A Shot in the Bark (A Dog Park Mystery)

by C. A. Newsome

  "Hey, Detective Peter. Come in and have a beer."

  "Hey, yourself." He opened the gate and unclipped Viola so she could join the other dogs, then set a bakery box down on the table. He grabbed a Grolsch swing-top from the ice chest and took a long pull while he studied Lia. He was feeling wary, but hopeful. She looked subdued and a bit tired. He noticed that instead of her usual T-shirt and paint smeared cut-offs, she wore a lavender tank top and purple paisley Bermuda shorts. Her hair was loose, and it curtained her face as she turned. "How have you been?"

  "I'm doing better. This whole summer has been one bombshell after another. That business with Bailey was the worst, worse than finding Luthor, even."

  "You didn't have to go to all this trouble."

  She gave a wan smile, "Grilling's easy as it gets. Anyway, cooking is therapeutic. Hang on a minute while I pull some things out of the fridge."

  "Need a hand? I've got two."

  "Sure, why not?"

  He followed her into the kitchen, which was warm and smelled of yeast. "Fresh bread?" He raised his eyebrows.

  "Punching dough is very satisfying." She handed him a bowl of Romaine and tomato wedges topped with a blackish paste. Peter looked at it and wondered if this was a bad sign. "My therapist thinks baking bread is a good outlet for my aggressions. Almost as good as working clay, but I'm not set up for that."

  "I didn't know you had a therapist."

  She's new. Like I said, it's been a rough summer." She pulled a plate out of the fridge and gestured to the door. "Shall we have some eats?"

  He eyed the bowl suspiciously. "I'm not one to look a gift meal in the mouth, but what is this stuff?"

  "What it is, is delicious. That's tappenade. It's a puree of olives and spices. If you don't like it, you can give all of yours to me. But I never took you for a culinary coward."

  "I'm not, normally, but this stuff resembles something that came up in my drain once."

  She rolled her eyes, "Have a little faith, Dourson. Tell you what, I'll eat it first so you'll know it won't kill you."

  "Thank you. That's a big load off my mind. Is that plate what I think it is?"

  "Tuna sashimi. I know you like sushi."

  "I didn't know you could make the raw fish stuff at home."

  "You can with tuna. That's the safest fish for do-it-yourselfers. Appetizer first, then salad."

  There was something intimate about sharing the plate of sashimi. Lia showed him how she liked it best, laying a piece of pickled ginger on top of a tender slice of fish, then rolling it up and using a fork to dip it into wasabi-spiced soy sauce. She demonstrated, then fed the first one to him. They saved the last 3 slices of tuna for the dogs. Chewy and Honey gulped theirs right down. Viola carefully laid hers on the grass and sniffed at it. Peter watched with amusement. "I guess my dog is a culinary coward, too." After eyeing the morsel a bit longer, Viola licked at it, then eyed it again and suddenly snarfed it up. Chewy sighed disappointedly.

  A timer beeped. "Bread's ready." Lia dashed into the kitchen and emerged a few minutes later with a steaming loaf on a breadboard. "We have to wait a little bit while it cools down."

  "Must we?" Peter gave her a mournful look.

  Lia laughed, "Yes, unless you want to hurt yourself. Here, try this." She held out a fork holding a smidgeon of the black paste.

  "I thought you were going to try it first?"

  "Dourson, Dourson," she shook her head. "Some things are all about trust. Do you trust me?"

  "I don't know. You've been really angry at me. You could be setting me up." Might as well get it out there, he thought. "I'm sorry you found out about Catherine the way you did. I would have found a better way to tell you, once it was going to be public knowledge. Until then, I couldn't say anything."

  "It's not your fault. I've worked it out every way I could think of, and I don't believe you could have done any different. If I had been paying attention, I would have realized something was going on between Luthor and Catherine. And you warned me there might be more women. I finally realized that underneath all the drama Luthor created, I really didn't care enough to notice. So I'm going to forget about them, and I hope you will, too."

  "Really?"

  "Really. Enough serious stuff. Now are you going to eat your sewer sludge like a good boy or am I going to have to send you home without your moo-cow?"

  "We're having moo-cow?"

  "Duh. Grill. Moo-cow. It should be obvious."

  "I thought you might be feeding me something girly, like Portabella steaks or veggie burgers."

  "Dourson, Dourson, Dourson," she sighed. "We are really going to have to work on your trust issues." She offered the fork again. This time he opened his mouth. "That's better," she cooed.

  The rich flavor of olives and garlic burst over his tongue. "Wow. Intense. Tasty stuff."

  She picked up a large, serrated knife and sliced a generous heel off the loaf. The whole wheat bread steamed as she slathered on softened butter. Rivulets of butter melted while she spread it. "Here, take a bite of this."

  He closed his eyes and concentrated on the flavor while it dissolved in his mouth. "This is Heaven. What did I do to deserve it?"

  "Not a thing. But we could both use a break. I've been thinking you don't want your filet to cook very long, so why don't we finish our salads before I put the meat to the fire?"

  "Sounds like a plan." He ate every last bit of salad, just in case that would have any bearing on the quality of his steak.

  Peter manned the grill as the sky began to darken. They ate in companionable silence. After the rare meat and fully dressed, grilled potato were safely in his belly, after they fed scraps to three eager dogs, he commented, "I never knew you were so carnivorous. Those were positively bloody. It doesn't quite fit with the carrot juice."

  "I'm a girl of depth and complexity."

  "I can see that. You know, I just realized where I heard that music before. Is it that same band? What was their name? Mayan something?"

  "Mayan Ruins. I've got their CDs." It was full dark now, with a bright quarter moon rising above the trees. "Kentucky Boy, I think they might be playing our song."

  "Do you think so?"

  "Yes, I absolutely do."

  He took her hand and led her out onto the grass and into his arms. They swayed gently to the sensual syncopation until the maracas shimmied and the drums kicked up tempo, until it became a throbbing in his blood. Peter stopped. He took Lia's face in both hands and leaned down to kiss her, gently at first, then sinking, sinking.

  Peter raised himself on his elbows after the pounding of his heart subsided. He watched Lia's face in the moonlight coming through her bedroom window, then kissed her lightly on the nose. She scrunched it up at him and sighed. "You know," he said, "I was afraid I'd never get to do that with you again."

  "That would have been a real shame."

  "You know what's a real shame?"

  "What?"

  "Our dessert, sitting in the backyard, waiting for the raccoons to get it."

  "Oh! I forgot all about it! Do you suppose it's still there?"

  "Let me pull on my shorts and go check."

  Lia grabbed a cotton robe and joined him out back on the stoop. The box was still intact. "What is it, anyway?"

  "Open it up and see."

  "It's dark."

  "Here, I'll grab a fork and you'll just have to trust me this time."

  "Sauce for the goose?"

  "Something like that. Open wide."

  The morsel was dark and creamy and bittersweet. "Oh, my God. Chocolate cheesecake. And dried cherries. This was sitting out here all this time and I didn't know it?"

  Peter took a bite. "I hope you had better things to do."

  "I don't know. This is pretty wicked."

  "Now you're going to go and insult my prowess."

  "Hey, Dourson?"

  "Hey, what?"

  "You dance just fine, Kentucky Boy. Now gimme another bite." She opened her mouth like a l
ittle bird and he obligingly fed her the rest of the slice. When it was gone, she examined him carefully. "I wasn't going to ask, but I think I'm gonna."

  "Ask what?"

  "Can you talk about Bailey?"

  Peter thought. Yeah, some things really are about trust. "Probably not, but I will."

  "Peter, I was never so scared. I froze. I was petrified. I just couldn't think, couldn't move. She had my own gun to my head. All I could do was cry and beg."

  "I've never had a gun aimed at me. I can't imagine it."

  "How did she figure she was going to get away with killing me?"

  "She quit talking shortly after we took her into custody. First she was babbling nonsense and then she became non-responsive. They had to send her to a psych ward. She hasn't said a word in over a week. What we know is pieced together from interviews with other people and speculation.

  "She knew you had the gun because Jose told her. Her truck was parked up at Maple Ridge Lodge. We figure she cut through the woods so no one at the park would see her. She left Kita at home. You take a lot of walks in the woods. I think she was looking for you down by the creek, and she probably planned to make it look like another suicide, like you were so distraught over Luthor that you decided to end it all. She factored everything in except the dogs."

  The trio had been lolling on the grass. At the word "dogs," they perked their heads up. Peter laughed. "Yes, we're talking about you. Don't get big-headed on us."

  "What's going to happen to her?"

  "I know you were terrified, but I can't help wishing she'd talked just a little longer. You said she mentioned Catherine and Luthor. You're absolutely sure she never said she killed them?"

  "From what I remember. Part of the time I was so freaked out, my ears stopped working. I couldn't hear a thing. I remember she said the world was better without them, and she said she had a mission to end pain and suffering. I don't remember her saying she killed anyone."

  "Damn. We've got nothing to connect her to Catherine and Luthor. The crime scene folks have torn her house apart, looking for any connection to the gun, anything she might have kept as a souvenir. The IT folks are reviewing her computer to see if they can find any incriminating files. They're also reviewing her browser activity.

  "She was visiting some very strange web-sites and forums, places that support that whole 'Hitler' thing you were telling me about. Her posts are frightening, you can see her coming apart. She hasn't admitted to anything about Luthor or Catherine, and if she's smart, when she comes back around she won't, since we have no physical evidence to implicate her. We're examining her life, looking for any possibility that she might have done it before.

  "Right now, all we have is an attempted murder charge, and it'll be pled down to assault with a deadly weapon. She's getting a full psych evaluation. Her lawyer's insisting she never meant to pull the trigger, just to shock you, and that the gun went off accidentally because the dogs tackled her. Looks like she'll spend time in a psychiatric unit for violent offenders. I'm not happy about any of this. We need to put her away permanently, and we may not be able to do it."

  "Do you think there's any chance that she didn't kill Luthor and Catherine, and that she really didn't mean to pull the trigger?"

  "How big are the odds that you have two homicidal maniacs at the dog park?"

  "Not very big, I guess. But Bailey! We've been friends for years. I still can't believe she'd try to kill me."

  "If we're lucky, when the time comes she'll ignore her lawyer and and spill it all. Self-righteous types often do."

  "It was so weird. She was acting so crazy. Still, there was a piece of what she was saying that really hit me, about choosing to be happy or unhappy."

  "I don't think life is that black and white."

  "No, it's not. But I sat on that log with a gun to my head and her finger on the trigger. She kept saying all this wild stuff about sending me to the other side. All I could think was, I'm going to die and I wasted all that time obsessing about that jerk, Luthor, and never gave you and me a chance." She turned to Peter. "Every time things got sticky, I pushed you away instead of dealing with it."

  He put his arms around her and pulled her close. Their eyes met and held for a long moment, his searching, hers earnest. The world stilled while she waited for him to respond. Finally he gave her an odd half-smile and said, "Do you want to give me and you a chance?

  "Yeah, I do."

  "Really?"

  "Really, Kentucky Boy."

  "Sing me Viola's Pee song."

  So she did.

  Epilogue

  Bailey was such a dupe. I so tired of listening to her nauseating New Age baloney. So delicious to turn it against her! Few people knew she was bi-polar. All I had to do was dump out the medication in her capsules and fill them with powdered aspirin to send her into a manic state. Then there were those two capsules I filled with a special chemical cocktail designed to push her over the edge. Easy enough to do since I knew where she hid her spare key.

  A few suggestions of web sites touting a ridiculous theory about reincarnation, and Bailey became a woman with purpose. She'll never know I was the one responding to her posts on that forum, egging her on. Regrettable that she chose Lia as her first target, but I knew she didn't have it in her to pull the trigger. Foolish woman, trying to explain herself, as if she were going to get Lia's approval for her plan to send Lia out of this life and into the next one!

  As much as they want to, they'll never connect Bailey to Luthor's murder. They'll either resign themselves that Catherine did it, or they'll have to let it go. The waters are sufficiently muddied and I am still under the radar.

  I am fascinated by the new possibilities this event raises, achieving my aims through the manipulation of others. An elegant solution to the problem of establishing an alibi, as well as making it possible to remove more than one person from the same environment at the same time. Presuming the one manipulated is not as thorough as I am, they should get caught, eliminating themselves.

  I am of two minds about this last round. On the one hand, I caved in to anxiety and broke my rules. It is questionable whether my actions after removing Luthor served a purpose. It is possible that had I just followed the rules and kept still, that everything would have been just fine. I could have disposed of the phone and no one would have ever connected me to Luthor, even if they suspected. But do I venture to say that this was invigorating? Even highly amusing? It was so satisfying to smash Catherine in the head with a rock! And the memory is so pleasurable. A clean, quiet removal has its rewards, but I was getting bored. Perhaps it's time to make the game more interesting.

  I must consider this carefully, determine the ramifications. For now, all is well in my little world. I no longer have to endure Catherine and her narcissistic preening, Luthor and his drama, or Bailey and her mumbo-jumbo. Terry's going to be in casts for months, then physical therapy. That won't improve his political position, but at least when he's spouting off, I can look at his casts and remember booby-trapping his ladder. My mornings are pleasant again. And that's as it should be.

  Viola's Song

  You gotta circle to the left and

  then you circle to the right

  Sniff, sniff, sniff until it feels just right

  Move along, do a little prance

  That's Viola's dance

  And so I circle to the left and then I circle right

  And I sniff and I sniff, but nothing seems quite right

  So I'll do it all again with a step that will entrance

  That's Viola's dance

  One more time!

  Circle left, circle right

  Sniff, sniff, oh boy, that's outta sight!

  Do a little squat with a wiggle of my pants

  That's Viola's dance

  Ahhhh!

  Author's Notes

  There really is a Mount Airy Dog Park, and I've been taking my furry horde there almost daily for more than eight years (It has
recently been renamed the Doris Day Dog Park). A few of the park regulars made it into the book under aliases (with their permission). Any truly heinous character is a product of my mind, and not to be confused with any real person.

  Terry Dunn is only slightly less intelligent in real life than he is in the book. Jose really is the nickname of an Italian guy whose family has called him Jose since he was a baby. Many of the dogs in the book exist. Mayan Ruins is a real (fabulous!) band. Their drummer, Paul Ravenscraft, is a talented massage therapist as well as the band's drummer.

  The bars and restaurants mentioned are also real, but don't expect to go to the Comet and see Desiree's butt cleavage. She, and it, don't exist. To avoid jurisdictional conflicts, I have redrawn Cincinnati police districts to include the dog park in District Five. Any deviation from proper police procedure is a product of my fevered imagination and no reflection on the Cincinnati Police Department.

  P.S. In the book, Peter doesn't understand Catherine's reference to Oliver North because he's under fifty. For those of you who are also under fifty, Catherine is referring to the Iran-Contra scandal of the early Eighties. During a congressional hearing, Oliver North was asked where he got the money to pay for a $17,000 alarm system. He responded that he saved the money up in his change jar. Alma would have happily explained this to Peter, but alas, there was no good place to slip that conversation into the book.

  Acknowledgments

  Many, many thanks to Lou Marti for being my main sounding board and critic while I was writing this book, and to Angie Hall for her colorful feedback on the MS. Thank you Mom for editing and for always believing in me. Special thanks to Tom Sansalone, John Cunningham, Anna Woo, Nick "Jose" Misch and Lou Marti for allowing me to base characters on them. Thanks to Anna Woo and Pat North for their eternal, unwavering support.

  About the Author

  Carol Ann "C. A." Newsome is an author and artist who lives in Cincinnati. She spends most mornings at the Mount Airy Dog Park with her three rescues. Carol loves to hear from readers. Contact her at carolannnewsome@netzero.net