Free Silent Night: A Raine Stockton Dog Mystery by Donna Ball

and knew immediately I had found the source of the bleach smell.
    I nudged the door all the way open and peeked inside. I expected a laundry room, but when I turned on the light I realized it was a bathroom.  The first thing I noticed was a smear of blood on the yellowing white tile of the floor.  The second thing I noticed was that the tub was filled with water, what appeared to be bed sheets, and a great quantity of bleach.  The water was pink.
    I closed my eyes briefly and swallowed hard, hoping this didn’t mean what I thought it meant.  Buck came up behind me and surveyed the scene silently for a moment.  Then he said, “Damn.”
    He took out his radio and called for backup.
    ____________

 
     
     
    SEVEN
     
     
    T he Hanover County Sheriff’s Department had twelve deputies, and Buck pulled six of them off parade and traffic control duties to conduct door-to-door interviews of the neighbors while he and Deke secured the trailer as a crime scene.  All of this activity naturally drew some attention, and it wasn’t long before a cluster of neighbors, many of them with coats thrown over their pajamas, was gathered in the tiny yard.
      Cisco and I sat on the front stoop, out of the way of the investigators, as ordered, but standing by in case we were needed to help conduct a search in the field that surrounded the trailer park, also as ordered.  It would have been warmer in the car, but I didn’t want to be that far away from the action.  And since very few people can resist coming up to pet a waggy-tailed golden retriever, I was in a good position to keep up with what was going on.
    My phone rang two or three times, but when I looked at the caller ID, it was only Miles. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk to him, exactly, but this wasn’t the time or the place.  And there was absolutely nothing he had to say to me that was more important, or more interesting, than what was going on here.  Finally I turned my phone off, and I only felt a little guilty about it.  
    “Hey, is this a drug dog?” someone wanted to know.  “I heard ol’ Earle was up to some pretty sneaky stuff, but I didn’t know it was drugs.”
    I explained that Cisco was not a drug dog, but a search dog. “What kind of sneaky stuff?” I wanted to know.
    The original man shrugged and wandered away, and someone else said, “Aw, he wasn’t such a bad sort.  Just fell on hard times is all.”
    “A man that hung out with the kind of trash he did was bound to get hisself offed sooner or later,” observed a middle-aged woman in a pink fleece bathrobe, puffing hard on a cigarette.  “No better than he deserved, if you ask me.” 
    “Now, Ellie,” said another woman with a note of reprimand in her voice, “he wasn’t so bad when he wasn’t drinking.  And he was purely devoted to his wife.  It just about tore him apart when she died.   That’s what started him on the downhill if you ask me.”  She reached down to scratch Cisco’s head.  “What a sweet dog.  They don’t let us have pets here.”
    I said, “What did his wife die of?”
    “Cancer, I think.”  She straightened up.  “He kept her wedding band on a chain that hung from his rearview mirror in his truck.  He gave me a ride into town one day when my car broke down on the side of the road and when I said something about it he told me he started every day by kissing that ring for good luck.  Now, you can’t tell me a man like that is all bad.”
    Something stirred in my memory, and I frowned a little.  “You wouldn’t happen to know if there was engraving inside the ring, would you?”
    She shook her head.  “I couldn’t tell.  What do you suppose happened to the girl?”
    Another woman said, “Somebody said they saw her go off with her boyfriend somewhere this afternoon.”
    I said, “Excuse me,” and stood up.  My back side was practically frozen from sitting on the cold concrete steps.  “I need to find out how long I’m supposed to