I stood unmoving for a very long moment as I stared at the scene, but then, I had my phone out and Jared on the line before I could even think. “Come to the dog spa. Now,” I said before I hung up.
Caro and Sheila were still looking at Penelope’s body.
“Did you touch anything?” I said.
Both women finally noticed me and shook their heads.
“No,” Caro said. “I was in the back doing paperwork.”
“And I was working with Taco,” Sheila added as her face grew deathly white.
“You both need to sit down,” I said as I walked over and took each of them by the arm to lead them to the small seating area by the window. “The police will be here in just a moment.”
“The police?” Sheila asked quietly. “So she was murdered?” She stared at me intently, clearly waiting for an answer.
“I’d say the scissors sticking out of her chest are probably a pretty good indication of foul play,” I replied in the language I used to only hear on TV shows but was now part of typical dinner table conversation at my house.
“Someone stabbed her,” Caro said, her gaze traveling back to Penelope’s body as her brain tried to make sense of what she was seeing.
The silence that settled around us was heavy, and after a minute or two, I realized it wasn’t doing any of us any good to sit there with the body. “Maybe we can go out the back and spend some time with the dogs.”
Caro sprang to her feet. “The dogs.” She was headed through the door behind the counter before I even processed what was happening, but then I hauled Sheila up to follow.
“Tell me about Taco,” I said as I used my elbow to open the door behind Caro.
Sheila stepped in front of me and walked toward a door at the end of the hallway on the right. “He’s just in here. Mayhem, too.” She opened the door and walked into the room where Caro was sitting in the middle of the floor with a half-dozen dogs gathered around her, my two included.
“It’s okay, pups,” Caro said as she rubbed their ears and scratched their bellies. “It must feel scary here now, but you’re okay. I’m calling your owners right now.” She took out her phone and started to scroll.
“Actually, Caro, let’s hold off on calling anyone, okay? Just until Jared, er, the police arrive.” I knew—or at least I thought I knew—the impulse guiding the young woman. She wanted the animals safe and sound and away from this. But she obviously hadn’t thought those owners would come to get them and would need to walk by Penelope’s body. “He and I can do doggy deliveries after he takes a look around.”
I was sincere about shuttling the pups to their homes, but I also knew that Jared and the sheriff, Tuck Mason, would not want anyone else in here, and I expected they’d also like to check the dogs for evidence before they sent them on their way.
“Oh, okay?” Caro said as she slid her phone back into her pocket and looked up at me. “You know the officer who is coming?”
I flushed. “Yes, he’s my fiancé,” I said.
Caro frowned at me, but then her face cleared. “We better feed them then.” She looked up at Sheila.
“Okay,” Sheila said, moving toward a big bin of kibble in the corner. “Who’s hungry?” she said.
Four of the six canine heads turned in her direction, trained by their owners to know that second word. Mayhem and Taco were already walking in her direction, and while I knew they could wait until we got home, I figured that the women needed something to do and that feeding the dogs wouldn’t destroy any evidence—at least, I hoped not.
As the women set out six bowls and put a small amount of kibble in each one, I found a large metal bowl and filled it with water that I then set at the edge of the room, where it had less chance of being knocked over.
Just then, I heard the artificial bark that signaled the front door had opened, and I smiled when I heard Jared’s and Tuck’s voices coming from the reception area. “Oh good, the police are here,” I said as I took out my phone and texted Jared to tell him we were in the kennel with the dogs.
His reply was quick. “Stay put. Be back there in a minute.”
“Tell me about these guys,” I said as I glanced down at the dogs and then looked back up at the women. “I haven’t met any of these other pooches before.” I knew I was filling the space with words, but we all needed less thinking and more filling.
“This here is Cyclops,” Caro said as she scratched the ears of a black pug with, not surprisingly, only one eye. “He’s ridiculous about tummy scratches.” As if given the signal, Cyclops rolled over and exposed his belly.
Sheila ran her hand down the back of a chocolate-brown dog slightly bigger than Mayhem.
“Who’s this?” I asked as I lowered myself to the floor beside her and rubbed another dog’s belly.
“Carusoe,” Sheila answered. “He’s named after the opera singer. Chesapeake Bay retriever.”
“Does he sing?” I asked.
“Nope,” Caro said with a small smile. “Doesn’t even bark. He’s deaf.”
“Ah, so an ironic name.” I got it.
The two women then introduced me to Cagney and Lacy, a pair of Jack Russell terriers who, oddly enough, resembled their namesakes. One sported a dark-brown patch of fur on top of his head, and the other a ginger-orange patch.
“Their parents are big police drama fans, I take it,” I said.
Sheila frowned. “Maybe.” She looked perplexed.
“Well, because they’re named after the detectives on that TV show.”
“What TV show?” Caro said.
“Cagney and Lacy. Those two women were police officers in New York City.”
Sheila and Caro stared at me like I was speaking about some ancient Sumerian text that only three scholars had ever heard of instead of a very popular TV show from my childhood. Then I thought of that meme about how 1923 and 1973 were as far apart as 1973 from 2023, and I stopped talking. I might as well have been discussing Model Ts as the latest craze as far as these young women were concerned. Inwardly, I groaned. Aging is not for the weak.
“Are their owners,” I asked, “older like me?”
“Oh yeah, pretty old. Wives. They just moved to town, the Dollins,” Caro said.
“Haven’t met them,” I said. That was a surprise. St. Marin’s was a small town. “But I guess I will tonight.”
Jared walked in. “I was going to ask if you were hiding puppies in here, Harvey Beckett.” He turned to me with a small smile. He was trying to keep things light, but I could see the concern and strain in the set of his jaw.
“No puppies, but these six beauties are still pretty amazing.” I introduced my fiancé to the four pups he didn’t already know and then to Caro and Sheila, who didn’t seem the least bit offended about getting second place after the dogs. My dad would have been mortified, but we were all dog lovers.
“Nice to meet you all,” Jared said. “Caro, could Sheriff Mason and I talk to you in the hallway?”
Caro frowned, then nodded and stood to follow Jared out. He looked back at Sheila. “Please stay put. We want to talk to you, too.”
I knew it was standard procedure to talk to everyone from a crime scene separately and that Jared and Tuck would be direct but kind. Yet the terror on Sheila’s face made me wish we could all just sit here with the dogs and discuss what happened.
“Jared seems nice,” she said without much enthusiasm. “This is horrible.”
I sighed. “It is. Do you have someone you can call?” I had been in this situation more than once and was still shaken hard every time. It was so difficult to imagine a living person being dead that actually seeing a dead body felt almost impossible, at least to me.
“My husband. Do you think it’s okay if I call him now?” She looked near tears.
“I’m sure it is. Just don’t tell him anything about what’s happening, just that there’s an emergency at work, and he needs to come get you.” I’d seen Jared and Tuck offer that same guidance in many situations.
She dialed and then said, “Hi. There’s been a problem at work. Can you come get me in—” She looked over at me.
“Half an hour?” I said, hoping that would be enough time for her to give her statement and be free to go.
“Thirty minutes,” she said. “Yeah, I’m okay. See you soon.” She paused. “I love you, too.”
“Good,” I said when she hung up. “Do you have any dogs?”
This question brought a full smile to Sheila’s face. “Six,” she said.
“Six!” I nearly shouted. “Holy dog hair.”
“You got that right. We vacuum every day.” She laughed and started telling me about the two Great Pyrenees, the two Saint Bernards, and the two rescue hounds they had. Her home sounded like absolutely gorgeous chaos.
“My two are enough for me,” I said. “If I had six, I would have surely broken my neck by now.” Then I told her how Taco had a knack for lying right behind me when I was doing something so that when I stepped back, I tripped over him and nearly fell. “Every day,” I said.
Sheila laughed. “Well, when you have six, they move as a pack, and keeping that many dogs out of your sight is hard.” She chuckled. “The hardest part is when they all go to the bathroom with you.”
Just the thought of six dogs in a bathroom had me laughing, and when Jared brought Caro back in and asked to talk with Sheila, she looked more relaxed than she had a few minutes ago.
Caro sat down and slid her leg under Caruso’s head before she leaned down and put her forehead to his.
“You like the big dogs, huh?” I said as I petted Mayhem and Taco, who had taken up their usual positions on either side of me.
She nodded. “The bigger the better.”
“Sheila was just telling me she has four huge dogs. Have you met them?”
“Oh yeah.” Caro chuckled. “I’m their dog sitter. That crew is a blast. All fur and slobber.” She was smiling.
“You okay?” I said as I realized that she was crying even as she laughed.
She took a deep breath. “Not really, but I will be. It’s just all, well, a lot.”
It was a lot. “It is.” Then I asked the same question about calling someone. I had asked Sheila, and she gave her roommate a ring and asked her to come by. “She’ll be here soon,” Caro said.
The two of us sat quietly for the next few minutes, petting dogs and telling them how cute and smart they were. I had learned that sometimes, the only creatures who understood our feelings were our pets, and it seemed like Caro needed their understanding more than mine right now.
Soon enough, Jared was back and said we could join them in the front of the shop. I had heard the woof alarm go off a few minutes ago and had presumed it was the coroner, a fact that was confirmed when we stepped into the reception area and saw only a tiny smear of blood to indicate where Penelope’s body had lain.
“Do you two have rides home?” Tuck said as the two women huddled together, three dogs on leashes for each of them.
“Yes,” I said for them. “I suggested they call someone.”
Tuck nodded. “Very good. Well, you two are free to go, but please stay in town and be available if we need to ask you anything.” His tone was friendly, but I knew the importance of that statement. These women were suspects, so Tuck needed to keep them close.
“I told Sheila and Caro that we’d take care of the dogs,” I said to Jared, who winked and nodded.
“The shop will need to be closed for tomorrow,” Tuck said as he walked the two women to the front door after they had handed Jared and me the leashes. “But you should be able to open the day after.”
As Jared and I drove around with six dogs in his crew cab pickup, I decided I liked the wildness of the situation, if not the cause. “This is kind of fun,” I said as Cagney stood up and put her paws on Jared’s shoulder as if she were his navigator. Taco was lying on my feet in the wheel well, a little overwhelmed, it seemed.
“It is fun, but it’s also a lot.” Jared pushed Cagney back into the seat behind him. “I can’t see if you stand on my shoulder, you goof.”
Our drop-offs went smoothly, and we could explain that there had been a situation at the spa but that everything was under control. Fortunately, Jared was in plain clothes, so it didn’t look like the police were escorting dogs to their owners. That might have raised a few more questions.
When we got home, Mayhem and Taco sped to the backyard, did their business, and then took to their respective beds, where they were snoring within seconds. Aslan, their crotchety feline sister, took the snores as her signal to prance around the house like she was Fred Astaire, and while Jared and I made dinner, we had to keep shooing her off the counters, the one place in the house she was not allowed to go.
“Why does she do that?” Jared said. “I think she wants to be annoying on purpose.”
“Oh, she definitely does. She has a brief window where she can be the center of attention, and she won’t let the fact that we’re cooking ruin her chance.” I hefted the big girl off the counter one last time and then took out a roll of packing tape, which I used to make big loops of stickiness to add to the edge of the counter. It only took Aslan one attempt to learn that she didn’t actually want to be on the counter. Apparently, tape was terrifying.
Instead, she tried to kill us by roping herself around our feet over and over again. She was nothing if not determined.
Finally, though, we set the table with all our fixings, sauces, and tortilla assortments and sat down to eat. Tacos had become a weekly staple in our house, but we had decided to make it a significant event. So we took turns adding a “secret” ingredient to the menu each week and had to try it. Jared’s week was tonight, and he finally decided to try avocado. I had talked about the pleasure of guacamole on tacos since we met, but he had been unconvinced. I was glad to see him smile when he took his first bite.
“See, I told you,” I said, a self-appointed expert in the food since I had lived in California for a few years. “The creaminess is really nice, isn’t it?”
“Actually, yeah, but I was thinking it was more about how it cuts the heat of the habanero sauce well.”
I nodded as I shoved most of a taco into my mouth. “That’s why Lu has it as a staple for most of her dishes.” Lu, who was our friend and the sheriff’s wife, ran a Mexican food truck that, hands down, served the best tacos I’d ever eaten. But since we’d been trying to save money for the wedding and our eventual honeymoon, we hadn’t had her tacos in a while. I missed them and said so.
“Well, just a few days, and you’ll get all of Lu’s food that you want,” Jared said as he fixed another taco with avocado for himself.
“That’s going to be the highlight of the day,” I said deadpan and then looked at my fiancé out of the corner of my eye, where I found his mouth open as he stared at me.
“The highlight of our wedding day will be the food, huh?” He shook his head. “I was about to say it was going to be the flowers, but all right.”
We both laughed as we continued to eat. But then I said, “This murder, though. . .”
“It’s not going to interrupt our wedding, Harvey,” Jared said and kissed my cheek, smearing a tiny bit of avocado beneath my eye.
“No, I wasn’t worried about that,” I honestly said as I wiped away the food. “I just hate that someone died in our town this week. Kind of dampens the mood, you know?” I felt kind of selfish saying that, but it was true. I had been hoping that our wedding week would be beyond perfect.
But this was St. Marin’s, and I was me. I should have learned to anticipate that a murder might happen near me at any moment.
Jared took my hand. “Yeah, but you know, maybe this is a good thing.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“I mean, not a good thing in the sense that a woman was killed.” He pulled his hand down his face. “I just mean that it gives you something else to focus on instead of worrying about the wedding.”
I smiled. “That is true, and now that Mom has taken over the organizing, I can actually look into the murder.”
Jared shook his head and held up one hand. “What? Your mother is now organizing?”
I sighed. “She and everyone else. Apparently, Rocky thought I looked overextended, so she brought in the team. Everyone has their marching orders.”
“I don’t,” Jared said.
“Me neither, but I bet if we ask Mom, she’ll say our only job is to show up in the right clothes on Sunday.” I smiled at him and let out a long sigh. “Actually, it is kind of a relief.”
“You are glad to have the help then?” My fiancé knew me and knew that accepting help was really hard for me. As a kid, I had come to understand that accepting help, even when it was offered, was burdening someone else with my problems. I was only now unlearning the trauma response of radical self-sufficiency.
“I am,” I said before letting my face open into a wide grin. “Besides, now I can get to sleuthing.”
Jared looked at me and smiled. “I already talked to Tuck, and while neither of us is thrilled to have you getting yourself into potential danger—again—we know it’s better to work with you than to try to convince you not to do anything and have you hide what you are doing.”
“I’m so glad you’re learning,” I said as I leaned over to kiss his cheek. He wasn’t wrong. Tuck had tried to stop my sleuthing when I first moved to St. Marin’s, but despite my best efforts—and I really had tried—I just couldn’t keep my curiosity at bay, so it was better all around if they just looped me in. “I’ll get started tomorrow. I think Mayhem may need more Reiki.”
“Just remember it’ll have to be a house call. We’re keeping the spa closed another day so we can do a final sweep for evidence,” Jared said as he cleared our plates from the table.
“Even better,” I said. The wheels of my mind were already turning.
Sheila responded with enthusiasm when I called her the following day to ask if she’d mind coming to our place to treat Mayhem again.
“She really did seem to be better,” I said, and I meant it. This morning, the hound hadn’t stretched for a full ten minutes just to get moving. She was actually a little bouncy.
When the doorbell rang at 10 a.m., and the pup caught the scent of the woman who was apparently her new best friend, Mayhem began to hop around in excitement. “Someone is happy you’re here,” I said as I greeted Sheila.
“That makes two of us.” She bent down and scratched Mayhem behind her ears before noticing that Taco was looking forlorn nearby. As she walked over to greet him, she said, “Maybe I can do a two-for-one special today. This guy just needs the loving, I think.”
I smiled. “That would be great, but don’t let him fool you. That’s just his resting basset face.”
Sheila cackled as she scanned the room. “I think the middle of the living room floor is our best space,” she said, “if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all,” I said and shifted the coffee table out from in front of the couch. “Do you need anything else? Towels? Hot water?”
She laughed again. “We’re not delivering a baby, Harvey. I could just use a glass of water for myself.”
“Water, I can do.” As I headed into the kitchen to grab her a drink, I heard her coaxing Mayhem over with whispers and clicks, and by the time I got back to the trio, Mayhem was fully laid out on her side, eyes half-closed as Sheila’s hands lingered over her back legs.
“Poor girl. She hurt herself a long time ago?”
I studied my graying pup as she started to snore. “Yeah, when she was really young, she ran very hard, and the vet thinks she tore some ligaments in her back legs. It hasn’t slowed her down much except for jumping.”
Sheila nodded as she closed her eyes and continued to move her hands a couple of inches above Mayhem’s body. I sat on the couch and pretended to read a book, The Kiss Curse, while I watched her work. I still wasn’t sure what I thought about Reiki in general, but maybe my opinion didn’t matter because Mayhem loved it.
When Sheila took a break before working on Taco, I asked her if she wanted a cup of tea and invited her into the kitchen while I brewed some for us. “How are you?” I asked as Sheila sat on one of the stools by the peninsula.
She sighed and folded her arms across her chest. “I’m okay, I guess. It was all just such a shock.”
I nodded. I had been exactly where she was far too many times, and still, it was always a shock. “Any word on when services will be held?”
“No, not yet. Penelope has—had…a son, so I expect he’s taking care of everything. But we haven’t heard a word.” Sheila took the blue and white mug from my hands and held it close to her chest. “I can’t imagine there will be a lot of guests, though,” she said and then looked up at me quickly. “Sorry, that was cruel.”
I shook my head and waved a hand in front of my face. I had to look casual, or I wasn’t going to get much information. “Why do you say that?”
Sheila took a sip of her tea and then leaned back. “I don’t want to speak ill of the dead.” She paused but then spoke anyway, as we all did when we invoked that phrase. “You saw how she was in the restaurant. She was just a volatile person. Very prone to anger.”
“Yeah, that was pretty intense. She did that a lot?” I asked.
“No, not a lot, but sometimes, she’d just fly into a rage over the smallest thing. And she wasn’t very forthcoming about her own life, so it was hard to overlook those rages.” Sheila met my eyes. “You know, you can give people a lot of grace if you know they’re going through something.”
I took a long sip of my chamomile tea. “Yeah, I get that. It’s much easier to take it personally when you don’t know the ‘behind the scenes,’ so to speak.” In my own life, I tried to remember that adage about how we never know the whole story of anyone’s life, so we need to give grace. But that would be hard to do in the face of such abusive treatment.
“Exactly,” Sheila said as she stood and set her mug in the sink. “If she treated everyone like she treated Caro and me, then well. . .”
She didn’t have to finish her sentence. I knew just what she meant. If she was that volatile with everyone, then we had a load of suspects to consider.