by Donna Ball
“Okay,” I said, glancing out over the lineup of dogs and the family and friends who were beginning to fill the folding chairs inside the tent. “I guess this is it.” And, because I was feeling more kindly disposed toward him now that I knew he was a golden retriever person, I added, “I’m sorry I got you in trouble with Jolene. Deputy Smith, I mean. And I appreciate the help with the crate.”
“That’s okay,” he replied. “You can make it up to me by letting me buy you that corn dog after the show.”
“Look,” I said, “you don’t have to keep being nice to me. You already have my vote.”
“Good to hear,” he replied with an appreciative nod of his head, “because it would be a lot harder to persuade you to work on my campaign if you were voting for the other guy.”
I gave a disbelieving shake of my head. “You really don’t know when to stop, do you?”
“That’s how you win elections,” he assured me.
“Well, you’re going to have to win this one by yourself. I’m not working on anybody’s campaign. But,” I added, “I will take that corn dog.”
He was laughing as he walked away.
~*~
I am not a qualified dog show judge, but that’s okay because this wasn’t a qualified dog show. It was mostly a way to reward outstanding participants in the 4-H club’s dog program and to encourage others to join, so I made sure I had something nice to say about every dog. Since most of the dogs were mixed breeds, there was no real standard: I judged on cleanliness and general grooming, manners and disposition, and basic obedience commands. The winner, hands down, was an Aussie/border collie mix, but you just can’t get any smarter than that, with second place going to what looked to be a cross between a German Shepherd and a collie, and third place taken by a funny little bulldog named Gus who, I was happy to see, had not forgotten all of the obedience skills he had learned in puppy class at Dog Daze.
I lingered to congratulate the winners and encourage the also-rans, taking the opportunity to pass out Dog Daze business cards to moms and dads while I was there. I brought Cisco out of his crate and let him do a few tricks for a dog biscuit, and one of the parents was nice enough to hold his leash while I got Cameo out and folded up the crate. Of course there were a lot of oohs and ahhs over Cameo, who really was a striking-looking dog, and she preened under the attention.
I dragged my camp down the midway to the Humane Society booth, which was decorated with colorful dog and cat flags and paw print bunting, and was once again flushed and sweating by the time I got there—not to mention hungry. I was beginning to hope Marshall had been serious about that corn dog. I wondered where he had gone off to until I heard, muffled by distance and carousel music, a microphoned voice saying something about the land of the free and the home of the brave, followed by cheers and applause. His speech. Of course.
The volunteer I relieved helped me set up the crate and get the dogs situated before she left. I put Cameo in the crate with a bowl of water and a chew toy, and let Cisco, wearing his “Donate now!” vest, sit beside me at the table that held brochures, volunteer signup sheets, and the donation jar.
With two show-stoppers like Cisco and Cameo, I would have been foolish not to take advantage of both of them, and I planned to take turns letting them wear the vest and work the crowd. Cisco and I did a brisk business, although I will admit, most of the people who stopped by just wanted to pet Cisco and tell me about their own dogs, dropping only a handful of change into the jar when they left. But quarters and nickels are better than nothing at all, and I actually like hearing about other peoples’ dogs.
Midway through my shift I switched out the dogs, zipping Cisco into the crate and slipping the “Donate” vest over Cameo’s head. She seemed pretty sanguine about the whole thing, and Cisco was happy as long as he could see her—and enjoy his chew bone, of course. I had no reason to expect trouble, so I was completely caught off guard when Cameo suddenly gave a series of joyful barks and leapt forward, jerking the leash out of my hand as she plunged into the crowd.
I cried, “Cameo!”
Panic surged as I rushed after her. A dog loose in this crowd might never be seen again, especially one as pretty as Cameo, and if I lost her for the second time … But I only had to run a few steps before my fears were allayed. A fairgoer had caught her—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say she had caught him. She was standing with her front paws on his chest, grinning, while he ruffled her fur and scratched her ears and exclaimed, “Hey, there, pretty girl! Aren’t you looking fine?”
I said, gasping, “I’m so sorry! She got away from me.” I reached for the leash and then caught my breath as the man looked up at me. It was the same balding, stoop-shouldered tourist who’d tried to break into my car … only he wasn’t stoop-shouldered now, and he didn’t look like a tourist.
He was wearing neat khaki pants and a short-sleeved, buttoned white shirt, and he moved with confidence and assurance. He said, “Cameo, off.”
Cameo obeyed him, four feet on the ground, looking up at him adoringly. He smiled as he extended his hand to me. “Miss Stockton,” he said. “I’m Greg Sellers.”
I extended my hand too; not to shake his but to snatch Cameo’s leash. “Mr. Sellers,” I said, “you should know the police are looking for you.”
“I’m not surprised.” A shadow of pain came over his face as he added, “I heard about April. I’m sure they want to interview me. I was on my way to the sheriff’s department when I got your call. I thought it would save time all around if I could bring them some information they could actually use.”
I looked at him warily. “How did you find me?”
“You said you were working a booth at the fair. I’m a detective. I figured it out.” Again he smiled. “Also, I saw Cameo across the midway.”
If I could get past the fact that he had tried to break into my car and my kennel, had snatched my purse and kicked my feet out from under me in the process, I might have been fooled into thinking he was a pleasant man. Even nice. I was having almost as much of a hard time reconciling his demeanor with his behavior as I was trying to believe that this well-dressed, well-spoken man was the same bumbling tourist I’d met only two days ago.
I could hear Cisco barking anxiously, and I knew if I didn’t return soon he would break right through the zippered mesh door of the crate. It wasn’t as though he’d never done it before. I glanced uneasily over my shoulder, back toward my booth. “I have to get back.”
He walked with me the few dozen steps back toward the colorful Humane Society booth. Cameo trotted between us happily, her head up tilted to keep her eyes on Sellers, her golden retriever smile lighting up her whole face. I said, “Cameo seems to like you.”
He flashed a grin down at Cameo. “Yeah, she’s my bud. I’ve had her since she was eight weeks old. After the divorce, I insisted on visitation rights. Of course …” And the grin faded. “Once April married Madison, that wasn’t so easy anymore.”
I remembered Tony Madison saying when Jolene interviewed him in the hospital, “None of this would have happened except for that damn dog.” I’d thought he meant that if April hadn’t gone out searching for a lost dog she never would have fallen. But now the police had evidence that she hadn’t fallen, at least by accident. Was it possible that what had begun as a custody dispute over a dog had ended in murder?
I drew Cameo closer to me as we reached the booth. Cisco was standing in his crate, nose pressed to the mesh door, tail wagging madly. I moved behind the table, folding another loop in the leash to keep Cameo close, and said boldly, “I guess that explains how you were able to plant the transmitter in her collar.”
To my surprise, he didn’t deny it. “Madison was trying to convince April to move to California. That’s what this trip was about, or at least that’s what he claimed.” His brows drew together in a way that seemed fierce to me, but it might have simply been in an effort to hide his grief. “I was afraid he was planning something like this, and
it turns out I was right. I couldn’t let her go off alone with him, so I put the transmitter in Cameo’s collar to keep up with them.”
I thought that anyone who would use an electronic bug to spy on his ex-wife and her new husband—not to mention tracking them across the country—was a little sick, but sometimes I actually do think before I speak, so I said nothing. Besides, at that moment a little boy dragged his parents over to the booth, eagerly pointing at Cameo, and demanded, “Does your dog bite?”
“All dogs bite,” I told him, and tried to soften my words with a smile. I’m not sure how well I did, since most of my attention was still on the man next to me. “What you want to do is make sure they don’t bite you.”
I went into an abbreviated version of my lecture on dog safety, showed him how to scratch Cameo under the chin instead of coming over her head with an open hand, and handed the parents a brochure. They let the kid put a dollar into the donation jar.
I said, when they were gone, “What I don’t understand is why you didn’t try to find April when she first went missing. If you were listening to everything that was going on you must have known something was wrong.”
“You have to be within a few hundred yards to pick up a voice transmission,” he explained, “that’s why the device is equipped with a recorder. I lost the GPS signal on Tuesday night and I did know something was wrong, but there was nothing I could do about it. I didn’t know where they were.”
I said, “Cameo was with April, in the gorge.”
He nodded, “That’s why I couldn’t get a signal until she was picked up on Thursday morning. I tracked her—or at least her collar—to town, and to the vet’s, and to your place.”
I said, “Why didn’t you just come up and introduce yourself, instead of following me and trying to break into my kennel?”
He shook his head with an expression that was part sad, part rueful. “And say what? That I had planted an electronic bug in the dog’s collar to stalk my ex-wife? Would you really have turned Cameo over to me under those circumstances? You would have called the police and I wouldn’t have been able to do anything.”
He was right about that.
“Besides,” he went on, “I still didn’t know what had happened to April. As far as I knew Madison might have dumped Cameo and taken off with her. I knew Cameo was safe with you. Finding April was my first priority.”
Another family came up, admired Cameo, and dropped some coins into the jar. I smiled and thanked them, but forgot to give them a brochure. I turned back to Sellers. “Look,” I said, not particularly graciously, “I know you think you did the right thing, and who knows? Maybe it’ll turn out you did. But the truth of the matter is that you were stalking your ex-wife and that’s not going to put you in a very good light in the eyes of the police. The best thing you can do is turn yourself in.”
His lips tightened, causing grim brackets to appear at either side of his mouth. “I stalked my ex-wife,” he said, putting emphasis on the word “stalked,” “because she married a killer. Tony Madison has been married three times before, and each wife has died less than a year after they were married. They all had life insurance policies. Fifty thousand, seventy-five … nothing outrageous, but I guess it’s worth killing for. He lives off of the insurance until it runs out and then he marries somebody else. April had a hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar policy from her job.”
I stared at him. “But … if that’s true, the police …”
“There was an investigation after the last wife,” Sellers said. “Of course they weren’t able to pin anything on him. He’d had two to practice on by then, and they all were made to look like accidents. Just like April’s accident.”
My thoughts were spinning. How could the guy make something like that up? And if Tony Madison had killed four wives, including April, it certainly explained why he had run when I’d mentioned Greg Sellers was tracking him. I said, “You need to take this to the police.”
He replied patiently, “That’s exactly what I intend to do. But it won’t mean anything unless I can also take them the proof.”
He looked as though he expected me to say something, and when I didn’t, he prompted, “Don’t you see? The device records. If Cameo was with April when Madison knocked her out and threw her into the gorge, and I’m almost certain she was, then everything that happened in those last minutes is recorded on that chip. That’s why I need it before I go to the police.”
I looked at him blankly. “What? But—you already have it. You stole it out of my purse last night!”
Now it was he who looked confused. “Stole it? What are you talking about?”
“Are you telling me you didn’t follow me to the fair last night?” I demanded angrily. “Because I know it was you! It had to be!”
His expression was caution mixed with reluctance. “All right,” he admitted. “I followed you here. But it’s not like the thing is a beacon, you know. I knew you were somewhere on the fairgrounds, but I was never able to find you. It was almost dark, and I might’ve walked right past you without recognizing you.”
And he might well have done so, when Cameo caught the scent of someone in the crowd and burst into the same kind of happy barking she’d demonstrated when she pulled the leash out of my hands a few minutes ago. Sonny had said it was her dad. Foolishly, I’d thought she meant Tony Madison.
“But,” I said, floundering, “someone knocked me down, stole my purse. And the only thing they took from it was the transmitter.”
Greg Sellers looked at me in confusion and dismay. “Miss Stockton,” he said, “I checked the GPS on that device half an hour ago, and it clearly shows it’s still at your address.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
All I could think was, Corny. It had been Corny after all. I didn’t know how, or why, but what other explanation could there be? He had shown up almost at the same time as Cameo, hadn’t he? He had known every detail of my schedule for the past two days. He had even been staying at the same campground as April Madison. And if the transmitter was tracking to my address now, he was the only one who was there. Even Marilee only worked half days on Saturdays and was long gone. It had to be him.
But I just couldn’t believe it.
I said slowly, “I think I know who has it.”
There was a quickening of expectation in his eyes. “Can you get it back?”
“I don’t know.” I bit down on my thumbnail anxiously. “I could be wrong.”
A group of teenagers stopped by the table, picked up some brochures and put them down again, nudged each other, and pointed to Cameo. “Hey,” said one of them, “is that dog for sale?”
I said, “No.” And hoped the brief answer would send them on their way.
Another one said, “Last year at the fair they were giving away puppies.”
I said, “The humane society doesn’t give away puppies. If you want to adopt a dog you have to fill out a form and be approved. The cost is sixty dollars.”
One of them guffawed. “For a dog?”
I bit down on my impatience. “The fee includes spay or neuter surgery and all shots. And,” I added pointedly, “you have to be twenty-one or older to apply.”
The group wandered off, looking disgruntled, and Sellers said, “I don’t mean to be pushy, Miss Stockton, but the longer I delay going to the police with my information, the less likely I am to be believed—unless I have evidence, of course. I’ve got to get that transmitter back.”
I said, “You need to tell the police what you know. I’ll look again for the transmitter, and if I find it I’ll turn it in. That’s all I can do.”
There was a moment, just a moment, when I thought he might object, but then he nodded. “Fair enough. You have my cell number.” He started to turn away.
I said, “How did you know she’d been hit over the head?”
He looked back at me, puzzled.
“I mean, until this morning everyone, including the police, thought April had fallen.”
He smiled, understanding. “I have a police scanner in my car.”
I said, “Oh,” and tried to smile back. I probably wasn’t very convincing.
He said soberly, “This is important, Miss Stockton. What’s recorded on that device may be the only way we can stop a serial killer.”
“I know,” I said. “I’ll find it.”
He nodded and walked away. Cameo whined and tugged at the leash as she watched him go.
I glanced at my watch. I still had another half hour before the end of my shift, and that seemed like far too long. Before I could decide what to do, I was besieged by another group of fairgoers, this one complete with three small children holding sticks of cotton candy. Cisco stood up in his crate and barked when he saw the cotton candy, and one of the toddlers, startled, dropped his candy on Cameo’s head. The toddler wailed, his siblings laughed, and the parents frantically tried to herd the group away while I scrubbed at Cameo’s sticky ears with a tissue dipped in the dogs’ water dish.
“Looks like you’ve got your hands full,” said a male voice behind me, “again.”
I glanced over my shoulder to see Marshall Becker place a red and white box filled with concession stand food on the table. “Do you have time for a lunch break?” he asked.
“I, um …” I straightened up, distracted, and glanced at the food. “Thank you, that’s nice. Could you do me a favor?” I thrust Cameo’s leash into his hand. “Hold her for a minute. I have to make a phone call.”
Without waiting for a reply I dug my phone out of my pocket and walked away from the crowd as I dialed. Jolene answered on the second ring.
