Without Missing a Bark

by Stella St. Claire

  “No,” Natalie said as she waved her hands dismissively. “She’s a little snarky for me. No offense.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. I don’t take offense to it, and neither would she.” Olivia sat down at the desk and realized once again that Natalie was still waiting for something. “Right. You wanted to know if Jackie and I have plans.” The girl nodded eagerly. “I might have dinner with her later.”

  “At her house?” Natalie asked anxiously.

  “No. I was thinking about going to End Game.”

  The seconds ticked by, and Natalie looked more and more frustrated. She opened her mouth again, and Olivia held up her hand. “I’m sorry, Natalie. I don’t want to make you late for your bowling fun, but I’ve got some work to do.”

  “Right.” The younger woman sighed, and her head drooped in defeat. “Sure. Sorry to keep you.”

  She walked out with her shoulders slumped, and Olivia shook her head. The woman was amazing with the dogs, but sometimes she had issues with people. Seriously. What kind of person would ask her if she picked out her clothes ahead of time? She lived in t-shirts and yoga pants. Who needed to choose anything?

  Within the next hour, several dogs trickled in. She put Goodwin, Jax, Snowball, and Tucker in one room to play. Lily and Duchess stayed out in the main office area. Olivia was putting up the dog pen for the puppy when Joyce arrived.

  "There's my cute baby!" Olivia squealed as she picked up the puppy and kissed him on the head. He squirmed and cried until Olivia put him down in the pen. She threw some toys in there with him. Lily and Duchess immediately ran up to the pen to sniff him, and the puppy made some grunting noises and tried to lick them through the screen.

  "That is just too cute," Olivia sighed as her heart melted. "Don't you want one, Joyce? I hear people’s kids are loving them."

  "I have been thinking about getting a dog," Joyce admitted. "But probably not a puppy. And I don’t have any kids."

  Olivia was surprised, but she didn't voice it out loud. Not having kids was a choice some people made, after all.

  Once everyone was settled, Olivia moved behind her desk. "Since Sharon hasn't turned in the contract yet, I'm going to need you to sign this for today. It's just granting me permission to do things like take the puppy to the vet if there are any issues that arise."

  Joyce pulled out a pair of reading glasses and scanned over the document. "Not a problem," she said upon reaching the bottom. Grabbing a pen from the can that Olivia kept on the desk, she signed it and handed it back. "Anything else?"

  Olivia was about to tell her that everything was fine when her eyes fell on the signature. It shouldn't have been anything out of the ordinary—except that there was something familiar about the loops and curves on the dotted line.

  "Young and Confused," Olivia breathed. The y and e in “Joyce” matched the ys she’d seen in Dear Ruby’s hate mail. She frowned in concentration, then nodded. The woman who’d lost her fiancé in Afghanistan—the y and e in “Dear Ruby” and in other words in that letter had been identical. She'd spent enough time analyzing them.

  Joyce looked up sharply. "What did you just say?"

  Olivia immediately realized that she'd made a mistake. Janelle and her helpers and customers in the bakery were right downstairs, but there was a decent amount of soundproofing between the floors. With the exception of the dogs running around, Olivia was basically alone.

  "Nothing," she said quickly. "Just talking to myself."

  There was a moment of silence as the two women stared at each other. Joyce was the first to relax, saying out of the blue, "I was eighteen, you know? I'd been in love with Aaron since I was twelve. We were high-school sweethearts, and I just knew that we were going to be happy for the rest of our lives."

  Her voice was filled with sadness, and Olivia gripped the edge of the desk. "Joyce."

  The other woman held up her hand. "You want to know why, don't you? Why I killed Madeline Stone? After all, so much time has passed.” Her voice changed, and she seemed to be mimicking someone. “Surely I'm not still holding on to that anger."

  "You don't have to explain anything to me. I know she ruined people's lives," Olivia whispered.

  "Writing to Dear Ruby was all the rage. She was a new columnist, and she was the first thing I read in the morning. I loved the edginess. I thought that only losers wrote to her, but then my friends dared me to do it. I knew that her response would be cutting,” Joyce paused, and then she added bleakly, “but I just didn't realize how deep. I asked her if I was too young to get married."

  "She told you yes." Olivia was trying to think how to distract the woman while she slipped a hand into her pocket and reached for her phone, but it didn't matter. Somehow she managed to dial 9-1-1 without Joyce noticing.

  Joyce’s eyes were glazed over. She was stuck in the past. "All of her reasons were logical—but I wasn't confused at all.” Her voice firmer, she went on. “I knew that Aaron and I were going to marry, but then he found out. He found out about the column, and we had a huge fight. The last words I said to him were terrible. I called off the wedding two days before we were supposed to be married. I told him that Dear Ruby had been right. We were too young to marry." A tear slid down her cheek, and her voice broke as she finished, "He was deployed the next week."

  "I'm so sorry, Joyce."

  "I wrote him letters every day, apologizing. Three weeks after he was gone, I discovered that I was pregnant. I wrote to him immediately and told him. I wanted him to have something to look forward to. I never heard anything back from him, but I was optimistic. I knew that our love would carry us through anything."

  The woman’s eyes turned cold. "Except death. I was with his parents when the army chaplain arrived to tell them the bad news. My world ended that very day. I miscarried a week later, and I lost every part of him I ever had. I think about them—Aaron and our baby—every second of every day."

  "How did you find her?" Olivia asked. She glanced down at the phone in her pocket. Nick had picked up, but she wasn't sure if he could hear anything.

  She prayed that he could.

  "It was your article. A friend of mine in the city had seen it. She called me after Madeline contacted her. My friend had responded to an ad in the city paper’s classifieds, had been one of the applicants interested in the puppies. I went to confront her about stealing the puppies."

  "And you saw the articles," Olivia finished.

  "I just lost it. Once I realized who she was, I accused her. She'd never once responded to my letters after my question was published. She never apologized. All I wanted was to know why, but she just laughed at me. I lost it. I didn't even realize what I was doing until after she was dead."

  Olivia sighed. "Not that it makes a difference, but Madeline was happily married once. Her husband divorced her after she was diagnosed with cancer. That experience made her bitter. It doesn't excuse the lives that she ruined, but that's the explanation."

  Joyce nodded her head. "You're right. It doesn't excuse it."

  "I'm sorry," Olivia said hesitantly. "I had to call the police."

  The woman nodded. "I know. We all have pay for what we did. She had to pay, and now so do I. Sharon will be back tomorrow. Will you watch Brady until then?"

  "I'll make sure he's taken care of."

  Olivia had barely gotten the words out before the door opened and Nick walked in. Several deputies followed behind him, and it looked as if he'd called Andrew as well, though Olivia had not heard any of them on the stairs, Nick and the deputies coming up from the street level, and Andrew hurrying down from their apartment.

  Joyce calmly stood waiting to be arrested, but Olivia could see the anguish on her face. There was so much regret there, so much pain. Killing Madeline hadn't alleviated any of it.

  The case was closed, but it certainly wasn't a satisfying ending, as far as Olivia was concerned.

  21

  As she watched Nick arrest Joyce, Olivia glanced uneasily at Andrew. The case had bee
n solved, and nobody else had gotten hurt. That should have made Andrew happy, but he stood a little apart and watched her grimly as she answered Derek's questions.

  "Olivia, you're not paying attention," Derek said and sighed heavily. "She just confessed to you?"

  "She was looking for Sharon's kidnapped dog. She told me that Madeline was in contact with another friend of hers, and she went to see if one of the puppies Maddie was selling was Sharon’s, to confront the woman about the dog. She had no idea that Madeline was really Dear Ruby."

  "And she lost her temper?"

  Olivia blinked and took a deep breath, letting it out in a sigh. "Joyce seems like such a happy and bubbly person. You'd never have any idea that she'd lost so much or that she was carrying such anger around. No idea at all." She shook her head. The poor woman had simply looked resigned as Nick escorted her away.

  Madeline had wrecked so many lives. Olivia found it difficult to really mourn the woman’s death. The arrest didn't feel like a victory. It also didn't really feel like justice. Murder was wrong—but after all that Joyce had gone through?

  "All right. We're going to take her for processing, but Nick might have some more questions later." Derek flipped his notebook shut and followed Joyce and the sheriff out of the office.

  "Are you okay?" Andrew asked quietly.

  "Yes. I'm just a little heartbroken."

  "But you did it. You solved the case."

  Looking up sharply, Olivia narrowed her eyes. She could hear a strange note in Andrew's voice. "Maybe I did, but that doesn't mean I feel good about it. Joyce made some bad decisions, but she was encouraged to make those choices by a woman she admired. She lost a lot because of Dear Ruby."

  Andrew shook his head. "She was an adult when she broke up with her boyfriend. What happened to her was terrible, but she needs to face the consequences of her actions. No one made her do it."

  Olivia’s chest squeezed with anxiety. "I would think that you of all people would understand. You broke off our engagement, and we found a second chance."

  "Because we were both able to admit that we were wrong."

  "Yeah, but nobody pushed you into it!" Olivia cried. "Nobody told you to break up with me. You did it on your own, so you didn't have anyone else to blame but us. If Brent had told you to break up with me, you could have agreed but then blamed him and never found your way back to me."

  Andrew cocked his head and stared at her. "You're upset," he murmured.

  "I am upset. What Joyce did was wrong, but ‘Dear Ruby’ let her bitterness take over until all she did was ruin relationships and lives."

  The world faded away as Olivia stared at Andrew in silence. She needed him to acknowledge that not letting go of the past could be toxic, especially to relationships. "Is there something else that you want to say to me?" she asked quietly.

  "Like what?"

  "Like the fact that you turned into me. You're rushing into this investigation, even though we both know that you hate it. The fact that you won't talk when we both know that there's a problem. You're avoiding, and that's usually my tactic."

  "Frustrating, isn't it?" he said lightly.

  "No. This is not some lesson that you're trying to teach me. Tell me what's going on!"

  Running his hand through his hair, he sighed. "I thought the mystery would be good. Us working as a team. We could each understand the other person's side."

  "And?" she demanded. "What is it that you understand?"

  "That you're a little too competitive," he said, and then he chuckled. "And that it means more to you than just being nosy." He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her.

  Olivia leaned into his embrace and murmured, "I get your frustrations, too. Just thinking about you maybe getting hurt was enough to make me want to ban you from working on mysteries with me," she admitted. "But you did a good job."

  "I like it better behind the computer," he chuckled. "So now that it's over, maybe we can talk? I feel like there's something on your mind."

  Yes, there was. This was her chance. Disengaging herself from Andrew's warm embrace, she walked over to her bag and pulled out her wallet. "Andrew, I love you," she said softly as she unzipped the pocket to pull out the ring.

  "I love you, too," he replied with a smile. "In fact, I think I know what you're going to say next."

  Olivia froze. "You do?"

  He raised an eyebrow at her. "You've been trying to be more romantic. You think that I haven't noticed, but I have! The trip to the restaurant where I first told you that I loved you, for just one example . . ."

  Seeing his grin as the words sank in, she gasped. "You did remember! I spent the whole night thinking that the only thing you remembered was the food poisoning!"

  "No,” he said with a chuckle. “I remember. Every detail, in fact. We were actually fighting over the meal. You were trying to convince me to try the fish and chips, and I'd had a late lunch, so I just wanted something light. Your fierce loyalty to that dive bar, your love of such a simple meal, everything about that night forced me to say something that I already knew. I finally thought that maybe you were ready to hear it."

  "Yes. That's right. We hadn't been back since that awful night, and I thought the place deserved a second chance. It really does have the best fish and chips I’ve ever tasted." Pushing her fingers into the pocket of her wallet, she touched the ring. "I always wanted to ask you something."

  "Oh yeah? What's that?"

  Olivia opened her mouth to finally ask him to marry her—and in that moment, his phone rang.

  Holding up one finger, he answered. "Hey, Nick. What’s up?" After listening for a moment, he nodded. "Sure. I have to head to work anyway for a couple of hours, so I'll drop them off on my way out."

  Hanging up, he flashed her an apologetic grin. "That was Nick.” He tapped the box full of Dear Ruby hate mail. “Apparently, all of the deputies forgot to take this box of letters with them—it’s evidence. I'm going to drop the box off now and head to the hospital for a few hours. I'll probably be home late. Are you going to be okay?"

  "Sure," Olivia said weakly. "Of all the killers I've taken down, Joyce was the easiest. It was almost anticlimactic."

  "I like those kinds of endings," Andrew said in satisfaction. Leaning over, he gave her a quick kiss before he grabbed the box and headed out.

  Alone again, Olivia slumped against the desk. Goodwin walked over and licked her fingers.

  "I don't think I'm ever going to make an honest man out of that guy," she murmured to her buddy.

  Goodwin barked sharply as if to encourage her to try again, but Olivia wasn't so sure. Maybe it was just time to accept that she and Andrew weren't meant to be married. They could still be together—and be happy—but maybe the white dress and tiered cake were just not for her.

  22

  "Jackie?" Olivia knocked on her friend's door. "Your door's locked. I can't get in."

  The lock turned, and the door opened. "Sorry. I forgot to leave it unlocked for you when I came in."

  Tentatively, Olivia stepped inside. The house was in complete disarray. Books were piled on the floor, and all the drawers were open. "Is this why you called me? Did someone ransack your house?"

  "What?" Jackie started to pace in the living room as she tucked her red hair behind her ears. "No. I just started moving things around, and then I started to panic. Am I ready for this? What if I'm not? What if we're moving too fast? What if it's just this scenario that’s forcing us together? And what took you so long?”

  Stepping forward, Olivia reached out and grabbed her friend's arms. "Whoa. Calm down. I had to change because my shirt smelled like dogs. Can we maybe back up a little bit? —because I have no idea what you're saying."

  "Brent wants us to move in together. He says that it's because of this whole stalker thing, but we both know it's because he's ready to take that next step."

  Laughing, Olivia let go. "This is your big emergency?" she asked. "Your boyfriend wants to live with you? Jac
kie, you two are pretty much living together now."

  Her friend's face screwed up in anger, and the redhead said in accusation, "That's what he said! Are you taking his side?"

  "I'm not taking anyone's side!"

  "Olivia, tell me why I'm freaking out!"

  Taking Jackie's arm, Olivia led her to the couch and forced her to sit down. "Look at me,” she said, emphasizing every word until Jackie did as she was told. Once she was sure she had her friend’s attention, she went on. “Everything is going to be okay. I get it. You and Brent are still riding the wave of a new relationship. You two are staying together but not really living together."

  "Yes." Jackie nodded her head eagerly. "That's right."

  "But Brent loves you. He wants to progress to the next part of the relationship.” Olivia narrowed her eyes. “What did you tell him?"

  "Honestly? I feel like somebody else took over my body. I was so excited! He kept trying to convince me, and all I could say was yes, over and over again. He went to work, and I came back here to make room for him, and then reality set in.” Jackie began to hyperventilate. “I told Brent that I wanted him to move in with me." Her eyes widened in panic. "What if that's not what I want?"

  “Calm down,” Olivia urged. “Breathe! In! Out! In! Out!” When she saw her friend’s breathing start to regulate itself, she went on in her most reasonable tone. "Well, then you tell him that you were wrong. I think the most important thing right now is not to focus on Brent's reaction but to focus instead on how you actually feel. Think about it. Do you want Brent to move in here with you?"

  "You didn't," Jackie said softly.

  "No. You're right. I definitely have never wanted Brent to move in with me," Olivia said with a snort.

  In mock anger, Jackie lightly punched Olivia in the arm. "This is serious!"

  "My experiences aren't yours, Jackie. My relationship with Andrew is nothing like your relationship with Brent. You can't base your decisions off anything I’ve done or decided."