Bark Once For Murder: A Pet Shop Cozy Mystery, Book 1 (Pet Shop Cozy Mysteries)

by Susie Gayle

  “Of course you are. Where’s, uh, what’s his name? Hank?”

  “He’s around.”

  I make a big show of looking left and right. “I don’t see him.”

  “You don’t even know what he looks like.”

  She’s got me there. I never met the guy in person… not like I’d want to. “I heard things didn’t work out. Heard you’re moving back here.”

  Karen rolls her eyes. “I forgot how news travels in this town. Alright, you got me, Will. Things didn’t pan out between me and Hank. We were just too different—”

  “I feel like I’ve heard that before somewhere.”

  “Don’t be the petty ex.”

  “I’m not being petty.” Maybe I’m being a little petty. So sue me.

  She shrugs. “So do you want to have dinner sometime or not?”

  Her question comes so far from out of the blue I feel like I have whiplash. “What?”

  “Or coffee. Whatever. You know, catch up, for old time’s sake.”

  “I, uh…” What I want to say is something along the lines of, “I think you’re the devil,” or perhaps, “I’d rather chew glass,” but what I say is, “I’m seeing someone.”

  “Oh.” Her expression is blank, so I can’t tell if she disapproves or not. “I see.”

  “I sent you a text about it. Didn’t you get it?”

  “I changed my number earlier this year,” she says casually. “But don’t worry. I’m sure I’ll see you around.” She gives me a little wave and walks off. And even though she sounds pleasant enough saying “I’ll see you around,” I can’t help but think it sounds more like a warning.

  ***

  The dour mood in the Pet Shop Stop that evening is made all the worse by the complete lack of customers. Sarah busies herself at the computer behind the counter, no doubt drafting up a petition, while I make the rounds feeding and taking care of the animals. I try to give each one a little attention every day, play with them when I can, pet them and talk to them. Karen always thought it was weird that I talked to the animals. Sarah finds it endearing. Me, I find it calming. They can’t talk back, of course, but I feel like they understand me better than most people. Animals can pick up on your emotions, the vibes you put out. They know what you’re feeling.

  After everyone is fed and appreciated, I tell Sarah, “Why don’t you head home? It’s been a long day. Relax, get some sleep, and we’ll start fresh in the morning.”

  She stretches and looks at her watch. “Are you sure? There’s still almost an hour until closing.”

  “I’ll finish up. Probably close early, too. I don’t think we’ll be missing out on any mad rushes.” I force a smile. “Seriously, go on. You’ve done plenty today.”

  She agrees and unties her apron, hanging it on a hook behind the counter. After saying goodbye to Rowdy, she heads home, and I set about the rest of my duties. I change the bedding in the guinea pigs’ pen and the newspaper in the parakeets’ cage. I take out the garbage and dump it in the bins behind the store. I lock the front door, sweep the floor, and I promise the dogs that I’ll come in early tomorrow and take them for a walk before we open.

  Then I check on Rowdy, who has made a temporary home out of our enclosure in the rear of the store, feng shui-ing it with bits of shredded tennis ball and the innards of a secondhand teddy bear that Sarah brought for him.

  “Listen, buddy,” I tell him, getting on one knee like we’re having a serious talk. “I know you’re not going to like it, but I’m going to have to crate you tonight. I promise that tomorrow, first-thing, we’ll go outside and play, okay?”

  Rowdy looks at me quizzically, cocking his scruffy little head to the side.

  “Close enough.” I reach into the enclosure first and take hold of his collar, and then I open the gate and lead him toward a line of kennels arranged on one side of the shop. “Look, you’ll have neighbors,” I tell him. “And Maxine, the poodle, is single. Just sayin’.”

  I can’t blame Rowdy. As a shelter dog, he probably spent twenty-two hours a day in a crate, and although mine are much larger than they need to be to give each dog a bit of space, Rowdy doesn’t like the sight of it, not one bit. He immediately rears back on his hind legs and starts jerking his head left and right.

  “Rowdy! Calm down, pal! It’s okay—”

  The dog scoots backward, pushing his head down and his butt up, and a couple violent yanks later he pulls free of the collar and dashes for the opposite end of the store.

  “Rowdy!” I call after him. “Sit! Stay! Stop! Heel!” Clearly he doesn’t know any of those commands. I chase him to the rear of the store, back to the front of the store, and then back to the rear. He stops long enough to yip at me and wag his tail as I try to catch my breath.

  “I’m not playing with you,” I tell him, trying to sound stern. “Come here.”

  He looks to his left. We both see it at the same time—the back door to the store is slightly ajar, just a couple of inches. It’s a big heavy steel door that sticks sometimes, and I must have neglected to pull it all the way closed when I took out the trash.

  “Rowdy, no…”

  The dog looks at me, and then back to the door. We both dash for the exit at the same time. Naturally, the dog gets there first. He pushes it open with his two front paws and takes off into the night.

  “Doggone it!” I shout, oblivious in the moment to just how appropriate that is. I pat my pocket to make sure I have my keys, and I grab a leash from off the rack before I run out after him, this time shouldering the door closed to make sure it’s latched.

  CHAPTER 6

  * * *

  I’m not much of a runner. Never have been. At one point, I tried taking up jogging for a short while. I bought myself a new pair of sneakers, a pedometer, and one of those shirts that wicks the sweat right off your skin. I gave up after three days, upon realizing that running for anything other than necessity is a form of torture that should be outlawed.

  Lucky for me, Rowdy still thinks it’s playtime. He bounds down the street until he’s nearly out of sight, and then he pauses and turns to me and wags his tail. Once I’m almost close enough to grab him, just barely beyond arm’s reach, he takes off again. What good fun, right?

  After about a half-dozen times like this, I resort to promising him everything under the sun if he just stops. “I’ll give you an entire jar of peanut butter,” I tell him. “I’ll personally make sure you’re adopted by royalty. I’ll grill you a filet mignon. Just please, sit still for a minute!”

  In response, Rowdy lifts his head and sniffs the air a few times. Then he happily bounds away again, this time around the corner and out of sight. I groan and give chase again, but by the time I get around the same corner he’s gone.

  “Rowdy?” I call out. “Rowdy?” I realize that calling his name is futile, considering we just started calling him that yesterday. Instead I try, “Buddy? Fido? Max? Charlie?” in the hopes that he’ll answer to one of the more common male dog names. No such luck, of course.

  I peer into yards and over fences as I search. After a while I pause to get my bearings, realizing that I’ve come all the way to the warehouse where the Pet Emporium is building. I decide it would be a better idea to go back to the shop and get my car, to cover more ground…

  I hear a noise. It sounds like a soft growl, so I stay stock-still and listen. It comes again, a high-pitched, almost playful growl. I follow the sounds closer to the warehouse, and then around the side, where the dirt is soft and recently overturned, likely in preparation for sod.

  “Rowdy!” I spot the dog first, tugging on the end of a large object in the dark like he’s playing tug-of-war. Then dread hits me like a truck as I realize that the shape is a person, lying on their back.

  I kneel beside them and peer into their face. The shadow from the building blocks out the moonlight, so I take out my phone and use it as a flashlight, shining it on the face of Derik Dobson.

/>   “Derik?” I say in a hoarse whisper. “Derik, are you—ohmygod!”

  I jump back, falling on my butt in the dirt. Derik Dobson’s shirt is soaked through with dark red blood. My heart wants to leap out of my chest. I turn off the light, as if the darkness will somehow be better, but the image of Derik’s bloody shirt stays imprinted in my mind, even after I can’t see it. My fingers trembling, I dial 9-1-1.

  I don’t remember what I tell them, or what they tell me; only that someone is on the way and I’m supposed to stay put—which suits me just fine, since my legs seem to have turned into jelly.

  All the while, Rowdy pulls at Derik’s pant leg as if they’re playing some sort of game. It’s not until I hear the fabric tearing that I scold the dog for tugging on a dead man’s clothes.

  “Rowdy, stop!” I gently take him by the scruff of the back of his neck and pull him away from Derik. He looks up at me forlornly and calms down long enough for me to fit the collar over his neck, an extra notch tighter than it was before, and clip the leash onto it.

  “Let’s just chill for a moment, okay?” I tell him, not realizing that I’ve been breathing so hard this whole time. I feel like I’ve run a marathon. Outside of funerals, I’ve never seen a dead body before.

  As I struggle to get my breathing under control, Rowdy tugs on the leash to get back at Derik. I give him a little bit of slack, but not enough for him to get to the body.

  The body, I think to myself. No longer a person; just an object now. I nearly retch. Rowdy, on the other hand, starts digging furiously at the already-upturned earth.

  “Rowdy, no,” I tell him. “We’re not burying anything.”

  But the dog keeps going, eagerly flinging dirt between his paws and grunting with the effort. He reaches his little beige head into the hole he’s made and comes up with something long and thin. He presents it to me, his tail swishing violently.

  “What did you find? Drop it.” I reach my hand out and he drops it. Hey, look at that—this little dog does know some tricks.

  The object glints silver as I bring it closer to my face, wiping some of the dirt away with my thumb. I gasp and let it fall to the ground.

  It’s a knife. A long, thin kitchen knife.

  “Okay, Rowdy, we’re just going to walk right over here,” I tell the dog loudly, tugging on the leash, “away from the body and the knife. Come on. There’s a good boy.” I lead him a short distance away from the scene and toward the front of the warehouse, where we can wait for the police.

  Before I can round the corner I hear footfalls on the asphalt parking lot. Strange; I didn’t hear any sirens and don’t see any lights. I turn the corner with Rowdy, expecting to see the cops, and a gasp catches in my throat.

  CHAPTER 7

  * * *

  “Sarah! What are you doing here?!”

  Sarah backpedals a couple steps, equally startled by our sudden presence. She looks from me to Rowdy and then back to me before saying, “Me? What are you doing here?”

  “Uh… walking the dog.” I hold the leash up, as if I need proof.

  “Sure,” she says, clearly not believing me. “Well, I’m scouting the place out, trying to get some kind of dirt on the Pet Emporium.”

  “Oh.” At least one of us is honest. “What do you mean, dirt?”

  “I don’t know, anything. Something not up to code, or maybe some kind of under-the-table deal… hey, are you okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m just fine.” I swallow the lump in my throat. “Derik Dobson, on the other hand…”

  Sirens interrupt me as two police cruisers and an ambulance screech into the warehouse parking lot. The chief of Seaview Rock, Patty Mayhew, approaches the three of us, frozen in the headlights of her cruiser.

  “I’m sure you all know you’re trespassing,” she says, “but all the same, I’m going to need one of you to show me where the body is.”

  Sarah looks up at me and turns a shade paler, “Body?”

  ***

  You know that age-old excuse, “the dog ate my homework”? Never really worked on teachers, did it? It turns out that “the dog dug up the murder weapon, and I touched it but dropped it right away” sounds equally stupid when you hear it out loud.

  I handed Rowdy off to Sarah and showed Chief Mayhew where the body of Derik Dobson was. She then told us that we’d have to come down to the station with her and give our statements. After the scene was examined and the coroner came to retrieve the body, we were escorted to the police station in separate cruisers and taken to separate rooms. Rowdy stayed with me, content to sit on my lap on the car ride and lay on the floor of the small windowless room they took me to upon arriving. An officer takes my fingerprints, and then tells me to wait until the chief is ready to talk with me.

  While I wait, I try to make sense of everything that happened in the last hour. The only conclusion that I can muster is that a man was murdered—and very unpleasantly at that. Eventually Chief Mayhew comes in, settles herself into the chair opposite mine, and eyes me up. Seaview Rock is a low-crime area; I can’t honestly remember the last time anyone even died here, let alone was murdered. And while Chief Mayhew has a reputation of being a down-to-earth, friendly woman, especially tolerant of teenagers and pranks, she doesn’t seem particularly patient at the moment.

  “Alright Will. You want to tell me what you were doing out there tonight?”

  I take a deep breath and start from the beginning—how Rowdy escaped, how I chased him down through the streets, how he came across Dobson’s body and I found him. I tell her that I called the police, and then Rowdy dug up the knife. I touched it, and dropped it right away.

  After I finish, she looks at me for a long time before she says, “Okay. Here’s what’s going to happen. They’re going to do an autopsy on this guy, Dobson. Forensics is going to run tests on the knife. And you are going to go about business as usual. You’re going to stay in town, and there’s not going to be any funny business with you or your girlfriend. You got all that?”

  I’ve seen enough cop dramas to know that “don’t leave town” has an implicit meaning behind it. “Am I a suspect?” I blurt out, suddenly feeling a little nauseous.

  “Will, you’ve been around here what, your whole life? I like you. I bought my daughter’s cat from you. But you have to admit, nobody in town had a bigger reason to want Dobson dead than you.” She folds her hands on the table. I gulp. “Now you were the one that called it in, and the one that gave us the murder weapon… which means that if you did do it, you would have to be the dumbest criminal I ever saw. Even so, we’re going to have to check out your alibi.”

  “My alibi,” I repeat. “Chief, I’m certain that plenty of people saw me chasing that dog like an idiot down the street.”

  “We’ll see,” she says. “You and your lady-friend can go.”

  I tug Rowdy’s leash and he follows me out to the small lobby of the station, where Sarah sits impatiently, wringing her hands and tapping a foot. When she sees me, she jumps up and throws her arms around my neck.

  “Will! What happened? What did they ask you? What did you tell them?”

  “Whoa. Hey, let’s just go outside and get some fresh air, okay? I’ll walk you home.” The three of us head outside and start in the direction of Sarah’s apartment. “What did you tell them?” I ask her once we’re past the station. “You couldn’t have told them the truth, about digging for dirt on the company.”

  “It is the truth,” she insists, “but no. That’s not what I told them. I said that you sent me home early, and as I was walking home I saw Rowdy run by and chased him.”

  “Sarah, you lied to the cops?!” I exclaim.

  “Shh!” she whispers harshly. “I couldn’t exactly tell the truth, could I? They’d never believe me. Besides, I only got to the warehouse about a minute before I ran into you.”

  “How did you know Rowdy escaped?”

  “Please.” She smirks. “I don’t believe for a s
econd that you were just ‘walking the dog.’”

  I roll my eyes. “Okay, yeah. He escaped. And maybe they believe that we were just out chasing the dog. But Chief Mayhew had a good point: no one in town has a better motive for wanting Dobson dead than us.”

  “True,” she murmurs. “Though I would never…”

  “Me neither,” I say quickly.

  We pause outside the door to her building. “Listen, you should go home and get some sleep,” she says.

  “Funny, I swear I told you to do the same thing a few hours ago…”

  “Yeah, yeah. I mean it. Try not to think about this thing until the morning. You can come by, and I’ll make us some breakfast before we open the store.”

  “That sounds good.”

  She gives me a hug and Rowdy a hearty scratch on the neck and heads into her building. The dog and I head back out into the night towards my place, a two-bedroom house that I rent on Saltwater Drive. I used to own a house in Seaview Rock, but then the divorce happened, and you can imagine what went down from there.

  “What a day,” I grumble to Rowdy. He grunts in agreement. “First the protest, then seeing Karen, and then… well, you know. You found him.” Try as I may, I can’t get the grisly image of Derik Dobson out of my mind. Sure, I didn’t like the guy, not one bit, and on top of that he was threatening to put me out of business, but that doesn’t mean he deserved that.

  Before I know it, we’re home. I start to unlock the door, and then I look down at the happy little dog wagging his tail at me. I groan. “I forgot to take you back to the store.” I deliberate for a moment before deciding that I really don’t want to have to walk all the way back to the shop.

  “Fine, you can stay here tonight,” I tell him. His tail doubles its speed. “But tomorrow morning, it’s back to the shop with you, okay?”

  Once inside, I unclip him and he dashes around the house like a furry tornado, pausing to sniff furniture and the corners of each room. I don’t actually own any pets; I get attached pretty easily, so I try not to bring my work home with me, if that makes sense. It would be a slippery slope. I’d start with one, and before I knew it I’d probably have twenty.