A Shot in the Bark (A Dog Park Mystery)

He had to go. Could she do it? Years with this man were endurable while he was pursuing his ambitions, working long hours and out of town for days at a time. Then retirement brought his domineering ways home and the man who was a big fish in a very big pond now thrashed around in her little puddle, making life miserable with his endless demands.

Potassium Chloride was virtually undetectable. It mimicked heart attacks, and he'd already had two. No one would notice the injection site because he took daily insulin shots. Could she sneak it into his syringe? Could she set it up so he would give it to himself while she was away? But the syringe would have a chemical residue. And if potassium changed the color of insulin, he'd notice.

What would deflect suspicion? If she were gone when it happened, she could arrange an alibi. That would mean an unattended death and maybe an autopsy. If she were present and had to face EMTs, could she pull off acting dazed and grieving? Could she time it right, the call to 911?

She recalled the Harris case, which blew up because he delayed the 911 call too long. His wife's skin was dry when the EMTs arrived and he had cleaned up the bathroom. Too clean. She was sure he had to clean it up because his wife thrashed around in the bath while he was holding her under. The floor was bone dry. No puddles from a distraught husband dragging her out of the tub. And he drained the tub. Was there something in the water to make her sleepy? Only her hair had been wet when the EMTs arrived, a fact that led to months of controversy in the press and in the courts, racking up thousands of dollars in expert witness testimony. Such a small thing and it led to disaster. Could anyone remember everything to do at a time like that?

Her thoughts returned to the man she'd lived with for so long. Her love was reduced to grinding resentment. He was a miserable man in a life where he no longer had a purpose, where his sphere of influence was reduced from affecting thousands over the years to this kingdom with only one citizen to rule.

His only joy was making her even more miserable than he was. He would be better dead. Careful planning was required. Could she pull it off? Could she do it?

"How did I get mixed up with such a loser, Anna?" Lia's question somehow managed to be simultaneously earnest and rhetorical. The lithe, thirty-ish artist posed this question as she and her friend perched on top of a picnic table at the Mount Airy Dog Park, watching their furry children at play.

Anna, wise in the ways of the heart, kept silent. Like all good cops and therapists, she knew a void invited unburdening. She was a sturdy, middle-aged woman of medium height, with a square face and thin lips. Dark brows hovered over intense eyes of an indeterminate color. Nature had gifted her with hair that went pale gold instead of grey, and it waved softly just above her shoulders. It was her one beauty. Like everything in her life, its display was understated.

Lia sighed and ruffled the ears of Chewy, her silver miniature schnauzer. Satisfied, Chewy took off for another tour of the park perimeter. Lia tracked his jaunty trot with fretful green eyes while she gathered her thoughts. "I know better. Mom went through the same damn thing with her second husband. Handsome, talented, and just needed a little help to manifest his brilliant potential. Ha!" She bent her head forward while she gave a pat to a passing lab. Summer-streaked chestnut hair poured over her shoulders, curtaining her expressive eyes. She chewed on her bottom lip and picked at the fringe on her paint-splattered cut-offs.

Anna gently posed her question. "You've been seeing him for, what, almost a year now? What's upsetting you today?"

"Nothing's upsetting me. That is, nothing's changed. Nothing's improved, nothing's different. He always acts like I'm this big muse, and he says he's writing like crazy but he's just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic." She gusted a sigh while rolling her eyes. "I take that back. He's not rearranging them, he's tossing them into a big pile and pouring gasoline on them. It's a funeral pyre on a sinking ship."

"So what brought this on today?" Anna asked.

"I read his latest revisions yesterday. Thinking about it kept me up most of the night. The manuscript was nearly finished when I met him a year ago. It's no closer to being finished now than it was then." Lia paused. "Really, it's further away. His revisions are chopping it up so it's disjointed and unpublishable. He says he needs to cut pages, but he'll need to add another 50 pages to pull together all the new material he's added. He's killed the pace and it's lost its freshness. He's overworked the good parts until they just lay there, dead and stinking to high heaven." Lia ended her rant and sat back, arms folded.

"That's quite an image."

"Anna, it's pure road kill. I told him, 'You can't sell something if you never finish it. You can't finish it if you keep adding new elements that mean you have to rewrite the whole damn thing. You're not curing cancer here, you're just trying to entertain people.'"

"Good thing he's a writer, not a painter. He can go back to an earlier version of the manuscript when he comes to his senses."

"That's just it," Lia's voice took on a disgusted edge. "He's been overwriting the file all along. I set up his computer and showed him how to save different versions of the book as he made changes, and he blew it off. He said it was too much trouble."

Anna considered this. "There's software that can retrieve it, isn't there?"

"There isn't if Paul offers to defrag your computer while you're having beers. It's gone. For good. Honey! Stop digging! Right! Now!" Lia's anger made this reprimand sharper than it should have been.

Honey usually deserved her name. Today she was busily enlarging a hole created by an earlier dog park visitor and quickly losing her sweetheart status. Chewy found this very amusing and sniffed the dirt pile, emerging with dirty paws and a clump of sod on his pert nose.

"Honey! I said STOP!" This time the handsome Golden Retriever looked up, her expression sheepish. She returned to Lia in a penitent slouch and placed one dirt caked paw in Lia's lap in a plea for forgiveness. Lia looked down at the dark smudges on her shorts. "And I thought Goldens were the perfect breed." She scratched behind Honey's ears and gave her a kiss on the top of her head.

Anna laughed, a merry tinkling full of good humor and empathy. "At least you have the sense to dress for the park. Not like some I might name."

Lia noticed the older woman's eyes flick over to the pair sitting at a picnic table several yards away. Lia knew she wasn't talking about Jim. Jim's couture was comfortable, well-used and rumpled, like his face and personality. It was the coifed grand-dame deftly touching his arm that drew this bit of spite from Anna.

"I miss Jim, too. I'm sorry I ever introduced them. Catherine's had her claws out for him ever since. And she never would have looked at him twice if I hadn't raved about what a great friend he was. Now every time I'm around him, she does everything she can to distract him from me."

Catherine Laroux and her twin Pomeranians had appeared three months earlier. Caesar and Cleo (Anna, Bailey and Lia privately called them "Prissy" and "Poopsy") didn't need much exercise. Catherine needed escape from her husband, and attention. Lots of attention. Any attention would do, and she got it with flattering focus and playing the damsel in distress. Whether it was people who slighted her, symptoms she couldn't decipher, or appliances she didn't understand, Catherine always found a reason to seek help and advice. She had a consummate talent for making her needs more important than anything else that might be happening. The women caught on quickly. The men, typically, when faced with the full brunt of femininity, were clueless.

"It's amazing, isn't it?" Lia continued. "How many problems can one person have at 8:00 a.m. in the dog park?"

This time Anna responded with a ladylike snort. "Now, now. Let's collect our furry children and see if they might like to chase some balls."

Anna's handsome and mannerly Tibetan Mastiff, CarGo (as in "Car! Go!"), was stately and full of humor. He was all black and always well-groomed. Like his mistress, he deplored fussiness and remained aloof from drama. He galloped up - gallop is the only word that would work. At 125 pounds, CarGo could be mistaken for a small horse. His one bad habit was jumping up, and with paws on shoulders, looking humans in the eyes. In moments of whimsey, Anna considered teaching him ballroom dancing.

His canine radar infallible, CarGo was ready as soon as Anna pulled her "flinger" from her bag. Anna expertly launched two balls in the air. CarGo beelined after a line-drive, Chewy yapping at his heels while Honey considered a high lob, bolting when its trajectory became apparent. She leapt up to snag it out of the air before CarGo pounced on her own grounder.

Anna turned to look at Lia. "I love watching them play. I don't even mind the slobber. So what will you do about him?"

"Luthor?" responded Lia, not thrown by the non-sequitur. "What I always do, I suppose. Withdraw.

"People who accomplish anything are finishers. They don't whine or make excuses. They might adjust their course a bit, but they don't suddenly decide to switch destinations. All of a sudden, Luthor doesn't know what kind of book he's writing. This is 18 months into the thing, and he hasn't decided who the killer is, or if he ought to be writing a police procedural instead of a psychological thriller. Drives me crazy. Once I figured he was never going to finish the book, I lost all feeling for him."

"Over a book?"

"Over his lack of direction and his pretense that he's actually doing something. I can't be with someone who hasn't entered the real world. Sooner or later, they wind up turning on me like it's my fault they haven't accomplished anything."

"Poor girl. I'm so glad he never moved in"

"That would have been a mistake. I'm dreading this as it is. Oh, Gawd. Here he comes."

It was the sound of a perforated muffler that drew Lia's attention to the parking lot. Luthor had named the rattle-trap Corolla "William" because it had "suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." Lia thought "Shakes-Gear" was more to the point.