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Uncle Gabe. We have to run this whole thing by him before we become involved.”
    Boo, unaware of the hullabaloo he’d just entered, pounced at my loose shoelace, capturing it with a triumphant bark.

CHAPTER 3
    W HEN I WENT OUT TO MY TRUCK TO DIG THROUGH Boo’s stuff, I found a note stuck to my windshield. It was from Hud.
    “Hey, ranch girl,” it read. “I realized I forgot to give you Boo’s schedule, his likes, dislikes, etc. He’s sort of house-trained, ha-ha. (Sorry.) I’ll donate five hundred bucks to the folk art museum if you can accomplish that. When I came back inside the museum, your door was closed. It sounded like there was some kind of emotional crisis going on, so I decided not to disturb you. Call my cell or the ranch if you have any questions about Boudin. Thanks again. You’re a stand-up broad. Your buddy, Hud.”
    So, I thought, the going rate for finding a killer and potty-training a puppy seemed to be the same in San Celina. I wasn’t sure which one would be harder.
    “Okay,” I said to Boo, who was now scampering about my feet, playing with a dandelion sprouting from the gravel, “according to your schedule you are due for lunch. But I suspected that.” I looked at my watch. “Then it’s time to meet perro grande , and I don’t mean Scout. Be on your cutest behavior, because I’m not sure how he’s going to take sharing his home with a semi-housetrained corgi.”
    Boo yapped, then chased a bee. I found his food and a black and red ceramic dish that had Yummers! printed on the bottom. I fed him, then took him to the side of the building to do his business. I put him in the pickup’s bed while I struggled to secure his padded car seat with the passenger seat belt. I recaptured him, slipped his tiny halter on and hooked him into his fancy car seat.
    “You know,” I said, starting my truck. “Traveling with Scout is a whole lot easier.” After introducing Boo to Gabe, I was going to spend some of that thousand-dollar retainer at All Paws on Board. He’d be in expert and loving hands with Suann, the day care’s owner and head dog wrangler.
    At the police station, it took me twenty minutes to maneuver the short walk to Gabe’s office. There was something about a puppy that softened the eyes of even the most hardened street cop, cynical detective or seen-it-all dispatcher. Before I made it to Gabe’s office I heard three long-winded memories of a special dog in someone’s life. Gabe’s oak door was closed when I walked up to his assistant’s desk. Maggie, a fellow rancher and dog lover, had to spend her requisite minutes fawning over Boo and telling me about a corgi-beagle mix her grandfather once owned.
    “Is Gabe in?” I asked.
    “Yes,” she said, cuddling Boo to her chest. “But he’s only got fifteen minutes to spare before he has a meeting.”
    “More important, is he in a good mood?” He had been when he left this morning, but being a police chief, that could change in a flash-bang.
    “Reasonably so. He’s excited about his mama coming out for Christmas.” She grinned at me. “Said you were excited about it too.”
    I grinned back. Maggie knew me too well to believe that. “More like anxiously anticipating. Kathryn and I came to something of a truce when I visited Kansas a few years ago. Except for three or four short phone conversations, we haven’t talked since.”
    Maggie rubbed her cheek against Boo’s head. “The only advice I have is that a person can fake anything for two weeks.”
    “I certainly intend to try.”
    The door opened as soon as the words came out of my mouth.
    “Try what?” Gabe asked.
    I looked away from Maggie, afraid the amused look in her shiny black eyes would cause me to start laughing. “Try to figure out how to tell my darling husband that he’s the most wonderful, understanding, open-minded, caring and generous person I’ve ever known.”
    He gave a disbelieving grunt and raised his thick eyebrows. “What do you want?