Bulldogs & Bullets: A Dog Town USA Cozy Mystery Read online

  Bulldogs & Bullets

  A Dog Town USA Cozy Mystery

  by

  Meg Muldoon

  Published by Vacant Lot Publishing

  Copyright 2016© by Meg Muldoon

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance whatsoever to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The Meg Muldoon Collection

  The Christmas River Cozy Mystery Series

  Murder in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Book 1)

  Mayhem in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Book 2)

  Madness in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Book 3)

  Malice in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Book 4)

  Mischief in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Book 5)

  Manic in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Book 6)

  Magic in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Book 7)

  Menace in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Book 8)

  Roasted in Christmas River: A Thanksgiving Cozy Mystery Novella

  The Cozy Matchmaker Mystery Series

  Burned in Broken Hearts Junction: A Cozy Matchmaker Mystery (Book 1)

  Busted in Broken Hearts Junction: A Cozy Matchmaker Mystery (Book 2)

  The Dog Town USA Cozy Mystery Series

  Mutts & Murder: A Dog Town USA Cozy Mystery (Book 1)

  Bulldogs & Bullets: A Dog Town USA Cozy Mystery (Book 2)

  Coming Soon

  Corgis & Conspiracy: A Dog Town USA Cozy Mystery (Book 3)

  Ginger of the West: A Broomfield Bay Cozy Mystery (Book 1) (With Jools Sinclair)

  Missing in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Book 9)

  Bulldogs & Bullets

  by Meg Muldoon

  Based on another true story

  (Of sorts)

  For the best writing partner ever…

  My Buddy

  1999 - 2016

  Chapter 1

  It all started with a man walking away from the scene of a crime.

  The Shih Tzu in the argyle sweater vest stood up and kicked his back paws against the grass, tossing up dirt and completing his business with little dog bravado. The canine’s owner – a 30-something man dressed in a matching brown and orange argyle vest – covertly glanced around in all directions, the way people often did before doing something they knew they weren’t supposed to be doing. Coming to the conclusion that the four-legged creature’s call of nature had gone unnoticed, the owner smirked, then led the dog away from the school’s field and back toward the sidewalk.

  The Shih Tzu resumed its dainty trot down the street, and dog and owner walked away from the scene of the dirty deed as if the thing left behind in the lush green grass of the school’s field had nothing whatsoever to do with either of them.

  “Did you see that, Freddie?! Did you see what that guy just did?” Mindy Monahan said, leaning forward in the driver’s seat. “That irresponsible jerk is walking away from it. But come recess tomorrow, little Johnny or little Sally is going to slip and fall on what that dog left behind. And guess who’s going to have to deal with crying kids and brown smelly stains? Me. And I’m sick of it, Freddie. I’m sick of crying kids and stinking stains and people breaking the city dog code. It all just makes me so…

  “Err!”

  The second grade teacher let out an aggravated grunt that sounded like it must have scratched the back of her throat on the way out.

  I watched as she pulled a long-lensed camera from her purse – the same old-fashioned one that she used in Mr. McDaniel’s journalism class back in high school – and lifted the clunky heap up to her deep-set brown eyes. She aimed the viewfinder dead on the offender as he strolled beneath the streetlights of the sidewalk. The camera shutter snapped away loudly.

  “Gotcha,” she muttered.

  Why Mindy still used that beat-up old camera was beyond me, considering what a pain it must have been to develop non-digital photos. But I supposed Mindy Monahan had always been a little quirky – the old turquoise Jeep Cherokee we were sitting in, for example, had been the same one she’d driven her senior year of high school, back when she went by her maiden name of Mindy Menendez. The way she dressed and styled her hair was peculiar, too. Her raven black tresses were Farrah Fawcett all the way and flared out around her face, elegantly highlighting her high cheekbones and dramatic deep-set Latina eyes. Her distinct, stylish 70s-inspired wardrobe consisted of corduroy dresses and turtle necks and clunky heels that few women managed to pull-off. But somehow, Mindy always could.

  Considering all those details, the fact that she was still using that old camera wasn’t exactly surprising.

  “And you say people let their dogs misuse the school field all the time?” I asked.

  Humphrey Bogart leaned harder on my legs, and I shifted uncomfortably in the vinyl passenger seat.

  Humphrey, Mindy’s five-year-old bulldog, known colloquially as Bogey, let another long thread of drool drop from his oafish mouth. The saliva hit my jeans and I shuddered, trying to wipe it away with the back of my jacket sleeve.

  It wasn’t like the jeans were new or anything. And even if they had been, I wasn’t usually that fussy about such things. Mugs, my seven-month-old yellow lab-mix, had put his personal stamp on most of my wardrobe either through his incessant shedding or his sharp teeth. A few drool stains from another dog wasn’t going to make much of a difference in the big scheme of things.

  But nonetheless, I wished Bogey the bulldog would have found another place in the car– any other place, really – to sit than on my lap.

  But, as I discovered shortly after climbing into Mindy’s Jeep, her pooch was a lapdog through and through. And since his owner was currently occupied in a heated battle against code-breaking dog owners, Mr. Bogart had found the next best person in the car to get attention from: Me.

  “This has been a continuous problem since the school district allocated funds to replace the black top with grass two years ago,” Mindy said. “Now everybody in this area just treats the children’s playfield as a literal dumping ground for their pooches when nobody’s looking. I mean, you should have seen this one I found the other day. It looked like a grizzly bear left it behind. And it didn’t smell all that pretty, either, let me tell you. The thing was practically steaming.”

  I made a grossed-out face at the vivid description. I would have followed it up with laughter if the look in Mindy Monahan’s eyes wasn’t so dead serious.

  She had the hardened expression of someone who had been fighting for a cause that people didn’t take seriously. So I swallowed back the chuckles that were coming up my throat and resumed a stoic, journalistic look.

  “You know that I love dogs, Freddie. I mean, I consider Bogey right there dearer to me than just about any person. My issue has nothing to do with the dogs: it has to do with the dog owners. They’re being flat out irresponsible, and the children of Errol Tabor Elementary School are paying the price for it. I mean, do you know how hard it is to wash doggie doo-doo stains from a pair of jeans?”

  She let out a frustrated scoff.

  “
Seventy percent of our kids at this school come from low-income homes. It’s not like their parents can afford to buy them new clothes all the time.”

  I wrote down what she was saying on the news notepad in my hands. My handwriting was more atrocious than usual on account of Bogey leaning his wrinkled head back into me, begging for another scratch behind the ear.

  When I got the quote down, I stole a quick glance at the time on the car radio.

  Dang it.

  Not that I wasn’t having a grand old time staking out dog poop offenders with a drooling bulldog sitting on my lap. But I had plans tonight. Plans that were making it rather hard to concentrate.

  I cleared my throat and quickly flipped to a fresh page.

  “How many times have you contacted the city police about this problem?” I asked.

  She placed the camera up to her face and snapped another shot of the Shih Tzu owner leisurely rounding the school yard’s chain link fence.

  “At least half a dozen times, Freddie,” she said. “I’ve got weeks of documentation. I talked to an Officer Anson Donnally over at the police department. He’s a cop who supposedly deals with code violations. But you know what he’s told me every time I’ve called?”

  “What?”

  “He says the Dog Mountain Police Department can’t spare the manpower to monitor such low-level offenses,” she said. “And not only that, but every time I’ve called, I hear laughter in the background. Like they’re all treating this like a joke over there. I mean, have you ever heard of such childish behavior? I have students in my second grade class that are more mature than that crew of donut heads.”

  I chewed on the end of my pen, not surprised in the least that Anson Donnally wasn’t taking Mindy’s concerns seriously. He was one of those small-town law enforcement types: slow, lazy, and with a crude sense of humor, Mindy hadn’t stood a chance given the subject of her complaint.

  “It’s time that something be done about this,” she said, putting the camera back in its bag and zipping it up – much to my relief. “Not picking up after your pet is against the law, and the offenders must be held accountable. At the schoolboard meeting tomorrow night, I’m going to present this issue along with all my weeks of thorough documentation. The school board members need to hear it more than anyone. And maybe with the evidence I’ve collected, the board can encourage the police to get up off their butts and actually do something for once.”

  She placed a hand over her mouth and her eyes grew wide suddenly.

  “Oh goodness, you’re not going to print that last part, are you?”

  I looked up from my notepad, meeting her fearful stare.

  Normally, I hated when people did that: when they said something without thinking and backtracked, putting me in the awkward position of committing a breach of journalistic ethics by not putting something down on the record. However, in this case, I doubted if Kobritz would let me use the quote anyway. The folks of idyllic Dog Mountain demanded their newspaper to be clean and free of crudeness and expletives. I doubted if I was going to get away with writing the word “poop” in this article.

  And besides, Mindy and I were on friendly terms, if not outright friends. I wasn’t going to make her look bad for no good reason.

  We’d been in the same class and had worked together on the high school newspaper. But though we got along, for the most part, we moved in different circles at Dog Mountain High. She was popular and pretty: I wasn’t. She’d been on prom court and eventually married the school’s star basketball player, Phillip Monahan. Meanwhile, I couldn’t claim to have even attended a single dance or basketball game all four years.

  But I had always liked the fact that despite her popularity, Mindy remained down-to-earth and treated everybody – including myself – with kindness. It was something I remembered when she called me at work a couple of days earlier out of the blue, saying she had a story idea.

  “I mean, I’m a teacher,” she continued. “I can’t be quoted saying something like that in the paper. The parents would have a fit. And if the police see what I just said about them, then—”

  “It’s fine, Mindy,” I said, cutting her off. “The quote’s not usable anyway.”

  She let out a sigh of relief. I shot another glance at the clock.

  Shoot.

  Punctuality had never been my strong point. And more and more lately, I seemed to be losing the battle with being on time.

  “Listen,” I said. “I’ll be there to cover the school board meeting tomorrow night. My editor thinks this may have Sunday A1 potential, so the story might not run until the weekend.”

  Her eyes grew wide when I mentioned Sunday A1 – the best placement a story could get.

  “That’s just fine,” she said. “I hope it does make the front page. The more people who see it, the better.”

  “Good,” I said, reaching over Bogey and placing my notepad in my purse. “I should get going, Mindy. I’ve got some place to be. See you tomorrow night at the board meeting?”

  She followed my gaze toward the radio clock and then she looked over at me, her face breaking into a wry grin. The kind of grin that I was sure Officer Anson Donnally had every time she called the police station to report another dog poop offender.

  I furrowed my brow.

  “And just what’s that smile all about?” I said.

  She shrugged.

  “Oh, nothing.Just… I meant to say to you – good going, Freddie. I mean, really well done.”

  “Good going with what?” I said, feeling my cheeks growing hot.

  By the cartoon grin plastered on her face, I had a feeling I already knew what she was speaking of.

  “Everyone in town’s been talking about it,” she said.

  I crossed my arms over my chest defensively.

  The thought of the town gossips wagging their tongues on my account made me squirm.

  “Been talking about what?”

  “Oh, you know.”

  I shot her a sharp glare.

  “No, I don’t know, Mindy. That’s why I’m asking you.”

  She started giggling. The same free-spirited helium laugh she sometimes had back in high school when Phil would come up behind her in the hallway and, without warning, toss her over his broad shoulders.

  I found it amazing how quickly she changed her tune. From righteous children-safety fighter to silly school girl in just a few seconds flat.

  “Well, you reeled in quite the looker, didn’t you?” she said.

  I felt my face turn a shade of crimson.

  “I’ve seen him a few times at Burnside Market, and the man is smoking, Freddie. I mean, he’s so hot that—”

  “Okay, I think we’re done here,” I said, opening the car door, trying to escape whatever other embarrassing thing was about to come flying out of her mouth.

  I started nudging Bogey off of my lap, but the stout, compact, heavy little dog would not budge.

  That only sent Mindy into another giggling fit. She laughed so hard, a moment later she was coughing like a pack-a-day smoker.

  “I’m sorry, Freddie,” she finally sputtered out. “It’s just so funny.”

  “Well, I’m glad you find such hilarity in my love life.”

  “Aw, I didn’t mean it like that, lady,” she said. “I’m just… it’s good to see a nice gal like you come out on top. That’s all.”

  She grinned again as she realized how the last phrase could be taken.

  I shook my head, feeling like my cheeks were about to burst into flames.

  “Oh goodness, I mean, oops… I really didn’t mean it that way. I meant, you know. That someone good-hearted and pretty like you snagged such a sharp-looking fella like the Lieutenant.”

  She cleared his throat.

  “I, uh, I hope I didn’t offend you with any of that cop talk a moment ago,” she said. “I wasn’t talking about him, of course. He’s most certainly not a donut head by any stretch of the imagination. I mean, those muscles…”

&n
bsp; It seemed as though Mindy’s attempts to dig herself out of the hole she’d made only caused her to sink deeper in.

  But I wasn’t going to hold it against her. I knew she only meant well.

  “I know you weren’t talking about him,” I said. “Now would you please get Mr. Bogart off of me? I can’t feel my legs anymore.”

  She reached into her large purse, rifling through stacks of student homework before pulling out something that looked like beef jerky. Bogey caught a whiff of it and spring-boarded off of my legs and over to hers, his little doggy claws digging into my flesh during the meat-motivated exit.

  I was pretty sure that one of those claws was going to leave a bruise. But for the time being, I was happy just to be free.

  I stepped out of the car into the mild night and closed the door behind me. I started walking away toward my car across the street when I heard the squeaky sound of the driver’s window slide down.

  “Say Freddie?”

  I stopped, turning around.

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks for doing this story.”

  I nodded.

  “Not a problem, Mindy. I’ll see you at the—”

  “Say, maybe after the school board meeting tomorrow night, we could grab a drink? You know, I’d really like to catch up. And I could really use a girls’ night.”

  I raised my eyebrows in surprise.

  Like I said, Mindy and I were on friendly terms, but not exactly friends. I’d returned home from Portland nearly ten months ago, and had only seen her one other time at a school district fundraiser event I was sent to cover.

  Though a little over a decade had passed, we still didn’t exactly move in the same circles.

  But what the hell? It wasn’t like we were in high school. In fact, maybe we’d finally reached an age where there weren’t such things as circles anymore.