LITMIR.BIZ

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if I know.” Jonas rose, unlocked the kitchen door to the backyard cedar deck. “Here, Webster. C’mon boy.” No bark. He waited. No fluttering tail. No galloping Webster.

      “Shouldn’t you bribe him?” Luann asked, using red scarf to pat dry short black hair. The half-inch faded scar below right ear had been there since he, as a teenager, pushed her out of a cottonwood tree. Unlike her, he remained self-conscious of a left arm’s jagged scar.

      “I’ve got pork rib.” Luann, from the fridge, handed Jonas a wrinkled aluminum foil package.

      He ripped off the foil. “This’ll bring him. Brace yourself for the stampede?” Jonas doubled a wink. He held the kitchen door open as an extended right foot placement creaked a deck plank.

      “Here, Webster. Treat time.” He waved the pork bone in front of forehead. By himself, Jonas backed into the kitchen letting the door slam. Front teeth nipped a sliver of pork meat.

      “So where’s that mutt of yours?” Luann microwaved a mug with tea bag. Toast popped.

      “Don’t know.” Jonas slumped into a chair. “Did you leave the fence gate open?”

      “Heavens no.” Luann frowned. “You musta done something?”

      “Had to reprimand him Monday at Jove Foods after he snapped.” He hadn’t previously told Luann. “But Webster’s never exhibited a long memory when food’s available.”

      “Dogs can pout like slighted relatives or spoiled children.”

      “Yeah.” Jonas bent forward to unloosen and retie scuffed Red Wing boots. On the deck, hand on rail, he called out, “Webster, Webster, here boy.” He extended right hand with the pork rib.

      Shout startled two sparrows into flight. No Webster coaxed into sight. Jonas stepped down three risers, and jogged to the right to check the gate. Locked. He waved the pork rib to waft its aroma on the freshening yard breeze. Still nothing. Jonas began to walk the inside fence perimeter. Behind a blue-spire juniper at the far corner, Jonas spied a furry tail sticking out. He cried out, “C’mon, Webster. Game’s over. I see you.”

      With creased boot fronts, he tiptoed forward, cupped both hands next to mouth, “Webster.”

      The tail, laid across dog’s hind leg, didn’t wag. An expanded adam’s apple restricted Jonas’s swallowing. A prickly feeling crawled spider-like across forehead. He hadn’t taught the dog to play dead. Left hand touched fur and skin. Fingers jerked away.

      Cold. A second longer pressing touch like ungloved fingers picking up ice cubes.

      Luann shouted, “What’s happening?” Her airborne words from the deck hung unanswered.

      From a squat, Jonas dropped to both knees. Grief welled within heart chambers. While his mind prayed for a miracle, hand pressed to Webster’s side relayed no underlying heartbeat or breathing upheaval. Jonas coughed to clear throat of clogging fear creeping from queasy stomach.

      “Found Webster.” Jonas’s weak voice cracked, “Not good.” Not good at all.

      “Should I call someone?” Luann asked. Right hand caught gown’s fluttering silk skirt.

      “No.” Jonas’s fingers flattened the fur between Webster’s ears. He rubbed and stroked his dog’s back. No sound or response movement did Jonas expect, see, hear, or feel. Webster’s body stiffness dashed all hope flickers any rescue attempt would restore life. He slid bare forearms under Webster, lifted, carried, and laid his faithful K-9 buddy gently on the deck. Jonas sat numb on the second step to wipe lingering morning dewdrops clinging to the hairs on the back of both hands. Other than for parents’ barnyard collie, he’d never internalized or cared deeply about any animal since age fourteen when a stray greyhound he tried to feed severely gnashed left forearm. The resulting scar a reminder to steer clear of all four-legged creatures. That is, until Webster.

      “I’m so sorry,” Luann said. She bent forward; her hand touched Jonas’s shoulder. “What’ll you do?” Standing, lips trembling, she stared at him. “What happened?”

      “Don’t know. Could’ve been natural. There’s no wound or blood.”

      “Wait here.” Luann returned with an old olive-colored woolen blanket. “Wrap Webster in this.” She spread the blanket on the deck. “Let me heat the skillet for blueberry pancakes.”

      “Can’t eat, not now.” Jonas rose to lift Webster onto the blanket. “I’m going to the vet.” He folded the blanket ends in. “If he’s not open, I’ll wait.”

      Jonas waited three hours before the office opened and the vet could see him. A veterinarian assistant led Jonas, carrying Webster, to a cubbyhole-sized sterile exam room. After somber assistant verified non-existent pulse, Jonas gently laid patrol buddy on a stainless steel table and returned to reception. He thumbed through an endless magazine stack or voiced one-word sentences with gray-haired Stella Pritchard, mother’s church friend. Fingertips rubbed and re-rubbed day-old beard stubble. At eleven thirty, the assistant asked him to follow her.

      The seated vet’s forefinger pushed brown-framed eyeglasses off elongated nose, a folder spread before him on a small green metal desk. His starched white coat, although dotted in brown stains, added no color to mottled parchment-colored complexion. The vet requested Jonas be seated as the assistant left.

      Sunlight filtered through a glass block window. “Well?” Jonas asked, throat dry.

      “Webster was poisoned.” The words bolted from a shadowy face between sunrays.

      “What?” Jonas’s stomach absorbed the striking punch of a Hoover ball. “Can’t be.”

      The vet explained blood samples would be sent to the lab to confirm what he deduced. Webster’s skin, said the vet, showed no external wounds nor parasite body invasion. Small rear throat redness and emerging blisters indicated ingestion of an undetermined caustic substance. Office records, he continued, showed Webster vaccinated and in robust health. This medical history coupled with the observed mouth symptoms signaled acute poisoning.

      Jaw-tightened, Jonas sprang up; kicked the visitor chair leg. Within the vet office confines, Jonas let fly a string of profanities. The vet suggested Jonas sit quiet for a few minutes. He did.

      Leaving the vet’s office, Jonas didn’t feel like beginning Thursday’s routine. He craved a Rainbow Cafe milk shake. He fended off the two stares his unkempt counter appearance invited with staccato outbursts of having a long night. He paid Sally, the owner, and walked south to Reggie’s Grocery. Ushering Reggie by the elbow into the rear store office, he asked if any customer purchased an extra large piece of steak within the last forty-eight hours. Reggie said nay.

      How about Melanie Stark in the last week? Reggie shook head no, and then volunteered that Sgt. Paul Anderson, store’s biggest steak purchaser, hadn’t been in since Saturday. Jonas realized his impulse sought the impossible but asked Reggie to check available store sales records. Then Jonas stepped outside Reggie’s and fulfilled promise to update Luann by cell phone. She suggested he offer a reward. He said he’d consider although thinking it something silly for a sheriff to do.

      In the few minutes needed to reach sister’s house and exchange personal F-150 for a Sheriff’s Plymouth cruiser, Jonas scratched but the surface of numerous fond Webster memories. Inside the empty house, Jonas shook off the willies Webster’s absence gave him. He let kitchen door screen slam to search the backyard fence perimeter, both inside the yard and out. Jonas observed no suspicious footprints near the fence, not surprising for all neighbors mowed grass lawns. Easy backyard access obtained from three directions.

      Then it dawned on him, the complaints Mrs. Longstreet leveled against others could spark retaliation against her Boston terrier and recently built board-on-board fence. Perhaps a perp’s mistake and the wrong house targeted. While mind tried to unravel motives, he knocked on Mrs. Longstreet’s front door without an answer. Another possibility? Webster snapped at Melanie Stark. Farfetched. She’d been unhurt and forgiving in

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