California Schemin' - Kate George [6]
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have anything against men, but if you’re looking for total devotion and unconditional love, go for a dog every time. Your dog will never ask you to move three thousand miles from home. In fact, your dog will follow you anywhere and be quite happy. They may resent you for leaving them in a kennel for a week, but they’ll get over even that in a day or two. Guys are not quite so forgiving.
I spent an hour playing with puppies. They crawled on me, licked my face, attacked my fingers and slept in my lap. When the attendant finally whisked the last one away I felt much better. I still missed my dogs, but my heart felt lighter. I left the pet shop and zipped down the mall to the Safeway grocery store.
The drive home, while still an hour, seemed to fly by. I had the radio blasting and the windows open. I’d seen the Vermont weather on the internet, and they were in the midst of a “wintery mix.” I did love being in the sunshine, at least temporarily.
The air conditioner was whipping my hair around as I turned up the one-lane road that led to Beau’s cabin. Sometime during the day it had become Beau’s in my mind. I wasn’t surprised he’d bought it. The place suited him. The isolation, if anything, suited him more.
A quarter of a mile from the house I could see the commotion. There were a couple of cop cars and a pickup in the drive. Three officers were standing at the foot of the stairs talking to Beau, and a fourth was just coming out the door.
I parked on the side of the road, gathered up an armful of groceries and started up the drive. Beau and the cops noticed me, and the whole group headed in my direction.
“Here, let me take these.” Beau took the groceries from me and set them in the bed of the pickup.
“There are more.” I started back toward the car. I knew there had to be a good reason for the sheriff to be at the house, but I really didn’t want to know what it was.
“Wait. Don’t bring those up yet. I’m not sure we can go in.” Beau glanced at the officer standing beside him.
I sighed and turned around. He was short-circuiting my efforts to ignore whatever crisis had befallen us now. I was supposed to be in California resting up from disaster. I wasn’t all that keen on the fact that it had followed me here.
“Okay,” I said, “lay it on me. What happened while I was gone?"
“Unfortunately,” a brown-haired officer broke in, “the cabin door was forced, and it looks as though your husband’s computer was stolen. The place was searched. Any idea what they were looking for?”
I let the husband label slide without comment, led them into the house and dragged my computer and camera out from under the bed.
“You’d better call Sheriff Fogel. I saw a woman fall off the Foresthill Bridge yesterday. They may have been looking for the camera I had with me. They must know that any pictures could have been downloaded. That’s probably why they took Beau’s computer. What they don’t know is that I gave the photo disk to the Sheriff already. There isn’t any point in stealing it from me.”
The cops took off, leaving Beau and me to clean up the glass from the window that was smashed out of the door. Beau was quiet, and I didn’t know what to say. Without meaning to I’d gotten back into trouble, and this time I’d dragged him in with me.
The house had been tossed. I put the cold stuff away but let the non-perishables wait. Whoever tossed the house either hadn’t thought to look under the bed, or they hadn’t gotten to it before they had to leave.