Mutts & Murder: A Dog Town USA Cozy Mystery

by Meg Muldoon

  Or maybe that had just been wishful thinking.

  I glanced up at Kobritz, who was looking at me inquisitively, waiting on an answer about whether the Myra news obit was a go.

  I shook my head, letting him know that it was going to be Bonedaddy’s moment to shine in tomorrow’s paper.

  He nodded and then went back over to his desk, leaving me with the voice on the other side of the line.

  “You there, Red?”

  I shivered, hearing him call me that again.

  Red was the nickname he’d given me, as in Little Red Riding Hood. He called me that because of my last name –Wolf. Thinking it was some clever nod to the fairytale. He gave everybody nicknames like that. Personal stamps that made you feel special somehow.

  I cleared my throat.

  “Yeah,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “I’m here.”

  “It’s sure been a while,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes it has.”

  He paused. No doubt trying to come up with something funny or clever or nonchalant to say. But I hadn’t given him much to work with.

  “So how’s it been being back home? Things are so different here without you.”

  “It’s been just fine,” I said, rather stiffly.

  “That’s good to hear,” he said.

  He paused again, waiting for me to say something. But when it came to him, I didn’t have the words.

  “Well, things are good on my end,” he said, carrying on as if I had just asked. “Dake is on the warpath again and we just had another round of layoffs, but that’s pretty much business as usual around here.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  I didn’t much care to hear how things were back at The Oregon Daily. I’d left there for a reason, and it wasn’t so I could get updates about my old editor or the staffing status of the newsroom.

  “I got to shoot this really cool bike event the other day,” he said. “It was a photographer’s dream. You ought to take a look at it on the web site when you get a chance. It was Sunday the 18th, if you’re inte—”

  “Is there a reason why you’re calling?” I said in a low voice, hoping that Kobritz wasn’t listening in.

  Jimmy paused for a long moment.

  “Jeez, Red. I thought you’d be a little happier to hear from me.”

  I felt my nails dig into the plastic desktop of my cubicle.

  Sitting there, hearing his voice, listening to him act as if nothing had happened, made me feel dizzy and sick to my stomach.

  “I just thought I’d call and check in on you,” he said. “I miss—”

  “I’ve got to go, Jimmy,” I said, hanging up the phone.

  I let out a long breath and looked out the window. The aspens that lined downtown were swaying peacefully in a warm summer breeze. The sight of them went a little ways to calming me down.

  That was just like him to call me at work. Catching me off guard like that.

  I heard Kobritz get up out of his chair and walk over to my cubicle.

  “So we’ll run with Bonedaddy?” he said, scanning my face.

  I knew that wasn’t what he was really asking me.

  He’d no doubt heard my whole conversation, including the part where I’d abruptly hung up.

  “Yeah,” I said, nodding my head. “Bonedaddy it is.”

  He went back to his desk without another word.

  Chapter 13

  “Myra Louden,” Lou said again, shaking her head in disbelief as she scooped another heap of reheated bacon sour cream mashed potatoes onto my plate. “I can’t say that I liked the woman much, but I am shocked.”

  She started pushing another load of the white stuff on the dish, but I shook my head vigorously.

  I swear. Lou wanted me to end up weighing 500 pounds.

  “I mean, it doesn’t seem so crazy to think that you and me were probably the last people Myra Louden ever talked to,” Lou said. “How’s that for irony?”

  I didn’t exactly understand how Lou saw that as ironic, but word definitions and their associated concepts weren’t Lou’s area of expertise. Food was. And in that department, she was bested by no other, as evidenced by the creamy, airy, delicious mashed potatoes and crisp blue corn fried chicken sitting in front of me.

  “She had one of The Barkery bag sleeves in her hand when she died,” I said, thinking about Lt. Sakai’s figure stalking across that green field in the sun, that evidence bag under his arm.

  “Really?” Lou said, her eyes growing wide.

  I nodded.

  “I saw it.”

  She shook her head again, but didn’t say anything more about it.

  “Does she have any family?” Lou asked.

  I shrugged.

  “She was divorced with no children,” I said. “I do remember her talking about a sister out in Minnesota once to mom a long time ago. But I think that might be it.”

  Lou nodded.

  “Kind of sad, when you think about it,” Lou said. “Nobody to cry over her.”

  I was going to start saying something about how unpleasant Myra Louden had been to our family when she was alive. How she didn’t show up to Mom’s funeral, even though she’d been her boss for over 20 years. About how she hadn’t sent us so much as a condolence card. But just as I started to say something, I stopped myself.

  Because Lou was right.

  No matter how rude, inconsiderate, unpleasant, and annoying Myra Louden had been in life, dying a sudden death alone at a dog park was a sad turn of events. And not having anybody who cared all that much about it was even sadder.

  I nodded in silent agreement with Lou and picked at my mashed potatoes.

  A sad and depressed mood settled in over the table for a while. I ate in silence while Lou sipped at a glass of pink wine.

  Finally, she broke the silence. Though her turn of conversation didn’t make me any more comfortable.

  “So, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you, Freddie,” she said, smoothing out the placemat in front of her.

  I raised an eyebrow, gnawing at a drumstick.

  “Shoot,” I said.

  “Well, you’ve been back home six months, right?”

  “Right,” I said.

  “And in that time you…”

  She took in a deep breath.

  “What?” I said.

  “Well, you haven’t been on a single date.”

  She blurted out the words quickly as if she was afraid they’d hurt my feelings.

  I felt my cheeks flush slightly.

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. “You know how much I work though.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “But I was just thinking… you know Milo, our newest hire at The Barkery?”

  I thought for a moment, trying to place the name with the face.

  “You mean the guy with the tattoo on his neck?” I said.

  She nodded.

  “Yeah, the cute guy,” she said, as if the fact that he was cute made that tattoo of a voluptuous comic book heroine on his neck disappear. “He’s single. And nice. And I thought, well, I thought maybe the two of you might hit it off.”

  I raised an eyebrow again.

  “You want to set me up?” I said.

  She nodded enthusiastically.

  “He likes grunge rock and he’s got a vintage muscle car,” she said. “What more could a girl want?”

  Plenty more, I thought. None of which included a neck tattoo showing a cleavage-baring woman.

  Lou picked up on my skepticism.

  “Oh, c’mon, Freddie,” she said. “One date’s not gonna hurt anybody.”

  “See, that right there is a lie,” I said. “One bad date can hurt plenty, and you know it. Haven’t you had a string of them lately?”

  Maybe that was a low blow. But she cleared her throat and looked back at me, unfazed.

  “This isn’t about me. It’s about you, Freddie. I’m just worried about you. I’m worried that you’re letting that SOB ruin your life fo
r no good reason.”

  I didn’t have to wonder who she was referring to.

  I sighed, putting the fork down on the plate.

  I crossed my arms and looked out the kitchen window to the backyard.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, suddenly. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “No, no,” I said, shaking my head. “You’re only trying to help. I know that”

  I let out another sigh. Then I looked back at her.

  “You know that he called me earlier tonight?”

  I watched as her eyes widened and anger flickered across them, and I suddenly regretted bringing up the phone call.

  “What did that bastard have to say?” she said, her voice shaking slightly.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I hung up on him before he could say much of anything.”

  She smirked.

  “Good for you, Freddie. That bastard deserves nothing less.”

  “Please don’t call him that,” I said.

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “What, bastard? Why not? That’s what he is, isn’t he?”

  I shrugged.

  I was being hypocritical, and I knew it. I had called him that word many times in my head over the last year.

  But there was something about hearing Lou call him that that sort of got to me. Maybe it was the tone in her voice, or some sort of lingering sentimentality in me. Or the fact that I should have known better when he came over that warm, rainy night last summer.

  Or the fact that Jimmy had at one point been my best friend.

  And more than that, I had once loved him.

  I pushed the half-eaten plate away, and Lou scooped it up quickly, placing the leftovers in a Tupperware container.

  I watched silently as she did so, then poured myself a glass of the pink wine she was so fond of.

  “All right, I’ll think about it, Lou,” I said.

  Maybe I was being too judgmental. After all, a brazen in-your-face tattoo wasn’t the end of the world.

  She spun around, her features glowing with a pleased expression.

  “Milo is going to be so happy,” she said. “You should see the way he looks at you when you stop by for lunch. He—”

  “I didn’t say yes yet,” I said. “I said I’ll think about it.”

  She grinned a bright, big smile.

  “Yeah, I know what you said.”

  I shook my head.

  We both knew that sooner or later, she’d wear me down. And that as far as Lou was concerned, my answer was as good as a confident yes.

  Chapter 14

  At 4 a.m. the next morning, I found myself rummaging around in the garage, looking for my pair of gardening gloves and some shears.

  If it was up to me, I would have rather been soundly sleeping beneath the cool sheets of my bed, getting a good night’s rest.

  But these days, I wasn’t lucky enough to have that many restful nights.

  I’d awakened half an hour earlier crying in my sleep. Like usual, I hadn’t remembered the dream. But I awoke thinking about Myra Louden, lying dead there on the green grassy fields of the dog park.

  And in that moment of early morning darkness, the fragility of life, and the overpowering inevitably of death, felt very, very real.

  I couldn’t go back to sleep after that. And rather than just lie awake in bed, tossing and turning while listening to the low whirring of the ceiling fan, I decided to do something useful.

  I pulled the gloves on and walked out into the front yard with the shears and a garbage bag. It was dark, but there was a pleasant evening breeze rustling through the leafy foliage of the long willow tree that stood in the middle of the lawn. The stars were out, and a swollen moon hung low in the sky.

  It was a beautiful morning for gardening.

  I started clipping at the broken branches of the yellow rose bushes, remnants of the dog vandal’s work. Buddy, never one to miss any action, came up and rubbed against the back of my legs as I worked.

  I pulled the broken branches down, my mind drifting from subject to subject like a pinball. Overactive, the way it often was at this hour.

  I was thinking about what had killed Myra.

  The woman had been in her mid-60s. Awfully young to die. But then again, someone like her must have had a fair amount of stress in her life. I knew that as a teacher, my mom had had plenty of job-related stress. I was sure the same kind of strain went with being a principal. Myra didn’t appear to be in bad health, but she didn’t appear to be in stunningly good shape either. She power-walked on occasion, but she was a regular at The Barkery. The way Lou told it, the woman was a sucker for red velvet cupcakes. And while she was skinny as a rail, I knew that health didn’t always go hand and hand with being thin.

  The woman could have had a heart attack, I figured. Or something else that wasn’t necessarily related to lifestyle choices. An aneurism, perhaps.

  But whatever had caused Myra to collapse the afternoon before, one fact remained true: the woman was dead.

  I closed my eyes, seeing her legs there on the lawn. That one clunky black shoe sticking out.

  I shivered as Buddy rubbed up against the back of my bare leg again, meowing.

  I knew that nobody was comfortable with the thought of death. But it seemed that ever since my mom died, it had taken on a new meaning for me. Every time death came up, I couldn’t help but dwell on the absolute finality of it. I couldn’t stop thinking how nobody on earth would ever again hear Myra Louden’s voice. No one would ever be subject to her dog board judgments. Nobody would ever hear one of her lengthy lectures about good dog ownership.

  Hell, nobody would hear the woman so much as clear her throat ever again.

  I sighed.

  Then I pushed those dark thoughts away, thoughts that seemed even darker at this lonely hour of the morning, and tried to think of something more cheerful.

  And for some reason, in that instant, the image of Lt. Sam Sakai walking away from me across the lawn, that little mutt puppy slung over his shoulder, popped into my head.

  In some ways, Lt. Sakai was just like any other cop I’d come across in the years I’d been in the media. He was tight-lipped, stubborn, not forthcoming, and ultimately, detested everything I stood for. He thought I was cold-hearted and was solely driven by headlines.

  But in other ways, Lt. Sakai was different.

  He appeared to be introspective and quiet. And though I hardly knew him, the man struck me as driven. As a man who immediately commanded respect. Who, with just a flash of his dark eyes, could scare the hardest of criminals. And though he’d given me a difficult time, in any other situation, I felt that he’d be a trustworthy agent of the law. Someone you could count on to be honest.

  He wasn’t your average small town cop.

  I realized I was spacing out again, kneeling down in the cold dirt and vacantly staring at a single dead rose that had been snapped off by the dog delinquent.

  I shook my head, snapping myself out of my stupor.

  What I wouldn’t give for one night of uninterrupted sleep.

  Chapter 15

  “Do you have a moment to talk, Freddie?”

  I looked up from my computer to find Rachael Chandler hovering over me.

  She was wearing quite the number today. Something that would have looked more at home in a Portland night club on a Saturday than a small newsroom on a weekday. She sported a tight-fitting, clingy red top with a plunging neckline. A long stranded gold necklace followed that neckline, no doubt a ploy to entice her male sources into losing their concentration and saying things that should have been off the record. To match, she wore a short black skirt and pointy heels that were the epitome of unpractical in almost every situation I could think of but a few. None of which were work appropriate.

  “Sure, I have a moment,” I said, leaning back in my chair.

  I still hadn’t forgotten about that little cackling incident at yesterday’s staff meeting. And I was still working on a way to get back
at her for it.

  She took a seat on my desk. She stared down at me a long moment in that sorority girl kind of way that made it clear she was analyzing my wardrobe choice and judging it harshly.

  Today I was wearing a loose-fitting, white button-down shirt that seemed a sensible and work-appropriate selection given the 80-degree day the forecasters predicted, though I could tell as she looked at me that she wouldn’t be caught dead in such a blouse.

  I crossed my arms, waiting for her to speak.

  “So Kobritz told me about how you started working on a news obit on Myra Louden?” she finally said.

  I nodded, preparing for what was coming.

  This kind of story was something that didn’t exactly fall under my beat, and I was sure that first thing this morning, Kobritz had asked her to take over the story. Meaning there wasn’t much I could do in the matter.

  I didn’t even know why I wanted to write the news obit about Myra so bad. Except that it was better than writing about how The Pit Stop, a local biker restaurant, was now offering special dog treats made from leftover food to its four-legged customers. Which was all I had for today’s story work load.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I was there at the park yesterday after Myra collapsed.”

  “Well, I’ll be honest, Freddie. I’m just swamped with the follow-up on that husband-wife shooting that took place last week. Kobritz wants it for Sunday A1, and frankly I don’t think I’ll have time to write this little thing up about Myra Louden.”

  I felt my heart jump a little at that news. Which in a way, kind of made me sad. I used to cover high-profile city crime. Now I was leaping at the chance to write a story about a dead woman who I had never particularly cared for all that much.

  “I could take it off your hands,” I said.

  “It wouldn’t be too much trouble?” she said, lifting her eyebrows.

  I shook my head.

  “Not at all.”

  She smiled.

  “You’re a bona fide lifesaver, Freddie,” she said.

  “It’s not a problem,” I said.

  “You know, I’ve been trying to tell Kobritz for weeks now to give you better stories,” she said. “You’re a good writer. You really shouldn’t be languishing in the dog beat the way you are.”