but that doesn’t feel right. People go home to show off for the people they used to know, especially if they make it as big as Grail did. If they go home to hide, they stay longer than a single month. And why hide for just one month of the year? Did August mean something special to Grail? Did his friends know about it back where he came from? If August has nothing to do with the murder, I want to know so we can forget about it.”
“We’ll get back to you with whatever we find,” Larry said as he reached for the phone, Rena doing the same. “Damn, but it feels good to actually have something to work on with this case.”
Mike understood how the man felt, so he left Larry and Rena alone to go back to his small office, where he took care of paperwork while he waited for the preliminary report on Roger Saxon. He wasn’t expecting the report to tell him anything he didn’t know, not unless this was the time the killer had made his first mistake. If it was…
Well, no sense in daydreaming. Mike brought himself back to the present with a shake of his head, then buckled down to finishing that paperwork. It needed to be done before he could leave to interview Tanda Grail again, an interview he was definitely looking forward to. But not because she’d given him his first real lead, and might somehow give him another of the same. Despite knowing better than to get involved with a possible suspect, he realized it was the woman herself he wanted to see. There was just something about her…
IT WAS STILL DRIZZLING when Tanda reached home, but pulling the van into the carport meant she didn’t have to use her umbrella. Not that the umbrella would have helped. Tanda was already so damp that nothing but a change of clothes would help.
For once, walking into the house didn’t give Tanda the usual feeling of being safely home. The kitchen, usually so bright and cheerful in yellow and white with touches of red, looked as drab and gray as the weather. Tanda remembered when her father had redone the kitchen for her mother, adding the surprise of a brand-new gas range. He’d been trying to bring some happiness into the life of a woman who grieved endlessly for a missing son, but it hadn’t worked. The heartbroken woman had still grieved herself to death, and the gift had gone unappreciated by anyone but Tanda.
Now she stood and looked around, finally understanding why a new kitchen hadn’t distracted her mother. She, herself, would give that kitchen and all the rest of the house to find her brother’s murderer and bring that person to justice. She still didn’t know if Don had seriously changed or had been playing some kind of game, and now she’d never know the truth. The chance to find out had been stolen from her, along with the last member of her family; for that she would find the guilty person, even if she had to do it alone.
Tanda went through the kitchen into the hall, and from there to her bedroom. The large room had originally belonged to her parents, and after her father died it had taken Tanda six months to make up her mind to use it. It wasn’t as if she’d really believed her parents had gone off for just a little while and would return very shortly. It was more that the realization they were gone forever had to be actively accepted, and that had hurt. She hadn’t been able to ease the pain until Don took her to dinner a couple of weeks earlier, and now…
Rather than going through it all again, Tanda forced herself to drop the subject and change her clothes. Once into dry clothing she went into her old room where she’d set up an office, then sat down to do some work. People who do business with you may sympathize when tragedy strikes your life, but they still don’t enjoy having their business unduly delayed.
Tanda worked for a couple of hours, paying bills, adding to her monthly supply list, answering letters from people. There were those people who wanted to buy a trained bloodhound, and those people who already had dogs and simply wanted them trained. Of course, the second group never understood that their request wasn’t all that simple. Dogs, like people, don’t always do what they’re able to, and some are better at the doing than others. Teddy, for example, had taken to the training immediately, while one of her litter brothers had had to be sold as a pet. He’d had no interest in tracking, and hadn’t even been willing to notice a fresh scent, let alone one that was days or a week old—
Suddenly Tanda sat straight, silently cursing herself for being an idiot. Her brother’s body had been found in his rental car not half a mile away, but no one had known why he’d been there. He certainly hadn’t come to visit her, otherwise he would have driven all the way to the house. The police were assuming that Don had gone to the spot to meet someone, and either that particular someone or somebody following one or the other of them was the murderer. But what if he’d parked there to go somewhere on foot, and knowing where he’d gone would point to who had killed him? Not once had she thought to check the possibility, but it might not be too late. That pup that had to be sold would never have been able to follow a scent better than a week old, but his sire was a dog of another color.
Once she’d made up her mind, Tanda didn’t hesitate. Her first stop was her brother’s old room, where she’d put the clothes the police had given to her after going through them. Their laboratory hadn’t been able to find anything in the clothes, but hopefully they hadn’t ruined Don’s scent on his shirt.
Once Tanda had stuffed the shirt into a spare plastic bag and that into a shoulder bag, she went out to the runs which were to the right about fifteen feet from the house. Happily, it had stopped raining by then, so she didn’t need to choose between fooling with an umbrella or getting wet. Only three of the five dogs she had were currently in training, and two of those, Teddy and Masher, were from the same litter. The third, Angel, belonged to someone attached to a police department in Rhode Island, and he would be going back to his owner once his training was finished. Teddy and her brother Masher were already sold, and since their training was almost complete, they would be leaving first.
Which left Robby and Merry, her first breeding pair. Merry was sweet and a top-notch tracker, but Robby was something special. His long, homely face had bright, eager eyes, and he’d never failed to follow any trail that was definitely, even if faintly, there. He might be a plain, light brown mass of furry wrinkles and drool, but to Tanda he was downright beautiful.
“All right, you bunch, settle down,” she told the dogs, who had quickly come to the front of their runs at her appearance. “This time I need a professional, so it’s Robby’s turn. The rest of you can watch and learn.”
Once Tanda had put Robby on a lead, the dog obviously expected to be taken to the van, but Tanda had already decided against driving. If someone saw her out with one of her dogs only half a mile away from home, they couldn’t possibly consider it suspicious. If they saw her drive a dog there, though, they could only conclude she was there to snoop.
“Which is just what we will be there for, but we don’t have to advertise it,” she told Robby as she headed him away from the van. “Whoever killed Don and the detective I hired would be stupid not to keep an eye on me, and I don’t think he’s stupid. We’ll have to look around carefully before we start.”
Tanda took Robby along the tar road leading to Old Stage Road at a pace close to strolling, and once they reached the blacktop she casually headed them left. The side of the road was muddy from the rain, but it wasn’t so bad that they had to leave the shoulder and walk either on the blacktop or in the grass and bushes. That area had a small number of houses like Tanda’s, each of them isolated with woods all around, and from the blacktop they were hard, if not impossible, to see.
It was still overcast and very humid, especially under all those trees, but Tanda moved along as if enjoying a simple walk. While pretending to give the neighborhood a pleased and casual inspection, she tried very hard to see if anyone was watching her. If they were it would have to be from the woods, so she kept an eye on Robby. A watcher might be able to hide from her, but her dog would know immediately if someone was there. He might not do anything about it, but he would certainly know.
