All That Glitters (Raine Stockton Dog Mysteries) (3 page)

“No,” I said, shaking my head.  “I’m just here to—“

“She’s not here,” the neighbor said, coming over to us.  The engine of the propane truck rumbled in  the background and she raised her voice to be heard.  “It got too cold when they ran out of gas.”

“Well, this ought to help.
”  He went around the side of the truck and started uncoiling the filler hose.  “We got an order to fill the tank this morning, along with
three
hundred dollars in cash to cover it.  Somebody left it in the drop box last night, along with this note.”  He reached in the pocket of his flannel shirt and  pulled out a torn half-sheet of white paper.  On it was scrawled, “From your Secret Santa.”

I lifted an eyebrow, and smiled at the neighbor.  “Well, that’s good news.  I’ll make sure the dog is taken care of  until she gets back, but be sure to tell her to call.”

“She won’t call,” the woman assured me, puzzling over the paper the driver showed her.  “She might come back, but she won’t call.”

I wanted to leave on a positive note, but I knew she was probably right.

“
W
ell, if you want my opinion,”  announced my friend Maude a couple of days later,  “that little collie has already found a good home.”

I had known Maude for most of my life and
she
was, in many ways, as much of a mother to me as my own mother had been.  When she spoke, I usually listened—in part because she had a clipped British accent that made every word she spoke sound more important than it was, and in part  because she had proven to be right about most things over the years.  But not about this.

“I’m not looking for a dog,” I told her firmly.   “Besides, that collie is going to be easy to place. 
Look how nicely she cleaned up.  Definitely a purebred.  I
f I can get  her pic
ture in the paper this week
e
nd
,
 
we
’ll have a dozen calls before Christmas
.”

Maude worked with me on the Humane Society, and I had brought her out to the barn to have a look at the collie. 
I had fixed up one of the stalls in the barn for the dog, although of course I brought her in at night and let her sleep in a crate in the kitchen
.
 
N
ow she was contentedly curled up in a pile of
hay, chewing
a rubber bone
.  

The collie’s owner had, in fact, actually called me... to surrender her dog.  Though she had been
beside herself with amazed joy over the mysterious gift of a full propane tank, there had been tears in her voice, too, as she confessed she
w
as no longer able to care for her dog.   “I feel bad,” she said
, “but I know it’s for the best.  You try to give your children everything but…when my four year old sat on Santa’s lap all he wanted for Christmas was to go home and sleep in his own bed.”  She took a brave breath.  “At least he’s got that.  I can only do the best I can.”

A story like that made me ashamed of feeling sorry for myself, but I managed it anyway.  “Besides,” I said, turning to leave the barn, “I’m about to join the ranks of the unemployed.  I can’t take on another mouth to feed.”

“
Do yo
u know,
my dear
,” Maude said thoughtfully, glancing around the
vast, dusty interior of the barn, “it would take almost nothing to convert this building into a functioning boarding kennel and training facility.
Your father’s horses always did live better than most families in this county… concrete floors, heating and plumbing already in place… the investment would be minimal for you. 
You already have more people asking you to teach classes than you can accommodate in the summer, and if you had an indoor facility you could do it year around.   You have room for twenty boarders, easily, and even at half capacity that would be a reasonable income.”

I looked at her skeptically.  “A boarding kennel is a lot of work.”

“But there is something to be said for owning one’s own business.”

“I suppose.
” I couldn’t believe I was actually considering it, however briefly.  “
And I do like teaching.”

“You’re quite good at it.”

I returned a half-smile to the woman who had been training me to train dogs since I was eight years old.  “I learned from the best.”  And then I shrugged.  “But there’s no money in dog training.  Besides…”  my gaze slid away uncomfortably.  “I don’t have a dog.”

Perhaps I should have mentioned that it had been Maude who
had given me my beloved Cassidy,
a product of her own championship kennel, Sundance
.  I suspected that in some ways losing Cassidy had been as hard o
n
Maude as it had been on me
, and I still couldn’t mention Cassidy’s name to Maude without tearing up.

Before that could happen, I added,  “Anyway, I’ve got to get going. 
Aunt Mart
talked me into being on the
Families First
Christmas Baskets
committee, and we’re meeting
at the church
to fill the baskets this afternoon. You’ll put the word out about the collie, right?”

“I will.  And you’ll think about what I said?”

Because I wasn’t entirely sure whether she was referring to what she had said about the collie, or about the kennel, I was careful to promise nothing except to
call her later
, and I hurried off to meet my aunt.

T
here was a Sheriff’s Department patrol car in front of the church when I pulled in, and I naturally assumed it belonged to my uncle, who had dropped
Aunt Mart
off for the meeting.  I circled around to the basement door and parked beside the other vehicles
, tuck
ing
my coat and scarf more securely around me as I got out into the cold.  A moment later, I was stripping gloves, hat, scarf and coat off  as the blast of overheated air from inside the church basement hit me.

A dozen
or
so
women were gathered in a long
concrete-floored
room to the left, and I could hear their voices as I approached, “Absolutely scandalous, if you ask me.  A man like that, running off with a woman half his age…”

For some reason, I always fe
lt
self-conscious when I hear
d
the words “scandalous”,  “man” and “running off with a woman” in a sentence together… as though that sentence might in some way be referring to my failed marriage.  So I entered the room hesitantly, stuffing my gloves into my coat pocket, only to be greeted by a cheerful, “Oh, hey Raine.  We were just talking about that scamp Jess Hanson.  Have you ever heard the like?”    
  
 

Well, it’s like my daddy always used to say: You wouldn’t worry so much about what other people thought of you if you realized how seldom they did. My ex- husband Buck and I were old news by now; of course I should have realized people had found something more interesting to talk about.

The room was lined with long tables, upon which were stacked piles of  canned goods
, packaged breads and cookies, canned hams and straw baskets.  The women had set up an assembly line, filling each basket with one item from the pile in front of them, and topping it off with a red bow at the end.  There were stacks of cardboard boxes from the food bank placed strategically around the room, and
Aunt Mart
was unpacking them.

“Well now,
all I know is that Jess Hanson was a fine member of this community and an absolutely perfect Santa Claus for over sixty years,” asserted
Aunt Mart
, and paused with her arms full of
jellied cranberry sauce
to offer her cheek for a kiss, which I obliged, “and if
he
wants to spend his sunset years in Jupiter Beach with that redhead, more power to him.  Hello Raine, dear. At least we were lucky enough to find someone to replace him.”

I had been a little self-involved the past few months and wasn’t entirely up on all the gossip, but I gathered that Jess Hanson, who had been the town Santa for as long as I could remember, had moved on to warmer pursuits.
“So who’s playing Santa now?” I asked,
hanging up
my coat and pushing up my sleeves.  Since I was probably the youngest person there, I figured my job would be the heavy lifting, so I headed for the cardboard boxes.  “I was just by Hanson’s Department Store and there was some guy in a red suit sitting in the window display with a line of children out the door.”

“Some fellow from up Raleigh way,” answered Donella Gray, mother of three.  “He just moved here last month.  Retired carpenter, I think somebody told me. To tell the truth, I like him a lot better than Jess as Santa.  That beard of his is real, and
the kids know the difference, let me tell you.”

“He’s been really nice about taking over all of Jess’s obligations, even the unpaid ones—the school parties, the church pageant, and of course he’ll play Santa at the town Christmas party.”

“I still think that Jess Hanson had a nerve.”

The women worked and gossiped with equal energy, never missing a beat as they passed the baskets down the line to be filled.  “Wow,” I said, setting a heavy box of canned hams on the table, “this sure is a lot of stuff.”

“
Seventy five
baskets,” replied
Aunt Mart
sadly, “and that doesn’t even meet the need.  It just breaks my heart, right here at Christmas time, to know all the families that are hurting.
  We’re  each going to
take on
deliver
ing
ten
baskets
.  I
was wondering, Raine, if you’d mind driving me in your car, since it’s so much bigger?
”

I said, “Sure, but isn’t that why Uncle Roe is here?  I saw his patrol car out front.”

She looked surprised.  “That’s not Roe.  He’s got a lunch meeting with the mayor and you know those things always go on all afternoon.”  The
n
she glanced across the table and said, “Wait, Sara Lyn , first the creamed corn, then the green peas.  You’ve got two cans of peas there.” 

Sara Lyn pointed out that she was out of creamed corn, and after a search through the boxes
Aunt Mart
sent me upstairs to make sure that all the
cartons
had been brought down
from the church office. That was when I met my ex-husband coming out of the administrative wing.

I should have mentioned that my ex is a de
puty sher
iff, and he had worked for my uncle even longer than he had been married to me.  To say we now found ourselves in an awkward situation would be an understatement, and I wasn’t just talking about meeting each other in the corridor of a church on a Wednesday afternoon.