Bone Yard Part 1

BONE YARD.

A Raine Stockton Dog Mystery Novella.

By Donna Ball.

ONE.

It's the kind of story the newspapers always love: family dog drags home human bones from the woods. Hunting dog sniffs out human remains beneath the autumn leaves. Beloved family pet digs up the bones of a murder victim in suburban backyard.

Well, let me tell you, it doesn't make for nearly such great reading when it's your beloved family pet, and when the bones are buried in your backyard. And it's even worse when that backyard has been in your family for over one hundred fifty years. I mean, it's not as though you could blame the bones on the person who lived there before you.

My name is Raine Stockton, and I have lived in the small Smoky Mountain community of Hansonville, North Carolina all my life. My father was a judge. My mother was a respected community leader and member of the Hansonville Methodist Choir for two decades . My uncle, up until his heart attack last month, had been the county sheriff for almost thirty years. I even married-and divorced-one of his deputies. I think it's fair to say I come from a perfectly respectable, law-abiding background.I have had my share of run-ins with the bad guys-my volunteer work in Search and Rescue has put me in harm's way more than once-but for the most part I live a quiet life. I work part time for the Forest Service. I train dogs. I run a boarding kennel. I do my best to stay out of trouble.People don't, as a general rule, get buried in my backyard.

As you can probably tell, I was a little irked about it.

It all started on a gray cold November morning, and my mood wasn't much better than the dripping weather outside. I was on the downside of my thirties and was starting to understand that things were not going to work out at all as I had planned. In the past month I had divorced-for the second time-the man I had been married to most of my adult life, I had almost died in a fire that had virtually destroyed my dog training and boarding business, and I had been laid off from the Forest Service due to a crumbling economy. I spent a lot of time in my pajamas. I let my hair grow out. I hardly ever wore make-up. I guess I was just waiting for things to get better.

The kennel had been closed for remodeling since the fire-but don't worry, no dogs were injured-and it was easy to fall into bad habits. After ten years of rising before dawn to feed and exercise the boarders, I now lazed around in bed until seven-thirty or eight, then lingered over coffee for an hour or so. I had no training cla.s.ses to rush to, and I had grown a little lax about even working with my own four dogs. Most mornings I just turned them out into the fenced exercise area after breakfast, and even though the rain was going to make for a lot of wet, smelly dogs to clean up when I let them back in, I was enjoying the peace and quiet of my second cup of coffee and the weekly newspaper too much to rush them back inside.

I should have realized it was a little too peaceful. A little too quiet.

I always read the paper all the way through: headlines, cla.s.sified, obituaries, community calendar. In a small community like this it's really the only way to keep up.I twirled a curl of my overly long, light brown hair around my finger as I discovered in the cla.s.sified section that someone had found a c.o.o.n dog with a radio collar on Bear Gap Road. Two notices down I read that Jake Phillips had lost a c.o.o.n dog while hunting in the Sorrowful Branch area, not far from Bear Gap. Hopefully the two had connected by now. I learned that the county commission had approved funds for an addition to the library, that a drive was being organized to bring Thanksgiving turkeys to the homeless-my Aunt Mart was on that committee, so I already knew about that-and that our community had lost three of its senior members over the past week: Thomas Jefferson Jones, age 92; Millicent Broadway,86, and Annie Mae Potts, 82.

The Potts family was one of the oldest in town, like mine, and everyone knew them or knew of them. My Golden Retriever Cisco and I knew Annie Mae from our routine therapy dog visits to the nursing home, and I knew she had been transferred to the hospital several weeks back. The paper said she was survived by one sister, two brothers, several grandchildren, and a slew of nephews, nieces and cousins, as well as a son, Terrance Potts. It took me a minute to realize that Terrance was actually the real name of the man who had been known around here for all his life-heaven knew why-as Pepper Potts, a name that was almost impossible to say without smiling. Pepper himself was a jovial, easy going man who was rarely seen without his red "Dr. Pepper" baseball cap. He was also the head of my construction crew on the kennel project, often arriving before daylight to get set up for the day's work, and sometimes even driving the bulldozer himself . I made a note of the time of the funeral home visitation, and decided to go pay my respects.

I was just finis.h.i.+ng the last of the obituaries-no one else I knew personally-when I heard my business partner, Maude, pull up and park in front. I have known Maude pretty much all my life. She clerked for my father, a district court judge, for almost thirty years, and became something of a second mother to me when my own mother died. She has raised and shown prize-winning Golden Retrievers all her life, and taught me everything I know about dogs. It was only natural that, when I decided to move back into the family home after my father's death and open a dog training business that I should ask her to be my partner. It was my great good fortune that she had agreed.

Maude had planned to come by to check on the progress of the kennel this morning, but I hadn't expected her to be this early. I got up to fill the tea kettle a Maude is British and hasn't managed to adjust to the coffee habit in the forty years she has lived in America-and I called out, "In the kitchen!" as I heard the front door open.

Imagine my surprise when my collie, Majesty, who was supposed to be securely enclosed in the fenced run, came trotting in from the front hall. Her fur was soaked and her white feet were muddy, and she greeted me with a reproachful bark. Majesty lived up to her royal name in many ways, and she was not particularly fond of the rain.

"Majesty!" I exclaimed, going to her quickly. "What are you doing here? How did you get out?"

"I asked her the same thing," Maude answered, coming in behind her. "She's not talking. She was sitting on the front porch when I drove up. My suspicion is there has been a breach of security."

But I was already running toward the back door. I flung it open to the blanket of cold damp air and rushed out onto the stoop, calling, "Mischief! Magic! Cisco!"The rain was coming down harder than it had been when I'd first let the dogs out to play, but I could see from here that the gate of the chain link fence was half open. My heart sank.

"Mischief!" I cried again, half in frustration, half in despair. Mischief, a three year old Australian shepherd, was notorious for her ability to break out of, climb over and crawl under anything that got in her way. I thought I had locked the gate when I left, but I must have done a sloppy job. I blamed it on the rain.

I was still in my pajamas and tattered fleece bathrobe, but I wasn't about to waste time changing clothes when my dogs could be out there somewhere racing for the highway. I started to tug on the galoshes that were sitting by the back steps. Maude came out behind me, closing the back door on the cold .

She stood calmly at the edge of the stoop and called in a firm, clear voice, "Mischief, here! Magic, here!"

The thing that has always frustrated me about pet dog owners is that they will spend hundreds of dollars and countless hours training their dogs to do the perfect sit, stay, heel and come in obedience cla.s.s, but outside of cla.s.s they forget everything they know. I'm constantly reminding them, "It doesn't matter how many times your dog comes and sits at your feet in training cla.s.s. If he doesn't come the first time you call him when he's running toward the highway in front of a truck, you've wasted your time here."

I might call myself a dog trainer, my dogs might have more initials after their names than the average university professor and I might have enough t.i.tle certificates to paper my walls, but at heart I am a pet dog owner. When it's my guys who are missing, I panic. Maude, on the other hand, is a professional. Mischief and Magic had been trained to a perfect recall from the time I had found them as four month old puppies abandoned on the side of the road. She knew this because she had done most of the training, and they had never failed her yet.

Sure enough, less than ten seconds later, two blue eyed, mud-caked, beautifully merled Australian shepherds came streaking around the corner, making it a point to splash through every puddle they could along the way. They dashed up the steps and skidded to a stop in front of Maude, dripping muddy rainwater, tongues lolling happily.

She promptly rewarded them each with a liver treat taken from her pocket. "Well done," she said. She took two leashes from the collection that hung on a hook by the back door, and snapped one on each dog. "Let's get you cleaned up now, shall we?"

That was clearly going to be easier said than done. The minute I looked at them I knew where they had been-in the mud pit that would one day be my indoor training room, where the rain had delayed the pouring of the foundation for over two weeks. I couldn't help groaning out loud, because I knew that if they looked this bad, Cisco would be even worse. He was twice their size, twice as rambunctious, and twice as much trouble.

Imitating Maude's no-nonsense stance as best I could, I drew a breath, squared my shoulders, and called, loudly enough to be heard on the other side of the mountain, "Cisco! Here!"

I crossed my fingers.

Cisco is a two and three-quarters year old Golden Retriever, and for anyone who knows Golden Retrievers, that's enough said. Goldens don't really mature until they're three years old. I'm counting the days. Meantime, Cisco is Mr. Personality: all bounce and energy, curiosity and blunder, with a knack for getting into trouble that would put most outlaws to shame. He is trained-or I should say, in training a as a search and rescue dog, is a certified therapy dog, an AKC Canine Good Citizen (barely), and a Novice Agility champion. In the obedience ring... well, let's just say he tries hard.In a pinch, I'll admit he has been a hero more than once. But when I call him, or ask him to stay or heel when he had rather be doing something else, I still cross my fingers.

I could feel the eyes of Maude, Master Trainer, on me, and I drew a breath for a desperate repeat call. At that moment my hero appeared through the curtain of rain, drenched in black mud from toes to shoulders, caked in mud from muzzle to ears, splas.h.i.+ng gaily across the yard with tail held high, b.u.t.t wriggling with pride, and a foot long bone clenched between his grinning teeth.

I shouted, "Cisco, drop it!" as he reached the back steps, and whether through rigorous training in that particular command, or because of surprise at my tone, he did. The bone clattered to the ground. My dog, tail swis.h.i.+ng somewhat lower now, regarded me uncertainly.

I held out my hand for one of Maude's liver treats, for, even as annoyed as I was, I knew better than to forget to reward the "come". I went down the steps in the rain, declaring "Good dog!" as I popped a treat in Cisco's eager mouth.

I caught his collar and hurried him back up the steps to shelter, trying without success to keep the mud off my bathrobe. I gave the bone only a cursory glance. I thought it belonged to a deer or another wild animal, which meant that he had probably scavenged it in the woods, which was really upsetting because if he had been wandering around in the woods while I sipped my coffee, oblivious, I was the worst dog owner ever. Seriously. If one of my clients had done that I would have put him in a remedial dog training cla.s.s. I was starting to feel as though that was where I belonged.

Maude said, peering through the rain, "What is that?"

I grabbed one of the towels from the stack by the door-you don't have four dogs without keeping a stack of towels handy by the door-and began to rub Cisco down. It was pointless, of course. The rest of my day would be spent with shampoo and doggie blow-driers.

"Who knows? Just toss it over the fence. I don't want them going for it again."

Maude, who was still in her rain gear, looped the Aussies' leashes over the back door k.n.o.b and started down the steps for a closer look. She picked up the bone, and returned somewhat more slowly. "You might want to wait a bit on that," she said, frowning a little as she examined it, "until the police have had a gander."

I straightened up from my futile attempt to towel off Cisco, but did not make the mistake of releasing his collar."What?" I was too harried to pay much attention to her expression, and too cold and wet to read the subtext. "What do the police have to do with a deer bone?"

Holding the muddy, stained bone by either end between her gloved fingers, she studied it with a bemused expression. "It's not a deer bone."

I started to get a really bad feeling. "Ah, come on." I took a hesitant step toward her. "You don't mean..."

She looked at me. "My dear, I was an army nurse for eight years. I've seen more than an average share of bones. This looks a good deal like a human tibia to me."

_________________.

TWO.

I live in a beautiful old farmhouse with a white columned porch and heart pine floors, four fireplaces (only two of which work) and tall elegant windows. My mother and grandmother before me had furnished it with lovely antique furniture-which probably hadn't been antique when they bought it-and gorgeous wool rugs. When I was a girl there were lace curtains on the windows and doilies on the velvet wing chairs, and everything smelled like suns.h.i.+ne.

Nowadays there are dog crates in the parlor and dog show trophies on the mantle, leashes hanging from the hall tree and sheets protecting the good furniture. The battle with dog hair is endless, as is the fine coat of dust that settles over everything within mere hours after the last dusting. For years my father used the big room that opens off the front hall as his office, and I had tried to keep it dog-free as long as I could. Currently, however, it was temporarily crammed with everything that had been scavenged from kennel-grooming equipment, training supplies, manufacturer's samples, filing cabinets, drying cages. Two of those drying cages were occupied by happy Australian shepherds, who loved the sensation of warm air from the driers blowing over their fur, while Maude worked on Majesty with the blow drier and coat rake at one grooming table and I put the finis.h.i.+ng touches on Cisco at another. The room was warm and humid-which was probably not all that good for the wood paneling-- and my entire house smelled like wet dogs and shampoo.

Cisco's low half-bark and the sharp turn of his head toward the window alerted me to company just after ten o'clock-two hours after I'd dutifully called the sheriff's office and reported the situation. I'd told the dispatcher there was no hurry. I glanced out the window and turned off the blow drier. "They're here," I told Maude.

"Almost finished here," she answered, fluffing up my pretty girl's white ruff. "You go ahead."

Cisco was still a little damp around the paws and ears, but there was no question of leaving him inside when his favorite person-my ex-husband-was on the property. He refused to be crated, and he had been known to bound happily through closed screen doors to greet Buck. So I clipped a light leash on him and took him with me. By now the rain had slowed again to a cold ugly drizzle, and the temperature was a bone chilling forty-two. The sky was pewter colored. It was a perfect day for standing around an open grave.

I put on my parka and kennel boots and reached the bottom of the steps as Lee Sutter pulled up in his black "Sutter's Funeral Home" van, followed by the sheriff's car. In our county, the mortician serves as both the medical examiner and county coroner-no special qualification required-and the Sutters had been taking care of the dearly departed for six generations. Lee Sutter was a tall thin man of about sixty with thinning hair and steel framed gla.s.ses. He always wore a suit, and today that suit was covered with a double breasted trench coat against the damp.

"How do you do, Miss Raine," he said as he got out of the car. "The deputy here wanted me to come by and have a look at what you found in your back yard."

Cisco swished his tail politely in greeting, but his real attention was focused on the sheriff's car behind him. "I figured he would," I agreed, and gave Buck what I hoped was a perfectly neutral glance as he got out of the car behind Lee's.

Cisco gave Buck a happy bark of greeting, and began to dance on his toes with anxiety. I couldn't help it; I "accidently" let go of the leash and Cisco, muddy paws and all, bounded into Buck's arms. Buck was a good sport about it; I have to give him that. He greeted Cisco with an ear rub, casually brushed the mud off his trousers, and caught the leash as he came to join us.

Smoothly I turned back to Lee Sutter. "How're you doing, Mr. Sutter?"

"I could use better weather, to tell the truth."

"Well, I'll try not to keep you standing out in it too long."

Buck handed me Cisco's leash. "Morning, Raine."

My ex-husband is a good looking man in his mid thirties, with mild hazel eyes and thick chestnut hair, highschool quarterback, everybody's hometown hero. Today the smile lines around his eyes seemed deeper and they weren't smiling; the creases in his cheeks were more p.r.o.nounced than I remembered. He looked tired, probably from running back and forth between two counties to see his girlfriend.

"Hey, Buck." My tone was noncommittal, and I absently patted my leg to bring Cisco into heel position. "It's back here." I flipped my hood up over my head to keep the mist off, and led the way around the house. "I still think it could be a deer bone, but Maude thought I should call."

"Are you sure he dug it up here, and not out in the woods somewhere?" That was from Buck, walking beside us with his collar turned up and his shoulders hunched against the cold.

I replied briefly, "Yes." And I didn't look at him.

Things had been a little awkward between us since I had filed for divorce.

I had left the leg bone-or, I should say, what Maude insisted was a leg bone-on the back porch for them to look at. I'm not squeamish about such things, so I got it and brought it back down the steps for Lee. "Deer, right?" I prompted as I handed it over.

Lee Sutter looked at the bone for a moment, turned it over in his hands, sc.r.a.ped away some of the mud. "It's been there awhile," was all he would offer as he handed it off to Buck.

Buck examined the bone, his expression equally unforthcoming. But when I held out my hand for the artifact, he did not return it to me. "Where did you say Cisco found this?"

So I led them down the gravel path from the back porch to the scarred piece of dug-up ground that had once been my kennel.

Before I turned it into a kennel, the area had been occupied by a horse barn that had been there at least a hundred years. The old wood had sustained significant water and structural damage in the fire, more than we had suspected at first. Of course, the concrete kennel area had survived intact, but after all the insurance adjusters and contactors got finished with their estimates, it had turned out to be cheaper to tear everything down, clear it out, and start from scratch. Target for completion was spring. But that was if we had good weather.

So far we had had enough good weather to do the demolition and haul- off, and had just gotten the new foundation dug when the rains set in. A big ugly bulldozer had been sitting in my backyard, all but mired in mud, for two weeks. What would one day be the foundation of my building currently looked like a six-inch deep swimming pool. No wonder the dogs had been unable to resist it.

Even before I put the first dog in the bathtub, I had gotten dressed and walked out in the rain to examine the scene of the crime, so to speak. It wasn't hard to find. At the end of the pit furtherest from the house, piles of mud had been scattered around a depression almost three feet deep at its deepest part-which was of course why Cisco had been covered with mud from toe to ear. I had taken a small garden shovel and poked around a little bit, but it was too cold and wet to spend more than a couple of minutes crouching in a puddle up to my ankles pus.h.i.+ng mud around, so I gave up before finding anything. Not, I was certain, that there was anything to find.

Buck noticed the shovel that I had left stuck in the mud on the side of the pit, and gave me a disapproving look. I ignored it.

Lee said, "Looks like you got yourself quite a project going on here."

I sighed. "Yeah, you could say that."

Buck picked up the shovel and began to gingerly move the mud around."Guess the weather held things up."

Way to go, Sherlock, I thought, but didn't say. After all, there was no need to let things deteriorate to a grade school level between us-which, as a matter of fact, was just about how long I had known Buck. It wasn't his fault that he was a shallow, insincere cheater who was no more capable of keeping a commitment to a woman than I was of raising my hands to the sky and making the sun s.h.i.+ne. It was my fault for marrying him.

Twice.

He turned over a careful if desultory shovel of mud. "How long would you say the barn stood here?"

He knew the answer as well as I did, having spent almost as much time at my place as he had at his as a kid. I wasn't going to bother answering, and was surprised when I heard a voice behind me reply, "A hundred and thirty seven years."

"Uncle Roe!" My face lit with delight and I hurried to give him a hug. Cisco, always eager to welcome a friend, wiggled his way between us for a petting. "What are you doing out here?"

He was only six weeks out of the hospital, and I suppose we were all a little protective. The heart attack had persuaded him to retire, but Uncle Roe's idea of retirement was a little different from most people's. He did not like to be kept out of the action. And to tell the truth, I wasn't entirely convinced retirement had been as good for him as everyone had expected.

He bent to rub Cisco's head and answered, "Aunt Mart sent me over with some leftover roast beef for that pretty little collie of yours. She might have put a slice or two in for you, too." Majesty was Aunt Mart's favorite of all my dogs, and she made no secret of that. Fortunately, since the treats were all distributed equally around my house, no one knew that but me.

I grinned and slipped my arm through his. "You were listening to the police scanner again."

He wasn't even embarra.s.sed. "I recognized the address."

He greeted Lee and asked, "So what do you think?"

"It looks like a leg bone to me," admitted the coroner. Like everyone else in this county, he still thought of Uncle Roe as sheriff. "You'll have to send it off to the state to find out anything more."

I groaned out loud. I wasn't entirely sure about all the details involved when human bones were found on private property, but I was pretty sure that construction on my kennel had just hit another snag.

Uncle Roe skirted the pit and squatted down beside Buck. "Wasn't there a family cemetery on the property somewhere?" Buck said.

Uncle Roe was already shaking his head. "It's way on the other side of the hill."

"Maybe there was an earlier one."

"Maybe. Not likely the family would forget about it and just build over a grave site."

"Maybe there was a flood or an earthquake that moved some of the bones," I suggested. It was a desperate theory, and not very likely, but better than thinking there had been a body buried beneath my barn all these years.

"Well, you're not going to get anywhere this way," Roe said."Who knows how far the body might have settled. Need to get in a crew, maybe pump some of this water out."

"I reckon." But Buck's tone was absent, and he sc.r.a.ped away at the mud with the tip of the shovel, carefully. Roe leaned in closer to look at what he had uncovered. I thought, Oh c.r.a.p , as Buck reached into his pocket and took out a pair of gloves and an evidence bag.

Cisco and I reached him in time to see him sc.r.a.pe off enough mud from the stick-like object to reveal the white of a bone. "Oh, come on," I said, but I sounded as unconvincing as I felt. "It could be a rabbit or a possum."

"Or a finger," said Lee, bending close and adjusting his gla.s.ses.