Mutts & Murder: A Dog Town USA Cozy Mystery

Mutts & Murder

A Dog Town USA Cozy Mystery

by

Meg Muldoon

Published by Vacant Lot Publishing

Copyright 2015© by Meg Muldoon

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance whatsoever to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The Meg Muldoon Collection

The Christmas River Cozy Mystery Series

Murder in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Book 1)

Mayhem in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Book 2)

Madness in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Book 3)

Malice in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Book 4)

Mischief in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Book 5)

Roasted in Christmas River: A Thanksgiving Cozy Mystery Novella

The Cozy Matchmaker Mystery Series

Burned in Broken Hearts Junction: A Cozy Matchmaker Mystery (Book 1)

Busted in Broken Hearts Junction: A Cozy Matchmaker Mystery (Book 2)

Coming mid and late spring 2015

Manic in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Book 6)

Bulldogs & Bullets: A Dog Town USA Cozy Mystery (Book 2)

Mutts & Murder

by Meg Muldoon

Based on a true story

(Of sorts)

For Grizz and Buddy

Chapter 1

Mr. Arthur J. Raffles gazed down from the courtroom’s projector screen, his muddied face frozen in a mean and malicious snarl.

His hair, an electric shade of white, was dirty and greasy and stained a pinkish-red in some places. His nose was oversized for his small face. His eyes held a kind of crude wildness that hinted at his unpredictability and capacity to inflict large-scale damage. And the way he sneered at the camera – his lips pulled back into a grotesque display of sharp teeth – wasn’t winning him any brownie points with the judges.

It was obvious to everybody in that stuffy courtroom: the offender was a real rotten apple.

Most certainly the kind you didn’t want to come across alone in a dark alley somewhere.

And most certainly the kind that could have been responsible for the slaughter out on Dandelion Road that took place a couple of weeks earlier.

Yet, despite the offender’s wicked looks, Fern Whitelaw, the elderly, cantankerous librarian who often was the subject of ridicule by the youngsters of Dog Mountain, Oregon, continued to beg for the life of her beloved white terrier-lab mix.

“That’s just a bad photo,” she said, her voice breathy and shaky from desperation. “He’s not like that most of the time. I promise you. He only looked that way when the picture was taken because that mean police officer yanked Mr. Raffles’ collar so hard, he twisted his leg backwards. You should have heard him yelp. It was the most terrible—”   

“I’m sorry, but that’s
not
the way it happened, ma’am.”

I looked up from my notepad, where I had been drawing a pair of lopsided palm trees beneath a crescent moon, and glanced over to where the voice had come from.

Lt. Sam Sakai, a tall cop with dark, shaggy hair and a quiet disposition most of the time, leaned forward in his chair. His eyebrows were drawn together in a look of injustice. His dark brown eyes appeared to be burning holes into the side of Fern Whitelaw’s face.

Now that was a look I wouldn’t have wanted to be on the other side of.

I sat up straight, the proceedings having suddenly taken a juicy turn that required me to actually pay attention rather than doodle far-off tropical beaches that I would never get to.

“I believe that was
exactly
how it happened, Officer,” Fern snapped back, shooting Lt. Sakai a nasty look that appeared to come quite naturally to the ornery librarian.

It appeared Sam Sakai had met his match in Fern Whitelaw.

I watched him as his eyes grew wider and darker.

“Ms. Whitelaw, you are
grossly
mistaken,” he said, his voice steady. “And if you truly believed I mishandled Raffles at the time, then you should have filed a complaint with the department. But you and I both know you didn’t do that, just like we both know that I didn’t hurt a hair on that dog’s hea—”

“Enough, Lt. Sakai,” Myra Louden, the head judge, said, pulling down her cat eye frames and glaring at him. “This matter is off-topic and doesn’t have anything to do with the reason why we’re all here tonight. Which is to determine whether or not Raffles the dog killed six chickens belonging to Delia Davidson of Dandelion Drive the 13
^th
of June.”

Lt. Sakai turned his attention toward Myra, his eyes flickering slightly. He wasn’t a man who was often interrupted, let alone interrupted by a middle-aged retired principal who didn’t have anything else better to do than to spend her evenings determining the fates of misbehaving canines.

“Now we’ve heard from everyone about what happened that day,” Myra said. “And since it’s nearly 8 p.m., I’d say it’s time the three of us judges deliberate and come to a verdict.”

“But Miss Louden, you hardly heard what I have to say about Mr. Raffles’ kind and pleasant nature,” Fern Whitelaw begged. “Mr. Raffles couldn’t hurt a fly. I know he didn’t do any of this. I know that it’s just the lieutenant and Delia who’s framing my poor Mr. Raff—”

“That’s a bunch of bull—” Delia Davidson, the owner of the murdered chickens, started saying.

“We’ve heard enough,” Myra said, abruptly cutting Delia off. “Now the three of us are going to go out in the hallway and deliberate the matter.”

Myra Louden stood up from her plush leather chair and led the way out of the courtroom. The two other judges, Bessie Stevenson, a retired city councilor, and Richard Kline, the manager of the local humane society shelter, followed her out into the hall.

I found my eyes drifting back over to Lt. Sakai. He didn’t look quite as angry as he had when Myra interrupted him, but he was still steaming about the whole thing.

And why shouldn’t he be? These dog board proceedings were all a big waste of time. A gimmick the city came up with as a way to get more “citizen participation” in the justice process, whatever that meant. The proceedings all took place after 5 p.m., and dragged on like cans behind a
Just Married
wagon. They only dealt with minor infractions like dogs killing fowl or damaging property. These evenings in Dog Board Court consisted of a lot of testimony and rehashing and begging and more rehashing for hours and hours on end.

The dog board hearings were nothing short of torture for those of us in the room who were forced to be here by our bosses. Like Lt. Sakai. And like me.

But this is what I had signed up for. Despite coming from a larger paper, and despite knowing every inch of my hometown of Dog Mountain like the back of my hand, I couldn’t just waltz into
The
Dog Mountain Chronicle
and expect to jump in on the crime beat or the city beat right away. Or so
The
Chronicle
’s managing editor, Roger Kobritz, had told me during the interview. Maybe in a year or so I could expect that kind of promotion. But as it was,
The Chronicle
had enough reporters to fill those beats. And what they really needed was a general assignment reporter. Somebody to scoop up the stories that fell in between the cracks. Somebody to cover the meetings that needed to be covered, but weren’t necessarily on a designated beat.

“It’s a real opportunity for a tenacious and dogged reporter” Kobritz had told me in the interview. “You’d be able to make a real impact on the community with this beat, Ms. Wolf.”

That’s what he sold me on. And I fell for that “you can make a real difference” mumbo-jumbo hook, line and sinker.

What I didn’t realize when I got the job was that 90 percent of my time would be spent covering dog-related puff pieces and writing pet profiles that were ever increasingly popular with our readership.

I really couldn’t blame it all on Kobritz, though. I should have known better. My hometown, Dog Mountain, had just been recently given the prestigious title by a popular national magazine as
Dog Town USA
, and with good reason.

The people in this town were mad crazy about their dogs. And Dog Mountain, a city of about 30,000 souls, had become a mecca for all things pooch-related. The town now had the highest dog capita in the country. It practically had more dog parks than playgrounds, and about half of the small-town businesses in this area were – you guessed it – geared toward dogs and their owners. All of this meant that there had been no shortage of stories to cover in the six months that I had been slogging through the “general assignment” beat.

Sometimes I thought about the things I used to cover back when I lived in Portland. The trials and homicides and robberies. Stories that were exciting and full of potential. Sometimes I thought about what my fellow reporters back at
The Oregon Daily
would think if they knew the indomitable Winifred Wolf was now covering dog board hearings and humane society fundraising events here in Dog Mountain, Oregon. They’d probably crack some joke about my last name and how I was meant for the job. Still, I knew most of them would wonder where my spark and ambition went. Sometimes I wondered that myself.

My breath caught sharply in my throat as Lt. Sam Sakai’s eyes suddenly met mine.

I hadn’t realized it, but I’d been staring at the cop since the judges left the room to deliberate, having become lost in one of my typical moments of deep thought that caused me to miss the occasional important quote.

Lt. Sakai’s deep-set eyes were the color of chocolate and spoke of some Pacific Islander background. Around the newsroom, Lt. Sakai had earned the nickname “Speed” because of how similar he looked to Keanu Reeves in the 90s action flick of the same name. And while the nickname was borderline inappropriate, it couldn’t be denied that the lieutenant did share a characteristic or two with the movie star.

He looked back at me, and for a moment, his look softened. He stared at me somewhat curiously. His lips turned up slightly at the edges, and there was something bordering on friendliness in his expression.

But that all changed when Lt. Sakai’s eyes fell on the newspaper-issued notebook in my hands.