Mutts & Murder: A Dog Town USA Cozy Mystery (9 page)

“Roger, I wasn’t going to bring this up, but I’ll take this to my aunt if it comes down to it,” Rachael said. “She won’t be happy if she finds out that you’re—” 

“Rachael, we don’t even know if any crime has been committed yet,” Kobritz interrupted. “The cops were being vague, at best.”

“It was murder, Roger,” she said. “The chief told me as much.”

Both Kobritz and I raised our eyebrows at her, surprised that she’d gotten that tidbit of information.

“Do you have anything on the record?” he said.

“No, but…”

Kobritz let out a long sigh.

“Well, Ms. Chandler, as soon as you do, feel free to take the story and run with it,” he said. “In the meantime, I’d like Ms. Wolf to do an enterprise piece on Myra Louden’s legacy in the dog community. I’ll schedule it for Sunday A1.”

I nodded.

Rachael scoffed, crossing her arms, though I couldn’t fathom why. Kobritz had as good as given her exactly what she wanted. All she had to do was do her job and get the chief to go on the record.

But she shook her head angrily and then headed for the door.

Kobritz just about rolled his eyes at me, though refrained from doing so.

He stood up to leave too.

“Ladies, before you go, we’ve got a candidate for the photo desk job vacancy coming in to interview Friday. It would be nice if you both could make time to meet him.”

Rachael turned around and her eyebrows popped up at that.

“Ooh,” she said, acting like an adolescent. “Is he young?”

Kobritz shrugged.

“Relatively, I suppose.”

“Is he cute?”

Kobritz damn near blushed at Rachael’s immature question.

“Dammit, Rachael,” he said. “How the hell should I know?”

Rachael giggled, seemingly forgetting all about her earlier anger. Then she went back over to her desk, straightening out her short, tight skirt before taking a seat.

I bit my lower lip.

Any other reporter, and I’d respect the lines surrounding our beats.

But when it came to Rachael Chandler, I found that I couldn’t sit back and play by those rules anymore.

If she wanted the Myra Louden homicide story, then I was going to make her fight for it.

Chapter 20

Myra’s funeral was a gaudy affair that drew in hundreds of mourners that hot and blustery Thursday. But looks could be deceiving: aside from Richard Kline, who appeared to be fighting back tears, nobody looked particularly broken-up about Myra’s passing. Most of them were there out of obligation rather than from an actual desire to pay their respects. Myra was a hard-ass in life, and most everybody in town knew that.

Among the mourners was the mayor, several city councilors, including Bessie Stevenson – Myra’s fellow dog board committee member. During the eulogy, she dabbed at her eyes, wiping away tears that weren’t there.

Richard’s wife Geraldine Kline, who owned a local antiques shop downtown, stood beside him, looking stoic and reserved. She was a tall, skinny, humorless woman who appeared to be the opposite of her husband – she was wholly unemotional as the priest read from the bible about grace and the glory of God.

Fern Whitelaw, the crotchety old librarian was there as well, which surprised me slightly. But I guess Fern had lived in Dog Mountain all her life, like Myra. Maybe their relationship went farther back than the dog hearing earlier that week.

As far as I knew, aside from Myra’s younger sister who had flown out from Minneapolis, there weren’t any other family members of Myra’s at the funeral.

I watched the final proceedings of the ceremony from a distance, watching as folks took turns tossing dirt over her coffin. There was a hot breeze blowing through the cemetery’s lilac bushes, and the whole graveyard seemed to be perfumed with their sweet scent.

It would have been a lovely day for a picnic.

As the service ended, I caught up to a few of the folks I needed to talk to for the piece about Myra’s impact on dog regulation in Dog Mountain. Bessie Stevenson and Richard Kline again, and a judge with the court that had worked with Myra to develop the Dog Board Committee. All of them agreed to do a more formal interview tomorrow morning to speak to Myra’s achievements.

I watched as just about everybody left the cemetery, no doubt all of them happy that it was finally over. Then I reached inside my car and pulled out the yellow bunch of roses that had been resting on the passenger seat. The ones that I had clipped from the garden this morning.

I walked through the tombstones, down the familiar path, until I reached the 19
^th
row on the right. I walked carefully down it until I found the grave of Anne Mae Wolf.    

I replaced the withered and cracked roses in the vase with the fresh ones, then took a seat in the warm grass.

“Hi, Mom,” I said.

I still felt somewhat foolish speaking out loud to her in the graveyard like this. But with each visit, it seemed to get easier.

I sat there for a while, giving her updates about Dog Mountain. I told her about how Myra Louden was now her neighbor, and about how the circumstances surrounding her old boss’s death were mysterious. I told her about how Mrs. Henley, the crazy old lady who lived next door, was still singing in her cracked falsetto at all hours of the night. I told her about how beautiful the rose garden looked. About how well I’d been taking care of it. I told her about Buddy and how for a while, he’d been tricking me and Lou into giving him more food by pretending that nobody fed him. About how we made sure he was getting lots of pets and outdoor time.

I didn’t tell her anything about work, or how I was having trouble paying my J-school student loans with my salary at
The Chronicle
, or about Lou’s efforts to fix me up with a guy who worked at her bakery.

The way I figured it, none of those things would have made her very happy.

After updating her, I just sat there for a long while, picking at the grass. Thinking about things.

I thought back to her funeral, that unusually cool, rainy day last August. She hadn’t had nearly as many mourners show up at her funeral as Myra Louden. But every one of them who did had come because my mother really meant something to them. There were some of her old students, people I didn’t even recognize. Co-workers and folks from the homeless shelter she volunteered at.

There had been no city councilors or mayors, or even high school principals.

Nobody had shown up out of obligation. But that was okay. I think she would have rather just had the ones who actually cared.

After a while, I got up, dusting grass off of my jeans. I said goodbye to my mother, promising to visit again soon and relay more gossip about Myra Louden’s death when I knew more.

Then I started heading for my car.

I nearly jumped when I saw him standing there by his police cruiser, watching me.

Chapter 21

“How long have you been standing there?” I said, feeling a thickness in my throat at the thought that my private moment with my mom hadn’t been so private after all.

Lt. Sam Sakai seemed to notice the agitation in my voice.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to interfere. I was here for the Louden funeral, and then I saw that you didn’t leave with the others.”

I looked at him suspiciously.

I hadn’t seen him amongst the mourners.

“I was watching it from my car,” he said, seeming to read my mind.   

I noticed that he wasn’t in his uniform. He was wearing a simple black shirt and holding a folded black jacket in his hands.

“How come you’re here?” I said.

“Same reason as you,” he said. “I was just following up.”

I sighed.

Lt. Sakai was vague and mysterious as ever. And I was sick of it.

I knew that cops often attended funerals not so much to pay respect to the dead, as to see who else showed up. Especially in homicide investigations. The murderer would often be amongst the mourners, watching the way people responded to their handiwork.

“Can you just tell me, please?” I said. “Off the record, even. Was Myra murdered?”

He looked away, back across the cemetery toward Myra’s fresh grave. A tell if I ever saw one.

But you couldn’t publish stories based on bad poker skills.

“Who were you visiting over there?” he asked.

He was, obviously, avoiding the real question.

I paused for a moment, wondering whether I should tell him.

I didn’t like letting strangers in, but I couldn’t think of a lie quick enough.

“My mom.”

His expression softened.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “When did—”

“Last year,” I said, peering off into the grassy distance. “It was breast cancer.”

He exhaled sharply.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

I nodded, expecting him to launch into some story about how he lost some relative or another to the disease, the way people often did when I told them about my mother. I knew people did that only as a way to let you know that they knew what you were going through. But I never much cared for hearing about how their great aunt Ida passed of the same cancer or how their sister-in-law was diagnosed with it.

But Lt. Sakai didn’t launch into any story. He just stood there, silent. Letting my own pain be my own pain.

I cleared my throat after a moment, feeling the need to change the subject fast before that old grief overcame me.

“How’s the puppy doing?”

He gave me just a hint of a smile.

“Good,” he said. “He’s getting along with the other dogs, so that’s good.”

“How many other dogs do you have?”

“Me? Oh, I have a whole kennel-full,” he said. “I foster them when the Humane Society doesn’t have room for them anymore.”

I raised my eyebrows.

I hadn’t pegged the hard-nosed, no-comment-favoring lieutenant as a sentimental type.

“How long have you been doing that for?”

“Since I moved back to Dog Mountain five years ago.”

“You grew up here?” I asked.

I hadn’t ever known anybody by the name Sakai growing up. And living in a town this small, you generally knew who everybody was.

Then again, Sam Sakai appeared to have at least four or five years on me.

“Not exactly,” he said. “I lived here for a few months with my aunt when I was a teenager. But I’ve spent most of my adult life in Seattle.”

“And you just missed it so much here, you had to come back?” I said sarcastically.

He smirked.

“Not exactly. My wife left me and I thought it was time for a change. But I don’t regret coming back,” he said. “Dog Mountain’s a lot better than most places.”

“Especially if you like dogs as much as you seem to,” I said.

“You must like dogs too, covering the dog beat.”

It was my turn to smile.

“Not as much you might think,” I said. “I’ve never owned a dog. And if it were up to me, covering Pooch Parades would be the last thing I’d ever do.”

He smiled. The first time I had seen him do so.

“Aw, c’mon now,” he said. “I saw the way you picked Mugs up the other day. Don’t tell me you don’t like dogs.”

“
Mugs
?” I said.

“Yeah, that’s what I’ve been calling Myra’s mutt,” he said. “His collar said ‘Lancelot.’ But he just doesn’t seem like a Lancelot to me. Does he to you?”

“I wouldn’t know,” I said. “I only saw him for a minute.”

The lieutenant smiled again.  

“Go ahead, then, Winifred. Play it cool if you want. It’s okay. I already know the score.”

“Do you now?” I said.

I raised an eyebrow, surprised at the casual way he was talking to me after the stiff, unpleasant way he’d been treating me up until now. I was about to tell him about the time a dog bit me and how I’d never wanted anything to do with dogs since.

But then I found myself falling into those dark eyes of his. Falling down, down, down, feeling a strange sensation coursing through me as I did.

A hot breeze blew through my hair, weaving its way around my neck. The lieutenant’s eyes met my stare with ease.

I pulled back suddenly, snapping myself out of the odd moment.

“I should go,” I said. “I’ve, uh, I’ve got work to do back at the paper.”

He nodded as if the moment hadn’t happened. That usual stern expression returned to his face. I started heading for my car.

“Uh, Winifred?” he said.

I stopped and turned back around.

“Yeah?”

“You’re right,” he said.

“About what?”

“About Myra Louden,” he said. “We believe she was murdered.”

I felt my mouth pop open in surprise.

I hadn’t expected him just to come out and say it like that.

“How?” I said, my heart pounding hard in my chest.

“Poison,” he said.

“
Poison
? What kind?” I said in disbelief.

“I haven’t been authorized to release that information yet.”  

I found myself speechless – something that didn’t often happen.

“We suspect it took place sometime that same afternoon,” he said. “It worked quickly.”

The lieutenant started pulling at the handle of his car door and opening it.

“Sam, you do know this is on the record,” I said. “I’m using everything you said just now.”

“Yeah, I’m fully aware,” he said. “So don’t misquote me.”

He got into the car. I walked over to the unrolled window before he could pull away.

“How come you told me first and not Rachael Chandler?” I asked.

He smiled, pulling on his sunglasses.

“I guess it’s like you said. I just like you better.”

He started up the engine and then rolled out into the road.

Chapter 22

I was going to catch hell from Rachael when she found out I had scooped her.

But as it was, Rachael had gone AWOL that afternoon, meaning I could put off the inevitable confrontation until tomorrow. She had supposedly driven to Wilsonville to interview a subject for a follow-up piece she was doing on the domestic homicide. Though knowing Rachael, I had a feeling she’d gone less for the interview and more for the outlet malls on the way there.