Dog Days (18 page)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I
spent the next five hours in the emergency room hooked up to an IV drip. The first couple of hours were mostly a blur, punctuated by vivid dreams that featured, of all things, Cornelius S. Lancaster the Third. It was only after my head cleared and I regained enough strength to suck on ice chips that I began to realize those had not been dreams after all.

Corny’s white, terrified face and shock of orange hair had been the first thing I saw when I regained consciousness on the stretcher before they put me in the ambulance, followed by Cisco’s grinning face and two front paws on the sheet beside me. I saw him again as they wheeled me into the emergency room; he was trotting along beside me with Cisco’s leash in his hand, shouting, “Out of the way, out of the way! This is a trained rescue dog!” Every time I opened my eyes over the next few hours, Corny was there, still wearing the dog-pin covered cap with tufts of frizzy hair sticking out from all sides, peering anxiously down at me, Cisco right beside him.

Now Cisco stretched out on the cool linoleum floor of my curtained cubicle while Corny brought me another cup of ice chips. Cisco was a familiar figure around the hospital, since he often did therapy visits here, but he had never been allowed in the emergency room before, and I couldn’t imagine how Corny had gotten him in.

“Well,” he admitted modestly, fluffing the pillow behind my head, “the police woman helped with that.”

“Jolene?” I said, surprised.

He nodded vigorously. “Everyone was out looking for you. She even had her dog searching the woods, but of course you weren’t there.”

“It was Mr. Lancaster here who figured out how to find you.” The male voice spoke from the entrance to the cubicle, and I looked around to see Marshall Decker hesitating there. “Is it all right if I come in?”

“Of course.” I gestured him in with my free hand and tried to make sure I was decently covered in the flimsy hospital gown. “I’m sorry I dragged you into this,” I added apologetically. “You were there, weren’t you, when Cisco found me?” I thought I remembered seeing him but I really couldn’t trust my memories from that time; everything was all jumbled up.

He nodded as he came over to me. “It took us a while to even realize you were missing,” he admitted. “At first it was all about bringing down Sellers.”

“You got him?” I said excitedly, pushing up onto my elbows. But the exclamation triggered a spasm of coughing, which made me dizzy, which resulted in a lot of fussing around on Corny’s part and concerned looks from Marshall. Even Cisco got up from his nap to check on me.

“I’m okay,” I gasped in a moment, waving my hand in front of my face as though to brush away the weakness. “I want to hear what happened.”

Corny gave me a look of stern reprimand. “The doctor said you were to rest, and that we could only stay as long as you didn’t get excited.”

I said, “I won’t. I promise.”

Corny looked fierce enough to forcibly eject Marshall from the room if he caused any more trouble, and I hid a smile by lifting the cup of ice and tapping a few chips into my mouth. Marshall assured him, “I’ll only stay a minute.”

Corny relented and resumed his seat beside my bed. Cisco flopped down beside him with a sigh. I waited impatiently.

“Actually,” Marshall said, “it was the dogs who’re responsible for bringing down Sellers, although I probably could have been of more help if I had known what was really going on.” Now it was his turn to look sternly at me.

“I guess I should have told you he had been there,” I admitted uncomfortably, “and that the police were looking for him. I was just in such a hurry to get out of there, and I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

“I knew the police were looking for him,” Marshall said. “I’m still a policeman myself, remember? But I didn’t know he was at the fairgrounds. When I’m elected sheriff,” he told me, “there will be much more open communication between the police and the public.”

I tried not to sigh out loud with impatience, but I must have, because he smiled a little and went on, “I felt so bad about letting your dog get away. I looked all over the fairgrounds for him. Finally somebody said they thought they had seen a dog running loose in the field behind the carousel so I headed that way and I spotted both of the dogs out in that field near the woods. I knew something was wrong because the last time I had seen the English Cream—what’s her name?”

“Cameo,” both Corny and I supplied.

“Right, Cameo. The last time I’d seen her she was with you, and I knew you wouldn’t just leave a dog behind of your own free will. Then I saw Sellers, and I started after him. The stupid son of a—” His lips tightened and he finished grimly, “He took a shot at me. All right, I guess I was the one who was stupid, going after him like that without knowing whether or not he was armed. Anyway, he took off for the woods and I called the sheriff. They had what looked like a whole battalion there inside of forty-five seconds.” His lips tightened briefly with a humorless smile. “That pretty little golden led the deputies right to him, with Cisco by her side.”

I nodded. “She was crazy about him. She still thought of him as her dad.” And my brows drew together as I said, “It’s hard to think of him as a killer, when he was loved so much by a golden retriever.”

“Dogs don’t discriminate,” Marshall said somberly, reminding me only of what I already knew. He added, “There might’ve been gunfire if it hadn’t been for her. In fact, I’m pretty sure he would have tried to take out a few deputies before they took him, but he wouldn’t risk hitting his dog.”

“Maybe the judge will take that into consideration,” I said, because, despite what he’d done, I couldn’t believe anyone who loved a dog that much was entirely beyond redemption.

Marshall said harshly, “Don’t start feeling too kindly disposed toward him. He was willing to let you die while he negotiated for a deal.”

I shivered a little, and Corny reached over quickly to pull the sheet up around my shoulders.

“Of course they started a search right away,” Marshall went on. “But they found your bag and your phone in the woods, so that’s where the search was concentrated.”

“He must’ve thrown them there,” I said. “To hide the evidence. But you found my car keys, right?”

He nodded. “The K-9 unit did. We thought you must’ve dropped them. We searched that area too but didn’t find anything to indicate what might’ve happened to you, and the K-9 couldn’t pick up your trail. In a way that was a good thing. She’s trained to scent blood and munitions. If she wasn’t picking up either, we figured you were probably alive.”

But all the while I was only a few hundred yards away, slowly smothering to death in a hundred-ten-degree metal box.

Marshall went on, “Of course Buck pulled out all the stops, called in two shifts to help with the search, and I think if it had gone on much longer his next move toward Sellers would not have been of the nonviolent type, if you know what I mean. I have a feeling our sheriff has a tendency to take certain things personally. Not,” he couldn’t resist pointing out, “a particularly good characteristic for an elected official.

“I decided to take the dogs back to your place so I could join the search,” he went on, “and that’s when Mr. Lancaster here demanded to know why Cisco wasn’t searching. To tell the truth, I’d asked the sheriff the same thing, and he said Cisco wouldn’t work without his handler, who was you. Deputy Smith concurred.”

Corny, who had been practically bouncing on the edge of his seat throughout the telling, could restrain himself no longer. “They don’t know how Cisco works,” he confided to me earnestly. “If it had been a regular search, maybe they would be right. But Cisco
loves
you. He wasn’t searching for a victim, he was searching for his
partner
. Of
course
he could find you!”

Marshall smiled. “He insisted on bringing Cisco back here and handling him himself. And sure enough, less than half an hour later Cisco led us to the truck.”

Corny sat back in his chair, beaming. “Just like Lassie,” he said.

I dropped my hand over the side of the bed, where Cisco’s silky golden head rose to meet it. I stroked the plane of his skull, and closed my fingers gently around his ear. “Thank you,” I told him, and he gazed up at me with his goofy golden retriever grin as if to say,
No problem
. I couldn’t help grinning back.

“And thank you,” I said to the two men. “Both of you.”

Marshall inclined his head graciously. “Just a small sample of the kind of service you can expect when—”

“You’re elected sheriff,” I finished for him. “I know. And I’m still not working on your campaign.”

He grinned. “Too bad. I’d already planned to order new posters with a picture of me and Cisco on them.”

“People vote for animal lovers,” I agreed.

He said, sobering a little, “I’m glad everything turned out okay. I’ll let you get some rest.” But just before he left he looked back. “It’s a shame about the golden retriever. What do you think is going to happen to her?”

I looked at Corny. He tilted his head slightly and looked speculatively back at me. “I’m not sure,” I replied thoughtfully. “I’ll let you know.”

The nurse came in, glanced disapprovingly at Cisco, checked my vitals, and hung another bag of fluids. Corny stayed out of the way, bustling about with the ice bucket and water pitcher on the bedside tray, until she was gone. Then he looked at me, small tight lines of distress appearing between his brows. “Miss Stockton, I don’t want to upset you,” he began uncertainly. “This probably isn’t the right time, but I need to tell you some things.”

I said, “Corny, I thought you were involved in all this. You shouldn’t have lied to me.”

He looked both relieved and dismayed as he came back to the chair and sat down, his hands clasped between his knees. “I didn’t want to lie,” he told me earnestly. “I tried so hard not to. I didn’t want you to think badly of me. I just …” He sighed. “I wanted the job so badly.” He looked at me hesitantly. “How did you find out?”

I said, “In the first place, I talked to Professor Rudolph.”

He dropped his gaze, ashamed. “I hoped if I did a good enough job you wouldn’t check my references. Not all of them anyway.”

“In the second place,” I went on, “I knew you’d been in my house when you said you hadn’t been. I found one of the dog pins from your hat.”

His hand fluttered uncertainly to his hat and the distress in his eyes only deepened. “It was the first night I got there,” he admitted. “By the time I finished work it was too late to find a place to stay so I sneaked back after you closed up the kennel. I thought if I stayed in the back room just that one night you’d never know and no harm would be done … but you almost caught me when that guy tried to break in and you came outside. I didn’t know what to do so I ran in the house and hid there until you got back, then sneaked out the back door.” Again he sighed. “I must’ve left the door open, and that’s how Cameo got out. I felt so bad about that.”

Technically, of course, he hadn’t lied about that one; I’d specifically asked him if he’d been in my house on Friday, and he hadn’t been. As for Cameo … well, I was most likely the one who’d left the door open, but I decided to let him take the rap for that, just to teach him a lesson. To emphasize my point, I said, “Corny, I almost implicated you in a murder investigation. This is serious business.”

His eyes were big behind the glasses. “Yes, ma’am, I know. I’ll tell the police everything I know about the attempted break-in, and about seeing Cameo and her mom walking that night at the campground. I was going to do that anyway. I would never withhold evidence,” he assured me fervently. “Never.”

I nodded. “That’s good. I want you to know I picked up your stuff this morning at the campground. It should still be in the back of my car.” His face lit up with relief, and then fell dramatically when I added soberly, “But Corny, I can’t have an assistant who lies to me.”

The despair that flooded his eyes, after the relief of only a moment ago, was heartbreaking. But then he squared his shoulders and started to stand. “Yes, ma’am. I understand.”

“Which is why,” I went on firmly, “I’m promoting you to head groomer and general manager. It’s a full-time position with a lot more responsibility, and I need someone who can live on site. I trust that won’t be a problem?”

He looked at me as though I’d just offered him the keys to the Taj Mahal. “N-no, ma’am,” he stammered. “Not a problem at all.”

“I was thinking the back room of the kennel,” I continued. “You can use the kitchen and the full bath next to it, and you’ll be in charge of opening and closing every day. Long hours, and the pay isn’t that great, but at least you’ll have a short commute.”

“It sounds,” he said, still stammering, still looking at me in wonder and disbelief, “it sounds like just what I’ve been looking for.”

I smiled. “Me, too.”

He rushed forward and embraced me awkwardly in the hospital bed, careful of the IV tube and the ice cup, exclaiming, “Oh, Miss Stockton! Thank you! Thank you so much! You won’t regret it, I promise you that! I won’t let you down! I’ll be the best employee you ever had! I’ll treat your dogs like my own! I’ll …”