Bark M for Murder

by An Anthology

  Settled on a huge chunk of driftwood, Maddy spent the next half hour throwing sticks for Aggie and Daph to swim out and bring back. And while Maddy was exercising her pitching arm, she was also considering her best course of action. How did you find out whether or not someone was a terrorist? She remembered reading something about a “terrorist watch list.” Wasn’t that what that lady customs agent in Blaine had used when she caught the guy coming down from Canada intent on blowing up the Space Needle? Or was it the L.A. airport?

  By the time the dogs finally tired of the game, Maddy had made up her mind. “Come on, girls,” she told the wet dogs. “Let’s go home and dry you off. Then it’s time I went looking for some professional help.”

  As it turned out, the professional help Maddy Watkins sought was none too helpful.

  When she walked into the Island County Sheriff’s Office substation a half hour later, the officer in charge, Lieutenant Sonja Knutson-Evers, happened to be someone who had started school in one of Maddy’s kindergarten classes. It was difficult to look at this poised young woman, sitting behind a desk in her very businesslike uniform, without remembering Sonja as a bright little student with long blond braids and glasses.

  “Well hello, Mrs. Watkins,” Sonja said cordially. “How good to see you again. What can we do for you today?”

  “I came to see the watch list,” Maddy announced.

  “The what?”

  “You know,” Maddy said impatiently. “The terrorist watch list. I hear about it on the news all the time. Now I want to watch it.”

  Sonja’s welcoming smile faded. “Do you think you may have encountered a terrorist?” she asked.

  “No, but I could,” Maddy returned. “And I want to be prepared. If I do see one, I certainly want to be able to recognize him.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sonja said. “Our bolfs come from the FBI and Homeland Security…”

  “What’s a bolf?” Maddy asked.

  “Be On the Lookout For,” Sonja answered. “They come through on a regular basis, and they’re part of our daily duty briefings, but they’re not for public consumption. We don’t put them out to ordinary civilians.”

  You probably should, Maddy thought, but she didn’t say it aloud.

  “What about Amber Alerts?” she asked. “You use ordinary citizens for those.”

  Sonja sighed. “Mrs. Watkins, we’re all aware that a year ago you had an extremely difficult encounter with a killer, but—”

  “I’ll say it was difficult,” Maddy interrupted, annoyed by Sonja’s patronizing tone. “The man burned my house to the ground, all because no one in this office was prepared to address my concerns.”

  “I’m sure everyone here did the best he or she could,” Sonja said. “And we’re all terribly sorry about your losing your home, Mrs. Watkins, but the suspicions you brought to us initially simply weren’t solid enough to warrant our taking action—”

  “Until it was too late,” Maddy finished. “And you’re doing the same thing now.”

  “As I started to say before, just because you’ve had one encounter with a killer, doesn’t mean you’re going to run into another one. The fact that your dogs found that murdered woman’s purse was a complete fluke.”

  “I see,” Maddy said, rising to her feet. “And all of us ordinary people are just supposed to sit on our hands and let the professionals mess things up.” She walked as far as the office door where she stopped and turned back. “Do you remember the story of ‘The Little Red Hen?” she asked. “I’m sure I read it to your class. It was one of my favorites. I read it to all my classes.”

  Sonja nodded.

  “Well,” Maddy said. “I guess I’ll have to do the same thing ‘Little Red Hen’ did—do whatever needs doing all by myself!”

  “Mrs. Watkins, please—” Sonja began, but Maddy didn’t wait to hear what she had to say.

  “Not solid enough indeed!” She fumed as she made her way back to the car. “I returned that poor woman’s purse and nobody even bothered to send so much as a thank-you note. Of course she was dead. It was as plain as the nose on your face. What more than that did the cops need?”

  As Maddy started the car and drove home, the entire unlikely chain of events played itself back in her mind as vividly as if it had occurred only yesterday.

  The whole thing had started on a flawless fall morning in early September when she and the dogs had set out for their usual morning ramble down to the beach from her old house. After tiring of chasing sticks into the water, Aggie and Daphne had come back to Maddy dragging an expensive woman’s purse, working like a little team of horses to carry the dripping, seaweed encrusted thing between them. Back at the house, Maddy went through the purse’s many contents finding, among other things, a large amount of soggy cash as well as a passport.

  Maddy did her good-citizen duty. She dried out the cash—all eight-thousand-dollars worth—and the passport, and cleaned up the purse as best she could. Using identification she gleaned from the purse, Maddy tried to track down the purse’s owner, Laurel Riggins, but there she ran into a brick wall. Told that Laurel was out of town, Maddy, instead, turned it over to the woman’s husband, Hadley Riggins.

  That should have been that. Maddy’s encounter with Hadley Riggins left her feeling that she had done a good deed, so she sat back and waited for some form of acknowledgment from his wife. Considering the time and effort Maddy had gone through to return the lost property, flowers would have been appropriate along with a handwritten note. At the very least, there should have been a personal phone call. When none of those were forthcoming, Maddy’s suspicions were aroused. She took her concerns to the very same sheriff’s substation she had just left, where she attempted to file a missing person report. When the officer on duty put her off and refused to do anything about it, Maddy investigated on her own.

  It turned out that Maddy’s suspicions had been well founded. Laurel Riggins hadn’t sent a thank-you note for the simple reason that she was dead— murdered—having been pushed off a Washington State Ferry by her estranged husband. Once the guilty husband learned about Maddy’s single-handed investigation, he came to Race Lagoon intent on silencing her once and for all. He torched Maddy’s house, believing she and the dogs would be trapped inside. But Maddy’s timely and courageous decision to take her dogs and escape to the beach had saved their lives. Later Hadley Riggins was found dead, the victim of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Along with his body, the authorities had found a handwritten note in which Riggins admitted to having murdered his wife.

  In the aftermath of those profoundly disturbing events, Maddy had her fifteen minutes of Oak Harbor fame. Local reporters dubbed her the “Thank-you Note Vigilante.” Some people referred to her as a Gray Crime Fighter as opposed to a Gray Panther. And she assumed that eventually her life would return to normal, but the encounter continued to disrupt her staid existence in ways she never could have imagined.

  Losing her house that way allowed Maddy to see the sense of redeveloping her property and making herself a small fortune. Naturally Rex wanted to step in and handle it for her, but she told him that she was more than capable of handling her own affairs, thank you very much. Knowing Maddy had fended for herself against a dangerous killer gave her reputation a cachet that somehow carried over into her real estate dealings, and she had money in the bank to prove it was true. She no longer had to sell Avon door-to-door in order to supplement her meager retirement income, either.

  Once settled in her new place in Oak Harbor proper, everyone, including Maddy herself, had assumed she would return to living exactly the way she had before. But she hadn’t. That day, huddled on a cold dark beach with her dogs, Maddy had watched helplessly as her house burned to the ground, because she’d had no way to protect herself. All that changed. In the months since, she had taken and passed a course in firearms safety. Maddy Watkins now held a state-issued license-to-carry. She kept her cute little Glock 17 in her purse right along with her cell phone.


  Another big change in her life was her television-viewing habits. She gave up on situation comedies in favor of crime-time TV. She watched and re-watched countless episodes of American Justice, Cops, and Cold Case Files. And she made sure she was home every single Saturday night when that nice man John Walsh came on her local Fox channel with America’s Most Wanted. She would watch every single moment of each program, taking detailed notes as she went along because you could never be sure when one of those dangerous criminals might cross your path, even in Oak Harbor. You’d be able to provide the missing clue that would, as Mr. Walsh said, “Put this bad guy away.”

  Back at the house after her futile visit to the sheriff’s office, she was met by Aggie and Daphne greeting her with utter enthusiasm. As far as they were concerned, Maddy could have been gone for days not only for little over an hour—This was one of the things she liked most about dogs. They were constant and loving—and very forgiving.

  The coffee from morning was cold and bitter, so she splurged on a brand-new pot and then sat down to think some more. What she needed was information—the kind of detailed information her niece had failed to supply. There was only one source for that. Picking up her telephone, Maddy dialed Genevieve’s number.

  “How are you doing?” Maddy asked when her sister answered.

  “Shannon called you, didn’t she!” Gennie said accusingly. “I was afraid she would. She’s really selfish that way. She just doesn’t want me to have any happiness at all. Or fun. As far as she’s concerned, people our age have no business falling in love.”

  “Are you in love?” Maddy asked, deflecting Gennie’s finger-pointing.

  “Well, yes,” Gennie admitted. “As a matter of fact, I am.”

  “Tell me about him,” Maddy commanded. “I’m all ears.”

  That wasn’t entirely true. Her hand was at work as well. Maddy sat with her head bent, using one shoulder to hold the receiver to her ear while she busily scribbled notes.

  “Jamil’s amazing!” Gennie babbled excitedly. “I just wish you could meet him, Maddy. I’ve never met anyone like him. He’s fascinating, and such a gentleman, too.”

  As Gennie raved on, extolling the young man’s good looks, intelligence, and general wonderful-. ness to the high heavens, Maddy kept remembering what Shannon had said earlier. She had claimed that her mother was “ga-ga” over the guy. That was hardly an exaggeration.

  “What does he do and how did you meet him?” Maddy asked. She had heard Shannon’s version, but she wanted to hear the story from Gennie’s point of view as well.

  “Right now he’s driving a cab,” Gennie chirped happily. “The first time I met him, he took me from here to my hair appointment downtown. When the appointment was over, there he was, parked at the curb outside, waiting for me almost like he was my personal chauffeur or something. And the next week, when it was time for me to go back to the beauty shop, here he was again. I didn’t even have to call. He said he’d put me on a standing appointment basis. Isn’t that sweet?”

  Sweet doesn’t have anything to do with it! Maddy thought.

  “But driving a cab is just a temporary measure.”

  Gennie continued. “Jamil and his brothers are interested in starting their own business. They’ve invited me to invest in it as well. That way I’ll be able to be in on the ground floor. I’ll be able to turn that little nest egg Joe left me into a real fortune,” Gennie added. “The same way you did with that redevelopment project of yours.”

  Maddy shook her head and almost dropped the phone in the process. Here she and Genevieve were—one of them over seventy and the other one within spitting distance of it—and the sibling rivalry that had plagued their relationship as children was still very much in play, and Gennie was willing to put her dead husband’s nest egg at risk in hopes of outdoing Maddy’s own modest monetary success.

  “That sounds very interesting,” Maddy managed, hoping she wouldn’t be struck dead for lying. “What kind of business?”

  “Something to do with the Internet, I think,” Genevieve answered. “You know how I am about all these newfangled things. But Jamil tells me it’s a terrific opportunity. He’s promised to bring me a business plan so I can study up on it, but it occurred to me I should probably have someone more knowledgeable than I am take a look at it. Should I show it to Rex? Shannon’s husband is a complete doofus when it comes to having any business sense.”

  Dragging her son Rex into the mix was the last thing Maddy wanted. He already had his own preconceived notions about how advancing age was affecting what he considered to be his mother’s feeble mental capacities. Maddy had no intention of allowing Rex’s Aunt Gennie to add any additional fuel to that particular fire.

  “I suppose I could take a look at it,” Maddy said tentatively. She made the offer more or less expecting that her sister would turn her down cold. Instead, Gennie surprised her.

  “Would you?” Gennie asked eagerly. “I’d like that. You’re a lot more with it about these things than I am. I mean, you even use e-mail.”

  That was true. Maddy had bought herself a used computer and had taught herself to use it about the same time the little twit from the animal shelter had told Maddy she was too old to adopt a puppy. She had found her two purebred red-dog golden retriever puppies and her computer at almost the same time. That original computer had been burned up in the fire, of course. The insurance settlement allowed her to replace the old one with a brand-new Apple laptop, which she could now operate like nobody’s business.

  “When do you think Jamil will have the business plan ready?” Maddy asked.

  “Sometime later this week,” Gennie replied. “Today’s Monday. I’m guessing it’ll be ready by Thursday or Friday.”

  “Good,” Maddy said. “Once you have it, let me know. I’ll come into town. The two of us will have lunch and go over it together.”

  “Maybe the three of us could have lunch,” Gennie suggested. “Jamil is really charming. You’re going to love him.”

  We’ll see about that, Maddy thought. “Sure,” she said. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  After hanging up the phone, Maddy sat and stared at it for a long time. Thursday or Friday didn’t give her much time. She had only three or four days to find out what she needed to know and make her move. A few minutes later she logged onto the Internet herself and went looking for hotel accommodations in downtown Seattle, a good two hours from her home on Whidbey Island. If Jamil Mahmoud was out trolling for what he thought were rich but helpless little old ladies, Maddy Watkins intended to give him a run for his money.

  In the end she decided on booking a room at the Fairmont Olympic. Rex had once insisted on taking Bud and Maddy there for dinner in the Georgian Room on the occasion of their fiftieth anniversary, but that wasn’t why Maddy chose it. By the time their fiftieth had rolled around, Bud’s health was already failing, and Maddy hadn’t felt much like celebrating. But between having a fancy but reasonably private dinner or being forced to endure a big public party, Maddy had opted for the former, which had seemed like the lesser of two evils.

  The dinner had been fine—expensive and rich, but fine. The one thing that stuck in Maddy’s head about that evening had nothing at all to do with the meal. As they were leaving the hotel after dinner, they had encountered a woman walking through the lobby. She had been holding the leashes of two snooty poodles—dogs who looked as though they were accustomed to walking through shiny hotel lobbies every day of their lives. The woman and her dogs were trailed by a hardworking bellman pushing a cart stacked head-high with a mountain of luggage—including two airline dog crates.

  Knowing those two poodles had stayed at the Fairmont made Maddy suspect that Aggie and Daphne could do the same.

  “How many in your party?” the reservations clerk asked.

  “Three,” Maddy answered. “Me and my two goldens, Aggie and Daphne.”

  “Will the dogs have any special dietary requirements?” the clerk asked without a moment
’s hesitation.

  “Oh, no,” Maddy replied. “I’ll bring their own food along.”

  An hour later she set off for Seattle with a single small suitcase, a laptop-loaded briefcase for her, food and leashes for the dogs, and the dogs themselves, all of them packed in to her Honda CRV. (Rex had wanted her to buy a Buick, but Maddy had opted for the Honda SUV since so many old people wearing their heavy-duty, post-cataract-surgery sunglasses seemed to be driving sedate Buick sedans these days!)

  Even with thickening afternoon traffic, it was only slightly past four when she pulled up to the hotel’s fully staffed driveway entrance, where a flock of bellmen surrounded the CRV to help her unload.

  The ride from the Fairmont’s front entrance up to the lobby level was Aggie and Daph’s first elevator ride. They greeted the experience with wide-eyed dismay. On the way through the lobby to the registration desk Maddy remembered those two poodles and wished that the luggage now stacked on her own bellman’s cart was somewhat more impressive.