by Diana Palmer
CHAPTER TWO
The special agent in charge, a pleasant-looking bald man with a little light blond hair named Hardy Vicks, offered him a seat. After his vacation, Curt would be reporting to Hardy. The agent in charge outlined a case they were working on in the county where Curt’s mother lived.
“It’s a real pain,” Hardy told him irritably. “This guy—” he tossed a photo across the desk to Curt “—Abe Hunt, is a government witness for a big media circus trial in Atlanta. They prosecuted the owner of a strip joint and he turned out to be a funnel for illegal drugs. Worse, he’s got ties to organized crime bosses in Miami.”
“Why is that a problem?” Curt asked as he stared at the photo of a hefty man with curly black hair, dark eyes, and a broad face.
“We can’t find him,” Vicks said drolly. “He’s hiding out, because he doesn’t believe we can protect him from retribution. He is afraid of a hit man named Daniels. The hit man is one of the best in operation. Anyway, Hunt knows everything about the operation, and we’re willing to give him immunity and a new identity if he’ll just finger the bosses. He was in protective custody in Doraville in a safe house. The agents with him were watching that new game show on television, and while they were shouting out answers, the guy walked out the door and vanished.”
Curt grimaced. “Poor guys.”
“Oh, they’ll get over it,” Vicks said. “We’ve got them on surveillance watching counterfeiters eat hamburgers at fast-food joints.”
“Why is that a punishment?”
Vicks grinned. “They’re both on diets.”
“Ouch!”
“Anyway, you’re officially on vacation, but if you could keep an eye out for Abe Hunt, we’d appreciate it,” Vicks told him. “We know he’s got two cousins up in your neck of the woods. In fact, one of them lives just two doors down from your mother.” He grinned again.
“A deputy district attorney lives just across the street from her,” he pointed out with a cold glare. “Why don’t you ask her to watch for your escaped witness?”
“We already have,” came the laconic reply. “She said she’d be delighted and then she asked if you were armed.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Excuse me?”
Vicks was trying very hard not to laugh. “She wanted to know if we let you have more than one bullet.”
Curt’s mouth made a thin line. “She’s a real pain,” he stated.
Vicks’s eyebrows lifted. “Gee, you’re the only man in twenty miles who could say that. She likes the rest of us.” He indicated a small baggie full of cookies on his desk. “She baked those and brought some in for us and the D.A. as well. She sure can cook!”
Curt thought he was going to choke. “Is there anything else?” he asked.
Vicks shrugged. “Not while you’re off duty. Enjoy your vacation.” The older man shot him a wicked glance as he headed for the door. “By the way, the DEA says if you ever lose this job, don’t ask them to hire you.” He was biting back laughter. “They don’t want an agent who can’t tell a tomato plant from a…hey, where are you going?”
Curt was already down the hall, and he left the office door open on purpose, gripping the photo so tightly in his hand that he almost crushed it.
“Russell!”
He stopped just past the metal detector and turned. A deputy sheriff was holding out his pistol in its holster. “You going to give this to me?” the deputy drawled. “That’s real neighborly. I didn’t get you anything.”
Curt took the holster and the pistol and snapped it on his belt next to his badge. He didn’t answer the deputy, but his eyes did.
He stalked out of the courthouse with invisible flames coming off his hair. This had been a real bust of a day.
It didn’t get better when he got back to his mother’s house. There was a big, rawboned red-coated hound dog sitting in the middle of the driveway. He blew the horn and kept blowing it, but the dog wouldn’t budge.
His mother came running out the door, with her finger to her lips. She motioned for Curt to let his window down.
“Don’t do that!” she groaned. “The man next door works nights. He’s trying to sleep.”
“I can’t park the car,” Curt told her. “The dog’s in the way!”
“I don’t have a dog.”
Curt pointed to the big animal, which was now lying down in the driveway.
“Now, where did he come from?” she asked dimly.
“Why don’t you go and ask him?”
She glared at him and went to coax the dog off the driveway. It still wouldn’t budge. She gave Curt a “just a minute” sign with her fingers and ran inside. She came back out with a cube of meat. The dog sniffed and licked and then followed right along with her while Curt got the car under the carport and parked it, turning off the engine.
The dog was now sitting on the porch, looking as if it belonged there.
“You can’t have a hound dog in the city,” Curt told her with a glare at the dog.
“Oh, he isn’t a hound dog, dear, he’s a bloodhound. Don’t you see how long his ears are? Now how do you suppose he got here?”
“Hitchhiked, maybe?”
She gave her son another hard look. “There’s a government witness loose in this county somewhere, hiding out,” she told Curt, keeping her voice down. “His cousin lives in the white house right down there.”
“How do you know that?” he exclaimed. “I’ve only just been told by the special agent in charge of the local FBI branch. The man I’ll be reporting to.”
She put her hands on her hips and gave him a long-suffering look. “I worked for newspapers. I’m an experienced journalist. We know everything.”
“You’re retired.”
She shrugged. “I saw his wife in the grocery store this morning. She told me she can’t stand the guy, but her husband thinks his cousin is the berries because he knows everybody in the rackets, and he’s best friends with one or two sports stars.” She studied her tall son. “I hate sports.”
“Me, too. She had no idea where Abe Hunt might be?”
She shook her head. “But she said she’d tell me if she heard anything. They are leaving town for a vacation somewhere. She didn’t give me any details.”
He looked at the dog. “Maybe we should call somebody. Have you got a dog pound?”
“Sure, it’s right out back…of course there’s a dog pound! But it’s being renovated right now, and there’s no place for strays. Besides, he’s got a collar.” She reached down to look at it. The dog wagged its tail and hassled while she looked for an inscription. “Maybe he belongs to the prison. The correctional institute,” she corrected herself. “I wonder how he got here? I’ll just go phone and see if they know anything about him. Don’t let him leave,” she instructed her son as she went inside.
Curt hitched up his trousers and sat down on the steps, pulling his jacket away from his belt. “See this?” he asked the dog, indicating his pistol. “You try to leave, I’ll shoot you.”
The dog licked Curt’s cheek.
Minutes later, his mother was back with a worried look. “They aren’t missing a bloodhound,” she said worriedly. “In fact, they don’t know of anybody who is. I phoned the sheriff’s office, but they don’t have any reports of missing animals. Nobody seems to have any idea where it came from.”
“It probably belongs to a neighbor,” Curt told her.
“Do you think so?” she asked absently.
Curt glanced across the street and scowled. “It’s probably Marijuana Mary’s,” he said gruffly.
“Mary? Oh, no, it’s not hers. She doesn’t have a dog, although she certainly has a place to keep one,” she added, nodding toward the old barn on the lower end of her property.
Curt stared at it thoughtfully. “Maybe our fugitive is hiding in there. Maybe it’s his bloodhound. He had it come over to throw us off the track.”
She chuckled. “Great thinking. Well, I’ll phone the radio station and ask them to put it
on the local bulletin board. Whoever owns it can come get it.”
“And meanwhile?” he asked uncomfortably.
“It can live here, dear,” she said easily. “Come on, boy!”
She opened the door to let the dog in.
“You can’t have a dog in the house!” he exclaimed. “Not a filthy, flea-and-tick-infested bag of bones like that! What if it decides to get on the sofa?”
She studied him curiously. “We never had pets when you were a boy because your father was allergic to fur,” she recalled. “What a shame.”
“I’m too old for a dog,” he pointed out.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” she said, turning to follow the dog into the kitchen. “Every boy should have one.”
“Then I’ll go to a pet shop and get a German shepherd!” he called after her.
“Too big, dear. He’d never fit in this small house.”
“And you think that big red horse will?”
“He’s not a horse.”
The kitchen door closed. He sighed and went to his room to change back into his leisure clothing. He took the photograph of the fugitive out of the inside pocket of his jacket and put it on the bureau.
The dog, christened “Big Red,” had been thoroughly washed and groomed by suppertime. His presence was announced on the radio, but nobody came rushing over to claim him.
That evening, he parked himself on the sofa beside Curt, despite the man’s heated objections, and lay down to watch the evening news as if he were really interested in hearing incessantly about the latest political scandal.
“I’m going to leave the country,” Curt announced disgustedly. “That way, maybe I won’t have to hear this congressman’s name five hundred times a day.”
“It won’t save you. They have our news everywhere now.”
“Humor me.” He glanced down at the dog, who had his big paws crossed, his muzzle lying on them as he watched television. “This is interesting to you, huh? Don’t have dog scandals, I guess?”
The big dog raised its sad brown eyes to his. It wagged its tail and went back to watching television.
“He’s very intelligent,” his mother remarked.
“How did you arrive at that conclusion?” Curt asked.
“He’s not bounding around the house trying to tear up stuff, and he isn’t barking.”
About that time, the local newscaster came back on and there was an interview with the man in the photograph Curt had been given, Abe Hunt. The dog perked up its ears and barked, once, loudly.
“Hush!” Curt muttered, leaning forward to hear better.
The sound bite was brief and uninformative. The missing government witness had only said that he knew nothing and refused to testify. The newscaster added the information that the witness had since disappeared and foul play was suspected.
“He’s probably lying at the bottom of Lake Lanier,” Curt muttered.
“If he is, dear, he won’t come up again,” his mother offered nonchalantly, working on a piece of embroidery while she spoke. “The water’s so cold that even spring heating won’t send him to the surface.”
“You always come up with these fascinating little tidbits about dead bodies,” Curt remarked. “How do you know so much?”
“I used to date a coroner.”
He shook his head and went back to watching the news.
The dog suddenly lifted its muzzle and howled.
“Stop that!” Curt muttered. “What’s the matter with you?”
The dog looked up at him and wagged its tail.
“He’s probably hungry,” Curt’s mother said, putting down her handiwork. “I’ll feed him some leftover macaroni. Come on, Big Red.”
The dog answered easily to his new name. He leaped down from the sofa with fumbling grace and trotted off after his new master.
Curt gave him a long glare. This was getting to be one miserable vacation. First Marijuana Mary, now the Hound from Hell had moved in with his mother.
After they went to bed, the bloodhound padded softly into the living room, sat in front of the picture window, and let out a howl that would have awakened people in the cemetery.
The doorbell ringing insistently dragged Curt out of bed, in silk pajama bottoms and no T-shirt. His mother could be heard snoring peacefully right through the closed door as he passed her room.
He shouted at the howling dog before he opened the wooden door. There was Marijuana Mary in an oversize navy blue T-shirt. She was wearing bedroom slippers, pink fuzzy ones, and her blond hair was standing out all over her head. She looked half-asleep and furious.
“Could you please put some tape around the mouth of the Hound of the Baskervilles so that those of us who have jobs could get some sleep?” she asked with venom.
“I have a job,” he pointed out.
“You’re on vacation,” she returned. She had her hands on her rounded hips, and the posture brought Curt’s appreciative eyes to the firm thrust of her breasts against the fabric. She cleared her throat and unobtrusively crossed her arms over her bosom.
He lifted an eyebrow and searched her eyes for longer than he meant to, his eyelids narrowing as he registered her sudden flush.
“Why do you have a dog all of a sudden, anyway?” she asked jerkily.
“My mother fed him and now he won’t leave. Besides, he’s interested in the evening news.”
“So?”
“It’s Mom’s favorite show. She’s given him a name. She never gives up things she names,” he added with a grin. “She’s had me for thirty-four years.”
“She should get a medal.”
“Look here, why are you prowling around the neighborhood in a nightgown at midnight?” he demanded.
“It isn’t a nightgown!”
She glared at him, but her eyes fell helplessly to his broad, hair-roughened chest, and she couldn’t seem to stop staring at him.
“Don’t leer at me,” he said outrageously. “Sexual harassment of men is a misdemeanor. I could arrest you.”
“You son of a…!”
“Foul language is a misdemeanor,” he continued, enjoying himself. “I could arrest you.”
“That dog—” she pointed to the picture window where the dog had begun to howl again “—is a public nuisance and he’s creating a disturbance and disturbing my peace. I could arrest you. I am an officer of the court!”
He put his hands on his own hips and stared down at her with renewed interest. She was very pretty. Not only that, she had a temper that was easily the equal of his own. It had been a long time since he’d been involved with a woman. He considered that he wouldn’t mind getting involved with this one. She had potential.
“Can’t you make him stop?” she wailed, dropping her pose and appealing to his better nature.
“I could, if I knew why he’s howling in the first place,” he agreed. “Why don’t you come in and have a cup of coffee and we can discuss strategy?” He started to open the door.
As if it were an invitation, the dog suddenly made a dash for the open screen door and shot through it like a bullet, barking hoarsely.
“Come back here!” Curt yelled, worried at what his mother was going to say when she found out he’d let her new pet escape. “Oh, hell, I’ll have to go chase him!”
He started out the door barefoot, without thinking how he was dressed, and shot off after the dog.
Mary hesitated, then threw up her hands and ran after him. She couldn’t sleep. She might as well assist.
Lights went on in the neighborhood as the scantily clad man and woman ran along the pavement calling after the baying dog. When he left the sidewalk and ran into the woods behind Mary’s house, she kept going, but Curt hit a low-lying rose branch and yelled in pain.
“Watch out for snakes!” he called after her furiously.
“Snakes?”
It was comical to watch her stop suddenly in place with one foot raised. “Snakes?” she repeated, looking around in every direction.
<
br /> Curt was standing on one foot holding the other and trying to pick out thorns in the streetlit darkness. Not that it was easy. The damned streetlight was temperamental. It stayed on for all of a minute and then began to flicker and suddenly went out. Two minutes later it flickered again and tried to come on. The power company had been called and called, but they insisted it was natural, despite the fact that none of the other streetlights acted similarly. It was something the neighbors had learned to live with. Curt hadn’t.
“If I had my pistol, I’d blow you away!” he raged at the light.
Doors had opened. The hound was baying wildly.
Mary was jumping from one foot to the other trying to feel her way back out of the tall grass and talking to herself, loudly. Curt was groaning and threatening the light.
A police car came careening down the street, screeched to a halt in front of Curt, and the doors of the car flew open. Two young officers appeared with leveled pistols.
“Hands up!” they yelled.
“I’ve got thorns in my foot!” Curt yelled back, still holding one foot. “I’m FBI!”
“And I’m Princess Don,” came the drawled reply.
“Get ’em up!”
“Go ahead and shoot!” Curt told them, exasperated. “But shoot that damned streetlight first, and I’ll go happily!”
Just at that moment, it went out, leaving the street in total darkness. There were quick commands, doors opened. A spotlight came on at once, but it not only caught Curt, it also caught Mary and the hound dog, both of whom were suddenly standing beside Curt.
“Is it Halloween?” one officer asked the other.
“No,” came the reply. “But I’m calling for backup!” He did, pushing the mike on his shoulder and requesting assistance.
“What’s going on out there?” came a furtive yell from the houses behind them.
Curt looked at Mary and they both looked at the dog. It was going to be a long night.
They were taken into custody and transported to the police station. The two of them were temporarily lodged in a cell while the watch commander phoned Curt’s friend at home. It would be no use to phone his mother. He knew from long experience that nothing short of a bombing would wake her once she went to sleep. But he had asked them to phone his friend, the chief, Jack Mallory, and ask him to come down and identify them.
