Death at the Dog Wedding

by Stacey Alabaster

  “Oh, of course I noticed that,” I said, taking the list back. This time, I wasn’t going to give it up again. “I’m just not sure why it was such a big deal?” I settled down in the chair on the other side of the room and waited for the answer—it hadn’t been a rhetorical question. But I had to act like I wasn’t actually waiting with bated breath.

  “Well, it’s a big deal because it looks like Maxine wasn’t an officially invited guest,” Adam said. “It looks like she was added at the last minute.”

  I glanced at the list again. I still didn’t want to admit that Adam had seen something that I’d failed to see. “It could just be that Felicity forgot to add her.”

  Adam shook his head. “Felicity doesn’t forget things,” he said knowingly. I had to swallow down the anger that was swiftly rising in my chest and throat. “No. Maxine must have been a last-minute invitation.”

  I looked down at the list again. “I’m not sure you’re right, Adam.” And this time, it wasn’t just my pride getting in the way. I had a hunch forming. A big one. “I think that Maxine was never even invited to that dog wedding. I think she added her own name to the list.”

  Chapter 8

  It seemed as though the spell in the hospital had done her good. Brenda arrived back at work like she was a new person, opening the door for me and asking me how my morning had been so far.

  “What did they do to you in there?” I asked, trying not to look too shocked by her bright smile as she welcomed me into the shop. She had something waiting for me as well. A gift. It was a bouquet, but this time, not a floral one. Instead of flowers, it was made up of dog treats. Good, high-quality ones even.

  “What is this?” I asked in shock, spinning the bouquet around. Unlike a floral arrangement, it didn’t exactly smell pleasant if you stuck your nose too close to it. At least, it didn’t for humans. But for four-legged creatures, it would be an entirely different case. Jasper was going to devour it.

  “I felt bad about missing the wedding,” Brenda muttered. “Don’t go making a big deal out of it.”

  “Brenda. Jasper is going to love this.”

  She blushed a little but then buried her face in her work, restocking shelves of beeswax candles, like it was no big deal. “So how are things with you anyway?” Brenda asked. “Had any interesting cases lately?”

  Were pigs flying through the skies at this very moment? I filled her in on the Maxine case and where I was up to. “Sounds like you’re stuck,” Brenda asked, frowning and looking genuinely interested.

  “If only I could speak to Maxine,” I murmured. “Figure out why she added her own name to the registry. But that is impossible.”

  “Well, you’ll just have to work with what you have,” Brenda said matter-of-factly. It was the first time she had ever offered me any help with a case.

  “And what do I have?” I asked, feeling a little off-balance. I wasn’t sure how to take Brenda’s new helpful attitude. I tried not to be too suspicious, tried to come at it with an open mind. Maybe she really did have some good advice to offer me.

  “You don’t have Maxine, but you have people who knew her before she died. Who was her best friend?” Brenda asked.

  “Elliot,” I said, after thinking about it for a few seconds.

  But from the look on Brenda’s face, that was the wrong answer. “No?” I said. “Then who was Maxine’s best friend?”

  Brenda shook her head. “You’re the dog nut around here,” she said, glancing over at the bouquet of dog treats.

  “You’re talking about Massie?” I asked in surprise. Well, they are called man—and woman’s—best friend.

  “Brenda. How do you feel about coming along for a mission?” I asked her.

  It only took Brenda stepping in some loose mud for her new cheery demeanor to sour slightly. “I can’t believe you trudge around town like this,” she said, shaking her shoe off in disgust. “Walking everywhere, when it's so much easier to drive.”

  “It’s better this way,” I said. “I’ve found that you can take in a lot more on foot. When you drive, the world just moves by too fast. You miss things.”

  “Yes. You miss things like the wind in your face and the insects,” she said, swatting away a mayfly. Then she yelled in disgust and leaned forward, coughing and spluttering. “I just swallowed a bug!”

  “You’ll survive,” I said, walking forward.

  Brenda finally finished coughing up the bug she had swallowed and caught up with me as we grew closer to Elliot’s house.

  “I’m not sure what help Massie is going to be able to offer me,” I said, walking up to the door. I still lacked confidence in this plan, but I was willing to trust Brenda’s instincts. I took a deep breath and decided to see where this journey would lead me.

  Massie was loose in the fenced yard. She jumped up as soon as she saw me, but she was a little reluctant to walk over. I opened the gate and let her out onto the front lawn.

  “Hey, girl.”

  Massie came up to me with her head down. I petted her and sighed, feeling down myself when I thought about all the depressed dogs in my life. It was an awful lot of change for her in such a small amount of time.

  “Take a look through her tags,” Brenda said, keeping a safe distance away from us.

  “What for?” I called out. But I kneeled down anyway and looked at them. There was one that had Maxine’s name and contact number on it. That was going to have to be updated. I made a mental note to speak to Elliot about it. The rest of the tags jangled together—strange that she had so many, I supposed. One just said “Massie” in a pink heart shape, but there was nothing on the other side. Beside it, there was a far plainer tag, rectangle and white, with a cell phone number etched into it. It was different from Maxine’s number.

  “I don’t know what number this is,” I said, taking the tag off Massie’s collar before I stood up. “I don’t think it’s Maxine’s number.”

  “Why don’t you call it and find out?” Brenda suggested. It was very sensible advice. But instead, I placed the tag in my pocket and decided to do it later. As helpful as Brenda was being, I still didn’t trust that she didn’t have ulterior motives. She’d never wanted to help me before, so why now? “Maybe I should take her for a walk while I’m here,” I said, getting the leash out of my pocket and clipping it to Massie’s collar.

  “Well, I’m turning back,” Brenda said, spinning around and getting her shoe caught in the mud again. I was expecting her to shout in outrage, but I saw her face go white. “Oh no, I knew we were going to get in trouble for trespassing. We should never have broken the law!”

  I spun around to see a police car stopping in front of Elliot’s house. Uh-oh. Brenda was right—technically, we were trespassing.

  Ryan.

  “You’re not trying to steal that dog, are you, George?”

  I made my best innocent look and put my hands behind my back, Massie’s leash still in my grip. I suppose it did kind of look like I was about to dognap her. “I was just going to take her for a walk. Elliot asked me to,” I said, trying to sound convincing. He wasn’t buying it.

  “I think you’d better take the dog back into the yard, George,” Ryan said carefully.

  I nodded a little and carefully opened the gate, aware of the stolen tag in my pocket. I just hoped he wouldn’t want to frisk me. Brenda was frozen, looking terrified. “I had nothing to do with any of this!” she stated. Ryan nodded and told her she was free to go. She sped off down the hill, not caring this time how much mud she stepped in.

  I thought things would still be awkward between Ryan seeing as the last time we’d met I’d caused a scene and stormed off. “Well, I guess I should be going,” I said, keeping my hands in my pocket the whole time to make sure the tag was still there.

  But Ryan surprised me. “Hey. Do you want to join me for a drink later?”

  What was this number for and why had Massie been wearing it around her neck?

  I turned the tag over in my hands and
then quickly shoved it in my pocket as Ryan approached the table.

  He took a seat and ordered a beer. I was already onto my second glass of wine. I’d gotten to the restaurant twenty minutes before him. “I’m sorry about last time, George. How are things going with Adam, anyway?”

  Look. I’m not one to get easily choked up. I don’t get overemotional; I shrug things off. Better yet, I laugh them off. Life is too short to get hung up over trivial things or to sweat the small stuff.

  But for some reason, Ryan asking and me having to think about it, about what I had seen at Felicity’s house… It was all too much.

  “Adam has been lying to me,” I said quietly, staring into my glass and trying to keep it all together.

  I saw Ryan’s eyebrows raise a little. “What has he been lying about?” He didn’t sound surprised to hear that Adam had been lying. Just interested to find out the specifics.

  “About what he does in his spare time,” I said bitterly, before I swallowed down the rest of my glass of wine.

  “Can I take a guess at what that might be?” Ryan sounded a little deflated as he looked down at his beer. He finished it off and then put his hand up to order another round. I nodded and said I was more than game for another drink as well.

  “Be my guest,” I said.

  Ryan paused for a moment. “I’m going to take a guess that he hasn’t been entirely honest about who he has been seeing in his spare time.” He paused and took a good look at me. “Has he been seeing another woman? Am I on the right track by any chance?”

  I gulped and nodded, my hands wrapped around the wine glass.

  Ryan sighed a little. “I suppose my next question, George, is, why does this bother you so much?”

  So I’d been right. He did sound deflated.

  I struggled to explain it to him. How could I get him to understand? It had nothing to do with him…nothing to do with my feelings for Ryan. The two were unrelated. Emotions can be complicated things.

  “It’s just that when you’ve been married…”

  But Ryan cut me off. “You haven’t been married to Adam for over a decade. Heck, you’ve been married several times since then, for crying out loud! How come these feelings are still there, George?”

  I stared into my glass. “It is hard to describe, Ryan. You’re young, you’ve never been married…”

  “Wow,” he said, standing up. So this time it was him who was going to make the scene, and leave me sitting alone in the restaurant.

  I couldn’t figure out why he had taken so much offense.

  “What did I say?” I asked.

  “I just thought we were over this whole age thing by now,” he said, pulling a couple of ten dollar bills out of his pocket and putting them on the table. “And I thought maybe you were ready to move on. It’s clear that neither of those things are true.”

  I gulped. I thought we could get past it as well. But the truth was, thirteen years was a large age gap. He was still in his twenties, he saw things in black and white, and he hadn’t lived long enough to figure out that things were never that simple.

  Alone in the restaurant, I pulled the tag out of my pocket and called the number.

  “Hello?” a male voice answered unsurely.

  I straightened up. For some reason, I hadn’t expected anyone to actually pick up. And I hadn’t expected a male voice if the call actually was answered.

  “Oh, hello,” I said, suddenly at a loss for words. It had been a trying evening. I quickly left a tip for the waitress and dashed outside to the front, where the evening had taken a chilly turn.

  “Who is this?” the voice asked suspiciously.

  “My-my name is George.” I struggled for composure as I watched Ryan’s car speed away.

  Right. Time to focus.

  “How did you get this number?” the voice asked quietly.

  I turned away from the noisy restaurant. “I know this is going to sound a little strange, but I found your number on a dog.” I had to laugh a little as I said it out loud. I thought the guy on the other end of the line was going to laugh too, or at least find it a little surprising.

  But instead, he became even more quiet. At first, I thought he had disappeared or hung up on me, when I finally heard a panicked. “I’m not doing that anymore!”

  “Not doing what?” I asked quickly, worried that he was actually about to hang up on me. I couldn’t let that happen.

  “I’m not taking on anymore clients!” he hissed at me. “Not after what happened. Go ahead and do me a favor and lose this number!” he said before he ended the call.

  I stood and stared at the phone in shock for a few moments before I called back and waited while the phone kept ringing. “Darn!” I said, hanging up. He wasn’t going to pick up while I called on this number.

  What was he talking about, not taking on any more clients?

  Adam was lying on my sofa again when I stormed through the front door later that evening. But this time, I was relieved to see him. “I need to use your phone, Adam,” I said, taking it off him and quickly explaining that the man I was phoning was refusing to take my calls.

  “You know, you could have just used your own, but blocked your number,” Adam pointed out.

  “Oh.” I hadn’t thought of that. Come to think of it, I wasn’t even sure how to go about doing it. So I kept Adam’s phone and tried again that way.

  But there was still no answer. “Great. He’s probably disconnected the number.”

  “Try Googling the number,” Adam suggested.

  “Yes. I know. I was just about to suggest that myself,” I said, lying through my teeth as I walked over to my laptop and opened it up. “But this probably won’t turn up anything.”

  The number retuned a result straight away. Oh.

  “Pottsville Premium Dog Walkers,” I said, sitting back. “Oh my goodness, Adam. This guy was Massie’s dog walker.” He walked over and started reading the screen over my shoulder.

  “Do you think this guy could have an idea about who killed Maxine?” he asked.

  “There’s an address,” I said, taking control of the investigation again. “This is where we need to go, Adam.”

  Chapter 9

  “So, have I been imagining things?” Adam asked as the truck rattled along the road toward the address that the internet had provided us. I just hoped it was a current address and that this terrified man hadn’t already skipped town. My phone call had obviously spooked him. The address was just out of town, a small farm property by the looks of it as we started to round a bend and I spotted some goats in an empty paddock who were eying us curiously.

  “I don’t know,” I said, gripping the handgrip and staring out the window. “What do you think you’ve been imagining?” I tried to say it casually, but my voice came out squeaky nevertheless.

  “That you’ve gone cold on me,” Adam said. “I wasn’t even sure you were alive there for a day or two. So, are you going to tell me what’s going on or not?”

  I really didn’t want to have this conversation. Adam did, however, have a captive audience. The only option for me was to open the door and roll out onto the highway if I wanted to escape it.

  “Not cold,” I said, offering him a brief smile. “So you must have been imagining it.”

  “Uh huh,” he grunted. “Sure.”

  We continued on in awkward silence for a few minutes as we approached the property.

  I could no longer hold it in. I had to address it. The elephant. It had followed us even in the truck and it demanded to be spoken of.

  “I know about you and Felicity,” I finally blurted out.

  Adam almost veered the truck off the road, then quickly straightened up and regained control of the steering wheel. “Know-know what about Felicity and I?” he asked, sounding ruffled but trying to sound all innocent. As though I must be crazy. Making stuff up.

  “I…” I gulped. “I went to visit Felicity the other night. Believe it or not, I wanted to make things right. Wan
ted to see if Jasper and Flora could get together. Anyway, I arrived when Felicity already had company.”

  I noticed Adam grip the wheel a little more tightly. His knuckles were starting to turn white.

  “…And I saw the romantic dinner you were having together,” I said, looking at him a little sadly. “Am I mistaken, Adam?” I held my breath for a moment, hoping that I was.

  “Oh,” he said softly, his face falling. My stomach fell as well. So, I wasn’t mistaken, then. His voice was a little shaky when he replied, “I didn’t mean for you to accidentally find out like that, George. I should have been honest and told you.”

  I felt the heat rise in me. Him and Felicity? Now I really wanted to exit the vehicle.

  “So what is going on there?” I asked, trying to stop my voice from going squeaky again. “Between you and Felicity, I mean?”

  Adam shrugged. He looked about as eager as I was to exit the truck, but we were in the middle of the road, going up a hill on a one-way street and there was no place to pull over unless we wanted to go off the edge. “We’ve been seeing each other, George. For a few months now.”

  For a few months now? And all this time, I’d thought the reason Adam was planning the dog wedding was because he wanted to prove something to me. When all along, it had just been an excuse to spend time with Felicity. She was the one he’d wanted to impress.

  “I see. And is it serious?”

  Adam shot me a look which said that it was. “I don’t know yet.”

  “Right. I see.”

  “George, I didn’t think you would get upset like this…”

  “I’m not upset,” I said, cutting him off. “I don’t even care in the slightest.”

  We were at the home of Pottsville Premium Dog Walkers. Or at least, the home of the man who ran it. I climbed out of the truck before Adam even came to a complete stop and was lucky that I avoided rolling my ankle with the rough landing I made on the grass.