Authors: Donna Ball
“A.K.A. Max,” I murmured.
“Well, isn’t that interesting?”
“It certainly is.”
I thanked Maude and disconnected and, while I still had some privacy, I quickly dialed my uncle at home.
It was a heart attack that had forced Uncle Roe into retirement, and I did not like to bother him with work-related questions. My aunt did not like it when I bothered him with work-related questions, either, and I never would have done so had Buck been in town. On the other hand, “retirement” for my uncle was shaping up to be more of a part-time job, and already he had started to organize a cold case squad from the surrounding mountain counties’ sheriff’s departments. The chances are that Buck would have referred me to my uncle, even if I had been able to reach him. Brian Maddox’s body had been found after Buck took over, but he had disappeared while my uncle was still sheriff. If a report had been made in Hanover County, he would remember it.
My aunt answered the phone and sounded surprised when she heard my voice. “Why, Raine, I thought you said you were going on some kind of hike this week.”
“I am,” I told her. “I’m in the mountains right now. I’m calling you from my new smartphone.”
“Well, isn’t that a marvel? You sound clear as a bell.”
“I know. It‘s great. Is everything okay there? How is Majesty?” My aunt had adopted my collie, Majesty—or I should say, Majesty had adopted her—back in the fall, and never had a woman and a dog been more content together. Nonetheless, I missed my girl and couldn’t help asking about her.
“Right as rain and snoozing in front of the fire this very minute.”
“Lucky dog.” I shivered. “Aunt Mart, I need to ask Uncle Roe something. I wouldn’t bother him with this, but you know Buck is on vacation and I just need to know if he remembers anything about a case from last fall.”
“Well, he’s not here, honey, but if it’s important I can have him call you back.” Her voice sounded hesitant and a little worried. She added, “Raine, you did hear about Rosalee, didn’t you?”
Rosalee Lawson was Buck’s mother, my former mother-in-law, retired in Florida now for almost ten years. I got a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. “No. Is something wrong? Is that why Buck is in Florida?”
“Honey, she died Friday afternoon. The funeral is Sunday. We sent flowers. I left a message on your home phone, but I figured you already knew.”
Crap
,
I thought, but didn’t say that out loud to my aunt. I had been fond of Rosalee, although we hadn’t been in touch for years, and I was sorry she was gone. But mostly I felt rotten for the things I had been thinking about Buck, as though it was his fault he wasn’t there when I expected him to be. As though his whole life should revolve around my convenience. I said, “Thanks, Aunt Mart. Listen, there’s no need for Uncle Roe to call me back. I’ll talk to him when I get home.”
“Okay, honey. You take care out there, you hear me? And stay warm. The weatherman says snow.”
After another moment’s hesitation, I dialed Buck’s cell phone. It went straight to voice mail, and I was glad. I never know what to say at such moments. Not even to a machine. “Buck, this is Raine. I just heard about your mother, and I don’t know what to say. You know I loved her. I’m so sorry. I’m not at home. I’m actually on a wilderness hike, but I just wanted to call and tell you—well, I’m sorry.”
I spent the rest of the morning feeling pretty glum—nostalgic and mad at myself, embarrassed for being too quick to jump to erroneous conclusions about Buck, and not at all interested in making conversation. That was just as well, because no one else was either. The weather had taken a downward turn, with an ugly wet look to the clouds and an icy wind from the north. The kids walked with their heads down and their collars pulled up against the wind, too miserable to even complain.
When I did catch up with Heather, it was unintentional. Even though I had not done this in a while, I was still in better shape than the average weekend hiker, and I had Cisco to keep me motivated. I had already passed all the girls, and when I came upon Heather she had paused to rest beside the trail. She had removed her back pack and braced her hands on her knees, stretching out her back. She looked winded.
“Guess I wasn’t as prepared for this as I thought,” she said when she saw me.
“That makes two of us.” I kept my voice casual and friendly and even let Cisco go up to her for a pet. I glanced at the sky. “Any word on when we might be making camp? Looks like we might be getting some weather.”
“Talk to Mr. Evans. He’s up front. My guess is he’s trying to give our day leader a lesson in wise decision making.”
I said, still keeping my tone easy, “So, how did you end up with Kelso?”
She went still. Her face lost all expression and she stared at me. “What?”
“Brian Maddox’s dog,” I explained. “The one you call Max. Are you the one Brian left him with the last time he went on a wilderness hike? The time he didn’t come back?”
She said coldly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She turned to pick up her pack.
“Why did you change his name?” I insisted. “Don’t you know the Evanses would have recognized him the minute they saw him?”
She made a derisive sound in her throat. “They don’t even recognize the counselors on sight, much less the dogs.” I saw a quick flash of alarm in her eyes and realized she had not intended to admit I was right. She tried to hide it with a gruff, “Besides, so what if they did? I haven’t done anything wrong.”
She shuffled into her backpack, studiously avoiding my gaze, but I wasn’t letting her off the hook that easily. “Haven’t you?” I replied pleasantly. “What about putting that bottle of booze in Cisco’s pack to try to get me fired? You must’ve been afraid I’d mention to Paul that I recognized the dog. That’s a lot of trouble to go to just to keep a secret.”
Panic stirred far back in her eyes, but then she lowered her gaze, jerking on the straps of her pack. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I shrugged and edged past her on the trail. “Have it your way.”
She grabbed my arm. Now the panic in her eyes was not so vague. “You’re not going to say anything, are you? What difference does it make whose dog it is? I didn’t steal him!”
I pulled my arm away. “Then why do you care who knows?”
I started to move on, and she said quickly, “It was Rachel who tried to break into your tent last night. When Cisco barked she ran away and pushed Tiffanie down so she wouldn’t see her.”
I looked her over coolly. “Why would Rachel try to break into my tent?”
She swallowed. “I think… maybe she was trying to get your phone.”
“And you know all this,” I said, watching her, “because you were hanging around my tent, too—tearing the stuffing out of Cisco’s toy rabbit.”
A dull flush confirmed the truth. I turned in disgust and started up the trail.
“Listen,” she said quickly, “it’s not that simple. Give me a chance to explain. Only…” I heard the voices of the girls behind us on the trail, and she cast a quick and frantic look in that direction. “Not now. Please?”
I threw my hands up in a
w
hatever
gesture and strode past her up the trail. I was so mad that I walked faster than I probably intended, and Cisco was trotting to keep up. I passed Pete, who trudged along a few yards behind Jess. There was no more joking or conversation, and both boys walked with their heads down.
“Maybe it would be a good idea to check the map for a place to take a break,” I suggested to Jess when I reached him. “We’ve been walking a long time.”
“No need to check the map,” he said. He shrugged out of the straps of his backpack and let it drop to the ground. “Found one.” He sat down in the middle of the trail.
That was
not
what I had meant.
“Where’s Mr. Evans?” I asked, and he made a vague forward gesture. Pete came up and dropped to the ground beside him. I moved on.
The trail, which had been wide and even in the flats, had narrowed as we climbed, hugging a tall hill on one side and rugged, brambly woods on the other. In some spots there was barely room for two people to walk abreast, and when I caught up with Paul a couple of dozen steps farther down, the trail had grown so twisted that it was impossible to see what lay even six feet ahead. I called out and he waited for me.
“The kids are tired,” I said, and noticed my own breathing was a bit labored. “Jess and Pete have staged a sit-in a few yards back down the trail. Will we be taking a break soon?”
He scowled in annoyance. “The trail divides just around that bend. I told Jess we’d take our midday break there. If he would learn to read a map…”
He shouldered past me back down the trail toward Jess. I watched him for a moment, then kept moving along the trail.
As we approached the bend, the trail narrowed to such an extent that Cisco and I could not walk side by side, so I released him to the end of his expandable leash, about eight feet ahead of me. He caught the scent of something and, nose the ground, urged me forward. I make it a practice never to increase my pace to keep up with my dog, and Cisco knows that pulling will get him nowhere. The reason he knows that is because every time he tries, I stop dead in my tracks and wait for him to return to me. That is exactly what I did when, in his excitement over the new scent, he bounded to the end of his leash. If I hadn’t done that, the chances are that this story would have had a very different ending indeed, and I probably would not be the one telling it.
I never saw it coming. One minute Cisco’s white-feathered tail was waving in front of me, the next it was not. I screamed, “
Cisco
!”
and dived for him. I hit the ground hard. Dirt sprayed into my mouth, I clawed at rocks. Fingernails ripped. I could see his startled eyes, surrounded by white, and his paws scrabbling for purchase on the edge of the cliff. I grabbed for his collar and clutched only a handful of fur. He started to slip. I screamed again.
“Cisco!”
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
T
hey say your life flashes before your eyes. But when you love a dog, the
future
flashes before your eyes: a future without him. It was only an instant, but it was an instant of a big black abyss—a future with no waggy golden tails, no happy panting grins, no golden paws scrambling across my wooden floors and dashing across my lawn and leaving big muddy paw prints on my porch. And then, in the next breath, he was licking my face, digging his claws into my thigh, panting into my ear. I wrapped my arms around him, shaking, my face buried in his fur, breathing in his warm, doggy scent with my whole being.
“Are you okay? What happened?”
“Yo, dog! Hey, man!”
“Whoa, guys!”
I yelled, “Stay back!” I flung out a hand in the direction of the voices and Paul and Jess, followed closely by Pete, came to an abrupt halt. I said, breathing hard, “We’re okay; it’s okay. The trail is out. Stay back.”
Paul extended his hand to me and I grasped his forearm, pulling myself up. I held Cisco close by the collar and we edged ourselves back onto the solid part of the trail. Paul’s expression was grim. “You’re off the trail,” he said. “How did you miss the sign?”
I stared at him. “What sign?”
Paul turned to the boys with an abrupt gesture. “Okay, guys, move back. This area is off-limits. Jess, get out your map and get us back on the trail.”
The boys turned back reluctantly and, I must say, I thought they showed a good deal more concern about what had almost happened to Cisco and me than the so-called adult in the situation did. In fact, anger sparked in Paul’s eyes and his tone was clipped as he turned back to me. “Miss Stockton, we cannot have this. You presented yourself to me as a trained professional with wilderness experience. I have my hands full taking care of the students in my charge. If you can’t take care of yourself, or at least manage to keep yourself out of harm’s way, you’re a liability I simply can’t afford.”
Oh, there were a lot of things I could have said, most of them at the top of my lungs and peppered with four-letter words. But I’m a dog trainer, remember? I know that animals, when frightened, will often express fear as anger and usually turn on the one least equipped to fight back. Humans are as much animals as dogs are and are subject to the same instincts. The worst thing you can do in the face of irrational anger is to react with anger yourself.
So I said calmly, “Cisco, with me.” And I moved around Paul, back down the trail, until I reached a point where we could stand side by side. “What sign?” I repeated.
In retrospect, of course, I could see exactly where the trail ended: at the point where a sheer bluff protruded onto the flats and narrowed the trail into a mere sliver of a footpath that curved out over the ravine and then abruptly stopped. There was no way you could know it stopped without edging around that bluff, however, and by the time you did that, it would most likely be too late. All things considered, it was a good thing that Cisco, with four feet and a superb since of balance, had gone first, and not one of the kids.
Paul looked around, scowling, took a few steps down the trail, came back. And then he swore softly and pointed at the leaf-covered drop-off about twenty feet below us, where a wooden sign with the word “Danger” stenciled on it in orange letters lay discarded in the rubble.