Mutts & Murder: A Dog Town USA Cozy Mystery

by Meg Muldoon

  Jimmy was looking more cleaned up than I’d ever seen him look back at The Oregon Daily. Like most photographers in the business, he thought he could wear whatever he wanted and let his hair grow out. Most of the time he looked more like a college student than a photographer for the state’s biggest paper. Now, though, he was sitting here clean-shaven, wearing a suit and a tie that looked out of place on his thin frame.

  My mouth had gone dry, and the words came out thick as peanut butter once I finally pulled myself out of shock.

  “What are you doing here?” I said.

  “What’s it look like?” he said, not missing a beat. “I’m interviewing for the job opening.”

  “But…” I trailed off.

  “You know how I told you The Daily had another round of layoffs?” he said, leaning back in his chair. “Well, I was one of the unlucky ones this time.”

  I felt my heart sink. I was still in the doorjamb, unable to move from my frozen, stunned stance.

  I understood now why he had called a few days earlier.

  “I was trying to tell you that I got an interview for the photography opening here at The Chronicle, but then you hung up on me.”

  He stared at me with those blue, puppy-dog eyes that looked so harmless and innocuous. Waiting for me to respond. To come into the room and sit down. To catch up about our lives. To treat him like nothing had happened. To treat him like we’d just been co-workers on friendly terms.

  To not bring up the fact that he’d been my best friend, once. To not bring up the fact that I’d fallen in love with him, even though I knew that he had a serious girlfriend. To not bring up the fact that he’d shown up on my doorstep drunk that one rainy night when she’d broken it off with him, looking for something. Telling me that he loved me too.

  To not bring up the fact that he ended up crawling back to her. That he chose her, over me.

  That he married her.

  That he’d done all this when my mom was dying.

  To not bring up the fact that he’d ripped my heart to shreds. Like the wolf in the Little Red Riding fairytale he was so fond of alluding to.

  And that I left my career-track job because of him, running home like a dog between its legs.

  He expected me to sweep all of that under the rug and sit down at the table with him.

  But the order was just too tall.

  I shook my head, feeling hot tears flood my eyes.

  Most of the time, I had a good hold on my emotions. But this had been too much of a shock. I couldn’t handle it.

  I couldn’t pretend, the way he wanted me to.

  He stood up, seeing my expression change.

  “Red, just… please let’s just talk,” he said holding out a hand. “I didn’t want it to be like this. I’ve been wanting to talk to you a long time now. I couldn’t…”

  He let out a sigh.

  How could he be doing this to me now? After all of that?

  “I know things ended bad—”

  “You’re damn right they ended bad,” I said suddenly, a hot fire rising up in my throat like a dragon.

  That put him on his back heel. He furrowed his brow and cleared his throat.

  “I know,” he said. “But Red, I’ve got bills to pay. Same as the next man. Kathryn’s pregnant. Did you know that? I can’t afford to be unemployed now. I’m just asking you if you can just set aside our differences and just… I don’t know, let me have an honest shot at this job.”

  I looked hard at him, having a difficult time believing that I had heard him right.

  “Do you have any idea how—” I started saying, but just then I was interrupted.

  “Pizza’s here!” Scott said, passing in the hallway behind me.

  When I didn’t turn around, he stopped walking, pausing to look over my shoulder at Jimmy.

  “You guys doing okay?” Scott asked, probably picking up on Jimmy’s strained expression.

  Jimmy started saying something, but I cut ahead.

  “We’re just peachy,” I said, glancing back at Scott. “Just peachy.”

  I gave Jimmy one more look and then brushed passed Scott, heading for the exit.

  “She must have not heard me right,” he mumbled to Jimmy. “Hey, Freddie, the pizza’s here—”

  “I don’t want any damn pizza,” I said.

  I left the newsroom, my wet jeans dragging on the carpet behind me.

  I felt like I would throw up at any moment.

  Chapter 28

  Lou came back from the bar with two fresh Tequila Sunrises, the stacked orange and red layers floating pretty in a pair of Hurricane glasses.

  It was the best thing I’d seen all day.

  “Thanks, Lou,” I said, taking one of them off her hands.

  The glass was icy cold and felt good against my skin. It was a hot night, made even hotter down here at The Dog Mountain Brew Pub by the throngs of locals and tourists alike crowding the bar and tables of the outdoor patio with their dogs. As with other establishments in Dog Mountain, the brewpub had capitalized on the dog frenzy, allowing its customers to bring Fido along in their imbibing adventures. The brewpub even offered special dog beer: a non-alcoholic liquid made from leftover beer mash. It was a hit with the customers, and on hot weekends, I was sure they sold just as much dog beer as they did human beer.

  Folks were in town for the Fourth of July weekend, and their conversations were full of talk about the Pooch Parade and the fireworks that were shot off of Dog Mountain as part of the celebration. Some years, the fireworks display got so out of hand that the top of the mountain caught fire. It was always a subject of much debate at the city council meetings this time of year. Some of the councilors feared that if the mountain did catch fire, and the fire couldn’t be kept under control, then the whole city might just go up in flames.

  I took a sip of my drink. It was my second one of the night, and I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be my last.

  I hadn’t really felt like coming out tonight. Not after the day I’d had. But once Lou found out about Jimmy being here, she had insisted on dragging me out to “drown those sorrows” as she put it.

  I had finished up the piece on Myra’s contributions to the dog community from a café down the street, knowing that if I went back into the newsroom, I wouldn’t be able to concentrate one iota. Not with Jimmy in the next room. But the café didn’t improve my concentration abilities much: the story was a chore to write and it came out half-hearted. Not the way I wanted it to – hardly worthy of a Sunday A1 centerpiece. But I did the best that I could under the circumstances. I could sense Kobritz was slightly disappointed by my efforts when I looked over his edits, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. He shouldn’t have brought in an old flame of mine for an interview if he expected my writing to be at its best.

  “I can’t believe that bastard,” Lou said, taking a long drink of her Sunrise. “I can’t believe he’d show up asking favors like that.”

  This time, I didn’t correct her when she called him a bastard.

  After finding out that Jimmy was back in town interviewing for a position at my paper, she had been nothing short of furious. It took every ounce of my energy to convince her not to go down to the Dog Mountain Inn, where the paper put up all its interviewees, and chew him out the way she’d been threatening to on the whole walk over here.

  “I guess I could have avoided being blindsided if I hadn’t hung up on him when he called,” I mused, watching as a border collie greedily lapped up a couple of ketchup-laden French fries that someone had dropped at the table across from us.

  “No,” she said. “Jimmy shouldn’t be here. Period. See, Freddie, you have dignity. That bastard doesn’t have one shred of it.”

  “Well, I didn’t feel very dignified earlier, I tell you what.”

  I sighed, rubbing my face, thinking about him sitting there all gussied up in his suit and tie and fresh shave.

  I hadn’t admitted it to Lou, but when I first saw him sitting ther
e, I had thought that maybe he was here for me. That maybe he was here to tell me that he’d changed his mind. That I was the one, and that I had been all along.

  Obviously I’d been living in a fantasy.

  “Is he still married to what’s her name?” Lou asked, saying the words in a low voice.

  I took another sip of my Sunrise. I was nearly halfway through it already.

  “Yeah,” I said. “And she’s pregnant.”

  She crossed her arms and leaned back. I thought I could see steam coming out of her ears.

  “You know what I’d do if I were you, Freddie?”

  “What?”

  “First thing Monday morning, I’d go and talk to that editor of yours,” she said. “I’d tell him that Jimmy Brewer is an unreliable and difficult employee. And I’d tell him that he doesn’t play well with others. And that you’ve seen this first hand.”

  I sighed.

  I had thought about doing that very thing. But as I thought it through, the prospect of ruining a job opportunity for him felt… I don’t know. Wrong.

  Because the truth was, Jimmy was neither unreliable nor difficult when it came to work. And aside from that, he was one of the best photographers out there. He had a way of capturing the moment like few in his field. I was sure the only reason he got laid off from The Daily was because he was the youngest photographer in the department.

  Lou seemed to pick up on my hesitation.

  “Freddie – the man drove you from a good, high-paying job. You came here to get away from him, remember?”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Well, then it’s settled,” she said. “You’ll go in and talk to your editor first thing Monday.”

  She drained the rest of her drink.

  “Right?”

  She looked at me, waiting for my answer.

  I sighed again.

  She had a point. I’d given up a lot to get away from him. And just because he’d been laid off and found himself in need of a job didn’t mean he was going to find any help from me. Photography jobs were scarce, but that was just the way things were these days. I couldn’t help it, just like he couldn’t. If he was so concerned about supporting his family, then he could get a job doing something else if he had to.

  “You’re right,” I finally said.

  “Good,” she said. “Now first thing I’m going do tomorrow morning is talk to Milo and set up that date for you guys.”

  I let out a stiff groan.

  I might have been feeling low, but going on a date with Milo wasn’t going to solve anything.

  “Oh, c’mon, Freddie,” Lou said, exasperated. “Milo’s a good guy and he said he thinks that you’re beautiful.”

  “He did not say that,” I said, raising an eyebrow.

  I knew when my sister was exaggerating.

  I’d been called cute before, and on a rare occasion, pretty. But I hardly ever got called beautiful. That was something Lou got called a lot more.

  “Well, he said something to that effect,” Lou said. “Now I’m setting you up with him and you can’t stop me. All right?”

  I let out a sigh.

  “Fine,” I finally said.

  Maybe she was right. Even if Milo wasn’t the one, maybe it would be nice to get my dating legs back. It had been a while.

  “Now let’s change the subject to something more cheerful,” Lou said. “Any news about Myra’s murderer?”

  I laughed, inhaling another swig of my drink, which was quickly vanishing.

  Lou’s sense of humor always did have a dash of darkness to it.

  “No,” I started saying. “But—”

  Just then Lou’s phone rang to the tune of Abba’s “The Winner Takes It All,” which could only mean one thing: Pete, her ex-husband, was calling. Since the divorce, she’d changed his personalized ringtone to that song.

  She sighed.

  “Sorry, Freddie,” she said. “Let me just talk to him a minute. We were supposed to talk tonight, but I forgot.”

  I nodded as she stood up and answered. She walked away toward the back of the patio where a long row of hop vines were growing, looking for some privacy.

  Pete no doubt was upset that she’d forgotten about their talk and was out drinking. Even if the only reason she was out drinking was to cheer me up.

  I slurped down the rest of my Tequila Sunrise, eventually hitting air.

  There was never a more lonesome sound.

  Chapter 29

  By the time I decided my legs were too restless to keep sitting there at the patio table alone, I’d finished Tequila Sunrise number three and was feeling a little better.

  Lou was still out back talking to Pete. I knew she didn’t mean anything by leaving me to sit at the table alone for half an hour. Lou had man troubles of her own to deal with, including the fact that Pete was still in love with her. Something that I knew she felt bad about. Consequently, she indulged him whenever he wanted to talk about the current state of their relationship.

  I stood up, my skin peeling away from the wooden bench, reminding me what a warm night it was. I went over to the bar and settled up our tab, then I sent Lou a text message, telling her I’d meet her back at home and to take as long as she needed on the phone with Pete.

  Part of me wished the two of them would just get back together. I liked Pete. He was a good sort, even if he was a little high-strung. But I also knew things weren’t all that easy. Lou had wanted more out of their relationship: things that Pete couldn’t give her. Despite the fact that he was insanely in love with her, it wasn’t enough.

  I knew as good as anyone: sometimes, love was just a real pain in the behind.

  I left the crowded patio and took a right on Constellation Road, meandering along its cracked sidewalks, heading west toward our house. The ache that had been at the bottom of my chest all day hurt a little less, having been replaced with a warm and hollow buzz. I inhaled the fresh night air. It smelled like pine and honeysuckle and every once and a while, there was a cool breeze that smelled damp and woodsy, like it was blowing straight off the river. Above, the stars were shining brightly, inhibited only by the occasional silver cloud.

  I walked and thought, working out my restless legs. Thinking about Jimmy, mostly.

  About that night when he showed up on my doorstep last year. What he’d said to me.

  “She left me because she knows I love you,” he had said. “It’s always been you, Red.”

  At the time, those words had been everything I’d wanted to hear. I never told him that I’d fallen in love with him, but I suppose he was able to tell just the same. I was never good at hiding the way I felt.

  When he showed up that night, I thought it was the beginning of something special.

  But a few weeks later, he began acting strange. Avoiding me, not making eye-contact on stories we were both assigned to. He finally told me that he was getting back together with Kathryn, his girlfriend. That he was ashamed at how he had treated me, but that he couldn’t just throw away five years of a good relationship with her. Especially since, he said, he realized that he really was in love with her.

  Those words had practically killed me.

  I had loved him. But to him, I wasn’t much more than a vacation away from his girlfriend.

  Not surprisingly, I didn’t get an invite to their wedding.

  I shuddered.

  I had done a better job lately of not thinking about any of this. It had been more than a year since all of it had happened, and I had made steps to move on with my life.

  But him showing up today had just—

  My voice caught in my throat suddenly as I saw a dark creature running toward me in the night.

  Running at me like I was a hunk of meat left out on the sidewalk.

  Chapter 30

  “Mugs!”

  I heard a voice from across the street yell just as the little ball of fur jumped up onto my leg, panting as his tail wagged wildly.

  After I’d gotten over the
shock of nearly being mauled by a small creature in the dark, I found that I was overcome with emotion.

  I hadn’t known it, but the puppy was exactly what I needed at that moment.

  I bent over and scooped the little mutt up into my arms, coiling up the leash that was attached to his collar in my hand. He licked my face, his rough little tongue leaving behind drool traces. But I didn’t much mind. I was just happy to see him.

  By the light of the streetlamp, I peered down into his little face. I suddenly felt the same way I’d felt at the dog park the day the little ball of fur had run smack into my leg.

  I laughed slightly as he licked behind my ear, hitting a ticklish spot.

  “I’m, uh, I’m sorr…”

  The voice trailed off as the man stepped into the light of the streetlamp.

  I looked over.

  Lt. Sam Sakai was as surprised to see me as I was to see him. In fact, he appeared to be speechless, losing his train of thought at the very sight of me.

  He was dressed casually and was clearly off duty. His shaggy black hair was slightly disheveled and glistened under the streetlamp.

  It took me a moment to realize he wasn’t alone.

  The lieutenant had four others with him. Three of them were pretty large, but the smallest one wasn’t much bigger than a squirrel.

  In fact, as I looked closer at the small one, I recognized him. It was Bonedaddy – the dog I had just featured in the Pet Pals feature section.

  I almost started laughing, but held back when my eyes drifted up to Sakai’s.

  He appeared to be thunderstruck.

  I stroked the soft head of the puppy in my arms and smiled.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were stalking me,” I said as ‘Mugs’ crawled onto my other shoulder and started licking that side of my face.

  “I’m not. I mean, I wasn’t,” he said defensively.

  “I know. I was only kidding.”

  I looked down at the four other dogs. Most of the time, it would seem like a man walking that many canines would be overwhelmed. But the dogs all appeared to be calm. Sitting down at a distance and not particularly interested in coming toward me.