Shepherd's Crook (17 page)

forty-eight

“A shotgun shell?” Goldie
and Giselle asked at the same time.

“Evan said they've been having trouble with coyotes,” I said, but knew that shooting right outside the front door seemed odd. The predators would be after the sheep, especially the lambs, and would have no reason to hang around the house.
Canine predators, at least
. I thought of the thugs from Cleveland and my
fight-or
-flight response kicked in. One little voice screamed “Get out of there! You're all in danger!” while the other insisted on looking for Evan and his dogs. I stared at the empty shell for another few seconds and set it back where I found it.

“Let's check the barn,” I said, and we hurried back around the house and across the yard.

The sliding door at the end of the building was half open and we stepped onto a dirt floor strewn with bits of hay. It was too dim inside to see well, but the musty warmth of hay mingled with animal scents filled my nose and warmed my soul. A dove cooed somewhere in the rafters, and something moved in a stall ahead and to my right.

“There must be a light switch around here,” said Goldie from somewhere behind me.

A few seconds later a pair of dusty bare bulbs came on above us and I walked farther into the barn. Luciano's stall was at the far end. I was about ten feet from it and convinced he wasn't there when a barrage of
basso profondo
barking knocked me back a step. Something heavy whammed into the wooden barrier between us and Luciano's big head appeared behind the chain link that formed the upper part of the stall. He kept barking, and I didn't want to imagine what he was threatening to do to me.

“No problem, big guy,” I said. I backed away slowly until the barking slowed to sporadic, then turned and walked back to Goldie and Giselle. “That answers that question,” I said. “Let's go.”

“If anyone's around, they must know we're here after that ruckus,” said Goldie. “Not very friendly, is he?”

Giselle said, “He's just doing his job. He's guarding his sheep and his farm.” She glanced back and added, “But I see why you wanted to be sure of his whereabouts.”

Maybe it was the shot of adrenaline Luciano gave me, but I started to laugh. “Whereabouts? Have you been hanging out with a cop or something?”

We had stepped out of the barn by then and I could see that Giselle's cheeks had gone bright pink. Goldie saw it, too, and something seemed to click. She said, “Oh my gosh! You're Hutch's new lady love! He told me he was seeing someone, but he never mentioned your name.” She elbowed Giselle. “Quite a gentleman. Doesn't kiss and tell.” Goldie studied the other woman's face as we walked and added, “You know, he's really quite smitten with you.” Then, as if to take the pressure off Giselle, Goldie pointed toward the far pasture. “Someone's up there.”

At first, I saw nothing. Then movement. Something dark, and hard to make out against the
silver-green
backdrop of Russian olive along the far fence line. “Maybe it's Evan. Let's go.”

We reached the gate I had seen the Bouvier open the previous day. It stood open again. There were no sheep in that pasture, though, so it didn't seem unreasonable to leave the gate unlatched, and I didn't think much about it as we trudged up the slope toward whoever was up there. The grass was still sopping from the night's dew, and the clay soil beneath was muddy and slick. We had fought our way almost to the top of the hill when a big
charcoal-gray
dog appeared from the other side. The Bouvier. And close on his heels was Nell, the Winslows' English Shepherd.

“Oh my,” said Goldie, a thread of fear in her voice.

“Just stand still,” I said. “I think they'll be okay.” I pitched my voice higher and said, “Nell. Come, girl. Nell, come.” She did, tail wagging a happy hello. Her big buddy followed her lead, but he seemed to misjudge his braking distance and sideswiped me. “Whoa!” My feet slid backward along the slick grass. I flung my arms out and tried to stay upright, but my toes hit a grassless patch of clay and accelerated faster than the rest of me. My knees hit first, still sliding, although a bit more slowly. I caught the balance of the fall on my hands and collapsed against the wet grass and muck.

“Careful!” said Goldie.

Good idea.
I laid my forehead against the ground for a few seconds, gathered myself, and pushed onto my hands and feet. A huge shaggy head knocked into my own, the black nose
leather-cool
against my cheek. “You big galoot.” I pressed a hand against the dog's back for support and got to my feet. The Bouvier leaned his thigh into mine and peeked up at me from under his bangs as if to say he was sorry.

Giselle and Goldie started to laugh. I tried to give them a dirty look, but when I replayed the sight of that big goofy dog slipping down the hill toward me, I laughed as well. I smeared the mud from my palms onto my jeans, patted the dog's neck, and said, “Who's out here with you guys, eh?”

Giselle handed me a crumpled but clean tissue and said, “You might want to wipe your forehead.” She cooed to the big dog and reached for the tags dangling from his collar. “What's your name, fella? Ah, Hugo. Good name.”

Nell had begun running a few yards ahead, turning back to us, running ahead again. “Come on. She wants us to follow.”

“Oh, man, I hope Timmy hasn't fallen in the well again,” said Goldie. We all laughed, but I secretly hoped it wasn't something worse.

The downward slope flattened into a small pasture backed by an
old-growth
stand of hardwoods. Even from a distance I could see that a patch of ground near the corner of the fence had been disturbed, and the closer we got, the colder the air seemed around me.

“What is that?” Giselle whispered.

“Odd place to put in a garden,” said Goldie.

We stopped. Nell sat down and whined at one end of the rectangle of brown earth so at odds with the spring grass around it. We were silent for a moment, and then I found my voice.

“It's a grave.”

forty-nine

We waited forty-five minutes
on the porch of the yarn shop. Giselle had put Hugo in the empty kennel in the barn for safety but Nell, I knew, was used to having the run of the place. I opened my van doors and she hopped onto the backseat to meet Spike through his carrier door, and then climbed over the crates in back to say hello to Jay and Bonnie. Judging by their waving tails, Nell and Bonnie were delighted to see each other, and as I looked on a tickle of panic started just north of my stomach.
What about Nell?
The rest of the thought was slippery, but felt a lot like another dog soon to be in need of a home.

Deputy Johnson, the same sheriff's deputy who had been sent to investigate the missing sheep over the weekend, was the first to arrive. He stepped out of the car and approached us as another vehicle pulled in behind him and I heard Giselle murmur “
uh-oh
” behind me. It was Hutchinson.

“You go explain yourself,” I said, retreating to the barn to make myself scarce until she was finished.

By the time I got back, Giselle and Goldie were closing the van doors and Hutch was taking to the deputy. He nodded at me and said, “We need one of you to show us what you found.” All three of us stepped forward, Goldie in the lead and Giselle somewhere behind me. Hutchinson glanced at the deputy before he spoke again. “Just one, ladies. And no dogs.”

“We and the dogs have already been back there,” said Goldie, suddenly in Question Authority mode. “I don't see why—”

“Goldie, please,” said Hutchinson, holding his palms out in a calming gesture.

Giselle rushed by me. As she passed Goldie, she leaned toward the older woman and I heard her
half-whisper
, “Stop it. It's Homer.” She walked past the two men and, without breaking stride, said, “I'll show you.”

Goldie's next two steps were twice as fast, and warning bells went off in my skull. I hurried forward and caught her elbow. “Goldie! What's the matter with you?”

She glanced at me, took another three steps, and then slowed, stopped, and turned toward me. “Hell if I know.” She closed her eyes and gave her head a little shake, then stared at me. “Must be the uniforms.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I don't like being told what to do by men in uniforms.”

I let out a long breath. “Okay, I get that, but we need them. Besides, it's Hutchinson.”

“Right.” She shrugged and turned back toward the van.

We were sitting on the shop's porch step with Nell between us when Goldie nudged me and gestured down the driveway. A big man in muddy work boots and bib overalls over a
long-sleeved
shirt was trudging our way. His pant legs sagged at the pockets, which I assumed served as portable toolboxes. Nell trotted out to greet him and he chucked her chin and said something I couldn't make out. When he reached conversation distance he touched the brim of his
green-and
-yellow John Deere cap and said, “Ladies.” He pulled a bandana from his pocket and wiped his red nose. “What's happening here? I seen the police cars.” He looked around, then back at us. “Where's Evan or Summer?”

“We, uh, found something out back and called … Have you seen Evan this morning? Or Summer?” I didn't want to explain about the grave, if that was in fact what we'd found.

He shook his head. “Not in a couple of days.” He pulled the cap off and wiped his forehead with his shirt sleeve before fitting the cap back over
buzz-cut
gray hair. He studied my face for a moment and then said, “I live right there,” he pointed across the road and down a farm. “If, well, I'm there if anything needs seein' to, you know, the animals.”

“Thank you,” I said, and told him my name.

“Wayne. Wayne Meyers.” He turned watery eyes toward the back pasture, and said, “If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to know if anything's …” He couldn't seem to find a way to end the sentence.

“I think it might be a while,” I said, and left it at that.

He turned to walk away, Nell on his heels. Wayne stopped and gestured toward us and said, “You stay here, Nell.” The dog hesitated, then rejoined us on the porch. Wayne looked at us and said, “She was born in my kitchen and likes to visit from time to time.”

We watched him go, and Goldie said, “That's a relief. I was worried about who would take care of the animals if, well, you know …”

Silence hung over us like a low, dark cloud for another quarter hour until, finally, we heard voices. At the same instant, I spotted a truck topping the small rise in the road and heading our way, a cloud of smoke spilling out behind like a blue tail. Evan's truck. Deputy Johnson and his crew crossed the yard and climbed into their vehicles. Giselle stopped and leaned against the gatepost, pulled off a shoe, and shook it, but Hutchinson kept walking. He reached Goldie and me just as the truck turned in and bumped up the driveway. It passed the shop, and as the rear window came into view, so did a
long-barreled
gun stretched across a gun rack at the back of the cab. I assumed it was the shotgun I had seen earlier in the house, but wondered if Evan had it for
self-defense
.

“Is that the guy? The owner?” Hutchinson's tone was as calm as I was jumpy.

“That's him. But what did you f—”

“I'll be back.” He strode toward the car from which Deputy Johnson was
re-emerging
and watched Evan pull in. The truck's usual spot was blocked, so Evan pulled onto the grass and jumped from the cab and said, “What's going on?”

I started to walk toward Evan and Hutch, but thought better of it and redirected myself toward Giselle. She was bent over, tying her shoe.

“Did he tell you?” Her voice was pitched higher than normal and seemed to need more air behind it.

“No! Tell us! Is it a body?”

She stood up and looked at me.

“Yes, it's …”

Oh God! Summer?
I was suddenly so dizzy I almost missed her next words.

“… a sheep.”

“A sheep?” Goldie and I asked in unison.

“She must have been special,” said Giselle. “She was wrapped in a blanket, and there were roses scattered over her. She had a bandana around her neck.”

“Aww, Rosie,” I said, feeling a pang of loss for a friend I'd barely known.

“Who?”

“They had an old ewe named Rosie,” I said. “She was a pet, slept on their screened porch. I just saw her yesterday.”
Was that only yesterday?
So much had happened, it seemed like weeks since I had been here talking to Evan. Rosie, I remembered, had been lying on the porch with a
flower-print
bandana around her neck, a nice pile of hay nearby.

Hutchinson started back toward us. One of the uniformed officers stayed with Evan while another looked through the open window of Evan's truck.

“You can go now.” Hutch looked at Giselle. “I'll be a while. I need to talk to Mr. Winslow.”

“About a dead sheep?” Goldie asked.

“About where his wife might be,” Hutch said, and then, “as if it's any of your businesses.” Giselle smiled, but seemed to think better of policing his grammar at the moment.

We rode in the silence of our own thoughts until we got home, unloaded the dogs, and went our separate ways.

fifty

I took Jay out
for a tennis-ball game. We'd been in the backyard for about five minutes when Jay ran to the fence and stood up against it. He barked once, a greeting, and our jolly new neighbor, Phil Martin, yelled, “Shut up!”

“Jay, come,” I said, forcing my voice to be calm as I walked toward the fence. My dog met me, fell into heel position, and sat at my side when I stopped. “Hello.”

“I hate barking dogs,” said Martin, forgoing all semblance of neighborliness.

“I wouldn't call him a ‘barking dog,'” I said. “He was just saying hello.” As if someone had planned the timing, the Washingtons' spaniels, Flo, Mary, and Ross, exploded out their back door and ran in full cry to the fence on the other side of Phil Martin's yard. “Now
those
are barking dogs” I said, and laughed. “But they're never out for long, and I think if they get to know you, they'll settle down.”

A cross between a harumph and an obscenity came out of Martin's mouth before he turned his back and started to walk away. Maybe it was the stress of the morning, of wondering whether another person I knew had died a violent death, of learning that a sweet and gentle animal was gone and that her absence left a hole in someone's heart. Maybe it was just the belligerent rudeness of the man. Whatever it was, it set me off.

“You know, Mr. Martin, we're going to be neighbors for the foreseeable future.” He stopped, but kept his back to me. “I've been nothing but friendly to you, and my animals are healthy and
well-trained
, and they are definitely not a neighborhood nuisance.” He turned slowly, and I waited until we made eye contact. “So whatever it is you sat on, I suggest you have it removed.”

I waited for him to respond, and when he didn't, I said, “Have a lovely afternoon,” and walked to my back door with Jay at my side. I stopped at the kitchen table and ripped up a couple of pieces of junk mail, muttering a few choice comments about Councilman Phil Martin. From there I went straight to the couch and stretched out. Jay hopped onto the other end, wrapped a paw over my calf, and laid his chin next to it.

I closed my eyes and tried again to sort through the tangled threads of information I'd taken in over the past few days. What little I had known about Summer and Evan seemed to be all wrong, an elaborate fiction they had spun for local consumption. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the bulk of the falsehoods were Summer's creations—the forged Purdue diploma, her nonexistent marriage, her adopted name—but Evan had gone along with them. Ray was even more of an enigma, but since I hadn't known him other than to say hello and pet his dog, the mystery of his past didn't feel like such a betrayal.

Something landed on my belly. “Leo
mio
,” I said, stroking Leo's soft tawniness as he settled his torso against mine. A second presence hopped onto the arm of the couch next to my shoulder and purred into my ear. “Miss Pixel.” She maneuvered herself between Leo and the back of the couch, quiet for once. I closed my eyes again, calmed by the touch of animals I loved.

But my mind kept working, and the more I thought about it, the more I was sure that Evan didn't know the whole story, either. In fact, I was pretty sure he'd been played. But why? If Summer wanted to leave Reno, why not just leave? Why hook up with a stranger in a diner? And what about Ray? Evan had said it was a coincidence that Ray and Summer were both from Nevada, but that just didn't ring true. Besides, Nevada wasn't the only thing they had in common. They both knew sheep, and herding dogs. Weirder yet, neither one seemed to have any traceable history.

The phone rang in the kitchen. Only a handful of people ever use that number anymore—my mom, my brother, Giselle, Goldie, and an occasional telemarketer. I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and found it was dead. I'd forgotten to charge it. I slid Pixel between me and the back of the couch, extricated my legs from under Jay, swung myself into a sitting position, set Leo onto the couch beside Jay, and got up. Giselle had hung up by the time I reached the kitchen. I called her back.

“Oh, Janet, I just called you.”

“I know. I was trapped under a pile of animals.”

“I found something.” She sounded a bit breathless. “About Ray. At least I think it's him.” Giselle didn't want to tell me the rest on the phone and asked if she could come over on her way to class.

“I'll do you one better,” I said. “I need dog food, so why don't we meet at the Firefly?” It was one of my favorite coffeehouses, and was close to the university and my
dog-food
source. We agreed to meet in an hour, which gave me just enough time to change out of my
Hugo-besmeared
duds and drop
seventy-four
bucks on the kind people at Blackford's Farm and Garden for a
forty-pound
bag of
grain-free
premium dog food. I had to rearrange a few things, including a new planter and two medium bags of potting soil that had been waiting for a couple of days, before the bag would fit behind my dog crates.

Somewhere I had read that switching a ring from the customary hand to the other can be a useful reminder, an updated version of tying a string around a finger, so as I walked into Firefly, I switch my
silver-and
-turquoise band from right to left to remind me to get the dog food, planter, and dirt out of the van when I got home. I settled in at a quiet table toward the back of the café. I had just turned my laptop on when a loud male voice from behind me exploded over the usual coffeehouse background murmur. It was followed by another, and the echo around it said the second guy was on speaker phone. I tried to ignore the conversation, but after about three minutes I knew it was impossible. A quick look around the room showed other people scowling and shooting
eye-darts
at the guy with the phone.

“Excuse me.” I had stood and turned toward the guy. He wore a wrinkled blue suit and his maroon tie had a dark stain four inches beneath the knot.

The guy said, “Hang on a sec,” and frowned at me.

I smiled and said, “That's really distracting. Would you mind turning the speaker off and lowering your voice a little?”

“Look, lady, I'm making a
multi-million
-dollar deal here, so get a grip.”

A young woman at another table looked at me
wide-eyed
, and I decided it was time to set an example for the next generation. Besides, to quote Woodrow Call in Larry McMurtry's
Lonesome Dove,
“I can't abide rude behavior in a man.” I stepped up as close as possible to where the guy's phone lay on the table, leaned toward it, and said, “Sir, does whoever is on the other end of that call know that you're broadcasting it in a crowded coffeehouse?”

The guy grabbed the phone and covered the microphone. “Look, lady, just stick it.”

And that was the funniest thing I'd heard in quite a while. I laughed. I looked around, still laughing, and said, “Folks, does this guy's conversation bother you?” Several affirmatives, many nods. “Me too. So I asked him to please turn it down and he told me to stick it.” I looked back at the guy, whose face had gone
fire-engine
red. Around me I heard, “Take it outside, guy,” and “Freakin' annoying,” and a few things more forceful than “stick it.”

The guy grabbed his stuff and passed Giselle in the doorway as she came through. She stopped and placed an order, and ten seconds later she sat down. She was practically vibrating.

“You sure you need coffee?”

“I ordered tea. Herbal.” She plunked her purse onto a third chair. It tipped and emptied half its contents, and I marveled at how organized everything still was. If that had been my bag, coins and pens and a ratty tennis ball would have been scattered among miscellaneous bits of paper, my unsnapped billfold, and
desiccated-liver
dog treats. Giselle's stuff was all neatly arranged in
see-through
zippered bags and they dropped more or less together next to the chair's leg. She put them back in the purse, zipped it shut, and said, “Man, I'm so disorganized these days.”

“Please, Giselle. You'll give us organizationally challenged a bad name.” I turned my laptop so she would have a better view just as the barista called our names. By the time I sat back down, Giselle had
re-entered
the search terms that pulled up the information she wanted to share—Ray + Reno + sheep + police. “There,” she said, pointing at the third entry, a link to a social media post that began “Have you seen this couple?” Giselle clicked the link and we landed on the original post.

Have you seen this couple around Reno? Theyre con artists. I need 2 find them SOON & get my money back. IM me if you have info.

A grainy picture of a man and a woman appeared above the post. The resolution was so low that it was impossible to make out details, but the man looked vaguely like Ray Turnbull. The woman wore a scarf and sunglasses, and had the collar of her coat pulled up past her jaw line. A band of dark hair peeked out between her forehead and scarf.

“Can you fix that picture somehow?” Giselle asked.

“I doubt it. It was probably taken with a cell phone on low res.” Giselle's sigh echoed my own disappointment. “What about the comments? Anything interesting there?”

“Maybe.” She scrolled past the first few comments and pointed to one. “He mentions their names.”

Who knows theyre real names. He went by Ramon Torres. Claimed to have a ranch near Ely. Complete BULL! He said her name was Bella Verano.

Giselle tapped a nail against the screen. “Ramon Torres. Ray Turnbull.
Torres
means ‘towers' in Spanish, but it
sounds
like
toro.
Bull. And Ramon is Raymond.”

A little tingle started in my brain.

“And
bella verano
is ‘beautiful summer,' assuming the guy misspelled
bella
.”

These two had to be the people we knew as Ray Turnbull and Summer Winslow. “I think you found them,” I said, touching Giselle's arm. “We—you—need to tell Hutchinson. If he goes back to the police in Reno with these names, who knows?”

“Right!” Giselle was bouncing in her chair and her face was flushed.

Finding the clue
was
exciting, but if Ray and Summer were running con games together in Reno and came here separately on the run, something had obviously gone wrong. And now Ray was dead, and Summer was missing, either running again, or … The pieces of the puzzle were swirling around my brain like leaves in an April wind, but one thing seemed clear. They had conned the wrong person.