To Fetch a Killer

by Maria Hudgins

  “Yeah,” Becca said. She made the hurry-up motion with her hands. “Keep going. It gets better.”

  Mrs. Wade promised she had evidence that Rose had killed her husband. If I remembered correctly, when she’d backed out of her garage and run over her husband, he’d died. It had been ruled an accident. What proof could Mrs. Wade possibly have to prove Rose a murderer?

  Rose’s response: NOT IF I KILL YOU FIRST.

  “Oh. My. Gawd.” I squealed. I hadn’t meant to. I mean how junior high was that. But good lord. My insides were a literal jumble. Thoughts. Emotions. Fears. All tumbling around together.

  Becca wore the-cat-who-got-the-cream expression again. “I know, right?”

  We now had motive and opportunity. If I could prove Rose had peanuts in her possession, that would tie this investigation up in a nice little bow which we could present it to the police.

  Grabbing Rose’s florist box, I lifted it and placed it on the counter. I started to reach in, but Becca stopped me.

  “Fingerprints,” she cautioned.

  Good catch. It really does pay to have a best friend who thinks like a criminal.

  My Wustof’s classic chef’s knife lay on the counter, waiting for me to take it home with me, since I didn’t know if I would ever cook in this kitchen again. I picked it up and slipped it out of its protective sleeve. Using it, I poked through the items in the box.

  Becca peered over my shoulder, watching my every move.

  Aha. I stabbed the point of the knife into the Ziploc bag laying at the very bottom of the box. Very carefully, I lifted it up so we could better examine it. A standard issue snack-size bag, with a small amount of a tan, powdery substance still clinging to the sides.

  I’d bet everything I had in this world that we were looking at ground up peanuts.

  Before I could say “Let’s call the police,” the cypher lock on the side entrance turned, an odd rumbling/whirring sound. Someone was coming in the house. Someone who knew the code. Someone who had no business being here at six-forty-five in the morning.

  The door swung open.

  Holy crapoli. In walked Rose Campbell.

  Judging by the look on her face, she was not happy to see us.

  I don’t need to tell you the feeling was mutual.

  She looked at us, at the knife in my hand and the plastic bag speared onto the end of it.

  “Well,” Rose said in a voice that sent chills up my spine. It wasn’t the friendly Rose I’d known and worked with for almost a decade, but a cruel, icy Rose who now had cold, hard eyes. “This sure complicates things.” She walked slowly, deliberately, toward us. Step. Step. Step.

  Becca found her voice before I did. “You killed Mrs. Wade.” She waved the printed email messages. “We’ve got proof.”

  Rose kept walking. Step. Step.

  Becca shifted closer to me, our shoulder’s touching.

  I could feel her heart beating, as I’m sure she could feel mine. It ka-thumped so crazily fast I feared it would jump out of my chest and go scampering down the driveway.

  Rose was only about five feet away now. I could hear her raspy breathing. Talk about unsettling.

  Becca kept goading her. “And we know Mrs. Wade had proof you killed your husband.”

  Rose leaped the last few feet and grabbed the chef’s knife out of my hand before I knew what was happening. She tucked the handle under her breastbone, the business end pointing skyward. “So much for my plan of getting the box out of here before anyone found it. I need to think for a moment.”

  She didn’t have a moment, though, because Tater rushed through the open door, flew across the room and all one-hundred-and-thirty pounds of dog hit Rose right between the shoulder blades.

  Rose crumpled to the ground, dropping the knife in the process.

  Becca jumped on Rose’s back.

  I jumped on Becca’s back.

  Tater jumped on my back.

  And that’s exactly how Officer Todd Siddons found us when he walked into the kitchen.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Two months later...

  “True confession time,” I said to Becca, who sat across from me at the Wade’s table on the back deck. It was one of those unusually warm November days, with blue skies and gentle breezes off the ocean. Mimosa’s might have been more appropriate this early in the day, but hey, it’s always wine-o’clock for us.

  “Do tell.” Becca relaxed into her chair and stared out toward the ocean.

  “I gave serious consideration to the idea that you had killed Mrs. Wade.”

  Becca snapped her head around and looked at me. She busted out laughing. I mean full-belly laughing, the kind that is contagious.

  I laughed too, because it really did seem ridiculous now.

  Once the guffaws had subsided, she said to me, “I seriously thought you killed Mrs. Wade.”

  That set us off again, laughing until we cried.

  I wiped a tear from my eye. “There were so many possibilities, but I sure didn’t have Rose on my radar. I’d started to wonder if she’d been killed by the developer Mrs. Wade had gone toe-to-toe with at the city meeting.”

  Becca nodded. “I hadn’t thought of that. My money was still on one of Wade men. Mr. Wade taking off to a country that doesn’t have extradition with the U.S. makes him look guilty, in my opinion. Plus, the fact he left the party right before Mrs. Wade died.”

  “Off to meet his mistress, I’d heard.”

  Becca nodded. She’d heard the same thing. “I’d also wondered if Dustin had slipped back into the country and done the dirty deed.”

  “Hey, did your uncle ever say why there was a warrant out for his arrest?”

  “Yes, a drunken brawl over an unpaid poker debt. Everett McKinney jumped on Dustin. Dustin defended himself, but pretty much rearranged Everett’s face. That Dustin has a bad gambling habit, and is a mean drunk. No wonder he ran off to Italy right after that.”

  “Yeah, drinking and gambling is a bad combination. Those were two of the main issues that caused strife between Mr. and Mrs. Wade.” I sipped my wine, a crisp pinot gris. From my wine cellar, yes, now mine, all mine. Mr. Wade had gifted it to me. Over two hundred bottles of really good stuff. A lifetime supply. Or a year’s supply. It depended on things played out for me. So many changes on my horizon which may require consumption of lots of wine.

  Mr. Wade wasn’t coming back to Sea Haven. I was now employed in full-time capacity cataloging all of the household items in preparation for an auction next spring. He said I could stay here until he sold his house, but I wasn’t comfortable doing that, so Tater and I came for work and then went home to my apartment.

  Yes, with the wine also came the gift of Tater. Dustin had relocated to Martinique, too. Along with Mr. Wade’s mistress, Prissy Palmer. I’m glad I didn’t have a role in those family dynamics. The dealership was being sold to his competitor in a very nice deal. Turns out Mr. Wade didn’t need Mrs. Wade’s money.

  Tater came trotting up from the beach, smiling his doggie smile. We’d really bonded, he and I, and I looked forward to many happy years with my new canine companion. It would mean I’d have to find a new career that offered day-time hours so I could drop him at doggie day care while I worked. And I’d also have to learn to live with black fur on every piece of clothing. But since he’d saved my life, I owed it to him to save his.

  I sighed. Change was good, right?

  I sipped my wine and thought about all that had happened since that fateful dinner party. Rose had confessed to dumping the peanut flour into the Death by Chocolate trifle when I’d been distracted by Tater eating the sausage for the stuffing. But there remained a few unanswered questions. “I still don’t understand why Rose was in charge of flowers that night. I mean, if she’d threatened to kill Mrs. Wade, why would they still do business together?”

  “I forgot to tell you. I stopped by The Flower Girl last week. Ginney and I got to talking about the murder. She said she was supposed to do the arrange
ments that evening, but she had double booked herself. She contacted Rose to fill in. She accepted, and thus was granted opportunity to carry out her murderous threat.”

  That had been risky. What if Mrs. Wade had seen her? I ran the events of that evening through my head for the one-thousandth time. I now realized that Rose had made herself scarce the few times Mrs. Wade had come into the kitchen. Hmm. I also realized I had asked Rose to get me the toothpicks out of the drawer. That must have been when she’d found the back-up epi-pen. I tried to push the guilt away, but there were just so many ways I contributed to—and benefited from—Mrs. Wade’s death. So many emotions all tied up together. Made it hard to sleep at night.

  “Did you ever find out where Mrs. Wade got her money?” Becca asked.

  “It really bugs you that you couldn’t find that on the Internet.” She prided herself on her online sleuthing skills.

  Becca shrugged, as if she didn’t really care. But I knew she did.

  “I did find she was beneficiary of a very wealthy New York city man, whose last name just happened to be Mrs. Wade’s middle name. She dropped it when she married Mr. Wade so that’s probably why you didn’t make any connection. Not sure of how the benefactor knew Mrs. Wade, but based on the thirty-year age difference, I can only guess he was her father. Could have been Mrs. Wade’s lover.” I sipped my wine. “To Mrs. Wade’s credit, she tried her best to do good things with the money in support of all of her causes, even if some of them were a little whacky.”

  “Hmm,” was all Becca had to say on that subject. I think she’d been hoping for something a bit more salacious.

  “Is this a private party?” Todd Simmons strolled across the deck, his arms tucked behind his back. He bent down and gave Becca a kiss on her cheek. Yes, they were an item, and made the cutest couple.

  “Thanks again for saving my life.” I said that to him, as I did every time I saw him, which was fairly frequently now.

  “You need to thank Becca for texting me.”

  Becca had texted Todd when she’d discovered the incriminating emails, and he’d come running. “Thank you, too, Becca.” I raised my goblet in her direction. But I still gave more credit to Todd for saving us. If he hadn’t shown up when had, the fight between Rose, Becca, and me might not have turned out as well as it had.

  “Speaking of thanks,” Todd said. “The police chief would like to thank Tater.”

  When Tater heard his name, he picked his head up.

  Todd brought his arms from around his back, and presented Tater with the biggest dog bone I’d ever seen in my life. I’m talking over two feet long.

  Tater rushed over and sat at Todd’s feet.

  “The chief told me to tell you thank you, and wish you bone appétit.” Todd handed the bone to Tater.

  My dog rushed off to a corner of the deck to enjoy his treat in private.

  Todd poured himself a glass of wine, and offered up a toast.

  Becca and I lifted our glasses.

  “Bon appétit,” we said in unison.

  THE END

  BE SURE AND CATCH THESE OTHER MUTT MYSTERIES ANTHOLOGIES!

  A portion from the sale

  of all of the books in the series

  is donated to local animal shelters.

  TO FETCH A VILLAIN

  Four Fun “Tails” of Miscreants and Murder

  Old dogs and new tricks abound in this third installment in the Mutt Mysteries series. This collection of four novellas illustrates why dogs are our best friends and the perfect companions for digging up clues, solving crimes, and bringing villains to justice. Let sleeping dogs lie? Not when the mutts are on the case! Read on to learn more about these four fun "tails" of miscreants and murder.

  “Ruff Day”

  By Jayne Ormerod

  Darby Agnes Moore owns and operates Ruff Day Doggie Boutique and Dog Wash, a small establishment in the coastal town of Bay Vista, North Carolina. Her top employee is shelter rescue Mr. Belvedere, a one hundred and forty-five-pound Great Dane. Darby takes a huge financial risk when she invests heavily in a local marketing gimmick. Months of planning went into the event. What could possibly go wrong?

  It’s a Ruff Day when Darby and best friend Tianna Platt arrive at the venue and discover a dead body. If that’s not trouble enough, Tianna tops the official suspects’ list. When Darby and Mr. Belvedere team up to collar the killer, the fur really starts to fly!

  “At Your Service”

  By Maria Hudgins

  Trey and Kim are bichons who live with Jessica, a mystery writer who happens to be deaf. Trey is Jessica’s incredibly intelligent and responsible service dog—Jessica’s ears. Kim is a recent rescue with a horrid past. Trey and Jessica are determined to help Kim overcome her memories and learn to enjoy life. But someone is out to make all their lives miserable with threats, drones, and even fire. Jessica and her dogs enlist the aid of friends, police, and Trey’s former trainer to find and trap the villain who is still after poor little Kim.

  “A Shot in the Bark”

  By Teresa Inge

  When Catt Ramsey, owner of the Woof-Pack Dog Walkers hires an ex-con as her handy-man to help around the property and construct a Doggie Festival in her backyard, she stumbles upon two thefts and a dead neighbor. When accused of the murder, Catt solicits the help of her sister, Em, family friend Jonathan Ray, and her pups Cagney and Lacey to solve the mystery.

  “Strut Your Mutt”

  By Heather Weidner

  Sassy Private Investigator, Delanie Fitzgerald, plans to spend her day off relaxing at the mall’s Strut Your Mutt festival where her partner’s English bulldog is a finalist in a pampered doggie pageant. Little did she know that Margaret the bulldog would turn into an overnight social media influencer and a magnet for new clients. The phone starts ringing with a distraught woman who needs help finding a missing dog. But this French poodle is no ordinary pooch. This star of the dog show circuit has been dognapped. Delanie, and her computer hacker partner, Duncan Reynolds, sniff out information from the deep web and put paws to the pavement to track down clues to the dog’s whereabouts.

  Delanie gets more than she bargains for when she wrestles a suspect, chases down leads at dog shelters, and uncovers a body. But can she find the missing poodle before it’s too late?

  TO FETCH A SCOUNDREL

  Four Fun “Tails” of Scandal and Murder...

  ...is the second book in the Mutt Mysteries collection. It features four tail-wagging novellas. Each story puts pups’ noses to the ground, as scandals are unleashed and killers are collared. Once you’ve finished reading these “tall-tails”, you’ll no longer wonder “Who let the dogs out?” You’ll just be glad somebody did!

  “The Fast and the Furriest"

  by Heather Weidner

  Cassidy Green just wants to keep her racetrack business from crashing. When an altercation breaks out between two race teams at the driver meeting, it adds one more problem to her already full plate. Cassidy gets more than she bargains for when Oliver, her Rottweiler, finds one of the star drivers dead in her garage. She hopes her fuzzy director of security will help uncover clues to reveal the killer before the bad publicity drives business into the wall.

  “Pawsitively Scandalous”

  by Jayne Ormerod

  Pilar Pruitt and her black Lab Natti live in a community that has not had so much of a whisper of a crime in over sixty years. So, it’s disconcerting when a neighbor is hauled off in handcuffs by the police for crimes unknown. But it’s downright alarming when another dear friend is found dead. Pilar and Natti start digging deeper into residents’ pasts, and the things they find are pawsitively scandalous!

  “Ruff Goodbye”

  by Rosemary Shomaker

  Bar owner Len Hayes’ frenemy Perry Lambert brings misery to all. Len finds himself strong-armed into shady business dealing by Winks family human attack dog Rocco Moretti, compliments of Perry. Len’s grief over his best friend Curt’s cancer death imbalances him, and everything
unravels at Curt’s funeral home visitation. The bar’s stoic black Lab and Curt’s miniature poodle have Len’s back and resolve the mayhem.

  “A Doggone Scandal”

  by Teresa Inge

  Catt Ramsey, owner of the Woof-Pack Dog Walkers, is back on the case when she receives a mysterious note in her pet supply order. Convinced the sender’s motive is scandalous, Catt packs up her SUV and heads to the Outer Banks with her sister Em, family friend Jonathan Ray, and pups Cagney and Lacey to solve the mystery.

  TO FETCH A THIEF

  Four Fun “Tails” of Theft and Murder...

  ...is the first book in the Mutt Mysteries series and is comprised of four novellas that have gone to the dogs. In this howling good read, canine companions help their owners solve crimes and right wrongs. These sleuths may be furry and low to the ground, but their keen senses are on high alert when it comes to sniffing out clues and digging up the truth. Make no bones about it, these pup heroes will steal your heart as they conquer “ruff” villains.

  "Hounding the Pavement"

  by Teresa Inge

  Catt Ramsey has three things on her mind: grow her dog walking service in Virginia Beach, solve the theft of a client's vintage necklace, and hire her sister Emma as a dog walker. But when Catt finds her model client dead after walking her precious dogs Bella and Beau, she and her own dogs Cagney and Lacey are hot on the trail to clear her name after being accused of murder.

  “Diggin’ up Dirt”

  by Heather Weidner

  Amy Reynolds and her Jack Russell Terrier Darby find some strange things in her new house. Normally, she would have trashed the forgotten junk, but Amy’s imagination kicks into high gear when her nosy neighbors dish the dirt about the previous owners who disappeared, letting the house fall into foreclosure. Convinced that something nefarious happened, Amy and her canine sidekick uncover more abandoned clues in their search for the previous owners.

  “It's a Dog Gone Shame!”

  by Jayne Ormerod