Home of the Brave (Raine Stockton Dog Mysteries Book 9) by Donna Ball Page A

“Must be important.”
    “Kind of.”  She frowned a little.  “Maybe.  I just thought you’d want to know.  Les and I happened by the White Lightning Saloon last night—bar fight, didn’t amount to anything, the report’s on your desk—and guess who happened to be sitting there at the bar sipping whiskey like it was soda water?  Reg Connor.”
    Buck spread jam on his toast.  “Fell off the wagon, did he?”
    “Right.”  Absently she reached for a piece of bacon from his plate.  “Like there’s ever been a wagon to fall off of.  That man’s never been to a meeting in his life.”
    “Particularly one that’s held on Monday night,” Buck reminded her.  “I called around to every AA group in a hundred miles.  A few on Tuesday, lots of Fridays, no Mondays.”
    Wyn crunched down on the bacon.  “So it seemed like a good chance to talk to him about what he was doing Monday night, since we know he wasn’t where he told his father he was, and whether he might have any ideas about the identity of the victim in the car, or failing that, whether he might have any ideas about who might want to steal his father’s car and set it on fire.”
    Buck took another forkful of eggs while the waitress brought Wyn’s coffee.  She patted Wyn’s shoulder just before she left and said, “You gonna want some breakfast, honey, or do you two want to share?”
    Wyn glanced guiltily at the bacon between her fingers and then put it down quickly on her coffee saucer, blushing.  “I’m not staying,” she said.
    “Holler if you change your mind.”  The waitress sailed off to her next table.
    Buck said, amused, “There’s no extra charge for sharing.  You want some toast, too?  I’ve got plenty.”
    She scowled, her blush deepening.  “This isn’t a date.  Everyone is staring.”
    Buck glanced around and no one, as far as he could tell, was staring.  He said, turning back to his eggs, “Speaking of dates, when are we going to have one?”
    She sat back in her chair, her shoulders stiff.  “That is completely inappropriate.”
    He moved his gaze deliberately to her hand.  “You’re not wearing it.”
    “I told you, not at work.” 
    “Wyn,” he said patiently, “everybody knows about us.  The guys at the department know about us.  Buddy Hall knows about us.  The waitress knows about us.  What’s not appropriate about being honest?”
    She said, “Have you talked to Raine yet?”
    Silence was her answer, and a quick shifting of his gaze.  Her lips tightened, and she, too, looked away for a moment.  The silence lingered.
    Then he picked up his coffee cup.  “All right,” he said.  “Go on.  What did you get out of Reggie?”
    Her expression settled into thoughtful lines, and she picked up the bacon again.  “It was the weirdest thing,” she said.  “He just kind of laughed and shook his head and he said, ‘You think that’s your biggest problem, Deputy?’ or something like that.”
    Buck lifted an eyebrow.  “That drunk, huh?”
    She shook her head.  “I don’t think so.  At least not from what I could tell.  The bartender said it was his first.  Of course, we don’t know how much he had before he got there but … no.  He didn’t seem drunk to me.  It was just like … I don’t know.  Weird.”  She frowned and crunched down on the bacon.  “Then he seemed to get with the program and said that he hadn’t been anywhere Monday night, that his dad was confused, medication, blah, blah, and as far as he knew the car hadn’t been driven since Sunday church.  He said the bedrooms are on the back side of the house and they wouldn’t have heard anything if someone came in the middle of the night, and the first time he noticed it was gone was when he phoned in the report.  About what you’d expect.  And then—this is the interesting part—when I asked if he had any idea who the victim might be, the one who was found in his dad’s car, he got real quiet and