Dawn Stewardson - Wild Action

And she likely wouldn’t. If she’d worked with him for twelve years and referred to him as the sweetest man in the world, he must have really cleaned up his act

“You obviously didn’t know he’d gotten into the animal-actor business,” she said. “But you’ll get a kick out of hearing how it happened. Initially, he won a share of Wild Action in a poker game.”

Nick grinned. That sounded more like the uncle he’d always heard about He’d bet Gus had been cheating, too.

Carly looked over at Nick once more, thinking that while he was smiling might be a good time to bring the conversation back to the subject of Attila. But when she tried, she couldn’t make the bear’s name come out, so she said, “Then, eventually, Gus took over the entire agency. It was a smaller operation in those days, and it wasn’t doing very well, but he’d discovered he was good with animals. So he bought a big piece of property and began gradually attracting clients.”

Focusing on the road ahead once more, she told herself she was a chicken. And that she was going to have to tell Nick about the problem with Attila very soon.

But maybe it would be better to wait until they got home and he’d unpacked. And it would probably help to give him a stiff drink of Gus’s best Scotch first.

“What’s this movie we’re involved with?” he asked after she’d turned north onto Highway 12.

“It’s called Two for Trouble. And it’s basically about two ten-year-old boys who take off from summer camp and get lost in the woods. That’s the part of the film Jay will be shooting on Gus’s…our property. A lot of it’s forest.”

“And the stuff he’s shooting in Toronto?”

“Oh, those scenes are supposedly in Manhattan. And the summer camp’s supposedly in upper New York State—but they’ll actually be using Camp Runa-Muck, near Lindsay.

“At any rate, the opening scenes in the city show the parents getting the boys ready for camp. The adults are the name actors—Sarina Westlake and Garth Richards. You know them? She looks a lot like Meg Ryan, and he’s the Latin-lover type.”

“Uh-huh. I know the two you mean. They’re married in real life, aren’t they?”

“Yes. But in the movie they play single parents who fall in love while they’re helping search for their kids.”

Nick waited for Carly to go on. When she didn’t, he said, “That’s it? That’s all there is to the plot?”

“Well, Jay’s the kind of director who improvises, so I expect he’ll add a few extra wrinkles during the shooting.”

“Or maybe a lot of extra wrinkles? I mean, it doesn’t exactly sound like a box office smash.”

“Let’s just hope it is, because Gus held out for a small percentage of the profits.”

“Oh? How small?”

She held up her hand with her thumb and forefinger a fraction of an inch apart

“Oh,” Nick said, looking disappointed.

“He did really well to get anything. In any event, the movie might turn out to be a lot better than the story line sounds. I’ve read the script, and there’s pretty good adventure and drama, what with the boys in a woods full of wild animals.”

“And Attila’s one of the wild animals?”

She nodded but didn’t elaborate. It really would be better to leave any further discussion of that until later.

“We’re almost home,” she said, pointing toward the township sign and changing the subject.

“Township of Scugog,” Nick read aloud.

“In Ojibway, it means ‘muddy, shallow water.’”

“Ahh.”

When he seemed content to simply watch the passing scenery for the remainder of the trip, Carly let her thoughts drift back to the meeting in Brown’s office. Nick had taken the bad news a lot more coolly than she would have. But she had a horrible feeling he wasn’t going to be even half as cool when it came to Attila.

Turning onto the Sixth Line, she decided it might be smart to give her new partner four or five drinks of Gus’s best Scotch before they talked about Attila.

WHEN THEY TURNED ONTO the gravel road that Carly said led to the house, Nick could see she hadn’t been joking about a lot of their property being forest.

Huge trees overhung the road on either side, with only the hydro poles and power lines to indicate this wasn’t really the middle of nowhere. Then the road curved and they were at one edge of a fifteen-or twenty-acre clearing with the house ahead in the distance.

Built of gorgeous old fieldstone, it had white gingerbread trim on both the second-story gables and the overhang of the porch. He was just about to comment on how nice it was when four large gray blurs appeared from nowhere and streaked toward the van.

“Wolves?” he said anxiously. “You didn’t tell me we had wolves.”

“We don’t. Those are the dogs. We took them because they looked so much like gray wolves, even as pups, but they’re actually half husky and half malamute.

“They’re perfectly safe. They don’t even bother the rabbits,” she added, giving him an amused glance as she pulled the van to a stop. “Their names are Harpo, Chico, Groucho and Zeppo. Collectively, of course, we refer to them as the Marx brothers.”

And Uncle Gus, Nick remembered someone once mentioning, had been a huge Marx brothers fan.

“I said we, didn’t I?” Carly murmured with a sad little smile. “I wonder how long it’ll take before I stop doing that.”

She got out of the van and hugged each of the dogs in turn. Then they rushed around to the passenger’s side and stood eyeing Nick through the window— drooling as if they were looking at lunch.

Checking them out from up close, he wondered if Carly was certain they weren’t at least part wolf. They were one hell of a size, and he’d never seen any other dogs with those sinister-looking yellow eyes.

Telling himself they weren’t a whole lot bigger than the German shepherds the police used, he opened his door and climbed out—the heat and humidity hitting him hard.

It had been hot in Alberta, but that was a dry heat. Ontario was at least as hot and sixty times more humid.

He cautiously extended his hand and let the dogs sniff it. Despite their appearance, they seemed friendly enough, so he risked taking his eyes off them long enough to get his suitcase and jacket from the back.

“I thought Dylan might still be here, but his truck’s gone,” Carly said. “The high school kid who’s been helping out,” she explained.

Nick nodded, then gestured toward the wooden building with the wired-in open area that stood maybe sixty yards away. “That’s the new aviary you mentioned?”

“Uh-huh. Attila’s field is at the bottom of the hill beside the house, and the little barn you can see is where we feed the rabbits and stable the ponies. But let’s save the grand tour until after you unpack and change. And then maybe you’d like a drink. There’s some Scotch that Gus used to say was smooth as silk.”

Glancing at his watch, Nick discovered it was only four-thirty. He’d been up for so long it seemed later. “It’s a little early for something as strong as Scotch,” he said, “but a cold beer would go down fine.”

They’d just started for the porch when a tremendous roar rattled his eardrums. He stopped dead, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. Carly and the dogs continued along as if they were deaf.

“What the hell was that?” he demanded, hurrying to catch up.

“What was what?”

“That noise.”

“Oh, it was just Attila welcoming us home. He must have smelled us.”

“From this distance?”

Carly gave him another amused look. “Bears have an incredible sense of smell. They can scent things for miles. But he won’t mind if we don’t say hello until later.”