Let Loose Read online

  But for the last month, he’d been working some statewide case that seemed to take him out of town more than it kept him in.

  The phone rang five times before he answered.

  “Blake.”

  The gruffness of his tone told me this wasn’t a good time, but there didn’t seem to be a good time, at least not lately. So I put a smile in my voice and chirped out the good news of my fund-raising ticket score.

  His voice softened. “Sorry, Lucy, I can’t. I have to be in Great Falls in three hours, and I won’t be back until the weekend.”

  I tamped down my disappointment and focused, remembering that he was serving the greater good, whatever that meant. “This weekend?” I asked, keeping the chipper thing going as much as I could.

  “Yeah, maybe we can go for a drive or something.”

  His voice lowered on the something and my heart and few other of my pertinent parts purred.

  “I’d like that,” I murmured, releasing the purr in what I hoped was a sexy don’t-forget-me way.

  “Are you catching something? George has been out for a week. There’s definitely something going around.”

  I cleared my throat and sat up straighter in my seat. Kiska, apparently sensing my humiliation, moved his nose from the window to my throat and inhaled loudly.

  “That really doesn’t sound good,” Peter added.

  I put my hand on Kiska’s face and shoved him into the back seat. “I’m fine. Maybe we could—”

  “Sorry, Lucy, I have to go. The detective from Bozeman just arrived. We have some people to talk to here before we head out.”

  I scowled and stared at my dog, who seemed completely unconcerned with the dive my love life seemed to be taking.

  “Lucy? Are you there?”

  “Yes.” My purr seemed to have changed to a growl.

  Peter’s voice lowered again, this time into a soothing apology. “I’m sorry I’ve had to cancel so much. You know I wouldn’t if... You know I want to see you, right?”

  “I guess.” I stared out the window and wallowed in some well-deserved self-pity.

  “Take Rhonda to the fund-raiser. You know you’ll have more fun with her anyway, and I promise I’ll see you Friday... Saturday at the latest.”

  Peter didn’t make promises. Peter didn’t even talk this much at one time unless he was admonishing me for something I’d done that he deemed... frivolous. And his tone was apologetic. It really was impossible not to forgive him.

  “Okay.” I purred again.

  “Good. Sorry. Have to go.”

  A dial tone buzzed in my ear.

  I muttered a curse and clicked “end call” on my phone. My fingers wrapped tightly around the Jeep’s steering wheel, I stared out the windshield at the snow-covered parking lot.

  I was still sitting there, staring, when a loud rap on the driver’s side window sent me shooting upright.

  “Are you Lucy?” A porcelain doll of an older woman smacked a carved wooden cane against my window. My discerning eye couldn’t help but notice the age - mid-1800’s, wood - walnut by my best guess, and an ornate handle shaped like the head of some kind of sharp-nosed dog.

  I rolled down my window. “Wolf?” I asked, still eyeing the cane. Wolf items flew out of my shop, especially during tourist season.

  Her pink baby doll lips pursed. “Coyote.”

  Hmmm. I settled back against my seat. Coyotes just didn’t have the universal appeal that wolves did.

  She raised her brow and tilted her head, giving her an unsettlingly innocent look for someone who had to be post-eighty.

  Kiska shoved his way past me to push his entire head out the window.

  “Are you my ride?”

  With a side of malamute pressed up against my face, I couldn’t see her expression; her tone sounded calm, but I had to imagine that my dog, friendly though he was, might be somewhat intimidating to someone of her size and most assuredly frailty.

  “Back!” she barked.

  Kiska jerked his head into the Jeep and floundered into the seat beside me, where he sat looking almost as stunned as I felt.

  I turned to look at the woman I’d classified as frail. The coyote head of her cane bobbed next to her cornflower blue eyes.

  “My second husband had a team. None of them were as big as him.” She eyed Kiska, who hadn’t completely recovered from his brush with authority. He stared studiously out the passenger side window, refusing to acknowledge either the porcelain doll turned drill sergeant or his loving owner.

  “But they were just as stubborn.” She lowered her cane to the ground and tapped one finger on the coyote’s head. “Northern breeds. They’re all the same.”

  Then with one last assessing gaze at my dog, she teetered around the front of the Jeep and yanked open the passenger door. Kiska, with no urging from me, scrambled into the back.

  It all happened so fast, I completely missed my opportunity to be the caring polite Girl Scout my mother and Phyllis dreamed of me being. I turned toward my door, wondering if it was too late to do some scurrying of my own and at least close the door behind my elderly but speedy passenger.

  She jerked the door shut, ending my indecision.

  “My appointment’s in ten minutes. I hope this rig moves fast.” She tapped the cane against the floor board in three decisive raps.

  When I made no move to start the vehicle, she tapped again, but this time with the coyote head against the steering wheel. “Drive,” she demanded.

  And I did. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure where I was going, but Ethel, as I was ordered to call her, did.

  A few minutes later, we stopped in front of a house with a pickup truck connected to a trailer carrying two snowmobiles parked in front.

  “Kitchen sink wash and set,” Ethel announced, shoving open her door and sliding out into the snow. “Carol Kennedy’s been doing my hair for fifty years.” She muttered the last as she stomped and struggled through two plus feet of snow that had been plowed up along the edges of the driveway.

  A little more alert this time, I hopped out of the Jeep, leaving Kiska to snooze inside, and hurried over to help her.

  Stuck knee-deep in the snow, she grabbed hold of my offered arm and let me tug her out of the bank and up onto the sidewalk.

  Huffing and puffing, I bent over and wondered how someone so small could weigh so much. My back shrieked. I pressed a hand to it and gritted my teeth against the pain. After the count of ten, the pain subsided, at least enough that I was able to open my eyes and see my octogenarian Peter Pan bending nimbly at the waist to pick something up off the ground.

  “You dropped something. Oh... tickets.”

  Remembering Phyllis’s’ concerns about the Humane Society and the race, I flushed, but then I remembered Ethel’s remark about her second husband and relaxed a bit. “It’s a fund-raiser,” I said, virtuously as I could.

  Ethel nodded. “I’ve heard of it. Kind of fancy.” She narrowed her eyes and stared at me in a way that made me distinctly uncomfortable. I glanced back at the Jeep as if Kiska might do something to save me from whatever was about to come.

  “In my day, a girl did herself up right for something like this. Are you planning on that?”

  Uh, yeah, well... “I suppose.”

  “You suppose? You have a date?”

  A great deal more uhing echoed through my brain.

  “You don’t, do you?” The tickets fluttering in a light breeze, she shook her head.

  She looked so knowing and unfairly empathetic, I had to defend myself. “I have a boyfriend. He’s just...”

  “What? Too busy to take you?”

  More head shaking. “If five marriages have taught me anything, it’s that you can’t let a man take you for granted. Are you letting him do that?”

  Me? Let someone take advantage of me? That was just... I dropped my gaze to the snow.

  “Carol!” she bellowed, causing me to jump and almost lose my balance on the recently cleared walkway.

&nb
sp; The door to the house opened, and a woman probably pushing 80 herself, but with orange hair that would have made Carrot Top pea green with envy, peered out at us.

  “Carol,” Ethel assured me. “Never turns down a girl in need. Now get inside and we’ll teach that boyfriend not to send you off by yourself. You’ll have a team of mushers waiting on you once Carol’s done with you.”

  I stared at Carrot Top’s next of kin and then back at my Jeep. I’d done the makeover thing before and it had gone okay, but...

  “Get.” Ethel tapped me on the shoulder with the coyote’s head. Then, after opening the door so Kiska could join us, she prodded me in the back and forced me into a house that smelled of stewed meat and massive quantities of peroxide.

  Chapter 2

  The next night, I arrived at the fund-raiser tugging at my brand new do. The cut was fine, not all that different from the shoulder-length layered look I’d been sporting since high school. But the color... that’s what made me wonder if I should have kept my hat on despite the 80 plus temperature inside the hotel conference room where the On Tap for the Silver Trail fund-raiser was being held.

  The place was packed. Half the employees of my ex-employer, The Helena Daily News, were there. I started to approach them. Then I spotted the editor, Ted Brown. Ted and I had an interesting relationship, one that usually involved him insulting me in some way or another. With my newly blue hair, I decided looking for another crowd might be wiser and easier on my ego.

  A few feet from them was one of my neighbors, Craig Ryan. He was talking to some other men I recognized from auctions, but none of whom I really wanted to socialize with when we weren’t all holding bid cards.

  I was also, however, beginning to feel a bit awkward. It’s one thing to walk into an auction alone. I was fine with that, but this fund-raiser was way too much like a party, and I was beginning to feel like a prom reject.

  Rhonda, God bless her, spotted me before I lost all my moxie and headed back out into the cold. She was wearing her usual uniform of sack dress and winter foot gear, aka faux sheepskin boots. Her red hair was loose and shiny and... normal.

  “Lucy!” She stopped, open-mouthed, in front of me. “Your hair—”

  Betty, wearing a hat that looked an awful lot like my brother’s pet goose, Pauline, sidled up behind her. “Is blue,” she announced while bending her neck side to side, in an unwitting impression of the goose.

  I waited, my breath frozen in my chest. I never did anything out of the ordinary with my appearance. Sure I’d been known to put on a flapper dress at Betty’s urgings, but only because I knew wearing one at that time, for the jazz fest, would in no way make me stand out.

  How Ethel and her hairdressing buddy Carol had talked me into blue hair, I didn’t know.

  Betty stalked around me, taking in my look from all angles. “It isn’t Marge Simpson blue,” she noted. “But definitely...” She pulled me by the arm until I stood directly under a spot light. “...blue.”

  “I—” Rhonda started.

  “Love it!” Betty finished.

  “Me too!” Rhonda grabbed me by the forearms and jumped up and down, like a tween at the latest heart-throb’s concert. “I can’t believe you did this.”

  I couldn’t either, but seeing the pride on both of their faces made me proud too, giddy actually. I laughed and joined Rhonda in her up and down hops.

  And hopped directly into the back of a lumberjack. Or at least a man with a lumberjack-worthy physique.

  He turned around ten seconds after I did, and I came face to face with my skijoring friend.

  “You came.” A smile curved his lips. His chin dimple, I couldn’t help but notice, was just as cute right side up as it had been upside down.

  “Yes.” It was all the response I seemed to be able to manage.

  “And she brought friends.” Rhonda, never one to be intimidated by a chin dimple or any other male-associated dimple for that matter, moved forward with Betty scant seconds behind. Both held out their hands.

  I stood stiffly in place, feeling awkward and fighting the urge to grab at my hair with both hands.

  Neither Rhonda nor Betty shared my affliction. They barged on, getting information from my rescuer at a rate that made my newly blue head spin.

  I stood by as he introduced himself, revealing his name - Martin, and his point of origin - Canada. Rhonda, of course, had always had an (unvoiced to me) burning desire to visit Canada, where I guessed she envisioned herself snuggled in wool and...

  “You’re a musher?” she dithered.

  My eyes narrowed and my lips twisted. It wasn’t that I was jealous. I had a boyfriend, after all, but then so did Rhonda. At least last we’d talked she’d had her eye on some new man or another. Honestly, it was hard to keep track.

  But this male was mine. In a strictly platonic way, of course.

  “Martin,” I announced. “Skijors.” I preened a bit at that, confident that neither of the others had any clue what the sport entailed.

  “Great exercise,” Betty piped in. “Everett, my husband, goes out whenever he can with our dogs.”

  I stared at Betty open-mouthed. The closest thing to a dog that I knew of Betty or her husband owning was her fox stole.

  “Well, he did, once, with friends.” She flounced her boa and tried to look unconcerned, but I was on to her. And here I’d thought Rhonda was the only predatory female I needed to watch.

  On cue, my best friend moved in. She placed her hand on Martin’s arm and went for his weak spot. “Are those your dogs? They’re gorgeous.”

  Following her gaze, I saw the three dogs that had visited my house two days earlier lying on the floor at the head of the room. All three lay with their snouts on their paws and their eyes moving back and forth in their heads as they tracked the movement of the people milling around them.

  With more gushing from Rhonda to fuel us, we moved as a group closer to the dogs. While she oohed and ahhed some more, I continued the conversation, showing my extensive knowledge of Martin by sharing that he was also camping at the campground near my house.

  Rhonda looked duly impressed. “In this cold?”

  Martin smiled. “The trailer has a heater.”

  Rhonda fluttered: hair, eyelashes, hands and voice. “But still... that’s so...”

  Her expression finished the sentence for her. I elbowed her in the side to cut off the actual words.

  “Well, last night was my last night. The dogs and I ran the first part of the trail once. Now it’s Red’s turn.” At my questioning look, he explained. “He’s The Silver Trail organizer. We’ve been taking turns running potential legs of the race. Now that we’ve settled on starting at Moose Creek, he wants to run that first leg again before I head back to Canada so we can discuss it.”

  He looked at Rhonda and Betty. “That’s why I’m here, to help Red with the planning. Anyway, tonight I’m moving into a hotel. Then once Red is confident, I’ll be heading back to Canada.”

  The three of us made matching sad faces.

  A man’s voice came over the speakers telling the poster contestants to move to the right of the stage. Betty quickly trotted off, leaving me alone with Rhonda and Martin.

  The musher, after explaining to Rhonda which position each of his dogs occupied when pulling a sled, looked back at me. “That malamute of yours would make a great skijoring partner.”

  “Really?” The idea startled me some. I mean Kiska was big and obviously a Northern breed, but skijoring? “Doesn’t that take training?” And the desire to work?

  “Not as much as you’d think, especially if you have an experienced teacher.” He smiled.

  I glanced around, sure someone had walked up behind me, but no, the smile was for me. Rhonda, squatting next to the dogs, cocked her head and raised both brows. I could feel the questions building up behind her blue eyes, ready to be fired off at me like peas out of a pea-shooter.

  “I go most days. You could join me.”

  I didn’t
look at Rhonda. I couldn’t, not and answer too. “Uh, sure.”

  The man with the microphone made another announcement, this one saying that the presentation was about to begin. Martin excused himself, gathered up his dogs’ leads and went to the small raised platform that was to serve as a stage.

  Rhonda sprang to her feet. “Uh, sure? Did you just agree to a date? What about Peter?”

  What about Peter? It was a good question, but not one that pertained to this situation. “It isn’t a date,” I declared, pulling at my hair. “It was just a general invitation. An ‘if you’re around’ kind of thing. He was being polite.”

  Rhonda nodded her head in a slow and deliberate way. “Yeah, keep telling yourself that.” She picked a plastic cup filled with beer off of a table and took a sip. “When did you say Peter was coming back?”

  “Not until this weekend.”

  “So after your skijoring lesson.”

  The emphasis on lesson was really unneeded. I was about to tell her so, when the man with the mic bellowed again. Luckily for Rhonda, it was time for the winner of the poster contest to be announced, saving my best friend from being soundly put in her place for her unfair assumptions.

  We walked to the stage where Betty was standing next to two men, another woman and a girl who couldn’t have been more than twelve.

  Seeing us approach, she sidled up next to me and whispered, “Did you see the competition?”

  “Competition?”

  “In the poster contest.”

  “Oh. No.” I immediately rose on my toes and tried to see past what I guessed were Betty’s competitors to the easels lined up on the stage.

  “About as exciting as a trombone solo.”

  From her tone, I took that to mean she wasn’t intimidated by the other artists’ work.

  “Nothing but dogs and snow. I added a little pizzazz to mine.”

  Betty pushed Rhonda and me forward until we were only a few feet from the stage. A man wearing a flannel shirt and khakis stood behind the microphone, and behind him was the row of posters.