“Let go, Mame! No!”
She growled again and shook her head angrily, but she didn’t let go. The shaking loosened the hand, creating a ring of space between wrist and pine needles.
I smacked her nose again, harder. “Mame, no! Let go!”
Along with knowing this was one of the most bizarre things I’d ever done, fighting with a dog over a corpse’s finger, was the uneasy knowledge that we were at the scene of a crime. Mame had already disturbed the covering by digging in the loose mulch, and I was trampling on it and possibly obliterating valuable evidence. There was also the possibility that whoever had covered the body was watching behind a tree.
I squatted over Mame, took her determined jaws in both hands, and forced them open. Mame snarled and tried to snap at me, but the dead finger slid out and the hand flopped on the ground. Rigor mortis sets in quickly in a dead body, especially in hot weather, but this one was still limp. Which meant it hadn’t been dead long. Which meant the killer might still be lurking nearby.
In the murky light, I could see it was a man’s hand, large, with long fingers and manicured fingernails. Through the dark dry matter around the wrist, I caught a glimpse of gold. Mame thrashed and growled low in her throat, so angry I knew that if I let her jaws go she would nip at me. Quickly, I moved one hand to grab her collar. Keeping that arm stiff to hold her away, I felt for a pulse on the man’s blue wrist with my other hand. No doubt about it, he was dead, and the color of his skin said he’d died of asphyxiation. I jerked my hand away and duck-walked backward, still stiff-arming Mame’s collar while I scrambled in my pocket for my cell phone to dial 911.
When the dispatcher answered, I gave her my name and location.
“I’m out walking a dog, and she just dug up a dead body.”
“Your dog dug up a body?”
“Not the whole body, just a hand.”
Mame snarled over her shoulder and barked for good measure, sounding like a dog five times her real size.
It must have impressed the dispatcher, because she said, “Somebody will be right there, ma’am, but stay on the phone with me, okay?”
I knew she wanted to keep me talking until a deputy arrived in case I was reporting a crime I’d committed myself. Also, the investigating officer would want to know how I’d come upon the body, and the dispatcher didn’t want me to leave the scene.
I said, “I won’t disconnect, but I’m going to put the phone down because I need to calm the dog.”
Before she could tell me what she thought about that, I laid the phone on the ground so I could use both hands on Mame. I not only wanted to calm her, I wanted to get us both back to the street. Keeping her collar in one hand, I stroked her head with the other and talked softly to her.
“Good girl, Mame, good girl. You’re a very good girl, and everything’s okay.”
That’s what we all want to hear, that we’re good and that everything’s okay.
I kept repeating it, and she gradually stopped snarling and decided not to bite me. But when I turned her around to pick her up, her eyes were full of reproach. I had hurt her feelings and she wasn’t going to forgive me easily. I didn’t blame her. I never hit an animal, any more than I would hit a child, and I despise people who do. No matter how people may try to justify it, any time a large person uses physical punishment on a small vulnerable body, it’s despicable abuse.
But here the first time I’d caught Mame with a corpse’s finger in her mouth, I’d smacked her nose. Both of us were going to have to readjust our opinions of me.
I picked up the phone and carried Mame to the street, stepping out of the thicket just as a green-and-white patrol car cruised toward us. I told the dispatcher the deputy had arrived and turned off the phone. The patrol car pulled to a stop and the driver got out. When I saw who it was, I took a deep breath. Deputy Jesse Morgan recognized me at about the same time. I imagine he had to suck up a bit of air too. The last time we’d met had been over another dead body, in circumstances no less peculiar than this one.
He was crisp and neat in his dark green shorts and shirt, his waist bulging with all the paraphernalia of a law-enforcement officer, his muscular legs covering the ground in a confident stride. Only the diamond stud in one earlobe indicated that he had a life apart from keeping Siesta Key safe.
He nodded to me with that impassive face that all law-enforcement officers cultivate.
“Miz Hemingway.”
I nodded back. “Deputy Morgan.”
“You called about a body?”
“The dog smelled it and ran over and started digging. She had a hand pulled out before I knew what it was.” I pointed toward the thick trees and underbrush. “The body is under that big oak.”
He stepped into the thicket, walking as if he wasn’t at all concerned about poisonous snakes or spiders or fire ants. I could see his dark green back through the branches, saw him stop and stand a moment with his hands on his hips, saw him kneel for a few seconds, and then stand and turn to walk back to me, talking on his phone as he came. When he stepped onto the street, his face was unreadable. I wasn’t surprised. Only once or twice in our acquaintance had I caught him in a smile.
“What time did you find it?”
“Not more than ten minutes ago.”
“You called as soon as you saw it?”
“I had to fight the dog first. She wouldn’t let go of the finger. If it has tooth marks, they’re from Mame.”
His mouth turned down a bit. “She chewed on the finger?”
“I wouldn’t say she chewed on it exactly, more like clamped her teeth down and held on.”
He looked hard at Mame, who returned his look with an imperious tilt of her nose. It took a lot more than a uniformed deputy to intimidate Mame.
He said, “I used to have a dachshund. They’re stubborn little guys.”
“That’s just it; she doesn’t know she’s little.”
He didn’t slip up and smile, but his eyes warmed a bit and he nodded. Another car drew up, and Deputy Morgan walked over to meet Sergeant Woodrow Owens. Mame squirmed in my arms and I put her down. Like a little guided missile, she headed straight back toward the thicket. I had the leash this time, so I pulled her back and glared at her, feeling like an embarrassed parent whose child is showing unflattering traits in public.
Read on for an excerpt from
Cat Sitter Among the Pigeons
The next Dixie Hemingway mystery from Blaize Clement
Chapter 1
I read somewhere that if two quantum particles come into contact with each other—like if they happen to bump shoulders in the dairy aisle of a subatomic supermarket—they will be forever joined in some mysterious way that nobody completely understands. No matter how far apart they travel, what happens to one will affect the other. Not only that, but they will retain some eerie form of ineffable communication, passing information back and forth over time and space.
Ruby and I were a bit like those weird particles. From the moment I opened the door and saw her standing there holding her baby, we had a strong connection that neither of us particularly wanted. It was just there, an inevitable force we couldn’t resist.
I met Ruby the first morning I was at her grandfather’s house. Her grandfather was Mr. Stern, a name which fit him remarkably well. Slim, silver-haired, and ramrod straight, Mr. Stern had ripped his bicep playing tennis. He was not the sort of man to make a fuss about a torn muscle, but his doctor had insisted that he rest his arm in a sling until it healed. That’s where I came in. Mr. Stern lived with a big orange American Shorthair named Cheddar, so he had asked me to help twice a day with cat-care things that required two hands. When he asked and I agreed, neither of us had known that Ruby was on her way with her baby. We hadn’t known how much exquisite pain we’d both suffer in the following days, either. Not muscle pain, but heartache.