She had not expected to see carvings that looked almost like works of art. Nor was John Hillman what she’d expected. He was slim with a closely clipped beard unlike his friend Sam Jeffers’s long one. He was younger than she’d expected too, maybe in his late thirties. Unlike Sam, he didn’t “talk country” but sounded educated with a touch of a Southern drawl. What a weird trio of friends Dane, Sam and John made. Was the foundation of their friendship animals, dead or alive?

“So this dog belongs to Jonas,” Gabe said. “Those Simons boys are pretty antsy about my relationship with Ann. All I need is them siccing a dog like this on me.”

“Better watch crossing that trio of bubbas,” Hillman said with a laugh. He looked at Tess again just as she noticed a shelf with a row of animal skulls, including one that looked newly scraped and cleaned. Either still wet or polished, it seemed to gleam.

“You don’t use the real skulls,” she observed.

“No. Even if there are antlers, they’re preserved and screwed onto a plastic skull. Not to brag, but there’s a lot of workmanship and even artistry that goes into shaping and carving the underlying forms. A lot of planning and care not to make a mistake. You’re only as good as your last carcass, like we say. In sheriff lingo, that’s you’re only as good as your last case or capture, right, Gabe?”

Hillman sounded as though he was goading Gabe. Or rubbing it in that here he was, running down a stolen, stuffed pit bull instead of tracking lost girls. Or was she reading this all wrong?

“This is a piece of evidence, so I need to keep it for a while,” Gabe said, when Hillman reached for it. “If someone’s harassing Tess, I need to know who and why. I’ll have Jonas stop around and fill out a stolen property form to get it back.”

“He owes me for the work on it, and if he doesn’t get it back, I bet he won’t pay,” Hillman said, sounding upset.

“Got you,” Gabe said, and started for the door with Tess right behind him.

She was surprised to feel the tension between the two men when she had expected them to get along. Yet Gabe had acted as if it were old home week with Sam. Did he just play different men—suspects—different ways? Since he hadn’t asked this man about his alibi for last night, she figured he must consider that new stag carcass proof of where he’d been.

At the door Gabe turned to Hillman. “Next time someone steals your property, report it, will you, John? Otherwise I have to assume you’re the last one in possession of it when it turns up where it shouldn’t be.”

“I just got home this morning from a trip with Sam Jeffers and Dane Thompson,” the taxidermist said.

“And that’s when you saw this pit bull was gone?”

“No, it was gone a few days before, but the fact that I was on the overnight trip was why I didn’t report it earlier. You got some agenda besides this dead dog, Sheriff? Like maybe kidnap victim number one here?” he said with a glance at Tess.

“When a kidnap case has never been solved, you trace any trail, whether one with a hound dog on it or a stuffed pit bull. I’ll keep this until I talk to Jonas and then you two can work out the payment for the dog.”

Hillman said something Tess didn’t catch and closed the door pretty loud and fast behind them.

“Sorry that got kind of tense,” Gabe said as he put the dog in the back of the cruiser again and they got in. “I needed to rattle a couple of cages, flush someone out by making myself the target, not you. Jonas may have taken his dog back without paying so that he could scare you off. If so, maybe it’s because he thinks I’m more interested in you than Ann.”

“As they see it, Ann’s in love with you and the three of them are her protectors.”

“Yeah. They aren’t the brightest guys around here, but I don’t want them bothering you or screwing things up. I almost hope one of the three musketeers put it there to get you away from here, instead of the kidnapper—yet I don’t want to use you for bait.”

“At least the Simons brothers are too young to have had anything to do with my abduction,” Tess said as she fastened her seat belt. “Besides, I’m not to blame if they see you stepping away from Ann, because it’s not that way between you and me.”

“No?” Gabe said. It was not so much a question, more a challenge.

Gabe backed the cruiser out and headed toward the road. He was frowning, but she was getting used to his moods now. She figured he wasn’t angry but worried. Maybe just thinking. As she was. About them, but she couldn’t face talking about that now. Until things were settled, a relationship was impossible. Even if the case was solved, the abductor found, it was still impossible. She just wanted to head home to Michigan.

Desperate for a change of subject when he kept shooting sharp looks at her that she felt clear down in the pit of her belly, she spoke. “Don’t you think John Hillman is too young to have been involved in my abduction?”

“He’s deceptive in more ways than one. I swear he’s financing the floating dogfight ring the Simons boys run in the hills. I’d have found it by now if they didn’t have someone with brains behind it, who keeps moving its location. Hillman’s over fifty, just doesn’t look his age, like he’s been preserving his own skin and shape. He was a drinking buddy of your dad’s way back when. He was such a ladies’ man you wouldn’t believe it.”

“Hillman, you mean, not my father?”

“Yeah, right.”

“But Hillman’s being a ladies’ man doesn’t tie into kidnapping young girls, does it?”

“Nope. It’s just that I don’t trust him—or Sam, or Dane—and it really ticks me off I can’t nail them on anything. I’m going to drop you at home, look around the place again before I leave you to head on over to Dane’s. Later this afternoon, I’m heading to Chillicothe to call on Dane’s lady-friend vet. I won’t even fight you and Vic about not taking you. Her place is near the railroad tracks, and you have some memory of that, so I’ll let you look around while I talk to her, see if her house jogs any memories. Then I’ll drop you off at a restaurant or someplace safe while I do another interview I don’t want you involved in. Deal?”

“Yes. Anything to help. And I feel safest when I’m with you.”

He looked at her. Their gazes locked for a moment until he turned back to the road again. He started to say something, then evidently changed him mind as they passed Dane’s house and headed for hers.

Tess glanced in the rearview mirror at the pet cemetery, but her gaze caught the snarling expression of the dead pit bull on the backseat as if it were chasing them.

* * *

Gabe didn’t like leaving Tess alone, even in broad daylight, but after dropping her off and looking around her house inside and out, he drove alone to Dane’s. After he parked, he had to wait for him to finish with a client. Jim Cargrove, the town banker, had brought in his new Great Dane pup to be neutered.

“Best breed around, Great Danes,” Dane said, making a lame joke when he saw Gabe sitting in his waiting room after Jim had left. But Dane’s eyes widened and his head jerked when he saw the stuffed pit bull in the next seat.

“Got a few minutes?” Gabe asked.

“A few. Busy day. My office is just down the hall where—”

“Mind if I just step in here with you instead?” Gabe asked and, without permission, the dog under his arm, entered an examining room. He quickly scanned the open shelves, but most were hidden behind cabinet doors.

“Just curious, Dane. When you knock a dog out for something like neutering, what do you use? Just straight ether or something else?”

“Things are a little more sophisticated than that today. Ether use began in the Victorian age. A variety of anesthetics are available now for animals, and certainly for people.”

“I had a friend who just had a colonoscopy, and they gave him Versed, some kind of amnesiac. I guess with animals you wouldn’t use something like that.”