Bulldogs & Bullets: A Dog Town USA Cozy Mystery

by Meg Muldoon

  She was dressed in a sheer navy blouse and her long blond hair fell around her shoulders in elegant beachy waves. She was wearing dark grey eyeshadow and thick eyeliner that highlighted her powder blue eyes. Her boyfriend, Greg, was set to arrive in half an hour to pick her up for drinks at Dog Mountain’s most high-end bar.

  “You don’t know that Mindy’s in trouble, Freddie,” Lou said, trying to ease my mind. “Not for sure, anyway. For all you know, she really is sick at home with laryngitis and just isn’t answering the door.”

  I shook my head silently to myself, unable to believe that.

  “And besides,” Lou continued. “You’ve done everything you can do about it for tonight. Not eating dinner isn’t going to help anybody anyway.”

  As if on cue, Buddy the big orange cat jumped up on the table, stalked over, and took a seat near my full plate of food.

  In recent years, the cat’s voracious hunger had gone beyond just meaty cat food and now included leftover dinner entrees. His appetite rivaled Mugs, who was sitting at my feet with a small dribble of drool running from his mouth. The puppy, much like everybody else in the household save for Lou, had become rather plump over the last couple of months thanks to her scrumptious fall-inspired kitchen experiments.

  Between Mugs and Buddy, not a scrap of food went to waste in the Wolf household.

  “You know I’m right,” Lou said, shoveling in a large mouthful of chicken and squash.

  I let out a defeated sigh, lifted my fork again, and started pushing around my food some more.

  Lou had a point. I had done just about everything in my power to find Mindy tonight. I had called her phone at least a dozen times, knocked on her door again, and checked her school classroom. I struck out on all three counts. My calls went straight to voicemail. When I knocked on her door, there was no answer from inside the vacant-looking house. And the school was locked – her classroom shrouded in darkness.

  When I tried calling the cell phone of her husband, Phil Monahan, there’d been no answer, either. When I’d called the accountant firm he was a partner at, I struck out too. His secretary had said he was on a business trip to Los Angeles. And she wouldn’t tell a reporter when he was due to get back.

  I had done all of this, and had gotten the dog story in late to Kobritz on account of it. My tardiness had severely displeased the editor, since it made him late to some talk-it-over dinner with his wife. But the way I saw it, there were more important things than filling tomorrow’s paper or the grumpy editor scoring points with Mrs. Kobritz.

  Like making sure that Mindy Monahan hadn’t suffered the same sort of fate that her dog had.

  Lou thought I was jumping to conclusions. But over the years, I’d learned to trust that gut feeling I got whenever something was up. And right now, that gut feeling was telling me that something had happened to Mindy, and it wasn’t laryngitis. And that even if she couldn’t be officially declared missing for 24 hours or so, she was still missing, all the same.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about what might have happened to her.

  Or the fact that I’d been so quick to dismiss her the day before when she didn’t show up for the school board meeting.

  I stood up from the table, leaving my full plate, and grabbed a hold of Buddy. The large orange cat meowed loudly when I took him over to the kitchen window, unhappy about being hauled away from a potential feast. But after a few pets, he settled into my arms and started purring loudly.

  I peered through the rain-streaked window pane, out into the darkness.

  I think you’ll get your money’s worth tonight, Freddie. This isn’t one you’ll want to miss.

  Mindy’s words echoed in my head.

  Why had I been so quick to assume she had bailed on me?

  “Freddie, you’re going to make yourself sick thinking about it,” Lou said, standing up and collecting the dishes from off the table. “And besides, didn’t you say that Sam’s looking into it right now? Let the professionals handle it.”

  Raindrops splattered hard against the glass as the wind wailed outside.

  Even if it accomplished nothing, it would make me feel better knowing I was at least trying.

  I made the decision.

  I put Buddy down gently on the floor. He let out a meow of protest, but within a few seconds, went quiet when he realized the leftovers were all his.

  I went for Mugs’ leash and attached it to the dog’s collar.

  I wasn’t the type who could just go home and rest easy when someone out there was in need.

  There was a reason I was a reporter. And it wasn’t to sit on the sidelines and twiddle my thumbs.

  “Freddie,” Lou said, watching as I headed out of the kitchen and down the hallway.

  “I can’t sit around doing nothing, Lou,” I said, ripping my raincoat down from the coat rack in the foyer. “I’ve got to do my job.”

  Mugs let out a happy bark at the prospect of getting outside.

  “It’s dark and stormy out there, Freddie, and you’ll only make me worry if you…”

  Lou trailed off, letting out a sigh and giving me a sharp look. A look she sometimes gave me when she thought I was taking too much of a risk. One to remind me that I was the only family she had in this world, and that I should seriously consider that before doing anything stupid.

  I walked back to the table and put a hand on her shoulder reassuringly.

  “Look, don’t worry about me,” I said. “I’ve got Mugs and I’m not doing anything dangerous. Just… go have fun tonight. Okay? I won’t do anything stupid. I promise.

  I gave her a small smile.

  “Sam’s not the only professional. I know what I’m doing.”

  I headed for the door with Mugs in tow.

  I knew Lou didn’t like it.

  But she didn’t understand what my gut had been telling me all evening.

  That Mindy needed my help.

  “Thanks for dinner, Sis,” I said, opening the door and stepping out into the blustery, rain-drenched night.

  All I got for a response was a worried and disappointed sigh.

  Chapter 18

  I ran across the street, trying to dodge the pounding rain while balancing two large coffee cups and keeping a grip on Mugs’ leash at the same time. When I got to the car, I put one of the coffees in the crook of my arm and one on the metal hood, and was about to lift the passenger door handle of the SUV when it magically popped open for me.

  He’d seen me coming.

  I slid in, bringing the coffee with me. Mugs followed a second later, jumping up on my lap and smelling of wet dog.

  I handed the man his black, no-sugar, no-cream dark roast coffee, and tried to catch my breath. Despite having worn a raincoat, my hair was dripping wet.

  “You don’t look surprised to see me,” I finally said.

  “I’m only surprised that you didn’t show up sooner.”

  He gave Mugs a couple of good pets, and the dog responded by giving him a couple of slobbery, overbearing kisses. He pet the pooch’s head until the mutt settled down.

  Sam always had a way of calming dogs. I supposed it was one of the reasons why he was the first person the local Humane Society called when they had an overflow of shelter dogs and not enough kennels to accommodate all of them. Sam knew better than just about anybody I’d met how to handle canines.

  “You know, you really shouldn’t be here, Freddie,” Sam said after a while.

  He said the words without much feeling, and I could tell he didn’t really mean them.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t be,” I said. “But admit it: You’re glad I am.”

  In the dim light glowing from the streetlamps, the edges of his mouth turned up just slightly.

  When I’d left home halfway through dinner, I’d had a feeling Sam might be staked out here in front of Mindy’s house. Though he couldn’t technically investigate Mindy’s disappearance for another 20 hours or so as a missing persons’ case, he could still ask questions concerning
her whereabouts. And I knew that after being unable to get a hold of Mindy’s husband, his next move at this hour of the night would be to put out an APB on Mindy’s turquoise Jeep Cherokee and stake out the Monahan residence, waiting for some sign of life.

  Sam had become a cop for a reason. And like me, it wasn’t so he could sit on the sidelines when someone might be in trouble.

  “Maybe I am glad you’re here,” he said. “But I don’t know if that’s a good thing, Freddie. You’ll only distract me.”

  “Oh, c’mon,” I said. “I don’t buy that distraction nonsense for one second. And neither do you.”

  He looked vaguely amused, confirming the fact that I was right and that he was actually glad to have me here with him tonight.

  “So, anything new?” I said, nodding at the dark house.

  “It’s a ghost town in there,” he said. “No lights, no movement – nothing.”

  “It was like that last night when I stopped by here, looking for Mindy,” I said. “But I saw one of the curtains in the front window move just as I was leaving. I don’t know if it was Mindy, but somebody was in there.”

  Sam rubbed his chin absentmindedly, a look of contemplation coming across his face.

  “Mindy’s husband hasn’t called you back, yet?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  “I’ve left half a dozen messages. Still nothing though.”

  I felt my stomach tighten.

  I knew that the majority of times in cases when the wife either disappeared or was found dead, it was the husband or boyfriend who was behind it. And when I thought about what Mindy had said to me the night before she disappeared – referring to Phil in the derogatory way that she had – I began to fear the worst.

  “I’m waiting in front of their house tonight because Phil Monahan’s secretary said he was scheduled to get back from California this evening,” Sam said. “She refused to tell me any details about what airline he was on without a warrant. But in the meantime, I figure he’ll show up here sooner or later.”

  Sam took another sip of his coffee.

  “And if we’re really lucky, maybe Mindy will show up with him,” he added. “And this will all just be a false alarm.”

  I nodded, hoping it was.

  Maybe I’d jumped to all the wrong conclusions with this. I mean, it was entirely possible that Mindy might have met Phil in LA for some reason, wasn’t it? Maybe there had been some emergency. Maybe she had left Bogey in the care of a friend and the dog somehow escaped from their backyard, running into a bad person along the way. Maybe Mindy was safe and sound on an airplane right now headed for PDX.

  “So that was him, huh?” Sam said suddenly, jarring me from my thoughts. “That was Jimmy?”

  I was caught off guard by the question. After a moment of trying to come up with something to say, I nervously ran a hand through Mugs’ downy fur. Then I swallowed hard.

  “Uh, yeah,” I said, taking in a deep breath. “That was Jimmy.”

  Sam was silent, and the sound of the rain drumming against the windshield echoed loudly in the car.

  I scrambled for something more to say.

  I didn’t know what he wanted to hear. Things were the way they were, and there wasn’t much I could do about it. Jimmy was my co-worker now. And that meant that sometimes, I would inevitably have to work with him.

  “Kobritz told him to come along and get photos of the dog,” I muttered.

  Sam nodded quietly.

  “There weren’t any other photographers around at that hour,” I added. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have…”

  I trailed off.

  He still didn’t say anything.

  The raindrops hammered harder on the glass.

  Sam’s silence was killing me.

  “Look, you know if it were up to me, I’d never work with—”

  “So you think Mindy and her husband are having marital problems?”

  I stopped speaking and paused, surprised by the abrupt change in subject.

  But I couldn’t deny that I was thankful that Sam had dropped the Jimmy conversation. Because there wasn’t much I could say to make it better. I wanted to tell Sam that it wasn’t a big deal. That Jimmy and I were long over and being in the same car with him for more than a minute made me nauseous. That there was nothing but disgust left in me when it came to him.

  But somehow, I didn’t think saying any of those things was going to help matters.

  It didn’t change the fact that I had to see him every day at the office.

  “It was just something Mindy said the other night,” I said, following Sam’s conversation lead. “I told her to give my best to Phil. And she said, ‘I will. If I ever see that jerk again.’”

  “Do you know Phil Monahan well?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “No, not really. I mean, I know him the way you know anybody you grow up with in a small town. In high school he was this super overachiever. He was on speech and debate and was the star of the varsity basketball team. But he wasn’t a friend or anything.”

  I couldn’t say that I’d been friends with a single jock in high school.

  “Does Phil seem like the type who could fly off the handle?” Sam asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “All I know of Phil these days is from the photos he puts up on his Facebook page. Which I only see because Mindy’s tagged in a lot of them.”

  “And what do those pictures generally look like?” Sam asked.

  I shrugged.

  “Your run of the mill, ‘Look at how great my life is’ kind of pictures,” I said. “Of him and Mindy. Them vacationing in Hawaii or on a summer tour of Europe. You know. It’s not like people ever post pictures of real life. Of them and their spouse arguing about finances or about who’s going to walk the dog during their lunch break.”

  “No, they most definitely don’t,” he agreed.

  Sam reached for the paper coffee cup and took a long sip from it.

  “Coffee’s good,” he said.

  He took his eyes off the house and flashed those hazelnut browns of his in my direction.

  They softened suddenly.

  “I am glad you and Mugs are here, Freddie,” he said in a gentle tone.

  “I knew you’d come around.”

  He gave me just the hint of a smile, then turned his attention back to the dark house.

  Chapter 19

  The street was still deader than a graveyard. Not a single car had driven past Sam’s parked SUV – meaning it was no different than any other street in Dog Mountain at this time of night.

  “So who else is coming to Lou’s Howl-O-Ween fundraiser?” Sam asked, breaking the silence that had settled over the car for the last ten minutes or so.

  “Oh, only the whole town,” I said. “Lou’s employees at The Barkery. Reporters and copy editors from the office. Other small business owners in the community. Humane Society folks. A few city councilors. Dr. Barrett and his wife. A very small gathering.”

  He smiled at my sarcasm.

  “Are you guys inviting Kobritz?” he asked.

  I let out a snort.

  “No,” I said. “Even if we were getting along lately, it’d just be too weird for the other reporters. Nobody likes to have their boss at a party. People want to let loose and have fun without thinking about work.”

  “I get that,” Sam said.

  He drummed his fingers against the side of the door, looking as though he was getting a little antsy waiting for Phil Monahan to come home.

  “So what’s your costume gonna be?” he asked.

  “I was thinking a reporter in a small town.”

  He smirked.

  “Now where’s the fun in that?”

  “I don’t know. I guess you could say that costumes aren’t really my thing.”

  Growing up, I’d loved dressing up for Halloween. But as I got older – into high school and then college – and the expectations of girls’ costumes changed from actual scary g
et-ups to high-heels, stockings, and cleavage, I’d lost my enthusiasm for dressing up for Halloween.

  “Oh, c’mon. You’re really not going to wear a costume?” he said in a tone that made it clear that he thought I was crazy.

  “Nope,” I said.

  Sam shook his head and clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

  “No way, Freddie Wolf. No way am I gonna let you be a stick in the mud this year.”

  “Hey,” I said. “Who said anything about a stick in the mud?”

  “I just did,” he said. “That’s what people are who don’t wear Halloween costumes. But now that I’m here, things will be changing for you in that department.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him.

  “Suppose I don’t want things to change?” I said.

  “Too bad,” he said. “You’re with me now, Freddie. And I refuse to let you have anything but a spectacular time at Lou’s party. Which means I’m taking you Halloween costume shopping next week.”

  I shook my head, feeling a glowing grin spread across my face.

  “Sam Sakai,” I said, crossing my arms. “You are one stubborn son of a—”

  “There’s a strict no-cursing rule in my car, Freddie Wolf,” he said playfully, interrupting me. “Now, I know that you’re all a bunch of sailors in the newsroom, swearing up and down the halls. But Mugs there has been good enough to respect my car’s no-cursing rule. Why can’t you just follow his good example?”

  I let out a frustrated snort.

  “Sam Sakai, if you don’t stop this nonsense, then I’m going to take Mugs and go back to my car and leave you here all by yourself—”

  “Oh, c’mon, Freddie. I don’t buy that leaving nonsense for one second,” he said, repeating my words from earlier. “And neither do you.

  “Admit it – you’re glad to be here.”

  He winked at me.

  The rake.

  I struggled to find something clever to say back to that, but came up emptyhanded.

  Sam had a way of taking the words right out of my mouth.

  His face broke out into a generous smile.

  “See? I knew it,” he said.