boys in the van to keep the excitement factor to a minimum, and Winnie was exactly the sort of hit you'd expect of a roly-poly puppy. Then we took all five of us for a walk on the Foster Park portion of the Rivergreenway, where Winnie was transfixed by the site of a Great Blue Heron on the far side of the St. Mary's River.

Goldie and Bonnie popped in later with two kinds of
fresh-baked
cookies—raspberry yogurt and
lemon-lime
-oregano—and a separate plate of homemade
carrot-ginger
dog biscuits. Saturday night we cozied up in front of a movie with the three dogs and two cats, and I went to bed wondering why I had any doubts about Tom moving in.

“This could work,” I told him as we drifted toward sleep in the wee hours. Of course, as soon as I said it, Demon Janet whispered, “But but but …” Worse yet, Phil Martin's wacko girlfriend popped into my head, dressed as the Wicked Witch of the West and whining, “I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!”

We stuffed ourselves with Sunday brunch at Spyro's Pancake House on West Jefferson and didn't eat again until late evening, when Tom brought out the box with Goldie's cookies. A slow afternoon of packing and pitching more of Tom's belongings punctuated by periodic
puppy-training
sessions oozed into another dog walk, a raucous game of backgammon, and an early lights out. I barely considered murder and mayhem all weekend.

Monday morning I unplugged my phone's charger and the screen lit up with messages.
At seven in the morning?
But when I looked at the time stamps, I found that the calls had come in over the weekend—three from Giselle, three more from Bill and Norm's landline, one from Hutchinson, and one I didn't recognize. “Stupid phone,” I said, and then thought to check the settings. The master volume was turned off. I'd forgotten to reset it after I left the bakery.
Stupid Janet.
It was too early to start calling people, so I drank my coffee, kissed Tom goodbye in his driveway, and followed his van until he turned off toward the university.

Bill and Norm were early risers, so I called their number first. Norm answered, and said he was just tidying up wedding plans. He went through a list of To Dos that included a few for me. “And seriously, Janet, get your hair cut before Saturday.” He recommended someone named Chas in place of my usual
cut-rate
place, and I promised to take the plunge. “I'll be able to tell the difference, you know.”
Busted.

Next on the
call-back
list was Hutch, but I had to leave a message. Then I called Giselle. “I have nothing new for you,” she said in a voice that suggested she was pouting. “I think Homer is on to me. He's being careful not to talk about the investigation in front of me.”

“That makes sense,” I said. “I mean, it is police business.”

“Right, but he talks about his other cases in front of me. Whenever he gets a call about Mr. Turnbull's murder or the sheep, though, he shuts himself in a closed room.”

I could picture Giselle with a glass pressed against a door to listen in. “He just doesn't want you getting hurt or, probably, passing things on to me.”

“So stupid,” she said. “That could have been a real grave, I mean, you know, for a person.”

I told her to call me if she accidentally overheard anything interesting.

Hutchinson didn't call back until almost noon. Jay and I were taking advantage of the crisp, bright spring day for a run through Franke Park. The wind was from the direction of the zoo, and Jay's nose worked overtime sorting out the scents he must have been getting. We slowed to a walk when my phone rang in my pocket. Hutch wasn't one for small talk.

“Good call on the ear tags. The sheep on the farm are the same sheep they reported missing.”

“How could they think they wouldn't get caught?”

“Why are you breathing so hard?”

“Running.”

“I don't know. Hiding them in plain sight, I guess.”

“Still no sign of Summer?”

“Not that I've heard.” Hutchinson told someone he'd be right there before continuing with me. “Anyway, my guy at the farm said the neighbor saw the cars and walked over. Says he's been helping since Summer's been away. Seems to think she's visiting family. He also told my investigator that the husband, Evan, doesn't know much about handling the sheep. That right?”

How would I know?
I thought about what I did know, and answered carefully. “When I went for lessons, I only ever saw Evan in passing. Summer's the one who knows sheep and sheepdogs.” I sat down on a bench and signaled Jay to lie down. “Ray was there sometimes, doing odd jobs or shearing the sheep or whatever.”

“So Summer and Ray were the ones who managed the sheep.” It was more statement than question.

“Evan is comfortable with the animals, and I think he probably helped with some of the work. You know, feeding and mucking and stuff.” I thought again about the photo I had taken of Evan with the newborn lamb, and of him and Rosie, the old ewe who had lived on their front porch until she was buried in a bed of rose petals. “I think he's a nice guy who got in too deep.”

“You mean the gambling?”

I said yes, but I thought that might be the least of his problems. Summer and Ray had played him, and he still seemed to be clueless about their relationship, their history, their motives. Thinking about that spun me off in other directions. What did I not know about Tom that might hurt me as Chet, my ex, had? What had I not told Tom about myself that might cause a problem between us a week, a month, a decade in the future? How much do we really know about anyone else, even people we've known all our lives?

“You still there?”

“Sorry, yes,” I said. “Just thinking. What did Evan have to say about the tags, the sheep?”

“Nothing yet. According to the neighbor, Evan went out of town to visit his sister for a couple of days. Needed to get away.”

That made me squeeze my eyes shut to find a memory. It came slowly. Evan and I had been sitting in their kitchen. In the midst of bewilderment and loss, Evan had brought up happy memories. Visits to the farm, his aunt's farm. Five brothers.

“Hutch,” I said, “I don't think Evan has a sister.”