Лори Касс: Lending А Paw

But I was frozen in place. I couldn’t move, couldn’t make a sound, couldn’t even nod my head. Strong hands encircled me, helped me down, away out of that barn, and into the sunlight of early evening.

Evening. I’d been in that barn a full day.

“You’re shivering,” Detective Devereaux said. “Let me get you a blanket.” Two police cars were in the driveway, one unmarked vehicle and one patrol car with someone, I couldn’t make out who, sitting in the backseat. Devereaux sat me in the unmarked and brought me a fuzzy blanket. I saw real concern in his eyes.

I tried to thank him, but it came out as a froggy croak.

“What was that?” the detective asked. “Your voice is pretty hoarse. Bet you’re dry as a bone after spending, what, almost twenty-four hours in that barn. I’m so sorry we didn’t get to you sooner.” He looked over his shoulder. “Deputy, get the lady some water, will you?”

A uniformed officer, whom I recognized as Deputy Wolverson, ran over with a water bottle. He cracked the top off the bottle, and held it out to me.

Water. I stared at it. At him. My mouth moved, but nothing came out.

“Go on,” Detective Devereaux said. “It’s all yours. There’s more, if you want.”

I did my best to smile at the deputy, then took the bottle and drank greedily, slugging it all down, not wasting a single precious drop. Nothing had ever tasted so good. The detectives let me drink, then asked if I needed an ambulance. I shook my head. All I needed was water and, after a gallon or so of that, a hot shower and whatever dinner Kristen wanted to cook for me.

“You sure?” Devereaux asked. “We can have one here in no time.”

I shook my head again and drank water until I couldn’t drink any more. When I lowered the bottle, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and envisioned dinner. Prime rib or whitefish, that was the question.

“Okay, then,” Devereaux said. “What was that you were saying before?”

“. . . Thanks. Just . . . thanks.”

He studied me. “You know, we were listening to you all along.”

Either my time in the barn had done something to my hearing or I hadn’t gotten the memo about you-know-where freezing over. I looked at him. He didn’t appear to be playing a practical joke on me. “It didn’t seem like it,” I said.

“Yeah, I know.”

I finished off the water bottle and he handed me a full one. When I’d poured it down my throat, I said, “If that was an apology, it wasn’t a very good one.”

“How about if I say I’m sorry you were locked in a barn all night?”

I shook my head.

He looked around. “Hey, Woody! She wants me to apologize for you being such a jerk.”

Detective Inwood came over. “Ms. Hamilton, I’m deeply sorry.”

I eyed him. “For what?”

Inwood sighed. “Ms. Hamilton, we seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot. Please accept my apologies for not seeming to take you seriously. But we were, and it was your tip about the quad that got us looking in the right place.”

“Okay,” I said. “Apology accepted. And I’m sorry, too. I should have had more patience and I really shouldn’t have lost my temper yesterday.”

The detectives nodded, and, for the first time, we were friends. But . . . “How did you know I was out here?”

They exchanged a glance I couldn’t interpret at all. “You can thank your cat,” Inwood said. “He was howling and making such a racket this morning that your neighbor, Louisa Axford, came to see what the problem was. When you weren’t there, she used the key she said you gave her”—he looked at me with his eyebrows raised and I nodded—“to get in. She was worried you might have been sick and went in to check. That’s when she saw the note you’d written. The one that said you’d expected to be back by dark yesterday. Good idea, leaving that.”

Bless you,Mom, I thought. You were right all along and I will forever do whatever you say without question.

“The note also said where you were and what you were doing,” Devereaux said. “We’ve been searching for you for some time. Nice to find you all in one piece.”

I agreed wholeheartedly, and I told him how much I appreciated their efforts, but . . . “Who’s in the backseat?” I gestured to the other vehicle.

“Oh, yeah.” Detective Devereaux smiled. “That is a gentleman who was found driving down this road. After a short chase he obligingly stopped. Since the only place the road leads is this house, what do you bet we’ll find his fingerprints all over this barn and that nice quad parked inside?”

“A quad with an ORV license issued to one Kyle Sutton.” Inwood raised his eyebrows. “And I’m willing to bet that Mr. Sutton here owns the exact type of rifle that was used to murder Stan Larabee. What do you think, Don?”

What I thought was that it was over, and that I wasn’t surprised at the ending. So it had been Kyle Sutton. He was the one who put me in the barn. Afterward, he’d probably left for his shift at the restaurant. Some of those growling noises in my dreams had probably been his car returning.

The knowledge that he’d been sleeping in the house while I’d been trying to escape gave me the creeps. And the knowledge that I must have been making too much noise to hear the noise of his recent leave-taking was even creepier.

But at least it was over. I wasn’t dead from dehydration or any other means, and Stan’s killer was in police custody.

“Sorry this took so long, Stan,” I murmured, and in a quiet part of my thoughts, I heard his reply.

Remember what I told you about reputations, Minnie. And thanks.

“Thanks for what?” Devereaux asked.

I shook my head. “Could I get a ride back to my car?” There was a cat waiting for me, and I had a lot to tell him.

Chapter 20

The next evening, Kristen and I sat out on the marina’s patio. My best friend was smart, brave, strong, and able to cook soufflés without a recipe, but she hated boats with a passion. Wouldn’t have anything to do with them. Wouldn’t even sit on the houseboat’s deck while tied up to the dock. I’d long since given up trying to jolly her out of her fears and had brought out a freshly opened bottle of red adult beverage and a couple of glasses.

“When I hired Larry,” she said, “I asked around about him. I knew him in high school, but hadn’t seen him since. Everybody said he was a great chef, but that managing money was his weak point.” She snorted. “I’m such an idiot. I remember thinking, well, gosh, I’m hiring a chef, not a manager. What do I care about his financial skills? But this was all about money, wasn’t it?”

On the ride back to my car, Detective Devereaux had told me what they’d already found out through some fast investigating.

Larry, aka Kyle, and his wife had lost their house to foreclosure a few months ago. They’d rented that place in the valley because it was dirt cheap. His wife had hated it. Devereaux had already tracked down her phone number; she said she’d left Kyle and moved downstate to stay with friends while she was looking for a job.

The captured Kyle had told the detectives that he was headed south that morning to talk her into coming home, that he was going to call the police from a pay phone at a rest stop somewhere and give an anonymous tip that I was locked in the barn.

Kristen rolled her eyes. “And they believed him?”

I shrugged. They hadn’t, but I had. Or I’d wanted to. Thinking that he’d left me there to die wasn’t going to improve my dreams any, and since I’d escaped, I’d decided to accept the explanation.

Kristen sipped her wine. “Man, this is good. Where did you get it?”