CHAPTER 2

SMELLS GOOD, once you get past the gun oil,” said Graham Campbell that evening. he pulled a bottle of red wine from the pocket of his jacket, handed it to Rosemary, then took off the jacket and handed her that as well.

“Thank you, Gray. I know, I’m sorry. I should have cleaned them in the basement, but it’s cold down there.” She hung the jacket in the hall closet, and took the wine and her guest into the kitchen.

“Your husband’s?” asked Gray, eyeing the firearms laid out on newspapers on the breakfast-nook table: a 16-gauge shotgun, a .22 bolt-action rifle, a revolver with a cross-hatched grip and a four-inch barrel.

“Now there’s a sexist remark,” she said. “The rifle and the shot-gun are mine; I was a ranch kid, remember? I gave Jack’s deer rifle to Paul, but the thirty-eight was his.” She zipped each weapon into its case and handed him the long guns before picking up the revolver case and the oil-stained shoebox of cleaning gear. “Right now I keep them in the basement.”

“What did your husband need a revolver for?” he asked as he followed her into the small back hall and down the stairs.

“When they were working at a site that didn’t have good security—I told you he was an electrical contractor—he’d sometimes go over at night to check on things. Then he carried the revolver. There, in that cupboard in the corner.”

Upstairs again, Rosemary curled up in a chair in front of the fire and her guest moved to the pine sideboard that was her liquor cabinet, turning to cock an eyebrow at her. “Yes, please,” she said. “I think I’ll join you tonight.”

Long-boned and loose-jointed, with a full head of rumpled pewter-gray hair over a weathered, clean-shaven face, Gray looked slightly shabby and entirely comfortable in worn corduroy trousers and a plaid flannel shirt. One of two locals she counted as friend rather than acquaintance, he was a veterinarian, long divorced and as settled in his solitary (except for his animals) life as she meant to be in hers. Rosemary viewed him as an interesting and agreeable male for whose well-being she had no responsibility; she suspected that he valued her not only as a friend but as a buffer between an unattached and presentable man and any of the local ladies who might want one of those.

“Thank you,” she said as he handed her a small, squat glass of ice and gin. “Now we can sit here and smell the lamb shanks. I’m no cook, but I can read and follow instructions, and so far the recipes I’ve tried from the San Francisco Chronicle Cookbook have worked out well.”

“Cheers,” he said, saluting her with his glass of scotch before folding himself into the second fireside chair. “Uh, Rosemary. What made you decide to get the guns out?”

“I’m…not sure.” Awkward, but true. They’d been kept in the basement since she moved into the house, and this afternoon she’d found herself unlocking that cupboard with no specific intention that she could recall.

His steady gaze invited more. Probably just the “where does it hurt?” look he uses on a wounded animal, Rosemary thought, and had a sip of gin. But it might not be a bad idea to have a local confidant, just in case. She took another sip, and a deep breath. “It seems my grasping, whiny, rotten former in-laws have learned I’m living here. Here in town, I mean.”

Gray’s eyes widened as his eyebrows climbed.

“A little history, okay? in my defense.”

“Rosemary, you don’t need a defense.”

She ignored this. “Jack and I met at UCLA when he was a senior and I was a freshman. He got into grad school, we got married, I dropped out to support us, and about a year later his father got sick. Jack’s mother had died when he was a kid; that was something we had in common. Anyway, we went north to Arcata to take care of his dad and help out temporarily in the business he and his brother and their wives had started in 1952. It was a lengthy illness, and when he died four years later, I was pregnant and we just—stayed.”

She tipped an ice cube into her mouth and crunched it. “Jack was killed two years ago on a building site, in an accident that was the fault of the major contractor. Between Jack’s personal insurance policy and the contractor’s insurer, I came out of a more or less perpetual hangover to find myself a fairly well-off widow. Tra-la,” she added bitterly.

“And?”

“The rest of the family—the uncle had died a few years earlier, so it was his widow and their two sons, Jack’s cousins—demanded that I put the settlement money into the company. Which was sliding rapidly from marginal to useless because Jack had been the only capable worker in the lot.”

“Ah. You resisted.”

“I wanted to be decent,” she said softly, “to not let years of resentment make me mean. But they—pushed. Too hard.” With a grimace, she tucked herself further into the depths of her chair and tipped her glass to drain it.

Gray got to his feet and reached for the empty glass. She yielded it and gave him a tight smile. “Yes, thanks. So, my sons came home and Paul, I think it was, told the relatives collectively and specifically to fuck off. he and Ben bought me a ticket to Hawaii and told me to stay a month and decide what I wanted to do with my life.”

Rosemary smiled a softer smile, remembering. Ben had suggested she go back to college. Paul had advised new clothes and a boyfriend or several. She herself had toyed briefly with the notion of relocating to Alaska.

Gray spoke from the sideboard without looking at her. “Rosemary, are these people threatening you?”

She thought this over for a moment. The boys, as their wives as well as their mother called them, were a pair of bullying cowards and had learned the hard way—or at least the older one, Fred, had—that it was a mistake to come at her head-on. “Not yet. And not seriously. I just hate the idea of having to deal with them again. Add to that Kim Runyon’s tale today about the poor woman shot by a hunter, and suddenly I just felt like cleaning guns.”

Gray handed her a newly frosty glass and then refilled his own, pausing in the kitchen doorway to sniff the air. “God. Remind me never to consider becoming a vegetarian. Is there anything needs doing out there?”

Rosemary shook her head. “Salad’s in the fridge, potatoes are in the oven with the lamb. Come and sit down and tell me what you know about the dead woman.”

Facing her now, Gray quirked an eyebrow in an expression Rosemary couldn’t read. She was about to ask him what was up when the sound of a passing vehicle out front was followed by a burst of furious barking from somewhere close. “Gray, did you bring one of your dogs with you?”

In addition to half a dozen cats and several horses, Gray owned three dogs: a quietly cheerful rescued Greyhound, a manic Jack Russell terrier, and an irascible three-legged German shepherd. “Not exactly,” he said now. He moved to the front window, and Rosemary got up to follow him. A large, light-colored head was framed in the window of Gray’s GMC truck, hung there a moment, disappeared.

“Gray, what is that? That’s the saddest dog face I’ve ever seen.”

“He may be the saddest dog,” Gray told her. “He belonged to Mike Morgan, the woman who was shot, and he got shot, too, or grazed. He was there with her body and wouldn’t let the deputies near it or near him, so they called me out.”

“But that was days ago, right?”

Gray shrugged, and took a sip of his scotch while keeping his gaze on the scene outside. “I had him in a pen at the clinic, but he was so morose and listless he wouldn’t even eat, which is unheard-of with this breed. So I took him to the house with me this afternoon, but Rocky vowed to make a war of it.”

Rocky was the German shepherd. “I bet,” said Rosemary.

“This guy’s a Labrador retriever, a good one in that stocky English style, somewhere around four years old. normally they’re a cinch to place, but he’s so depressed and unresponsive I can’t get anybody interested.”

Rosemary saw the plot and swooped to squelch it. “Gray Camp-bell, don’t you look at me! We never had dogs; Ben was allergic and anyway he and Paul were into sports practically as soon as they could walk. And I worked full-time besides.”

“I never push dogs on people, Rosemary. Just leads to disappointed, unhappy dogs.”

“Not to mention people.” The dog put his face against the truck window again, and Rosemary sighed. “For heaven’s sake, I won’t object if you want to bring the poor sad guy in for a while. Obviously he needs company.”

Gray dashed through the first few drops of rain and was back quickly, towing the dog on a short leash. Rosemary let them in and then stood back for a look. The dog’s thick, slightly rough coat was a warm tan along back, shoulders, ears, the top of his tail; the big, sad face was a paler tan, the chest and belly nearly white. There was a neatly stitched, four-inch gash in a shaved strip along his left side. Not tall, he stood with big feet and sturdy legs planted four-square to support a solid trunk.

“Gray, that’s not a dog. That’s a tank.”

The heavy head came up, the thick, straight tail lifted and waved just a bit. After a long moment the dog sat, tipped his head to one side, fixed dark-rimmed brown eyes on Rosemary, and offered her a paw.

Rosemary bent to accept the paw, muttered, “Good boy,” and turned a baleful glance on Gray Campbell. “I have a strong sense of being set up here.”

He lifted both hands high, palms out. “No ma’am. He’s got no tag, there weren’t any papers at Ms. Morgan’s house, nobody I talked to had heard her call him anything. Somehow you hit on his name.”

The dog twitched a caramel-colored ear in Gray’s direction but kept his gaze on Rosemary. “All you had to do was look at him,” she said. “Gray, I do not want a dog. I do not want anything I have to feed and clean up after and worry about.”

“Sorry, didn’t know you felt so strongly. Look, if you can keep him a few days, maybe his basic Lab nature will surface and I can find him a home. one big problem, and it’s a real oddity for the breed: he doesn’t like little kids.”

“Really.” She was eyeing the dog thoughtfully when the stove’s timer went off. “Okay, Tank, you lie down and keep watch. Gray, you open the wine, and I’ll put on my new Schubert CD.”

“Still Schubert?”

“Oh hush. you call it nostalgia, to me it’s an attempt to regain something from my past.” When Elizabeth Craigie, a skilled ama-teur violinist, died in an accident at age thirty-four, her family had lost not only their mother, but music. “This is the ‘Trout’ quintet, it’s cheerful.”

When dinner was finished, Rosemary simply turned out the lights in breakfast nook and kitchen, and carried coffeepot and cups into the living room. The Campbell–Mendes rules for their Saturday night dinners were simple: host cooked, and cleaned up later; guest brought wine. next week Gray would cook.

Rosemary poked the fire, sipped at her coffee, sighed. “Okay,” she said, settling into her chair, “I feel weird talking about it while he’s listening…” she nodded in the direction of the dog, stretched out flat on his belly before the fireplace “…and that in itself is pretty weird. But what do you know about the shooting? The story I found in the Courier was mostly quotes from local people who didn’t know anything; and the Redding paper wasn’t much better. Was it just a hunting accident?”

“Sheriff Angstrom, who’s a fishing buddy of mine, says there’s no reason to think otherwise.” Gray slouched back in his chair, long legs stretched toward the fire. “The wound was horrendous; high-powered shell took her right in the back of the head at fairly close range. This happened out in the deep woods off the edge of her property, and they’d probably not have found her for months if somebody hadn’t spotted that big blond dog.”

Whose face was sad even as he slept by a warm fire. “do they know when it happened?”

“Not exactly. She was found Wednesday, probably been dead two or three days.”

Dead three days—no, six days now, nearly a week—and now just a piece of tossed-aside rotting meat, while somewhere, in some mother’s or sister’s or lover’s mind, she was still a live, walking-around person. “Kim Runyon said nobody knows where she came from, or who her relatives were.”

“So I understand.”

“In the mean old city it’s drive-bys; out here in the wholesome, healthy countryside it’s an idiot with a deer gun.” Rosemary got up to refill the coffee cups. “Poor woman. it’s strange she wasn’t wearing colors.”

“She wasn’t wearing hiking boots, either,” said Gray. “Gus Angstrom found a pair, obviously frequently used, at her house; but on her feet that day, sneakers. He figures she just went out there on the spur of the moment, between showers maybe.”

“Gray, did you know her?”

He shook his head. “If she used a local vet, it must have been Jensen. I saw her a time or two, in town. Tall, brown hair, just an ordinary not-to-notice face but a nice long hiker’s stride.”

“How old?”

“I’m not good at that, Rosemary. Somewhere around thirty, maybe.”

“And what’s the buzz? Gossip,” she said in response to his blank look.

He hunched his shoulders uneasily. “As my ex-wife remarked on her way out the door, most of my attention is devoted to critters. My sense is that people found her—‘standoffish’ is the word that comes to mind.”

“Is there any way of finding out who the stupid hunter was?”

Gray shook his head. “Not without a confession or a lot of luck. The whole week’s been unseasonably cold and overcast, with rain off and on. The sheriff’s guys haven’t turned up any local person who was hunting up there then. Some people who live in the area remember hearing occasional shots, but they didn’t take any particular notice, this time of year.”

“Poor woman,” said Rosemary again, helplessly. “And poor or-phan…” Standing before the fireplace cradling her coffee cup, she looked down and gave a little shriek.

“Gray! That dog has balls!”

Gray sat up and glanced at the dog; Tank, surprisingly limber for such a stocky, muscular animal, now slept splayed out on his back. “He’s male, Rosemary. Males have balls.”

“Don’t be cute, Dr. Campbell. I raised four little brothers and two sons and had plenty of exposure to male equipment. But I thought male dogs got de-balled these days, in the interests of population control or civility.”

Gray got to his feet, set his cup aside, and stretched. “About time to hit the road, got a busy day tomorrow. As to neutering, a Rott-weiler, doberman, or German shepherd, yes indeed unless they’re show dogs and breeding stock. Quite a few vets now, me among ’em, feel it’s not necessary for, say, Labs or goldens.”

“Wonderful,” she muttered. “It’ll be like having a fourteen-year-old boy in the house again.”

Gray grinned at this tacit capitulation, and Rosemary scowled at him. “only until you find him a real home, understand?” The dog, catching a noise outside, rolled to his feet and hurled himself to-wards the front door, roaring.

“Good boy, Tank,” Gray called after him. “Okay, enough. Quiet!”

The dog sniffed the air, gave one final bark, and trotted back to the fireside.

“Will he eat small children?” asked Rosemary. “Or anybody else?”

“Probably not.” At her look of irritation, he spread his hands. “These guys aren’t inclined to go looking for a fight. But by the time he’s fully adult, a male Lab can be pretty protective. Given his good ears and terrific nose, along with an innate sense of territory, you can at least figure nobody will sneak up on you. And since he’s likely to be here with you for a few days at least, let me give you a few hints.”

“Please do.”

He held up one finger. “Labs have bottomless pits for stomachs, so feed him sparingly. Twice a day, about a cup and a half of dry food each time, not many treats.”

“Got it.”

Another finger. “He won’t run around and exercise himself like a terrier would, but he’ll be eager to hike with you.” And a third. “Just remember county laws: except on his owner’s property, or in the national forests or wilderness areas, any loose dog can be shot as a potential danger to livestock.”

Rosemary looked at the now-peaceful dog. “Would he really go after sheep or cows?”

“Probably not,” said Gray again. “But he comes with two leashes; just use them until you find out whether he’s responsive to your voice control. Don’t look so worried, Rosemary. I think you may find him good company, but if he turns out to be a burden, call me and I’ll come pick him up. now if you’ll just hang on to him for a minute, I’ll bring in his gear.”

In short order there was a large plastic bin of food on Rosemary’s service porch, a metal pan of water on her kitchen floor, a big round dog bed in her living room. “You do take up a lot of space,” she said to the dog as the sound of Gray’s GMC faded away. And then it occurred to her to wonder what it was that had set him off a few minutes earlier. Willow Lane was county-maintained only about a mile beyond her place, turning soon after into a dirt track that eventually petered out against a hillside. The passing whatever-it-was hadn’t sounded like Eddie Runyon’s rattly pickup, nor the misfiring, muffler-impaired old van driven by the only other resident out that way, an elderly recluse.

“So, who?” she asked the dog, who tipped his head into classic listening pose. “Let’s make a rule, friend. Let’s not bark at raccoons or deer unless they come right up onto the porch, okay? Just people, you bark at them any time.”