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

diner, and took another statement from the woman who had told me about the wedding ring.  He sent Deke back into town to interview Lucy, who had gotten a much better look at Camo Man than I had.
    “Do you think it might really be something?” I asked, both excited and a little worried by the possibility.  To think I had stood that close to a cold-blooded killer—and had even given him a quarter—was a little unsettling, to say the least.  Knowing that he was still out there somewhere was even worse.
    “Could be.”  Buck was writing in his notebook.  “We’ll search the truck again for the ring. But it’s pretty clear Earl was involved in these burglaries we’ve been trying to track down, and if he had a partner, and if they had some kind of disagreement that went bad…”  He gave a small lift of one shoulder without looking up.  “Somebody tried to mop up an awful lot of blood with those bed sheets that were in the tub, and we know the body was moved from wherever he was killed to the back of the truck.  A hunting knife would match the wound.”
    “And the girl?  Do you think she’s okay?’
    He snapped the notebook closed.  “We won’t know until we find her.  Listen, Raine, I’ve gotta go.  We’ll be up all night cataloguing this stuff and I’ve still got a lot of people to talk to.  See you later, okay?”  He was walking away before he finished speaking.
    “You’re welcome,” I called after him. 
    Buck, of course, did not look back.
     
     
    The minute I parked in front of my house I knew something was amiss.  All the downstairs lights were on, and even if I had accidentally left the front lights on in my hurry to leave, I hadn’t even been in the kitchen, and I could see the light from the kitchen window spreading a pool over the side yard.  I could smell wood smoke faintly, and though I did like to keep a fire going in the woodstove in the kitchen, I was almost certain it had gone out long before I left to take Santa Dog on his first therapy visit.   I went up the steps and opened the door cautiously, Cisco swishing his tail excitedly beside me.  The sound of the television reached me from the living room.  I called uncertainly, “Mischief?”  How in the world had she learned to work the remote control?
    I heard the sound of paws hitting the floor and Mischief and Magic came trotting out of the living room, grinning happily, and were met in the hallway by Miles Young, who came from the kitchen with a glass of wine in his hand.  My mouth fell open in astonishment. 
    “Before you say anything,” he said and seemed surprised that I didn’t interrupt him.  He went on, “I must have called you six times.  Is your phone broken?  And we waited almost an hour in the car.  Your door was open so….”
    “You did not.”  I found my voice at last, and my outrage bubbled up.  “You did not just walk into my house and make yourself at home!  This is over the line, Miles, and I mean it.  I can’t believe you would do such a thing.”
    “I told you she would be mad,” sang girl’s voice from the living room.
    “She’s not mad, honey, she’s just surprised,” Miles called back.  To me he said, with deliberate emphasis, “I told her people did things differently in the country.  I told her they were more neighborly.”
    I thought my eyes would pop out of my head with things I couldn’t say in front of a child.
    The Aussies wriggled and pressed up against me and I petted them absently.  Cisco sat hopefully in front of Miles and he produced a dog biscuit from his pocket.  It was easy to see how he wouldn’t have had any trouble getting past my faithful guard dogs.  He never made an appearance without a pocketful of dog biscuits and he had trained them well.
    He pressed the glass of wine in my hand.  “I hope you like white,” he said.  “It’s all I had left.  I figured you’d need it after the night you’ve had. Come on in the kitchen,” he urged.