Silent Night: A Raine Stockton Dog Mystery (25 page)

“You think I don’t know what’s going on?”  The man with rage in his face lunged down the steps of the trailer.  It was the man from the trailer park who had asked if Cisco was a drug dog.  The man who had been manning the netting stand when we were here the last time.  The man they called Dusty, who carried a knife strapped to his belt.  “I cut you a deal, trying to be a nice guy, give you a break, the next thing I know you got drug dogs sniffing around here.  You narced on me, didn’t you kid?  Didn’t you?”

“Back off, Dusty, I’ll run you over, I swear I will!”

Ashleigh was half-in and half-out of the truck, clutching the screaming baby tightly to her chest, her face terrified.  The truck engine screeched and roared to life.
 
With a single lunge, Dusty grabbed Ashleigh, his arm beneath her throat and pulled her away from the truck.  He had a knife in his hand.

Everything happened in a matter of seconds. The first thing that flashed into my mind was,
That could have been me or Melanie, if I had run the other way when Nick came out
.  I began to wonder if there really was such a thing as guardian angels.  Cisco started barking excitedly and lunging at the leash.  I pulled him back, holding on to Melanie, trying to stay clear of the truck, which had started to roll backwards.  Dusty shouted, “I’ll off her, I swear I will, and your brat, too! Just like I did her old man when he crossed me!  You don’t want to mess with me, kid, I got nothing to lose!”

  Ashleigh screamed, “
Nick
!”  The baby wailed.  Nick looked out of the window of the truck, his face stark-white and his eyes wild with fear.

Cisco’s barks became high and frantic.  Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of movement from somewhere behind the trailer, and I realized with a shock of dismay and horror what Cisco was barking at. This was the moment.  This was the disaster that had been waiting to happen.  This was the consequence of my lazy training habits and Cisco's lack of impulse control.  He saw Buck behind the trailer, and nothing—not all my strength, not all my prayers, not all the angels in Heaven—could stop him from leaping to the man he loved.
 

I cried, “Melanie, run!”  I jerked mightily on the leash with both hands and tripped over the uneven ground.  The leash flew from my hands and Cisco flew from my grasp, racing directly into the path of the oncoming truck.  I screamed, “
Cisco
!” 

Melanie cried, “Hey!” and scrambled after Cisco. I lurched for her and grabbed only air.  Brakes squealed; dirt and gravel flew.  I screamed again.  Dusty looked from me to the oncoming dog to Nick, but what he did not see was Buck, stepping quietly out from behind the trailer with his gun drawn. 

Melanie yelled again, “Hey, Cisco!” and Cisco turned his head in response to her voice. When he did, she turned and ran back toward me.  Cisco chased her, just as he might be expected to do, and both of them bounded into my arms.
 
At some point, I was actually able to draw a breath, my heart started beating again, and I heard Buck say, “Drop the knife, Harper.”

Nick, with panic in his eyes, slammed the truck into gear and it shot forward.  He fought the wheel for control as the truck bounced across the rutted ground toward the dirt road that led down the mountain. But he only made it about twenty yards before a patrol car, with a single blast on its siren, pulled out from the shelter of the tree rows and blocked his way. I could see the cloud of dust that another police car, fast approaching, kicked up in the distance.  By the time I looked back at Buck, Dusty was in handcuffs and Buck was saying, “Dusty Harper, you are under arrest for the murder of Earl Lewis, and for manufacturing and trafficking in controlled substances.  You have the right to remain silent…”

“Holy cow,” Melanie said, big eyed.  “It’s a real drug bust!”

My knees started to turn to jelly.  I sank slowly to the ground, one arm around Melanie, the other around Cisco.  “Your dad,” I managed, my whole body shaking, “is going to kill me.”

***

Within minutes, the mountaintop was swarming with police cars.  Nick was in one, Dusty was in another, and Ashleigh was sobbing in a third.  Deputies moved in and out of the trailer, removing equipment and product.  Peggy Miller arrived in an SUV with Ruth and Jack Holloway.  The car had barely stopped moving before Ruth tumbled out, dressed only in jeans and a sweater with house slippers on her bare feet.  Her expression was frantic and she looked neither right nor left but ran straight for the sound of the crying baby.  Almost as soon as the baby was transferred to her arms, the wails diminished into weary, gurgling whimpers.

Melanie took it all in with confident, eager absorption.  “It’s a meth lab,” she informed me.  “We should have figured.  Meth labs account for up to twenty percent of the gross income in rural populations.  Lucky it didn’t blow up,” she added matter-of-factly.  “We’d all be ka-powy.”

Once again, she left me without anything at all to say.

Buck came over to me, greeting us with a pleasant nod and a tip of his hat.  “Afternoon, ladies,” he said, glancing around. “Shopping for a Christmas tree?”

“What are you doing here?”  I demanded hoarsely. “You couldn't have gotten here this fast.  I only called five minutes ago.”  My throat was still dry, and every time I thought about Cisco and Melanie dashing into the path of that truck my hands started to shake again.  To hide it, I kept them tightly wound around Cisco’s leash, which did not discourage him from making anxious, happy sounds in his throat and trying to leap up on Buck.

“I’m a cop, “he reminded me, rubbing Cisco’s ears.  “Solving crimes is kind of what I do.” 

Then he turned his smile on Melanie.  “So, princess.  We’ve got to see what we can do about getting you some kind of commendation.  You not only saved Cisco’s life, but Ashleigh’s too.  If you hadn’t distracted the bad guy while I snuck up on him, there’s no telling what he might have done.  How did you know to do that, anyway?”

Melanie’s eyes were glowing and her cheeks were bright pink with pride, but she admitted, “Raine taught me.  I didn’t mean to save anybody.  I just didn’t want Cisco to run away.  The last time we had to chase him, it was really hard.”

I was starting to like that kid.  A lot.

Buck’s eyes crinkled with a grin.  “Well, it was quick thinking, anyway.  You were right about something else, too—using those baby Jesus figurines to transport drugs.  The ones we found at Nick’s house just hadn’t been used yet.”

“Wow,” Melanie said, impressed with herself. 

Buck added to me in a slightly lower tone, “Or Nick might have gotten the idea from her—we’re not too clear on that one yet.  The photo you sent me this morning,” he went on.  “It was Ashleigh in the background, all right—but she was standing by a Walt’s Christmas Tree Farm truck.  They’re the ones who delivered the town tree that afternoon, and it turns out Dusty was driving.  We had already figured him for Lewis’s partner in the burglary ring, and it just seemed like too much of a coincidence – he’s the last one to see Ashleigh’s father alive, then he’s right there with her, practically in the same picture.  So we came up here to ask a few more questions.
 
Turns out it was just a coincidence, but when I saw your car…well, our timing was pretty good, huh?”

I swallowed hard.  “So—it was just an accident you were here?  And if you hadn’t been…”  I couldn’t think about what might have happened, or almost certainly would have happened, if he hadn’t been.  I started to get shaky again.  “We need to go,” I said.  “Can we go now?”

Buck held up a detaining finger and turned to Melanie.  “Princess Melanie,” he said soberly, “would you be good enough to look after this fine steed here while I have a word with Miss Raine?”

She giggled and took Cisco’s leash.  “You’re funny.”

“Thank you,” he replied.  “I try.”

Buck touched my arm and we walked a few steps away.  I kept Melanie and Cisco in my peripheral vision.  “Really, Buck,” I said.  “I’m late.  We haven’t even had lunch.”

He said, “It looks like Earl was killed when he found out about the meth lab and tried to horn in on Dusty’s profits.  There are blood stains on the floor inside the trailer that I’m pretty sure we’ll find out belonged to Lewis.  And Nick, the stupid kid, was just trying to do the right thing and take care of his girl. His friend, Dave, put him on to the drug operation, and Dusty promised him a thousand dollars to drive those figurines filled with crystal meth to Texas.”

I shook my head in disbelief, thinking about Nick dumping a box of puppies by my mailbox because he knew if he didn’t they would be drowned.  Trying to do the right thing.  “That’s crazy,” I said, “and sad, and infuriating.”

Buck nodded.  “You’re talking about a drunk, two teenagers, and a guy who used more of his product than he sold.  I guess the only surprise here is that no more than one person got killed.”

I was trying not to think about that.  “What about Ashleigh?”

“She’ll be charged with child endangerment.  What happens after that is up to the court.”

I looked toward the police car where Ashleigh was sitting and crying, and I was overwhelmed with sadness.  “She’s only a few years older than Melanie.”

“You know how it is, Raine.  All these kids want is to be loved, and they go looking for it in the wrong place.  At least the baby’s okay.”

I sighed.  “At least.”
 
I turned to go back to Melanie.  “We need to head back.”

He touched my arm, detaining me.
 
He said, “I owe you an apology.”

I looked at him, and his expression was tight and uncomfortable, the way it always was when he knew he was wrong and didn’t like to admit it.  My attention quickened.

“About the Christmas party,” he said quietly.  He avoided my eyes.  “I should have told you Wyn was coming.  I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Given my choice of every topic known to man, perhaps the only conversation I would have liked to have had less was the one in which I explained to Melanie’s father that I had just taken his daughter to a meth lab and exposed her to a killer.  I started to walk away. 

He said, “Do you know what happens to a man when he doesn’t have a wife around to tell him when he’s acting like a jackass?”

Reluctantly, I turned to look at him.  “He acts like a jackass?”

“Right.”

We looked at each other for another long moment.  I said, “So who told you that you had acted like a jackass this time?”

He didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to.  Well, what had expected? 

Like I said, I’ve always liked Wyn.

After a moment I said, “So.  Are you having Christmas dinner at her house?”

He nodded, slowly.  “Yeah.”
 
And he held my gaze.  There was no apology there.

In another moment I managed a smile.  “Well.  I guess I won’t see you before then, so Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas, Raine.”

I had walked a few steps away before he said, “Hey.”

I looked back.

“You’ll always be my family,” he said.

I walked back to Melanie, and took Cisco’s leash.  My eyes were stinging, but I smiled as I put my arm around her shoulders.  “Come on,” I said, and gave her a little squeeze. “Let’s get you home.  We’ve got some explaining to do.”

____________

SEVENTEEN

S
ometimes I think there really are such  things as Christmas miracles. Not only was Miles not mad at me, he actually thanked me for keeping Melanie safe.  And when she told him the story—with the inimitable drama to which she was prone—he made her feel every bit the hero that she insisted she was.  I thought he had real potential as a father.

“He said Melanie seemed onboard with the idea of moving in with him,” I told Sonny a couple of days later. “I think she was afraid all along she would have to move to Brazil.  Moving to Atlanta must seem like a pretty good trade.”

“Still,” Sonny said, “losing a mother can’t be easy.”

I thought about Ashleigh and the infant who, it now appeared, had a chance at a wonderful life because she had given her up.  “It depends on the mother, I guess.”
 

Sonny had stopped by to leave a spare key to her house, and I had promised to catch her up on all the news before she left for the winter.  We shared one of Aunt Mart’s coffee cakes and exchanged gifts for the dogs:  I had a box of organic gingerbread dog cookies I had ordered online for Mystery and Hero, and she brought individually wrapped cheese-stuffed marrow bones for each of my dogs, which they munched on enthusiastically while we talked. 

Sonny took another sip of her coffee, reading my mind.  “So, I saw Mark James at a Christmas party last night.”  Mark James was our county prosecutor.  “He’s not going to try Nick as an adult.”

I released a breath of relief.  “That’s good.  I don’t think he’s a bad kid at heart. He just got caught up in a bad situation, and tried to do the best he could to make it right. Aunt Mart said social services was finally able to contact Ashleigh’s aunt in Ohio and they’re taking her in.  They’ve even got her enrolled in school right after Christmas.  The Holloways are at the top of the adoption list for baby Hope, and meanwhile they’re fostering her.  Aunt Mart said they had painted the nursery like a scene out of a fairy tale, and the church has given them so many baby showers that they’ve started rewrapping the gifts and sending them to children’s homes for the holidays.”