Rose Hill Read Online Free PDF

midnight. He and Willy Neff came out to the farm in Willy’s truck. When we got outside Theo was yelling about the black lab I found out at the state park a few days ago. He said it belonged to him and he wanted it.”
    Hannah began disinfecting the kennels Scott had washed out, and Scott sat down on the stairs to the hay loft.
    “Was he driving?”
    “Willy was driving, and he was none too sober himself.”
    “Tell me everything that happened, from the beginning.”
    Hannah hopped up to sit on top of several forty-pound bags of dog food stacked on a pallet. Ignoring Scott’s disapproving look, she took out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter and lit up. The doors and windows were open, so a cold stiff breeze blew the smoke out of the barn as quickly as she could exhale it. She was far enough away from Scott so he wasn’t bothered by it, but he hated seeing her do it.
    Hannah picked a piece of tobacco off her tongue and flicked it away.
    “The dogs woke me up when they heard Willy’s truck come over the ridge. It was after midnight, maybe 12:30. I don’t remember but Sam might; he was still up working. I got up and threw on some duds, thinking there must be some kind of emergency. When we got outside, Theo was yelling he had come for his dog. Sam took a shotgun out with him and that, combined with our dogs barking at him, convinced Theo to get back in the truck.”
    “He was drunk?”
    “Mean and crazy drunk; you know how he gets. Said I’d kidnapped his dog and Drew was going to castrate it, and we were all in cahoots to steal this prize black lab, worth thousands of dollars”
    “Thousands? Could that be true?”
    “Oh, yeah. I heard a guy bought a German shorthaired pointer from Theo for four thousand and the dog turned out to be gun shy.”
    “Expensive house pet,” Scott said, thinking fast and furiously, trying to work out a timeline. “So how long was he at your place?”
    “I’m not exactly sure. It seemed like a long time but was probably only ten or fifteen minutes. I told him the dog was not in my kennel, that Drew had him at the clinic. He called me a liar, and a few other things. My darling husband took exception to this and fired a warning shot over the truck, so they left. Willy could probably tell you, if he wasn’t too drunk to remember. He’s not home, though. I checked.”
    Scott wondered again what Willy Neff’s part in all this had been, and where he had gone.
    “If Willy’s passed out in his truck somewhere it may be hours before he comes home,” Scott said.
    “He could also be dead in a ditch, and who would care?” Hannah said. “Nobody, that’s who.”
    “And when did Drew call you about Theo’s dogs?”
    “About ten this morning. I was headed to the store and he called me on my cell.”
    “Which means the scanner grannies heard every word.”
    Hannah nodded, saying, “Yep.”
    “Any idea where Theo was headed when he left your place?”
    “No, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he went to Drew’s house.”
    “He knew where Drew lives?”
    “He should have; he was the landlord.”
    Scott reflected that Drew hadn’t mentioned that fact.
    “Are you going to tell me what happened?” Hannah asked. “You might as well, you know. The scanner grannies will tell me anyway.”
    The scanner grannies were a group of senior citizens in town who kept their hearing aids glued to their older model police scanner radios. Using a cell phone in Rose Hill was akin to using a party line in the old days, as the ir now illegal type scanners could pick up cell phone and cordless phone calls as well as firefighter and police radio communications.
    “Somebody whacked him over the head in the back room of the vet clinic,” Scott said.
    “He must have gone there looking for the dog,” she said. “Who do you think killed him?”
    “I don’t know,” Scott said. “He had plenty of enemies.”
    Hannah slid off the pallet of dog food, put her cigarette out in a puddle of water on the