Deadly Dog Days

by Jamie M. Blair

  I didn’t watch too closely, only noticing Old Dan had joined them, staying outside the taped-off area, walking back and forth with his dowsing rods. The officers humored him, like we all did. At ninety-six, he was the oldest Metamoran, and if not altogether of sound mind, he was respected as patriarch of one of the town’s founding families. Over my four years here, dementia had taken a firmer hold on Old Dan and we all watched out for him, taking him in and welcoming him at our dinner tables when Frank Gardner was busy at the grist mill, working long hours trying to keep the family tradition of milling flour and grits alive.

  The bottom fell out of the tourism economy a few years back, and the Metamorans who remained in town with their shop doors open were suffering. The amateur actors and musicians among us were trying to drum up the town’s performing arts reputation by putting on a play. To help sell tickets, I set up a makeshift phone bank in the basement of Metamora Faith and Friends Church. (In Columbus I ran a call center, an automated one where you didn’t have to dial manually and hope a passing thunderstorm didn’t take out the phone lines.) I was overdue back at the phone bank, so I turned in that direction.

  Not to be a pessimist, but I couldn’t help but think it was going to take more than an amateur play in a converted barn to bring people to The Middle of Nowhere Metamora to shop, dine, and stay at the inns. But, for the time being, my phone bank of five volunteers was busy contacting past patrons of the town to invite them back for the big show. Oh Horrors! It’s Murder!—a musical mystery comedy—was being performed live on stage in the Metamora Playhouse (a grand name for a converted barn). We were two weeks to curtain and tickets weren’t exactly sold out.

  Given the dead body found in the canal, I suddenly realized the title of the play might seem a tad insensitive, but possibly this would all blow over before opening night.

  Who was I kidding? Nothing ever happened in this town. A dead body turning up was as rare as winning the lottery and getting struck by lightning on the same day.

  My mind kept pinging back to Ben as I walked over the bridge and the three blocks to the church. What on earth could he possibly have in common with a woman as young as Jenn Berg? She waitressed at the Cornerstone restaurant/bar and lived in the gatekeeper’s cottage at Hilltop Castle, where the owner of the Cornerstone, Carl Finch, lived. Carl, in addition to being the man who hired and paid Ben, was a business-minded eccentric who was very religious. He built a real modern-day castle on the top of the highest hill in Metamora and raised an enormous cross next to it, where everyone driving down Route 52 could admire it. He claimed Metamora was the location of the Ark of the Covenant, the gold chest said to hold the tablets the Commandments were engraved on, among other religious relics.

  If you ask me, his castle looked like an homage to the Knights Templar, but that was probably just me watching too many conspiracy shows on the History Channel.

  Word was, years before Ben and I moved to town, some vandals decided to pay Hilltop Castle a visit and ever since, the gate at the bottom of the hill has been shut tight and the gatekeeper’s cottage occupied by a guard; most recently, Jenn Berg and her five big dogs.

  From what I knew of Jenn and her busy work schedule at the Cornerstone, it was the dogs that did most of the gatekeeping. Sue Nelson was always complaining about how if she wanted to see her oldest daughter, she had to pop into the bar and have a drink. It wasn’t really a complaint though. Sue spent most of her time finding ways to run into Carl Finch. She said a man’s eccentricities were a lot less quirky when they came with a bank account the size of Finch’s. I supposed she might be on to something.

  Workers were busy scraping the old, peeling paint from Sophia House, the florist next to the church, when I meandered by, reminding me that my own house needed painting. I’d have to ask Andy about it. Ever since I hired him to plow the snow from my driveway over the winter, the twenty-one-year-old amateur filmmaker had become my unofficial handyman, always hanging around doing yard work and fixing shutters or nailing on shingles.

  Like me, Andy Beaumont was not actually from Metamora. Unlike me, he chose to be here. At his age, that showed a heck of a lot of dedication to his work, which at present was documenting Carl Finch’s search for the Ark of the Covenant on film. Which meant he spent a lot of time at Hilltop Castle and most likely knew about Ben and Jenn, too. The little weasel hadn’t said a word to me about it.

  Inside the small church, the familiar smell of damp assaulted my nose as I took the rickety stairs down to the basement. One of the hazards of a building in a canal town was flooding, and there was no doubt that this basement had been filled with water on more than one occasion.

  Pastor Stroup preached at the newer, larger church up a ways on Route 52, but this smaller building was still where he kept his office and hosted the ladies’ quilting circle. The older Metamorans preferred to think of this ramshackle building near the canal as their church instead of the bigger one filled with families and crying babies from neighboring towns.

  My phone bank was tucked into a back corner in the basement. Old black-and-white linoleum tiles were peeling from the floor, and dark spots of mold shadowed through the white paint on the stone block walls, but we used our secondhand school desks and donated office phones from the eighties and did what we could.

  I’d mentioned the idea of marketing for the town by phone to Irene, my mother-in-law, once in passing and it was all downhill from there. She had me assigned to the task and set up in the church basement two days later.

  I reached the phone bank and took stock of the scene.

  None of the five volunteers who worked for me wanted to be working for me; they were only doing it for the community service hours. Three of them court-ordered. (Nick Valentine: Assault, Roy Lancaster: DUI, and Johnna Fitzgerald: Theft. Johnna was a chronic kleptomaniac who ran Canal Town Treasures. Most of those treasures weren’t hers to sell.) Anna Carmichael and Logan Foust were going to be seniors at Metamora High School in the fall and were getting a jump-start on the volunteer hours needed to graduate.

  “How are ticket sales?” I asked, seeing only one of them actually on the phone. Logan. He wouldn’t be able to slack off if his life depended on it. He’d feel too guilty and confess if he did.

  “You really want us hawking tickets for Oh Horrors! It’s Murder! when one of our own was just found dead?” Roy asked, rubbing his stubbly chin. He had the perpetually red nose of an alcoholic and droopy eyes of someone who never slept. “Wasn’t Jenn in the musical? How will the show be put on with a cast member killed?”

  “Better yet,” Johnna said, looping her yarn around a knitting needle, not even pretending to be making calls, “who’s going to take her dogs? She has five, I believe, or is it six now with the pup? I think I’ll head on over there and see what needs taking care of.”

  “No, no. I’ll look after the dogs,” I said quickly. “I’m certain Sue will want to have a chance to go through her daughter’s belongings before anyone else. The police will most likely have her cottage secured anyway.” The last person who needed to get her sticky fingers on Jenn Berg’s belongings was Johnna. They’d never be seen again, and I’d have her in my phone bank doing community service until the devil opened a snow cone stand right here in Metamora.

  Roy leaned back in his chair. “You’ll look after her dogs, eh? Got something on your conscience then, Cameron Cripps-Hayman?” Roy always called me by my full name. He thought keeping my maiden name was an abomination, but after years and years of making professional contacts, it was easier to add Ben’s name on than to subtract mine altogether.

  “She’s only doing her part for the town,” snapped Anna, who was fiery in her feminist spirit and hair color. “Just because a woman’s husband is dating a girl who ends up in the canal doesn’t mean that woman had anything to do with it.”

  Did everyone but me know about Ben and Jenn?

  “It was probably an accide
nt,” Logan said, coming in on the conversation after hanging up his phone receiver. “Two more tickets sold.”

  “Overachiever.” Roy scowled. “You’re ruining it for the rest of us.”

  Nick ignored them. He never said much. I placed him around twenty, so he was like my middle child in the group with Roy and Johnna firmly in their sixties. He rode in on the scenic Whitewater Valley train from Connersville every day and boarded it in the afternoon to go back home. With his dirty blond hair sticking out all over his head, his nails painted black, and the way he always wore a band t-shirt, he reminded me of a misplaced rock star. I imagined he played the guitar, or maybe the drums, and sang songs that would make my head pound and my ears bleed. Songs I never would’ve listened to, even as a teenager. When I was in high school, I loathed hard rock hair bands and was all about the New Kids on the Block. Alas, my dream of becoming Mrs. Jordan Knight never came true.

  “Hey Cam,” Ben’s voice boomed down the stairs and across the basement. “You down there?”

  My mind flashed to Jenn Berg and Ben. Together. Kissing. Did he know his girlfriend was dead? He had to. Reins would’ve talked to him by now, or someone in town would’ve gotten to him. “I’m here,” I said, heading back across the basement to the stairs. Ben had a serious aversion to dark, damp basements. My evil mother-in-law probably locked him in theirs when he was little.

  Who was I kidding? Ben was the biggest mama’s boy on the planet. She’d never do that to him. Certainly, with gun drawn, he’d face the boogieman in the basement if he had to. He was a police officer, after all, and had faced much worse than black mold.

  At the bottom of the steps, I looked up and saw him standing on the landing. He wore his faded jeans and work boots, like always, but had on a navy blue shirt I’d never seen before. A baseball cap covered his wavy brown hair, perpetually in need of a trim. The words Metamora Law Enforcement Officer were printed over the hat’s bill. It was strange, but ever since we separated, whenever I saw him, I sometimes couldn’t remember what was so terrible about being married. “Your knee’s bothering you,” he said. “It’s supposed to rain tonight.”

  “You were dating Jenn Berg,” I said. “She’s dead.” No one could accuse me of having tact, but Ben knew that about me, along with most everything else.

  “Calling it dating is pushing it, but I heard she was the woman you found in the canal.”

  Should I feel bad for him or want to strangle him? I’d never been in this position before, so I wasn’t sure. All I really felt was sad and a little anxious that he might have come to arrest me. “I’m sorry for your loss, I guess,” I said, hoping to smooth things over but managing to make them more awkward.

  He gripped the railing and stepped down to the first stair off the landing. “She was a nice girl, Cam, but when I count my losses, she’s not one of them.” His dark eyes held mine. Maybe I only wanted to see regret there, or maybe it was real. Either way, it was like a giant hand grabbed me by the chest and squeezed. Maybe we could work things out. Maybe—

  “Dad, is she down there or what? I’m bored.” Mia’s head peered around the corner of the landing. “Oh. Hey,” she said by way of greeting me. “Dad says I have to stay with you since you kicked him out.”

  The giant hand released its grip on my heart and flicked me in the forehead.

  • Three •

  I didn’t kick your father out,” I said, walking side-by-side with Mia along the canal, toward home. Since it was near four o’clock anyway, I told my phone crew to call it a day. We’d regroup tomorrow, when I would hopefully have an idea what direction the town players were going to take with Oh Horrors! It’s Murder!

  “How was the end of your sophomore year?” I asked her, hoping to change the subject. We hadn’t seen Mia since Christmas break, just before Ben had moved out. She was staying only for the week, and then her mom was taking her on a Caribbean cruise. So the appeal of Metamora was lost on Mia, or maybe it would be more accurate to say it was buried under white sand and crystal blue seas. Ben was lucky to get a week out of her.

  She let out a deep sigh. “Why does everyone want to ask me about school? School’s school, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, taken aback, watching her flip her dark hair over one shoulder. “Are you going to see your Grandma Irene while you’re here?”

  “Do I have a choice?” she asked, sneering. Disdain for Irene was something the two of us had in common. I knew what my problems were with my mother-in-law (and there were several), but I had no idea what Mia had against her. Being the only grandchild, and a girl, Mia wasn’t only doted upon, but she was a Daughter of Metamora. To Irene, that meant royalty.

  Two weeks after we were married, Ben’s mother, Irene Hayman—aka President of the Daughters of Historical Metamora—summoned us here with the gift of her family’s ancestral estate. Ellsworth House, a large Greek revival on the far end of the canal, had been passed from generation to generation since the early 1800s. All of the other homes around it had sold out long ago to commercialism and boasted signs like Grandma’s Cookie Cutter and Canal Town Treasures. The Haymans were the last of the holdouts. Except Irene and my father-in-law, Stewart, were holding out just fine over in Brookville, where they bought their gas and eggs in separate locations, and their new house didn’t creek and shed shingles when the wind blew.

  Ben was an only child, and his mother couldn’t wait to lure him back to town. Heidi, his first wife, outright refused to move here and inherit the family home. Seeing as how my romance with Ben was a whirlwind affair, spanning two months from the time we met until we were married, I was still in the new-relationship daze—which is similar to the new car smell, only it wears off quicker—when Irene handed Ben the keys and put the house in his name. I gave up a good-paying job that if I didn’t love, I could put up with, and an apartment close to my sister to move with my new husband.

  “I’m surprised Irene’s letting you stay with me,” I said, “and not insisting on you staying with her and Grandpa Stewart.”

  “She doesn’t know I’m here yet, and you’re not going to tell her. I’ll have to deal with her soon enough.”

  “Deal with her, Mia? Really? She loves you. She bought you your car!”

  “And I should kiss her feet every time I see her. I know.”

  My patience was just about depleted. I’d never had an overabundance where Mia was concerned, but now that Ben and I weren’t even together, I didn’t feel like holding my tongue.

  I stopped dead in my tracks and planted both hands on my hips. Mia took two more steps before realizing and turning around. She took one look at me and knew she was about to get an earful. “I don’t have to listen—” she started, but I held up my hand.

  “You will listen. For a girl who has everything she could want—a smart, pretty girl—you have the worst attitude I’ve ever come across. Your mother and father and grandparents spoiled you rotten. Now, I’m not your grandma’s biggest proponent, but she does deserve to be treated with respect from her sixteen-year-old granddaughter. When we get home, you’re calling her and telling her you’re here, and you will spend time with her. Do you understand me?”

  Mia crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll call her. But just so you know, she’s not going to be happy to see me because I totaled my car.”

  “You totaled your car? The one you just got on your birthday last month?” This girl never ceased to amaze me. “How? Were you hurt?” She didn’t look hurt. Ben would’ve told me if she’d been hurt.

  “It was just a stupid accident.” She pivoted on her heel and began walking away from me.

  I’d never had someone blatantly turn her back on me during a conversation before. If she were an employee, I’d write her up for insubordination, but I’d never had kids, so what was I supposed to do with her?

  Good gravy, this was going to be the longest week of my lif
e.

  I let Mia walk on ahead of me, past Grandma’s Cookie Cutter with a new I Love Lucy cookie jar among the hundreds in the front windows, then past Schoolhouse Antiques with all the bric-a-brac out on the front lawn that looked like junk to me, before getting to Ellsworth House. Andy was outside pressure washing some of the peeling paint off the front of the house.

  “It’s like you read my mind,” I called to him over the noise of the sprayer.

  He lowered the nozzle and flipped the machine off. “The house needs painting. I thought I’d get you an estimate.” Andy’s eyes wandered over to Mia. She was five years younger than him and light years of maturity apart.

  “Andy Beaumont,” I said, “this is Ben’s daughter, Mia. Mia, this is Andy. He helps out around here.”

  “Hi,” she said, throwing Andy a cool yet oddly seductive smile for a sixteen-year-old girl. “I thought you didn’t have a job,” she said to me. “Does my dad pay him to keep up the house since you kicked him out?”

  “I told you, I didn’t kick your dad out.” I’d been with Mia less than an hour and had never been so exasperated by someone in my life. “Let’s go inside and call your grandma. I’m sure she’s dying to spend time with you.” If there were any fairness in the universe, Irene would rush right over and pick Mia up.

  Mia marched up the porch steps and opened the door—nobody in Metamora locked their doors—and Andy shot me the wide-eyed, brow raised, incredulous expression of someone who couldn’t believe what they had just witnessed. “Good luck with that,” he said before flipping his pressure washer back on.

  “Yeah. Thanks,” I said—to myself, because he couldn’t hear me.

  I stepped up the two cement stairs onto the square porch flanked by white columns harboring carpenter ants and boring bees and went inside, shooing a few of the buzzing pests out before closing the door. The house carried the warm-earth smell that old houses have and made creaking sounds of settling in. It had bothered me at first, and I bought plug-in scented oils for each outlet and jumped at every tap and groan from the windows and floorboards. Living without Ben now, the scents and sounds were more like characteristics of another person living with me than the house itself and kept me from feeling alone.