Chapter 26

CHAPTER 26

I t took me a second or two to get past seeing Rose, somebody who'd been a stranger yesterday and who was so familiar today in her flowered dress and frumpy apron, round and rosy from the heat from the oven. She looked warm, and then she smiled at me, and my alarm system evidently took a hike because today she didn't look like trouble, she just looked good. Better than I remembered.

Yeah, enough of that. I sat down on the floor beside my dog to see what Poppy was doing. She was cleaning Maggs' paw so gently that Maggs wasn't even twitching. This was a dog who reacted to my nail clipping as if I were touching her with a red-hot poker. I looked at all the dried blood there, fresh blood underneath, and I felt guilty as hell.

"I know," I said to Poppy. "I should have let her rest."

Poppy nodded. "Why is the left side of her coat always more snarled than the right?"

She was probably changing the subject to keep from yelling at me, so I went along. "Maggs always goes left of me on the trail when we're walking, so I guess she brushes against more things on that side." I didn't want to admit I had never noticed.

Poppy frowned at me.

"For some reason she loves being on the left," I said. "Rarely right. Maybe a dog shrink could figure it out. Know any?"

She grinned at me, so I kept going.

"I figured she's left pawed, like I'm left-handed. Maybe she just likes left? Maybe one of her legs is microscopically shorter than the other and she leans that way? Maybe to her I'm always walking to the right and she wonders the same things about me?"

Poppy laughed, and I felt more at ease. I didn't bring up the fact that Maggs didn't walk directly ahead of me like a good service dog should because I tended to walk into things like tripwires. Plus, she was retired. And I'd just said more than I had in months to anybody. Possibly to avoid looking at Rose again. Looking at Rose was not good for my thought processes.

I watched Poppy put ointment on Maggs' paw just as carefully as she'd cleaned it and then wrap it up neatly. Very professional job.

"Are you planning to go to vet school? You're very good at this."

She flushed a little, probably pleased and embarrassed to be pleased. Then she shook her head. "Vets have a really high suicide rate. I couldn't stand to see that many hurt animals, so I'm just going to run my own business."

My brain had switched tracks at the first sentence, taking it the wrong way, thinking about all the veterans who'd taken their own lives, some of whom I'd known. I focused back. "What kind of business?"

"I'm not sure. I've got four years of college to figure that out." She let go of Maggs' paw and Maggs leaned against her, so she put her arm around my dog.

Poppy Malone, the dog whisperer.

"So do you carry dog food in your rucksack for her?" Poppy asked. "That's pretty heavy."

"Some, but we also hunt on the trail." I saw Rose shoot us a look from where she was scooping out the insides of baked potatoes. Her face was flushed and rosy, darker on one side from the bruise Junior had given her. I really wanted to find Junior and return that bruise.

"Hunt?" Poppy was frowning .

"Yep. We've shared squirrels, which taste like chicken. Rattlers, which also taste like chicken. Field mice, which taste like small chicken, and rabbits, which taste like rabbit. She hunts game down and brings it back to the campsite." I didn't add that I occasionally used the SW22 Victory .22-caliber pistol with suppressor that I carried to take down small critters. Both for food and to keep my skills up to speed. That's how I'd taken out three rattlers Maggs had alerted me to along the trail over the course of my journey. Then we ate them.

"You eat mice ?" Poppy said. "Oh, gross." Which was odd because most people would have reacted to the rattlesnake part of that.

"Don't knock what you haven't tried. Her foraging allows me to travel light and I appreciate it. You might be upset about her taking down prey and bringing food, but we're all in the food chain, one way or another."

"I know," Poppy said. "I should be a vegetarian, but I really like meat. I try to go vegetarian most of the time. I'd starve on the trail."

"No, you wouldn't. I pick berries and dig up other edible stuff. There's even an app for that, to help identify edibles. I tried fishing a few times with my line and hook, but that rarely works. Maggs loves jumping in water, and she scares the fish away."

"Maggs," Poppy said, lovingly. "Shame on you."

I shook my head. "It just a game we play. She likes the water, and I see no reason to put an end to it just to catch some fish."

"Good for you," Poppy said.

I was talking too much, but Herc's revelations made me see this place and Rose and Poppy in a different light. If they truly didn't know who Oz had been, they were facing a possible storm that could overwhelm them. They were good people in trouble.

Which, I tried to tell myself, was not my problem. But here I was.

I looked back at Rose again, scooping sour cream into a bowl of potato innards. She caught me watching her and met my eyes and smiled slowly and didn't look away, and I didn't either, and that was a damn long look, neither of us smiling now . . .

She went back to beating her potatoes and sour cream, dropping slabs of butter in as she whipped—that bowl was a heart attack waiting to happen and so was Rose—and then Poppy said softly, "Junior came back this afternoon," and I focused on her instead.

"What happened?"

"Mrs. Baumgarten tased him and he's gone."

"Who is Mrs. Baumgarten and what exactly occurred?"

Poppy told the story, and I could tell it was secondhand from Rose. The ex-player circle now expanded to include Mrs. Baumgarten, who, Poppy explained, owned an emotional support llama, so I knew where she lived, and Melissa Merriweather, the funeral director who lived and worked just down the street. And had an injection at the ready. This wasn't their first rodeo.

Poppy looked at me, solemn, when she was done. "It's better when you're here."

I almost gave my automatic reply that I couldn't stay, but this time I knew enough of her to know she wasn't scamming me. She was scared.

Now it was my problem.