Witch One Dunnit? (Rachael Penzra mystery) (22 page)

       The sheriff’s opinion of the dog was it was a young male, under a year and still growing.  And that he was ugly.  “With a face like that, it’s no wonder someone dumped him.  Want me to take him in?”

       “First of all, he’s not
that
ugly.  He’s just ... unusual, that’s all.  Secondly, you’re not taking him with you!”  I realized I was being ridiculously indignant on behalf of the dog.  I mean, the dog
was
ugly, and
I
couldn’t
keep it.  So I compromised, as I’m all too wont to do in life.  “He saved my life.  I’ll find him a decent home.”

       He gave me one of those looks that make it plain who’s not fooling whom.  I met it blandly.  If he wanted my vote in the next election, he’d better learn how to curb his expressions.  It didn’t help when (after I left a note for Patsy) he made me go out the front door and around to my car the long way to avoid messing up any evidence.

       “Could be a mugging,” he told me, as he held the door for the dog and then, belatedly, for me.  “We don’t run into many muggings around here, but there’s always a first time.  I want to check it out thoroughly, though, considering the recent murder.  Have you got your key to the house?  I’ll lock up when we leave.  You get yourself checked out.  I’ll see you tomorrow.”

       “Not early,” I warned him.  At the rate I was going, it’d be two or three in the morning before I got to bed and quite frankly, I just wasn’t so fond of the man that I needed to see him first thing in the morning.

       The emergency room was empty when I arrived.  There was no one to attend to except me and my sore head, so I got fast service.  The outcome was exactly what I’d figured and would be costly because I hadn’t used my insurance deductible for the year.  All the same, I was glad I went.  First of all, the emergency room doctor could testify I had indeed been conked over the head, and second of all I have a secret streak of hypochondria running through me.  It usually crops up after I’ve watched some upsetting medical show or report.  I imagine Shelly’s death was what triggered it this time.  So when I was told my skull was intact, my neck in alignment, and my soreness normal, it was almost worth the cost and trouble.  I gave them my medical card so this particular expense could be applied to my deductible, emptied the checkbook I’d been so pleased to have some extra money in, and went out to make the return trip home.  I made one of the nurses stand in the window and watch to make sure I made it safely to the car.  I wasn’t in the mood to take any more chances that night.

       Then I opened myself to any enemies by stopping at an all-night grocery store/gas station to buy dog food.  I assuaged my common sense conscience by parking near the door.  The dog, who badly needed a name by this time, could apparently smell the food when I returned to the car.  He whined and fussed about the sealed bag and finally settled for lying with his nose on it.  I was halfway home before I started thinking about the food awaiting me in my refrigerator.  That’s a clear indication of how upset I was by the whole ordeal.

       It was one-thirty in the morning before I had myself, the dog and the dog food safely in the house.  The police were gone by then and Patsy wasn’t home yet.  I cut open the huge bag, dug out two big bowls from the cupboard, and fed and watered Dogzilla.  No, I thought.  Fitting though the name was, I was going to have to find something a little more dignified
.
  A name would only be temporary, anyway, since I was going to find him a good home as quickly as possible, but it should be something he could live with into old age.  He was
not
going to be the Peter Pfeiffer of the dog world.

CHAPTER TWELVE

      
From the Wiccan Rede:

When the wind blows from the West

Departed souls will have no rest.

“Oh, let’s name him Guardian,” Patsy begged, feeding the dog yet another piece of my gourmet goodies.  There was very little left of what had seemed like a bountiful supply earlier in the evening, and I was getting a little testy about it.  “We can call him Guard for short.”

       “
Glutton
would be more on the mark,” I assured her.  “Don’t feed him any more of that stuff.  It isn’t good for dogs to eat scraps.  I bought him some perfectly-balanced dog food.”

       “Bet it tastes like poop,” said my painfully honest niece.  I would have agreed except that I’d watched Guardian/Glutton gobble down a large bowl of said poop earlier.  He didn’t seem to discriminate between gourmet goodies and dog food.  I’d have to try a nibble of his food sometime when no one was watching.  Maybe the stuff wasn’t all that bad.  Might even be good. 

       Patsy and Joe had arrived home fifteen minutes after I returned from the hospital, arousing the dog from his undivided attention to my hand, which had been steadily moving from plate to mouth with food.  He’d accepted their arrival with great pleasure, tail wagging and grinning like a fool.  The more I was seeing of him, the more I wondered exactly how much he’d protected me from my attacker and how much he’d just been trying to join in the fun and games the humans seemed to be having.  Not that it mattered particularly, but it was kind of nice to believe I’d had a protector.  I mentioned the thought to the two young people, who’d been chagrined at not being here for the excitement. 

       “Dogs know,” Joe announced, portentously.  What they knew and what he was basing his knowledge on he didn’t mention. 

       Patsy leaped in before I could turn mean and pin him down.  “It doesn’t really matter, does it?  He barks.  He’s big.  He’s a little ... Well,
scary
looking.  Daddy always says you don’t need a
mean
dog.  A good dog will attack anything to protect its master.  They don’t need to be trained.  It’s instinct.”

       I didn’t want to call her Daddy a liar, so I looked thoughtful.  Actually I like my brother-in-law.  He has a quiet, almost sneaky, sense of humor.  Around The Seven-Sisters and the rest of my primarily female family, that’s as far as any man dares to go.

       “We can think about it,” I told them.  “He won’t be around long, so don’t become too attached to him.  If the house was separate from the boutique, it wouldn’t be much of a problem, but it’s not.  He’s too big and noisy.  Can you imagine him barking every time someone came in to shop?”

       “We can train him,” Patsy argued.  This from the girl who would be off to school in a few months, leaving me to walk him and shovel the doggy poo-poo all those long, cold winter months.  Besides, I wanted to do some traveling.  I had kids to visit, places to go. 

       “Then you can stop giving him treats, for a start,” I grouched.  It was enough to watch Joe scarf down my goodies without seeing them feeding the treats to the dog.  I’d already scratched lunch and was merely hoping for a few treats before bedtime the coming night. 
If
there was even enough left for that.

       I was really going to have learn to tell people to keep their greedy hands off my food.

       I talked the two of them into walking the dog up the road to the adjoining state land for its nightly chores (I hoped), giving them repeated warnings to be careful, keep an eye out, be ready to run ...  It was difficult to think of the hefty Joe, accompanied by such a formidable looking dog, being in any danger.  Apparently neither of them thought so either, because they set out to walk the dog as if they didn’t have a care in the world.  Ah, youth. As soon as they were out of sight, I packed away the rest of the food and stuffed it deep in the refrigerator.

       I told them to shut the dog in the laundry room in the basement for the night when they returned.  I’d already put water and more food down there for him, along with a folded old quilt.  If he was going to be around for a few days, it was going to be necessary for him to learn a few basic rules.

       Then I took my aching body up to bed, forcing myself to take a hot shower before retiring.  I’m finding, as I age, there are parts of me I hadn’t known even existed ten years earlier.  Muscles that have apparently been lying dormant throughout my lifetime will suddenly ache after a little unusual strain on them.  Add a physical attack and a blow to the head and a whole new set of those mystery-muscles had emerged to torment me.  I had to get back into my daily stretching exercises, such as I’d done when I practiced my karate regularly.  I was getting lazy and my body was getting slack.  I’m not naturally self-disciplined.  I would have to force myself into a class or something to keep in shape.  Meanwhile, I felt as though I had been shocked enough by the attack to keep to a schedule for the next few months at least.  I scare easily.

       “Hah!” I shouted, kicking the air in the bathroom when I emerged from the shower.  My body responded with a nasty “hah!” of its own.  I apologized to it before clothing it and tucking it into bed.  I would start my program the next day.  No sense going overboard with the exercise idea.

       I had been ridiculously calm throughout the whole almost-getting-killed ordeal.  I’d gotten to my feet, rescued what I could of my gourmet goodies, called the authorities, gone to the hospital, etc.  Lying in bed, though, the reality of it finally hit me. 
I’d almost been killed!
 
Somebody wanted me dead! 
I curled into a ball, trying to stop my body from shaking, and tried to clear my mind.

       Not gonna happen, I realized.  This fear was much too big to put away for another day.  I got up and double-checked the locks on the doors and the windows, checked on Patsy who (typically) was already snoring softly.  I then got out my biggest, my very favorite rolling pin to take to bed with me.

       Why a rolling pin?  Well, I didn’t own a gun, and I wasn’t sure I was capable of using a knife, so ... why
not
a rolling pin?

       I cradled the rolling pin in my arms like a favorite teddy bear, and finally managed to fall into an exhausted sleep.

         ....

       The next morning I awoke to a sense of something wrong.  No, not
wrong
exactly, but different.  It slowly dawned on me the difference was an unexpected body in the bed.  A live one. It must be how people feel after getting drunk and bringing home a stranger for the night.  “What the ...?  Who the ...?”  In my case, it turned out to be less exciting than a drunken date.  I had the drunk’s headache, though mine was more a dull throb than a full-fledged hangover.  I was properly confused for a minute.  However, when the male in my bed turned over, yawned in my face, and flopped back down again, I remembered all the gory details.

       The howling of a dog is not a sound that’s easily ignored.  It has all the power of a baby’s cry, and adds the mystic sound of wolves baying at the moon.  When the sound echoes through the heating ducts, reaching you two stories above the source, you know exactly what you have to do.  Stop it!  At any cost, put an end to that miserable wailing!  I did.  I went downstairs and brought the yowling monster to bed with me.  At least it shut him up. Patsy, trainer of dogs, proponent of animal rights, had slept through the agonizing howls of canine spiritual suffering.  But that didn’t particularly surprise me, having raised three kids of my own.  You can scream at them until you turn blue to ‘do the dishes!’ and they ‘didn’t hear you’.  Yet they can hear the phone ringing from a mile away, with the wind blowing in the opposite direction.

And to my credit, I have to say that he was not in bed with me when I fell asleep.  He was quietly and peacefully asleep on the rug next to the bed.  How something his size had managed to climb into my bed without my noticing is something I would have to think about later, after my coffee.

       In the meantime, I had to sneak the rolling pin back into the kitchen drawer before Patsy saw it.  In the light of day, I found my fears to be a little embarrassing.  Going to sleep with
food
is one thing, going to sleep with a
utensil
is another.