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coat over her flannel pajamas and left the station.
     

Chapter Three - Still Sunday
     
     
    Scott was looking forward to seeing the lo dge again, even though it was because of tragic circumstances for the owner. He drove his own vehicle, leading the way for the two sheriff’s deputies, who had a signed search warrant.
    The house was perched on one of the ridge tops of Pine Mountain, at the end of a long, curving driveway. It faced southeast, overlooking Gerrymaine Valley, a high alpine valley encircled by mountains on protected state forest land. When the humidity was low and the sky was clear, you could see all the way to Bear Lake, which shone like glass, reflecting the lush green of spring and summer, the burnished gold and red of fall, or the stark grey and white of winter. This part of the Allegheny Mountains still displayed a largely unspoiled natural beauty, mostly due to the laws that protected it from people like Theo.
    Sarah’s team members used the dead man’s house key to enter the house, and pointedly did not ask Scott to join them, so he went in the opposite direction, up the drive toward the kennel. Willy’s old truck was not parked anywhere Scott could see, but the county animal control truck was parked between the garage and barn.
    Hannah Campbell was supervising Theo’s dogs as they ran and played in the deep snow of a fenced meadow. Scott hailed her and she walked up to the fence to meet him.
    “What are you doing out here?” Scott asked.
    “Hello to you, too, Chief Gordon,” Hannah said, as she held up a net bag of tennis balls. “What does it look like I’m doing?”
    “I can see that, but why?”
    When she handed Scott a ball he threw it down to the end of the meadow. Baying and barking, a multi-colored pack of retrievers sped off to find it, kicking up snow as they went.
    “Well, Theo can’t very well do it himself, now can he? Being dead and all.”
    Hannah hitched herself up and over the fence.
    ‘She couldn’t weigh 100 pounds,’ he thought, as he helped her down the other side.
    No one could call Hannah pretty, with her prominent nose, closely spaced hazel eyes and thin lips. She did nothing to try to enhance what she had with makeup or hairstyle, preferring to slick her mousy brown hair back into a stubby ponytail anchored down by a baseball cap, and to leave her plain face clean.
    “Why are you doing it, though?” Scott asked. “Isn’t this Willy’s job?”
    “Drew called me this morning and asked me to check on the dogs,” she said. “He said Theo was dead and Willy wasn’t answering his phone.”
    Scott followed Hannah into the barn, where she picked up a pressure sprayer attached to a long hose, and turned on the water spigot. Hannah sprayed the concrete floor so the muck in each kennel rolled into a grate-covered drain.
    “How did Drew say Theo died?” Scott asked.
    “Said he didn’t know the details and I shouldn’t tell anybody.”
    Scott took the hose from Hannah when she handed it to him and washed out the kennels on the other side as she disinfected the clean side. The mess was stinky, but it seemed a wholesome kind of smell compared to the foul stench at the murder scene. Hannah sprayed the disinfectant from a gallon jug connected to a sprayer and hose. It smelled like pine and reminded Scott of scout camp outhouses.
    “And your good friend Maggie didn’t call you early this morning?” Scott asked.
    “No comment.”
    “And you haven’t been on the phone all morning gathering information from various sources?”
    “I’d like to call my attorney before I answer any more questions.”
    “Alright,” Scott said. “Off the record, just tell me the local consensus.”
    “Well, by the state of him last night I’d say he either drank himself to death or drove into a tree.”
    Scott turned, dowsing Hannah’s feet.
    “You saw Theo last night? When?”
    Hannah turned off the spigot, took the nozzle from Scott, and coiled the hose back up.
    “Around