Mutts & Murder: A Dog Town USA Cozy Mystery Read online

  I let out a short sigh, not all that surprised that Myra was not a fan of my coverage of the hearing. I had done my best to write it in a serious tone, but apparently in her view, I had failed.

  “I wrote it the way I saw it, Myra,” I said. “I’m sorry if you felt it wasn’t how you would have written it.”

  She lifted her nose at me and waited for an apology that I wasn’t going to give her. When she saw that I wasn’t going to give in, she let out a scoff, and turned her attention back to Lou.

  “Louise, dear, I’ll have my usual today,” she said. “A red velvet cupcake and a vanilla latte to go.”

  Louise nodded, but then shot a glance back at me and rolled her eyes.

  We both regarded Myra Louden with equal disdain. But turning her out of The Barkery was something Lou couldn’t exactly afford. Myra was too embedded in the community and had too much sway to do something like that.

  “I’ll get that Caesar salad for you in a minute,” Lou said, winking at me.

  Then she walked over to the cash register and went about doing what Myra asked.

  I sat there at the wooden table, looking out the window at the blue, breezy day.

  My stomach was still growling for that Key Lime bar.

  When it came to food lately, I was no better than our cat Buddy.

  Chapter 9

  I was on my way back from the Humane Society, covering our weekly Pet Pals piece when I heard the sirens.

  The Pet Pals piece was a filler feature that had become painful and tedious to write. In it, we featured a dog from the Dog Mountain Humane Society that needed adopting. For this week’s article, I was writing about a six-year-old poodle Shih-Tzu mix someone had named Bonedaddy. The dog looked innocuous enough at the beginning, but when I had tried to pet the dog’s head, he’d snarled at me, baring a row of sharp little teeth. It became clear why Bonedaddy had been at the shelter for as long as he had in this dog-crazy town.

  The shelter volunteer I spoke with had told me the canine was poor with children, cats, and other dogs. Still, the Humane Society was hoping to place Bonedaddy in a home any day now.

  I was driving along Honeysuckle Road, a scenic shortcut through a patch of cherry blossom trees, thinking about how to phrase the article’s lede in a fresh and new way for the boring feature, when I heard the sirens.

  I slowed down as the wailing got louder, pulling off to the side of the road as the flashing lights approached in the opposite direction. I watched as the ambulance whizzed by me. A moment later, a cop car raced behind it.

  I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up while I watched them zoom past.

  In that instant, a strange feeling overcame me.

  It was a feeling I hadn’t had a single time since taking up the job at The Chronicle, but one that I used to get on occasion while working for the paper back in Portland.

  This feeling had led to me winning first place in the hard news category of the Northwest Society of Professional Journalists’ annual awards competition for a piece I wrote on the violent murder of a college professor. This feeling had also led me to other articles of equal significance in my time as a reporter.

  That strange feeling was my story meter, as I liked to call it. A sixth sense of sorts that good reporters had when a breaking story was just around the corner.

  I rubbed the back of my neck and watched the ambulance and cop car disappear from my rearview mirror.

  The car behind me suddenly honked, knocking me out of my daze. I shot a sharp look back his way, keeping myself from giving him a stronger gesture, then proceeded to make a screeching U-turn.

  I sped along the road, following the siren procession to wherever it was going.

  Chances were it was probably just a medical call – an old lady who had fallen down the stairs or somebody who had collapsed at the gym.

  Chances were, it wasn’t a story at all.

  But if there was one thing I’d learned over the years in my profession, it was that you didn’t ignore that feeling.

  Even if it meant chasing ambulances and cop cars to track down the story.

  Chapter 10

  I didn’t have to see the body lying on the dog park’s lush green grass to know just who had met their end this hot summer afternoon.

  Because I had already recognized her BMW sitting in the parking lot of Dog Mountain’s biggest and most popular dog park.

  And I recognized the puppy running loose around the park, howling frantically with a kind of heartbreaking sadness that no one else in the world would display over Myra Louden’s passing.

  I stood back, my heels sinking into the soft grass, watching as the paramedics circled the body. I could tell by the slowness in their movements that there would be no resuscitating the fallen woman.

  A group of spectators were huddled a short distance away from the body. One middle-aged woman was sobbing into the arm of a young man who looked like her teenage son.

  I snapped myself out of my momentary shock, and stalked across the grass, heading for the small group. The puppy was running loose and kept circling the park, going back over to the body, then running away when someone tried to grab him.

  I approached the woman who was crying.

  “Excuse me, ma’am, did you see what happened?” I asked in my most sympathetic, understanding voice.

  The woman lifted her head from the young man’s shoulder. I recognized her as being somebody I knew at some point while growing up here in Dog Mountain, but I couldn’t put a name to the face.

  “I saw it happen,” she said. “Myra was walking along with that new puppy of hers when she just…”

  The woman’s voice started to tremble like leaves in a stiff breeze. I nodded, her having just confirmed what I already knew: that it was Myra Louden, the dog board judge, former high school principal, and well-known Dog Mountainite, that had just bitten the dust.

  “She was… she was eating something and then she just…”

  The woman trailed off.

  “She screamed and then she just collapsed.”

  The woman started crying again, her large shoulders shaking with the effort.

  I felt my heart sinking slightly, but not because I was sad over Myra’s passing.

  I was hoping for something a little juicier than this. Such as Myra being stabbed while being mugged or attacked by somebody who’d gone through her Dog Court.

  Instead, the woman had most likely died from a mundane heart attack. Something that would garner nothing more than a news obituary on the local page.

  I caught myself thinking these cold thoughts, and I scolded myself silently.

  Sometimes journalism had a way of turning you into a downright heartless, headline-grubbing, unfeeling human being.

  I turned away from the small crowd of folks gathered off to one side and focused my attention back toward the scene.

  The puppy was still running around, howling. A cop with a Jell-O gut was trying to chase it down to keep it from interfering with the paramedics, but the pooch dodged every attempt at capture, running circles around the officer.

  I squinted looking hard at where the paramedics were working, trying to catch a glimpse of Myra for myself.

  A solitary, clunky black shoe lay apart from the body. I recognized it as one of the pair that she’d been wearing at Lou’s bakery earlier that afternoon.

  I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up again, though this time it had nothing to do with my story meter going off.

  It had to do with the fact that not two hours earlier, I had seen Myra Louden standing, talking, complaining, and being her usual crabby self at Lou’s bakery.

  Now, just a few short hours later, she was here lying deader than a doornail at The Dog Mountain Dog Park, a flurry of paramedics and cops and flashing lights surrounding her body.

  I wasn’t any fan of Myra Louden’s, but the significance of those two drastically different pictures didn’t fail to cut through my cold thoughts and get at something r
eal.

  The woman was alive. And now she was dead.

  No one would ever see her march into the courtroom at another dog board hearing ever again.

  I cleared my throat, pushing away the emotion that was trying to grip hold of me. It wasn’t my place to feel sad over her death, I told myself. I had to remain focused and objective.

  I started walking toward the scene, trying to get a better look at what was going on before they took her away. It had probably just been a heart attack. But then again, it was always good to dot the I’s and cross the T’s.

  But just as I was getting close enough to get a good look at the body, I felt something hard hit my leg and nearly knock me off my feet. I let out a short gasp at the sharp impact. My ankle wobbled like a stack of Jenga pieces about to collapse. I tried to keep my balance as a soft whimper sounded from somewhere beneath me. By some luck, I somehow stayed upright.

  I looked down to see just what had slammed into my leg.

  The little puppy was sitting on the grass next to me, looking confused, like he might be seeing stars.

  He was small and had a brownish-blond coloring. It seemed possible that he was a runt. The dog appeared to be a mixed breed, though I couldn’t be sure. He looked something like a yellow lab mixed with some sort of hound.

  He whimpered some more, and then looked up at me with big sorrow-filled eyes.

  Without thinking, and without my normal apprehension about approaching dogs, I picked up the puppy and hoisted him into my arms. I clutched onto his soft, downy fur. He didn’t squirm or try to get free. The dog just let me hold him, his body trembling, a frightened expression on his face.

  As I stared down at that scared, panicked little face, I temporarily forgot why I was there at the dog park to begin with.

  The puppy had maple-colored eyes and his snout hadn’t grown out yet. His little wet nose shone in the bright sun.

  He looked up at me with an expression of utter helplessness. And there was a desperate sadness behind his eyes. The puppy seemed to understand that his owner was never going to get up again.

  I felt a strange sensation in my chest as I gazed down at the little dog. A sensation that I wasn’t used to. Something that hearkened back to a time before I was bitten by that mean little pug all those years ago. A feeling that—

  “I’m going to need to take him, miss,” a deep voice sounded behind me, breaking through the strange spell I’d suddenly found myself under.

  I turned around, squinting into the sun at the man who was trying to take this helpless little creature away from me.

  When my eyes had adjusted, I was surprised to see just who was standing there.

  His dark eyebrows lifted for a moment at the sight of me, and there was a blank expression on his face.

  “It’s you,” he mumbled suddenly, as if he couldn’t keep the thought from slipping out.

  Lt. Sam Sakai cleared his throat, as if he were suddenly aware that the words hadn’t remained just a thought in his head.

  “What are you doing here?” he said.

  “I saw the ambulance and cop cars,” I said. “Is that Myra Louden? Is she dead?”

  I glanced toward the paramedics. They had hoisted the body onto a gurney and were transporting it to the ambulance.

  I already knew that it was Myra but couldn’t print that until I confirmed it with someone who actually knew what was going on. Which in this case, was Lt. Sakai.

  He looked at me suspiciously.

  “We’ll send out a news release when we’ve notified next of kin,” he said. “That’s all I can say.”

  “Or you could confirm that it’s Myra now so I can get a head start on the story.”

  He flashed those dark eyes of his at me.

  “You reporters are all the same, aren’t you?” he said.

  But he didn’t say it with anger. He said it in a resigned tone. As if he was somehow disappointed.

  “You’re always looking for the story. You don’t care at all that someone just died here today, do you?”

  I furrowed my brow.

  I had encountered plenty of this kind of moralistic nonsense since I started writing. But what people didn’t understand most of the time was the purpose that reporters served. Sure, we could be ruthless. But a good reporter’s final product usually justified that kind of behavior. We told the stories that needed to be told. Without me, Myra’s passing and the work that she did in the community would probably never get the recognition it deserved.

  Or so I believed.

  But explaining all that to a cop like Lt. Sakai was a waste of time. He didn’t see the value in what I did and probably never would.

  “I do care that someone died today, Lieutenant,” I said. “I knew Myra better than you. But I have a job to do. So spare me the lecture and please just confirm that it’s Myra Louden.”

  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.