Shepherd's Crook (12 page)

thirty-four

I bolted straight up
in the tub, sending the ice pack flying toward the mirror over the sink and a bubbly lavender tidal wave onto the rug and my bath towel. I had checked all the locks, so how … I remembered the jimmied doorknob on the storage room and looked around for a weapon. Why hadn't I brought the softball bat in with me? I carefully stepped out of the tub and opened the cupboard under the sink.

Scrubbing powder wouldn't be much good as a weapon unless I could throw it into an assailant's eyes.
Oh, sure,
said Janet Devil,
ditch the aerosols. They're dangerous.
I grabbed an old toilet brush from the back of the cupboard, but the plastic wand had no heft and was loose.
Aha!
I wrapped my trembling fingers around a spray bottle of Goldie's homemade glass cleaner. It might be nontoxic, but a blast of detergent and vinegar in the eyes should slow …

My brain kicked in about then. The hammering against the wall was accompanied by snuffling, and as I reached for a dry towel, two white paws appeared under the door. The banging stopped and a pair of black paws pushed in beside the white ones. I wanted to be angry, but what kind of person doesn't smile at the love letter of dog feet under the bathroom door? Besides, I was a tad embarrassed for myself.

“Janet, are you okay?”

At the sound of Tom's voice I shoved the bottle back under the sink and wrapped the towel around myself. “Yes, although that Labrador tail scared the bejeepers out of me.” I dried myself and dropped the towel onto the puddle my first towel hadn't sopped up. “What are you doing here?” I asked as I pulled my jammies on and ran a brush through my hair.

“We're here to help,” Tom said. “I'm a doctor, you know.”

I opened the door and walked into Tom's open arms. “You're not that kind of doctor, Doctor.”

“Sure I am. I know all kinds of herbal concoctions.” It was true. Tom's anthropological specialty is ethnobotany, and he has studied traditional uses of plants for purposes of all sorts. “How's your head?”

“Better. Between the caffeine, the ice pack, and the hot bath, I think I'm fine, although I may not sleep the rest of the week.” I disengaged and bent to snugglekiss the two dogs who were sniffing my legs. “Where's Winnie?”

“I put her in the
x-pen
in the living room so the cats can check her out without getting trounced.”

As if to confirm his story, a series of sharp yips erupted from down the hall. Drake and Jay trotted off in that direction, and we followed. When we got to the living room, Winnie was bowing at Pixel, who was arched into an “h” with her tail as the upright and skitterjumping back and forth in front of the imprisoned puppy. Leo was lying on the couch, a
whose brilliant idea was this
look on his face.

“Things seem to be under control in here,” I said. “I was thinking of hot chocolate.”

Tom put his arm over my shoulder and steered us toward the kitchen. “Sounds good.”

“More to the point,” I said, “now that you're here, I was thinking of that Mayan hot chocolate you do so well.”

Twenty minutes later we had settled onto the couch with spicy hot chocolate and a lot to talk about. We started with Bonnie's condition and Goldie's elation. I considered not worrying Tom with the story of my encounter at Dom's Deli, but I was itching to double check my images from the weekend to see whether I had in fact photographed Skinny and Porky without realizing it. “Remember those two thugs I saw talking to Evan?” I asked as I retrieved my laptop and booted it up.

“We don't know they're thugs.”

“Yes, we do,” I said, and by the time I had described my interactions with them, Tom was sure they were hit men from Jersey.
Or Nevada
.

“Wait a minute!” I looked at Tom as I waited for the machine to wake up. “What if they really are connected?”

“Connected?”

“To gambling or organized crime or something. Ray was from Nevada. And Summer is from somewhere out west.”

“But you saw them talking to Evan, and that was after Ray …”

Tom didn't finish the thought, and we sat in silence as I opened my photo file from Saturday and scrolled through the images, focusing on backgrounds and peripheries. Tom scooched in close and draped his arm over my shoulder, and I leaned into his warmth. The photos flew by. Most of the early ones were just dogs and sheep with no people at all. There were several dozen shots of Bonnie and Ray organizing the sheep early Saturday morning when the world still seemed normal.

“I'll have to print some of these for Goldie,” I said. “I'm sure she'd love to have some photos of Bonnie working.”

“What if someone, you know, Ray's family, wants her?”

I handed Tom the computer and extricated myself from the depths of the couch, wincing at the aches beginning to settle into my
sheep-bruised
flesh. “May as well find out right now.”

“Right now” meant as soon as I rounded up my phone, which took a few minutes of searching my tote bag, camera case, and pockets. Jay and Drake did their best to help me, but after I tripped over them three or four times, I sent them to lie down in the living room. As they toddled away and I started
re-searching
my jeans pockets, I heard “From Me to You” playing somewhere in the vicinity of my feet. I lifted the bed skirt, and picked up my phone.

“Thank you,” I said.

Tom chuckled. “You're welcome. Hurry back.”

When I rejoined him in the living room, I felt as if a great load had been lifted. “I talked to Evan. He says Ray had no family, and no one has any claim on Bonnie.”

As I took the laptop back, Tom covered my hand with his own and directed my attention to the
x-pen
. It had gotten so quiet, I'd forgotten we had two babies in the house. But there they were. Winnie was pressed up against the wires of the pen, and Pixel was snugged up to the outside, one paw pushed through the wires and tucked under the puppy's chin.

“Where's my camera when I need it?”

thirty-five

We just sat for
a few minutes, holding hands and watching the sleeping babies. Then I went back to the photos. The only people in any of the herding photos were the judge, the dogs' owners, and Ray. The scene shifted to the disc area, and although the focus of most photos was on the leaping, running dogs, there were more people on the fringes. It was, after all, set up as a spectator event. I found a terrific shot of Edith Ann, the little black-and-tan dog whose owner had helped me look for Jay, catching a disc mid-air, and made a note to send Kathy a copy. “Some of these are keepers,” I said, “but no shady characters that I can see.”

“You want to call it a night and do the rest tomorrow?” asked Tom.

“I won't be able to sleep if I don't get through them. Wait! What day is tomorrow?”

“Wednesday. All day.”

“I have a herding lesson in the morning,” I said. “Maybe I'll learn something then.”

Winnie woke up and whined, so Tom left me to finish with the photos while he took her and the big dogs out. The images in front of me had shifted to the parade of herding breeds, and there were some good ones. I knew most of the dogs and people, since they were nearly all local and many of them trained at Dog Dayz.

I knew I had nearly reached the end because I hadn't taken many photos after the parade. There were some random shots of the crowd and the vendor booths, and an occasional
human-interest
shot. My eyes were beginning to itch and my brain was fogging up when headlights panned the wall across from me, as Goldie's lights did when she pulled into her driveway at night. I wanted to run over to see Bonnie after her makeover, and to tell Goldie that, according to Evan at least, no one else was asking for the little dog. Tom brought the dogs in and set Winnie back in the pen with a giant teddy bear, while I rushed through the last two dozen images.

And I almost missed it.

In fact, I did miss it, but my subconscious didn't, and I scrolled back, leaning into the screen at first, then zooming in on the image. It was meant to be a shot of the Indiana Collie Club's information booth, and if I used it, I would crop out the part I now found most interesting.

Tom slid in beside me. “Goldie's home.”

“We'll go see her in a minute. But look at this first.”

A man with a dark blonde ponytail was turned
forty-five
degrees away from me. Evan. I couldn't see his left hand, but his right was held palm out toward the heavier of the thugs. The skinny guy stood beside his buddy, head thrust forward and mouth open as if he were talking.

“That doesn't look very friendly,” said Tom. “Are those the guys you mentioned?” I nodded, pointing at another figure turned away from the men, but looking back toward them. Her long copper hair was bright as ever, but even at that distance, Summer's expression was dark. I always take several shots of a scene, so I clicked through to the next image, and the one after that. By the third one, Summer still appeared to be looking at the men while moving away from them, away from her husband. In the final shot, her torso was angled forward and her elbows were bent. She was running away.

thirty-six

The Winslows' farm was
bucolic in the morning light, and more perfect spring weather would be hard to find. Wooly clouds scattered themselves across a robin's-egg sky like a reflection of the sheep grazing here and there in the rolling meadow behind the house, barn, and yarn shop. It wasn't until I had parked in the shade of an ancient beech between the shop and the barn that a few oddities struck me.

First was the size of the flock in the pasture. A week earlier, it would have seemed normal, because Summer typically kept about fifty sheep. A quarter of the flock had disappeared the previous Saturday, and yet at a glance there seemed to be as many animals as ever. Could they have replaced the stolen sheep in four days? I had the impression they didn't have that kind of cash lying around, and the
insurance claim—if there was one—couldn't have been settled yet.

As I tried to wrap my mind around the number of sheep in evidence, I spotted Luciano, the Winslows' Maremma, lying toward the center of the scattered woollies. Summer usually locked the big dog up before her herding students arrived because he got to be quite the handful, even for her, when other dogs appeared on the property. Had she forgotten I was coming? It was certainly possible, given the stress of the past few days.

I opened the windows, the side doors, and the back hatch to keep the van cool for Jay, and left him in his crate while I walked across the yard to Summer's wool shop. A rustic painted sign hung above the door—Hole in the Wall Yarn Shop. The door was unlocked and the lights were on, but there was no one there.
Thinking she must have stepped out for a moment, I walked around the shop and looked at the merchandise. There seemed to be thousands of skeins of gorgeous yarn in bright colors, heathers, darks, blends. There was sheep's wool, alpaca, and blends of all sorts. I can't knit two rows with the same number of stitches, but I enjoyed imagining the possibilities embodied in that wall of fibers.

The center of the shop was taken up by a
double-sided
display rack. The side facing the wall of yarn held three rows of craft and pattern books. Here were instructions for sweaters and shawls and comforters, caps and mittens, wall hangings and scarves. At one end of the display there were even a few patterns for needlepoint projects, and I wondered whether my mother would enjoy working on one. Then again, I wouldn't dare choose for her. Besides, she was busy these days with the therapy garden at Shadetree Retirement, and with Tony Marconi, her
bridegroom-to
-be.

I heard barking, but by the time I stepped out the door the only sound was a mixed chorus of chickadees, cardinals, and crows. The sheep were calm, and Luciano was still in place. I pulled my phone out to check the time and found that we should be starting my lesson in seven minutes. I walked around the shop, thinking Summer might be in the little dye garden she kept at the back, but there was no one there. Her truck was in its usual place, though, and Evan's rusty old Toyota pickup was parked in front of the house. Even if Summer had forgotten my lesson, she must be around. I shaded my eyes with my hand and squinted at the
sheep-dotted
slope to see if I had missed her up there, knowing even as I did that Luciano would be on his feet if anyone were out there with his beloved sheep.

The house. They must be in the house, I thought, already walking that way. In fact, since the shop was unlocked, it seemed likely that Summer had run “home” for something. The house was oriented with the front door facing away from the barn and shop, and a herringbone brick walk through paired borders of different kinds of lavender led around the privacy fence that enclosed the back and sides of the house. The plants were just greening, but I had seen this walkway in August when the beds were rivers of white and violet and the air was heavy with fragrance and
a-dance
with bees. I stopped and drew a deep breath, and smiled at the promise carried in the faint lavender scent.

The curtains were drawn over the front windows, which seemed odd and gave my stomach a tiny squeeze. I glanced back at my van, wondering if I should go back and lock Jay's crate, but that seemed a little silly. No one coming to the yarn shop would bother my dog, and besides, I'd only be a minute.

I stepped onto the long wooden porch. One end was framed and screened, and Rosie, the old ewe who slept there and had occasional house privileges, was watching me. She lay on a braided rug and had a
flower-print
bandana around her neck. “Hi, Rosie,” I said. “Your people around?” I flinched at the loud squeak of a loose board and a louder flurry of barking from inside the house. Nell. Summer must be inside, then, because Nell was always at her side. I knocked on the door and waited. Nothing. Even the barking had stopped, as if someone had hushed the dog. I knocked again, a bit harder, and called, “Summer? Evan? It's Janet MacPhail.”

Evan's voice came from behind the doorframe. “Janet?”

“Yes.” When the door didn't open, I said, “I have a herding lesson scheduled. Maybe Summer forgot?”

Another couple of seconds went by before I heard a deadbolt pop and the door opened a few inches. Evan peered past me, then opened the door a bit wider. “Come in,” he said, and when I did, he looked out again, then slammed the door and locked the deadbolt. As I bent to greet Nell, the corner of my eye caught something that made me turn my head. A shotgun leaned into the corner behind the door.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.
Of course something's wrong
, whispered my scoldy voice.

Evan turned wide,
red-rimmed
eyes my way. “Wrong?”

“You seem a little jumpy, and you have a shotgun by your front door.”

His eyes flicked toward the gun and back to me, and he said, “Oh, yeah. Coyotes. We've had coyotes around.”

That was certainly possible. In fact, that was a big reason Luciano was out there guarding the sheep. Still, as I registered again the closed curtains and Evan's attention to locking the door, I knew there was more to his jumpiness than coyotes on the prowl.

“Where's Summer?”

“Summer.” He murmured the name so softly I could barely hear him.

Yes, Summer. Your wife.
I half turned back toward the door and said, “If something came up, that's fine. I'll just reschedule my lesson.”

Evan just stared at me, and I got the same creepy sensation I'd had with the skinny goon at Dom's Deli, dialed up a few degrees. My salivary glands seemed to have stopped working and my voice came out a bit squeakier than I would have liked. “That's what I'll do. I'll call her.”
Right after I run to my van and peel out in a storm of flying gravel.

I turned and pulled the doorknob, then remembered the deadbolt. Blood was thundering in my ears, each beat coming a little faster, but not so loud that I couldn't hear Evan breathing close behind me. I grabbed the deadbolt with my other hand and tried to turn the two bits of metal in unison. The knob turned easily and I felt the door move toward me a fraction of an inch, but the cold metal in my other hand held fast. I hit it with my palm and tried again, panic rising like acid in my chest.

The deadbolt wouldn't turn.