Mutts & Murder: A Dog Town USA Cozy Mystery (11 page)

He leaned forward in his chair.

“We were very good friends. That’s it.” he said, sharply. “Now I believe you wanted to know more about the founding of the dog board?”

“Yes,” I said.

I launched into several questions about the dog hearings, getting boring details from him about his role on the committee and Myra’s leadership style. About the purpose of the hearings and how it saved the Dog Mountain County Courts time. About Myra’s sense of justice and why, in Richard’s eyes, she made such a good judge.

His answers were all perfectly politically correct.

And wholly unenlightening as to who might have murdered Myra Louden. 

After I’d bored myself half out of my mind listening to Richard, I finally asked him the question that I’d come here for.

“I was wondering if I could view the files and notes from all of the dog board hearings since it started,” I said.

His face twisted slightly in surprise.

“I don’t see why that’s necessary,” he said. “You’ve attended several of the hearings. You know how the board operates.”

“It would help the article,” I said. “It would help me write it with more accuracy.”

I didn’t tell him the real reason I wanted those files: to see if there were any good motives for murder that might have arisen from past dog board rulings.

He looked at me for a long moment, and then finally shrugged.

“You can ask Judge Warner about getting copies,” he said. “She has them all.”

I nodded. I had already scheduled an interview with Judge Warner, who was an actual judge as opposed to a dog board judge, just before lunch. I would ask her for the documents then.

Richard turned from me and looked back out the window again.

“It’s strange, isn’t it?” he said.

“What is?”

“The way life just…
goes
. It all happens so fast.”

He scratched the grey stubble on his chin, that distant look on his face again.

I tried to think of something to say to that, but could think of nothing.

He was right.

Chapter 26

I returned to the office just before lunch with a large stack of Xeroxes that I’d spent the better part of an hour making down at the courthouse. I tossed the stack on my desk and then checked in.

There was another Post-it note stuck to my keyboard.

I peeled it away from my computer then peered down at the message, which was more of a riddle this time than anything else.

“
Newsroom, Saturday night: The ball’s in your court now
.”

I glanced around again to see who might have stuck it there, but just like the time before, I didn’t make much progress in finding my mystery messenger.

After studying the note for a long while, I set it aside, resolving to return to it later. Then I made sure I hadn’t missed any important phone calls or emails in the time that I was gone. I put down a few more lines into the A1 Sunday centerpiece about Myra’s impact on the dog board, adding in a few quotes from Richard. It wasn’t going to be much more than a puff piece. Nobody ever said the truth about somebody after they died.

The clock approached noon, and I reasoned I’d go down to the café and get myself a Caesar salad, sans Milo Daniels this time, when Kobritz intercepted me.

“Ms. Wolf, the candidate for the photography job is in the break room,” he said. “I told him you would meet with him now.”

I sighed.

I had forgotten that I’d agreed to meet with the job candidate today. Having the newspaper staff meet with prospective co-workers was something the small paper encouraged as a way to give its employees the illusion that they had a say in the hiring process. I didn’t mind meeting with the new candidates all that much. Most of the time it was a good way to get out of making a phone call or writing a news brief. But today, it’d be cutting into my lunch hour.

I glanced at my phone, trying to think of some excuse about me needing to be somewhere else right now. But after years of being editor, Kobritz could cut through the BS like nobody’s business.

“C’mon,” he said. “Jennifer already bailed earlier, and Rachael was just in there talking to him for half an hour. You need to go in there and convince him there are actual serious reporters in this newsroom.”  

I supposed that was Kobritz’s way of bribing me with a compliment.

“Besides, we ordered pizza. A free lunch is in this for you if you just go in there and talk to him.”

When I compared that to my planned Caesar salad, the deal didn’t seem quite so bad.

“Fine,” I said.

I grabbed a pad of paper and the cup of coffee that I had refilled earlier, and headed for the conference room.

When I opened the door, the coffee cup slid right out of my hand.

Chapter 27

I just stood there with coffee splattered all over my sandals and the bottom of my jeans, staring at him.

Dumbfounded
didn’t even begin to describe the way I felt.

“What the f…” I mumbled, feeling my face go numb.

I suddenly wondered if I wasn’t in a nightmare. If I wasn’t asleep in bed at home, unable to pull myself from the feverish, troubled dream. That, or maybe I was hallucinating. Superimposing his face on the man sitting there at the table.

Or maybe I had been poisoned too. Just like Myra.

But when he smiled and opened his mouth to speak, I knew I was experiencing none of the above.

I wasn’t in a nightmare. I wasn’t at home in bed. I wasn’t hallucinating.

Jimmy was actually
here
.

“Jeez, Red. I didn’t mean to surprise you so bad.”

He glanced down at my stained jeans, dripping with coffee.

“I hope that wasn’t too hot,” he said, smiling.

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 there, 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.