Free Fire and Ice by J. A. Jance Page A

looks like,” Joanna agreed. “We won’t know for sure until we finish our investigation.”
    “And who did it?”
    “We don’t know that, either. Is there a chance your brother got involved with some unsavory characters?”
    “Les has been involved with ‘unsavory characters’ all his life,” Margie replied. “He didn’t hardly know any other kind. I thought he’d left all that behind him—those kinds of friends, but maybe he had a slip.”
    “A slip,” Ernie said, latching on to the sobriety lingo. “Are you saying he’d been through drug or alcohol treatment?”
    “Alcohol,” Margie answered. “Three times, to be exact, but this last time it finally took. Les had been sober for a little over a year. Fourteen months, to be exact. Said the only kind of booze he still had around the house was Miller.”
    “Miller High Life?” Ernie asked. “You mean he still drank beer?”
    “Not that kind of Miller,” Margie said. “His dog. Les was still drinking two years ago when somebody dumped an almost dead puppy out by the garbage cans at the trailer court in Tucson where Les used to live. The puppy was a tiny little thing. To begin with, Les fed him with an eyedropper and later with a toy baby bottle. He finally managed to nurse him back to health. Les named the dog after his favorite beer—Miller—and even taught him to bring him a cold one from the fridge. He thought that was funnier ’an a rubber crutch. ‘Hey, Miller,’ he’d say, ‘bring me a Miller.’ And that dog would do it just as cute as can be. Truth be told, Les let that dog drink some of his beer as well. But finally Lester went through treatment and sobered up. It turns out that when Les stopped drinking, so did Miller. But when Les wanted a soda from the fridge, he’d still say the same thing—for Miller to bring him a beer. Les told me it was just too much trouble to try teaching that dog a new command. Besides, Les liked it. He said asking the dog to bring him a soda didn’t have quite the same ring to it; wasn’t as funny.”
    Margie paused and looked around. “Les loved that dog to distraction,” she added. “What’s going to happen to him now?”
    Joanna had learned over time that dealing with pets left behind by homicide victims was often a tough call. Sometimes any number of people—friends and relatives—came forward to lay claim to the suddenly orphaned animal. Other times no one did and the unwanted dog or cat or gerbil ended up being hauled away to the pound. As head of Animal Control, Jeannine Phillips was a tiger about finding homes for abandoned animals, but sometimes even she came up empty.
    “Miller loved Lester, but ever since he stopped being a puppy, I’ve been half scared of him,” Margie admitted. “And after getting used to living out here with all this room to run around, I think he’d be too much dog for me and my little single-wide. I doubt he’d get along with my pug, Miss Priss, either.”
    Joanna had learned enough about animal control to see that sending Miller to live with someone who was scared of him was an invitation to disaster—for Marge Savage, for her little pug, and for Miller as well. A second choice would be to send Miller to live with some other relative so the dog wouldn’t be shipped off either to the pound or to live with complete strangers.
    “Is there anyone else who’s familiar with the dog?” Joanna asked.
    “My stepsons know him, of course,” Margie said.
    “Could one of them take him?” Joanna asked.
    The woman shook her head. “They both have little kids,” she said. “Miller’s a Doberman, after all—part Doberman, anyway. He’s used to being around grown-ups.”
    Joanna sighed. “All right, then,” she said. “You have enough on your plate right now to worry about the dog, but we certainly can’t leave the poor thing here. I’ll have my ACO take Miller back to the pound in Bisbee.”
    “You won’t let them put him down, will you?” Margie asked.