Furbidden Fatality

by Deborah Blake

  “Always a plus,” Suz said, grabbing plates down out of the cupboard. The kitchen was an improvement on the one in Kari’s old apartment, in that it at least had adequate storage and counter space, even if what was there was all careworn and needed updating. The space opened to the living room area, which was convenient, and Kari thought that when she finally got around to redoing it, she’d install a nice eat-at central island between the two rooms. For now, though, she made do with the card table and four folding chairs.

  “But my brother arrived this morning. It was that darned newspaper article. Someone sent him a copy.”

  Suz plopped the pizza and plates down next to the wine and put her hands on her hips, straightening up to her full imposing height. “I can’t believe you didn’t call me as soon as he got here. Please tell me you didn’t give him any money.”

  “What am I, an amateur?” Kari responded, trying to figure out which of the three remotes she needed to start the movie. Once they’d grabbed their food, she and Suz would sit on the couch in front of the television, no doubt with the supervision of two cats, a kitten, and a dog.

  “Mickey came over to the shelter for a while and tried to pretend to be helpful, but he mostly got in the way and annoyed Sara and Bryn by trying to charm them.” She snorted. “You should have seen his face when Tripod hobbled up and starting drooling on his designer sneakers.”

  Besides having only three legs, Tripod was missing most of his teeth, so he had an unfortunate tendency to dribble on innocent bystanders. It was one of the reasons he hadn’t been taken in by any of the other shelters, since he was considered unadoptable. Daisy just shrugged and said every shelter needed a mascot, and Kari tended to agree with her.

  “Ha,” Suz said, a string of cheese hanging from her own mouth, making her look remarkably like the cat in question. “Speaking of money, and people trying to get it by nefarious means, I wanted to take another look at that paperwork Sara’s friend Rachel put together for us.”

  “Sure,” Kari said, getting up. She didn’t bother to pause the movie, since they’d both seen it multiple times. “Guard my pizza, will you?” Three sets of feline eyes and one very sad canine pair gazed longingly at her plate until she returned with the folder and set it down in front of Suz. “Did something new occur to you?”

  “Not new, exactly, just putting together a couple of the pieces we had already looked at separately.” Suz wiped her hands on a napkin and pulled out some of the papers. “I wanted to compare some things side by side. Give me a minute.”

  Intrigued, Kari went back to watching the movie and gnawed on a crust until Suz was ready to share her idea. It didn’t take long.

  “Aha!” Suz said. She’d been jotting down some notes in the notebook Sara had brought over for them to keep track of clues, if they were lucky enough to come across any, or barring that, stray thoughts and theories.

  “Aha?” Queenie had wormed her way onto Kari’s lap, so she was using one hand to eat and the other to keep the kitten away from the food. At Suz’s exclamation, Queenie suddenly focused her attention on the lavender-haired woman, as if she wanted to know what “aha” meant too.

  “I noticed an interesting pattern the other night, but it didn’t really sink in until I had some more time to think about it,” Suz said.

  Kari was a little confused. “You mean the pattern in the kind of tickets Myers gave out, and how often Deputy Carter’s name showed up in his reports? We talked about that already.”

  “We did,” Suz said. “But we didn’t track it. Here, look.” She tilted the notebook so Kari could see. “I broke down the bigger tickets—loose dogs, untagged dogs, dogs off their own properties, and so on—by date. About five years ago, Myers’s records start showing a slow increase in these kind of tickets. Then, about a year later, Carter suddenly starts finding loose dogs when he is out on patrol, or calling in reports of dangerous animals.”

  “So Myers got more assertive about his job, and for some reason Carter decided to follow suit?” Kari pondered this possibility for a minute. “That doesn’t really seem to fit what little we know of the two men. They hardly seem like the dedicated public servant types.”

  Suz shook her head, one lock of lavender hair falling into her eyes. “No, that’s not my point at all. I think Myers figured out some way to make money off writing more tickets, and then somehow convinced Carter to help him. If you look at my timeline, the number of tickets has gone up gradually every year ever since, along with the number of dangerous dogs taken into custody.”

  “But how would they make money off the tickets? Don’t the fines go to the town?” Kari took a sip of wine. “And wouldn’t someone notice that they were both issuing more tickets?”

  “Oh, people noticed, all right,” Suz said, sounding grim. “Remember I said I was going to talk to my customers? I spent some time earlier today making phone calls, and heard the same story over and over again. Mrs. Swenson swears her Pekingese Peekaboo never left the backyard. There’s a doggy door in the kitchen and a fenced yard, so the dog could go out during the day when Mrs. Swenson was at work. A couple of years ago, she got a call that Peekaboo had been picked up by the dog warden. Supposedly the dog had dug under the fence, but Mrs. Swenson never did find a hole.”

  “Well, dogs do dig,” Kari said, playing devil’s advocate.

  “Uh-huh,” Suz said. “So she paid the fine for a loose dog, and then the additional fee to collect the dog from the shelter where Myers had taken her. The impoundment fee is twenty dollars, plus a twenty-dollar-a-night charge payable to the shelter. On top of that, there is the cost of the ticket itself, which is twenty dollars for the first occurrence, forty for the second, and sixty for the third. Peekaboo supposedly got out three times, although Mrs. Swenson swears she checked the fence line every time. She finally ended up having to keep the dog inside when she was gone.”

  Kari did some quick math in her head. “Wow,” she said. “So with three offenses, that’s one hundred twenty dollars in fines, plus a minimum of sixty to the shelter, more if the dog ended up staying overnight.” She whistled. “That’s a lot of money.”

  “No kidding,” Suz said. “Then multiply it by all these animals.” She tapped her list of tickets issued over the last few years. “And of the customers I talked to, I had more than one who told me essentially the same story. Dogs that got out of previously secure yards. Dogs whose tags mysteriously disappeared between the time they got out and when they arrived at the shelter.” She shook her head. “That’s a whole separate fine, by the way. And if they’re not wearing their rabies tags, you have to bring paperwork to the shelter to prove they’ve been vaccinated. Which is a good thing, theoretically.”

  “But not if someone is abusing the system,” Kari said. “So your theory is that Myers was not just being more aggressive about writing tickets, but actually purposely creating the circumstances somehow by letting dogs out or removing their collars? That sounds crazy.”

  “Does it?” Suz asked, folding another piece of pizza in half and biting off the end, as if taking out her anger at the dog warden on the innocent dough and cheese. She washed it down with a hefty slug of wine and added, “You found the guy dead in the act of digging a hole under the shelter fence. Almost certainly so he could go after Buster. Face it, the man was crooked and lower than pond scum.”

  “Darn,” Kari said. “And if Deputy Carter was in on it with him . . .” She drank some wine too. “No wonder he is being such a pain to me. He is probably worried I’m going to figure out what Myers was up to.”

  “You’re going to have to talk to the sheriff,” Suz said. “He needs to know what was going on, and that one of his officers was probably involved.”

  Kari dropped her head into her hands, and Queenie reached up and licked her chin. “That’s going to go over well,” she said, her words muffled. “I already alienated the new dog warden by suggesting that Myers ma
de up the story about Buster biting someone. I’m sure the sheriff will be even less enthusiastic about our theories.”

  She sat up and gazed at Suz. “Are you sure you don’t want to go talk to him instead? At least you’re not a suspect in a murder investigation. And you’re way more persuasive than I am.”

  “Sorry, no,” Suz said. “It’s your shelter, and your shelter dog that’s being accused. I just helped you put together a few facts. I’m afraid you’re the one who is going to have to go talk to him.”

  “Great,” Kari said. “If he throws me in jail, will you feed the cats and Fred?”

  Twelve

  Sheriff Richardson listened to Kari without saying a word, and then looked through the paperwork and Suz’s notes, still not commenting in any way other than an occasional grunt. His silence made her twitchy, which she suspected was its desired effect.

  Finally he lifted his head and stared across his desk at Kari, gray eyes piercing and his expression neutral.

  “So,” he said, placing the papers on the tidy surface of the desk and straightening them until they sat in a neat, square pile. “Your theory is that the town dog warden, who held his position for ten years after a career in the military, and my deputy, who has been on this police force for over two decades and is barely more than a year away from retirement, colluded together to write unwarranted tickets to dog owners. And that they did this for profit, although you have not as yet come up with a theory as to how, in fact, they made money off this supposed scheme. Is that about it, Ms. Stuart, or am I leaving anything out?”

  Kari sat up as straight as she could on the uncomfortable wooden chair that faced his desk. “That’s about it for that part of what I came to tell you about, yes. Sir,” she added hastily. “But I also wanted to tell you about a couple of possible suspects I found out about in talking to other people about Myers this last week. He made a lot of enemies during his time as dog warden, but there were two people who really hated him.”

  Richardson cocked one eyebrow and made a “go on” gesture with his hand. Kari had the sinking feeling he was just giving her the chance to dig herself into a deeper hole, but she owed it to Buster, and to Daisy and Izzy, to make sure he knew about everyone who had it in for Myers.

  “As you know, Myers was trying to get one of the shelter’s dogs, Buster, declared a dangerous dog. He apparently did this at an unusually high rate, leaving the dog owners furious and heartbroken.” She cleared her throat, trying not to wiggle in her chair. The sheriff’s undivided attention was a little nerve-racking.

  “One of those owners is a college professor named Steve Clark, whose valuable purebred Irish wolfhound was accused of ravaging sheep. Myers seized the dog and had him euthanized, and Clark swears that not only did the dog not chase sheep, but there was no way he could have kept getting out without human intervention. I talked to the professor, and he is still really angry about the whole incident.”

  “I see,” the sheriff said. “And your other suspect, Miss Marple?”

  Oh, funny. Now he’s comparing me to an Agatha Christie old-lady snoop. Of course, that snoop had solved a lot of crimes. Kari just wanted to solve one.

  “Georgia Travis. She’s a former state trooper, so she is probably pretty tough. Myers seized her retired police dog, supposedly for uncontrolled aggressive tendencies stemming from neglect and abuse.”

  Richardson’s eyebrow went up higher. “Is that so?”

  “It doesn’t seem likely that she would fight so hard to be allowed to adopt the dog and then abuse it, and according to the court papers, she denied it vehemently and accused Myers of making the whole thing up.”

  Kari swallowed hard, thinking about their own situation.

  “He had all the necessary documentation, so the judge had no choice but to rule in his favor and allow him to take the dog.” If she couldn’t fix things, it seemed all too likely that the same fate awaited poor Buster. “So Georgia had motive too, plus, presumably, experience with violence.”

  “It might surprise you, Ms. Stuart,” Richardson said in an even tone, “but I was already well aware of both Steve Clark and Georgia Travis. I didn’t get this job because of my charm and good looks, you know.”

  Heat rose in Kari’s face. “I, uh, no, sir. I mean, yes, sir.” Aw, crap. “I wasn’t trying to suggest the police weren’t on top of things. I was just afraid—”

  “You were just afraid that I’d already decided that either you or one of your friends was guilty, and had stopped looking for other suspects,” he finished for her. “You may be at the top of my list, Ms. Stuart, but that doesn’t mean the case is closed. You’ll know when that happens because someone will be arrested for the murder of Bill Myers.” He gave her a look that made her think he was envisioning her in handcuffs.

  “As it happens, both Steve Clark and Georgia Travis were already known to us, since they had both lodged official complaints against the dog warden, although nothing ever came of them. Steve Clark’s only alibi is his wife, who not only admits that she sleeps like a rock but freely told us that she was glad Myers was dead. So he’s still on our radar, although I’m not convinced that revenge is a good enough motive in this case. If the dog was still alive and he could have saved it, maybe.” He looked pointedly at her, reminding her that this was a potential motive for either her or Daisy.

  He tapped his fingers on the file. “Georgia Travis, on the other hand, while absolutely livid about the loss of her dog, couldn’t have committed the crime. You see, she had to leave the force because she was shot in the shoulder. She was deemed too disabled to be able to work because of a permanent weakness in that arm. So while she might have wanted to kill Bill Myers, she didn’t have the upper body strength to have wielded that snare pole.”

  Kari could have sworn she saw the hint of a smile as he added, “I know Georgia, and if she’d decided to kill Myers, she would just have taken out her old service revolver and shot him between the eyes.”

  “Oh,” Kari said. “Well, I’m sorry to have wasted your time, Sheriff.”

  He sighed, flipping open the folder again. “I wouldn’t say that, Ms. Stuart. You’re still a good suspect, and I sure as heck hope you didn’t dig up this dirt just to try to throw me off your trail. Or that of any of your friends. If so, I assure you it isn’t going to work. However”—he grimaced—“I think there is enough evidence here for me to look into what dealings Mr. Myers and my deputy had together, if any. What you’ve given me doesn’t prove anything, but it definitely stinks to high heaven.”

  The sheriff didn’t look happy as he escorted her to the door of his office. Kari could only hope that his ire was aimed at Deputy Carter and not at her. It was distinctly possible she’d made things worse instead of better.

  * * *

  * * *

  On her way back to the shelter, Kari stopped at the bakery and bought a dozen donuts for the staff and volunteers. Okay, maybe there was a chocolate with chocolate frosting that had her name on it. It had been a rough morning. The smell of yeast and sugar that permeated the small shop had lifted her spirits as soon as she walked in. It had about a dozen tables, most with two scrollback chairs with paisley padded seats, although there were a few that could seat four instead.

  A glass case filled with pastries took up most of the space at the far end of the room, along with a counter with thermal jugs filled with various types of coffee, all labeled in beautiful script. According to the blackboard propped on a standing easel by the door, today’s specials were maple baklava (made with local maple syrup), Black Forest muffins, and Sumatran coffee. The owners, two sisters named Pansy and Petunia, were nothing if not eclectic. Luckily for Kari and everyone else who frequented the place, everything they sold was delicious.

  Between the scents of the coffee brewing behind the counter and the attractive lineup of treats inside the glass case, Kari considered it nothing short of a miracle that she m
anaged to make herself leave at all. As it was, she arrived back at the shelter with an extra bag full of muffins that smelled like chocolate heaven, and a to-go cup of Sumatran with extra cream, just because.

  “How did it go?” Daisy asked as soon as Kari walked in the door. She was clearly asking about the visit to the sheriff, not the bakery.

  The former owner still came by a few times a week, although Kari could tell she had purposely been trying to stay out of the way so Kari could make the place her own. And maybe so it wouldn’t be quite as tough for Daisy to leave town once she’d been cleared of murder and the issue with Buster had been resolved.

  Even when Daisy wasn’t around, though, they’d been trying to keep her up to speed on everything that was going on. She’d really read Kari the riot act for not calling the night the windows got broken, although she admitted that Kari had handled it well.

  Sara came out from behind the desk. “I’m glad you’re back,” she said. “I was starting to worry that the sheriff had gotten annoyed and thrown you into jail. Oh, donuts! Excellent.”

  “I can definitely see how worried you were,” Kari said dryly, putting the bakery box down on the table next to the coffee maker. “I got maple glazed for you and jelly-filled for Bryn. Also, there are Black Forest muffins.”

  “Did someone say jelly-filled?” Bryn asked, coming through the door from the dog area. “Don’t anyone eat mine while I wash my hands.” She disappeared into the bathroom but popped back out quickly. “So what did the sheriff say?”

  Kari pulled the folder out of her large shoulder bag and placed it on the desk. Queenie, who had been sleeping on top of the cat tree in the main room, raced over to greet Kari, purring as if they hadn’t seen each other for days instead of just a couple of hours. Once Kari had poured her coffee into a real mug, grabbed her donut, and sat down behind the desk, Queenie leapt up to her usual post on Kari’s shoulder.