Gun Shy by Donna Ball Page B

you’re not getting any impressions of what might have happened, are you?”
    She was silent for a moment, and then I saw her repress a shudder. “Just terror, confusion and a noise like thunder. I’ve never known such a . . . a dark chaos. Oh, it’s so sad.” She looked at me gravely. “He says his life is over. Everything is all over. For heaven’s sake, Raine, don’t you have any idea where he came from?”
    For a moment it was hard for me to speak. I had to clear my throat. “I think I’d better open the wine,” I said.
    As I poured the wine, I told Sonny about yesterday’s gruesome find and Hero’s ordeal. When I was finished, she nodded, unsurprised. “So that’s the thunder I keep hearing.”
    It took me a moment. “Oh. The gunshot.”
    She sipped her wine, watching Hero from one of the two chairs I had drawn up in front of the fire. The old house was drafty, and in the winter I had all of my meals in front of a fire. “What an awful thing for him. He must have felt so helpless, being locked outside the door.”
    “I don’t even like to think about the kind of person who could do something like that.”
    “We can never know another person’s heart, Raine. She must have been very deeply disturbed.”
    I suppose she was right, but I couldn’t seem to find much sympathy for the deceased under the circumstances. I was spared from answering by the distant sound of the oven timer. I took a quick sip of my wine and set the glass on the occasional table. “Be right back.”
    “Do you need any help?”
    “No, just relax.” I grinned. “Even I can manage paper plates and leftovers.”
    A beseeching look from the hearth rug was Cisco’s way of reminding me what a very good dog he had been—particularly considering the fact that Mystery had settled down not three feet away from him with one of his favorite toys—so I said, in passing, “Okay, boy, release.”
    And then the oddest thing happened. Predictably, Cisco bounded to his feet and went straight for the toy with which Mystery was teasing him. But at the same time, Hero emerged from his crate just as though he too were responding to the word “release.” He stood there for a moment, looking confused. Sonny extended her hand to him and called his name softly, but he didn’t even glance at her. He turned around and went back into his crate.
    I shook my head helplessly and continued to the kitchen.
    “I’ve been kind of working with him,” I explained to Sonny as we settled with our plates of warmed-over chicken and dressing at the little table I’d drawn up before the fire. “Just trying to see how responsive he is, you know. The thing is, I think someone really put some time into training this dog. For one thing, look.”
    I gestured toward the canine population that surrounded us. Cisco, the dog in whom I had invested countless hours of training, lay obediently at my feet, his eyes fixed upon my fork, long strings of drool hanging from his jowls. Begging at the table is, by any other name, still begging. Mystery was a bit more subtle about it. She sat prettily a few feet away, but the way she watched every bite Sonny took indicated that she was by no means a stranger to the good things that come from human plates. Even my three crated dogs were sitting at attention, rubber bones forgotten, hoping for a morsel to be tossed their way. But Hero lay quietly in his crate with the door open, indifferent to tantalizing aromas and the other dogs’ interest, while we enjoyed our meal. That was the way a dog with perfect manners was supposed to behave.
    Sonny pointed out, “He’s probably too depressed to be interested in food.”
    “Well, there’s that,” I agreed. “But watch this.”
    Without getting up from the table, I said, “Hero, here.”
    Hero slowly got out of his crate and came over to me. Ignoring both Mystery and Cisco, who were actually distracted enough from their fixation upon the plates of food to turn and sniff him as he