Copyright Information
Deadly Dog Days: A Dog Days Mystery © 2016 by Jamie M. Blair.
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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 to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
First e-book edition © 2016
E-book ISBN: 9780738751238
Book format by Bob Gaul
Cover design by Lisa Novak
Cover illustration by Gerad Taylor/Deborah Wolfe Ltd
Editing by Nicole Nugent
Midnight Ink is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Blair, Jamie M., author.
Title: Deadly dog days / Jamie Blair.
Description: First edition. | Woodbury, Minnesota: Midnight Ink, [2016] |
Series: A dog days mystery; 1
Identifiers: LCCN 2016026043 (print) | LCCN 2016028833 (ebook) | ISBN
9780738750187 (softcover) | ISBN 9780738751238 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Murder—Investigation—Fiction. | City and town
life—Fiction. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3602.L3348 D43 2016 (print) | LCC PS3602.L3348 (ebook)
| DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016026043
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Acknowledgments
Thank you to Rebecca Friedman for stumbling into Metamora with me, to Terri Bischoff for adopting my stray mystery, and to Nicole Nugent for grooming it so it’s nice and pretty!
I discovered the charming little canal town of Metamora, Indiana, in the summer of 2014 while taking a weekend trip with my mom, grandma, and great-aunt. As a huge fan of the 1990 television series Northern Exposure, I immediately became captivated by the quaint eccentricity of the town. It wasn’t in Alaska, but it was as close as I’ll ever get to the show’s Cicely. While all of the people and places are fictional in Deadly Dog Days, they represent the close-knit sense of community in Metamora as accurately as possible. I believe I’ve done a good job transporting you there in this novel, but I recommend going and spending time in Metamora for yourself.
To Mom, Nana, Aunt Linda, and Metamora, Indiana.
What a memorable trip!
• One •
Old Dan started dowsing again the day I found the body. I sat beside the canal, tossing bits of wheat bread from my sandwich to Metamora Mike and his flapping, quacking raft of followers, and I didn’t notice anything strange at first. If Dan hadn’t strolled by holding his divining rods, I never would’ve diverted my attention from the town’s fat, feathered mascot to the opposite bank, where a slender hand lay splayed in the mud.
The rest of her was underwater, so I didn’t know who it was. It looked like she’d slipped and fallen in. Maybe she hit her head on a rock? I stood up too fast, making my left knee gripe and complain, reminding me I was two days from forty and could stand to skip a few lunches.
The fleeting thought crossed my mind that maybe she wasn’t dead, but it was pushed aside by the fact that she hadn’t moved since I sat down in the grass about thirty minutes ago. Nobody could hold her breath that long without gills. But then I guess she wouldn’t need to hold her breath if she had gills.
Mike let out a sharp quack meant to admonish me for standing there like a stump. “Right,” I said. “I’m coming.”
I hustled across the wooden bridge and down the opposite bank to where the hand lay pressed in the mud. Kneeling in the damp grass, I stretched and grasped for the closest finger.
“Don’t touch,” Old Dan said, startling me so badly that I slipped and landed on my rear in the mud. “She’s gone,” he said. “It’s a crime scene now. Better call Ben.”
The last thing I wanted to do was call Ben, my husband from whom I was separated and the only police officer in historic Metamora, Indiana. Metamora was an unincorporated canal town, so the official authorities that responded to emergencies came from the neighboring town of Brookville. Since there were barely enough full-time residents in our little tourist trap to fill a hat, Ben, having been a “big-city” cop in Columbus, Ohio, for seventeen years before moving back, was hired privately and stationed in town to be our first responder until the Brookville PD arrived.
After righting myself and getting on my feet, I crossed back over to the far side of the canal and scooped up my bag. I shoved my hand inside, digging around in the many pockets and pulling out every item but my cell phone. I kept telling myself I didn’t need to carry such huge handbags, but I always found ways to stuff them full.
Finally I tugged my phone out and dialed Ben’s number. He answered on the first ring. “Cam, I told you I’d talk to her. I haven’t had time. If she calls again—”
“It’s not about your mother,” I said, watching Mike swim lazy circles right about where the dead woman’s head would be under the water. “I found a body in the canal.”
“You what?”
“I found a body. Looks like she drowned. I was sitting on the opposite bank eating lunch and—”
“Who is it?”
“I don’t know. I can’t see anything but her hand.”
“Did you call 911?”
“No. I called you.”
He let out the deep, annoyed sigh that I’d grown familiar with over the course of our four years of marriage. Funny how six months of separation couldn’t erase the tension that sigh always shot through me. I wondered if Ben’s first wife still felt it sometimes, like a phantom limb.
“Cameron,” he said, in his best authority figure voice, “in a life-threatening situation, you dial 911.”
“Well, Ben, the life-threatening part of this situation appears to have been over a while ago, and since the body isn’t going anywhere, it’s not exactly an emergency, either.”
“I’ll call it in to Sheriff Reins. Do not move until he gets there. I don’t want anyone coming along and contaminating the scene.”
I wondered if he thought duck poop was contamination. “I’ll wait for him,” I said. “When will you get here?”
“Not for a while. I’m about an hour and a half away.”
“An hour and a half away?” It was a
Tuesday, just before one in the afternoon. “Aren’t you at work?”
“No. I’m over in Nashville,” he said.
Nashville, Indiana, was a little village filled with shops and bed-and-breakfasts and … and … A female laugh on Ben’s end of the line told me all I needed to know. “Thanks for calling Reins,” I said, and hung up, chest swelling and eyes burning. When would I get past the pain and ache? I didn’t want to be married to him, so why did it hurt to know he was with someone else? Wasn’t it reasonable to think he’d wait more than six months?
I plopped back down on the grassy bank and studied the hand in the mud across from me. There were no age spots or bulging veins. My guess was that she was young. It was the right hand, so I couldn’t tell if she was married. The fingernails were unpainted and the middle nail was broken off short.
Mike swam by her again, flapping his wings and splashing. The water rippled against the bank, and something red could be seen wrapped around the woman’s wrist.
What if I knew her? I probably did. There were only a couple hundred people in Metamora. Chances were good I knew Ben’s lady friend, too.
I shook my head. A woman had died. The last thing I should’ve been worried about was with whom my soon-to-be ex-husband was waltzing around Nashville.
He never took me to Nashville. He said we lived in a town made up of shops and inns, and the last place he wanted to go was another one.
Sirens wailed. Police cars streaked down the road. Mike and his flock flew off, shaking water in my direction as they passed over. Big, dumb ducks.
Sheriff Reins pulled down the road that ran between the shops and the opposite side of the canal from where I sat. He parked in front of Odd and Strange Metamora, the paranormal freak-show shop claiming Metamora was a hotbed of all sorts of phenomenon that were impossible to prove but completely fascinating. His siren blared as he sat in the car talking into his radio. Probably calling for backup.
I made my way over to the bridge again, ignoring the pang in my left knee, which was a sure sign rain was on the way. Reins saw me coming toward his cruiser and blessedly silenced the screaming siren.
By this time Old Dan, dowsing rods erect and grizzled beard hanging down his chest, had been joined by his son, Frank Gardner, who operated the oldest running grist mill in the state. Sue Nelson was beating feet across the road from the Soda Pop Shop, and it would only take another ten minutes for the whole of Metamora to be gathered around the canal waiting for the body to be dragged out.
“Mrs. Hayman,” Sheriff Reins called to me, tipping his hat. “Your husband tells me you’ve found a … um … well, I mean to say—”
“She’s there.” I pointed to the body, putting the sheriff out of his misery. For a man in blue, he had a delicate disposition when it came to situations beyond speeding tickets and loitering. When one of the horses that pull the canal boat accidentally trampled over a man’s foot last month, Reins fainted at the sight of it. To give him credit, it was a rather gory compound break.
“And you know it’s a woman how?” he asked, stopping short of the bank and eyeing me quizzically.
“Narrow fingers,” I said. “The hand looks female to me. I could be wrong.”
More sirens called in the distance, nearing with every second that passed. A brick red SUV pulled down the lane with Fire and Rescue printed on its side, followed by an ambulance.
“Stand back,” Reins shouted to the gathering crowd. Fortunately it was a weekday, so the shops were closed and most of the shopkeepers were at their full-time jobs out of town. Only a few remained during the week, running online retail sites and stocking inventory. Still, there were a good dozen milling about. Old Dan, Frank, and Sue were joined by Fiona and Jim Stein, who ran the train depot, and Jefferson Briggs of Court House Antiques.
To complete the circus-like atmosphere as Sheriff Reins and the rescue crew traipsed down the bank of the canal to recover the body, the Whitewater Valley train chugged into the station, blowing its whistle.
“What happened?” Sue Nelson yelled over the riot, edging up beside me. “Who is it?” Despite the eighty-degree heat of late June, she wrapped her arms around herself like she was freezing.
“I don’t know. Only a hand was visible. I found her.” For some reason, I was beginning to feel guilty for spotting that hand and reporting it.
The paramedics took hold of the body, and I could no longer watch. Something made me turn around and close my eyes. It was one thing to know she was dead, but quite another to see it firsthand.
The last of the steam left the train’s engine on a sigh. The crowd was gravely silent, making it easy to hear the sound of a waterlogged body being lifted out of the canal, and then—
Sue screamed—a gut-wrenching, grief-stricken cry.
Murmurs broke out, bringing the name of the victim to my ears.
“It’s Jenn Berg.”
“Jenn Berg’s dead.”
“Poor Sue!”
The air rushed from my lungs. Jenn Berg was Sue Nelson’s daughter. Sue Nelson, who was standing there beside me with her arms wrapped tight around her middle.
• Two •
Don’t worry, Cam, not everyone thinks you did it,” Brenda Lefferts said, taking a sip of her hot tea like she didn’t just strike me a deathblow. “At least, I don’t.”
“Why would anyone think I had anything to do with it? I only found her. And I’m beginning to regret not leaving her there for someone else to stumble on.”
“Don’t say that,” she said, shushing me and looking around Soapy Savant’s to see who might have overheard me. Most of Soapy and his wife Theresa’s products ran along the lines of scented lotions, soaps of course, and candles, but they also had a little coffee shop. Brenda was the proprietor of Read and ReRead, a used bookstore, located next door to The Soapy Savant.
“You know why,” she said, “and it’s terrible this had to happen at all, but especially now with her dating Ben.”
I gulped my mouthful of coffee and scorched my throat. “What?” I said, wheezing.
“Oh. You didn’t know? I figured you just didn’t want to talk about it. I mean, she is—was—so much younger and … ” Brenda lifted her cup to her mouth and stifled her babbling with another sip of tea.
“I had no idea. I suspected he was seeing someone, but I never imagined—she was in her twenties! That’s closer to his daughter’s age than his.” Ben’s daughter Mia, my stepdaughter, was sixteen. “Wait. Then he’s not with her in Nashville?”
“No, I suppose not,” she said. “Clearly, she’s here.”
“Clearly.”
Brenda patted the bun on the back of her head and checked to make sure the bobby pins securing the oval lace doily were in place. She was around my age, slim as a pole, smart as a whip, and although she didn’t gossip herself, she always knew what was being spread around town.
Sheriff Reins pushed through the door and ordered a cup of coffee at the counter before heading my way. “Mrs. Hayman, ready to make your statement?”
It was Cripps-Hayman, actually, but I didn’t feel it was the appropriate time to correct him, even if answering to Mrs. Hayman made me feel like my mother-in-law, which might be worse than being suspected of harming Jenn Berg.
“I’m ready,” I said, wondering if he too was harboring a hunch that I had something to do with Jenn ending up in the canal.
“I’ll see you later,” Brenda said, clearing out at the speed of light but leaving me with a battered paperback before disappearing. The Clock Struck Midnight was the title. I adored old mysteries, and she never left me without a good book to read.
Reins took her seat and settled in, creaking like an old tree as he stretched his long limbs. “Quite a day,” he said, stirring a spoon around in his caramel-colored coffee.
“Yes,” I said, wishing Ben would show up and navigate this unfamiliar ter
ritory for me.
“So, walk me through finding Miss Berg.” He tapped his teaspoon on the side of his cup before setting it aside and catching my eyes with his. I felt held hostage, locked in his steely stare.
“Well,” I said, and coughed, the word coming out hoarse. “I was on my lunch break, sitting by the canal.” I relayed the short story of Old Dan walking by and me spotting the hand in the mud. “That’s when I called Ben. And he called you.”
Reins tapped his index finger on the table. “Did you know Miss Berg?”
“Did I know her? No.” A sour feeling crept around in my stomach. “I mean, I met her before. She’s Sue’s daughter, so I met her, of course, but I didn’t know her.”
“Where were you last night, Mrs. Hayman?”
My burned throat started to ache. “At home.”
“Was anyone there with you?”
“No. I live alone since Ben … since he moved out.”
Reins pushed his coffee away, like the sight of it disgusted him all of a sudden. “Were you aware of your husband’s relationship with Miss Berg?”
“Relationship?” I was starting to sweat. How could I feel guilty for something I didn’t have any part of? “No, I wasn’t aware of any … ” Dizziness swept through me, and I swayed in my chair. My stomach roiled. I jumped up, jarring my knee. “I think I’m going to be sick,” I said, before dashing away from the table and into the ladies’ room.
When I exited the bathroom, Sheriff Reins told me we’d talk again some other time when I was less worked up. I wondered when that would be. Hearing about your husband dating the much younger woman you just found dead in the canal and learning the whole town was pointing fingers at you for having killed her didn’t seem like something I’d become less worked up about anytime soon.
Outside, the flashing lights and sirens were gone, and the train had left. Two of Brookville’s finest had the bank of the canal roped off with yellow crime scene tape and were doing whatever it was that police officers did to investigate a scene.
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