Shepherd's Crook (8 page)

twenty-two

Mi Pueblo was not
directly on our route, but they have the best
chili rellenos
in northeastern Indiana, and the drive gave me a chance to drop off flyers about Bonnie at some vet clinics on the southeast side of Fort Wayne. I didn't need the menu, but the picture of the
margarita grande
on the table display was calling me. I'm not much of a lunchtime drinker, but dress shopping seemed like a pretty good reason to make an exception.

“Don't you dare,” said Goldie.

Stop reading my mind.
“Wouldn't think of it.”

“Right.” She closed her menu and set it aside. “Any news about the missing sheep?”

“Not that I've heard,” I said. “Nothing about Ray, either.”

“Ray?”

Our server took our order, and then I answered Goldie. “Ray's the man who …” I almost said “hanged himself,” but changed it to “died.”

“Do you think he had something to do with stealing the sheep?” Goldie shook about half a cup of Cholula green pepper hot sauce into her salsa, turning it brown and making my salivary glands go into overdrive. She dipped a corn chip, held it in front of her mouth, and went on. “Do you think that's why, you know, the suicide? Remorse, maybe?”

I waited, ready to slide my ice water her way, as she popped the hot salsa into her mouth. No reaction. Goldie scooped up another chipful and said, “Good salsa, once you jazz it up a bit.”

“Let me try that,” I said, dipping a chip into the brown mix. “I thought that green stuff was really hot.”

Goldie spoke while I taste tested her salsa. “It's very sad, and it seems like an odd place to, you know …”

She seemed to be waiting for me to finish the thought, but I was busy trying to breathe, and the water I gulped just spread the fire down my throat and into my chest cavity. Goldie pushed the chip basket toward me and told me to eat a couple, plain. Our food arrived, and I forked up a mouthful of rice. It soaked up some of the heat, and the fire in my esophagus sputtered and died back to a warm glow. I excused myself and scurried off to splash cold water on my face.

When I got back, we picked up the conversation, and as usual, Goldie knew what I was going to say before I said it.

“You don't think it was suicide, do you?” She made it sound like more of a statement than question.

Don't I?
“I'm just not sure it makes sense. But I don't know why I think that,” I said, pausing to bunch the pieces of my thoughts into a usable bundle. “That's not true.” I told her about Ray's injured hand, and added, “I didn't really know Ray, didn't know anything about his life.”

“What does Hutch think?” Goldie and Detective Hutchinson had gotten to know each other over a box of kittens back in the fall. He had adopted Pixel's and Totem's sister, a little calico he called Amy.

I shrugged. “He's waiting for the autopsy, I suppose. I decided not to say too much until I knew more. “We haven't really talked about it.”

Goldie patted her napkin against her mouth, folded it, and laid it on the table. “I hope someone finds his dog soon. Poor little thing.”

We were waiting for our change when my phone vibrated in my pocket. Tom. I'm not big on taking calls in social situations, but he rarely calls me during the day, so I thought it might be important. Goldie excused herself and I answered.

“The realtor just called,” Tom said. “The people who looked at the house on Saturday want a second look.”

“And you're in a cleaning frenzy?”

“It's not too bad,” he said. “I'll just shovel the bones and toys into a box and take the dog bed out to the van, and Drake and I will get out of here.” No one said anything for a moment, and then Tom said, “So this is good. Maybe we'll get an offer.”

We.
My tummy did a little
flip-flop
. It was his house, not ours, but he had been speaking of us as a “we” for months. I was committed to Tom and I knew I could trust him in a pinch, but I'd been on my own so long, I wasn't sure I could share living quarters well with anyone who didn't walk on all fours.

“That's great. I guess we'll know soon.”

“I hope so,” he said. “I'm going to drive out to Collin's place and take another look around for Ray's dog. I'll drive around the area. There's an old barn about half a mile down the road, might be a place she'd hide.”

“So you knew Collin Lahmeyer owns that place?”

“Well, yeah.” He sounded a bit surprised at the question. “I told you he'd bought some property. He wants to put up a
dog-training
facility.”

My complete inability to recall Tom telling me that gave me pause. Ever since Mom started having memory problems, I've worried about my own mental future. Then again, maybe he only thought he had told me, or maybe I hadn't heard him. I let it go, and told him that I had dropped off flyers at both shelters and several veterinary offices.

“You're still nervous about this, aren't you?”

“Not nervous. I just hope we find her soon,” I said. “I found a coyote kill out there this morning. That's not a good thing for a little dog.”

“Not Bonnie. Us.”

Yes, I'm terrified.
“No, I'm not.”

“It will be great, Janet.”

A quarter hour later, Goldie and I walked into Pamela's Bridal and Formal Wear. I had suggested Macy's or Kohl's, but Goldie insisted on something a bit classier. “You're only going to do this once, Janet. Get something special to wear.”

Get something expensive, you mean.
“I'll probably never wear it again.”

A bubbly blonde was approaching from the back of the store, a big “what can I sell you” smile on her face. Goldie elbowed me and said, “Stop grumbling.”

“Hello, ladies. I'm Candace. How may I help you?” The way she looked at my jeans and
not-so
-new sweater suggested that I might be beyond help.

“We're just looking,” I said.

Goldie peered over her glasses at me and turned to Candace. “She needs a lovely, special dress.”

Candace pressed her hands into prayer position and said, “Lovely! Mother of the bride?”

I tried not to look at Goldie, but couldn't help myself. She had her chin tucked toward her chest, her lips pursed, and the corners of her eyes crinkled. We both burst out laughing, and Candace took a step backward, a little wrinkle furrowed between her
well-groomed
brows.

“No, dear,” I said. “I'm the daughter of the bride.”
Could be worse,
I thought.
I could
be
the bride.

twenty-three

Tom was almost vibrating
with excitement when he picked me up bright and early Tuesday morning. He had three dog crates in the back of his van—two big ones side by side for Jay and Drake, and a medium for his yet-unnamed puppy girl. Hers was snugged up to theirs at a right angle, just behind the front seats. I smiled at a plastic caddy full of cleaning supplies—a spray bottle of water, another of diluted Dawn, a third of no-rinse dog shampoo, several elderly hand towels, a roll of paper towels—resting on a clean crate pad next to the puppy crate. Leave it to Tom to be prepared for a carsick baby dog.

Jay hopped into his crate, wiggling his nubby tail, and Drake thumped back at him. I stuck my fingers between the bars of Drake's crate and he pushed his velvety muzzle against them. “Brace yourself, old man,” I said. He cocked his head and lifted the base of his ears as if to say
Why would I do that?

“There's coffee in the thermos.” Tom leaned over and kissed me, handing me a travel mug in the same motion. “And breakfast in the cooler.”

“You don't look like you need much more stimulant, Dr. Saunders.”
You look like you might leap out of your skin.
As soon as I had the lid back on my mug, he backed out of the driveway, a big grin on his face. I glanced at the doggy boys, both of them panting happily. “The boys are in for a surprise,” I said.

We beat the morning rush and were on
I-69
headed south just as the sun prepared to clear the treetops. Tom slipped a Grupo Putumayo disc into the CD player, set it to background volume, and sang along to the beginning of “Madre Selva.” I took my own advice to the dogs and tilted my seat back a tad, savoring the morning light and the pleasure of being cocooned in a small space with three of my favorite friends. The coffee was rich and warm and smooth, with no acid bite and just a suggestion of cinnamon. I reached for the cooler, hoping for a bear claw or at least a bagel with cream cheese.

“You call this breakfast?” I asked, pulling out a container of
sugar-free
low-fat
Greek yogurt, a baggie of
hard-boiled
eggs, and an orange.

“You said you were cutting out sugar and bread.”

“And you believed me?” I sighed, fished a spoon from the bottom of the cooler, and opened the yogurt. “At least it's key lime.”

“If you start to feel faint, we'll stop at the first rest stop and get some junk food from the machines,” said Tom, patting my knee and grinning sideways at me. “Shopping trip a success?”

“It was.” We laughed about the sales clerk's confusion over my status as daughter, not mother, of the bride, and I changed topics. “Still no sign of Bonnie.”

“No. I talked to most of the neighbors within about a mile last night. But there's a lot of land, and more than a little of it covered with woods and brush.”

The idea of that lovely little dog lost or hiding alone out there made my stomach heave. “We have flyers out all over the place, and Giselle has been posting to social media. Luckily, I had some pretty good photos of her from Saturday. Bonnie, not Giselle.”

We rode in silence for a few minutes. Leo had been abducted once, and my eyes still burned when I thought of that time. As far as I knew, Tom had never had a pet go missing, but I'm sure he could imagine the pain and guilt, fear and
second-guessing
the experience brings on. Even if Bonnie wasn't our dog, her disappearance had spurred a lot of dog lovers to help with the search. I knew that if we found her, someone would give her a good home.

The sun cleared the tops of the trees and slammed into the side of my head. I pulled the visor to the side and down, but it didn't reach far enough, so I gave up on my
semi-reclining
position and
re-adjusted
my seat. Maybe it was my movements, maybe it was the brighter light, but the mood in the car shifted again.

“Guess what?” Tom's face was all grin.

“Let me guess … You're getting a puppy?”

He laughed. “That too. But there's more.”

“You have a new book contract?” That was true, too, but it was
week-old
news. Tom had signed a contract with Indiana University Press for a book on something to do with herbs and magic among New Agers in the desert southwest. He'd spent the previous summer doing fieldwork in Arizona and New Mexico, so much of our early relationship had developed over the phone and through emails.

Tom pulled me back to the moment. “More.”

“I think you're going to have to tell me.”

“The house is sold!” He was practically bouncing in his seat.

“Yeah? The second showing?”

He nodded. “I accepted the offer last night. The realtor called while I was out looking for Bonnie, and I signed the paperwork on my way home.” He grinned at me.

“So now we wait to see if they get the loan approval? How long—”

“Nope.” Another glance and grin my way. “It's a cash deal.”

I couldn't imagine having enough cash to pay outright for a house. “No kidding?”

“They're moving back here after
thirty-five
years in the Bay area, so they came with
big-time
equity from their house,” he said. “And they want to close and take possession as soon as I can get out.”

Whoa,
screeched both my little voices. I'd been counting on a leisurely adjustment period between offer and closing to let me ease all the way into this realignment of the earth's axis. I'd been living alone for decades. So had Tom. Neither of us was completely inflexible, but we had developed our own ways of living.
It'll be fine
, said Janet Devil, eager as always for adventure and risk.
Oh dear oh dear oh dear
, muttered Janet Angel.
He's tidy. You're not. He cooks. You don't. He's easy going. You're a hot head. He minds his own business. You snoop.
Not that I hadn't thought of all that many times already.

“Janet?” Tom's voice, still excited but stitched through with a slender thread of worry.

“That's great news!” I said, meaning it.
“I was just thinking … . I'll have to speed up the reorganizing.” I had promised to clear out my
guest-cum
-storage room to make an office space for Tom, and I hadn't made much progress. Plus we had to decide which pieces of whose furniture we wanted to keep. I might have to take Goldie up on her offer to lock me out and purge, as she put it, “all this crap.” And then there was the little matter of Phil Martin's pet limit bill. “So, what are you thinking, time wise?”

“How does May Day sound?”

May Day! May Day!
“Perfect,” I said.

twenty-four

An hour and a
half into the drive, Tom took the Pendleton exit, turned west onto State Road 38, and engaged his GPS system. “They're just this side of Noblesville,” he said. “I think we should take the boys out before we get there.”

He was right. Most breeders with young puppies aren't keen on having strange dogs on their property. Even healthy dogs can bring in disease, and puppies who have been weaned but not yet fully vaccinated are vulnerable. We pulled into the parking lot beside a small branch bank and walked Drake and Jay across a side lawn to a gnarled redbud in its full glory. The sky overhead was clear and blue, but gray clouds rolled across the horizon and, judging by the prevailing wind, were headed our way.

Ten minutes later we turned onto a county road and found the mailbox we were told to look for. “Kurt and Karen Williams, Sycamore Labrador Retrievers” was stenciled under a pair of Lab faces, one black, one yellow. Tom parked in a gravel
pull-off
and grinned at me. “Wait 'til you meet the ‘screening committee.'”

Karen Williams opened the door before we were up the steps, and five adult Labs surrounded us, shouldering each other out of the way to check us out. Tom scratched chests and
tail-bases
with both hands. One black boy with grizzled muzzle and eyebrows leaned against my leg, his paw on top of my foot, and gave me that woeful look that retrievers do so well. I pulled on the strap to position my camera in the middle of my back and leaned down, talking softly and scratching the old dog's chest while he made little groany sounds.

“Guys, guys, that's enough,” said Karen, a laugh in her voice. The four younger dogs broke off their attentions and ran back into the house. “Tom.” She nodded at him and turned to me and my new friend. “Fowler, that's quite enough, you old flirt.” She guided the old dog toward the door with a gentle hand, held out the other, and said, “Karen Williams. You must be Janet.” When I felt the confidence of her hand in mine, I couldn't help but think of Phil Martin's flaccid imitation of a handshake.

Karen ushered us through the door and said, “The screening committee seems to approve of you both!” She led us to a great room at the back of the house and sent the dogs out through a sliding door. Fowler hesitated, turning big eyes on me for help, but Karen laid a hand on his shoulder and said, “No you don't, you. ‘Everybody out' includes old guys, too.” The dog sighed and walked slowly onto the outside deck.

Karen positioned a baby gate across the end of the hallway we had come through and looked at us, a sparkle in her eyes. “Ready for the next wave?”

Tom sat down on the floor, his back to the couch, and grinned at me. Karen opened a door to another room off the kitchen. There was the sound of scrambling on the vinyl floor, a soft
whump!
against a something out of sight, and five
roly-poly
Lab puppies bounced and slid into the room followed by a yellow bitch with drooping boobies and a whirligig tail.

I may have squealed. I set my camera in a safe place and joined Tom on the floor. Lucy, the mama dog, inspected us both, switching between us as she confirmed that we were okay to be with her puppies. And the puppies! Three blacks, two yellows, and if you can find anything cuter than baby Labs, I'd like to see it. They were all over us, clambering onto our laps, untying our shoelaces, tugging on our clothes.

A few minutes in, Karen took Lucy, the three black pups, and the yellow boy back to their room, leaving the yellow girl. Tom threw a few toys, and the pup brought them right back. I stepped outside and took some photos of the big dogs, and when I came back in, Tom had the yellow girl cradled in his arms. She was relaxed and quiet as he rubbed her soft round tummy and they studied each other. Call me a sap, but my eyes stung and my throat tightened.

“Winnie,” said Tom, and the puppy lunged at his face and licked his nose. “She looks like a Winnie.”

“Perfect,” I said.

It took another quarter hour to do the paperwork. When that was finished, Tom handed me the folder and scooped up his baby dog. Karen walked us to the car, where Tom set Winnie in her crate. She wagged her little tail with perfect Labrador enthusiasm, sniffed Drake and Jay through the bars of their crates, and let out one loud
yip
. The boys stood and sniffed back, Jay's rear end vibrating and Drake's tail waving slowly. Puppy girl bowed at Drake, jumped at his face, and bounced off the wires that separated them. Drake pulled his head away from the wires and gave Tom a look that seemed to say, “Really?” Winnie spun around and repeated the maneuver with Jay, and he pushed his nose against the bars, whining softly. Drake lay down facing away from the puppy and let out a low, grumbly moan.

“You'll adjust, old man,” said Tom. To me he added, “Change is hard.”

No kidding.

We stopped to eat in Anderson. Tom seemed to glow with happiness, and my doubts about our next move—his move—drifted away. Most of them, anyway. I knew we were great together, and that I could depend on him. He wasn't the problem at all. The problem—my problem—was the reality of giving up my
long-standing
autonomy.
But you've already made most of the adjustments,
whispered a voice. That was true. But hanging out at one house or the other knowing that the one who didn't actually live there would go home eventually offered a safety cushion that cohabitation did not.
Better get over it soon, MacPhail
.

After lunch, we found another stretch of grass behind another business—an auto parts store this time—where we could let the dogs out for a pee. It was also a good place to introduce each of the boys to the puppy, up close and extremely personal. We had just pulled in when my phone rang.

“Janet, have you heard the news?” It was Giselle, and she was talking faster than a terrier after a squirrel. She sounded angry.

“No, we left early to pick up the puppy.” My lunch turned into a cannonball in my stomach.
What now?
“We're in Anderson, on our way back. What …” I started to ask, but a terrible thought stopped the question in my mouth.
Please, not bad news about Bonnie.

“The city council. They released the details of the bill.”

Tom cocked his head at me, a question all over his face, and I shrugged.

“The bill?” My heart was beating so loud in my ears that I wasn't sure I heard her.

“The pet limit bill?” Giselle must be upset, I thought. She's back to her old habit of speaking in interrogatives. “I thought of you and Tom right away. It's going to affect so many people and pets. And they're being very hush hush about when the public hearing will be.”

Tom pointed at the clouds to the northwest. They were bigger, darker, and closer than before, so I told Giselle I would have to call her later.

“But Janet,” she said. “It's worse than expected.”

I didn't want to spoil the fun of picking up the puppy, so I tried to keep my voice light. “Okay.”

“They want to set the limit at four pets per house. Two dogs and two cats.” Giselle paused. “Oh, you don't want to spoil the moment. I'm sorry. I guess I already did?”

“That's fine.” I forced a lilt into my voice. “I'll call you later.”

“Wait! One other thing?” Giselle spoke quickly.

“Okay,” I said. Tom gave me a look and stepped out of the car.

“I thought you'd want to know. Hutch told me … they got the coroner's preliminary opinion, you know, pending the autopsy on that man Ray? You were right. It wasn't suicide.”