Bark Once For Murder: A Pet Shop Cozy Mystery, Book 1 (Pet Shop Cozy Mysteries)

by Susie Gayle

  I untie my green apron, which I’m still wearing since I was pretty hasty in chasing down Rowdy, when I realize there’s something in the front pocket… Sharon Estes’ wallet. I completely forgot about it in all the hubbub of, you know, finding a body.

  I don’t have her home number, so I check my phone to see if it’s listed. It’s not. Instead I call her office and, considering the late hour, I get her answering machine. I leave a message that I found her wallet and that I can bring it back to her tomorrow.

  By the time I crawl into bed, Rowdy is already there, rolling around on his back on my comforter. I can’t help but laugh at his personality. What a ridiculous little dog.

  Before I go to sleep, I mentally review my to-do list for the next morning: go to Sarah’s. Bring Rowdy back to the shop. Return Sharon’s wallet. And hope that my alibi is strong enough to not be arrested on suspicion of murder.

  CHAPTER 8

  * * *

  The next morning, my eyelids flutter open around six-thirty and the first thing I see is Rowdy’s face, panting excitedly. Morning breath is bad; doggie morning breath is worse. Yuck.

  I groan and roll over, and he decides this is an invitation to climb atop me and lick my face.

  “Alright, alright, I’m up! Jeez.”

  Being a pet shop owner, I frequently get samples from pet food manufacturers, so after some digging I find a small bag of kibble to serve as an appropriate breakfast for Rowdy and I feed him from a plastic Tupperware bowl. He gobbles it up like it’s the best meal he’s ever had, and then runs to the door and glances up at me expectantly.

  “Right, bathroom. Give me a minute.” I pull on jeans and a light jacket, and then grab my green apron and Sharon’s wallet before I hook Rowdy’s leash to the collar and we head outside. The sun is already shining and the day promises to potentially relieve me of long sleeves. Rowdy does his business in my small front yard, and then we head over to Sarah’s place, walking since my car is still parked at the shop.

  Sarah’s apartment is on the second floor of a three-story red-brick building that used to be a school on the southern end of Seaview Rock. It’s about a fifteen-minute walk from my house on Saltwater Drive, which isn’t bad at all in nice weather.

  I knock on her door and a moment later she calls out, “Come on in, it’s open!”

  Two scents hit us both at the same time: coffee and bacon. Rowdy tugs hard at the leash to find the source of the intoxicating aroma of pig product, while I head straight for the coffeepot.

  Sarah stands in front of the stove, cooking up eggs and flipping bacon. “Good morning,” she greets us. “Did you sleep well?”

  “Not really.” Truth is, I was tossing and turning most of the night, my dreams a chaotic combination of Karen’s stern expression and Derik Dobson’s unmoving body.

  “Me neither,” she admits. “But hey, nothing a good breakfast can’t fix.”

  I appreciate her optimism, though I have my doubts about that. Rowdy sits in front of the stove and watches her, his tail swishing so hard it’s likely to rub a shiny spot in the tiled floor.

  She serves up two plates of sunny-side-up eggs with bacon and toast, and we sit at her small round dining table. I poke at the egg yolk, letting it run into a pool beneath the bacon and realizing that I don’t have much of an appetite.

  “Will,” she says finally, “you know we should talk about it.”

  “I don’t wanna,” I tell her.

  “I know. But you said yesterday that you knew him.”

  “I did.” I quickly recount the tale of Dobson trying to buy me out a few years earlier. “He wasn’t a nice person. It seemed to me that he only wanted to be in Seaview Rock because we had a reputation for keeping companies like his out. But still… I can’t believe anyone would do that.”

  She gives my hand a reassuring squeeze. “I’m sorry you had to be the one to find him.” We eat in silence for a few moments before she quietly asks, “Who do you think could have done it?”

  I shrug. “Honestly, I can’t think of a single person in town that would. But when you consider how passionate most people are about keeping things the way they are around here… I suppose it could be anyone.”

  She nods. “I really, really hate to say it, but there is a silver lining to this.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, construction on the Pet Emporium will be on pause for a while. It’s a crime scene now; until they figure this thing out, I’m sure the police will force them to stop.”

  “That’s not worth someone dying,” I tell her.

  “Of course it’s not,” she says quickly. She tosses Rowdy a small piece of bacon, and then rises and moves to take my plate.

  “No, let me. You cooked.” I take my plate and hers and bring them over to the sink, rinse them, and put them away in the dishwasher. As I’m closing the door again, I notice a knife block on her countertop that wasn’t there before. Ordinarily that wouldn’t be anything noticeable, except that there are three knives missing from it, and none in the dishwasher.

  “Hey, did you get a new knife set?” I ask her.

  She shrugs casually. “Kind of. I needed a new set, so I picked one up at the thrift store. There were a few missing, but the price was right.”

  “Huh.” I glance at my watch. “It’s almost eight o’clock. We should head down to the store.”

  ***

  The three of us get into Sarah’s red sedan and she drives us over to the shop. I try to put Rowdy in the backseat, but he decides the front seat is where it’s at and settles into my lap.

  “He’s getting attached to you,” Sarah notes.

  “Yeah, well don’t get too used to me, buddy,” I tell the dog. “Once all this craziness is over, my top priority will be finding you a good home.”

  It only takes about four minutes to drive downtown to the shop. Sarah pulls into a narrow parking spot behind the store next to my SUV and the three of us walk up the alley to the front—and then we all stop in our tracks.

  A police cruiser sits idling at the curb. Chief Mayhew leans against it, her hands in her pockets. When she sees us come around, she straightens and frowns.

  “Chief,” I say, trying to sound calm. It’s usually not good when the police are waiting outside your door. “Good morning. What can we do for you?”

  “I’m really sorry,” she says, and her expression appears genuine, even as she reaches for the handcuffs on her belt.

  “No, you can’t!” Sarah exclaims. “He didn’t do it!”

  “I know,” Chief Mayhew replies. “Sarah Cummings, you’re under arrest for suspicion of murder.”

  CHAPTER 9

  * * *

  It turns out that’s a really important phrase, “suspicion of.” As I later find out, it means that there’s enough reason for the police to think that someone committed a crime, but not yet enough solid evidence to formally charge them with the crime.

  As Chief Mayhew reads Sarah her rights and puts her in the back of the cruiser, it’s all I can do to stare in disbelief and try to protest.

  “Chief, be reasonable! Sarah couldn’t have done it!”

  “And why’s that, Will?” she asks before getting into her car.

  “Because she… she would never hurt anyone!”

  Patty sighs and looks away. “The way I heard it, she took a lunge at Derik Dobson yesterday in front of a few dozen people. Witnesses tell me you had to hold her back.”

  “I… but… that’s…” Words fail me. Sarah is the most compassionate person I’ve ever met. There’s just no way she could have done it.

  The chief gets in and the cruiser rolls away. I consider my options for a quick minute before unlocking the door to the shop. I put Rowdy in the enclosure in the rear and give him a tennis ball to keep him busy.

  “I’m really sorry, buddy, but I have to go take care of some things. You stay here and be a good boy.” As I leave again, Rowdy whimpers a lit
tle, and it breaks my heart. Poor guy is so used to being left alone.

  I scribble a quick note and stick it in the window of the shop—“closed today for emergency”—and hop in my truck, an eight-year-old gray Bronco that still runs like a champ. I drive straight to the police station, march inside, and right up to Patty, who sits at a desk filling out paperwork, no doubt in connection to Sarah’s arrest.

  “Patty, you have the wrong person,” I tell her, trying to muster as much conviction as possible.

  She sighs, sets down the pen, and folds her hands atop the desk. “Will, I’m not going to share details of this case with you. But I will say that I have eight eyewitnesses who claim they saw you chasing that dog through town. Your alibi checks out. Hers doesn’t. And in your statement, you said that you ran into her at the scene of the crime right after discovering the body. Didn’t you?”

  I suck in a breath. In my quest for complete honesty, I did indeed include that in my statement… and it helped to land Sarah in jail.

  “I’m sorry,” Patty continues. “She seems like a very nice woman, but facts are facts. She was at the scene of the crime, alone, and no one else was around. We’ll get a warrant and search her place, and forensics will report back to us on the knife and the body. Until we find evidence to the contrary, she’s our lead suspect.”

  “Can I at least see her? Just for a minute?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Patty gives me a long, even look. “In the spirit of honesty? Because I don’t yet know that the two of you weren’t in cahoots on this.”

  My mouth falls open a little, and I decide to get out of there before I talk myself into a worse position. I head outside, the bright sun and warm breeze a bizarre dichotomy to how I feel right now. I sit on the concrete stairs for a moment, thinking. All I really have to do is stay out of this, like Patty said, and the evidence will show that Sarah is innocent. The knife will come back with someone else’s fingerprints, and…

  The knife.

  Oh, no.

  My mind reels as I recall the knife block in Sarah’s kitchen with the three missing knives. Did those knives match the one I found at the warehouse? Think, Will. Think! Try as I may, I can’t conjure up a clear-enough image of the dirty knife that Rowdy dug up. I didn’t get a good look at it before I dropped it.

  What if it matches? The police will get a warrant, search Sarah’s apartment, and find that three knives are missing… one of which might be the same or similar to the murder weapon.

  “Hey, you okay?”

  I’m so deep in thought that I don’t even recognize the voice until I look up and see Karen behind the wheel of a silver sedan, pulled over at the curb outside the station. She appears concerned, leaning over the passenger seat and shouting to me through the window.

  “Are you okay, Will?” she asks again.

  “No.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “With you? Absolutely not.” It comes out a bit harsher than I intended.

  “Yeah, that’s fair,” she says quietly.

  “What was that?”

  She puts the car in park and gets out, hugging her arms sheepishly and looking at the ground. “Look, I was pretty terrible to you. The way we felt about each other wasn’t enough to sustain our differences, but that’s no excuse for the way I treated you. I’m sorry.”

  I scrutinize her, trying to tell if she’s being sincere. It sure seems it, but on the other hand, she never once apologized for her behavior in the past, not even in the midst of the divorce.

  “You don’t have to accept my apology,” she continues, “but clearly whatever has you sitting outside a police station at eight-thirty in the morning is bothering you. So come on. Let’s go down to the Runside, get a cup of coffee, and talk.” She puts her hands out in front of her, like someone who’s surrendering. “Just talk. I promise. You’ll feel better.”

  I sigh. She’s not wrong. I get up, and we both get into the car.

  CHAPTER 10

  * * *

  I know what you’re thinking: guy’s girlfriend gets arrested, and the first thing he does is hop in the car with his ex-wife? What’s wrong with this picture?

  First off, Sarah is still at the forefront of my mind. Nothing matters to me more than clearing her name. Second, Karen’s right; even though animals usually suffice as a sounding board for whatever I’m feeling, they can’t talk back. Talking it over with a person who can give advice is called for in this situation. Sure, I could have just gone to Sammy—he’s always ready to lend an ear to my grievances—but there’s a third part to this, and it requires some brutal honesty on my part: closure. If Karen is truly moving back to Seaview Rock, and seeing her is unavoidable, I’d much rather us have some sort of acquaintance, even if just barely, than to seethe at the very sight of her on a regular basis.

  At least these are all the things I tell myself as she drives us out to the Runside. We don’t talk much until we get there and grab a table. Holly raises both eyebrows at the sight of us together, but I don’t offer her any explanation. I just ask for two coffees.

  “Alright,” Karen says, “lay it on me.” She sets her cell phone on the table next to mine and wraps both hands around the warm mug.

  I shake my head. “Okay. Well, uh, my girlfriend, the woman I’m seeing, was arrested this morning for a crime that she didn’t commit.”

  Karen’s eyes widen in surprise. “Oh. That is something.” Whatever she was expecting me to say, it wasn’t that. “Are you completely sure she didn’t do it?”

  “Yes, Karen, I’m sure,” I tell her flatly.

  “What is it she’s accused of?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “That’s fine.” Her gaze softens. “I’m really sorry to hear that, Will.”

  “Are you though? I figure you’d be tickled at the idea of my life not going so great.”

  Her mouth falls open a little. “How can you say that? I don’t wish anything bad on you.” She reaches over and tries to put her hand on mine. I pull it back quickly, as if I was touched by a hot iron.

  She bites her lip, obviously hurt. “Look, if we’re going to live in the same town, we should at least try to be friends.”

  “I know,” I agree. “But to be honest, I’m not sure I know how to do that.”

  She nods. “That’s fair.” She thinks for a moment, and then says, “I’m going to go to the restroom real quick. Maybe when I get back, we can start over from the beginning, try this again until we get it right.” She stands and adds, “Don’t leave.”

  “Okay,” I murmur.

  As soon as she’s out of sight, my first instinct is to leave. What am I even doing here? I have bigger problems than trying to make a friend out of my ex. I start to rise, but then my phone buzzes loudly from the table.

  I pick it up and check the message. It’s an email, some promotional offer from a clothing store, and I realize it’s not my phone, but Karen’s. I’m about to put it back down when another email catches my eye, near the bottom of the screen. The sender reads “Derik Dobson,” and the subject is “Seaview Rock.”

  Yes, I know this is a crazy invasion of privacy. Yes, I know I should just put the phone down and let it lie. But would you? Of course not.

  The email thread is a long correspondence, going back a few months, between Karen and Derik. I know I don’t have time to actually read them, so I scroll through it quickly, picking up keywords and phrases here and there: “ideal location,” “almost no competition,” and frequent use of the name “Sharon Estes.”

  My god. How could I be so blind? Sharon is good friends with Karen’s mother, who lives just outside of Seaview Rock. Karen has known Sharon since she was a teenager. But why on earth would Karen help Pet Emporium move here?

  “Will!” Holly exclaims from behind the bar. “Will, come see this!”

  I put down the phone, pick up mine, and hurry over to the bar, whe
re Holly has the small TV behind it tuned into a news station. A report on the death of Pet Emporium’s CEO, Derik Dobson, is on the screen, a camera crew reporting from just outside the warehouse where he was found.

  “Do you believe that?” Holly asks, incredulous. “He’s dead.”

  “Who’s dead?” Karen asks from behind me. Her hand flies to her mouth when she sees the headline across the bottom of the screen. “Oh my god, Derik…?”

  I turn to her calmly. “Derik? Did you know him?”

  “I, uh… no, of course not…”

  “Then why do you have emails from him going back to January?”

  She scowls at me. “Did you look at my phone? How dare you!”

  “I thought it was mine… that’s not important. You did this. You connected Sharon with Derik and facilitated the Pet Emporium coming here. Why, Karen?”

  She just shakes her head, her lip trembling. “I… didn’t think…”

  I storm out of the Runside. She chases me out into the parking lot and grabs my arm. I spin on her angrily. “What?”

  “Listen to me, please. I only did it because, well, things weren’t going so well for me, and… I thought that if…”

  “If what, Karen?”

  She squeezes her eyes shut and says quickly, “I thought that if your business went under, you would need me again.”

  There I am, struck speechless once again. When I find my voice, it’s low and edged with ire. “You tried to put me out of business so we could get back together?” I scoff the loudest, hoarsest scoff I can muster. “That is despicable.”

  “I did change my mind. I tried to talk Derik out of it, but he wouldn’t listen to me. I even tried to threaten him, but he and Sharon were already making the plans—”