Chapter One

New home sweet home.

Dale Kinsall sat in the comfortably full parking lot of the Foothills Veterinary Clinic and let recent changes roll over him. Steamroller, even. The surrounding view was no longer of flat Midwest dairy cow fields and long white barns bordered with trees, verdant grass, and road ditches thick with cattails. Instead he found himself amidst drought-dry high desert, with the San Francisco Peaks directly behind him, ponderosa pines lining the road and climbing up the base of the Peaks, and natural volcanic cinders waiting to crunch beneath his feet. Massive cinder hills dotted the landscape, some with signs of old mining operations. The dry air still made his sinuses recoil in shock when he drew a deep breath. Late spring in Flagstaff, Arizona.

And I have only myself to blame.

Well, and maybe the fire.

A cold wet nose gently bumped the back of his arm. Dale realized he'd never quite removed his hand from the stick shift, as though perhaps he might throw the Subaru Forester in gear and burn rubber out of there, spitting gravel -- cinders -- from the tires. Thirty-four and suddenly life didn't seem so predictable anymore. Maybe it was a lesson he should have learned earlier.

bump

He glanced back over his shoulder to discover the obvious: Sully had again escaped from his soft-sided travel case. Cedar Ridge Sully, escape Beagle extraordinaire. And Sully looked at Dale with an expression totally devoid of guilt. In fact, with the slightest crease above those chocolate brown eyes and long floppy ears pulled forward to frame his soft face in Flying Nun mode, there was quite clearly -- and as usual -- only one thing on Sully's mind.

when do we eat?

"Never," Dale muttered at him, but not without a gentle tug on one of those ears to make the Beagle smile. A cat-toting woman navigated the doors out of the clinic, doing a creditable job of hanging onto the Silly Putty cat as she maneuvered past the young man and gawky young setter on the way in. Dale looked out at the building again, long and low and brown with no indication of the extensive facilities hidden in the back. Two benches flanked the doorway under a porch overhang, and drought-limp landscaping bordered the front between no-nonsense painted 4 x 4 porch posts. And then there was the sign. Freshly painted at the bottom of the Foothills clinic sign was Dale Kinsall, DVM. "There we are," Dale told Sully. Another customer, this one carrying a tiny goat, entered the clinic while Dale watched. Larger animals would go around back -- they tended plenty of stock, horses most of all. "And we might as well go in and start making it feel like home."

He slipped a collar over Sully's head as the Beagle invited himself to clamber into a front seat already occupied by the carelessly overstuffed boxes Dale was reasonably sure belonged at his new desk. He'd gotten a little hasty during the final stages of packing and only hoped he wouldn't open any office boxes to the sight of old laundry or grade school mementos.

Balancing between the boxes on the seat and the cooler stuffed into the passenger leg area, Sully gave Dale a startled, unhappy look. His expression went from amiable to the unmistakable down-turned quirk of lip and droop of ear, dog caught by an abrupt i don't feel so good and Dale didn't hesitate; he fumbled with his seatbelt, freed himself, and escaped from the Forester just in time to haul Sully out and --

hu-hu-hu -rrrrup !!

"Wonderful. What is that, pine needles? Really great way to christen the clinic, Sully. You might have just peed on something." But Sully excelled at droop-eared forlorn sorrow, and Dale sighed and gave the young dog a pat, glad to remember the short hose at the corner of the building. He had no intention of leaving the entry walk . . . well, sullied.

The silent pun cheered him, and abruptly the changes and the challenges ahead didn't seem so overwhelming. He pulled the hose free from its casual coil on the ground and turned it on, sluicing the walkway clean and then sluicing Sully's face clean with no regard to the Beagle's horrified expression.

He heard the footsteps of someone's purposeful approach and looked up with a smile ready --

"This isn't your day!" The newcomer stood between two parked cars with a bike by his side and an outraged expression on his face.

"Er," Dale said, using all the intelligence he could muster and soaking his shoes before he remembered to release the hose sprayer handle. At second blink he realized this newcomer had detoured from his journey along Highway 89 to deliver his declaration. Dale hunted for something more meaningful to say in response but only repeated himself, this time less certainly. "Er . . ."

The man flung an accusing finger at the bold numbers attached to the side of the clinic. "You're odd!"

One of us certainly is, Dale thought, and offered a weak smile. "Okay," he said, hoping that might make the man go away. He didn't look like an unbalanced person as he stood beside the Forester; in fact, in his nifty biking outfit and clean-shaven face under a neon helmet, he looked like a habitually active, functioning individual.

But the man didn't act like he was going to go away, so Dale returned the hose to its corner, squishing audibly, and shut off the water. Sully was conspicuously quiet on his leash, either still feeling a little ill -- not likely, given his cast-iron constitution -- or wary of the man's demeanor. For his own part Dale thought it was a good time to escape into the clinic, and rued the fact that his car door still hung open, waiting for attention. Sure enough, as soon as he returned within range, the man said sharply, "Rules are made for a reason, you know."

"Yes, of course," Dale said, pretending he didn't feel the narrow-eyed scrutiny of the man's hard blue gaze. Maybe this was typical of his new home. Maybe he'd just have to get used to casual encounters of the baffling kind. In this case, it seemed a quick retreat was the way to go. He gave the scowling fellow a we're all friends here kind of smile and turned away from the SUV --

-- and whoomp! ran solidly into someone -- a female someone -- who'd just come storming out of the clinic at high speed. Sully startled off to the end of his leash while Dale grabbed the woman to keep them from both going down and then hastily readjusted his grip to keep himself from getting arrested. She jerked back and they tried twice to go around one another in the same direction, until she drew back in exasperation to glare at him.

At second thought there was more than just glare there; her lower lip and chin had a slight tremble to it, making her look much more vulnerable than he suspected she would have preferred, especially to judge by the part of her that was indeed still glaring -- her eyes, nearly black eyes. Her heart-shaped face had the distinctive features and complexion he was quickly coming to recognize as Navajo, but she was a smaller-boned package overall. She wore a collared tee embroidered with Laura Nakai, DVM and Pine Country Clinic and she filled it out very nicely indeed.

Heel, Dale told himself, realizing that he'd collided with a colleague, albeit one who worked in the clinic across the city.

But it was a very small city. It was to Dale's mind little more than a long, narrow town, pulled out like thick taffy with lumps of commercialism and residences on either end and a strip of old Route 66 hotels where the middle was thinned by the encroachment of Mt. Elden, the shorter mountain of the Peaks. The other end of it was a bigger lump, heavy with the university community. The Foothills Clinic -- and now Dale -- resided outside Flagstaff proper in the small almost-town of West Winona. That this woman worked on the other end of it all still pretty much put her in his backyard.

He gave her the best smile he could muster with his feet squishing and the sounds of the strange accusatory man departing behind him and Sully tugging gently on his leash, rooting around behind the wilted plantings in front of the clinic. "I'm sorry," he said, running a hand through hair too recently cut to actually fall over his eyes. Black and thick and please, God, let it stay that way, it generally grew too quickly to keep in hand and the habit never went away. "I was distracted."

Her glare faded long enough for her to take in his wet shoes, the rapidly drying walkway, his SUV crammed to the ceiling with boxes and the kind of objects that enter a car only to move from point A to point B.. A favorite desk lamp squashed up against the side window of the cargo area, a sheaf of loose papers crept for escape, and a very visible old stuffed elephant he suddenly wished he'd packed in the middle instead of at the very visible edges. "So I see," she said, and then her glance rested on the man who cycled away from the parking lot with WN-WN stamped on the back of his shirt. The woman's face cleared somewhat, though her distraction remained evident. "Ah," she said. "You ran into Win-Win."

He followed her gaze to the fast retreating cyclist and wondered what that was supposed to mean. "Did I?" he said, and then upon short reflection added, "He called me odd. Which is probably true, but it's an awful personal thing to say to someone in a parking lot." Sully, still mostly immersed in small shrubs and groundcover, pulled the leash; Dale gave it a gentle pull in return. "Sully," he said, but Sully only gave the tilt of head and ear that meant he heard, but . . .

busy.

The woman gave a short laugh, though it still had the edge she'd brought with her out of the clinic. "Not you, the building." She gestured at the street number on the clinic sign. 7977. "Someone from Waste Not-Water Not caught you hosing things down on the wrong day. You know, even days, odd days. Don't you read the paper?"

"Not yet," he admitted, but not willing to also admit just how baffling he found her words. Nor did he have to, for Sully had realized that Dale was in conversation and that he was somehow not the focus of it; he came trotting out of the bushes with his tail held high and his recently sluiced face and chest entirely smeared with the fine dusty high desert soil. Dale gave an inward groan.

But Sully wasn't through. He came, he saw, he liked -- and he put his tail in gear and flung himself on the woman as though he'd never had a moment's training otherwise, smearing muddy paw prints down her jeans.

"Sully!" Dale said in his doom voice, horrified. He bent down to capture twenty-plus pounds of wagging -- and then the world went gray and whirling, betraying him entirely, and he kept right on going down. With much shock, he found himself on hands and knees while Sully commenced nuzzling and bumping and worrying.

Laura Nakai came to the rescue. Gently but firmly, she pushed Sully away, securing his leash around one of the clinic's porch posts. She pressed down on Dale's shoulder when he started to gather his feet under him. "Sit," she said, so he did, instantly feeling the water soak through the seat of his jeans. It just gets better . . . But the Forester and the parking lot and even Laura Nakai still whirled around him in dizzying swoops, so he propped his forearms on his knees and closed his eyes. She said, "You're new to the area, aren't you?"

Through clenched teeth, he asked, "What gave it away?"

"Besides the packed vehicle and the general ignorance?" she responded, digging in her leather backpack-purse as she crouched beside him. "The altitude sickness. Do you have a headache? And I'll bet you haven't had anything to drink all day."

"No!" he said, startled. His eyes flew open, but quickly shut again. "I'm not -- I don't -- "

"I meant water." Real amusement in her voice this time, she put a sports-bottle in his hand and nudged upward. "Drink. It's tea, but it's wet and cold."

He drank. The instant it hit his mouth he realized how thirsty he was, and how many boxes he'd lugged to and fro that morning without remembering to drink a drop. It's the desert, dummy. Dumb, dumb, dumb . . .

She might as well have been reading his mind. "People forget. Flagstaff isn't a furnace like Phoenix, but it's just as dry; you have no idea how much you sweat out. Get yourself a sports bottle and keep it full. As for the altitude . . . you'll adjust."

He groaned without thinking, and she gave his shoulder a pat, but even then he felt her amusement. Small women seemed to find it amusing when a big man did girlie things. Like fainting, for instance.

I didn't faint.

Just almost.

oh woe.

dale's sick. me too but who cares, that was whole moments ago. dale! don't be on the ground! don't look so pale, it's not right! i can't reach you because the woman tied me, that's not right either. beagle woo-oooh! beagle woo-oooh!

they're ignoring me. I'd like a drink too, but -- oh, he looks better already. maybe it was that loud man. I'd like to chase his bike, i would. but the woman is nice. she smells good, an open smell . . . she likes dogs. i would trust her. she's not happy though. dale missed it, too busy falling down. not the breathing thing, that makes noise. another thing.

untie me? someone untie me? I'm left out! beagle bark!

"Cute dog," said Laura Nakai, sitting back on her heels as Dale took another drink. "Nice to see a well-bred Beagle. Do you show him?"

Dale found he could focus on her, though the world had a far-away feeling. He took a deep, surreptitious breath, testing for tightness in his chest or the faint burn of irritated lungs. Odd how quickly that had become habit again. The climate will help. Or so everyone said.

She'd quirked an eyebrow at him, waiting.

"Uh," he said, feeling stupid. "I meant to. Life . . . got in the way. Maybe now that I'm here."

Sully barked again, a woebegone sound. me!

"Yeah, yeah," Dale told him. "We know you're there. You've made quite an impression on us all today."

"Try agility competition. He looks like he already keeps you on the run," she said dryly, closing her little backpack and gathering herself to stand up; she glanced over her shoulder at the clinic door, and her fine features tightened. "I've got to go. Keep the tea, and drink it. If you know someone who can drive you home, call them. And take it easy for a few days."

"Thank you," he said, trying to imagine if he could possibly feel more humbled. "I actually work here. Or I will. So I'll be okay."

"You -- " She abruptly closed her mouth, and it thinned slightly in a response he couldn't understand. Her deep brown eyes latched on to him, really looking at him, and her expression didn't improve any in the process. Dale had never felt taller or gawkier, in spite of the fact that he'd finally filled out to his height lo these many years ago. He'd definitely never felt less dignified.

His tentative offering of a smile didn't do any good. She thrust herself to her feet and said tightly, "Good luck," as she strode swiftly for the small hatchback hunkered down at the end of the parking row.

Dale watched her go, dazed in every brain cell. The little car jerked into reverse, swung a quick backwards turn, and accelerated up the short steep incline up to the highway, barely hesitating before darting onto the road itself. Behind Dale, Sully gave a puzzled little whine.

"Yeah," Dale said. "Me too."

.

Chapter Two



Dale lingered cross-legged on the walkway, drinking tea and looking at the Peaks, the dry terrain, and the pines surrounding the cinder-crunchy parking lot. Thinking. Behind him, lining the front of the clinic, two wooden benches stood guard; he could be sitting in one of them. Although that meant getting up, and if he was getting up, he'd just as well sit in the car -- even if it did suddenly seem further away than he'd remembered. So for another long moment he sat, until he determined that the hot little poke of pain in his butt was from one of Flagstaff's ubiquitous cinders grinding its way into his pocket area. Just about then Sully worked his leash loose and marched over to climb into Dale's lap with no doubt that the lap was indeed there just for him.

mine.

Mud and all.

"All right, then," Dale said, and lifted Sully, climbing to his feet. Carefully. The world stayed upright and so did he; he counted the process a success. He wiped his muddy hands on the navy blue of his loose T-shirt. Not exactly washboard, that stomach, but enough lean muscle to be reassuring -- at least until he realized what he'd done, and tried ineffectively to brush the mud away. Quit while you're ahead, he told himself, and did. He returned to the Forester to embark on a search for the towel he knew would be there, somewhere, simply because one did not go off with Sully in a car and not have a towel. And also because Dale had a sneaking affection for Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,S and thus knew better than to go anywhere without a towel.

He spread the towel and plunked his wet posterior behind the wheel, two parking spots down from the entryway and feeling anonymous enough. The strong spring sunshine offset the cool temperature and even won the fight; sitting here sipping tea and consuming blue corn tortilla chips seemed like just the right level of ambition for the moment. Sully sat on the floor at his feet. He gave Dale his big brown eyes look.

"You're drooling," Dale told him. He bit a chip in half and gave Sully the other half. Sully inhaled it and sat there looking like he'd never gotten anything at all and wasn't life a cruel trick?

Dale was by no means immune to this expression, but found himself too distracted to offer it proper homage. Laura Nakai. She'd been upset . . . obviously a woman of strong feelings, much as she hid them. He thought he'd like to bump into her again. On purpose. And then he remembered her words. "Don't I read the paper," he muttered, pretty much about the same time he recalled that he did actually have a copy of the paper -- yesterday's or the day before's -- sitting on the front passenger seat. Somewhere. Under boxes. Gingerly, he lifted a box and felt around for it. From the corner of his eye he caught Sully lifting his nose toward the bag of chips between Dale's knees and without turning, he said, "Don't even think about it."

poop. Sully settled back on his haunches and made a resentful face until he forgot to.

"It's here somewhere," Dale said, fingers reaching and searching. They scrabbled across slick newspaper and pounced in triumph. He didn't quite have the room to grasp the paper between fingers and thumb, but he edged his hand sideways and trapped the layers of newsprint between his index and middle fingers, tug-tug-tugging --

Victory retreated as the paper ripped, leaving Dale with a third of the front page, most of which was taken up by a picture of the dramatically receded shoreline at Lake Mary and the newly exposed detritus. "Who'd throw a computer away in a lake?" he wondered, taking another slug of tea. He passed a chip to Sully, let the dog take a bite, and absently put the rest of it in his mouth. "Or a washing machine drum? That's a hefty little package to wrestle around."

whatever. Sully kept his eyes glued to the chips bag.

"Here we go. Level Two water restrictions. Odd-numbered street addresses should water Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday." He glanced at the clinic address again: 7977. "I guess we're odd at that. And on a Wednesday. Excellent planning, to move out here in the middle of . . ." he looked more closely at the paper and quoted, ". . . Arizona's worst recorded drought." He shoved the chips out of Sully's reach and spread the partial paper over the steering wheel, looking for more information. All he got was a truncated story written in self-consciously grim text. "Hmm, murder over by the university. Second one this year. Only the second! Now that's a number I could grow to like. Victim was one John Heflinger." Except after that tidbit, the paper deckled off into nothingness, leaving everything but half a headline and a few torn sentences; no details whatsoever.

A USPS Jeep pulled up in the spot Laura Nakai had so recently vacated; Sully immediately alerted. The mail was the mail was the mail, and every mail truck deserved extra attention.

Dale absently crossed his ankles, making a cage of his legs. "I don't think so," he informed the Beagle, taking another swig of tea. He thought maybe if he drank it all, and maybe if he had a few more chips in lieu of actual food, he'd still be okay to unload what he'd brought. And Dr. Hogue was expecting him today, albeit not at any particular time.

One of the clinic workers, resplendent in scrubs with dog breeds printed all over it and short-shorn wire bristle hair sticking up where she'd shoved her fingers through it, came out as the mailman went in. She sat down on one of the benches flanking the entry and gave him an amiable wave. "Hey, Hank."

"Hey, Dru," he said back, just as amiable, balancing several packages atop the stack of mail he carried. "Those things'll kill you, you know."

"Yep." Her voice was cheerful enough, her words muffled. Dale glanced over at the click of a lighter and discovered an older woman. She probably thought of herself as "mature," but P.C. or not, that many wrinkles meant older to Dale, as did the dumpy shapelessness beneath the scrubs, the kind of shapelessness where some things fall and some things square up and they kind of meet in the middle. But her arms showed muscle and her eyes, as they caught Dale watching her over the cigarette-lighting ritual of flame and cupped hands, had a hard glint that made Dale think he wouldn't want to tangle with her even if she did look old enough to be his mother. Older.

At her gaze he looked hastily back to his chunk of paper, embarrassed to be caught staring. He didn't recall meeting her when he'd flown in for his interview, but there was a number of the vet techs and support staff he hadn't yet met.

Sully perked up, alerting Dale to the reappearance of Hank the mail carrier. Unfettered by packages, Hank proved to be a lanky forty-something, balding on top and making up for it with thin, graying shoulder-length hair. A hard round little potbelly pushed at his shirt buttons, exacerbated by his slouching posture. Hank's attention seemed aimed at the truck now lurching its way into the entry drive and down the brief but steeply angled hill to the parking lot itself. A homemade camper topped the truck bed, swaying alarmingly with the give of the vehicle's tired shocks.

Bright country-look curtains peered out from the edges of the little window on the side; the camper shell itself was painted with unreadable gingham lettering, a few sheep, and a token fence section. The entire thing was so overwhelmingly cute that Dale wanted to run and hide. Hank evidently felt the same way, given the wary look on his face.

But Dru ignored the newcomer and said to Hank, "Hey, that dead fellow. Weird, him being staked like that. I mean, uhh!" -- and she thumped herself in the chest -- "staked for real."

Dale felt his eyes widen; he flipped his partial paper over, looking for any mention of stakes or staking.

Hank said, "Big stake, too -- one of those tree stakes. Pinned him right through to the ground. And it was his -- he was out planting some tree."

Dale found nothing in the paper but stared at it with determination as though it had suddenly become fascinating. Only the second murder of the year, that was nice. A grisly, creative murder . . . SOP around here? He wasn't sure he wanted to know. And half a weather report with many little pictures of clear skies and the obvious effort someone had made to avoid repetition barely served to distract him from Dru's next words.

"Makes ya wonder if he saw it coming," she said. "I mean, it musta taken a sledge. And whoever did it woulda had to stood up over him -- so was he awake? Or did the guy kill 'im, then stake 'im?" She lowered her tones into drama level. "And no one heard anything but a barking dog . . ."

Dale stared rather desperately at the weather section, too startled by her casually brutal assessment to hide his reaction, not wanting to be caught eavesdropping any more than he'd wanted to be caught staring and definitely not wanting to hear this at all. In the background, the newly arrived truck's door opened, closing with that dull sound of something not quite latched. Closed again several times until the driver was satisfied. Wednesday: Sunny. Thursday: Bright and clear. Friday: Sunny and clear. Saturday: Clear and pleasant. As far as he could tell, they might as well have used a rubber stamp. They certainly weren't fooling anyone.

"They don't know the cause of death -- they haven't done the autopsy yet," Hank said wisely. More truck door activity filled the background. Someone was very busy doing something. "Or if they have, they aren't admitting it."

"Probably because it's too horrible." Dru seemed to get a certain satisfaction from that thought. "Probably the guy saw it coming. Flat on his back, too scared to move -- " She flung her arms wide and lifted her feet from the cement porch floor in what Dale thought of as a Dead 'Possum pose, cigarette smoke trailing through the air like skywriting. Two day-old dead smoking 'possum by the side of the road pose. "And wham!, here comes the stake."

"You been trapped with that disinfectant stuff again?" Hank asked, sounding amused. But before she could respond, his eyes went wide. "I knew it!" he said, looking around rather wildly; his eyes lit on the empty bench opposite Dru and he leaped up onto it.

The scrabble of many tiny toenails made things clearer; Dale turned in his seat to spot the frenetic arrival of a flock . . . herd . . . pack . . . of tiny dogs. Not quite Chihuahuas, not quite anything else. They all had medium, frosted black-over-white coats, big bug eyes, and prick ears. They strained eagerly against their tangle of leashes, towing along a busty helmet-coiffed bottle-blond wearing an I love my dog sweatshirt. The leashes proved too much for her; she dropped several.

"Ahh, nooo," Hank groaned, cringing, and Dale prepared himself to rescue the beleaguered mail carrier as the little dogs launched their . . .

Attack?

"Awww!" Hank said in dismay, shooing ineffectively at the small creatures. "Awww, c'mon now!" They scaled the bench with no discernible effort and latched on to him, gripping his ankles tightly between their spindly little forelegs as their backs hunched up and went to work in an unmistakable, socially unacceptable motion.

Biting was definitely not what they had in mind.

Dale let out a sudden snort of laughter, desperately muffled. At his feet, Sully growled in a baffled way, then slunk to the furthest recesses of the available floorboard space, embarrassed for his fellow dog.

Dru made no attempt to hide her snorting guffaws. "Could be worse, Hank!"

"Every time I come here -- !" he sputtered, dislodging one of the creatures.

"Don't hurt them!" the woman cried, gathering leashes and tugging ineffectively.

"Hurt them!" Hank said. "A guy's gotta have some pride, lady!" He jumped over the arm of the bench, awkward but successful; the leashed dogs jerked back and ping-ponged off the ground, eagerly bouncing up to follow while the woman bombarded them with cries for obedience that made Sully pull his ears forward but had no effect whatsoever on the leaping, yapping little dogs. Hank made it to the Jeep and dove inside; the engine ground to life, whining a little at the sudden reverse and escape velocity.

Dru watched without making any attempt to help gather the dogs, not even a little shift of her weight to indicate she might be thinking about it. Finally the country-themed woman propped the door open with her foot and dragged the tiny dogs into the clinic.

Now Dale made no pretense of not watching. Staring. Gawking, even.

Dru looked over at him with a twinkle of wicked humor in her eye but a deadpan expression. "There's a reason we call him Humping Hank," she said. "But don't tell him that."

"What," Dale said, hunting words as he turned slightly to face her, letting one long leg rest on the ground, "What were those -- "

"Teacup Huskies," Dru said wisely, watching him through a slanted gaze. Still definitely wicked. "She breeds them."

"But . . ." he said. No such thing. Never had been . . . probably never would be. Alaskan Klee Kai, yes . . . but these dogs weren't even close.

"Oh, we know," she said, easily able to fill in his unspoken objection. She flicked ash to land just beside her foot. "But we don't tell her that, either. Someone gave her two of 'em and told her that's what they were, and off she went, breeding 'em. Just your basic punting dog, if you ask me." She pantomimed the action, flinging more ash.

"I see," he said carefully.

"Welcome to the zoo," she told him, and grinned, no question about the wickedness this time.

"Excuse me?"

"You're the new doc, aren't cha? Seen your picture, so just in case you thought you were sitting there all incognito, you weren't. Grab a box and let's go. Sure am glad to see you haven't got one of the fat sausage-shaped ones, which is what I figured it for when I heard you had one."

Much more faintly, he repeated, "Excuse me?" and resisted an urge to check his zipper.

"Beagles!" she said, standing to grind her cigarette butt under the ball of her foot. She bent over to prod it, making sure there was no spark of life left, and then toed it under the bench. "Don't get your knickers in a twist, I sweep 'em up the end of every shift."

"No," he said, turning hastily away to acquire the box from the passenger seat. "Not twisting. Not me."

In the end, he took the box, the tea, and the chips. He had a feeling he might need whatever faint sustenance they provided. And of course he took the dog. Not fat or sausage-shaped. And thank goodness for that.

those weren't dogs. can't convince me. stubborn, stubborn. but the man . . . the one who brings things . . . i liked him. I'd like to -- not polite. dale would yell. big beagle sigh. all right then, in we go. nose to ground, sniffsniffsniff . . . ooh, what's this? smoky stinky thing with red lip stuff on it.

i think I'll eat it.