Maybe. “But that would cut down on the profits. And defeat the purpose.”
Catherine shook her head. “I doubt we’ll ever find out. And I, for one, intend to do anything I can to ensure that they won’t get their hands on the place. Now more than ever. It was one thing to question Beulah’s competency. She was old, and they didn’t know her well. But to accuse Yvonne of murder, when there isn’t even any evidence that a murder was committed... I’m not going to stand for that.”
“Good for you!” I applauded. “I’ll stand with you.”
“I might hold you to that.” She turned to Yvonne. “How about you?”
“I don’t think I can afford you,” Yvonne said. “I’m working at the drugstore for minimum wage.”
Catherine reached over and patted her hand. “Don’t worry about it. When you own Beulah’s and I come in to eat, you can give me free pie for life.”
Yvonne looked relieved. And since I’d never in my life seen or heard about my sister eating anything at Beulah’s, let alone pie, I figured Yvonne was probably safe.
“So is there anything I can do to help you?” I wanted to know. “Any snooping you need done, or anything like that?”
Catherine snorted. “You think I’d risk making your husband angry by sending you out to snoop? No way. And anyway, I don’t think there’s much of anything that anyone can do right now. We’ll just have to see what happens. I’m going to go read some case law about civil cases in situations like this. See if I can do anything to prepare, if indeed they plan to bring a civil suit.”
“I could talk to the sheriff,” I suggested. “See if he’ll check with the M.E. to see if there’s any chance at all that Beulah might have been murdered.”
“We don’t want Beulah to have been murdered,” Catherine reminded me. “We want there to be no question at all about whether Yvonne could have killed her.”
“Sure. But isn’t it better to know for sure?”
Catherine allowed, a little reluctantly, that maybe it was. “Don’t spend a lot of time on it, though. If everyone said it was natural causes, it probably was.”
I promised I wouldn’t do more than make a quick inquiry.
“What about me?” Yvonne wanted to know.
Catherine shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. I realize that’s probably easier said than done, but we made it through the hearing. And we won. We’re going to make it through this, too. And win again.”
Whatever ‘this’ turns out to be.
I thought the words, but I didn’t say them. There was no point in fouling up my sister’s pretty little speech with dire predictions. Yvonne was already worried enough.
* * *
Catherine said she’d drive Yvonne back to Damascus, so I headed back up into the foothills to find my husband and the sheriff, to update them on what had happened. And since Rafe had been concerned about his phone, I didn’t call him first. Instead, I called Sheriff Satterfield.
“Good afternoon, Sheriff. It’s Savannah.”
“Afternoon, darling.” From the background sound—a sort of humming—I thought he was either driving, or standing next to one of the generators.
“What’s going on? Has my husband made it out of the woods yet?”
“Not quite,” the sheriff said, “but he’s found a road and gotten his bearings. I’m on my way to pick him up.”
“I’m on my way to talk to the two of you.” He didn’t answer, and I added, “I brought lunch.”
Before I left the café in Columbia, I’d had them pack up a couple of chicken wraps for me. I’d thought the offer of food might come in handy—aside from the fact that I had assumed my husband hadn’t had a chance to eat—and I turned out to be right.
“Why don’t you go on up to Robbie’s place,” the sheriff said, “since you know the way. Meanwhile, I’ll go pick up your husband and meet you there.”
That worked for me, and I told him so. We both hung up, and I continued driving. I assume he did, too.
I thought they might beat me there, but Rafe must have ended up farther from the Skinners’ properties than I’d thought. When I came up the rutted driveway and into the open area in front of the trailer, there was no police car there. Just Robbie’s blue truck and the trailer, just like earlier.
I turned off the engine and looked around. Everything seemed quiet. Nothing moved, other than the bare branches of the trees.
I opened the car door, the bag with the sandwiches in my hand, and got out. The dry branches creaked and sort of snapped when they rubbed together.
But there was another sound, too. Sort of squeaky. A little bit like crying.
I should have gotten into the car and waited. But it sounded pitiful. And I thought someone might be in trouble and I could help. So I made my way carefully around Robbie’s truck, toward the back of the trailer. We’d been here earlier, after all. There hadn’t been anything scary here then. And Rafe and she sheriff were coming.
I guess I thought it was someone mourning Robbie. That girlfriend we’d surmised he might have. Or maybe Kayla, Robbie’s daughter. Rafe’s son David had once bicycled all the way from his summer camp on the Cumberland Plateau to Sweetwater to look for his father. He was only a year or so older than Kayla, and it was a very long distance. I wouldn’t put it past her to have bicycled from Pulaski to the Devil’s Backbone to see her dad’s place.
And I didn’t want to scare her, so while I picked my way across the still-muddy ground, I called out. “Hello? Is someone there? Do you need help?”
The whining ceased. I turned the corner of the trailer... and stopped when I found myself face to face—or nose to kneecaps—with the gray dog that had been chained under the trailer yesterday.
It wasn’t chained now. It was unchained, off the leash, and standing six feet in front of me, with its feet planted and its head lowered.
I think I might have squeaked. I don’t think it was a scream, but that was only because my voice got caught in my throat. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to scream.
Up close, it looked even bigger and scarier than yesterday. And it was big, and plenty scary.
I thought about running, but only for a second. In addition to being big and scary, it was muscular. A bit on the thin side—I could see ribs—but if I ran, I had a feeling it would chase me. And probably catch me. And then eat me.
The dogs nose twitched. I remembered the bag in my hand.
I reached in and closed my fingers around a chicken wrap. “Here, doggie.” My voice shook as I pulled the wrapped sandwich out of the bag. “Are you hungry?”
I thought about just throwing it the package, and then taking off while it ripped at the paper. But it’s tail twitched, in a sort of tentative, aborted wag, and I found myself feeling sorry for it. Still scared practically out of my mind, but sorry enough that I took off the outer paper. My hands shook so much I almost dropped the sandwich on the ground.
The dog kept its eyes on it, but it didn’t—as I’d been afraid of—attack me and try to tear the sandwich out of my hands. Maybe someone had taught it to wait—and I didn’t really want to think too hard about that, since it might have involved hurting the dog.
“Sit,” I tried.
It sat. I tossed the first sandwich at its feet. It leapt on it, and devoured it practically whole, in a single gulp. Inner wrapping and all.
“Wow.” It looked up at me, expectantly. “Um...”
The second sandwich was still in the bag. And I might as well sacrifice that one, as well, since I didn’t have food for both Rafe and the sheriff now. They’d understand that I’d had to use what I had to defend myself.
I pulled the second sandwich out of the bag. My hands were still a little unsteady, but better than earlier. If nothing else, I knew that the dog would sit and wait, and wouldn’t attack me.
Unless it would leap on me once it figured out that I was out of food...?
I determined that as soon as I’d given it the second sandwich, I’d make a br
eak for it. I could probably make it over to Robbie’s truck, at least, before the dog caught up.
Assuming it would stop and eat the sandwich first. If it left the sandwich behind in pursuit of me, I’d be out of luck.
I took the paper off the second sandwich. Each half was still wrapped in a thinner wrapping paper, and I removed that, too, from one half. “OK. Here’s the deal. I’m going to give you this.”
The dogs stub of a tail made that twitch again.
“And then I’m going to leave the second half over here and back away. And it would be really nice if you’d just eat the food and let me leave. I’m giving you my husband’s sandwich. He’s probably not going to be happy about that. And I’m pregnant. I really don’t want to be mauled by a dog. You know?”
The dog twitched its tail, eyes on the sandwich in my hand.
“OK, then.” I took a deep breath before I tossed half the sandwich in its direction. It snapped it out of the air, before it even landed on the ground.
“Shit. I mean—” Shoot.
“OK.” I took another breath. “Stay. OK? Stay where you are. Wait.”
I bent, to the best of my ability, and placed the second half of the sandwich on the ground in front of my feet. And then I took a step back. “Stay.”
The dog stayed.
I stepped back again. “Wait.”
The dog waited. It was looking at the sandwich, not me. I made it to the corner of the house.
“OK,” I told it. “Go ahead.”
I ducked around the corner, but not before I’d head the rush of displaced air as the dog moved, and then the snapping of its jaws. Catherine’s table manners were absolutely perfect in comparison.
I knew it wouldn’t take the dog long to swallow the second half of the second chicken wrap, so I threw the plastic bag on the ground—maybe it would serve as a momentary distraction; maybe it still smelled like food—and then I booked it as fast as I could in the direction of the Volvo.
Fifteen
I was halfway there when a car crested the driveway and bumped its way into the parking area.
It slowed me down for a second. I knew the sheriff and Rafe were on their way, but I also hadn’t forgotten my earlier fear that someone would be at Robbie’s place to harm Rafe. So I slowed down. Just long enough for the dog to round the corner of the trailer and bound past me.
The car did belong to the sheriff, as evidenced by the light bar on the roof. But by then, the dog was between me and the car, it’s feet planted and the hairs at the back of its neck standing up. It was barking, those same threatening barks we’d heard yesterday morning.
The car stopped. At an angle. The passenger side door opened and Rafe got out, his movements smooth and, even from this distance, sort of deadly. It didn’t surprise me to see him brace his forearms on the hood of the car, his pistol aimed at the dog.
“Wait,” I yelled, over the dog’s barks. “Don’t.”
My phone rang. I fished it out of my pocket and looked at it. It was the sheriff. “You need to get out of the way,” he told me tersely. “Your husband can’t shoot with you that close to the dog.”
“Tell him not to. The dog’s protecting me.”
The sheriff didn’t say anything, but I could hear him relay the message to Rafe. He didn’t move.
“I swear,” I said. “He’s standing between me and you. And he just ate both your sandwiches. I think he’s trying to make sure I’m safe.”
“Not sure I want to take that chance,” the sheriff told me. “If something happens to you, your mama’ll have my hide.”
I could hear Rafe’s voice in the background. I didn’t bother to ask what he said. I could guess.
“Just let me try to talk to it,” I said. “It listened to me earlier.”
I waited while the sheriff relayed the message to Rafe. “He says to hurry up,” the sheriff told me. “And if you can’t, get out of the way so he can have a clear shot.”
“I’m not letting him shoot the dog. Not unless he has tranquilizer darts in that gun.” I dropped the phone back in my pocket, but without turning it off. I wanted them to be able to hear what was going on.
And I admit it, it took everything I had of courage to step up to the dog. It was about six feet in front of me, feet planted and compact body tensed and ready to go on the attack if it felt the need.
“It’s OK,” I told it, doing my best to keep my voice calm and even. It wasn’t easy. Although I hoped and prayed that it wouldn’t, I knew there was a chance the dog might turn and attack me. If it did, I hoped Rafe could shoot it before it mauled me and the baby. And if he had to, I hoped his aim was true enough that he didn’t accidentally shoot us instead of the dog. “It’s all right. You can stop barking. They’re friends. They won’t hurt me. Or you.”
Hopefully I was right about that.
The dog glanced over its shoulder at me between barks.
I nodded. “I promise. It’s all right. Nothing’s going to happen. If you’ll stop doing this, I’ll make sure you get another chicken sandwich.” Even if I had to go buy one. “Or a hamburger. Something good.”
The dog hesitated before the next bark.
“I swear. All you have to do is stop barking, and then show them that you’re not going to hurt me. And they’ll put the guns away, and we’ll all walk away from this.”
The dog wouldn’t, of course. I had no idea how it had even made it here, now that I thought about it. The woman from Animal Control had picked it up yesterday. Maybe it had gotten away from her and run back home.
“It’ll be all right,” I told it, between barks that were becoming less and less frequent now. I don’t know whether it was my voice, or the fact that nobody moved, but either way, the dog was calming down. The scruff at the back of its neck was no longer standing at attention. “Why don’t you come with me? We’ll go get in the car. That way we’ll both be safe. And nobody’ll shoot at you.”
I took a step to the side. The dog glanced at me and followed, making sure to keep itself between me and the police car.
We kept walking. I could feel the muzzle of the pistol following along as we did, until we—or at least the dog—disappeared behind the front of the Volvo. It was a big dog, but not big enough that it showed over the hood of the car.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Rafe holstering the pistol and stepping out from behind the sheriff’s vehicle. I hoped he had enough sense to stay out of the way until I had—hopefully—managed to tuck the dog away in the backseat of the Volvo.
We stopped at the back door, and I opened it. “Here you go. You’ll be safe in here.”
The dog looked from me to the open door.
“It’s OK. I won’t let anything happen to you. I’m not sure why you ran away from Animal Services. Maybe you just wanted to go home. But there’s nobody here anymore. So we’ll find another home for you.”
I waited. Eventually the dog crouched, and then jumped into the backseat. I waited until it was clear of the door. “Go ahead. Lie down and take a rest. You must have walked a long way to get here. Just take it easy. I’ll be right here.”
I had no idea how much it understood. Probably very little. But it understood the tone of my voice, I think. When I shut the car door, it didn’t object.
I got to the front of the car just as Rafe did. The sheriff had exited the vehicle, but seemed to think it would be best to let the two of us handle this without interference. Maybe he thought we were about to have a married spat.
Rafe arched a brow at me.
“Sorry,” I said. “But it seems like a nice dog. I couldn’t let you shoot it.”
He glanced at the car. The dog was standing up on the backseat, staring a hole through the windshield.
“I think it’s just very protective,” I added. “It was probably trained to protect Robbie. And maybe Sandy and Kayla when they were here. Do you think they might want it?”
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t wanna trust that dog with a lit
tle girl. And anyway, that was a small house they lived in. And no fence. They’d have to chain it under a tree in the yard.”
I definitely didn’t want that. I was still bothered by the way Robbie had kept the dog chained.
“Maybe we’ll just have to take it home with us.”
His brows rose. Both of them this time. “Have you lost your mind?”
“We have the room. The backyard is fenced. And the house is huge.” Three stories. Not quite as big as the Martin Mansion, but plenty for two people and a dog. And soon, a baby. “And we could use a dog. You’ve said yourself it isn’t the greatest neighborhood. How many times have people broken into our house now? Three? Four? All in the last year?”
He had no answer for that.
“In a couple of months, I’ll be home with the baby,” I said. “Alone. And you’ll be at work. Having a protective dog around isn’t a bad idea.”
He glanced into the car again. The dog was still standing at attention.
He turned back to me. “Does it have to be that one? Couldn’t we get a nice, normal dog from a store, or somewhere? The pound, even. Just not that one?”
“I like that one,” I said. “And I think it likes me. I may have bought its affection with chicken wraps, but after I fed it, it tried to protect me.”
Rafe sighed. “How’s your mama gonna react when you bring that monster back to her house?”
I hadn’t thought about that. Chances were she wouldn’t react well. Then again, she had surprised me before. “Worst case scenario, it can sleep in the carriage house for a couple of nights. Until we go home.”
He sighed again. “I’m not opposed to a dog. You’re right, a dog might be a good idea. But I want it to be a dog that likes me. I don’t wanna have to worry about getting my throat ripped out when I walk through my own door.”
“It’ll learn to like you.” Just like I had. “It’ll just have to get to know you first. Next time, you can feed it.” And it probably had to realize that Rafe was no threat to me. If the dog had attached itself to me, once it realized that Rafe’s whole purpose was to protect me, too, the two of them would be best of friends.
Bad Debt (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 14) Page 16
