by Meg Muldoon
“Did you tell them anything else?” I said, my voice cracking a little.
I had suddenly remembered Lt. Sakai with that beige bakery sleeve wrapped in a plastic evidence bag.
The one Myra had been holding onto when she died.
“No,” she said, shrugging again. “There was nothing else to tell.”
I swallowed.
“Good,” I said, leaning back. “That’s good.”
“Jeez, you’re acting like we actually did commit murder,” she said, looking over at me.
I didn’t say anything.
I didn’t know why this hadn’t occurred to me before. Myra was poisoned, and the last thing she probably ate was a red velvet cupcake from Lou’s bakery.
“You shouldn’t be worried,” she said, noticing how tense I suddenly was. “The police officers were very nice.”
She took a long chug of her wine as I glanced over at her.
One of Lou’s defects, or advantages, depending on how you looked at it, was that she liked just about everyone she met at first. I was always the one who was cautious and reserved and cynical when it came to people.
“Sam was there,” she said.
“Sam Sakai? The lieutenant?” I said.
She nodded.
“Yep.As cute and good-looking as ever. I don’t understand why you think he’s so rude. He’s been nothing but the epitome of genteel toward me.”
“Well, maybe he has a thing for you,” I said, absentmindedly, thinking about that evidence bag.
She laughed at that.
“Better not mention such a thing to Pete,” she said. “He’ll have another meltdown.”
I forced a chuckle, but I suddenly felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up again.
Lou seemed to notice my uneasiness.
“Seriously,” she said. “They were just looking for some information. They weren’t there more than 10 minutes.”
She turned in her chair toward me.
“Now, Freddie,” she said, changing the subject. “I want you to tell me exactly who you think might have killed Myra Louden and why. Tell me every angle of your theory.”
“I hate to disappoint you, but I’m afraid I’ve got nothing juicy for you, Lou,” I said. “I don’t have any idea who might have killed Myra.”
Her face fell a little at that.
“Oh, c’mon,” she said. “I’m sure you’ve got a theory. Plenty of people in this town probably had a reason to do the woman in. The only question is, who’s behind the grisly act?”
“Just narrowing it down to a list of possible suspects overwhelms me,” I said. “Myra was a principal for twenty years. She was on the dog board for five years after that. Seems to me even a considerate, kind person could cross a heck of a lot of people in those two positions. And as we know, Myra wasn’t a kind person.”
“Want to know what I think?” Lou said, her eyes lighting up.
“What?” I said.
“I think Myra was leading a double life,” she said. “I think on the surface, she was this perfect, goody-two-shoes, law-abiding spinster. But you know what she did in her off hours?”
I smiled. I couldn’t possibly fathom where Lou was going with this.
“Tell me,” I said.
“She ran a prostitution ring,” Lou said. “In fact, Myra Louden was the most successful madam this side of the Mississippi. She was a secret millionaire. She thought she had it all, until it all caught up with her.”
I let out a long laugh and threw back a swig of wine. It tasted good on the hot summer night we were having.
I felt my muscles start to relax.
“That’s quite the theory,” I said.
“You haven’t even heard the half of it. I think one of her employees killed her,” Lou said, making air quotation marks around the word employees. “Want to know how?”
I smiled, settling back in the Adirondack chair.
Lou’s eyes were dancing like fireflies around in her head.
“How?” I said.
“Well…”
Lou launched into a long explanation of dirty deeds and jilted lovers and smoking guns. I stared off into the distance as the sun sank below the horizon, listening to the frogs bellow by the river. A peaceful summer breeze rustled through the fresh leaves of the aspens, and as dusk settled in, the crickets began singing their evening songs.
Lt. Sam Sakai might have been right.
For all of its dog madness, of all the places you could end up in the world, Dog Mountain wasn’t such a bad place to land.
Chapter 24
Rachael was waiting for me by my desk when I got into work that Friday morning.
She was wearing a new skimpy outfit, most likely just purchased at the outlet malls, and she had a copy of the day’s paper rolled up tightly in her hand. The edition that had my story about Myra’s murder on the front page.
Rachael was shooting me a death stare as I walked the length of the hallway.
I had expected this kind of showdown from the crime reporter. But seeing her sitting there, looking mad as a bull on mars, I somehow felt tired and unprepared to spar with Rachael. It was Friday, and it had been a long week, and the last thing I wanted to do was be part of the scene she was going to make.
“Hi, Rachael,” I said, walking up to my cubicle and taking a seat.
She slapped the paper down on the plastic desktop.
“You’re kidding me, right?” she said, her murky brown eyes drilling into me.
The girl was livid. She reminded me of a rattlesnake whose den had just been invaded.
I crossed my arms and looked up at her.
“I found out Myra was murdered,” I said. “And since you weren’t here, Kobritz asked me to write the story.”
“Who told you? Who told you she was murdered?” she said.
“Lt. Sam Sakai,” I said. “Like it says in the article.”
I thought I could see fog coming out of her nostrils.
I went about turning on my computer and organizing a stack of notepads that had slid across the desk.
She glared at me.
“Are you sleeping with him?” she said.
I nearly knocked over my cup of coffee as I turned toward her abruptly.
“Excuse me?” I said, meeting her fuming stare.
“You heard me,” she said.
I gazed back at her, speechless.
I’d been covering crime for a lot longer than she had, and for a paper much bigger than this one, and never once had anybody ever accused me of making such a moral transgression.
“Rachael,” I said, sharply. “If you think I’d sleep with a police officer just to steal a story from you, then I’m afraid you’re a poor judge of character and an even poorer judge of boundaries. I know you never went to journalism school, so you might not understand the importance of reputation in this field, but you can’t throw accusations like that around.”
None of that seemed to take the fire out of her eyes.
“I don’t even care if you are sleeping with Speed,” she said, referring to Lt. Sakai’s office nickname. “Just stay the hell away from my beat, all right?”
She stood up, giving me a sorority girl once-over before leaving.
“If you don’t, then there will be… consequences.”
She stared at me a moment longer, as if she wanted to watch my face as the meaning of what she was implying sank in. But I didn’t give her any satisfaction, keeping my expression as emotionless as a statue’s.
She finally left, her heels making heavy impressions on the carpet as she stalked away toward her desk.
I imagined she was implying that if I continued the path that I was on, she was going to talk to her aunt – Janet Chandler. The paper’s owner.
That had been a threat she’d just leveled at me.
But I’d come across types like Rachael Chandler before. And I knew that she was mostly a lot of wind, and not much else.
I wasn’t going to worry about
it, I resolved.
And since I still had interviews scheduled with Judge Warner and Richard Kline this morning regarding Myra’s work with the dog board, and since Kobritz had yet to tell me otherwise, I wasn’t going to let Rachael’s threat stop me from doing my job.
I grabbed a fresh notepad, stuffed it in my purse, and then walked through the newsroom toward the exit. Not so much as looking in Rachael’s direction.
As I walked away, Scott, who had overheard the entire conversation, made a screeching cat noise.
I felt my ears burn.
Scott was over 40, but his sense of humor was more akin to a teenage boy’s.
I would have stopped and made him pay if I wasn’t already late for an interview.
Chapter 25
Richard Kline stared out the window of his drab office, pressing his fingers together in front of his face, a faraway look in his eyes.
The man looked like he hadn’t gotten any sleep the night before. Or the night before that, for that matter.
He looked shaky, like a rickety old bridge. Much different than the confident and stern dog board judge that I had often seen him as.
Without Myra, he was proving to be just a puddle of melted snow.
From down the hall, I could hear the shelter dogs barking in their kennels. With it being summer, the shelter was packed with pooches of every variety. But in a town like this, most of these dogs didn’t stay here for long. Most would be scooped up in a matter of days by the bleeding heart types that had gotten this town named Dog Town USA in the first place. But, I knew, from a story that I’d done a few months before, that many of those adopted dogs would end up back in the shelter again for one reason or another. Often times because the new owners didn’t realize they were getting in over their heads with the troubled, but cute, pooches they picked up.
For many of the dogs, there was no such thing as a forever home.
But that was beside the point of why I was here.
I cleared my throat, figuring I’d go easy on Richard to start with. Initially when I had shown up, he had said he’d forgotten we’d made plans for the interview and wanted to reschedule. I told him I was on deadline and couldn’t reschedule, which was the honest truth, especially with Rachael circling the story like a vulture. Richard finally gave in to my persistence, leading me to his small office behind the kennels.
He was dressed today in a white pinstripe shirt that was slightly yellowed in some places, along with a pair of khakis and moccasin-style shoes with little tassels. His greying hair was looking a little overgrown and unruly. The man needed a comb and some sleep.
“Thanks again for taking the time to meet with me,” I said.
He nodded, but didn’t say anything. He didn’t move his eyes from the window either.
I cleared my throat.
“So are you looking forward to the Pooch Parade next week?” I said.
“Honestly, I haven’t even thought about it since finding out…” he trailed off.
“Are you still going to participate in it?”
He nodded solemnly.
“I suppose I am. They’re all expecting me to represent the Humane Society, like I do every year, so I have to,” he said. “Besides, I think it’s what Myra would have wanted. She always did like the Pooch Parade.”
“It sounds like the two of you were close,” I said.
He swiveled his chair toward me, his hands still clasped together in front of his face.
“I told you. We were friends. Nothing more.”
He said it defensively, as if I’d been trying to imply something.
Too defensively.
Whenever someone acted that way, saying more than they needed to, it was usually because they were lying.
I rubbed my chin, something occurring to me that hadn’t before.
Maybe I should have picked up on this when he was blubbering on the phone about Myra being dead. Or from the fact that he was the only person really crying at her funeral.
I found my eyes drifting down to his wedding ring before I could stop myself.
So Myra Louden wasn’t the old, boring, uptight spinster that everybody thought she was.
I quickly looked down. But I had the sense Richard knew what I had been thinking about.
He leaned forward in his chair.
“We were very good friends. That’s it.” he said, sharply. “Now I believe you wanted to know more about the founding of the dog board?”
“Yes,” I said.
I launched into several questions about the dog hearings, getting boring details from him about his role on the committee and Myra’s leadership style. About the purpose of the hearings and how it saved the Dog Mountain County Courts time. About Myra’s sense of justice and why, in Richard’s eyes, she made such a good judge.
His answers were all perfectly politically correct.
And wholly unenlightening as to who might have murdered Myra Louden.
After I’d bored myself half out of my mind listening to Richard, I finally asked him the question that I’d come here for.
“I was wondering if I could view the files and notes from all of the dog board hearings since it started,” I said.
His face twisted slightly in surprise.
“I don’t see why that’s necessary,” he said. “You’ve attended several of the hearings. You know how the board operates.”
“It would help the article,” I said. “It would help me write it with more accuracy.”
I didn’t tell him the real reason I wanted those files: to see if there were any good motives for murder that might have arisen from past dog board rulings.
He looked at me for a long moment, and then finally shrugged.
“You can ask Judge Warner about getting copies,” he said. “She has them all.”
I nodded. I had already scheduled an interview with Judge Warner, who was an actual judge as opposed to a dog board judge, just before lunch. I would ask her for the documents then.
Richard turned from me and looked back out the window again.
“It’s strange, isn’t it?” he said.
“What is?”
“The way life just… goes. It all happens so fast.”
He scratched the grey stubble on his chin, that distant look on his face again.
I tried to think of something to say to that, but could think of nothing.
He was right.
Chapter 26
I returned to the office just before lunch with a large stack of Xeroxes that I’d spent the better part of an hour making down at the courthouse. I tossed the stack on my desk and then checked in.
There was another Post-it note stuck to my keyboard.
I peeled it away from my computer then peered down at the message, which was more of a riddle this time than anything else.
“Newsroom, Saturday night: The ball’s in your court now.”
I glanced around again to see who might have stuck it there, but just like the time before, I didn’t make much progress in finding my mystery messenger.
After studying the note for a long while, I set it aside, resolving to return to it later. Then I made sure I hadn’t missed any important phone calls or emails in the time that I was gone. I put down a few more lines into the A1 Sunday centerpiece about Myra’s impact on the dog board, adding in a few quotes from Richard. It wasn’t going to be much more than a puff piece. Nobody ever said the truth about somebody after they died.
The clock approached noon, and I reasoned I’d go down to the café and get myself a Caesar salad, sans Milo Daniels this time, when Kobritz intercepted me.
“Ms. Wolf, the candidate for the photography job is in the break room,” he said. “I told him you would meet with him now.”
I sighed.
I had forgotten that I’d agreed to meet with the job candidate today. Having the newspaper staff meet with prospective co-workers was something the small paper encouraged as a way to give its employees the illusion that they had a say
in the hiring process. I didn’t mind meeting with the new candidates all that much. Most of the time it was a good way to get out of making a phone call or writing a news brief. But today, it’d be cutting into my lunch hour.
I glanced at my phone, trying to think of some excuse about me needing to be somewhere else right now. But after years of being editor, Kobritz could cut through the BS like nobody’s business.
“C’mon,” he said. “Jennifer already bailed earlier, and Rachael was just in there talking to him for half an hour. You need to go in there and convince him there are actual serious reporters in this newsroom.”
I supposed that was Kobritz’s way of bribing me with a compliment.
“Besides, we ordered pizza. A free lunch is in this for you if you just go in there and talk to him.”
When I compared that to my planned Caesar salad, the deal didn’t seem quite so bad.
“Fine,” I said.
I grabbed a pad of paper and the cup of coffee that I had refilled earlier, and headed for the conference room.
When I opened the door, the coffee cup slid right out of my hand.
Chapter 27
I just stood there with coffee splattered all over my sandals and the bottom of my jeans, staring at him.
Dumbfounded didn’t even begin to describe the way I felt.
“What the f…” I mumbled, feeling my face go numb.
I suddenly wondered if I wasn’t in a nightmare. If I wasn’t asleep in bed at home, unable to pull myself from the feverish, troubled dream. That, or maybe I was hallucinating. Superimposing his face on the man sitting there at the table.
Or maybe I had been poisoned too. Just like Myra.
But when he smiled and opened his mouth to speak, I knew I was experiencing none of the above.
I wasn’t in a nightmare. I wasn’t at home in bed. I wasn’t hallucinating.
Jimmy was actually here.
“Jeez, Red. I didn’t mean to surprise you so bad.”
He glanced down at my stained jeans, dripping with coffee.
“I hope that wasn’t too hot,” he said, smiling.