Ruff Way to Go (8 page)

More likely
he’d use it to buy booze, but I didn’t want to dampen Russell’s optimism. I
focused the beam at the wet tracks, growing fainter as they were farther away
from the puddle.

Russell
said, “Let’s try to track the dog and see if it’s Shogun.”

“Thanks. I’m
sure you’d rather we head to the restaurant, but I really do want to see if I
can locate this dog.”

He grinned
and took my hand. “Actually, it doesn’t matter to me what we’re doing, so long
as I’m with you.”

My cheeks
warmed, but not merely from embarrassment at Russell’s kind words. I’d had more
of a reaction to Russell’s simply holding my hand than I would have liked.
Certainly more than I would have admitted to him. I was still very unsure of
whether or not it made much sense for me to pursue a relationship with someone
who seemed to have so little in common with me. This vague sensation that my
hand somehow felt right in his wasn’t going to count for much a few years down
the line.

The last
time, I reminded myself, I’d made the mistake of letting my heart run roughshod
over my brain I’d been all but destroyed. My fiance ran off with my maid of
honor. Nothing of the sort was ever going to happen to me again.

We kept up a
brisk pace, worried that the wet prints would evaporate, but there seemed to be
enough puddles that the dog had run through to keep us on target. The man and
Russell’s money, on the other hand, seemed to be long gone. We managed to track
the dog across three blocks, till we reached an impasse at a loose board in a
gate on someone’s property, which the dog had squeezed through.

“Guess that’s
that,” Russell said. “We can’t go traipsing through someone’s backyard.”

“No, but...we
can knock on their door and ask if they’ve seen a terrier.”

Russell
grimaced slightly and peered over the fence at the house, which I could see
through the slats was small with white clapboard siding. “All right. But for
the sake of the
owner, we have to go around and ring the front door rather than
trespass through their backyard.”

“Well, all
right, but this is awfully conventional. I was really looking forward to
scaling the fence and banging on a bedroom window,” I said with a forced sigh.

“They’re
probably just sitting down to dinner now, and if we—”

“I’m
kidding, Russell. Of
course
I meant that we should go knock on their
front door, not the back.” Actually, that was a lie, but I was certain that the
thought of using the front door would have occurred to me before I’d even
gotten myself halfway hoisted over the fence.

I masked my
impatience when Russell made the sensible suggestion that we get the car and
drive to the front of the house on our way to the restaurant. My appetite hadn’t
returned, and I suspected that my thoughts were really much too centered around
Cassandra Randon’s murder and Shogun’s related disappearance to be much of a “date”
anyway. But I do try to be fair, and I had already promised Russell I’d go out
with him tonight

It took us
several minutes to get around to the house. I convinced Russell to let me go
alone to speak to the inhabitants. A Hispanic woman who wasn’t even as tall as
me opened the door and said, “Hello?” More compelling than the fact that I’d
found another short person in Colorado was the yipping sound of a small dog
barking from within the house.

“Hello. My
name is Allida Babcock. I’m looking for a lost dog that may have come into or
through your backyard. It was a little silky terrier, about yay high.” I spread
my hands about a foot apart to demonstrate.

She shook
her head at me.
“No
entiendo, senorita. Un minuto, por favor.”

A moment
later, a boy who looked to be about ten emerged with the woman and said in an
accent, “My mother doesn’t speak English. Can I help you?”

“Hi, there.
Yes, I’m—”

I stopped as
a dog dashed into the room. He was a terrier mix—similar to, but
definitely not, Shogun.

“I was
looking for a lost dog, and I think I made a mistake and thought I recognized
your dog. What’s your dog’s name?”

“Rojas.”

I knelt,
ostensibly to pet him, but also to gage if this was indeed the same dog I’d
mistaken for Shogun. The long fur of the two dogs was very similar, and seen
from the back, it would have been impossible to tell the dogs apart. “Did I
just see your dog running down an alley?”

“He gets out
of the yard a lot.”

“You should
fix the loose board in your fence. Rojas could get hit by a car or something.”

“I will,” he
said, too quickly for me to believe him.

I thanked
him and his mother and left. By the time I left, Russell was standing by his
car, watching me with a look on his face as if I were considerably prettier
than I really was.

“Wrong dog,”
I said simply.

He held open
the door for me. We made our way back onto Main Street.

“Thanks for
helping me find the dog and putting up with the delay.”

“Glad I
could help. I’m just sorry it didn’t make any difference.”

“I don’t
know if the missing dog is related to the murder or not, but I’d sure like to
know if those were his paw prints in... the blood.”

“You saw
bloody paw prints?” Russell asked, his voice rife with alarm.

“I guess I
didn’t tell you. I found her body.”

“God. No,
you didn’t tell me. That must have been terrifying.”

“Yes.”

Russell said
nothing, but the color was starting to rise on his cheeks, which seemed to
happen to him whenever he was nervous about something. “Maybe it’d help if you
could get away and get your mind off of what happened for a while. I was
wondering if you’d like to join me on a trip with my friends this weekend.”

“A trip?”
Uh
oh.
What would this involve? An over-nighter? I liked Russell quite a bit,
but dearly hoped that he wasn’t about to put a damper on our relationship by
trying to rush things.

“Yeah. We’re
going rock climbing.”

“Rock
climbing? “
I repeated, making no effort to disguise my distaste for the
sport. Sadly, Russell would have had a better chance trying to rush things.

“Nothing
intense, I promise. In fact, one of the guys is bringing his girlfriend and
this is going to be her first climb. Have you ever gone before?”

I shook my
head, thinking of how unlikely it was that a dog lover with a pathological fear
of heights was going to meet a rock climbing enthusiast with a pathological
fear of dogs.

“If you’re
at all interested in giving it a try, I could give you some pointers tomorrow
morning before we head out. We could meet first thing at Boulder Rock Climbing
Club. It’s right across from the Y. They have an interior wall.”

“I can’t,
Russell. I have a pretty intense fear of heights.”

He paused,
then chuckled. “That balances things out nicely. Me with my fear of big dogs
and now you with this. Maybe we can be chased up a cliff by a pack of wild dogs
someday and go loony together.”

I laughed
and Russell turned and then pulled into a parking lot. “We’re here.” Our eyes
met. Neither of us moved for a long moment.

I’m not sure
which one of us initiated the kiss; probably it was mutual. At the soft
sensation of his lips on mine, my heartbeat quickened. I felt a surge of
unexpected warmth that made me want to respond too intensely. Uncertain about
my feelings and his, I drew away.

Our gazes
locked for a moment. In the blink of an eye, his face changed to that of the
one man I’d been physically intimate with and who’d broken my heart. Though the
image left me as quickly as it came, I was shaken.

I turned my
face away and said, “I can’t do this. I’m so sorry, but my going out on a date
tonight is...really bad timing.”

Russell
sighed and ran a hand through his hair as he settled back behind the driver’s
wheel. “Of course it is. This was stupid of me. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t
apologize. I’m the one who should have known better than to try to go out on a
date tonight.”

“Let me get
you some dinner anyway.”

“No. I’m
not—”

He started
the engine. “Taco Bell drive-through okay? Even if you’re not hungry, you could
order something for your mom. In case
she
hasn’t eaten.”

I was
touched by his kindness, but only gave him a feeble nod when he looked in my
direction.

Less than an
hour later, the three of us, counting Mom, were washing down Taco Supremes with
Coors Lights, laughing our heads off at Mom’s embellished stories of intrepid
flight students. The dogs had been banished to the back deck, where they were
lined up, noses to the glass door.

Russell and
I avoided each other’s gaze, and he’d avoided his fear of being around my dogs
by positioning his seat so that his back was to them. And yet, I was beginning
to feel strangely on edge in his presence.

The next
morning I, as usual, had no clients scheduled; because most people don’t take
time off from work for appointments with a dog behaviorist, my work schedule
generally began when theirs ended. I decided to pay a visit to the Haywoods,
the grouchy couple who lived on the other side of Edith’s house. I rang the
doorbell three times before anyone responded, although I’d seen a curtain
flutter while I was walking up their steps.

Mrs. Haywood
opened the door, but left the chain in place. She peered around the edge of the
door and said in a voice gravelly from years of smoking, “What do you want,
Allida?”

“Good
morning. I came to ask you if I could check your bushes. You see, there was
this note on—”

She shut the
door. I waited a moment to see if she was simply removing the chain, but when
she didn’t open it, I rang again. This time she flung the door fully open,
looked me up and down, and, before I could say anything, called over her
shoulder, “Harvey, it’s the Babcock girl! She says she wants to take a look at
our bushes!”

“What’s she
want to do that for?” Harvey’s deep but phlegmy voice rumbled from some
interior room.

Betsy threw
up her hands and shuffled away from the door. “Beats me. Should I tell her she
can go ahead?”

A minute
later, I was still standing on the porch, listening to them bicker about which
of them should deal with “that Babcock girl.” It was Harvey who finally drew
the short straw. He was wearing slippers, dark pants, and a sleeveless
undershirt.

I forced a
smile, which was greeted with, “Did you go ‘n’ lose a baseball in our yard
again?”

“Uh, no, Mr.
Haywood. I haven’t played baseball in this neighborhood for almost twenty years
now. I wanted to check your property to see if a note had blown over here in
yesterday’s storm.”

“Didn’t you
get the chance to read it?”

“No, I...I
mean, yes, I read it, but I need to find it to prove my story. This is about
Cassandra Randon’s murder yesterday.”

“Oh yeah.
Yeah. Terrible thing.” He crossed his thin arms, the flesh of his former biceps
sagging.

“See,
someone left me a note that may have been blown onto your property yesterday.” In
spite of myself, I could hear my voice rising and my enunciation becoming more
careful, as if Mr. Haywood were hard of hearing, though he’d given me no
indication of that. “Did you find any pieces of paper on your property last
night or earlier this morning?”

“No. We don’t
take care of the outsides of the place. Susan does that.”

“Susan?”

“Yeah. Susan.
My eldest daughter. Your babysitter. She comes over here three, four times a
week.”

“Was she
here yesterday afternoon? Or anytime after the storm?”

“Beats me.
Betsy!” he called without bothering to turn. “Was Susan here yesterday? The
Babcock girl wants to know when she was here last!”

“I don’t
know, Harvey! Tell her to ask
Susan!”

Betsy’s
words were accentuated by the clanging of pots. By the sound of things, she was
dropping pots on top of one another from a considerable height.

“You’ll have
to ask Susan,” Harvey said to me. “Lives over in Lyons. Last name is Nelson
now.”

“Could you
give me her phone number? Or her address?”

“Yeah, yeah,
well, all right. I’ll do that.” He started to shut the door.

“So, is it
okay with you if I look around outside for the note?”

He gave me a
dismissive wave. “Yeah, yeah. Go ahead. You should be more careful with your
things, Allida. I know it’s hard on your mama, raisin’ you two all by herself
like she is. You should watch yourself. Make it easier on her.” He shut the
door.

At least he
didn’t call me a “young’n,”
I thought as I headed down the steps. It was
strange to think that the Haywoods were probably only ten years older than my
mother, if that. They seemed to have come from a different world. One in which
couples shut out the outside world and yelled at it when it intruded.