Mutts & Murder: A Dog Town USA Cozy Mystery (10 page)

Kobritz, showing a brazen display of guts, went with my breaking story about Myra’s death being a murder, not even giving Rachael a chance to defend her beat by phone. Judging by the extra dose of stress relieving vitamins he threw back after sending the story to the copy desk, I figured he was a little nervous about letting me write the article, what with Rachael’s family owning the paper.

“You did a good job, Ms. Wolf, but as soon as Ms. Chandler gets back, she’ll take over the story,” he said just as I was leaving for the day.

I nodded in agreement, though I was pretty sure that both of us knew I was going to do my best to see that that didn’t happen.

Kobritz could have told me to lay off in no uncertain terms, but I was sure he saw the value in having me pursue the story right alongside Rachael.

“And Ms. Wolf?” he said, popping back a few more of the vitamins on his desk.

I looked over the cubicle’s dividing wall in his direction.

“Don’t forget about the Pooch Parade next week,” he said. “That’s your first priority.”

I nodded glumly, throwing my purse over my shoulder.

Chapter 23

“Hot damn, this has taken an interesting turn, hasn’t it?” Lou said, handing me an icy glass of pink wine and taking a seat on the Adirondack chair next to me in the backyard. “I mean, I can’t say I’m surprised that Myra Louden was murdered. I said as much to the cops. But this is—”

“Wait, you talked to the cops?” I said.

She nodded enthusiastically.

“They came by this morning,” she said. “They knew Myra had stopped at
The Barkery
before she went to the dog park.”

“What’d you tell them?” I said, sitting forward in my chair. 

She shrugged.

“Just that Myra had come in and ordered a red velvet cupcake and a 12-ounce vanilla latte to go. And that she also picked up a barley beef-flavored dog biscuit for that puppy she had.”

I was always amazed at Lou’s ability to remember orders like that. She never forgot an order, and often wowed her customers with her ability to anticipate exactly what they were going to ask for.

“Did you tell them anything else?” I said, my voice cracking a little.

I had suddenly remembered Lt. Sakai with that beige bakery sleeve wrapped in a plastic evidence bag.

The one Myra had been holding onto when she died.  

“No,” she said, shrugging again. “There was nothing else to tell.”

I swallowed.

“Good,” I said, leaning back. “That’s good.”

“Jeez, you’re acting like we actually did commit murder,” she said, looking over at me.

I didn’t say anything.

I didn’t know why this hadn’t occurred to me before. Myra was poisoned, and the last thing she probably ate was a red velvet cupcake from Lou’s bakery.

“You shouldn’t be worried,” she said, noticing how tense I suddenly was. “The police officers were
very
nice.”

She took a long chug of her wine as I glanced over at her.

One of Lou’s defects, or advantages, depending on how you looked at it, was that she liked just about everyone she met at first. I was always the one who was cautious and reserved and cynical when it came to people.

“Sam was there,” she said.

“Sam Sakai? The lieutenant?” I said.

She nodded.

“Yep.As cute and good-looking as ever. I don’t understand why you think he’s so rude. He’s been nothing but the epitome of genteel toward me.”

“Well, maybe he has a thing for you,” I said, absentmindedly, thinking about that evidence bag.

She laughed at that.

“Better not mention such a thing to Pete,” she said. “He’ll have another meltdown.”

I forced a chuckle, but I suddenly felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up again.

Lou seemed to notice my uneasiness.

“Seriously,” she said. “They were just looking for some information. They weren’t there more than 10 minutes.”

She turned in her chair toward me.

“Now, Freddie,” she said, changing the subject. “I want you to tell me
exactly
who you think might have killed Myra Louden and why. Tell me every angle of your theory.”

“I hate to disappoint you, but I’m afraid I’ve got nothing juicy for you, Lou,” I said. “I don’t have any idea who might have killed Myra.”

Her face fell a little at that.

“Oh, c’mon,” she said. “I’m sure you’ve got a theory. Plenty of people in this town probably had a reason to do the woman in. The only question is, who’s behind the grisly act?”

“Just narrowing it down to a list of possible suspects overwhelms me,” I said. “Myra was a principal for twenty years. She was on the dog board for five years after that. Seems to me even a considerate, kind person could cross a heck of a lot of people in those two positions. And as we know, Myra wasn’t a kind person.”

“Want to know what I think?” Lou said, her eyes lighting up.

“What?” I said.

“I think Myra was leading a double life,” she said. “I think on the surface, she was this perfect, goody-two-shoes, law-abiding spinster. But you know what she did in her off hours?”

I smiled. I couldn’t possibly fathom where Lou was going with this.

“Tell me,” I said.

“She ran a prostitution ring,” Lou said. “In fact, Myra Louden was the most successful madam this side of the Mississippi. She was a secret millionaire. She thought she had it all, until it all caught up with her.”

I let out a long laugh and threw back a swig of wine. It tasted good on the hot summer night we were having.

I felt my muscles start to relax.

“That’s quite the theory,” I said.

“You haven’t even heard the half of it. I think one of her employees killed her,” Lou said, making air quotation marks around the word
employees
. “Want to know how?”

I smiled, settling back in the Adirondack chair.

Lou’s eyes were dancing like fireflies around in her head.

“How?” I said.  

“Well…”

Lou launched into a long explanation of dirty deeds and jilted lovers and smoking guns. I stared off into the distance as the sun sank below the horizon, listening to the frogs bellow by the river. A peaceful summer breeze rustled through the fresh leaves of the aspens, and as dusk settled in, the crickets began singing their evening songs.

Lt. Sam Sakai might have been right.

For all of its dog madness, of all the places you could end up in the world, Dog Mountain wasn’t such a bad place to land.

Chapter 24

Rachael was waiting for me by my desk when I got into work that Friday morning.

She was wearing a new skimpy outfit, most likely just purchased at the outlet malls, and she had a copy of the day’s paper rolled up tightly in her hand. The edition that had my story about Myra’s murder on the front page.

Rachael was shooting me a death stare as I walked the length of the hallway.

I had expected this kind of showdown from the crime reporter. But seeing her sitting there, looking mad as a bull on mars, I somehow felt tired and unprepared to spar with Rachael. It was Friday, and it had been a long week, and the last thing I wanted to do was be part of the scene she was going to make.

“Hi, Rachael,” I said, walking up to my cubicle and taking a seat.

She slapped the paper down on the plastic desktop.

“You’re kidding me, right?” she said, her murky brown eyes drilling into me.

The girl was livid. She reminded me of a rattlesnake whose den had just been invaded.

I crossed my arms and looked up at her.

“I found out Myra was murdered,” I said. “And since you weren’t here, Kobritz asked me to write the story.”

“Who told you? Who told you she was murdered?” she said.

“Lt. Sam Sakai,” I said. “Like it says in the article.”

I thought I could see fog coming out of her nostrils.

I went about turning on my computer and organizing a stack of notepads that had slid across the desk.

She glared at me.

“Are you sleeping with him?” she said.

I nearly knocked over my cup of coffee as I turned toward her abruptly.

“Excuse me?” I said, meeting her fuming stare.

“You heard me,” she said.

I gazed back at her, speechless.

I’d been covering crime for a lot longer than she had, and for a paper much bigger than this one, and never once had anybody ever accused me of making such a moral transgression.

“Rachael,” I said, sharply. “If you think I’d sleep with a police officer just to steal a story from you, then I’m afraid you’re a poor judge of character and an even poorer judge of boundaries. I know you never went to journalism school, so you might not understand the importance of reputation in this field, but you can’t throw accusations like that around.”

None of that seemed to take the fire out of her eyes.

“I don’t even care if you are sleeping with Speed,” she said, referring to Lt. Sakai’s office nickname. “Just stay the hell away from my beat, all right?”

She stood up, giving me a sorority girl once-over before leaving.

“If you don’t, then there will be…
consequences
.”

She stared at me a moment longer, as if she wanted to watch my face as the meaning of what she was implying sank in. But I didn’t give her any satisfaction, keeping my expression as emotionless as a statue’s.

She finally left, her heels making heavy impressions on the carpet as she stalked away toward her desk.

I imagined she was implying that if I continued the path that I was on, she was going to talk to her aunt – Janet Chandler. The paper’s owner.

That had been a threat she’d just leveled at me.

But I’d come across types like Rachael Chandler before. And I knew that she was mostly a lot of wind, and not much else.

I wasn’t going to worry about it, I resolved.

And since I still had interviews scheduled with Judge Warner and Richard Kline this morning regarding Myra’s work with the dog board, and since Kobritz had yet to tell me otherwise, I wasn’t going to let Rachael’s threat stop me from doing my job.

I grabbed a fresh notepad, stuffed it in my purse, and then walked through the newsroom toward the exit. Not so much as looking in Rachael’s direction.

As I walked away, Scott, who had overheard the entire conversation, made a screeching cat noise.

I felt my ears burn.

Scott was over 40, but his sense of humor was more akin to a teenage boy’s.

I would have stopped and made him pay if I wasn’t already late for an interview. 

Chapter 25

Richard Kline stared out the window of his drab office, pressing his fingers together in front of his face, a faraway look in his eyes.

The man looked like he hadn’t gotten any sleep the night before. Or the night before that, for that matter.

He looked shaky, like a rickety old bridge. Much different than the confident and stern dog board judge that I had often seen him as.

Without Myra, he was proving to be just a puddle of melted snow.

From down the hall, I could hear the shelter dogs barking in their kennels. With it being summer, the shelter was packed with pooches of every variety. But in a town like this, most of these dogs didn’t stay here for long. Most would be scooped up in a matter of days by the bleeding heart types that had gotten this town named
Dog Town USA
in the first place. But, I knew, from a story that I’d done a few months before, that many of those adopted dogs would end up back in the shelter again for one reason or another. Often times because the new owners didn’t realize they were getting in over their heads with the troubled, but cute, pooches they picked up.

For many of the dogs, there was no such thing as a forever home.

But that was beside the point of why I was here.

I cleared my throat, figuring I’d go easy on Richard to start with. Initially when I had shown up, he had said he’d forgotten we’d made plans for the interview and wanted to reschedule. I told him I was on deadline and couldn’t reschedule, which was the honest truth, especially with Rachael circling the story like a vulture. Richard finally gave in to my persistence, leading me to his small office behind the kennels.

He was dressed today in a white pinstripe shirt that was slightly yellowed in some places, along with a pair of khakis and moccasin-style shoes with little tassels. His greying hair was looking a little overgrown and unruly. The man needed a comb and some sleep.

“Thanks again for taking the time to meet with me,” I said.

He nodded, but didn’t say anything. He didn’t move his eyes from the window either.

I cleared my throat.

“So are you looking forward to the Pooch Parade next week?” I said.

“Honestly, I haven’t even thought about it since finding out…” he trailed off.

“Are you still going to participate in it?”

He nodded solemnly.

“I suppose I am. They’re all expecting me to represent the Humane Society, like I do every year, so I have to,” he said. “Besides, I think it’s what Myra would have wanted. She always did like the Pooch Parade.”

“It sounds like the two of you were close,” I said.

He swiveled his chair toward me, his hands still clasped together in front of his face.

“I told you. We were friends. Nothing more.”

He said it defensively, as if I’d been trying to imply something.

Too defensively.

Whenever someone acted that way, saying more than they needed to, it was usually because they were lying.

I rubbed my chin, something occurring to me that hadn’t before.

Maybe I should have picked up on this when he was blubbering on the phone about Myra being dead. Or from the fact that he was the only person really crying at her funeral.

I found my eyes drifting down to his wedding ring before I could stop myself.

So Myra Louden wasn’t the old, boring, uptight spinster that everybody thought she was.

I quickly looked down. But I had the sense Richard knew what I had been thinking about.