Page 36 of Deputy Brand Gets Her Man
“Oh, Beanie, Beanie, Beanie,” she sang. “What a good boy you are. Yes, you are, Beans, you’re a good, good boy!” The pup wriggled with so much joy, Willow didn’t know how Drew didn’t drop him.
“I didn’t plan to…you know, keep him,” Jeremiah said.
Drew, Willow, and Beans all looked at him in horror, then Willow showed Drew the note, so she could get the full impact, then held Jeremiah’s eyes while she read it, and crossed her arms over her chest.
He said, “Well, I mean, I don’t even have a place of my own yet, and when I do?—”
“Nobody’s fixin’ to worry about a dog in the bunkhouse,” Willow replied.
“Beans wouldn’t even be the first,” Drew added, and the dog started wriggling again, so she took him back to the Jeep, and set him on the driver’s seat. She closed the door, to keep him in. A parking lot with rigs rolling in and out was no place for a fearless puppy.
He sat behind the wheel as if he were planning to drive, and she loved on him through the rolled down window.
“Are you sure that’s the same dog?” Willow asked. “He seems a lot bigger.”
“Well, it’s been almost a week.”
She tilted her head at him. “That’s not very long.”
“You have to keep him,” Drew called back from the Jeep a few yards away. “That little boy’s countin’ on you. He trusted you with him. You can’t betray that.”
“I can’t?” He looked at Willow.
She shook her head side to side and wondered why he was asking her.
But he sighed as if she had determined his fate. “Well, I guess?—”
“Yay!” Drew raised both fists, then quickly resumed petting the pup through window. “Everyone can meet him at the bonfire tomorrow night.” Her phone signaled. Drew pulled it out and said, “I need to take this,” and wandered a few cars away for privacy.
Willow wondered if it was a certain art major and part-time sketch artist.
Jeremiah said, “So you’ve seen how my day went. How was yours?”
“Got all pumped up about an eyewitness who saw someone at that house that was vandalized, but it turns out she only saw the owner.”
“That’s too bad. You seem…bothered by it.”
“I called in a sketch artist. That’s department resources I spent, and it amounted to nothing. I think I might be the worst cop on the planet.”
“You’re not. You’re a good cop. I found a lead because of you today,” he said.
She raised her head and her eyebrows. “You did?”
“Yep. I was at the WTD. My old man ate there frequently according to your uncle’s notes, which you kindly got for me. And I talked to the owner, Marvella.”
She smiled and said, “Marv’s a character, isn’t she?” And he nodded, smiling. “Did she remember him?”
“She remembered him bringing Juanita Lopez with him to eat one time. She thought there was something going on between them.”
“Juanita was still a teenager,” she said. “Was she sure?”
He shrugged. “She seemed pretty sure.”
Willow frowned. “Juanita told us she barely exchanged two sentences with him.”
“Yeah, she did.”
“That’s curious.”
