Let Loose (7 page)

“And you are an upstanding member of the
community who values the importance of both the law and the efforts
of charitable organizations such as the Humane Society.” He said
the last with a grin.

My eyes narrowed. “Have you been talking to
Phyllis?”

His grin widened. “I didn’t have to. I saw
the ad in today’s paper.”

Ad? Damn Phyllis, and Betty too. The jazz
queen designed all of my advertising. She had to have known about
this. I gritted my teeth and tried not to show the dark thoughts
swirling through my brain.

“Anyway. You are approved and the dogs are
all yours to take care of until the Humane Society can set up a
different foster.” He smacked me on the back as if I’d just won the
lottery and walked off.

George was big, but apparently, when it was
in his best interest, he was fast too. He was well out of my arm’s
reach before I could spin around and make a grab for him.

“Red dead. I can’t believe it.” Martin
stopped beside me and held out the female husky’s leash.

I stared at the familiar strip of brown
leather for a couple of seconds, but faced with Martin’s shaken
expression, I could think of no good way to refuse my fate.

His gaze flickered. “I offered to take the
dogs. It would be tough. I already have my own team to take care of
and they’re shutting down the campground, at least until the police
get done investigating.”

I hadn’t thought about them closing the
campground. I wondered what that might mean for the race. However,
with Red’s body still lying in the snow, it seemed callous to ask.
Instead, I followed up with Martin’s personal situation. “I thought
you’d found a hotel. Did that fall through? Were you staying here
too?”

He shook his head. “No. I got a room at the
Sleep Inn. There’s a snowmobile trail that leads from there to
here. That’s how I got here today.”

“On a snowmobile?”

“The motel owner has one he rents out.” He
shoved his hands into his pockets and watched as Stone and George
walked back across the bridge to the campground. The coroner had
arrived. I guessed they were getting ready to move Red.

An uncomfortable quiet settled over us.

As the coroner and police disappeared from
view, I swallowed. “What about your dogs?”

He moved his head to the side. “I left them
in my truck. A dog box, like Red’s. When I’m at the Inn though, the
owner’s okay with me having them in the room.”

A team of sled dogs in a hotel room. There
weren’t many places that would be okay with that, but this was
Montana, and from what I’d seen of the Sleep Inn on the outside, I
doubted a little dog hair was going to be much of an issue.

Still, even the Sleep Inn might have issue
with
two
sled dog teams taking up residence - even if
Stone would go for it.

Resolved to my fate, I wrapped the leash
around my hand.

“Do you need anything? Food? Their gear?”

Uh, yes and yes. I hadn’t even thought about
what I was going to feed all of these dogs. “And names.” I just
realized I didn’t know the dogs’ names. How horrible was that?

Martin’s lips curved into a smile. “This is
Fluff.”

“Fluff? Like Fluffy?” I looked down at the
dog I’d termed head bitch in charge. With a name like Fluff, it was
no wonder she had an attitude. All the other sled dogs probably
snickered at her behind their paws. With a new sense of sympathy, I
ran a finger down the back of her head.

“In case you hadn’t figured it out, she’s
Red’s main lead.”

Stone had walked to the end of the bridge and
was watching us through mirrored sunglasses. I twisted a bit in the
snow.

Martin glanced at the detective, and then
said, “I can ask him about getting the dogs’ supplies if you like
and bring them by later.”

I accepted with an appreciative smile.

At my Jeep, Martin helped me shove Fluff
inside, while naming each of the other dogs. There was Finik, a
second lead who Red had only brought along because the Silver Trail
was an eight-dog team race.

“Fluff prefers to solo lead,” he
explained.

I glanced at Fluff who had just
shoulder=checked Finik out of her path. “Shocking.”

The rest of the team were Gent, a point dog;
Daisy, another point dog; Inuk and Winny, both team dogs; and
finally the two big guys: Zef and Cash.

“They’re a great team,” Martin said, a bit of
envy sounding in his voice.

“What will happen to them?” I asked. “Once
the police decide they aren’t ‘evidence’ I mean.”

Martin shook his head. “Red didn’t have any
kids. The dogs were his family. His ex-wife might try to take them.
According to Red, she tried during the divorce, more to hurt him
than because she wanted the dogs. Then there’s the money she could
get for them too.”

“Really?” I couldn’t imagine selling Kiska,
but I knew working dogs - hunters and those trained to do other
jobs like guard dogs - were sometimes sold to new owners. It made
sense that sled dogs would be too, as barbaric as it seemed to
me.

“Fluff is probably worth a couple of
thousand.” Martin shook his head. “Although anyone who’s met her
knows she’s worth way more than that, just in personality.”

“Yeah.” I looked at the lead dog who was back
in shot gun position. I hoped Kiska appreciated her charm. He
wasn’t, that I’d ever noticed, dominant, but he was also used to
doing whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. Somehow I thought
Fluff might expect that to change.

Thoughts of how Fluff and Kiska might get
along were jolting enough, but a realization shot through my head.
“Wait, are you saying Red doesn’t have any family? He’s divorced
with no kids?”

“That’s right.” Martin smiled back at me,
obviously not getting the seriousness of what this meant.

“So, when the police lift the hold on
releasing the dogs, who is going to get them?”

A frown pulled at Martin’s brows. “Well,
plenty of people would probably want them. They are a winning team,
but who will own them depends on whether Red left a will I guess or
if he has some other relative I don’t know about.”

“Like a brother? He has to have a brother or
sister, right?”

Martin shrugged. “If he did, he never
mentioned them.” His smile returned. “Maybe you’ll get to keep
them.”

Uh, yeah. Not what I was hoping for.

With that little shoe drop, he turned and
trotted back to the bridge where Stone was still standing. I got in
my rig hassle-free, thanks to the efforts of Fluff who seemed to
have accepted her new role as car etiquette enforcer. By the time I
rolled past the bridge, on my way to a neighbor’s drive where I
could safely turn around, both men had disappeared, hopefully to
load up whatever it would take to keep eight athletic dogs happy
and nondestructive in my care.

On the trip back past, they were still
missing. I lowered my shoulders in resolve and concentrated on the
introductions ahead of me.

Kiska was a friendly dog. He wouldn’t mind
sharing his home with a few new friends. Right?

Kiska was not happy.

Let me amend that. I was not happy. Kiska was
not happy. If my neighbors had any hearing capabilities left, they
were not happy either.

I’d arrived home with no plans for my new
wards besides keeping them separate from Kiska for as long as I
could. Leaving Kiska inside, none the wiser to the interlopers
gathered in his yard, I gathered up blankets, towels and even a
pair of old sweatpants to make beds for the team in my semi-heated
shed. I filled my best stainless steel mixing bowl set with food
and water. And I spoke quietly to Fluff, filling her in on the
rules of the land: No barking. No digging. No terrorizing of small
woodland creatures.

Then, confident she’d got my message, I went
back inside to... I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. Call for
help was my first thought, but from whom?

I was mulling this over when a stainless
steel mixing bowl went sailing past my front window like some
warped flying saucer. It smacked into a tree and fell with a loud
ping against a rock.

Kiska, lying on his bed, happily enjoying his
reprieve from being forced outside as soon as I got home, lifted
his head and frowned. I smiled nervously and babbled something
about squirrels.

He lowered his head back to his pad, but kept
one eye open, watching me.

Five seconds later, Zef and Cash bounded out
of the shed, sliding past the window and landing in a snow drift.
Daisy followed with a second stainless steel bowl gripped daintily
in her mouth. Winny came out of nowhere, soaring through the air
and landing on Winny with an umph.

I took that moment to look at Kiska,
completely missing the rest of the team’s arrival. When I looked
back, they were all there, bounding, wrestling, digging, snapping
and cavorting with only the joy a snow dog can feel when finding
him or herself alone with seven of his best buds in two feet of
previously undisturbed snow.

Then Finik dropped to his haunches and began
to howl. Within seconds, the entire team had joined in the song.
And if that wasn’t enough to give up my secret, Fluff galloped to
the window, rose up on her back legs, placed her front legs on the
glass, and stared inside.

After a moment of husky joy, her gaze shifted
to an accusing glare. I knew then the gig was up.

Sure enough, Kiska had decided to join me and
was now staring out on the canine invasion with a mix of
fascination and confusion on his face.

Fluff’s emotion was a lot easier to read.
Deep disappointment, laced with a touch of disgust. I’d been
holding out on her. There was another dog, one surely in need of
her guidance, and I had not performed the necessary
introductions.

Then Kiska began to talk, the team returned
the greeting, and my phone began to ring.

It seemed my neighbors did have a breaking
point.

o0o

After assuring my closest neighbors that I
was not opening a kennel, puppy mill, or any other dog-related
business, I took Kiska out on his leash.

The confinement seemed a bit unfair to him,
but it gave me at least
some
feeling of control.

As probably easily predicted, Red’s team
barreled toward us like bears to a tipped-over garbage can.

Fluff, however, was on duty. When Zef, Cash,
and Daisy got too close, she lowered her head and brushed them
aside. Gent, Winny and Inuk were even less of an issue; a strong
glare got them to back off. And Finik, poor guy, kept completely
out of the way, pretending interest in the previously discarded
stainless steel bowls.

Kiska, happily unaware that he was being
assessed and possibly possessed like a prized new toy, watched the
proceedings with a grin and swaying tail.

Finally, after she was sure the other dogs
knew their place in line -
after her
- Fluff went about
sniffing Kiska down tail to snout and gauging his position in her
world.

I waited stiffly, completely unsure what I
would do if Fluff weighed Kiska’s measure and found him
wanting.

Luckily, this didn’t happen. After a thorough
sniff down, Fluff lifted her tail, turned around and moved to the
side, apparently signaling her acceptance and thus her approval of
the other dogs giving theirs.

After another twenty minutes of sniffing and
the occasional snarl as one dog or the other got a little too eager
and shoved a teammate out of the way, everyone seemed to have
settled down and given Kiska, me, and their temporary home
husky-approval.

I had just stepped back inside my house with
the intention of warming up some cold coffee in the microwave when
my phone rang. Hoping the Humane Society had performed a miracle
and found a foster for Red’s dogs, I raced to answer.

Betty’s voice on the other end of the line
dashed my hopes.

“Why are you answering your phone?”

I cocked a brow, thinking the obvious answer
was because it had rung, but before I could offer this reply, she
hurtled on.

“Your walking tour called to ask if lunch was
included in their day, the Mountain Scout troop wants to know if
they can use that marble washstand for their cookie display -
outside I might add. Don’t their parents know the mercury is barely
past zero?” She didn’t wait for my reply. “Esther Monroe is in your
office waiting for you to take her to the dentist. Daniel Rowe came
by wanting to know how you killed Red Benson. Oh and a pipe broke
in the bathroom. I shoved a tablecloth in the hole, but haven’t had
time to call a plumber.”

I held out the phone so I could stare at
it.

The voice on the other end changed. Phyllis
called out, “Lucy? Are you there? I heard what you did today. That
is perfect. I’m getting a photographer here—”

There was muttering and the sound of the
phone hitting the ground, and then Betty was back on the line. “Get
in here!”

“And bring the dogs!”

I was pretty sure the last was from Phyllis,
but I didn’t have a chance to find out for sure. The line went
dead.

Her demand was still ringing in my ears as I
turned around to stare out my front window.

The team had separated into three groups. One
seemed focused on a stone wall that I knew chipmunks and other
furry creatures called home, another was occupied digging a hole
that I could only assume was meant to house the entire team and
perhaps a family of moose if they were to wander by, and the third
had moved down to the gate by my garage where they were howling in
unison to some noise far out of reach of my mere human ears.

Kiska sat plunked down in the intersection of
the three groups glancing back and forth from one to the other as
if he just couldn’t choose which mayhem to join.

I made the decision for him, grabbing him by
the collar and tugging him inside. Then I gathered up every leash I
owned, a jump rope I bought during my “box your way thin” craze of
two days, and three bungee cords.