Home of the Brave (Raine Stockton Dog Mysteries Book 9) (10 page)

“I don’t think he’s going to go for it, though,” she confided as we reached the soccer field where the ring gating and agility equipment were stacked under blue tarps.  “He says there’s already an indoor and outdoor pool at the clubhouse and it’s too late to make them bone shaped.”

“Wow,” I said.  “Indoor and outdoor.”  I had never seen, nor wanted to see, the fancy club house Miles was building on the site of what once had been one of the most breathtaking valley views in the county.  I supposed it still was a breathtaking view, of course.  The only difference was that now it would not be enjoyed by hikers and hunters, but by golf-playing millionaires and their chardonnay-sipping wives who gazed out over the valley in air-conditioned comfort through panes of storm-rated glass.  The whole thing threatened to depress me, so I changed the subject.

“Guess you’re going to miss Atlanta when you guys move up here full time,” I said.

She shrugged.  “Not really.  I haven’t been there that long.  And Dad says the school up here is a lot better.”  She grinned at me.  “They have horseback riding as a regular class!”

Miles had enrolled his daughter as a day student in an exclusive private boarding school half an hour away; the public education our little village had to offer being completely out of the question.  If horseback riding was on the curriculum, I could definitely understand why.

I said, “They used to have horseback riding here when I was a kid.”

“Oh, yeah?  What was it like back then?”

She made it sound as though she pictured covered wagons rumbling along in the background.  “Not that much different.  No dogs, though.”

“What did you do?”

“The usual.  Canoeing on the lake, swimming, soccer, arts and crafts …”  I smiled a little to myself.  “Smooching with my boyfriend.”  I realized too late that might not be an appropriate thing to say to a ten-year-old, so I added quickly, “Of course, I was a lot older then.  I was a counselor, almost grown up.”

Melanie was sanguine. “Whatever happened to him?  Your boyfriend, I mean.”

I made a small wry face.  “Actually, I married him.”

She looked interested.  “Sheriff Buck?”

I nodded.  “Let’s set up the ring gating first, then we can let the dogs loose.”  Meantime, I clipped the dogs’ leashes to one of the spiral ground stakes that were provided for that purpose, and handed her a couple of the folding plastic gates, picking up an armful for myself.  “Let’s start here and work our way out.”

She said, “I guess your hair was short back then.”

At first I didn’t follow.  “What?”

“When you met Sheriff Buck.  I guess your hair was short.”

I thought back, carrying the gates across the grass.  “I guess so.”  I set up the first gate, and she snapped hers in place beside mine.  She had done this before.

“It was long when we met you,” Melanie said.  “My dad and me.”

I snapped another gate next to hers.  “What, my hair?”

“Yeah.  It was long.”

“I guess it was.”  And then I said.  “Oh.”  I looked at her with slow understanding and a small smile. “Yeah, it was long.  ”

She shrugged.  “Sometimes it takes my dad a while to get used to things. It took him a couple of months to get used to me.  So, are we doing a regulation ring or what?”

She really was the coolest kid ever.

When the field was enclosed by ring gating, I unleashed Pepper and Cisco to wander at will.  This meant that they ran in wild pointless circles for the first thirty seconds, and Melanie and I watched them, laughing.  Pepper clearly had a case of hero worship, and Cisco, being a generally good-natured dog with absolutely no self-esteem issues, accepted it as his due.  He allowed Pepper to chase him and even to catch him, but as soon as she drew abreast he turned and started chasing her.  They raced around the ring until Cisco abruptly lost interest and started sniffing the ground.  Pepper looked disappointed for a moment, then pretended not to care, bounding away in search of her own amusements.

I dragged the six-foot tunnel to the center of the ring while Melanie put together the offset weave poles and jumps.  She had a set of similar equipment in her backyard at home and knew where everything went.  While we worked, Melanie told me about her dorm mates—Alexandria with the Labradoodle, who was cute but couldn’t be trusted off leash;  Bailey, who looked just like her Bichon but wasn’t nearly as smart;  Monty—short for Montana—whose Great Pyrenees puppy was already bigger than she was.  I had noticed that pair coming in and wondered if the short blond girl was going to be able to handle the huge dog, but Melanie assured me the dog was just a great big teddy bear.  I couldn’t help smiling at her authoritative assessment of her fellow campers, and was glad she was settling in so well.  When I was her age it had taken me more than one night to feel comfortable in a new place.  But then again, Melanie at age ten was already a more experienced traveler than I would ever be.

With the two of us working, it only took moments to set up a puppy practice ring—a low tire jump, three bar jumps, weave poles, tunnel and a low dog walk.  “Can I take Pepper through?” Melanie wanted to know.  “Since we don’t get to take agility until tomorrow?”

“Sure,” I said.  Since she had given me the teacher’s advantage with the lowdown on her dorm mates, it was the least I could do.  “On leash, though, just like you were in class.”  The important thing, when training a new dog in agility, was to make sure the pup took every obstacle the first time, and to reward appropriately when she did.  That was hard to do when the puppy was running wildly off leash in the opposite direction.

She made a sour face.  “She doesn’t need a leash.”

“Maybe not, but I’m the teacher.”

“I’ll raise the bars,” she decided.  “Pepper can jump way higher than that.”

“Not on leash she can’t.  Safety first.”

Melanie gave me an eye roll and went to get Pepper’s leash, scuffing her feet a little to show her disagreement with my edict.  She’s not
always
a perfect child.

The two goldens had long since lost interest in what we were doing, and were gathered at the opposite end of the ring, pawing and sniffing at the ground.  This is never a good sign, since whatever is uncovered beneath a layer of dirt or grass is probably not going to be good for either my dog’s digestion or for my clean white shorts once I removed it from his mouth.  I called sharply, “Cisco!”  He looked up at me as I started toward him, then turned back to his explorations.

I said again, “Cisco, Pepper!  Stop that!”  And Pepper, the little imp, suddenly snatched something from the ground, did a half-spin, and took off running with her prize.

I called to Melanie, “She has something in her mouth!”

Melanie got down on her knees, held out a piece of bacon, and called “Here, Pepper!”  Pepper made an about turn and was sitting in front of Melanie munching bacon by the time I reached them.

Melanie snapped on Pepper’s leash and stood, holding out a small metal tube in her hand.  “Good thing you saw her,” she said.  “She could have swallowed this.”

I took the object from her, frowning.  “Yeah,” I said, and glanced over at Cisco, who had broadened his search but was still sniffing the ground.  “I’d better make sure there aren’t any more.”

Cisco, not to be outdone by the little upstart Pepper, pranced over to me with his butt wiggling and his teeth clenched around another metal cylinder.  Unlike Pepper, however, he dropped it into my hand on command, and
then
sat grinning at me expectantly, waiting for his treat.  I dug into my pocket for the plastic bag of freeze-dried chicken and tossed him his reward.

“What are they?” Melanie asked as I gazed at the two objects in my open palm.

“Shell casings,” I replied, glancing around thoughtfully.

“Maybe the hunter we met at the lake yesterday?” she suggested.

“Maybe,” I agreed.  Except that hunting season, even the illegal kind that was performed on posted land, had been over for six months.  The brass casings I held in my hand were barely even dirty.

We scoured around and found a dozen or so brass shells, all within a six-foot radius.  I stuffed them in my fanny pack, because I really didn’t want to take a chance on any of the puppies picking them up, and stood for a moment near the edge of the ring, scanning the surrounding terrain until I saw what I was looking for.  I snapped on Cisco’s leash, picked up one of the PVC weave poles to use as a walking stick, and told Melanie, “Wait here just a sec.”

I walked a few dozen yards into high grass, swinging the weave pole in front of me to scare away small creatures, until I came upon the broken bale of hay, slightly damp from yesterday’s rain and hastily scattered.  Cisco sniffed curiously, but didn’t find anything interesting.  I poked around with my pole, turning over clumps of hay, until I saw a smear of red.

“What’s that?” Melanie said at my elbow.

I jumped.  “What are you doing here?  There could be snakes!”

“You scared them all away,” she said, unconcerned as she peered around me to examine the pile of hay.  Pepper bounded forward to chew Cisco’s ear, and he ignored her.  “What is it?”

“A target,” I said, pointing at the smudges of red paint on the clumps of hay.  “Somebody’s been target shooting out here, that’s all.”

“I’ll bet it was that guy with the weed eater.”

“You’re probably right.”  The only thing was, I had been around guns all my life, and those casings didn’t look as though they belonged to any handgun or rifle I had ever seen. 

I glanced at my watch.  “Come on, show me what Pepper can do.  And then we’ll have to hurry if we’re going to be on time for orientation.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, “Counselor Bill said those of us who got here last night are supposed to kind of be in charge of the others, show them around and stuff.”  Melanie liked to be in charge.  “So we’d better hurry.”

I chuckled as she and Pepper trotted back to the ring, Cisco watching alertly after them.  I dug the shell casings out of my pack and tossed them as far into the weeds as I could, out of the reach of curious dogs.  I saved one, though, to show to Buck when I got back.  I wasn’t entirely sure why.

Chapter
Eleven

W
yn had convinced Buck shortly after she agreed to come back to the department that being seen together outside the office while in uniform was a really bad idea, at least until after the election was over.  That meant they didn’t have meals together while on duty, even though he often had lunch or breakfast with the other deputies during the day.  They didn’t pull their vehicles close in parking lots to catch up on business or just pass the time as he did with the other guys.  They did their communicating by phone or radio, where anyone could hear.  And most annoying for him, they never interviewed witnesses together, gathered evidence together, or examined scenes together, even when they were working the same case—which was most of the time.  Wyn was the best partner he’d ever had, back when they had both been deputies and ridden together.  She saw things he didn’t, and some of his best thinking had been done out loud, to her, riding the roads and patrolling the highways of Hanover County.  She was still the best partner he’d ever had, and he still did his best thinking out loud to her, only these days, most of the time it had to wait until they got home.

That was why he was surprised to see her come into Miss Meg’s Diner a little after seven in the morning, glance around until she saw him, and then start his way.  The diner was busy with the bustle and clatter of the breakfast crowd: the smell of coffee and eggs, the rattle of dishes, the buzz of voices.  Buck had taken his coffee over to Buddy Hall’s table, who was head of the Chamber of Commerce, and had scheduled a meeting with him later that day to talk about the parade schedule.  They were both glad to save themselves the time, and they got the last minute details on the parade schedule ironed out while Buddy finished up his pancakes and Buck waited for his toast and eggs.

“The only thing is,” Buddy was saying, “we’re going to need to close Main Street for about an hour tonight to get those big banners up over the reviewing stand.  Generally, we’d do it the night before but with it falling on a  Sunday and all we couldn’t find anybody to drive the cherry picker unless it was tonight.  Sorry about the short notice.”

Buck nodded.  “As long as it’s after closing time for the stores there shouldn’t be much of a problem. I’ve got Jeb Wilson’s people coming Sunday anyway to check out the parade route, so it’ll be better to get as much set up in advance as we can. I’ll send a couple of patrol cars over.  Call me when you know what time you can get the cherry picker because we can’t reroute traffic more than an hour.  It’s Friday night, you know. ”

“I’ll check as soon as I get back to the office.”  Then he grinned.  “It sure is something about old Jeb, isn’t it?  Whoever would’ve thought he’d amount to anything?  But folks sure are worked up about him coming to town.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Buck agreed, and that was when he saw Wyn.

She was working a week of nights—it was her turn in the rotation—and had that weary, just-coming-off-shift look common to all night shift workers.  Her dark bun was a little messy, her uniform tired, and her eyes looked puffy and sun-shocked.  Buck had worked plenty of night shifts himself and knew the feeling.