Mutts & Murder: A Dog Town USA Cozy Mystery (17 page)

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 he 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.

“Okay,” I said. “But I’m sure you had your reason, Milo. I didn’t like Myra that much either. Nobody in this town did. As far as I’m concerned, she got what was coming to her.”

“Nobody but my stepdad liked her,” he said.  

I felt my eyes go wide again.

I glanced back at the picture of Richard Kline and Myra behind me, and then back at Milo.

“I don’t understand. Your stepdad?”

He nodded, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Geraldine’s my mom,” he said.

That revelation blew everything apart.

I gripped the back table behind me, looking down for a moment as the pieces of the mystery suddenly came together.

“Did you do it because Myra and Richard…”

I trailed off, afraid that I might say something to upset him.

But he didn’t seem all that upset.

“That was one reason,” he said. “But it wasn’t so much about the two of them as it was because of what Myra did.”

I felt a couple beads of sweat roll down the side of my face. I wanted to brush them away, but I was scared that any sudden movement might get me a one-way ticket to the other side.

“What, uh, what did Myra do?”

He gave me a sharp look.

“She ran over Eddie.”

I furrowed my brow.

I didn’t know who he was referring to. Was Eddie a brother, maybe? A friend?

“Eddie?” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “My dog. That wench ran over him.”

He nodded behind him to the backyard where the dog was still barking, but too afraid to come near us.

“Is that how he got that busted leg?” I said.

Milo nodded.

“Richard was supposed to watch him for the weekend while I drove my mom to an antique conference in Portland,” Milo said. “When I came back, Eddie was all messed up. Richard said that he’d jumped the fence and got hit by a car. But I knew he was lying. Richard’s a piss-poor liar. I could tell he knew more about it than he said.”

Milo stepped even closer. I could smell the floral scent of his hair gel.

“So I paid Myra a little visit the next morning, before she woke up. And you know what I found on the rear bumper of her car?”

“What?” I said in a hoarse voice.

“Blood. And fur.”

His expression had turned to one of pure hate.

“That bitch ran over Eddie. I know it. She backed over him, probably in the dark. Because she was at our house, which she shouldn’t have been at in the first place. Richard covered it up to save her the shame. But I knew. I knew it was her.”

“But… but you poisoned Myra because she ran over your dog?”

Milo’s eyes flickered.

I regretted the question as soon as it escaped my mouth.

Damn my curiosity and need to know things. I should have just kept my mouth shut about all of it. But here I was, just having passed judgment on Milo. Me being in the worst possible place to do such a thing. 

“
Yes
,” he said.

The single word answer was delivered with such detachment and lack of emotion, that it and in of itself revealed everything there was to know about Milo Daniels.

That he was a killer.

And that he had no remorse for murdering Myra Louden over his dog getting hurt.