Let Loose

Let Loose

Book 4 in the Dusty Deals Mystery
Series

By Rae Davies

Published by

Copyright Rae Davies & Lori Devoti, 2014

Smashwords Edition

File Updated May 2016

This book is set in the real city of Helena, Montana.
However, this is a work
of fiction
and all
people, places of business, and events are fictional. Any
similarity to anyone, thing or place is purely coincidence.

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment
only. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this
book, or a portion thereof, in any form. This book may not be
resold or uploaded for distribution to others.

If you notice any typos or
formatting issues with this book, the author would appreciate being
notified.

Email her at
[email protected]

Loose Screw

Cut Loose

Loosey Goosey

Let Loose

Lucy and the Valentine
Verdict
(a Dusty Deals
Novella)

Loose Lips

They say no good deed goes unpunished.
Honestly, in my close to thirty years on the planet I hadn’t tested
that theory a bunch.

Recently, however, my kind-of-employee,
kind-of-partner, Phyllis, had - in the name of public relations -
been more than pushing me to do good. She’d been kneeing me in the
back and shoving me in front of every do-gooding train she could
find.

I’d licked envelopes, picked up trash and
done the chicken dance in a chicken suit for a group of
chicken-hating senior citizens.

What did I have to show for all of this? A
tongue that stuck to the roof of my mouth, a pair of snow boots
that reeked of old cheese, and an aching back from dodging one
particular chicken-hater’s cane.

And a day off, but that I’d given myself, and
without Phyllis’ approval.

Staring out my front window at the snow, I
half expected her to pull up with a sleigh filled with orphans.

Luckily, no sleigh arrived. No malamute
either though.

I’d let Kiska out an hour earlier and hadn’t
seen so much as the tip of his tail since.

I glanced at the oversized round thermometer
that I kept just outside the window where I could observe the
temperature and relish the fact that I was snugly inside.

Thirty degrees.

Not bad. I could see why my dog was staying
outside.

I started to walk away and did a double
take.

The thirty was on the wrong side of the
zero.

Thirty
below
. Crap.

I tilted my head up and let the shame wash
over me. Even a nicely blubber-lined Alaskan malamute had to be
cold in that kind of weather.

With my shamefest done, I hobbled to the door
and yelled for Kiska again.

He didn’t come.

I tilted my head, this time to keep the curse
words from bubbling forward.

Initial reaction suppressed, I hobbled to the
closet and pulled approximately 300 pounds of snow-gear on over my
fleece jams.

Looking like a giant chocolate-covered
marshmallow in my brown down coat and brown snow bibs - both
presents from my mother that I would never wear in front of another
human even at 100 below - I stumbled out into the cold.

I lumbered around the side, to the space
between my main house and the original homestead cabin that sat a
hundred feet or so away.

No Kiska.

With a sigh, I stared upward.

My property, bordered on the back by national
forest, sat on the side of a mountain. My backyard was one giant
vertical climb. Something I found challenging to traverse even when
not wrapped in two feet of down and encumbered by a chicken-hater
injury.

“Ki—” I started to yell before remembering
that it was seven in the morning. I didn’t have a lot of neighbors,
but I had a few, twenty actually, and at least some of them would
still be asleep. And with our houses all nestled in the same tiny
crevice between two mountains, sound carried.

Mumbling to myself about dogs who - only when
I was down and out and the temperature was even lower - decided to
get up at the crack of dawn and insist on being let out, I pigeon
walked down the path that led to the road and my unattached
garage.

I was halfway down the slope when I spotted
my wayward pet. His back half anyway. The front half was hidden by
a small pine tree, but I was able to guess that he was watching
something or someone in the road.

I stopped and considered leaving him alone.
He was alive, and if he was focused on something, it wasn’t like he
was going to listen to little old me. And little old me was in no
shape to drag him back up the hill.

I was all ready to declare my duty as
responsible pet owner done when I caught a flash of red outside my
fence, right next to my dog.

Kiska’s back end moved, not side to side, but
forward. As in all the way forward, perilously close to going
through my fence and out into the road.

Back forgotten, I lurched. My feet, encased
in my only pair of non-reeking snow boots - which also happened to
be two sizes too big - caught on the snow. Arms out in a windmill
motion, I teetered forward and back. Then, just as I thought I’d
found my balance, a dog barked. I jerked toward the noise, fell
onto my side and rolled like a log down the path.

Too padded to move more than my arms, and too
cold to risk shoving my hands into the snow to slow my descent, I
let myself go until I smacked, like the oversized snowball I was,
into my garage.

I lay there, back shrieking and mind
swirling, for a full minute before remembering what had sent me
tumbling in the first place.

Kiska had been wiggling out of my fence.

Kiska never left the fence. It wasn’t that my
fence was some miracle of engineering. It was just that he was,
well, lazy.

It was honestly one of his most redeeming
qualities.

“Whoa!”

The call came from nowhere. I looked around,
or tried to, but positioned as I was, flat on my back and stuck
that way as surely as a box turtle in the same position, the effort
was a waste of the pain it sent shooting through my spine.

I heard scrambling behind me; then a
wool-knit hat with a bright blue tassel on the end popped into my
view.

“Can you move?”

The voice was masculine and with a slight
accent I couldn’t quite place.

“So happy I was here, eh? I was a boat to
leave when I saw you take the tumble.”

He leaned forward and I found myself staring
into a pair of the biggest, most delicious toffee-colored eyes I’d
seen on a non-furry face.

“A boat?” I asked, wondering if I’d hit my
head in the “tumble” too.

“Yes, a boat, but your malamute was talking
to me, and my three wanted to join in.”

He knew Kiska was a malamute. My heart
pinged. Then I remembered a certain police detective with whom I’d
had the longest lasting romantic relationship of my life, and the
ping dulled to more of a guilty pong.

My new hat-wearing friend moved forward
again, this time to run his hands over my arms. “Does this
hurt?”

Swaddled in down as I was, I could barely
feel his touch, giving me the perfect excuse to keep my answer to
myself for a bit.

“How a boat this?”

A boat... “About,” I murmured.

He leaned back on his heels to look at me
again. Even upside down, I could see the concern on his face. “Did
you hit your head?”

His chin had a dimple. The observation,
completely innocent and ping-free, caused my concentration to
slip.

He jerked off a bright blue glove and held
out his hand. “How many fingers?”

“Four,” I answered, feeling only slightly
insulted.

He smiled and moved back.

Maybe I should have said two.

“If you don’t hurt anywhere, you’re probably
just winded. Let me help you up.”

He tromped through the snow until he was
standing at my feet. His coat, I noted, was some kind of high-tech
thing built to provide warmth without the bulk, as were his
water-proof pants. Around his waist was a wide black belt that
looked a lot like the kind of thing a box boy at Wal-Mart might
wear, except that it attached in the front with skinny nylon
straps, rather than wrapping tightly around his entire body.

He noticed the direction of my eyes and for a
second looked startled. Realizing where I’d been staring, or the
general vicinity of where I’d been staring, I flapped my hands and
began to stutter.

He, however, waved off my discomfort. “We
were skijoring. A bit cold for it, but the dogs need their run.
Plus we were all getting a bit stir crazy at the campground.”

I nodded as if I completely understood what
in the world anyone would be doing at a campground when it was 30
below, or the compelling need to be up and out of bed before 8 a.m.
in these conditions, much less doing anything that involved the
word
run
.

He reached down with both hands to pull me to
my feet. I was three quarters of the way upright when I remembered
what had brought me to this position in the first place. I jerked
to the side, wrenching my back and sending new jolts of pain
shooting through me. With a grimace, I forced down the discomfort
and called for my dog.

“He got out. That’s why I fell,” I mumbled,
staggering and wincing and cursing the damn coat, which dragged in
the deep snow, gathering a foot or so inside it with each of my
steps.

“You mean him?” My rescuer pointed toward the
pine tree that I’d seen Kiska disappear behind earlier.

And there my beloved pet was, his head shoved
between the rails of the fence and his butt still very much
inside.

“Oh... I thought I saw him go outside the
fence.”

“Must have been one of mine you saw. Sorry
about that.” He motioned again.

Moving side to side like a penguin, I managed
to maneuver myself with minimal pain so that I could see the road
past my fence. Three dogs lay just outside it, their noses resting
on their paws and their eyes closed.

“Huskies?” I guessed. They didn’t look like
the purebred huskies I knew, but there was definitely a resemblance
and they were definitely not malamutes. Way too small for that.

“Alaskan,” he clarified. “Best sled dogs in
the world.”

That explained the red harnesses each wore
and, I realized, the belt he was wearing.

He touched his waist. “In the winter, when we
aren’t racing, I use skijoring to keep them in shape.”

Another hand wave drew my attention to a pair
of cross country skis propped against my fence.

“They’re so calm,” I commented, eyeing Kiska
and wondering just how long I had before his curiosity overcame his
laziness and he tried to wriggle his plus-sized form through the
fence.

“It’s the exercise.” His gaze moved to Kiska
and stayed there about three beats too long.

“Uh, yeah.” The magic of our moment broken, I
waved at my dog as if he might actually listen and bound toward me.
“Time for us to get inside.” I lumbered a few steps toward the hill
that led to my house, tightening my jaw against the pain shooting
through my back as I did.

“Do you live here?”

I turned, wondering why else he thought I’d
have rolled down this particular hill this morning.

“You should come to the fund-raiser.” He
reached into his coat pocket and pulled out two bright green slips
of paper.

Fund-raiser equaled charity and my charity
cup had bubbled up, overflowed and almost drowned me in the
process.

I shook my head, but he held out the slips
anyway. With a sigh, I took them.