Joe chuckled. “And the bishop believes that having a wife who can shoot straight and kill the animals with evil plans for the henhouse might be a great help to a novice farmer.”
“Farmer?”
“They are planning my future for me.”
“Oh! My father’s people love doing that.” Rachel’s cheeks had grown pink with embarrassment. “But I am astonished that the men have been discussing the length of my childbearing years.”
“Men are men, Amish or not. I’m not at all surprised that there have been some manly speculations about you. I think it was a good idea to take you off the market as soon as I did. You might have found yourself being courted by someone wearing suspenders and driving a buggy.”
“After hearing about that comment of Peter’s, I believe you’re right.”
The high color of her face subsided. She turned her back to the men and Joe saw that her eyes were troubled. He knew it had nothing to do with the banter of his male Amish friends. Despite her surprise over Peter’s comment, Rachel was tougher than that.
“I know you’re happy to be home, Joe, but…is something wrong? You seem to be worried.”
Rachel didn’t miss much. His wife could read body language as well as other people could read the newspaper.
“We’ll talk tonight,” Joe said. “After Bobby goes to sleep.”
“I already made arrangements for Bobby to spend the night at Ezra’s house.”
“That’s even better.”
“Something bad happened in LA?” Her brow was furrowed with worry. “What was it?”
“Things were not as I had hoped.” Joe glanced around at the crowd. “Like I said, we’ll talk tonight.”
Chapter 4
“Got a new friend for you, Carl.” The dog handler walked into the common room of the prison where Carl had been waiting. This was where the exchange between dog handlers and prisoners took place. “She’s going to need a lot of care. This is a bad case.”
The dog the handler brought to Carl was not the worst example of animal abuse he had ever worked with, but it was close. She was a black Labrador retriever mix, one of the sweetest breeds of all, and she was a mess of nerves. As he stooped down to get a better look at her, she tried to hide behind the handler’s legs. When he reached out to pet her, she made a puddle on the floor from the sheer fear of the touch of a man’s hands.
He felt his anger rise and immediately tamped it down. Being angry at the dog’s previous owner could transfer to her, in her mind, and she would not be able to distinguish the difference.
“Thanks, Sarah,” he said. “I’ll take good care of her.”
The middle-aged, heavy-set blonde who handed the dog’s leash to him had devoted her life to rescuing animals. Carl respected her for that. He also respected her for having the courage to deliver the dogs to the prison.
It was not as dangerous as some would think. The prisoners who had been given the privilege of working with the dogs did not want to put their hard-earned positions at risk. But, still, even driving up to the prison was intimidating to most outsiders. He gave Sarah points for being willing to do so.
“I know she’s in good hands now.” The volunteer wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands. Sarah was tenderhearted and a crier. “I don’t understand what’s wrong with some people.”
“I don’t either.” Carl hated to see Sarah cry, so he tried to distract her. “Hey, what was the weather like when you were coming in?”
“Oh, you know what March is like.” She sniffled a little. “In like a lion, out like a lamb.”
“So it’s nice outside?”
“It’s perfect—warm with clear blue skies.”
“Then go home and enjoy it, Sarah,” he said. “I can take it from here.”
‘Thanks, Carl.”
It was hard work getting the Lab back to the cell. She skittered around on the surface of the shiny concrete floor, trying to get away. He was finally forced to simply pick her up and carry her, her terror exhibiting itself by the dog going stone-still.
As soon as he closed his jail-cell door, Carl put her down and tried to get a better look at her as she ran, shivering from fear, to the nearest corner.
“It’s okay, girl. You’re safe now.” He crouched and put out his hand for her to smell.
Instead of sniffing him and beginning to make friends, the dog cowered with its backside pressed hard against the cement wall. The whites of her eyes showed as she searched for a way of escape.
“I know you don’t trust me,” Carl spoke gently, staying where he was and letting his hands dangle between his knees. Dogs this frightened could become dangerous—even a sweet-tempered breed like the Lab. He knew better than to make any sudden moves around her. “I don’t blame you, girl. I wouldn’t trust me either, if I were you. Not after what you’ve been through.”
With her tail tucked tight between her legs, the dog sidled along the perimeter of the cell until she was directly behind him. At sixty-two years of age, Carl didn’t move as easily as he used to, but when he turned around, he saw the dog exactly where he expected her to be—curled up tightly in the furthest, deepest corner, beneath the metal bunk where he slept.
“You feeling safer now?” He might be angry at the unknown person who had hurt this beautiful, gentle creature, but he felt proud to be given the opportunity to heal her.
When he had first asked to be included in the prison’s dog-training program, it was entirely for selfish reasons. The prisoners who trained dogs were to keep them at their side seven days a week, twenty-four hours per day. The best part, in Carl’s mind, was that they shared their cells with the dogs alone. As long as he was a dog trainer, he would not be assigned a human roommate. Now, working with the dogs consumed most of his waking thoughts and gave him a reason to live.
He filled the frightened dog’s water dish from the stainless steel lavatory in his cell and sat it at the foot of his cot beside her food bowl. He sat quietly and thought awhile. His new roommate needed a name, and he prided himself on coming up with good ones.
Blackie was an obvious one, but everyone used it. Carl remembered seeing a movie once by the name of Black Beauty. He didn’t remember much about the movie except that there was a beautiful black horse in it.
Black Beauty sounded a little pretentious, though. Maybe he would shorten it to Beauty. That suited the pretty young animal still cowering in the corner of his cell. He leaned down and looked beneath the cot.
“Do you like the name Beauty, girl? I believe it fits you. At least it will when those scars get all healed up.”
It would take six weeks of careful work to bring this dog out of her terror. At least six weeks. Maybe more. At the end of his time with her, she would be housebroken, able to obey simple commands, and trained to walk quietly at the end of a leash—and she would have gotten her heart and her dignity back. Carl intended to use every method he knew to make her whole again.
At the end of his time with her, someone from the outside would come to the prison, pay one hundred and fifty dollars to help cover the prison’s expense of food, and take possession of the animal Carl had lived with and trained and loved. There was a long waiting list for prisoner-trained dogs.
He would be allowed to meet the new owners and give them special instructions about the personality of the dog. He would also take stock of the people taking his animal home with them. Usually, he was pleased. Sometimes he wasn’t. There was nothing he could do about it either way.
Each time, it felt empty in his cell after his charge had been taken to what some of the visiting civilians called a “forever home.”
His feelings were ambiguous about that term. Nothing was forever. Homes could be destroyed by any number of things, some from without, some from within. Some quietly rotted away from neglect.
The only “forever home” he knew was the one here where he could not leave of his own free will. The one with metal bars and guards. The one where he was serving a life sentence fo
r a murder he had not intended to commit.
Carl had killed a man. Some said it was in cold blood. At least a dozen people saw him do it, so he could not deny it. But it had not been in cold blood. It had been a knee-jerk reaction to what he saw as a threat. Unfortunately, he had been at the wrong place at the wrong time and had reacted in the worst way possible.
Carl understood how a man could accidentally kill another man. The one thing he would never understand was why anyone would deliberately hurt a defenseless animal.
Without a dog for a roommate, he always felt lonesome in his “forever home.” But he was seldom alone for long. There was always another damaged dog to take in, and he was very good at healing them. It was the only thing he was good at. He understood the psyche of abused dogs.
After all, he had grown up feeling like one of them.
Chapter 5
“Jock-itch cream?” Rachel paused in forking up her salad and stared at him.
“I only have to memorize a couple of sentences,” Joe said. “It shouldn’t take more than a day in California for me to film the commercial.”
“Wearing nothing but your underwear?”
“Well…yes.”
“On television?”
Joe felt a little sick to his stomach at hearing the shock in her voice. It hadn’t sounded quite as bad when an agent in LA contacted him and said that the owner of the company was a big fan of his.
“It pays well, Rachel.” Joe took a bite of spaghetti and noted that the noodles could have used a few more minutes in boiling water. He chose not to point out this fact to her. “And a lot of other athletes would jump at the chance.”
“Are you teasing me?”
“No. I’m serious.”
“Are we really that bad off financially?”
“Yes, actually, we are.”
He had not wanted to give her the bad news on his first night back, but it was not easy to keep anything from her. This was one of the drawbacks of being married to a cop. He had thought he could cushion things by first telling her about the money he would make with the commercial. Obviously, that was a mistake.
“I know you were disappointed that you didn’t get a better price on the house,” she said, “but did something else happen in LA?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Okay.” She shoved her plate away. “I want details.”
He took a deep breath. Dinner had lost its appeal to him as well, and his lack of appetite had nothing to do with undercooked spaghetti.
“Do you remember how we divided up the household chores when we first got married? We decided that I would take on the job of banking and paying the bills?”
“I remember. Was that a mistake?”
“No,” he said. “I’m actually pretty good at it. I only wish I’d figured that out a lot sooner.”
She leaned against the back of her chair and crossed her arms. “What do you mean?”
“Back when I was playing ball and Grace’s acting career was skyrocketing, we had no idea how to handle our money. Grace came from nothing, and my parents subsisted on a missionary’s pay while my brother and I were growing up. I was signing million-dollar contracts and so was Grace. We didn’t trust ourselves to know how to deal with all that money. The busier we got, the more we allowed Henrietta, as our agent and manager, to handle things.”
“Oh no.” Rachel groaned. “Henrietta is part of this story?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“It’s truly amazing how much damage one toxic individual can do.”
“Tell me about it.” He sighed. “The more she took care of us, the more we let her. It was easy to turn over our lives to such a competent woman. At heart, we were still just a couple of kids who wanted the grown-ups to take care of things. Before long, Henrietta was managing everything, including our finances. We thought eliminating so many business decisions would make us more productive in our jobs.”
“Considering what that woman did to my aunts and to Grace, that was a mistake.”
“It was a terrible mistake. Henrietta was a disaster,” Joe said. “But Grace and I didn’t know that at the time. We were impressed with the fact that we were at a point in our careers where we needed someone to be a business manager and take care of all the PR. Henrietta hired an investment broker to look after our finances. It seemed like a great idea as long as we didn’t have to do anything about it.”
“I’m assuming it was not such a great idea.”
“No. But we thought we were being wise. Compared to other careers, an athlete’s is a short one. I had seen other ballplayers blow everything on crazy investments or high living. Grace knew that actresses could be the hottest thing in Hollywood one year and unemployable the next. We were determined to be smarter than that.”
“So what went wrong?”
“Henrietta chose the wrong man to handle our finances.”
“Did he simply make some unwise investment choices, or was it worse?”
“Much worse. I recently noticed my investments trending down, but I figured that was to be expected with all the fluctuations in the stock market. It was slow at first. A trickle. But the trickle got more aggressive. The reports I received started to get confusing. Numbers were not adding up. Finally, I called and questioned him. He was vague and did not give me solid answers. I told him I was coming out and wanted to personally go over my investments with him.”
“I’m guessing that was a mistake too,” Rachel said.
“You’re right. I shouldn’t have given him any warning. When I arrived, the office was closed and it stayed closed. I got the police involved. It turns out I wasn’t the only client he had been stealing from, but I was the biggest. When he knew I was coming—that was the final straw. He’s probably enjoying a nice retirement now, some place from which we can’t extradite him even if we can manage to find him.”
“Aren’t investment brokers backed by their companies?”
“Not all of them. This guy ran his own company. The bottom line is that the police aren’t holding out a lot of hope that we’ll get any of it back.”
Rachel was quiet. She stared down at her hands and toyed with her wedding ring.
“I’m so sorry.” He reached over and grasped her hand. “I should have paid more attention.”
“I thought the only reason you flew out to California was to take care of some paperwork involved with selling the house.” Rachel glanced up at him. “At least that’s what you told me.”
“I didn’t want to worry you until I knew for sure that my hunch was right,” Joe said. “He cleaned us out. That’s why I need to make this commercial—and several others, if I can get them. I can also do baseball signings, some personal appearances…”
“All the things you hate,” Rachel said.
“I won’t be the first man to do things he hates in order to support his family.”
“I’m sure that’s true.” Rachel blew out the candles and began to clear the table. She had created a romantic dinner and he regretted the fact that he had managed to ruin it.
“I’ll work extra hours,” Rachel said finally.
“Sweetheart, what you can make working a few more hours isn’t a drop in the bucket compared to the money I can make in an afternoon of telling the camera how well the jock-itch cream works.”
She covered the salad bowl with plastic wrap. “You’ve actually used the stuff?”
“No,” he admitted.
“Then how can you tell people how good it is?”
There it was again. That basic rock-hard honesty to which she and her Amish relatives held fast.
“The people who make commercials don’t necessarily use the product. The public knows that.”
She poured the leftover spaghetti sauce into a jar and stored it in the refrigerator. “They deliberately lie?”
“It’s not exactly lying,” Joe said. “It’s a gimmick, like an actor playing a part. It’s advertising. Everybody does it.”
“But
you aren’t just anyone, are you?” she said. “You’re Bobby’s father. You’re my husband. For years, you were considered one of the finest athletes in the world. People trust you. How can you consider standing there in your underwear and lying to people on camera?”
“What if I wear a towel?” he asked. “I could try to talk the company into letting me wear a towel. It pays a quarter of a million dollars, Rachel.”
“That much?” She gave it some thought and then shook her head. “I don’t like you having to lie, and I don’t want other women looking at you while you’re wearing nothing but a towel.”
“Rachel, it’s just one commercial.” He was losing this argument and he knew it, but he was also surprised to discover relief and gratefulness that she felt this way. He’d had enough public attention to last him two lifetimes. The last thing he wanted to do was to appear in a commercial, but if that’s what he had to do to support his family…
He gave it one more try.
“Rachel, one of the biblical principles I learned at my father’s knee was Romans 13:8.”
“What does that have to do with advertising jock-itch cream?”
“It says to owe nothing to anyone.”
“Does that mean we’re in debt?”
“Not yet, but we will be soon if I don’t find a real job.”
“You have a real job. You love coaching those kids, and you’re good at it.”
“I also love the idea of being able to keep a roof over our head. I don’t want you to have to put on a uniform and a gun because I can’t support you. Samuel was already telling me that I should make you quit, now that you’re a mother.”
“But we’re okay for now, financially?” she insisted.
“If we continue to live in this house,” he said. “But I wanted to build you a new and bigger house. I wanted to give you nice vacations, like taking you and Bobby to Hawaii or Europe.”
“I have no desire to go to Hawaii or Europe.”
“Okay, Disney World, then. For Bobby.”
Rachel's Rescue Page 3
