Let Loose (19 page)

“Martin was teaching me to snowshoe. I’ve
always wanted to learn.” She looked up at Martin and fluttered her
eyes. Then she glanced at me, unsure and more than a little
uncomfortable.

I straightened. I wasn’t sure, but I thought
my friend had just...

Peter raised a brow and then smiled.
“Learning to snowshoe. That’s good.”

Rhonda nodded, but her eyes were
downcast.

I pressed my lips together and assessed my
feelings. They were... confused.

I glanced at Peter. His hat blocked the sun,
allowing me to focus on his face. Strong and steady. Everything I
wasn’t and everything I needed.

I let out a breath. “Learning to snowshoe
is
good. Much better than learning to skijor.”

Rhonda looked up, still uncertain, but
hopeful. “You think?”

I nodded. “Definitely.”

“I don’t know a boat that—” Martin said, like
the man he was, completely missing what was really being said.

I caught Rhonda’s gaze. She shook her head in
a “can you believe them” kind of way. Then we both broke out
laughing.

Five minutes later, after we’d finished
talking dogs and snow shoes and pretending everything had always
been as it was right now, we got into our vehicles and drove to my
house.

There my smile died.

I pulled into my garage happy enough. I’d
found the dogs and all were safe. Sure, I had the mystery of who
had cut my fence and the problem of getting that fixed, but for the
moment that was overshadowed by the knowledge that the dogs were
all healthy and in my care.

Then I got out of my Jeep.

The door that opened into my yard stood open
in a sad, broken-hinges kind of way.

I stood staring at it for a good minute. I
was too confused to do anything else. In the Jeep beside me, the
dogs began to howl.

“Lucy, are you going to—”

Rhonda cut off her question as her gaze
locked onto my door.

She placed a hand on my arm and her fingers
tightened. “What happened? Was it like this when you left?”

Too shaken to say anything, I shook my
head.

Peter’s truck and the police car parked along
the road.

I looked at Rhonda.

Her lips thin, she turned. “I’ll get
him.”

Five seconds later, Peter was beside me,
looking official and stern and just a shade worried all at the same
time.

“It wasn’t like this...?” He looked at my
face and didn’t bother to finish the question. Instead, he motioned
for Rhonda and Martin, who had followed her into the garage, to
step outside, back into the road.

Then he pulled his gun. “Stay put.”

It was an order, and I wasn’t much for
orders, but this was different. I nodded again and stepped back
until my Jeep’s door handle jabbed me in the spine.

Once Peter and the other police officer had
disappeared through the gaping door, I got back inside my Jeep and
put the key in the ignition. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do
if I heard shots or if someone came running down my hill into the
garage where the dogs and I sat, but I wanted options, and sitting
inside a 4,000 pound vehicle seemed a lot smarter than standing
unarmed in the street.

I looked in my rearview mirror. Rhonda and
Martin had had the same thought.

So we were all tucked inside our vehicles
ready to make a run for it or run over it, whichever the situation
seemed to call for.

Luckily, it called for neither. Fifteen
minutes or so later, Peter was back and motioning for me to come
with him.

I left the dogs in my rig because I had
nothing else to do with them and trudged up the hill next to Peter.
As we walked, he reached for my hand and gave it a squeeze.

It was a small, completely unprofessional
gesture and I appreciated it more than he could ever know.

We stopped outside the front.

“He didn’t come in through the door,” he
said.

“But he came in?”

Peter nodded. “Through the kitchen. It’s a
small window, but the most hidden from view of the road.”

“So I need a new window?”

Peter’s jaw tightened. “And a few other
things.”

He moved his hand to my back and guided me
inside.

My house was destroyed. Okay, maybe not
destroyed, but definitely messed up. Cushions had been thrown off
the couch, the bucket of pellets I kept by the stove overturned,
and the basket of clothes I’d left ready to fold on the dining room
table dumped out.

In the kitchen, things were worse. The one
window was shattered; glass was all over the floor, window sill,
and the adjacent counter.

That wasn’t the worst though. My favorite
cookie jar, a bear holding a cookie, a jar just like the one my
grandmother had had in her kitchen, was also smashed on the
floor.

Ignoring the glass, I dropped to my knees and
scooped up the crockery pieces. “Why would they do this?”

Peter sighed. “I don’t think it was
intentional.”

Surprised by his response, I looked up. He
nodded his head to where my remaining two cookie jars were sitting.
“My guess is he hit that one with his foot when he came through the
window.”

I stood and looked at the counter. Peter was
right. The bear would have been directly in the path of a leg as a
person crawled in through the window.

“The cereal too,” Peter added, nodding to the
ground where the corn flakes I’d had for breakfast were
scattered.

“It was a new box,” I muttered, somewhat
inanely.

Peter put his arm around my waist and pulled
me against him. “I’m sorry,” he murmured against my hair.

We stood like that for a minute, me just
letting the reassuring warmth of his body take away some of my
stress, him... waiting, I guessed, for me to take in some of what
had happened.

A few seconds more and he stepped away.
“You’ll have to go through everything and tell us what is
missing.”

Missing? Of course. Burglars didn’t break in
to spill your corn flakes and toss your clean laundry on the dirty
floor.

Since we were in the kitchen, that’s where we
started. Aside from cupboards that had obviously been riffled
through, the window and cookie jar seemed to have taken the brunt
of the damage.

In the bathroom, however, we found something
strange. The lid to the back of the toilet lay broken on the
floor.

I looked at Peter.

“Dropped it, is my guess,” he said.

“But why?”

Peter didn’t answer. It could have been that
he wasn’t listening, but I knew him better than that. He was going
into police mode. I pressed my lips together and walked closer.
Aside from the broken lid and more rummaged cabinets, everything
seemed intact.

“He was looking for something, wasn’t he?” I
asked. “Something he thought I might put in the toilet?” The idea
was bizarre, but I just didn’t think your average burglar intent on
stealing electronics, money, jewelry, whatever burglars stole,
would look in my toilet.

I mean, really, I wasn’t a drug lord.

My gaze shot to Peter again. “Drugs?” There
was shock in my tone. I couldn’t help it. Who would think I had
drugs? I barely took aspirin.

Peter, noncommittal as ever, shrugged. We
walked on. The laundry room got off easy. Dryer and washer were
pulled away from the wall, but undamaged.

Living room and kitchen were mainly just
tossed and turned too. In my bedroom, the mattress and box springs
had been flipped upright, and the clothes pulled out of my
closet.

Back in the living room, I gathered up my
laundry from the floor and placed it in a basket.

“So?” Peter prompted.

Disturbed by the violation of my home, I’d
forgotten that I was supposed to be looking for anything missing. I
turned in place. TV was still there. As were my collections of
crocks and restaurant creamers.

“I keep cash in the desk,” I said. The drawer
was closed, but I couldn’t believe whoever had been in my house
hadn’t checked it. I pulled it open.

“It’s gone,” I said. I felt strangely
relieved at the revelation. Maybe this was random. Or a wrong
address...

“How much?”

I slid my gaze to the side. “$50?” I asked.
It could have been more, but yard sale season was long past and
with it my need to carry cash.

“$50.”

I could tell he wasn’t impressed. But then
neither was I.

Twenty minutes later, and I had nothing else
to add to my list of missing items. After sending the other officer
back to town, Peter patched my window up with a piece of plywood he
got from my shed. When he was done, he walked into the living
room.

“I talked to Rhonda. She’s fine with you
staying with her. I’d suggest my place, but I’m going to be at the
office for a while.”

My knee-jerk reaction was annoyance that he
was making plans for me, but then I looked at the mess that was my
living room and realized I would have felt much worse if I thought
he
wasn’t
worried.

Still, I had no intention of leaving my
house, not to mention the dogs, which I was pretty sure Rhonda’s
cat Nostradamus would not welcome with open paws. Besides, what
better protection could I have than nine wolf-look-alike dogs?

Peter, however, wasn’t as willing to listen
to reason as one might expect. Finally, after battling back and
forth - mainly me battling and him staring at me with disapproval -
we agreed on a compromise. I’d ask Rhonda to stay with me.

Ten minutes later, after checking to make
sure my phones worked, he left.

Rhonda did stay. Martin offered to also, but
I refused. Not only was I a little concerned with how Peter might
feel about Martin spending the night, his presence would have made
it really hard to get the scoop from Rhonda on what was happening
between them. And let’s face it, after what had happened to my
house, I needed some juicy gossip to bring back at least some
feeling of normalcy.

o0o

Rhonda and I stayed up for most of the night.
Rhonda pretended she was too engrossed in a marathon of some old
spy show to sleep or talk to me, but I saw her nod off a time or
two, and knew she was faking her interest to keep me company while
avoiding conversation.

The dogs did their part too. I split the
group into pairs and positioned each in a different room to
hopefully serve as an alert system should my burglar decide to
return. Although after going into the laundry to wash some of the
clothes that had been tossed on the floor and seeing how Gent and
Daisy were passed out, I wasn’t all that sure that a husky alarm
system was going to be any more effective than a malamute one.

Still, they looked intimidating. Maybe that
would be enough.

Finally, about two in the morning, I managed
to drift off with Fluff stretched out over my feet in the bed and
Rhonda snoring on the couch.

At nine, I was startled awake by the phone,
which also activated the dogs. Well, all except Kiska. He did
wiggle his toes.

Running to the phone, I yelled to Rhonda to
release the hounds from their various quarters.

“Hello,” I huffed into the phone.

“Did you read the paper this morning?” Daniel
Rowe, sounding smug as ever. “Never mind. Don’t answer that. I know
the answer.”

“What do you want?” I, of course, wanted to
ask what was in the paper, but I wouldn’t give him the
satisfaction. Instead, I walked to my computer and pulled up
The Daily News
website.

“I heard you had a break-in last night.”

“Did you?” I didn’t see anything on the front
page of interest. I clicked the link for Crime. There was a small
mention of a break-in on my road, but nothing else that I could see
of interest.

He was jerking me around. Shocking.

“Do you want to make a statement?”

“No.”

“Was anything taken?”

I walked to the front door to help Rhonda
herd the dogs outside. I was holding it open, thinking about my
upcoming day and not listening to Daniel, when I kicked the box
that I’d taken from Craig’s.

I cursed and hopped in my sock-clad feet.

Daniel, assuming the curse was meant for him,
responded, “Why are you so touchy? I’m just taking an
interest.”

Taking an interest my aching toe. I hopped
some more and then, as if it would make my foot feel, better shoved
the box a couple of inches over the ground.

The lid rattled.

I stopped and stared.

Daniel kept talking.

“Sorry. Got to go,” I mumbled into the phone
and hit end.

“Rhonda?” I called.

“Yeah,” she answered from the kitchen.

“Come here.” Stupid as it sounded, I was
afraid to pick the toolbox up without someone else seeing it
too.

She walked into the living room holding a
carton of pop tarts and a can of Diet Pepsi. “Is this as healthy as
you get?” She shook her head. “You have got to do better.”

I pointed at the toolbox. “That was locked. I
tried to get it open but couldn’t.”

She frowned. “When?”

“Yesterday, before the dogs got loose.”

“Before someone broke into your house?”

I nodded and we both stared at the box. After
a second, Rhonda spoke again. “Why would a burglar open it? Why
wouldn’t he just take it with him?”

“And how did he open it? I didn’t have a key.
I was going to take it to the shop to see if I had something there
that would work.”

“Was it jimmied?”

We both approached the box, moving as if it
might fly open and a demented clown might jump out at us.

I bent down and lifted the lid. The box was
empty. I ran my finger around the edge. There was no sign that the
lid had been forced. I looked up at Rhonda.

“There was something in here before. I could
hear it and feel it.” I shut the lid and picked up the box by its
handle. It was definitely lighter.