Free 5 Mischief in Christmas River by Meg Muldoon

at all.”
    Brad scratched his chin for a moment.
    “You know, it reminds me of something,” he said. “Something that happened to Will once.”
    “Really?” Kara said.
    He nodded.
    “This was about six years ago, a while before we started dating. But when he was living in Portland, Will had this miniature bull dog. Reginald was its name.”
    Brad shook his head.
    “I still don’t know who names a dog Reginald anyway.”
    “What happened?” I asked.
    “Well, Will told me he was walking Reginald in Laurelhurst Park. There’s this off-leash area in the park, so Will let Reginald roam free for a little bit. But the dog wandered off, and then Will couldn’t find him. He looked all over, but it was like Reginald had just disappeared.
    “So Will did what any dog owner would: he put up missing posters all over the park, promising a nice reward to anybody who brought the dog back. After a few days, he still had no luck. He started thinking that maybe he’d never see little Reggie again. But then he gets this phone call from this woman, saying that she thinks she might have come across his dog. Well, Will was ecstatic, so he gives her his address, and she comes over, and lo and behold, it is Reginald. I guess she had found the pooch wandering alone in the woods close to the park while she was on a run with her PSU cross-country team. Will is so happy, he gives this young woman an extra hundred dollars on top of the reward.”
    Brad shook his head.
    “But after a few days of having Reggie home, Will started thinking that something was off about the whole thing. He started thinking that if the dog had really been in those woods for a few days, he would have been all muddy and dirty when he got back. But he was as clean as the day Will lost him when he was returned.
    “Then Will said the more he thought about it, the more familiar the girl who found him looked. Will thought that he must have seen her the day Reggie went missing. He went so far as to call Portland State University to see if there was a girl by her name on the cross country team there. Turns out, there wasn’t.”
    “So it was a scam?” I said.
    He nodded.
    “Pretty sure, anyway. In a town like Portland, where folks love their dogs so much, I bet a dog kidnapper can make a pretty penny all right. So long as they don’t get caught.”
    I furrowed my brow.
    “Do you think that’s what could be going on here?”
    He shrugged.
    “I’m not saying that, necessarily,” he said. “But I bet the Sheriff’s Office would offer a nice reward for anybody who finds that K-9.”
    “How does a dog get to be worth $20,000 anyway?” Kara asked.
    “I guess there’s a lot of training involved,” I said. “Billy was down in California for two weeks in the fall getting trained with the dog. It’s highly specialized, I guess. Then they had to outfit Billy’s patrol car for Shasta. Then there are other expenses too for the dog’s care.”
    “His mom told me all about that too,” Brad said. “Said Billy slipped, tripped and fell in love with some dog trainer lady down there, and that he wasn’t paying as close attention in training as he should have been.”
    I let out a short sigh.
    Not that Billy didn’t deserve some scolding for losing the dog, but his mother seemed like a real piece of work. I was sure that that accounted, at least in some small part, for the way the young deputy got down on himself about things.
    “Well, if you all do come across that dog, would you let Daniel know right away?” I said. “‘Cuz I’m afraid that all of the blame for this is going to fall on his shoulders if that K-9 isn’t found soon.”
    Kara looked at me with a concerned expression.
    “Is it serious?” she asked.
    I shrugged.
    “I don’t really know,” I said.
    A silence fell over the crafting studio. It lasted for a few awkward moments.
    “I’m sure everything’s going to be just fine,” Kara said, going back to tossing woodchips together. “These