Рита Браун - The Tail Of The Tip-Off

Dr. Shulman smiled slightly. "Well, you'll need these things until you do and-uh-Tazio, I should tell you that Labrador retrievers are excellent companions. They are used to lead the blind because they're so rock steady."

"I'll put signs up describing him. Someone might be searching for him."

Dr. Shulman looked down at the dog and, when Tazio's head was turned, he winked.

Sharon had already put the rabies tag on the collar, a bright royal blue. She placed it around the dog's neck. "Perfect." Then she tidied the papers at the front desk. "All right now. What shall we call this fellow?"

Tazio, knowing an ambush when she saw one, nevertheless smiled, "Brinkley Two. Seems only right."

"I think so." And she wrote down the name in black ink, block letters.

"Sharon, I guess you heard about H. H. Donaldson?"

"Sure did." Sharon glanced up from her paperwork. "I shed not a tear." A note of sarcasm was inflected in her voice. She looked up again. "I'm one of H.H.'s castoffs." She waved her hand. "Oh, it was years ago but it still stings a little."

"I'm sorry. I had no idea."

"I didn't broadcast it." She handed Tazio the papers with the day written down, the list of shots given, and when the dog would need boosters. "But it's weird-now I don't care."

"Could be the shock."

Sharon shrugged. "Maybe. I feel sorry for his little girl. And Anne. She's a nice lady."

"I guess I put my foot in it." Tazio blushed.

"No you didn't. I just felt like casting a weight off my shoulders. You're still relatively new here, Tazio. This place is full of secrets."

"I guess any small town is."

"Got that right." Sharon smiled, then stood up to pat Brinkley's head. "You're going to love this dog. Trust me."

With a weak little voice, Tazio half-protested. "I work too many hours to have a pet."

"I will never let you down," Brinkley vowed to the architect. "Not with my last breath."

On the way home, Taz thought she'd better brave the supermarket. Just in case the storm lasted. The first flakes were falling. She pulled in next to Harry's truck just as Harry put two large bags of groceries into the seat.

"Taz, what have you got there?"

Taz gave her the story.

Mrs. Murphy shouted from the seat, "Welcome to Crozet, Brinkley. You were named for a good dog, a German shepherd."

"Thank you. Do you think she'll feed me soon?"

"As soon as you get home, and she lives maybe seven or eight minutes from here. She's very responsible and, oh, make sure you tell her you like her work. She's an architect," Tucker helpfully suggested.

"Don't drool on her blueprints," Pewter sassily said.

"Oh, forgive me. I'm Mrs. Murphy, this is Tucker, and the smart mouth is Pewter. We live out by Yellow Mountain and we work at the post office so I'm sure we'll see you."

As Harry and Taz talked about H.H.'s death, the shock of it, they moved on quickly, because it was cold, to the next guild meeting and what they both hoped to accomplish.

"Hey, I was surprised to see you at the basketball game. You haven't been a regular."

"I thought I'd give it a try." The cold air tingled in Taz's upturned nose.

"Well, let me know if you need anything for your new best friend."

"Thanks. I'm hoping to find a home for him. I'd better grab some milk and bread and hurry home. Brinkley needs to eat."

"Yes," Brinkley agreed.

When Taz got home, the first thing she did was mix some canned food into the dry food. She watched while the famished animal gulped the food then drank water. When he finished he smiled up at her.

"You know, even though you're skinny, you're a rather handsome dog." She walked over to pet him. "You know, oh, I said that already, didn't I? Well, how about if I put your bed in the bedroom? We don't want it where people can see it."

She picked up the fleece doggie bed, placing it on the floor at the foot of her bed. She thought the dog would curl up and go to sleep for he had to be exhausted but Brinkley was so thrilled to find a person who might love him he followed her everywhere she went until she sat down at her computer. Then he blissfully slept at her feet.

She couldn't help but smile when she glanced down at him.

Harry arrived home before the wind started howling. By the time she left the barn, the doors rattled.

Walking to the house she complained to her animals. "First it's El Niño, then it's La Niña. Okay, that passed and with it the mild winters, but this is ridiculous. Second big blow in as many weeks."

Once in the house she fed her pets, buttered a bagel, pulled out a legal-sized pad, a pencil, and sat at the kitchen table. She diagrammed the inside of the Clam, marking who sat where. She diagrammed the parking lot, noting the spot where H.H. collapsed. Then she wrote down the names of everyone she could remember who either tried to assist or who watched helplessly.

"Didn't she hear a thing Herb told her?" Pewter crossly complained.

"She heard." Tucker gazed at Harry, her expressive brown eyes filled with concern.

"She feels compelled to solve this or to at least shift the focus onto herself and away from Susan," the tiger correctly surmised.

"I think she'll be careful." Tucker hoped she would.

"I'm sure she will but if she's being watched, it's only going to add fuel to the fire." Mrs. Murphy knew her human very well.

"Sooner or later people will know H.H. was murdered," Pewter thought out loud. "Might take some of the onus off her."

"They won't know until the report comes back from the state lab in Richmond," Mrs. Murphy replied. "January isn't the murdering season so those toxicology reports will be back soon enough, I'll bet. She can get into a lot of trouble in that time."

"Maybe the storm will slow her down." Tucker allowed Pewter to groom her.

"We can hope." Mrs. Murphy jumped onto the kitchen table.

Harry looked at the cat and back at her drawing of the parking lot. "Ah, you three were in the truck. I'll add that." She added their names with a flourish. "Maybe if I can find out who H.H. was sleeping with I can figure this out."

In a way she was right and in a way she was wrong.

13

Although the storm didn't dump a lot of snow on the ground, the winds howled ferociously. Drifts piled up across the roadways, and five feet behind the drifts the asphalt shone as though picked clean. Nor did the winds abate. Shutters rattled, doors vibrated, and the stinging cold seeped through the cracks and fissures in buildings. The storm system stalled out, too, so every now and then a flurry of snow attended the wind.

Harry's three horses, Gin Fizz, Poptart, and Tomahawk, played outside wearing their blankets, each one a different color to please the horse. Unless the ground was glazed with ice, Harry turned her horses out. They needed to move about, burn off energy. She would bring them in at sundown. Often she'd pause during her barn chores to watch them dash around. Poptart, the youngest and lowest on the totem pole, liked to tease the two older horses. She'd sidle up to Gin Fizz, the handsome, flea-bitten gray, then tug his blanket askew. She'd do this until he'd squeal, then she'd torment Tomahawk. Poptart was the baby sister at her teenage siblings' party. Usually Tomahawk and Gin Fizz indulged her. When she'd cross the line they'd flatten their ears, bare their teeth, and snort. If that failed, a well-timed kick, not connecting, usually backed off the naughty horse.

Simon, the possum, snored slightly as he slept in the hayloft. He'd made cozy quarters out of a hay bale. Since Harry knew he was there she'd never pulled out that bale. The owl dozed in the cupola, glad to be out of the wind. The blacksnake, in deep hibernation, was out of it. She wouldn't stir until April at the earliest. Old and huge, she was as big around as Harry's wrist. The mice cavorted behind the walls of the tack room, having burrowed into the feed room. Theirs was a merry life despite the efforts of Mrs. Murphy and Pewter to curtail their nonstop party.