Mutts & Murder: A Dog Town USA Cozy Mystery (6 page)

That look of surprise came across his face again.

I got the feeling that Lt. Sakai wasn’t used to being talked to like this.

A moment later, he regained his normally stoic expression. Then he reached for the puppy that I was holding securely in my arms.

As he did, I suddenly had the urge to run. To pull the little pup away from the lieutenant, and make a break for my car. To drive the little puppy home and feed it until that look of sadness disappeared from its eyes.

But instead of doing that, I didn’t fight. I let Sakai take the pup into his arms.

I figured I didn’t need to make the man hate me more than he already did.

The little dog howled.

“You can expect a news release tonight, Winifred,” he said without looking at me.

I stifled back a frustrated sigh.

Tonight
most likely meant past deadline, meaning that the story wouldn’t run until the day after tomorrow.

Meaning that he was giving clear advantage to the gals over at KTVX. They’d have the story on the morning news, while being in print journalism meant I’d be waiting on the paper’s next edition to see the story run.

Just as the lieutenant started walking away, I noticed something in a zip lock bag tucked under his arm.

Something familiar.

It was one of the beige paper bags that pastries from
The Barkery
came in.

“What’s that?” I said, nodding to the zip lock bag, catching him just as he was turning.

He looked down at the bag in the crook of his arm.

“Something the deceased had at the time of death,” he said.

I swallowed hard.

It was an evidence bag that he’d put it in.

“Just in case,” he said, turning and walking away.

I watched as Lt. Sakai walked across the green lawn. The puppy didn’t howl or whimper at all as he carried it. He had his paws resting over the lieutenant’s shoulder, and was looking back at me.  

That strange sensation pulled at my chest again as I watched the lieutenant put the puppy in the back seat of his cruiser.

Chapter 11

I sat at my desk cubicle, waiting on a phone call that I knew wasn’t coming.

I had developed almost a sixth sense about these kinds of things. I could tell when somebody was going to get back to me, and when somebody was going to leave me hanging.

And as the hands of the clock crept closer to 7 p.m., I knew that my news obit about Myra Louden was a no-go.

Nobody, including Lt. Sam Sakai, had returned any of my calls. There was no news release. And all the calls I had out to community members, such as Myra’s fellow dog board committee judges, went unanswered.

And since I hadn’t set eyes on the body myself, Kobritz wasn’t about to risk running a news obit on the off-chance that Myra Louden was actually sitting at home watching Jeopardy.

“Nobody’s gotten back to you?” he said, leaning over my desk cubicle, his whiskers looking especially bristly in the dying orange summer light streaming through the window.

I shook my head.

“No cigar.”

“Well, I guess we’ll go with the usual
Pet Pals
piece,” he grumbled. “What’s the name of this week’s dog again?”

“Bonedaddy,” I answered.

I sighed.

The KTVX gals were going to break the news about Myra in the morning. And my chances of writing about something other than Fido would go out the window. Tomorrow, Kobritz would probably assign Rachael the story on Myra Louden’s death, and I’d be stuck writing about the town’s preparations for the Pooch Parade.

Noticing my dour expression, Kobritz launched into one of his rallying speeches – a technique that I imagined he picked up at some conference for newsroom leadership. 

“Look, I know your beat isn’t glamourous, Winifred,” he said, uncharacteristically calling me by my first name. “But the paper needs these kinds of stories the same way it needs stories about town growth boundaries and robberies. People don’t always want to read about doom and gloom. And no matter how much you might want to argue, you actually do a rather good job with the dog beat—”

Kobritz stopped mid-sentence as my desk phone let out a sharp ring.

“Maybe it’s the cops,” I said, feeling a new spark of hope.

He scratched his chin and nodded.

I answered on the second ring, glad to have been saved from another Kobritz lecture about the “importance” of my beat.

Chapter 12

“
Dog Mountain Chronicle
, this is Winifred Wolf,” I said in a deep, confident voice.

When talking to cops, it was always best to sound self-assured. To let them know right off the bat that you weren’t some pushover who could easily be lied to.

“How in the hell are you, Red?”

I felt my throat go bone dry at the sound of the voice coming from the other side of the line. And for the second time that day, I found myself deep in shock.

I hadn’t expected to ever hear Jimmy Brewer’s voice again.

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 18
^th
, 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 for 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.