Leaving Jake to assess the condition of Stella’s ten stitches, I continued on down the path toward the dog shed. The thought of those stitches instigated a sudden image of my sister, Liz, age four, a row of ugly black stitches marching across her forehead. The little minx had trailed me up a tree in our back yard, slipped, fell and cut her head. I was at the ripe old age of eleven at the time, an age where I needed to escape my kid sister’s constant chatter. But no—Liz had to follow me up that tree. All I could remember now was how brave she’d been while the doctor stitched her up. And her sweet smile when Dad and I brought her home from the hospital and I promised to read her a story and stay with her until she drifted off to sleep. I sighed. When we were kids I couldn’t move without stumbling over my baby sister. And now—she couldn’t even ring to let me know we were living in the same State.
As usual, my greyhounds were excited to see me. Excited? Make that ecstatic. Hyper. Over the moon. After calming them down, I set to work. First I collected the four sets of registration papers needed for the day’s meeting and placed them on the table. If I forgot their papers my dogs wouldn’t be racing.
Intent on grooming my runners before leaving for the track, I lifted a blue cotton bag featuring a picture of Snoopy from a hook on the back wall. Brushes, combs, rags and grooming mitts spilled out onto the table as I upended the bag onto the table. It was a matter of pride that made me particular about the appearance of my dogs. In fact my greyhounds usually looked better than I did when we went racing.
After opening the lid on a bottle of baby oil, I reached into the cupboard for my set of nail clippers. Should I be worried that Liz had moved on without telling Scott? Should I ring Ma to let her know? My globe-trotting mother and her latest beau, Dwayne, were holidaying somewhere in Europe.
Somewhere
being the operative word. I sighed and snaffled a collar and lead from a nail on the wall. If I rung Ma now and told her I was worried about Liz’s disappearance, it would be like banging my head on a steel rubbish bin. She’d merely spout the same old line:
Elizabeth Jane can look after herself. She closed the door on this family five years ago when she took off without a word and didn’t come back.
Always conveniently forgetting it was Ma’s constant nagging and belittling that sent Liz off into the world at sixteen, two weeks after our father Jake McKinley was run down and killed by a road train. For some reason Ma had been jealous of Dad’s closeness to us girls—more so Liz—and tore strips off her at every opportunity. Without Dad around to blunt the verbal blows, I guess my little sister saw no reason to hang around. Liz had drifted from commune to commune over the last five years with only a card at Christmas to let us know she was still alive.
And now, it seemed like she’d drifted someplace else. Again. This time leaving a boyfriend behind. Typical Liz. Frustrated, I pushed my nomadic sister from my mind and unfastened the nearest kennel door. “Okay, your turn to be prettied up, Lofty,” I told the big brindle greyhound, the most talented greyhound in my racing team. Lofty, or Big Mistake, if you wanted to call him by his racing name, previously belonged to Peter Manning, the guy who’d tried to kill me, but since Peter had been incarcerated, Lofty, plus Peter’s other dogs had been sold. Now, big ugly Lofty was owned by my mother. Yes. Amazing—but true. Of course I had all sorts of trouble locating Ma when Peter Manning’s dogs were put up for sale but I figured no way could I lose the best dog in my kennel. Naturally, it took charm, guilt and even a little blackmail to cajole Ma into buying the dog—especially as she ranked the job of greyhound training alongside scrubbing toilets, drug dealing and prostitution, but in the end she’d agreed on one condition. If Big Mistake didn’t win her outlay back in the next twelve months, I’d quit training greyhounds and get a ‘real job’. Her words not mine–and something she’d been pushing for ever since Dad died.
A rough wet tongue greeted me when I stooped to fasten a collar around Lofty’s bull neck. “Hey, cut it out,” I told him and wiped the drool from my cheek with the back of my hand. “I’ve already washed my face today, big boy, so you can haul that flannel back in your mouth. Okay?”
Heeding every chiropractor’s sage advice, I wrapped my arms around the dog’s body and bent my knees ready to heft the dog’s forty five kilos up onto the treatment table. Of course, Lofty, not known for his eagerness to assist in difficult situations, decided to turn into a bag of concrete blocks.
“Want a hand there, dude?” Jake, his grin a mile wide, barreled through the doorway.
“’Ts okay. I’ll manage,” I puffed, wrestling Lofty’s dead weight onto the table before stepping back to rub the trembling muscles in my arms. “Are Stella’s stitches okay?”
“Stitches looking good, dude, but she’s down in the dumps. I think our little GAP dog’s missing her bro.”
“No worries. I’ll collect Stanley from his foster home tomorrow. That’ll make her happy again.”
As soon as Lofty was settled on the table, I lifted each paw and carefully snipped the tiny points off the dew-claws on the insides of his wrists. Didn’t want to risk the claws breaking off or tearing the skin if he sustained a bump on the track. Satisfied with the results, I wiped his coat over with a rag dampened down with baby oil, rubbed him dry with a soft towel and then used a soft brush to smooth his brindle coat down flat.
While I groomed, Jake wrestled a broom from the equipment at the back of the shed and swept the cement floor—all the while giving a badly off-key version of some rapper-dude. One of six professional protesters who bunked down in contented squalor in a rented apartment half hour’s bike ride away, Jake adored my greyhounds as much as they adored him. As usual he was dressed in ancient torn-at-the-knees jeans and one of his many
Save the…
T-shirts. Today’s faded and out of shape model proclaimed his anxiety for the endangered tree frog. Jake’s tuneless warble didn’t seem to worry the dogs. In fact, every canine in the kennel house had settled, head on paws, eyes soft, to listen.
That is, until a piercing squeal of brakes broke the serenity of the shed. Immediately, the dogs hurtled off their beds. The shed exploded in a cacophony of barking. And Lofty leaped off the table and bolted.
“No Lofty!” I grabbed for the loop at the end of his lead and hung on as he dragged me through the open doorway.
Fair dinkum, if a forty five kilo dog sets his mind on heading in a certain direction, puny girl muscles fall well short as a deterrent. Like a programmed missile, Lofty rocketed along the path toward the front gate. The leather lead bit into the soft flesh of my fisted hand. And my upper body struggled to keep up with my running feet.
“Slow down, Lofty!”
I may as well have yelled at the sky.
“Some geriatric dude’s stealing Stella!” Jake gasped, incredulous, as he caught and passed me in a blur.
Almost tripping over a rocky garden border when Lofty decided to take a short cut, I squinted up ahead at the two kennels at the end of the path. “But he can’t do that—”
Evidently he could. One of the kennel gates was wide open and an old guy, dressed in tight purple pants and a monster of a Hawaiian shirt, so bright it could be classed as a lethal weapon if you weren’t wearing sunglasses, was running out the front gate with the GAP dog spilling from his arms.
A cold chill skittered up my spine and my heart gave several quick lurches of fear. If he dropped Stella, her stitches could burst.
“Hey, you! You can’t just come in and take one of our adoption dogs. You have to fill out an application.”
Lofty barked in agreement and gave a hard yank on the end of his lead. It was like he was saying:
Just let go of me, dude, and I’ll rip those purple pants right off that guy’s backside!
I told Lofty I couldn’t take the risk because he might break a toenail while performing a service to the community and I needed him fit and sound for today’s Country Cup heats at Gawler.
Dismissing my worries, he put his head down and pulled harder. I dug in my heels, spewing gravel up behind me like a surfer riding a wave. If I didn’t stop for oxygen—right this moment—my chest would split down the middle like a dropped watermelon in a game of catch. In desperation, I reached out with one hand, latched onto a tree branch and held onto the branch while Lofty choked and bucked and skidded to a head-shaking halt. His frown of frustration said it all. Especially when I wrapped the lead around the trunk of the tree, tied it in a knot and left him to bark his disapproval while I hurled myself in the direction of the fashion disaster dog-napper.
Reaching the gateway, I stood there, bent double, breathing hard, unable to believe the scene in front of me. A nondescript, pus-colored Holden car of vague vintage wheezed and roared on the other side of my front gate. Its exhaust proclaimed it was in dire need of replacement and the tar scent of hot engine filled my nostrils. My dude-helper, Jake, who had reached the gateway before me, sat on the ground holding a handkerchief to his bleeding nose while the old guy in the car slammed his foot on the gas and skidded off in a cloud of smoke.
“You okay, Jake?”
“Yeah, dude,” he said, slowly getting to his feet, handkerchief still attached to his bleeding nose. “Sorry I couldn’t stop the wrinkly from nabbing Stella. Thought I could take the old dude out, easy like, but the bastard used a knuckle duster.”
I peered into Jake’s eyes to see if he appeared concussed but all I could make out was a high level of indignation. Probably from being taken out by a geriatric, forty years his senior. “Not your fault,” I reassured him. “But you’d better go raid the ice-tray in the dog fridge. Then sit down, lean your head back and put the ice pack on the back of your neck.”
When Jake shuffled off, my thoughts returned to the audacity of the dog-napper. This guy, who had the fashion sense of a constipated rocker, had a lot to answer for. Stella, the GAP bitch he’d kidnapped would be horrified by the man’s rough handling, especially as the poor dog was recovering from her spaying operation and consequently nursing ten stitches. Like a pressure-cooker simmering on high, anger bit deep into my gut. With no gun to shoot out the dog-napper’s tires, all I could do was shout obscenities as I watched the piece of shit car disappear into the distance.
“I’ll get you, you no-good, bandy-legged creep! And when I do, you’ll be eating soup through a straw.”
Even if I had to put out an SOS email to Scuzz, my seven-foot biker bodyguard buddy, and tell him to jump on his hog and get his leather clad ass back here. His services were needed.
Frustrated, I untied Lofty and turned toward the kennel-house. No good going after the thief—by the time I found my car keys he’d be long gone. Instead, I’d ring the police and report Stella’s kidnapping. Get them to look out for the pus colored Holden. Put out an all-systems alert. Notify their SWAT team if necessary.
After returning a disgruntled Lofty to the safety of his kennel, I settled the dogs with a slice of cheese apiece and hurried into the house. What was the old guy in the Hawaiian shirt up to? And why steal Stella? The brindle bitch wasn’t a racing proposition any more. Worth no more financially than a slap up meal at the local pub. I frowned as I snapped open the front door and charged inside. Something wasn’t right. Stealing a pet GAP dog was too weird…unless the jerk thought Stella was one of my racing dogs.
That troubling thought sent a sudden icy coldness seeping into my bloodstream. It was as though I’d never feel warm again. To be honest, the whole situation freaked me out. Plus if I didn’t leave for the racetrack soon, kenneling would be finished, my dogs would be scratched, and I’d be up for a hefty fine and a bollocking from the chief steward.
And zero chance of adding to my bank balance.
Head in a whirl, I collapsed on the comfortable overstuffed sofa set in the middle of the lounge room. My racing dogs were my life, my job, my love. Sensing my distress, Tater, my tiny stegosaurus-hearted Chihuahua and Lucky, my wriggly black greyhound pet decided they both wanted to sit on my lap to comfort me. Tater snuggled on with ease but Lucky, after two unsuccessful attempts, leaned her head on my knees and looked up at me from under her eyes with a troubled frown.
“Don’t worry, I’ll sort this out,” I told my canine friends before pulling out my cell phone. Finger on the first 0 of the standard 000 emergency number, I hesitated. Perhaps I should ring Detective Inspector Adams, personally. He’d been the policeman in charge of the case when Peter Manning, my psychotic ex-owner dragged me into his crazy murderous schemes. I’d feel more comfortable talking to a policeman I knew.
But would he remember me? Would he get all upset and snarky if I called him on his private mobile number? I screwed up my nose. Gently teased one of Tater’s tiny ears between the tips of my fingers. Perhaps I should ring my best friend, Tanya, first. Or contact Ben—get his input? Then, mind zeroing in on the terrified expression on Stella’s face and the nasty smile on the thief’s, I started punching in DI Adam’s number.
3
Screeeeech!
A car screamed to a halt outside, horn blaring loud enough to waken fossilized dinosaurs. I shot from the sofa—phone tumbling from my fingers. Holy catfish! If that was a police car—Detective Inspector Adams must have the telepathic powers of the part-faerie barmaid, Sookie Stackhouse. A snarling Tater immediately went into his usual guard dog pose, hair vibrating all along his back, growl deep in his throat, while big soft Lucky scuttled behind the sofa, long ratty tail between her legs, paws over her eyes.