All That Glitters (Raine Stockton Dog Mysteries) (2 page)

For a moment I was baffled, and then I said, “
It’s
a
Wonderful Life
?”  

Melanie nodded enthusiastically. 
“Just think how many
people he’s rescued
,” Melanie
said
, “tracking them down out there in the wilderness.  And
the
bad guys he’s put in jail.  And what about all the old people he visits in the nursing home, and kids in the hospital?” 

“Cisco know
s
what a great dog he is,” I said, rescuing a bone-shaped ornament from
Cisco’s mouth
and giving him a little nudge with my knee.  “He doesn’t need a press agent.” 

“How many lives do you think he’s saved, anyway?”

When Cisco was relaxing at home, as now, it might be hard to convince a stranger that he was a valuable working dog.  But when Melanie put it like that, I felt a surge of pride and affection that momentarily overcame my impulse to put Cisco in a permanent down-stay.  “A lot,” I admitted.

“More than ten?”

“Sure.”

“More than twenty?”

I paused to
give my guy a scratch under the chin, smiling at him.  He reciprocated with a happy swipe of his tongue aimed at my face.  “Probably,” I agreed, and I thought that in some ways, the most important life he had saved was my own.    

“Of course,”
Melanie
observed
confidently, “that’s nothing to what my
Pepper
is going to do when she grows up.”

I
reached for another ornament.
“I
wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”

“We’re going to join the FBI and chase down terrorists and spies all over the world.
Istanbul, Dubai,
Hong Kong
, Milan, Paris…
”

“The FBI can only chase down terrorists and spies on U.S. soil,” I pointed out, suppressing a grin. Her recitation of exotic locales was more suggestive of a series of fashion shows than an international terrorism ring, but I supposed anything was possible.

“
Plenty of time for that to change before we
join the force,” she assured me airily.  “The point is, we’re going to be
real
crime-solving
hero
e
s
, just like
you and
Cisco.”

Of course it was flattering to be thought of as a hero by anyone, but
I made a face, keeping a wary eye on my dog as he strolled casually toward the buffet table
once again
.
  “There’ve been a lot of days when ‘hero’ is not
the first word I thought of to describe Cisco.”
  Then, sharply, “Cisco, here.”

Cisco turned guiltily and came
back to me
, breaking into a heart-melting grin halfway across the room.  But I refused to be melted.   “Go to your place,” I told him sternly, pointing to a yellow mat
by the door.  His tail dropped a few inches at the words, and he looked over his shoulder toward the mat.  Then he spotted the chew bone he had left there and bounded over to it happily, plopping down on the mat and taking up his bone.

“Say, is this Cisco’s baby picture?”  Melanie held up a Christmas ornament with a photograph of a golden-retriever puppy in
a red jingle-bell collar sitting on Santa’s knee.
   
I couldn’t prevent a sentimental smile as I reached for it.

“Yes, it is,” I said.  “He was eight weeks old.  I’d only had Cisco for a few
minutes
when this was taken.  And right after that…”  I stretched as high as I could, placing the ornament on a safe, sturdy branch,  “Cisco  solved his first crime.”

“Really?”  Her eyes lit with
the avid
interest
of someone who watched far too many cop shows on television, i
n my opinion.
“Who’d he nab?  A kidnapper?
Gangbanger?
A cold-blooded serial killer?
Maybe he busted up a whole drug cartel!
”

The corners of my lips twitched as I glanced across the room at Cisco
, who held the bone between his two front paws and was contentedly munching away.  “Much bigger than that,” I assured her.  “As a matter of fact,” I added
,
and I felt a twinkle come into my eyes as
I
pulled out another handful of  ornaments and
look
ed
back at her,  “it’s really kind of an interesting story…”

I
t had not been a good year for me, nor for the majority of the county.  The textile plant that
had provided jobs for almost half of the families in
the
county had closed down, which drastically affected the economy of our small, isolated mountain town.  Shops and businesses were starting to cut back their hours, which is never a good sign, and according to Aunt Mart, who was in charge of just about every charitable organization in town,  donations to the Charity Drive were down while requests for charity had never been higher.  According to Uncle Roe, who was married to
Aunt Mart
and who also happened to be the sheriff of Hanover County,
crime was also up.  That surprised no one but
Aunt Mart
, who liked to see the best in everyone.

I probably should have been more concerned about the unemployment rate, the rising crime and the general state of need surrounding me, but as I said, I had not had a good year, either.  This would be my first Christmas without my father, who had died of a stroke
earlier tha
t
year
.   I was recently
separated – for the second time
–
from the man to whom I had been married for ten years, and who had been my best friend since high school.  I was still at the stage where I kept expecting to hear his footsteps in the hallway, and
I
picked up the phone to call him several times a day before I remembered
we
didn’t do that anymore.
That sucked.

And
,
perhaps most devastatingly, my golden retriever Cassidy had died at age 13 that summer.  She was the one who taught me everything I know about dogs.
She was the first certified search and rescue dog in Hanover County, and her find rate was 98%.  She made me look like a
superstar
.
  She had more awards than a Nobel laureate and more letters after her name than an Oxford professor.   But at the end of the day, she was the one who curled up on the sofa beside me and
shared the popcorn on movie night
, who was waiting at the door every time I picked up my car keys,
who laid her head upon my knee when I was sad and who danced with excitement when I was happy.  She made me who I was. Now she was gone, and I was alone.

And, almost as though to
a
dd insult to injury, it now appeared as though I would lose my job, too.  I s
tared in disbelief at the letter that had arrived in the morning mail. 
Due to cutbacks in federal funding, we have been forced to downsize…

I had worked for the Forest Service
here in the Smoky Mountains
since college.  It was all I’d ever wanted to do.  I wasn’t sure I really even knew how to do anything else.

From my supervisor Rick, who had  graduated two years ahead of me in high
school, was a scrawled note on the bottom of the official letter:
Raine, call me.  We’ll work something out.
  

Great.  The man  had graduated ninety-sixth out of a class of one hundred two, and now I was depending on him to
“work something out”
.  Terrific.

“Merry Christmas to me,” I muttered.  I flung my booted feet atop the kitchen table and dropped my head back onto the chair.  And there was absolute
l
y no one to tell me not to do it.  That made me even more depressed.

When the phone rang, I almost didn’t answer it.  Given the way my luck was running, it had to be more bad news. 
I answered it curtly, “Raine Stockton.”

“Hey, Raine,” said the chirpy voice on the other end of the line.  “This is Rose down at dispatch.  We’ve got a call about an abandoned dog out on  Mockingbird Place, and your Uncle wanted to know wouldn’t you mind going out there to check it out.  The boys are just covered up with work down here, and the sheriff said to be sure and tell you he’d really appreciate it.”

Our small county couldn’t afford an animal control officer, so when a complaint about a dog came in it was usually through the sheriff’s office.  Unless it was a dog bite case, most of those calls were referred to the
H
umane
S
ociety.  And since I had been president of the
H
umane
S
ociety for the past four years, that meant me.  With a long-suffering sigh,  I copied down the address, pulled on my coat, and went out into the cold to Mockingbird Place.

The address led me to a row of small square houses a  few blocks from the center of town.  Fifty years ago they had probably been perfectly respectable middle income homes; now they were a couple of notches below that.  Most of them had the not-quite- neglected look of rental property, with shabby lawns and worn shingles.  I pulled into the short dirt driveway of a pale yellow clapboard house with a mud-stained cement block foundation, and I saw the dog immediately.  A sable and white collie of about a year old sat imperiously atop a dog house inside a 10x10 chain link enclosure.
  At least I thought it was a collie; her coat was so muddied and matted with neglect that it was difficult to tell.
    She didn’t bark when I got out of the car; she didn’t jump down and rush the fence to greet me.  She just sat
atop the dog house
with all the composure of a royal princess, and watched as I approached.

“Well, hello there, Your Majesty,” I said softly, putting my hand on the latch of the gate to the dog’s enclosure.  “Do you mind if I come in?”

The screen door of the house next door slammed, and a woman came down the steps, hugging a pink cardigan to her.  “Hello!” she called.  “Hello, are you here about the dog?”

I admitted that I was and she introduced herself.  “I hated to call,” she said, “but the
family
left last week.  She said the propane tank was dry and they didn’t have any heat—a sweet young thing with three children under school age, her husband left last month, the no-ac
c
ount so-and-so, and she’s been doing the best she can since then
,
I guess.  She and the children went to her sister’s, but she couldn’t take the dog, so I’ve been feeding it and making sure it had water, but the bag of food she left is almost gone and it’s supposed to get down in the teens tonight.  She didn’t leave me a way to call, and I’d just hate to see the poor thing freeze to death.  It’s a sweet dog.”

I assured her that
she had done the right thing, and entered the pen with a slice of hot dog in one hand and a slip leash in the other.  The collie didn’t fuss as I
dropped
the  leash over her head, and
she
nibbled on the hot dog I offered her with a delicacy that suggested she was simply being polite. 

“We’ll take her to the vet to make sure she’s up on her shots,” I told the neighbor, “and board her  until the owner claims her.  But if she isn’t claimed in five days, we put her up for adoption.
  I’ll leave you one of my cards, and slip another one under the front door so the owner can call when she comes back.
”

The neighbor took my card, but shook her head sadly, hugging the pink sweater closer to her.  “She won’t come back.  And even if she does, she won’t call you.  She can barely take care of those children, much less a dog.”

I suspected she was right, but it wasn’t my job to say so.  The collie hopped  into the back of my SUV, and walked nicely into the wire crate I had prepared for her.  I was just locking her in when I heard the sound of a big truck coming around the bend.  It was a propane tanker, and to my surprise, it pulled into the driveway beside my car.  The driver got out and came around to me.  “Miz Chambliss?”