Shepherd's Crook (24 page)

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.”

It's scary how often Goldie knows what I'm thinking without being told, and that was another of those times. “Blending families can be difficult,” she said. “Different approaches to managing the young 'uns and all.” She picked up the dishes and said, “Get dressed. I've decided to buy a new dress for your mom's wedding, and you're going to help me find one.”

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.”

sixty-nine

Shopping for Goldie's dress
turned out to be more fun than I've had clothes shopping since I tromped around the Southtown Mall with my junior-high pals. Goldie picked out a long, tiered Gypsy-print skirt and vibrant pink peasant blouse in the second store we tried. Best of all, I didn't have to try anything on, and I found a funky pair of dangly earrings on the clearance table for four bucks.

We stopped by Blackford's Farm and Garden again on the way home, hoping to find Joe as close to safe and sound as he ever was. We parked alongside the building and walked down the alley. As we neared Joe's alcove, I called his name. There was no response, but I could tell he had been there since our last visit. The blanket that made his door was folded back over the top of the carton, and the sandwich bag and coffee I had left just inside were gone.

We stopped in the store and looked for Ralph Blackford, but he wasn't there. One of the clerks—Alan, according to the nametag pinned to his madras shirt—was stocking shelves, and I figured he had probably made one or two trips to the alley with empty boxes. I asked if he had seen Joe out there, and had to explain who I meant. Alan hadn't seen him lately.

By the time we got home, I felt ready to sort things out with Tom, if he was willing. I took Jay out back for a tennis game, played
feather-on
-
a-stick
with the cats, and checked the time. Tom had office hours scheduled until
two-thirty
, and I planned to catch him there. We could walk along the river that runs by the campus and have a talk on neutral ground.

Tom's office door was closed when I got there at
two-twenty
, so I wandered down the hall to read the bulletin board. Flyers and brochures for archeology field schools and intensive language courses and graduate programs festooned the
three-by
-
five-foot
surface and made me want to grab my camera and buy a ticket to some exotic place. When the door was still closed forty minutes later, I raised my hand to knock, but decided that any meeting that went twenty minutes past the end of office hours must be important. I backtracked to the office. A young man I didn't know, probably a
work-study
helper, was slipping bright yellow flyers into faculty mailboxes.

“Do you happen to know if Dr. Saunders is with a student?”

He answered without looking at me. “He left about an hour ago.”

“But he has office hours on Thursday.”

“Not today.”

“Was he okay?”

“Far as I know.”

All sorts of panicky thoughts pranced around my mind. I'd never known Tom to cancel a class or office hours. Was he sick? Was something wrong with Winnie? Had she been hurt in the previous night's events? What about Drake? Then I thought about the things I had said after Winnie the Ripper's adventures in paper art, and a ball of lead dropped into my stomach. Had Tom decided not to move in with me? Wasn't that what I wanted, what I had told him, more or less?
Okay, more.
When I got to my van, I tilted the seat back as far as it would go and laid my arm across my eyes and stayed there, just trying to breathe, for a few minutes. Then I called Tom's cell. No answer, not even his voice mail.

I had promised my mother I would stop by Shadetree Retirement Home, and I forced myself to follow through. Jade Templeton, the manager, saw me walking toward the solarium and called, “Janet!
I believe your mother went back to her room with your brother.” I thanked her, wondering what Bill was doing there in the middle of the day, and she added, “We're all so excited about Saturday's nuptials!”

It was
brother-in
-law Norm, not Bill, in my mother's room with her. Mom was giddy and glowing, and he was almost as excited as she was.

“Oh, Janet!” Mom said, grabbing me in a smothering hug. Love had been good for her, I thought, and realized with a pang that it had been good for me, too, over the previous year. I had to find Tom as soon as possible.

Mom finally released me and scurried to her bureau. She picked up a plastic bag and handed it to me with a giggle. “For that handsome boy of yours.” Calling Tom a boy struck me odd, but I opened the bag and pulled out a black bow tie with silver dots all over it. That seemed even odder until I saw it was attached to a matching dog collar. Mom said, “It's Jay's tux for the wedding!”

Norm grinned at me, and I smiled and looked at Mom. “You want Jay at the wedding?”

“Of course! And I got one for Drake, too!” She picked up another bag and held it out. “Give it to Tom for me.” She lowered her voice and said, “I think the puppy is a little young. I hope Tom's feelings won't be hurt.”

I've already seen to that,
I thought.

Tony Marconi, the happy bridegroom, appeared in the doorway, and greetings quickly turned to
last-minute
logistics. Norm confirmed that I planned to be there in the morning to help decorate the solarium and that yes, I had an appointment to “do something about” my hair. I claimed to have a photo shoot and left Norm with the lovebirds. As I hurried down the hall, he called after me. “Family dinner tomorrow evening at our house. See you at six!”

Tom still didn't answer his phone, so I left a message. When he still hadn't called back by
four-thirty
, I had cycled through several stages of phone grief. First was shock that he hadn't called back all afternoon. Then anger, its target evenly distributed between the two of us. Bargaining came next—if he calls, I'll do my best to have a rational discussion about my fears and our future.
Really.
If I remembered correctly, the final stage should have been acceptance, but one afternoon just wasn't enough time for that. Besides, I was worried. I called again, but got a recording saying his voice mail box was full. It just wasn't like Tom not to return my calls, or check his voice mail, and he must know I was trying to apologize. At least I hoped he knew that.

Another thought came unbidden as I puttered around the house. What if something had happened to him? What if he was sick? That would explain why he cancelled his office hours. But what if it was serious? My own dad had died of a heart attack in the middle of a Montana trout stream two decades earlier. He was only
fifty-six
. The thought that something might have happened to Tom almost gave me a cardiac event of my own, and I grabbed my jacket and keys and ran to the door. Jay was right there, eager to go, but I told him no, not this trip, and took off.

Several cars were parked in driveways and on the street. Until that moment, I hadn't realized how many gray sedans are running around. I could see five of them in my own block, and that vision conjured another. What if Mick Fallon's buddy, the fat goon, had done something to Tom?
Why would he?
It was my inner voice of reason.
To get at you,
said my other voice, the panicky one.
To get the photos they think you have.
I slammed the van into reverse, and may have laid rubber in front of my driveway when I peeled out. By that time, my imagination was in full gallop.
What if those wackos from the night before went after Tom?
I tried to convince myself that they had no reason to target him specifically, and even if they did, they wouldn't know where to find him.

Tom didn't answer the doorbell, and the blinds were down on the garage window so I couldn't tell whether his van was in there. Drake stood wagging at me through the glass panel by the front door. I rang again, waited, and then went around to the back of the house and peered in through the sliding door. All was quiet in the family room. I went back to the front, and stood on the porch for a moment. Finally, I pulled out my keys and let myself in.

“Tom?” I walked through the house, my heart in my mouth, but he wasn't there. Winnie whined and banged around in her crate, and I figured she needed to go out. I took my time with the dogs, hoping Tom would catch us, but no luck. I put Winnie back in her crate with a third of a carrot, gave the rest to Drake, wrote a note, and left it on the counter.

His voice mail was accepting messages again, meaning he had checked in, but he still hadn't called by the time I fell asleep. It was after two a.m.