Let Loose (11 page)

I stared at the phone and considered calling
again, but I couldn’t seem to raise my arm. I also couldn’t seem to
think of anything I would say. I was locked in indecision.

So I did the next best thing: I avoided the
issue completely.

After talking to Linda the day before, I knew
pawning the dogs off on her was not an option. And since she was
the closest thing Red had to a relative, that left me with them
until his case was closed or the Humane Society was flooded with
new volunteers, which I knew from my own experience volunteering
was about as likely to happen as I was to have a growth spurt that
was vertical versus my usual horizontal.

So, my best bet at getting my life back to
normal? Finding Red’s killer. But not just finding his killer.
After meeting Linda, I realized I had another job too, finding a
good home for the team. I didn’t want to keep them, but that didn’t
mean I wanted them going to just anybody, especially a just anybody
who would only want them for the money they’d bring in when split
up.

They might be destructive and annoying, but
they were also growing on me. Damn them.

So two goals. That wasn’t bad. One, find the
killer. Two, find a loving home for eight rambunctious sled
dogs.

Where to start?

Zef slid into the room with his head stuck
inside a cereal box. Daisy ran up and smacked him in the cardboard
with her paw.

I’d start with the killer.

The day I’d found Red’s body, I hadn’t been
able to snoop around as much as I would have liked because of the
snow, but that had been days ago. By now, no telling how many
moose, deer, and cougars had wandered through the scene, not to
mention snowmobilers and other random humans. Any disturbance I
made would be minor, if the police were even still visiting the
scene. They had been yesterday, but... well, I’d deal with that
potential snafu when I encountered it.

Still, I did need a reason to be at the
campground, just in case my dear friend Stone decided to drop
by.

Luckily, though, I had a newly acquired skill
that would serve the purpose beautifully.

Skijoring.

Martin had insisted I keep the equipment.
He’d also recommended that the next time I went out, I start with
just Fluff, and add Kiska
after
I’d perfected my own
technique a bit more. After winding up face down in the snow, this
seemed like good advice.

So with Kiska and company left snug inside my
house, Fluff and I got in my Jeep and drove toward the campground.
We stopped far enough away that any police parked there wouldn’t
see us, but close enough I wouldn’t have to do all that much actual
skijoring before reaching our destination.

Leaving the Jeep behind, we tromped through
the snow and across the frozen creek to the trail. There we suited
up and went into operation undercover.

At first I thought this experience was going
to be a repeat of the first. I called “mush,” in a voice, strong
and loud and confident. Fluff glanced over her shoulder at me as if
to say, “Really?” Then she faced forward again.

I remembered then, that that wasn’t what
Martin had said to get her moving the first time.

I sucked in a breath and called again, this
time louder, “Hike.”

And to my amazement, she moved.

I slid forward with a sudden jerk that pulled
at my waist and threatened to pull my front half too far forward,
but this time I recovered. I swung my legs and my arms and battled
my way along in what was probably a bad imitation of an antique
whirligig with a missing washer or two.

If Fluff noticed my struggles, she didn’t
comment. We moved forward, awkward but steady. I was already sore
and wishing this adventure was over, but I was also feeling
confident and proud. I wasn’t a complete klutz.

Another ten minutes and we had reached the
campground. Red’s trailer and truck had both been removed, and the
crime tape had for the most part fallen down. Giving me obvious
permission to proceed as I liked.

I stayed on the skis until we were fully in
the campground, under the trees where the snow wasn’t as deep and I
felt confident I could get around without sinking up to my waist in
a drift, at least as long as I paid attention to where I
stepped.

Leaving the skis stuck in such a drift, I
guided Fluff to the area where I’d found Red’s body.

There was still blood. There were also signs
that some animal had been through, sniffing the site, probably
looking for a meal from whatever had left the blood behind.

I wrapped the lead line around my hand and
pulled Fluff closer. I’d seen cougars near here before, and like
any rational person, I had a near paranoia about encountering one
face to face. The other times, I had been safely inside my rig.

But I was here now, and with my Jeep parked
down the road, there was no quick exit.
I might as well do what
I came here to do.

We wandered to one side, closer to the woods.
There I found tracks. One set I guessed to be from Red’s sled and
the dogs. They led from an area near the edge of the campground to
the trail that Fluff and I had just come down.

So Red had tried out the trail.

Another set was obviously from a snowmobile,
or more accurately, snowmobiles. So someone had ridden a snowmobile
into the campground. Of course, it could have been Martin. I hadn’t
seen the snowmobile he said he’d ridden here the other day, but
that didn’t mean at some earlier point he hadn’t ridden it all the
way into the campground.

There were boot prints too, but they didn’t
go far. Those I guessed belonged to one of the Helena Police
officers, or a curious neighbor.

I walked a bit further to the right of Red’s
site, in the direction his body had seemed to be facing. Fluff
investigated, sniffing and peeing and looking about as pleased with
herself as a husky could look.

Further on, I found more disturbances in the
snow. It looked as if another truck or trailer had backed up into a
campsite three places past Red’s.

Had this been before or after Red’s murder?
It hadn’t snowed since, so I really had no way of knowing.

Being thorough, I walked Fluff through the
campsite to see if the former occupants had left anything
interesting behind. I quickly realized that the site was the
holding area for excess snow. A huge pile of it had been shoved to
the back of the site. Which explained the tracks, or not. It was
still possible someone had camped here. Fluff and I continued our
investigation.

I was rewarded almost immediately. A red
bungee cord lay half-buried in the snow as if the camper had run
over it on his way in or out, or both.

I picked it up and shoved it into my coat
pocket. Fluff meandered ahead. I let her go, giving her a bit more
of the eight foot lead. Away from Red’s blood, I felt a bit safer,
plus Fluff’s relaxed demeanor was calming me some. Her hearing and
sense of smell were much better than mine; if a cougar or some
other threat was nearby, surely she would know it.

She pulled on the lead, obviously intrigued
by something at the back of the site. I followed, scanning the
ground as we went for anything else that might have been
dropped.

When I looked up, Fluff had disappeared.
There was the pile of snow and trees, but no Fluff.

Search forgotten, I jogged forward. I’d gone
only a foot when her head popped out from behind the snow bank.

Confused, I stopped. Fluff, pleased with her
discovery, popped back out of sight, this time moving far enough
that I felt a tug on the towline still attached to my waist.

I walked forward and peered around the pile.
It was hollow and its insides were wooden.

Highly unusual for a snow bank.

Then I realized it wasn’t just snow. It was
some kind of storage building that had been barricaded by snow in
the front. It also wasn’t much of a storage building. The back was
completely open.

I followed Fluff in the back, ducking as I
did. The building, if you could call it that, wasn’t super tall
either. There I found its purpose: a sign that read “firewood” was
propped up against one wall.

I sighed. No big discovery here. Just where
the forest service kept firewood during the normal season to
discourage people from bringing in their own.

After that disappointment, Fluff and I
retrieved my skis and walked across the bridge to the road.
Fabulous companion though Fluff was, I was too tired to skijor any
more today. I was also eager to leave Red’s blood and whatever
might be circling it behind. And to get home and think of some
other idea that would help me find his killer because aside from a
renewed ache in my back, I had nothing to show for this trip.

I spent the rest of Sunday on my couch
surrounded by dogs, about as close to heaven as a living person can
get, at least during the time my companions stayed calm. When Zef
started wandering around looking for a toy, I took the cue and
shoved them all outside, Kiska included. Then I staggered back to
my couch and reality TV and pretty much stayed there until late
morning the next day.

Zef, always the first to stir, pounced on a
pillow that someone had dragged into the living room. I got up to
put them all out again and then glanced at my clock. It was
approaching noon.

Betty had an appointment this afternoon in
Bozeman at some art shop that was showcasing her poster, and
Phyllis had asked for the day off over a week ago.

Betty would have already left, which meant
the shop was locked up and unmanned, and I was bringing in exactly
zero dollars in revenue.

I zapped a frozen burrito in the microwave
and ate it on my drive in.

The dogs I left at home, all nine of them.
We’d had enough together time for a while.

As I’d guessed, neither Betty nor Phyllis was
at the shop, but it wasn’t locked up either. I walked in through
the back to find Ethel, Carol, and four other women “of a certain
age” gathered around a round oak table that I’d acquired a month
earlier.

The ladies had cleared a space out around it
and had settled down with a deck of cards and a pile of poker
chips.

Unsure what protocol was when discovering a
gambling den in one’s business, I stopped beside them and waited
for someone to acknowledge me.

“Carol got last pick. This one’s mine,” one
of the women I didn’t know said.

“Carol won the jackpot. You know the rules,
winner takes all.”

“But—” another member of the table, a woman a
few years younger than Carol or Ethel who, based on her embellished
t-shirt, was a “Rodeo Princess,” waved her hand in objection.

Ethel cleared her throat and looked up at me.
“Lucy, it’s so good to see you, dear.”

I licked my lips and looked around, checking
to see that yes, we were in my store.

Rodeo Princess seemed to miss the change in
conversation, or maybe she just wasn’t ready to give up her fight.
“But she got the winnings
and
pick of where we—”

Carol kicked her under the table. Princess
jerked and grabbed her shin. Then she looked at me through narrowed
eyes.

Ethel set the deck of cards that she’d been
about to deal down on the table. “Girls, this is Lucy, supplier of
today’s treat.” She motioning with her hand over the top of the
table, drawing my attention to the chocolate Mountain Scout cookies
mixed in with the poker chips.

“Well, I didn’t supply—”

Ethel waved my objection off. “Close
enough.”

Rodeo Princess picked up a Bent Mint and
snapped it in two with her teeth.

Ethel kept the conversation going. “Lucy’s
very involved with local charities, aren’t you, Lucy? She even took
in Red Benson’s dogs while the police sort out what happened to
him.”

The women nodded and made polite noises. All
of them except for Princess. She picked up another cookie and
grunted. “If we’d given last month’s pot to the Humane Society like
I’d wanted, they’d have been able to look after those dogs
themselves.”

Ethel leveled her with a stare. “Now, Rose,
you know that isn’t true. That expansion project is going to take a
lot more money than one of our little games can supply, and time.”
She emphasized time and then looked at me with a smile.

One of the other women, with gray hair and no
makeup, said, “I feel for the dogs. You know I do, but what about
people? The frequency of violence against native women is
shameful.”

“Susan, you know we agree with you, but
everything you’ve proposed went out of state.”

“And didn’t come with an idea to pay for it,”
Carol grumbled.

There were more rumblings. Susan and Carol
scowled at each other while Rose picked up another cookie and
shoved it into her mouth. The other two women smiled at each other
and then up at me.

As they did, I realized they were identical
replicas of each other, right down to the giant orange bows in
their bouffant hair-dos.

“Molly and Milly,” Ethel explained. “They
don’t talk a lot, but when they do, we all listen.”

Everyone paused and looked at the twins, but
the pair just nodded and smiled.

“Molly’s an anti-mining activist,” Carol
offered. “And Milly has a love for the arts.”

“Oh,” I replied. Apparently, I had stumbled
in on a meeting of the philanthropists. I wondered if this was why
Phyllis had paired me with Ethel. “I like dogs.”

Rodeo Princess, aka Rose, lowered the cookie
she’d been holding. “Are you joining us?”

I glanced around the table at the piles of
poker chips. Just how much money did these women give after each
game? When I looked back up, Rose was still watching me.

“Uh, I like art and mining and violence
against women too.”

Eyebrows shot up.

“I mean as causes. I think everything all of
you mentioned are great causes, and it’s so inspiring that you
spend your time...” Not sure exactly what they spent their time on,
I stumbled. “...and money...” There had definitely been mention of
money. “...in helping others.” I smiled, stepped back, and prayed
I’d said enough to stay in their good graces while not being pulled
into yet another Lucy-for-hire charity plan. Or gift of money,
because honestly, I just didn’t have it to give. Not if I wanted to
eat too. Which I did.