sixty-three

I can spend all day waiting in a bug-infested wetland for the perfect photo opportunity, or shooting photos of dogs or cats or horses in action, but twenty minutes shopping for anything other than pet toys, running shoes, or camera accessories makes me want to curl up like a cat on a cushion. Shopping for an appliance I will use occasionally to boil water? Just thinking of the upcoming ordeal made me itch, but Tom insisted I tag along since the thing would be installed in my kitchen. And he wanted to go early so he would have the afternoon to take the dogs for a swim at Collin Lahmeyer’s place.

Pixel is almost trustworthy enough to be loose in the house when I’m gone, but with Winnie there, I decided to shut the kitten into my bedroom. She would have access to everything she needed other than trouble. I left Leo with her for company and tossed a couple of felt rodents into the room for good measure. Tom was shutting Winnie into her wire exercise pen in the living room when I emerged from the bedroom.

“Don’t you think she should be in her crate?”

He clipped the final slide bolt into place to close the pen. “She’ll have more room in here.”

“But she might get out.”

“She never has,” he said, giving the corner a tug to show me the panels were securely connected. “Anyway, we won’t be gone all that long.”

How long does it take for an eleven-week-old puppy to get into trouble? I bit my tongue.

“Have you ever left her in the pen before? I mean, when you weren’t home?”

He grinned and kissed my cheek and said, “You worry too much. She’ll be fine.”

I wasn’t so sure, but decided to wait and see.

The appliance store had some kind of mega super biggest-of-the-year power sale going on, and an army of salespeople hovered just inside the door. A perky brunette won the sprint to intercept us. “I’m Evelyn,” she said. “How may I help?” The low cut of her polyester top said she was in her twenties, but her face argued for mid-forties.

She guided us right by the nearest row of stoves and into one with price tags that would have gotten me a very nice new telephoto lens. Then she began her pitch for the latest in sensory this and electronic that, all aimed at me. I wasn’t sure whether to find her assumption sexist or hilarious. Both, I decided.

“Let’s see something a bit less precious, shall we,” said Tom.

“Certainly,” Evelyn said, bustling around the end of the lineup and into the row we had passed by earlier. “Now here’s a nice unit,” she told me, and started to rattle off all the fancy features.

“We don’t need all the bells and whistles,” Tom said. “Just a nice basic stove with a self-cleaning oven.”

Evelyn shot me a quick glance of what looked a lot like sympathy, and I just couldn’t help myself after that.

“Oh, really? We can have self-cleaning?”

Tom looked at me like I’d lost my mind, but when Evelyn explained that a self-cleaning oven would reduce my exposure to toxic cleaners, he started to laugh. The poor woman started to say something else, but closed her mouth and took a step backward.

“Evelyn, I’m the cook at our house, and I’ll be the one cleaning the oven.” Tom smiled at her, but she looked skeptical. Tom asked a few questions about two competing models, and picked one.

As Evelyn held her phone and waited for delivery information, I smiled at her and said, “I hate to cook.” She seemed to have some trouble processing us.

We passed Blackford’s Farm and Garden on the way home, and I wondered again about who might have killed Ray Turnbull and Mick Fallon. And where in the world was Summer? “Tom,” I said, but stopped because I couldn’t seem to shape my thought into words.

“Janet.” He glanced at me and grinned.

“Those two guys, the goons from Cleveland …”

“Yes?”

“We’ve been assuming they came after Evan, you know, to collect the money he owes their boss. But what if once they got here, what if Summer and Ray …” I still couldn’t fit the pieces into a coherent whole, and the half-formed question just hung there for a few moments.

“What if Summer or Ray—or both of them—had some history with the guy? Is that where you’re going?”

“I think so.” I thought about the photo of Summer running away from the encounter between Evan and the two men. “What if they met him in Reno, you know, tried to con him, but didn’t really know who he was, what they were getting into? Maybe that’s why they left there in such a hurry.”

“But why move closer to his home base?”

We pulled into my driveway and Tom turned the engine off.

“Maybe they didn’t know he was from Cleveland. Or maybe they thought, heck, it’s what, three or four hours from this area to Cleveland, and there’s nothing around here to make him likely to visit.” I popped my door open, but stopped to add, “They didn’t expect Evan to go borrow money from the same guy.”

We were just approaching the door from the garage into the house when something hit it from the other side with a solid thunk. Tom and I looked at each other, and closed the overhead door and opened the other. I was not surprised to see a dog on the other side. I had figured the crash into the door was Jay or Drake skidding to a stop. The surprise was which dog it was, and the way she looked.

Winnie was a moving collage. Bits of multicolored paper were stuck to her head, her body, her legs. She tumbled over the doorsill and ran two loops around the garage before skidding past Tom and back into the house. She disappeared into the kitchen and the sound of her little paws on vinyl stopped, telling me she was on the living room carpet. We hurried past the laundry room and into the kitchen, where we were met by Jay and Drake. They, too, had bits of paper stuck to their heads, but only a few. Drake held his ears pulled back and was wagging his tail in low, short, fast motions that looked a lot like an apology. Jay squinted his eyes and bared his teeth in a submissive grin. Behind them, the kitchen table was shoved out from its usual home against the wall. The salt and pepper shakers lay under it, and the teddy bear honey dispenser lay in the far corner. It seemed to be deformed.

I pulled a bit of raggedy paper off Jay’s cheek. It felt sticky. I ran my finger over it and touched my tongue. Honey. I scowled at the paper bit and realized what it was at exactly the moment I heard “Ohmygod!” from the other room.

Winnie’s pen lay where it had been knocked over, the wire panels collapsed but for the puppy toys caught between them. Tom was trying to catch Winnie, but she was too fast and too exhilarated, and small enough to get behind the couch to escape between gleeful circuits of the room. Nothing else looked out of place in the living room, but when my eyes took in my work area, my lungs seized.