A Dead Man and Doggie Delights Read online

  Not that I really thought she minded all that time snoring away in the corner. She is a Newfie after all and Newfs aren’t exactly the most energetic of breeds. But I knew she also liked to get out and smell new things and we really hadn’t had a chance to do so since our arrival.

  So after I fed her breakfast at five-thirty in the morning—an unfortunate side effect of living those first crucial months of her life in an apartment with a neighbor who had a loud alarm and liked to get up at that time every morning of every day—we headed up the mountain behind my grandpa’s house.

  Most of the mountainside was covered not only with big evergreens and tightly-clustered aspens, but with juniper bushes and long grass that you wouldn’t want to try to walk through. Fortunately for us, there was a nice little trail I’d seen Mr. Jackson tending the day of our arrival that was just wide enough for me and Fancy to walk side-by-side. Mr. Jackson had done a good job of cutting back the branches, because not one slapped me in the face as we made our way towards the ridgeline about five hundred feet above my grandpa’s house.

  Fancy’s a good girl so she didn’t pull on her leash at all, just stopped to sniff and pee on things every few feet. She sometimes became a little too focused on one spot or another and I had to tell her to leave it and give a slight tug to move along, but usually I just let her do her thing. The walk was as much for her as it was for me, after all.

  It was a gorgeous late spring morning. Birds were singing in the trees, bees were buzzing around on the early wildflowers scattered along the mountainside, and everything smelled fresh and clean and alive.

  I was winded within five minutes because I wasn’t used to hiking up mountainsides, and certainly not at seven thousand feet, but that was okay. It was worth it to feel like no one else in the world existed for just a little bit, especially knowing how stressful things would be once the store actually opened.

  I probably should’ve thought about bears or mountain lions or criminals living in caves, but I didn’t. I’d always thought of the mountain as part of my grandpa’s home. Hardly anybody went there so it was easy to think of it as an extension of his backyard.

  I took a break on a large rock slab most of the way up the mountainside. It was big enough it created a perfect space for sitting and watching the sleepy little town below us. I could just barely hear the freight train that passed through town down by the creek on its way to some unknown destination. When we were little, Jamie and I would go up there to watch the trains while we munched on peach slices sprinkled with sugar that her mom had put in a plastic baggie for us.

  (It’s a wonder neither one of us has diabetes or serious weight issues, the way we used to eat.)

  Fancy sprawled out on the ground next to the rock, content to let me have my moment. She was snoring away within moments.

  I took a deep breath. Tomorrow was the day. Tomorrow we’d open the Barkery and Café and see if this crazy little dream of ours had any hope of succeeding.

  I was scared. Scared that I’d finally chosen to risk everything and pursue my dream and that I’d fail. Scared that I’d have to go back to living in the city, driving an hour each way to work, spending all day everyday inside while the sun shone outside, arguing with people about things that probably didn’t matter to anyone but us.

  I’d never held it against the folks that liked that sort of thing, but for me that rock in the middle of a mountainside had always been where I’d wanted to be. Right there, looking down at the peaceful little town that was my home, my dog at my side.

  It had taken longer to get there than I’d wanted, but I was finally making it happen.

  I just hoped it would work out…

  After a while, Fancy got restless. Or at least her version of restless, which involved her giving me what I like to call her puppy side-eye where she looks at me out of the corner of her eye like, “Are we done yet? Can we go do something interesting now?” and cries really softly.

  If I ignore her, she’ll stop. She’s good that way. She’s learned over the years that sometimes I just have to do my work and she has to be patient until I’m done. But if I show the slightest weakness, she won’t let up.

  Since the hike was as much for her as for me, we moved on after her first little cry. We continued to the ridgeline where we could see a gorgeous valley nestled between four separate mountain peaks. I’d always loved that valley as a kid; it was so pristine and untouched, nestled there where no one could find it, a secret little hideaway.

  I narrowed my eyes at the small wooden cabin that now stood at one end of the valley, rows of something growing nearby. We were too far away for me to tell what was being grown down there, but I figured I had a pretty good idea. Just because Colorado had legalized pot didn’t mean that private grow operations had gone away. It wasn’t my scene, as a user or a grower, but I’d heard that some folks still grew their own despite the laws.

  I turned away from the valley, disappointed to see a treasured childhood memory tarnished that way, even though I’d known it was inevitable. Everything beautiful and private is eventually discovered and destroyed. Still makes me sad when it happens, though.

  Reminding myself that the forest around me was still a thousand times more beautiful than the concrete streets of most major cities, I nudged Fancy farther along the ridgeline, determined to enjoy it while I could.

  Fancy tugged at her leash and glanced back at me, pleading silently for me to let her run free. I debated doing it. She’s good at staying nearby, so I didn’t figure she’d run away or anything. But I still remembered that one time at Elk Meadow when she’d seen a couple elk and left me for a good ten minutes while she chased them. I’d been convinced that was the end until I heard her crying her little heart out trying to find me.

  I wasn’t going to take that kind of risk again, no matter how much she wanted to go exploring. Instead I let her tug me along the trail, her nose pressed tight to the ground as she followed some scent I couldn’t detect.

  Not until the end that is. Dead things have a certain common stench all their own. Not that I’d known that before I had a dog. But once I got Fancy and we started going to big outdoor dog parks I’d soon learned all about the smell of dead things.

  She loves them. We’ll be walking along just fine and then there she’ll go, off into the bushes, and I’ll come up to find her peeing on something that reeks of death. A badger, a squirrel, a rabbit. You name it, she’s peed on it.

  That’s nature for you. Things die, and when they do, they stink. And when they stink, dogs like to pee on them. It’s the circle of life. Or so I tell myself.

  And trying to keep Fancy from a dead thing once she’s found it is almost impossible. I’m not a small woman—about five-eight, one-sixty—but there’s no way I can hold back a hundred-and-forty-pound dog who’s built for pulling things when she’s determined to go somewhere.

  So I turned my face away as we got close and let her do her peeing thing. (Thankfully, she’s only tried to roll in dead things twice and both times they were fish, so no worries she’d do that this time.)

  When she’d finished, I tugged on her leash. “Come on, Fancy, let’s go.”

  She wouldn’t budge. I started to worry maybe she really was going to roll in this one and pulled harder. “Come on, Fancy.”

  I grabbed her collar and pulled her back, but she fought me for every step. “Darn it, Fancy. What’s so special about this one?” I demanded.

  I almost fell on my butt in surprise when I looked past her and saw what she’d been peeing on. Because it wasn’t a badger or a squirrel or a rabbit.

  It was a man. And not just any man, but that crazy man who’d barked at me the day after I arrived. At least, I thought it was. Maybe. Stupid ballcap was the same. Hair color looked to be, too.

  I stepped closer to take another look, burying my nose in my elbow to try to mask the scent. Somehow I’d been fine when I thought it was a small rodent I was smelling, but now that I knew it was dead human I wanted no
thing to do with it.

  Of course, Fancy thought my stepping closer was an invitation to pee on him again…Sigh.

  It was a little hard to tell if it was him, because the body was mostly buried under some old leaves, but it certainly looked like him. I was tempted, just for a moment, to move the leaves out of the way to check. Call it morbid curiosity—I’d never seen a dead person who hadn’t died in a hospital before. I knew these kinds of things happened, but never in my world.

  Fortunately, I’d watched enough crime scene shows on television to know I didn’t want to mess with the scene or get my DNA all mixed up with his, so I dragged Fancy far enough along the trail to get away from the immediate smell of him while I tried to figure out what to do next.

  Chapter Five

  The obvious choice when you find a dead body is to call the cops. Maybe the guy had just been mauled by a bear or something and that’s all there’d be to it. Just a “Howdya do, there’s a dead body on that trail up there that someone needs to take care of” and I could be on my merry way.

  But…

  My grandpa had threatened him with a shotgun. Not that I really thought my grandpa was capable of tracking a man up a mountainside, gunning him down, and burying his body under dead leaves.

  Not really.

  I mean…No. He’d had a rough early life, but he was past all that now.

  At least, I thought he was.

  But what if he wasn’t? What if he really had followed this guy up the mountain and gunned him down? Sure, I believed that murder was wrong and people should do their time and all that. But my grandpa? He was old. He didn’t deserve to go to prison. (Again.) Not at his age.

  So letting a little more time pass until someone else discovered the body made a certain amount of sense to me. Maybe by then Mr. Jackson would’ve forgotten the little confrontation he’d witnessed or at least be a little more fuzzy on the details.

  I know. I’m a horrible person. But this was family we were talking about.

  There was also the hassle factor. Did I really want to call the cops and get all mixed up in them finding a dead body the day before I was supposed to open my new store? They’d probably want to question me. And who knew how long that would take.

  Everything at the store was ready to go—Jamie and I weren’t the kind of people to leave things to the last minute—but still. I didn’t want to spend most of my last day of freedom in an interview room waiting to be questioned about the death of some jerk who’d barked at me.

  Not to mention the gossip factor. This was a small town. People would know I’d found the body and that’s all they’d want to talk about. I didn’t want to ruin our opening with thoughts of dead people under bushes. Talk about unappetizing.

  (I really am a horrible person, aren’t I?)

  But then I figured he probably had a mother who was missing him by now and who deserved to know that he wouldn’t be home for Christmas. And what if he had kids? Didn’t they deserve to know where their daddy was?

  While I debated and thought things through, Fancy lay down on the path. (She’s not one for standing if she doesn’t have to.) As I processed all the pros and cons she rested her head on her paws and watched me with her steady amber gaze, her mind already made up.

  “Fine,” I sighed and reached for my phone. “See? Happy now?”

  She sighed and closed her eyes while I dialed 9-1-1.

  Luckily for the dead guy, I had enough of a signal to complete the call, because if I’d had to walk back down the mountain first, I probably would’ve rethought my decision. But no, the call went through just fine. I explained to the very sweet and patient woman who answered exactly what I’d found.

  I’m not sure she believed me—Creek isn’t exactly a hotbed of criminal activity—but she took down my information and told me an officer would be by my grandpa’s to talk to me after they’d checked out my story.

  Good enough. I’d done my civic duty. If they decided it was a prank call, fine by me, I’d just be sure not to let Fancy close enough to pee on the body next time we were in the area.

  I stomped my way back down the mountainside to my grandpa’s, Fancy trotting along in front of me happily sniffing anything and everything, tail wagging with joy.

  At least one of us was having a good day.

  When I got back home I told my grandpa what had happened, watching his face for any sign he already knew. His only reaction was to reach for his non-existent cigarettes and say, “Someone was going to shoot that man sooner or later. Only question was who,” and then turn his attention back to the daily crossword.

  I didn’t want to freak Jamie out the day before the opening so I just texted her that something had come up and I’d try to be in later but didn’t know when. She immediately thought something had happened to my grandpa and I had to text her back to let her know no one was hurt or injured. Or at least, no one that mattered. When she texted a “???” to that, I just let her know that I’d give her the full story once I got there.

  Whenever that was.

  And then I waited. And waited. And waited.

  I had a book I’d been enjoying, but my mind was so distracted I stopped trying to read it after I read the same paragraph ten times and still couldn’t remember what it said.

  I tried grilling my grandpa about the dead guy, but he told me to leave him alone. (He takes his crossword puzzles very seriously. Even has a crossword dictionary he carries around like other people carry a bible. And doesn’t appreciate if you look over his shoulder while trying to find something to do and solve one of the answers for him either, let me tell you.)

  I was tempted to start looking the dead guy up on the internet but then decided that probably wasn’t the best of ideas. What if the cops seized my computer and saw all those searches? What would they think?

  (Probably nothing, I know. But you try finding a dead body behind your house and then waiting for the cops to come by and see what you come up with to entertain yourself while you’re waiting.)

  Finally, when I was about at my wit’s end and ready to just head out to the store for something to do, there was a knock at our front door.

  “I’ve got it.” I raced to answer the door while my grandpa grunted a reply without even bothering to look up from his crossword. Fancy lifted her head halfway from where she was lying at his feet and then dropped back to the ground with a loud sigh. (She’s not the best of guard dogs...)

  I yanked open the front door—it sticks but I maybe gave it a little more force than it needed in my excitement—to find a very good-looking man in a cop’s uniform, hand raised to knock again. He was tall, dark hair, blue eyes, and filled out his uniform in a very pleasing sort of way.

  I gave myself two seconds to appreciate an example of the beauty this world has to offer and then I shut all that nonsense down, because I had a business to start up, a grandpa to take care of, and a dead body to discuss.

  “Bout time you got here,” I said. I knew I was being rude, but he’d made me wait a long time. Plus good-looking men make me cranky. I don’t like being distracted.

  He grinned at me in that way overly-confident men sometimes have. “Maggie May. It’s been a long time.”

  I glared at him. I’d remember knowing a man who looked like that. And I didn’t. “I’m sorry, am I supposed to know you?”

  My grandpa, who’d finally bothered to join us, squeezed my shoulder. “Now, Maggie May, is that any way to treat your first love?” He shook the man’s hand. “Women. How quickly they forget. How’ve you been, Matt?”

  Matt—whoever that was—shook my grandpa’s hand with a firm grip and slight nod. “Good, Mr. Carver. I’m at my dad’s old place. Getting all his stuff sorted and taken care of.”

  “And the new job? You’re liking it?”

  He shrugged one shoulder. “It’s not as exciting as Iraq.”

  “Not much is, I’m sure. That a good thing or a bad thing?”

  He thought for a moment. “Both.”

>   My grandpa laughed and I crossed my arms, glaring at both of them. “If you two are done catching up? I assume you’re here about the dead body?”

  “I am.” He grinned at me, the smile wrinkles in the corners of his eyes giving him a mischievous look that was a little too appealing.

  “Let me get my shoes and I’ll show you where it is.”

  “No need. We already found him. I left Sue up there doing her thing so I could come down, welcome you to the neighborhood, and get your statement.”

  “Who’s Sue? And why do you think you know me? I’d…remember if we’d met.”

  He laughed. He had a good laugh, but I shoved that thought away as fast as it occurred to me.

  “Sue is the coroner. She’s taking her pictures and seeing to the body. And we have met. Many, many years ago. I lived in Creek before my mom moved us to Bakerstown. According to her, you and I were inseparable.”

  My grandpa chuckled. “You two were adorable together. Of course, I can’t say I appreciated how Maggie chose to demonstrate her affection for you.” He pointed at the wall behind me where the word Matt was scrawled in permanent black marker, twelve-inches high, the letters poorly-formed and wobbly. “Thirty years and I’ve never been able to remove that no matter how hard I try.”

  I flushed scarlet. “You’re that Matt?”

  “Yep. Sure am.”

  My grandpa laughed. “You want me to drag out the photo of the two of you cuddled together in my armchair reading a book? It really is a great picture.”

  Fortunately, Fancy chose that moment to introduce herself. She nudged Matt’s hand with her nose, demanding his attention.

  “Hey, there, who do we have here?” he asked as he knelt down and started rubbing her ears. She groaned in pleasure and practically knocked him over as she leaned into him, eyes closed in ecstasy. I was grateful for the save, but disgusted by how easily she let him win her over. Sellout.