Silent Night: A Raine Stockton Dog Mystery (21 page)

“There aren’t very many dogs who won’t chase a running child,” I explained to Melanie, reaching down to extract what appeared to be a dirt-smeared golf ball from Cisco’s mouth.  “So if you meet a strange dog and you don’t want to be chased, what do you do?”

“Don’t run,” Melanie pronounced matter-of-factly.  “What’s that?”

I opened my hand and we both looked at the object Cisco had retrieved, which was not a golf ball at all, but the decapitated head of a cherubic-looking ceramic doll.  Puzzled, I glanced back toward the trailer, which did not look like the kind of place a family with children might ever have lived, and then I stared more closely, startled.  I could have sworn the door opened a crack, then closed as I watched.
 

 
The sun chose that moment to drop behind a mountain peak, and I felt a chill that was from more than the cold.  I dropped Cisco’s find into my coat pocket and touched Melanie’s shoulder.  “Come on,” I said with sudden urgency.  “Let’s go.”

________

FOURTEEN

T
he sun was just beginning its spectacular painted-clouds show over the purple-shadowed mountains when we arrived home.  Melanie and I wrestled the tree, still carefully wrapped in its protective netting, onto the front porch so that we wouldn’t have to do it in the dark, then hurried inside.  A chorus of puppy yipping greeted us, and both Melanie and Cisco rushed to the kitchen to attend to it.  The house, however, looked suspiciously as we had left it, and Mischief and Magic were resting in their crates with heads on paws, looking far too innocent for my comfort.  My eyes darted this way and that, looking for signs of mayhem, as I went to let them out.  The first thing I noticed was that the cable tie had been chewed through on Mischief’s crate, and that both bolt locks were disengaged.  The doors to both crates, however, had been pulled closed.

I stood before Mischief’s crate with my arms folded, completely unimpressed. “Really?” I said, and she pretended to ignore me.

I released them both and they took off like twin shots.  There was the usual pre-dinnertime chaos as I turned the bigger dogs out into the play yard and the puppies into a smaller, outdoor pen close to the house.  Melanie of course wanted to go with them, and I told her, “Okay, but let’s call your dad first.  I told him we’d check in before dinner.”

I reached in my coat pocket for my phone but came up only with a ceramic doll head.  I tried the other pocket, and my jeans pockets.  I groaned out loud.  “I must have dropped my phone at the Christmas tree farm.”

“Oh, well, guess we’ll have to call him later,” Melanie said happily, and let herself into the pen with the puppies.

Well, at least I’d found a way to take her mind off her dad.

The phone call was delayed while I fed the dogs, showed Melanie how to prepare the puppies’ food, cleaned up the puddles inside the ex-pen and sanitized the rubber liner I used to protect my wood floors, then took the puppies out once more for their after-dinner bathroom break.

“It sure is a lot of work taking care of puppies,” Melanie observed as we carried the puppies back inside.

“You got that right.”

“I guess that’s why my mom won’t let me have one.”

If there is one thing I’ve learned it is never, ever, try to influence a parent’s policy on pet-keeping.  The only way a dog, or a family, will ever be happy living together is if everyone involved is one hundred percent in favor of the arrangement.  Otherwise…well, that’s why we have animal shelters.

It was a shame, though.  Melanie was one of those kids who really could have benefitted from having a dog in her life.

I said noncommittally, “Moms are usually right about these things. But,” I added, watching the way she nuzzled the female puppy against her face before setting it down in the ex-pen, “you can always come visit my dogs.  I have plenty.”

That seemed to surprise her, and she gave me a smile that seemed almost as shy as it was pleased.  “Yeah,” she said.  “Okay.  Maybe I will.”

I rummaged around in the freezer until I found one of Aunt Mart’s emergency casseroles—the emergency being the kind that occurred almost daily around here, when I had nothing nutritious in the house to eat—and popped it in the microwave.  While it heated I dialed the number of the hospital, asked for Miles’s room, and handed the receiver to Melanie.

She told him about training the puppies and searching for the Christmas tree, and how Cisco had run away but she had gotten him back, and about Mischief breaking out of her crate and dragging a whole box of Christmas decorations inside it.  She exclaimed suddenly, “Oh! We forgot to watch the video! Gotta go, Dad, love you, bye!”  She thrust the phone at me and raced out of the room with all three dogs on her heels.

Miles said, “Sounds like you two had a big day.”

“I think she’s having a good time,” I replied casually, but I was grinning. The difference between the girl I first had met less than a week ago and the girl who had just raced out of the room was monumental.  “I guess it took her awhile to warm up to me. How are you feeling?”

“To tell the truth, I haven’t had a hangover this bad since the spring break in Mexico I’ll never remember.”

“I thought you didn’t drink.”

“Now,” he corrected.  “I don’t drink now.  Mexico is why. But the upside is I’m all caught up on
The
Real Housewives of New Jersey
.  Ask me anything.”

I laughed.  “Listen,” I said.  “I lost my cell phone, so if you need me call me on this line.  I know how you freak out when you can’t reach me.”

“Very funny.”  He hesitated.  When he spoke again his tone was very serious. “Listen, I want to explain why I was so short with you the other day.  I’d just spent the morning on the phone with Melanie’s mother, and my lawyer.  It turns out she’s decided to stay in Brazil with her new husband.  Our custody agreement specifies that if either of us takes up residence outside the U.S., full custody automatically reverts to the other parent.  So that’s what is happening.  As of now, Melanie will be living with me.  Permanently.”

The silence between us practically echoed.  Not only did I not know what to say, I didn’t even know what he wanted me to say.
 
In a moment he filled the void with, “Yeah, I know.  It hit me like that too.  I don’t know how to be a full-time dad.  I’m not even very good at being a part-time one.”

I managed, “Miles, you’re being a little hard on yourself.  You haven’t given it a chance yet.”

“Well, I guess it doesn’t matter, does it?  I have to figure it out.  It’s just that there’s a hell of a lot to figure out, and I wasn’t prepared for this.  So I over-reacted the other day when you were late, and I’m sorry.”

I smiled into the phone, just a little.  “You’re forgiven.”

“Thanks.”  Some of the tension in his voice eased.

“It’s the least I can do, seeing as how you’re in the hospital and all.”

“The thing is—I haven’t told Mel yet.  Somehow I don’t think she’s going to be too happy about it.”

“You don’t know that.”  My protest sounded weak, even to my own ears.  “Kids are resilient.  You might be surprised.”

“I thought the ski trip would give us a chance to get to know each other, and then I could sit down and talk to her… well, it didn’t exactly turn out that way. Thanks for stepping in, Raine.  I didn’t expect it.”

“Hey,” I reminded him, “that’s what friends do. Besides, I’m having fun.”  It was the truth, and no one could have been more surprised than I.  “She’s a good kid. I like her.”

He said, “I don’t suppose you’ve given any more thought to the conversation we had the other morning.”

“You mean the one where you gave me an ultimatum.”

“I mean the one where I made a suggestion.”

I said casually, because I did not want him to know how very much I had thought about that conversation in the past few days, “I’ve come close to eliminating a couple of options.”

“Care to give me a hint which ones?”

“You’re welcome to start guessing.”

“You know that headache I mentioned?”

“Right.”
 
The microwave pinged and I said, “So, are they springing you tomorrow?  What time do you want us to be there?”

We had one of those back-and-forths about how he didn’t need me to pick him up and he could make arrangements for himself, and I finally told him that I would call after I had finished with the puppy interviews in the morning and let him know what time I’d be there.  Men, honestly.  Sometimes they can be such babies.

Before I finished my conversation with her father, Melanie was excitedly calling to me to hurry up, and as I returned the receiver to its cradle and turned to get the casserole out of the microwave, she plopped her iPad in the middle of the table.  “Wait, you’ve got to see this!  It worked, it really did – look, I’ve got it all cued up.”

I abandoned the casserole and sat beside her, peering at the fuzzy still photo of Mischief frozen in video with one paw out of her cage.  The real Mischief and Magic crawled underneath the table, almost as though they knew what was about to happen. Cisco, for once completely innocent, sat beside me alertly, ready to pass judgment with the two of us.

Melanie pushed play and the screen sprang to action.  Mischief edged out of her crate and went immediately to her sister’s crate, tugging at the lock.  I watched in a mixture of amazement and consternation as, after less than ten seconds' work, the second Aussie nosed open her door and wedged herself out, wriggling happily.  I stared.

“Wait a minute,” I said.  “Replay that.”

Melanie did, and I could hardly believe my eyes.  “That’s not Mischief,” I said. “It’s Magic!”

Melanie grinned.  “I know, right?  You never double-lock Magic’s cage, so it’s easy for her to get out and then open the other door.”

“Holy cow.”  I sank back in my chair, amazed.  “It was Magic all along.”

“Watch this.” 

She pushed PLAY again and we watched as the two dogs scampered off, moving in and out of the frame, disappearing for long periods of time.  Melanie fast-forwarded until suddenly Magic appeared again, carrying something in her mouth.  “What is that?”  I leaned forward for a better look at the oversized, ungainly object that she half carried, half dragged across the room.

“Looks like a box,” Melanie said.

I leaned back again.  “That’s exactly what it is,” I said with a small shake of my head.  “It’s a shoe box—the box the shoes Miss Esther gave me were in.  Mischief—or Magic—took the shoes out days ago.”

We watched as Magic placed the shoe box in Mischief’s crate, then scratched around on the cushion until it was mostly covered.  Mischief then got inside the crate, turned around a few times and plopped down.  When she did, the door, which was open only enough to admit an Aussie-sized body, swung closed of its own momentum.

Melanie ran to the living room while I watched the recorded Magic casually saunter into her crate and settle down for a nap.  I leaned down and found the real Magic resting her head on her paws beneath the table, and I glared at her.
 
“You must think you’re pretty clever, huh?”

She blinked at me and closed her eyes.

“Here’s the box,” Melanie said, returning.  “It’s kind of squished.”  She tried to straighten out the flattened corners. “Hey, there’s some stuff in here.”  She pulled out a few scraps of yellowed tissue paper and handed me a manila envelope.

I undid the clasp and shook out the contents.  There were a couple of letters addressed to Esther at a Los Angeles address  and a zippered plastic bag containing a dozen or so souvenir postcards from the fifties.  “Hey, look at this,” I said, pulling out one.  “It’s a studio shot of Lassie.”  I gave a shrug and a half grin.  “Maybe Magic is a fan.”  I repacked the items, reminding myself to call the nursing home tomorrow to see if they had a forwarding address for Miss Esther.  I was sure she would be glad to have her letters back, even if the postcards were only souvenirs.

We ate a quick dinner while the puppies wrestled and tumbled in their ex-pen, and the older dogs settled underneath the table and pretended not to watch our every bite.  I turned on the outdoor lights and let Melanie take the puppies out by herself, but I watched her from the kitchen window while I cleaned up the dishes.  It took some doing, but I managed to convince Melanie to let the puppies have a well-deserved nap while we set up the tree.

I got a fire going in the living room fireplace, dragged the tree inside, and carried down more boxes from the attic.  The dogs, sensing the excitement of something new in the air, scurried up and down the stairs with me, trying to peer into the boxes.  With Melanie’s help, I wrestled the tree into the stand, got it semi-straight, and cut the net.  The dogs scooted back as the branches sprang out of their confinement and filled the room with the piney smell of Christmas, and Melanie clapped her hands and laughed out loud.
 
We spent the next hour unpacking boxes and unwinding lights, and both Mischief and Magic sat back and watched with pleased expressions on their faces.

I hung four red velvet stockings embroidered with the names Mischief, Magic, Cisco and Majesty over the fireplace.  I filled a bowl with red and green glass balls and tacked a garland of dog bones and fake holly over the doorway.  I sat on the floor and carefully unwrapped my mother’s imported Italian crèche, arranging the figurines on a snowy bed of cotton batting beneath the Christmas tree.