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

wait.  Cisco, let’s go.”
    The front door had been sealed off with crime scene tape, so I went around to the back.  The back door was open and all the lights were on inside, but there was a strip of police tape across the opening of it as well. Deputies managed to go in and out by ducking under, but I knew better than to try the same thing.  Forensics units tend to take a dim view of dog hair all over their crime scenes.   I stood on the ground at the edge of the steps, which put my head about even with the threshold of the door and called, “Hey, Buck!”
    In a minute he came to the door, looking busy and preoccupied.  “Yeah, you can go on home, Raine.  We’ve got three people who said she left in a blue or green Chevy this afternoon, and that she had a duffle bag with her.  We might be looking at a runaway, so we’re going to follow up on some leads before we declare her missing.”
    I said, “I need to ask you something.”
    Someone inside said, “Buck, you got a minute?”
    He glanced over his shoulder, and then back at me, trying to hide his mild annoyance.  “Okay, but make it quick, will you?”
    He ducked under the tape and came down the steps.  A couple of deputies were poking around the wood pile and searching the area around it with their flashlights, and his gaze flickered toward them.  “Y'all take down that wood pile piece by piece and lay it out,” Buck called.  “And check out that storage shed.  We’ve got a warrant.”
    “What are you looking for?” I asked.
    “The murder weapon, maybe.  There’s a knife missing from the stand on the counter, and we didn’t see it anywhere in the house.”
    “Did you look in the dishwasher?” I suggested.
    He looked at me for a moment, then walked back to the door and said something to one of the men inside.  I felt smug.  Buck looked impatient when he returned.  “Was there something you wanted, Raine?”
    “Hey, it’s not like I’m having a great time standing out here in the cold either, you know.”  And for a moment I was so irritated I almost turned and stalked away.  “I could be at home watching It’s a Wonderful Life .”
    He tried, not very successfully, to look apologetic.  His eyes kept wandering to the boys with the flashlights.  “Sorry.  I didn’t mean to keep you out here so long.  What did you want to ask?”
    I hesitated.   The whole thing sounded a little farfetched now that I said it out loud, “Did you guys find Lewis’s wedding ring on a chain hanging from the rearview mirror of his truck?”
    For the first time, I had his attention.  “Not that I know of.  How come?”
    “Because his wife’s name was Amy, and someone said he kept his wedding ring on a chain hanging from his mirror.  And tonight I was in the diner and this guy in front of me—a strange fellow dressed in camo with a kind of crazy look in his eyes—he dropped a wedding ring that was engraved Forever, Amy inside.   He had a big buck knife on his belt and blood all over his jacket.  I just thought it was a coincidence, the names and all.”
    Buck stared at me.
    “Hey, Sheriff!”  The guys had opened the shed door and were shining their lights inside.
    “Stay here,” Buck said tersely.  “Don’t move.”  And he hurried across the narrow strip of dirt yard to the shed.
    Well, I didn’t go far—just far enough to see that what the deputies had uncovered was a shed filled with flat screen TV’s,  laptop computers, stereos, smart phones, and MP3 players, among other things, many of them still in their boxes.  There was also a couple of pairs of skis, an outboard motor, two generators, and enough power tools—all still sealed in boxes—to open a woodworking shop. 
    “Looks like Santa Claus got here a little early,” one of the guys observed.
    And somebody else agreed, “I guess we cracked our burglary ring.”
    “And found a motive for murder,” Buck said.
     
     
    Buck took my statement about the man in the