Murder Goes to the Dogs

  A Gertie Johnson Mystery

  by

  Deb Baker

  * * * * *

  SMASHWORDS EDITION

  * * * * *

  PUBLISHED BY:

  D.B. Publishing LLC at Smashwords

  Murder Goes to the Dogs

  Copyright © 2016 by Deb Baker

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  **

  Chapter 1

  Word For The Day

  MOLLIFY (mol uh fi) v.

  To calm an angry person down.

  “Fire!”

  Kablam!

  Her gun went off, the bullet missing the target. What a surprise.

  Monday morning had started off to be a perfect summer day. What’s not to be perfect when you are constantly surrounded by family members, and for once, just once, some of them are going away for seven glorious days? The August sun beat down as I sat on a lawn chair close to the action. My trusty Blublocker sunglasses cut the glare as I braced for another sure miss from my business partner and best friend.

  Looking back later, I should have been wondering, among other things, how in the heck I managed to get roped into this particular situation, since it would momentarily lead to the next situation, one that would create all kinds of difficulties. At sixty-six years old and with so much time under my belt, you’d think I’d have found all the easy routes through life by now. I should be cruising on autopilot. Instead, I tend to do everything the hard way—choosing the overgrown path, whacking at the brush blocking my way with a machete. Not that I actually own a machete. That was figurative speech.

  Other than being born with an impulsive nature, I suspect my life is further complicated by other people—some who are worthy of my undying friendship, some that have been imposed on me whether I like it or not. Right now, I’m hanging with the worthy ones: my two best friends, Cora Mae and Kitty.

  I glanced at Fred, my canine companion. He was sitting calmly at my side without exhibiting a single sign of stress, in spite of all the racket. Our eyes locked in mutual adoration. Fred is a retired police dog, a black shepherd with a no-nonsense persona that, if he’s riled, can scare a grown man up a tree. Which has happened more than once. Fred doesn’t suffer fools gladly.

  Always keen on spoiling a superb moment, Grandma Johnson, wearing her travel clothes that included a yellow pillbox hat and a stiff old-lady purse slung over her arm, came running from the house when she heard the shots. I groaned. Fred sighed.

  Grandma Johnson is my deceased husband’s mother, also known as the mother-in-law from Hell. She lives with me. Thank you very much, Barney, for checking out of this life several years ago and leaving me to deal with the likes of her. Grandma is ninety-two. Even though she seems to be shrinking and sagging more and more every day, her tongue is still sharp as ever.

  George Erikson, my male companion, aka to some as my boyfriend—which sounds a bit juvenile at this age—had offered to drive Grandma, along with my daughter and my daughter-in-law, to Milwaukee to visit relatives. They should be on the road by now, but apparently Grandma had slipped under the net just in time to witness another display of complete incompetence by Cora Mae.

  “Fire!”

  Kablam!

  Who knows where the bullet went this time. There still wasn’t a single hole in the round bull’s-eye target.

  Grandma sneered derisively, since she hates my friends. “How big a gun do you need to hit that humungous target?” she crowed, her false teeth clacking. “A cannon?”

  I blocked the sight of her shriveled prune face from my vision by scanning the open field. Then I gazed up at the beautiful blue sky with just the right kind of fluffy clouds floating lazily above, appreciating the land I owned. One hundred and twenty prime acres. Some of it is wooded, filled with hardwoods and pines, some inhabited by family members. In the spring, this particular field is overtaken by wild flowers. But now, as autumn is set to arrive, it’s planted in golden rye and oats for the deer and is striking in its fall glory. Bear Creek butts up to the back property line behind a stand of tamarack trees, and the trout fishing is fine there.

  Today was going to be a hot, muggy one judging by the high humidity. Right now, I ought to be picking blueberries in my secret patch, plopping those plump delicacies into a big coffee can. After that, I should be eating a bowl of them with cream and sugar.

  Blueberries are brain boosters.

  We all could use more noggin power.

  Instead of driving out to the blueberry patch, I had reluctantly agreed to turn over my back field to Cora Mae and Kitty, my partners in the Trouble Buster investigative business, while they attempted to qualify for concealed pistol carry.

  I’d insisted on a weekday, specifically so my sheriff son would be gone to work. Blaze lives on the east end of my property in a mobile home. I could see a glimpse of his house through the trees from where I sat. His wife is one of the Milwaukee bound bunch. My daughter, Star, another of today’s travelers, lives on the west end in a log cabin.

  One hundred and twenty acres should be plenty of room for all of us, but at times I wonder about my mental state back when I suggested living in such close proximity. Star is okay. She’s divorced, is discreet when it comes to her personal life, and has an easy going temperament. But Blaze is getting crankier and crankier. He’d have a fit if he knew about the concealed carry training. I could just imagine him hitching his pants and stomping over to put a stop to the fun. He’s long since forgotten about his freeloader status. After all, this is my property, and next time he goes off on some tangent, I’m going to remind him of that fact.

  I was going to miss George in the upcoming Grandma-free week, but I sure was looking forward to a break from her. If only Blaze would go along. That had been the original idea, but at the last minute he backed out, claiming work had interfered. Blaze tends to be big, bossy, and bent on throwing kinks into every one of my well laid plans.

  Kablam!

  The revolver barked and jumped. Yet another miss.

  “Did I tell you to fire?” Joe Oja, the training instructor, bellowed. “Did I?”

  “Sorry,” Cora Mae whined, lowering the gun. “I get nervous when you yell.”

  I kept my thoughts to myself, but you’d think that standing a mere four yards from a target about the size of a doormat would be a sure thing.

  “This gun is getting awfully heavy.” Cora Mae said referring to the tiny pink revolver clutched between her fists. A Pink Lady .38 Special. She rolled her shoulders forward then back in an effort to relieve some of the tension. I could see sweat condensation building up behind the safety glasses she wore. Cora Mae isn’t used to applying herself.

  I had tried to explain to her at the gun show when she first spotted the revolver—had strongly suggested—that buying something that small was a terrible idea. But would she listen? No. I’d been too late with the warning, because she’d just found out that it came inside a pink alligator case. That was it. She had to have it.

  I called out again now, “That revolver might be cute and all, but you get a lot of recoil, thanks to the two-inch snub nose. It’s also harder to shoot straight. I told you to get something bigger.”

  Cora Mae is BB (Best Bud) #1. She and I have a lot of history. Cora Mae was there when I buried Barney, reciprocating in kind for the times I’d stood at her side while she buried all three of her husbands, one after the other. Cora Mae looks like a million bucks—sexy, slinky, with boobs that haven’t lost a bit of altitude thanks to Wonderbras. She’s usually decked out in black; in fact is clad in black right now all the way down to the strappy heels she wears at inappropriate times like this. Black is her thing. So go figure—a pink gun? Suddenly she’s accessorizing in color?

  Just the thought of a deadly weapon in her hand is frightening.

  “You would do better if there was a man’s head on the target,” Kitty told her as we stared at the bullet-hole-less target. Then to Joe, “Do you have any man targets?”

  “She doesn’t need a man target,” he snapped.

  “All you have to do to pass is hit it somewhere,” I prompted, throwing a lot of patience into my voice since Joe looked like he was on the edge of losing his. He wasn’t very tolerant considering he’s a shooting instructor. “Any place at all,” I told her. “And it will help if you quit closing your eyes.”

  “Give me that piece,” Grandma called from the sideline. “I’ll show you some shooting.”

  We ignored Grandma because none of us wanted to die today. Until recently, Grandma had her own hand gun, which I’d hidden away. As hard as I try, I can’t remember where I stashed it. At least she can’t find it either. Fred didn’t even turn his head in her direction when she started heckling Cora Mae, that’s how much he doesn’t like her. “Don’t worry, Fred,” I whispered. “She’ll be out of our hair in a minute or two.” Fred’s ears twitched at the prospect.

  Sure enough, as though George had heard my quiet plea, he called across the field for her. Grandma swiveled and marched back toward the house muttering a string of insults lou
d enough for all of us to hear. Good riddance. A glorious week ahead without my mother-in-law taking verbal pot shots at me or at anybody else. What more could a woman want?

  I spotted George and we blew each other good-bye kisses.

  I didn’t have time to revel in my newfound freedom because without warning, Kitty, who’d been twitching with barely constrained excitement, opened fire with the Raging Bull .44 Magnum she’d acquired. Lately, she’s been making references to a ‘secret’ lover. Cora Mae and I have been trying to discover the guy’s identity, but so far we’ve failed. Anyway, she claims he gave her the Magnum.

  It’s another real piece of work; way too long for concealed carry with its six-and-a-half-inch barrel.

  A flash of insight struck me. Doesn’t it stand to reason that you can figure out a person’s personality just by the type of weapon they choose? Raging Bull sure fits Kitty with her charging right into the thick of things personality. And Pink Lady comes close for Cora Mae, too, who is more classy than Kitty and me. What does a Glock say about my own traits, I wonder? Rugged but simple? You can put my Glock through a lot of roughhousing and it holds up to whatever you hit it with. Just like me.

  As Kitty opened up, I couldn’t help noticing that she was ignoring pretty much everything she’d learned from Joe about her body’s shooting position. She wasn’t gripping the Magnum in both hands with her elbows locked like she was supposed to. And her shoulders weren’t perpendicular to the target. Instead, she had taken a John Wayne side-stance with one arm ramrod straight and aimed at the target. The recoil from the Magnum was amazing to behold, but luckily, Kitty is a big solid woman.

  Fire flashed from the muzzle.

  What was Kitty thinking? She should be following the rules if she wants that permit. Although realistically, nobody in a dangerous situation is going to stand like that. This instructor should be teaching them how to shoot while running away. That scenario is more like real life.

  Kitty’s rogue moment happened so fast none of us had time to react, even when she blew the legs off the wooden target stand. After a few moments of stunned paralysis, Joe’s brain fired up. He marched over and wrenched the weapon from her grip. He had a grey-cast complexion, not at all a common color for a north woods Finlander.

  Joe went even whiter when Cora Mae asked, “Can you reload mine for me?” and attempted to hand her gun to Joe—barrel first, finger on the trigger, at least one round still in the chamber if I had counted the rounds she’d fired correctly.

  Being able to count also and coming up short of empty, Joe took a dive to the ground instead of taking the offered revolver as he yelled, “Point that thing at the sky!”

  “It’s not loaded,” Cora Mae explained as though talking to a five-year-old. “See.”

  Instead of up, she pointed away from us, directly at Joe’s truck parked off to the side. She casually pulled the trigger. The gun went off, scaring everybody but Fred, who had spent more time on gun ranges back in his K-9 cop days than all of us put together. Cora Mae screamed. I heard the distinctive ping of a bullet hitting metal.

  Joe rose in a rush like a soldier from a fox hole and lunged for the revolver. He not only had his hands full with my investigation partners, he literally had his hands full with their weapons.

  Kitty was the one who had brought Joe in. “He’s a friend of my third cousin,” she’d said. Knowing her cousin, that wasn’t much of an endorsement. “Certified to teach NRA courses,” she’d gone on. “Certified pistol, rifle, shot gun. He traps, skeets—the works.”

  In the beginning, Joe had been friendly, especially to me. He seemed particularly interested in the investigative business, wanting to know what we were working on. I had to resort to a bit of fibbing to keep him impressed. I hinted at plenty of intrigue and danger without actually giving any specifics. He didn’t have to know that our only gig right now is tracking down a missing garden shoe.

  Joe, whose good mood had vanished a while back, glanced over at his truck, which already had more than a few dings, before turning his attention back to Kitty, “It wasn’t your turn,” he huffed.

  “Who else’s turn would it have been?” she asked him. “And all my rounds are dead center, except for that one that shot out the target leg. I’m not sure how that happened. But I passed with flying colors.”

  Kitty is on the impatient side. She’s also BB #2. She came in late to our team after Cora Mae had already established her position as Best Bud number one. Kitty has been taking online attorney courses, a real plus for the type of business we conduct. Eventually you’re bound to run into legal tangles when you investigate crimes for a living. Kitty straightens out pesky legalities for us.

  Speaking of straightening out, Kitty used to wear her hair in pin curls most of the time, something even old-bat Grandma Johnson condemned as antiquated. Eventually, Cora Mae convinced Kitty to go commando head-wise. But we suspect that she still secretly wraps her wet hair in pin curls because of tell-tale ringlets that can only come from clumps of pinned confinement.

  Her coiled curls had bounced like crazy when she’d opened fire.

  “Following directions is part of the test,” their increasingly agitated instructor said, holding the Pink Lady in one hand and the Magnum in the other, glaring at both of them.

  “Legally, that’s incorrect,” Kitty informed him. “Nowhere in the documentation does it state that.”

  “It’s assumed!” he hollered. “Not only that—”

  Kitty cut him off, “As far as I’m concerned, we just completed our competency evaluation, and I passed.” I noticed she wasn’t making eye contact with Cora Mae, who had exhibited no shooting ability whatsoever.

  While I sat there with Fred beside me listening to Kitty argue her case, I still couldn’t see the point of all this. I’d tried to talk them out of it, but Kitty is pretty bullheaded (another example of the Raging Bull personality) and she’d refused to back down even though it was in her best interest to have heard me out.

  I carry a concealed weapon on a routine basis and don’t feel the need to have some worthless piece of paper to tell me I have permission. I could pass this class in a flash if I chose to. But, as I said, why bother?

  If rules are stupid enough, they are made to be broken.

  And Michigan concealed pistol carry permit rules are some of the most ridiculous and illogical. Starting with locations where we supposedly aren’t allowed to tote our concealed weapon. These include, but aren’t limited to schools, daycares, bars, stadiums, churches, hospitals, and casinos—all the places you might actually find yourself in a situation where you need a weapon to defend yourself and protect those around you.

  Then there are the rules to qualify for a permit. A long list of misdemeanor violations, or even charges pending for which you haven’t even been found guilty, will disqualify a person. Reckless driving, for one. Kitty is the worst driver on the road, but what does that have to do with carrying a weapon? Nothing, that’s what. Not to mention that somehow she’s managed to dodge charges of endangering lives while behind the wheel.

  Anyway, back to the point, here’s another perfect example of a ludicrous rule.

  Forget getting approved for a permit if you’ve ever been ordered into involuntary commitment. Okay, as an afterthought, that one might be valid. Although, who gets committed against their will in this day and age? Nobody, that’s who.

  And how about this dopey rule—you can’t have a permit if you’ve ever been found guilty of operating a locomotive while under the influence. If you don’t believe me, check the rules yourself! It’s there.

  Can someone explain exactly how your average person goes about operating a locomotive, whether drunk or not? Sure, Otis Knutson actually drives a freight train and stops it on the tracks periodically to socialize at the restaurant, but he’s never driven it drunk that I’m aware of.

  I think the rule makers were the ones who were drunk when they concocted this stuff.

  Anyhow, that’s my two cents.

  Here in the Michigan Upper Peninsula, aka The U.P., we honor God, country, and guns, and in no particular order. It’s a great place to live if you can figure out how to make a living. We’re a creative bunch though, and one way or the other, we get by.