by Meg Muldoon
Because both Lou and I knew that Buddy was much more than just a cat. He’d been a friend who had seen us through thick and thin. A member of our family.
And the prospect of losing another family member so soon after our mother’s passing scared the daylights out of me.
“It’s okay,” I said again as another round of tears rolled down her cheeks.
I said the words, but I didn’t know if I even believed them.
Buddy was missing. Mom’s rose bed was practically destroyed. Lou was on a shortlist of murder suspects. And I was no closer to finding Myra’s killer.
Things were not okay by any measure of the word.
Chapter 43
I woke up that Fourth of July morning with a terrible sinking feeling of doom.
It was partially because of Lou’s predicament, partially because Buddy was still missing, and partially because I was at square one again after talking to Geraldine Kline.
But there was also another reason for that feeling:
It was the Fourth of July. Which meant that today was Dog Mountain’s annual Pooch Parade. The most foolish event to take place this side of the Rocky Mountains.
Today, the streets of Dog Mountain would be filled with bulldogs, pugs, huskies, hounds, poodles, and just about every variety of mutt imaginable. Most of them would be dressed in Uncle Sam-style top hats, red white and blue bowties, multicolored tutus, and probably several other costumes never even seen before. It was an embarrassing spectacle to see a whole army of dogs in costumes parade down the street with their owners.
But Kobritz was expecting me to cover it. And besides, a story like the Pooch Parade wouldn’t take all that long to report and write up. All I needed was a few event participants to talk about their dogs and tell me what a fun time they were having. That wouldn’t be so hard. Then I could go back to The Chronicle, write it up quickly, and get back to figuring out who killed Myra.
I glanced at the alarm clock. Then I sat up, letting out a sigh as a horrible pang of sadness erupted at the base of my chest.
Usually at this time, Buddy would be stepping all over my legs, nudging me awake.
Buddy still wasn’t home. And I was worried. Lou and I had spent the afternoon and evening before walking up and down the sidewalks of our neighborhood looking for the orange cat. I knew because of his size and age, he couldn’t have gotten that far. But all of our searching and asking neighbors had been to no avail.
His disappearance weighed heavily on my mind.
But I would have to figure out a way to set it aside for the time being and focus on the day ahead.
I took a shower, got ready, and then left the house.
Even though it was still relatively early, the day felt like it had all the makings of a real scorcher.
Chapter 44
I stood on the downtown sidewalk, watching as a float in the shape of a beagle rolled down the street. It was carrying a pack of beagles and their owners, all of who were decked out in red, white and blue costumes that made me sweat just looking at them.
But it wasn’t just the costumes. It was brutal out here in the crowd, under the hot July sun. Humid heat radiated from the concrete, and I could feel it through my flats. Beads of sweat rolled down the sides of my face. The pen and notepad in my hand felt slick and slippery. Sweat kept pooling on my upper lip.
I meandered through the crowd as God Bless America blared from the speakers, watching the parade go by. Craig Milton, one of our summer photography interns, was snapping away from across the street. I’d already spoken to the parade organizers and a few participants. One middle-aged man I spoke with had been dressed in full-on Uncle Sam wear: the top hat, beard, striped pants, jacket and all. He’d dressed his bloodhound, Flossie, in a dog version of the costume too. Both of them looked as though they would pass out at any second from the heat.
When asked why he’d decided to come out and dress up his dog this hot Fourth of July, he told me it was “To support the community of Dog Mountain. And of course, to support the United States of America too.”
I kept my eyes on the parade goers, looking for anyone else dressed in stand-out costumes who might offer a better quote than Uncle Sam had. I was so busy watching the parade that I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going, and I suddenly ran smack dab into a woman wearing an American flag t-shirt and eating a red, white and blue cupcake.
The cupcake went flying out of her hands, hitting the ground upside down. The frosting bled all over the concrete.
“Hey!” she shouted, turning toward me, a stampeding bull look in her eyes.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t—”
“Yeah, I know you wasn’t,” she said in a bumpkin accent. “Now look what you’ve done to my cupcake. You know I wait all year for the Red, White and Blueberry cupcake? The Barkery only offers it for two weeks around the Fourth of July.”
I looked down at it again. Nothing could be done to salvage the fallen treat.
“Well, I’m real sorr—”
But then I stopped midsentence as something occurred to me that hadn’t before.
The woman peered at me like I was losing it, but I hardly saw her.
The cupcake flavor…
I pushed past her suddenly, fighting my way through the crowd. I rounded the corner of a building, heading in the direction of my Hyundai, which I had parked on a side street halfway between my house and the downtown area to avoid the traffic.
I pulled out my phone and hit speed dial. It rang a couple of times before she answered. My nerves hung on every ring.
“It’s a great day at The Barkery. What can we do for you?”
“You don’t make the Apple Custard cupcakes anymore, do you?” I said in an unsteady voice.
There was a pause on the other end of the line.
My legs were pumping so hard against the hot concrete, I thought my feet might burst into flames at any minute.
“Freddie? Is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me,” I said. “You stopped making those cupcakes last fall, didn’t you?”
Lou paused again.
“I don’t understand what—”
“Just… tell me. It’s important.”
“Yeah, we stopped making them,” she said. “The custard took a lot of time to make, so we decided to make that flavor a fall seasonal special instead. We only make it in October and November now.”
My heart thudded hard in my chest.
“Why?” she said. “I can’t think what that has to do with a single thing.”
“Geraldine Kline said she was in The Barkery the day that Myra was poisoned because she’s addicted to your Apple Custard cupcakes,” I said.
“Geraldine said that?” Lou said.
“Yes.”
“But that doesn’t even make any sense,” Lou said. “She’s gluten intolerant. She only orders the gluten-free items on the menu when she comes in. Which the Apple Custard Cupcake was never part of, even when we did offer it.”
Good old Lou and her elephant-like memory for customer orders.
Geraldine Kline had told a lie. And though it was a small lie, something in my gut told me that it was a significant one.
Liars added specific details like that to their stories to make them sound more believable.
If Geraldine was lying about the flavor of the cupcake she ate at Lou’s bakery the day Myra was poisoned, it seemed entirely plausible that she was lying about other things too.
Other, more important things.
I hurriedly rounded the corner to where I had parked the Hyundai.
“But what does any of this mean, Freddie?”
I unlocked the door to the car, tossing my bag and notepad onto the passenger seat.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “But I’m going to find—”
I stopped mid-sentence as something across the street caught my eye.
Chapter 45
The dog’s head was practically buried in the hibiscus bed that h
e was ripping apart. Just about the only thing exposed were his hind legs. One of them jutted out at an unnatural angle, but that didn’t stop the dog from digging deep into the earth, breaking branches and mutilating flowers.
“Son of a…” I said out loud, trailing off.
It was the dog.
Not just any dog.
The same dog that had ruined mom’s yellow rose garden.The same one that I’d been after for weeks now.
The Ripper of Labrador Lane.
I leaned on the open door of my car, watching him unleash his particular brand of mischief on some poor soul’s front lawn.
I knew I needed to get in the car and get down to the police station. I knew I needed to go tell the cops about Geraldine and the fact that she was likely Myra’s murderer.
I knew all that logically. But here I was with a chance to bring the Ripper of Labrador Lane and his owner to justice.
The image of the torn up roses, the ones my mother had tended to for so long popped into my head, and before I knew it, I had shut the car door behind me.
I headed straight for the dog.
He wasn’t going to get away from me this time.
Chapter 46
I chased after the mutt the way a cop might chase after the sole suspect in a double homicide.
My flats pounded hard against the hot pavement. Somehow, despite his head being buried under a foot of soil, the dog had seen me coming. He’d bolted just as soon as I’d gotten within a yard of him. And me, stubborn and clearly on a mission, wasn’t about to let him escape my grasp again. Even though my flimsy shoes, jeans and chandelier earrings were definitely the wrong wardrobe items for embarking on a chase.
He ran in the middle of the quiet and abandoned streets, swerving across the yards of houses and ripping up lawns. I noticed that one of his back legs was badly misshapen and he had a strange running gait because of it, but it didn’t seem to slow him down much. After a few minutes of running, he was far ahead in front of me. I forced my legs faster. I was swallowing big gulps of air like a fish out of water, and my muscles burned, but I kept going.
The dog was getting farther and farther away, and to my dismay, I realized I was slowing down. Out of shape after several months of skipping the gym, my legs would only go so fast.
The dog was just a speck in the distance as I turned down Grapevine Street, which was a few streets down from the community college. For a dog whose leg was busted up, he sure could run fast.
I was just about to give up and admit defeat when out of the blue, the dog took a severe left, cutting across a lawn and disappearing.
I picked up the pace again, even though my lungs were screaming for mercy. I followed his paw prints across the dead, brown lawn. The tracks led to a small hole under a fence.
I glanced around, breathing hard, looking to see if anybody was watching.
Nobody was.
I lifted the latch on the fence door and stepped inside.
The dog was pacing his yard. When he saw me, he started barking.
So this was where The Ripper lived.
I went up to the small, run-down house, peering in the windows to see if the owner was home, prepared to give him or her hell. But there was no movement inside.
Maybe the dog had been getting out all this time when the owner was at work. The owner might not have had any idea that his dog was causing so much trouble and damage throughout the neighborhood.
I knocked on the back door, but there was no answer.
I looked around again.
I would have to come back when the owner was home. But at least I’d solved the mystery of where the dog lived. I was one step closer to bringing him to justice, and to saving what was left of my mom’s rose garden from—
I stopped mid-thought as I noticed something.
There was a shed in the backyard.
It was small. Four tin walls and not much else.
But the door was open.
I glanced around again. I was still breathing hard from the run and had sweated clear through my clothes. I wasn’t in much of a position to be nosing around anywhere quietly.
But it felt like something was pulling me toward that little dilapidated shed.
Something that I couldn’t quite control.
The hair on the back of my neck was standing on end.
I walked over to it cautiously.
The dog kept barking.
Chapter 47
I turned on the light, and glanced around the dim, enclosed space.
It was a typical, windowless shed. Like one of those you might see sitting in the lots of Home Depot this time of year. Tools were lying about messily on the table tops. A saw sat on a table next to a stack of wood. A tool box lay open, its contents a rusted heap of nails and screws.
Everything in the shed appeared to be normal.
Everything, but the table in the far corner.
I walked slowly across the floor. The wood panels squeaked under my weight.
I felt a sharp pang in my stomach as I went deeper into the shed.
On the table in the back was something that looked to me like a heavy duty high school chemistry set.
There were vials and beakers and funnels. A burner and some jars that had various labels on them. One said “sugar,” and another “flour” in jagged scrawl across masking tape.
I had a distinct feeling that neither one of the jars contained those ingredients.
Because up on the wall, above the chemistry set, was something else. Something that turned an innocent chemistry set into something entirely different.
It was a photograph.
I gasped when I saw it taped there. I gasped, and then I felt like I was going to vomit.
Because I recognized the man and woman in the picture.
Richard Kline.
And Myra Louden.
Chapter 48
“What are you doing?”
The voice was so loud and menacing as it pinged around the tin frame of the shed that I almost screamed out loud.
But somehow, I managed to muffle the cry before it could escape. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing straight up on end as a current of fear ran through me.
I took in a deep breath, knowing that what stood behind me could only be bad.
Here I was, somehow having stumbled into Myra’s murderer’s den by complete accident. With the only escape now blocked, I knew my chances of getting out of this shed were slim.
My only out might be if I could somehow play dumb and convince the man who was behind me that I didn’t know what this little lab of his was.
I slowly turned around. At first, all I could make out was a man’s silhouette, the backlight from the open door being so bright. He was lanky and had an imposing stature that sent chills coursing through me.
But I didn’t even know what chills were until he stepped forward into the dim light of the shed.
I felt my eyes widen and my mouth drop open.
“Milo?” I said, unable to believe the name as it came shooting out of my mouth.
Milo Daniels, Lou’s cashier and baking assistant, the guy with the neck tattoo who she’d tried to set me up with, stood there in the shed with me. In his shed, I realized.
He looked as surprised to see me in there as I was to see him.
But that surprised expression didn’t last long. A moment later, it turned to something like anger.
He stepped toward me.
“What are you doing here, Freddie?” he growled.
I felt my mouth go drier than if I’d swallowed dirt.
“I… I, well…” I started saying, swallowing hard.
After a few seconds of silence, I regained my traction.
“Your dog,” I said. “I followed him. He’s been digging up my rose beds all spring. You should really patch up that hole in the fence.”
I smiled.
“He’s been wreaking havoc all over the neighborhood. We’ve nicknamed him The Ripper of Labrador Lane.
”
I forced a laugh.
Milo nodded, but didn’t say anything. He wasn’t buying what I was selling.
Because while that might have explained why I had ended up in the backyard, it certainly didn’t explain what I was doing here in his shed.
I smiled again, hoping it didn’t look as phony and nervous as I felt.
“I, uh, I saw the door open here and I thought you, I mean, the owner of the dog might be here. I didn’t know it was you who owned him.”
Milo still didn’t say anything. All he did was stare at me. Maybe it was just my imagination, but his eyes seemed to be growing darker with each passing moment.
I had to figure a way out of this one. And fast.
I had a bad feeling that time was running out.
“Hey, so now that I’m here,” I said, clearing my throat. “What do you say to maybe grabbing dinner sometime this week? I mean, you seem like a really nice guy, and Lou said that you might—”
“I know what you’re doing,” he said stepping toward me again.
The movement made me flinch and back away. I bumped into the chemistry set behind me. The clinking of glasses sounded for what felt like an eternity.
“What am I doing?” I said, trying to sound as innocent as a cupcake with sugar sprinkles.
“You’re pretending like you don’t know what’s behind you,” he said. “But I saw you looking. You know what that is. Don’t act stupid.”
I swallowed hard.
This was a completely different man from the cashier with butterfingers who almost spilled Caesar salad all over me earlier in the week.
“Milo, I really don’t—”
“You wrote the stories about her,” he said. “You know.”
He came nearer. I’d run out of places to move.
I was cornered.
I swallowed hard again.
Playing dumb wasn’t going to get me anywhere, I realized.
I knew too much. And he knew that.
I looked into his dark eyes.