“Hey yourself. Whatcha doing?”
Nick made a spur-of-the-moment decision to come clean. He truly believed honesty was the best policy and he didn’t want to make enemies of Edwina and Debbie Sue. And he especially didn’t want to make an enemy of Sandi. If everything got un-screwed up, he would like to know her better.
“My dog is lost again.” He lifted the small stack of flyers off the passenger seat and started to hand them to Debbie Sue. “I was hoping you’d—”
“Ever hear that old saying, what goes around comes around?”
Her ire radiated all the way through his truck window. Uh-oh. He angled a cautious look at her. “Yeah, I’ve heard it.”
“Then think about it.” She paused, looking him in the eye. “You’re wasting paper on flyers.”
“Wait a minute.” He opened the door and stepped down from his seat. “Why do I think you know where Buster is?”
“Waffle is at his home in Midland with his owner, Sandi Walker. You shouldn’t have stolen him out of Ed’s yard.”
“I know that. It was dumb. I know I owe Edwina an apology.”
“You owe Ed and her niece both an apology. And you might as well apologize to me, too. Ed and I stick together. And because she’s my friend, so is her niece.”
“You said you have dogs.”
“I do. Three of them.”
“Big dogs or little dogs?”
“What difference does it make? This isn’t about me and my dogs.”
“The difference is you know what different dogs are like. Buster isn’t a frou-frou lap dog. He happens to be a working dog. A cattle dog.”
“He isn’t a born-and-bred cattle dog. He doesn’t even look like a cattle dog. He’s a mix.”
“That might be, but he has the right instincts. He loves to be busy. He shouldn’t be cooped up in a house or a store. He needs to have room to run.”
For a fleeting moment, he thought he saw understanding in her eyes, but she turned on her heel, prissed her ass-in-tight jeans into the beauty shop and slammed the door with a Crash!
Women!
He sat a few more minutes, absorbing all that he thought he now knew. So those crazy women had come out to his home on his employer’s ranch and taken Buster out of his back yard. Nervy. Harley’s words from yesterday came to him: Edwina and Debbie Sue do have a way of getting everyone’s attention.
If he gave in to his instinct for fair play, this was poetic justice in a way. Debbie Sue was right. He shouldn’t have taken Buster out of Edwina’s yard. Later, after tempers had a chance to cool, he would come back to town and apologize to Edwina.
But at the moment, he was more concerned with getting his dog back and after all that had happened, an apology to a crazy woman wouldn’t solve that problem.
He returned to the ranch and dug his Midland phone book out of a desk drawer. He paged through the yellow pages under “Attorneys” and found Aubrey Hester’s name and an office address in downtown Midland. Like Jason Webster, Aubrey was an old high school acquaintance, though Nick hadn’t seen him or talked to him in years.
The phone operator in Aubrey’s office told him the lawyer was out for the day, but after some cajoling and a little teasing, she said he was probably playing golf. Nick’s memory zoomed backward to when he and Aubrey were in high school. The Aubrey Hester he remembered was too blind to follow a golf ball in flight, didn’t have an athletic bone in his body or a muscle anywhere.
Nick prowled through his desk until he found the roster listing the names, addresses and home phone numbers of the Midland High School class of 2001. An office number and a cell number were listed for Aubrey. Nick pressed in the cell number.
The lawyer answered right away. After Nick told him who he was, a monotonous who’s-died, who-lives-where-now and what’s-who doing-now conversation ensued. Minutes later, Nick got an opportunity to explain the situation.
“Hey, no problem, Nick,” Aubrey replied. “We’ll get that pooch back to you in no time. I just have to talk to the judge. He’s a friend of mine.”
Wow. Back in their high school days, every person in Midland High School would have said that Aubrey Hester was more likely to be standing in front of a judge than being friends with one.
“Where did you say the dog is?” Aubrey asked.
Nick gave him Sandi’s store name and address.
“You can trust me to take care of this, Nick. I’ll do it first thing tomorrow. If I need more information, I’ll call you.”
“Fine.”
“Listen, I gotta go, buddy. They’re waiting on me to putt out. We need to get together sometime and have a beer.... Oh, and Nick? One more thing. Don’t go near her. Or the dog. Just leave things alone and let me take care of it.”
Nick hung up, satisfied that something would be done. He didn’t know exactly what, but something. He should have called a lawyer in the first place and not fooled with a deputy sheriff. Then an afterthought came to him. Calling up a lawyer on a golf course probably wasn’t the greatest idea. Nick had told Aubrey Sandi’s address and phone numbers, but he felt sure Aubrey hadn’t written them down.
***
After so much confusion and stress, Sandi had a calm, uneventful week. The weekend came. Richard took her out to dinner and they saw a movie. He seemed morose. Probably because John Wilson was still in jail. Not wanting to ruin a pleasant evening, Sandi didn’t broach that subject.
On Monday, just after finishing up a fresh batch of Atomic Energizer, the front door chimed and a man wearing neatly pressed jeans and a long-sleeve dress shirt stepped into the store. He had “cop” written all over him. “Miss Sandi Walker?”
“Yes, I’m Sandi Walker.”
He thrust a folded blue document at her. Reflexively she
