Mutts & Murder: A Dog Town USA Cozy Mystery

by Meg Muldoon

  I went for the door, grabbing my purse and stuffing everything into it hastily. Then I grabbed the keys off the foyer counter and reached for the front door knob.

  “Meoooowwww!!!”

  I turned around and let out a sigh, giving the big cat a hard look.

  “I know that Lou already fed you before she left this morning,” I said, looking into his sad little face. “Don’t try and pretend you didn’t have a nice turkey giblet feast this morning.”

  That sorrow-filled, begging expression remained.

  After a moment, I let out another sigh.

  The cat had my number and he damn well knew it.

  “Fine,” I said, putting my purse on the counter.

  He seemed to understand me and turned his back, trotting toward the kitchen.

  If I had one-tenth the manipulation capability that Buddy the orange cat possessed, I would have had my name etched on an office door at The New York Times by now.

  Chapter 6

  My hand dropped suddenly from the car door handle as I stared at the wreckage.

  “Son of a…”

  In the rush of being late, I had almost missed the disrupted leafage and torn-up flower petals strewn across the front yard.

  I felt my hands ball up into fists at my side. I tossed my purse down on the ground and stomped over to the ripped-up rose bushes.

  The Ripper of Labrador Lane had struck again.

  When dog walkers let their pets poop on the lawn, it didn’t bother me that much. I just simply cleaned it up without complaint. When they let their dogs pee and dig their claws into the manicured grasses, I didn’t complain then either.

  In fact, as far as I was concerned, the entire Fido force of Dog Mountain was welcome to the usage of my front lawn.

  Just so long as they kept their paws, claws, and snouts out of the rose garden.

  I surveyed the damage, feeling helpless and mad as hell all at the same time. A few of the plants’ branches had broken clean off. Several of the yellow roses had dropped to the ground, their petals crushed and their leaves scattered.

  This was the third time in the last month that some destructive mutt had a field day in the garden. I’d seen the muddy-colored medium-sized dog once, but had been unable to catch him. As of yet, I had no way to stop the culprit, and more importantly, no way to find the culprit’s owner. The dog itself was going to do what dogs do when it was off leash – run through gardens and destroy lawns. It was the owner I was really after. The one that I was going to make pay once I found out just who he or she was.

  It wasn’t that I was a green thumb freak, though I had spent the last six months diligently caring for those plants.

  It was because of what the yellow roses represented.

  My mother had planted them. Just a small row of yellow flowers 20 years ago. In the two decades since, they’d grown into a full-fledged beautiful rose garden.

  It had been my mom’s pride and joy.

  And that self-centered dog owner had just their pooch run all over it this past month, along with several other gardens on the street too. I’d dubbed the dog “The Ripper of Labrador Lane” because of his mysterious and destructive ways.

  I shook my head angrily. Then I glanced at my watch.

  I was going to find the dog’s owner. And I was going to find him or her soon.

  But it wouldn’t be this morning.

  I took one long last look at the crumpled flowers in the dirt, then I turned on my heels, walking quickly back toward the car.

  Mumbling unpleasant obscenities as I drove away.

  Chapter 7

  I felt the eyes of the entire newsroom on me as I clumsily rammed my foot into the board room door.

  I had been trying to slip into the staff meeting without being noticed, but had failed with flying colors.

  I smiled sheepishly, then gave the room a little awkward wave.

  Roger Kobritz gave me a deadpan look that was nothing short of displeased.

  Our editor was a stickler for punctuality in an industry that bred tardiness like a hungry bacteria, which meant that he spent a good deal of his time being unhappy with his fleet of clock-challenged reporters.

  I was practically soaked through with sweat. I had driven here fast and had run through the parking lot and up the creaky old steps to the newsroom like a rowdy kid being chased out of the library by old, crotchety Fern Whitelaw herself. But the hell-fire run had been for naught. I was still late to the meeting. And I was only drawing more attention to myself by my red-faced attempts at trying not to swallow the room’s entire air supply.

  “Nice of you to carve out twenty minutes of your day for us, Ms. Wolf,” Kobritz said dryly.

  Rachael Chandler’s shoulder’s quaked as she let out a high-pitched giggle that reverberated around the meeting room.

  I shot a glare at the slender, red-headed crime reporter.

  I was fully aware that I might have deserved scolding from Kobritz, especially since he was my boss and I knew how much he despised tardiness. But for a fellow reporter to join in… that was downright treasonous.

  Though I didn’t know what else I should expect from Rachael Chandler. The 24-year-old had the most coveted beat on the desk and she always made sure that everybody knew it. In a field that generally attracted average-looking, intellectual, bookish types, Rachael stood out as someone who would have been more at home with the perfect, blemish-free, sorority girl types that populated the desk of our local news station and rivals, KTVX.

  And she made sure that everybody knew that too.

  I disliked her from the start. She had the job that I should have had, given my experience. But I think even if I had liked Rachael Chandler, I would have come to the same conclusion: her one-source, conjectured stories wouldn’t have cut it at The Oregon Daily, or at most papers in the state for that matter. She wasn’t half as good as she thought she was. But nobody in the newsroom, including Kobritz, could do a thing about it. She was the niece of Janet and Ronald Chandler, the owners of the small newspaper. Meaning that whatever Rachael Chandler wanted, she got.

  I detested her. And after being here six months, I was finding that sentiment harder and harder to conceal.

  “I’ve just informed everybody that Billy Peterson is leaving us to take a photography job with a newspaper in Missoula,” Kobrtiz said as I took a seat in one of the squeaky office chairs that felt like it might fall apart at any moment.

  I nodded silently. It wasn’t much of a surprise. Billy Peterson was one of the paper’s long suffering photographers. A mostly unpleasant, irritable character, he’d been angling to get out of The Dog Mountain Chronicle newsroom for as long as anyone could remember. I guess he’d finally found a way out.

  “We were also just talking about ways to improve our coverage this summer,” Kobritz said, watching as I unpacked a half-used notepad from my purse. “How, Ms. Wolf, are you planning to improve coverage of the general assignment beat?”

  Kobritz always insisted on calling everyone by Mr. or Mrs. or Ms., as if we were all the second reference in a New York Times article.

  Everyone’s eyes were on me again. Which didn’t really amount to that many, considering that we were a small paper with a circulation of only 11,000 or so. It really only amounted to Kobritz, Rachael, Todd Ahern, a recent J-school grad who was still struggling with remembering AP style, Jennifer Helt, a single mom whose punctuality was a hell of a lot worse than mine most days, Scott Appleton, a 40-something journalism lifer who styled himself after Dustin Hoffman in All the President’s Men, and Carrie Kessinger, a woman in her mid-50s who wore sunglasses indoors and spent her lunches chain smoking outside in the parking lot.

  It was a small newsroom. But despite that, as Kobritz awaited my answer, it felt like the eyes of an army on me.

  I swallowed hard, trying to think of something quick.

  Honestly, I hadn’t thought much about ways to improve my beat. The way I saw it, the general assignment beat, which was just code
for “dog beat,” didn’t exactly lend itself to improvement. The beat didn’t offer all that much in the way of real, hard-hitting news.

  Still, I rummaged around in my mind, coming up with the best that I could given the circumstances.

  “Well…” I stammered, trying to buy a little more time. “I always thought it was interesting how the local Humane Society doesn’t take in stray cats. Given the large stray cat population of Dog Mountain County, it’s inexcusable to me that the cats are basically shunned to make more room for a stray dog problem that the county just doesn’t have. I mean, just the other day, I got a phone call from Donna Beasley saying that a whole stray cat colony had just—”

  Kobritz placed his hands up to his face and rubbed the sagging skin around his eyes, a gesture of distaste that made me stop midsentence.

  “You might have a point, Ms. Wolf,” he said. “Cats may very well be the victims of this town’s tourism industry.”

  He sighed like a man who was bored with everything in his life.

  “But I’m afraid that our readership could care less about cats. And since we’re struggling to maintain said readership, it would behoove all of us to think in terms of their interests, rather than our own.”

  I furrowed my brow.

  “But it’s a real problem, Kobritz. One that nobody’s talking about. They might not care about stray cats now, but they will when the cats start taking over their yar—”

  He shook his head.

  “I’m afraid you’re not at The Oregon Daily anymore, Ms. Wolf,” he said.

  I sat there, at a loss for words after getting shot down.

  Journalism wasn’t about writing the things that people wanted to hear.

  The way I’d been taught, it was writing about the things that people needed to hear.

  I cleared my throat, ready to say as much, when Kobritz interrupted me again.

  “Maybe if you’re hard-up for a story at the end of the summer, you can take a crack at it,” he said. “But in the meantime, I hope you’re planning to cover the Fourth of July Pooch Parade next week.”

  I furrowed my brow, sure that I had misheard him.

  “The Pooch Parade?” I said.

  He nodded, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

  I felt my cheeks grow hot.

  The Dog Mountain Pooch Parade was an event on the Fourth of July where dog-crazed folks dressed their canines up in red, white and blue costumes and paraded them down the main drag of Dog Mountain. It was an embarrassing event to witness, let alone to cover as a news story.

  What did anybody have anything interesting to say about a bunch of dogs in Uncle Sam outfits?

  “You’re serious?” I said. “You want me to cover that?”

  He nodded, having never looked so serious in the short time I’d known him.

  “Not just cover it,” he said. “We’re planning an A1 photo essay to go alongside it.”

  I had trouble not letting out a scoff.

  I knew that this was a small town newspaper back when I had interned here at the tender age of 18. But even back then, the editors had tried to fill the paper with decent, hard-hitting news. Not this kind of crap.

  I thought about saying as much, but stopped myself.

  Despite where I’d come from, the fact remained: I was still the new addition to the newsroom. I was general assignment: the lowest spot on the totem pole.

  Meaning I wasn’t exactly in a position to argue with my boss about his definition of news.

  At least, not yet, I told myself.

  I bit my lower lip to keep from arguing anymore and nodded my head, a sinking feeling of resignation in my heart.

  What Lou had said the night before echoed in my ears.

  Maybe it’s just the price you have to pay for your dignity, Freddie.

  Maybe she was right.

  And writing about the Pooch Parade was just the bitter pill that I would have to swallow.

  I didn’t say anymore, and Kobritz turned his attention from me to Rachael.

  “Ms. Chandler, what do you have to say for yourself? How are you planning to improve coverage of the crime beat this summer?”

  I looked back at her, slightly startled when I realized she was ignoring Kobritz, and that her eyes were still on me.

  “Ms. Chandler?” he said a second time.

  She smiled cruelly, still not looking at him.

  Then she winked at me.

  I felt the blood rush up to my head as I was gripped by an immediate rage.

  I was suddenly almost as angry as I’d been earlier after finding the rose garden vandalized.

  I wanted to reach across the table and smack that smug look off of Rachael Chandler’s face.

  But before I could do anything or say anything, she had turned her attention toward our managing editor.

  “Well, Roger,” she said. “I think I’ve done an outstanding job covering the crime beat up until now. If anything, there should be more…”

  Rachael launched into a long-winded, convoluted speech about how she needed Kobritz to give her more time than he gave other reporters to work on stories because of the detailed nature of her beat.

  I spent the rest of the meeting biting my lip, thinking about ways I could get back at Rachael Chandler for being such a back-stabbing, self-aggrandizing little witch.

  Chapter 8

  “Isn’t that the same blazer you were wearing yesterday?” she said with a ruthless grin. “And that shirt looks like it’s been at the bottom of the hamper since Christmas, Freddie.”

  I crossed my arms and leaned back in my chair, shaking my head at her.

  Somehow, despite getting up before 5 a.m. every morning and spending the hours kneading dough and working with pastry in a hot kitchen, Lou always looked just perfect. Not a single blond hair on her head was out of place. Meanwhile I couldn’t even get up in time to iron out a shirt.

  “Everybody but you has been kind enough to let my look slide so far today,” I retorted.

  “Well, I’m not everybody, am I?” she said, leaning back. “I’m your older sister, and I’m only trying to look out for you. You look like you spent last night bar hopping.”

  Since our mother had passed, Lou had done her best to step up her older sister duties, which included judging my clothes, hairstyle, and even the color of nail polish I chose to wear.

  I knew she didn’t mean anything by it. She was just filling in where our mother would have had she been around to see me walk out the door this morning.

  I glanced around the crowded, cozy café. It was the lunch hour, and men in business suits and young mothers in yoga pants with cradles and crying babies seemed to fill just about every nook and cranny of The Barkery. They scarfed down the delicious sandwiches and croissants and brownies and bars that were a big reason why my sister’s bakery was one of the most popular establishments in downtown Dog Mountain.

  “Looks like business is good,” I said to her.

  I noticed that she still hadn’t taken a seat at the table, and I realized that she probably wouldn’t have any time to have lunch with me.

  “Yeah, almost too good,” she said, wiping away a dribble of sweat from her forehead. “We’ve been scrambling to keep the pastry case filled this morning. Pete’s been having a little meltdown in the back.”

  She rolled her eyes and I smiled.

  Pete Bennett was Lou’s ex-husband and the head bread baker at The Barkery. The two of them had met in culinary school and had been married for five years prior to their recent divorce. There hadn’t been any smoking-gun reason for the divorce: Lou just said that she was fed up with being married to him. Somehow, the two had, for the most part, kept their business relationship afloat throughout. Though Pete, an anxiety-prone mad genius of bread, had spent the last few months since the divorce in a manic depressive state of sorts. He was either moping around listlessly, or freaking out when the stress of keeping the pastry case full proved to be too much.

  Still
, I had admired Pete’s ability to put aside the emotions of the divorce and continue working hard at his job: I wouldn’t have been able to do that.

  “So what can I get you for lunch, Freddie?” Lou said, placing a hand on her hip.

  I took in a deep breath of the sweet, sugary café air.

  Everything in me wanted to try those new cinnamon scones that Pete had just filled the front case with.

  But I knew that if I gave into the urge, I’d only be continuing the weight gain streak that I’d been on since returning back home.

  And that, as evidenced by my tight-fitting jean skirt, was something I flat-out couldn’t afford.

  “I’ll, uh, I’ll take a Caesar salad,” I said, reluctantly. “And, uh, and a bottle of water.”

  “Are you sure?” Lou said. “In ten minutes, we’ll have a batch of Key Lime bars ready. I know how much you like those.”

  I swallowed hard, pushing back the saliva that had pooled instantly on the side of my mouth at the mention of my favorite pastry treat.

  Sometimes I thought Lou was conspiring to fatten me up on purpose. I wasn’t sure why she’d want such a thing, but if she didn’t stop feeding me pesto and key lime bars, her only sister would soon be waddling down the street like a duck.

  I started saying something, but before I could refuse the mouthwatering key lime bar, someone interrupted us.

  “Excuse me!” a voice said from the front counter.

  The woman was looking around the bakery, barely able to contain her exasperation. Her eyes finally fell on Lou.

  “I’ve been waiting up here for—” she started saying, but then she noticed me sitting there.

  Myra Louden crossed her bony arms across her frail body and shot me a sour look. I noticed that a copy of today’s Chronicle was tucked under her arm.

  She was also holding a leash attached to a little puppy that was no bigger than a groundhog. The dog was tugging in the direction of the front door, but Myra was unperturbed.

  “I read that article of yours about the dog board hearing last night, Miss Wolf,” she said, shouting across the dining room. “I must say, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were laughing at the entirety of the proceedings. You have a very sarcastic way of putting things, dear. Offensively so.”