Protests flew into my head, but I didn’t bother uttering them. What good would saying, “You can’t do this,” or, “I won’t tell anyone” do? Those phrases didn’t even work in movies.
The woman with the knife took a step toward me. There was nowhere for me to go. And even if I did run, how far would I make it before one of them caught me? Or the dog? I was, for all intents and purposes, surrounded.
Still, I took a step back, toward the golden retriever and the woman there. As I did, the dog growled low in its throat.
“Get her under control, Cam.” Moonlight glinted off the knife as the woman took another step my way.
The growl grew deeper, more sinister. I was afraid to so much as twitch, lest the golden retriever leap at me.
“Why?” I asked instead. “Why do this?”
“Jon killed her.” The knife-wielder paused her advance to answer. “He had to pay for what he did to Annie.”
“We just wanted to scare him.” This from behind me. “We didn’t mean for him to die, not really.”
“He didn’t just keel over on his own,” I said. “You must have done something to him.”
“He deserved what he got.” Another step my way. “He killed Annie. Murdered her. He used Goldie as an excuse, and no one bothered to look too closely, but I know what happened.”
“You could have taken your concerns to the cops.” I shuffled back a step but stopped when the dog growled again.
“I tried. My sister…” The woman with the knife took a deep, trembling breath. “It doesn’t matter. Jon got what he deserved. He refused to admit it, but I know. I won’t allow my life to be ruined because you saw me here tonight.”
This time, when she took a step toward me, she raised her arm, knife in hand and poised to strike.
The growl that followed caused me to cry out, thinking I was going to go down under both the knife, and the weight of an angry canine.
Instead, a golden streak shot past me, toward the woman intent on killing me—Annie’s sister, Lana. She screamed as the dog latched onto her arm, and together, they went down.
I spun around, thinking the other false Annie would be coming at me, but she was just standing there, hand to her mouth, eyes wide.
So, instead, I went for my phone.
“Call her off!” Lana screamed. Her knife was on the ground at her side, and the golden retriever’s mouth was latched around her forearm, but even in the dark, I could tell she wasn’t biting hard enough to draw blood. “Cam! Make her stop!”
“I…I can’t.” I could hear tears in Cam’s voice. “And I don’t think I should. I don’t want anyone else to die because of us.”
Neither did I. I hit a button and brought the phone to my ear, keeping a close eye on both of the women and the dog. “Manny?” I asked, relieved when he answered on the first ring. “Find Detective Cavanaugh. There’s been a murder…”
Jon Luckett had thought he’d seen a ghost. Two of them, in fact. He’d followed what he believed to be his dead wife, as well as her beloved golden retriever, into the corn maze, and there, he’d met his end.
I got the story from Detective Cavanaugh later. Apparently, Annie’s sister, Lana, had recruited her best friend, Cam, to help prove Jon had murdered Annie. They bought a dog that looked like Annie’s old dog, and then they dressed up in her favorite dress, before they headed for the Howl-O-Ween event to enact the plan.
The whole incident was on Lana’s phone. She’d set it to record what she’d hoped would be a confession, but instead, it caught her growing anger at Jon’s denials, as well as her eventual breakdown, and subsequent act of murder.
It was hard to say what happened then. Both Lana and Cam had refused to talk about it, so all Cavanaugh had was the recording. All we know for sure was that Lana’s anger caused her to attack Jon, and choke him to death, all while Cam begged her to stop.
I kind of felt bad for Cam, since she was only at the party to help create the illusion of a ghost, not to participate in a murder. Her presence allowed “Annie” to disappear around one corner, and then appear somewhere else.
Jon had fallen for it, but he never did admit to killing his wife. Did that mean he was innocent of the crime? I’m not sure anyone will ever know for sure.
And then there was the golden retriever.
Lana and Cam might have gotten away with the murder if it had been just the two of them. Unfortunately for the women, the golden retriever named, not surprisingly, Goldie, had gone for help the moment she realized Jon was injured.
And I was the lucky one to spot her.
“You’re a good girl,” I told Goldie from the front seat of my van. She’d heard it at least a hundred times since I’d taken possession of her after Halloween night. She’d likely hear it a hundred more over the coming months, and hopefully, years.
Normally, I would have had someone else with me as I dropped Goldie off, but I wanted to do this one alone. She’d saved my life, and if Jon hadn’t had the life strangled out of him, if Lana would have let up, even just a little, she likely could have done the same for him. It was what she was trained to do; to be a rescue dog. It was something neither Lana nor Cam knew when they’d bought her.
I pulled into the driveway and got out with a mixture of sadness warring with joy. If I thought I could handle keeping a dog and a special needs cat, along with the constant stream of foster pets I took in, I might have kept her.
But for as much as I appreciated Goldie and wanted to keep her as my own, there was someone else who needed her more.
The front door opened just as I helped Goldie from the back of the van. The moment Lisa Edmonds saw her new pet, she dropped to her knees, eyes brimming with tears.
Goldie didn’t hesitate. She knew why she was there.
Carefully, but with a wagging tail, she went to Lisa and allowed the older woman to gather her into her arms. As Lisa wept, Goldie licked away her tears, causing Lisa to laugh the first heartfelt laugh she’d probably had since her husband and beloved dog had passed.
I slipped quietly away, not wanting to interfere in the moment. Seeing the joy in Lisa’s eyes was thanks enough, and I knew right then and there I’d done the right thing. Lisa had been saved from the sadness that had threatened to overwhelm her.
But the credit wasn’t really mine.
It was what Goldie was trained to do.
Alex Erickson is the author of both the Bookstore Café and the Furever Pets mysteries. As E.S. Moore, he’s written the Kat Redding urban fantasy series, which is currently out of print, but will hopefully rise again.
When not writing, he can be found gaming, listening to loud obnoxious music, and, well, that’s about it. He lives in Ohio with his wife and son. And while he doesn’t have a dog to save the day, his three cats would happily watch if something were to happen to him before going back to their naps.
You can find him online at: https://alexericksonbooks.com/ .
Dog
By D.J. Butler
“WHICH DAUGHTER IS SICK?” Billy Redbird asked.
“The older one. Sunitha.” John Abbott patted the pocket of his raincoat and heard the tablets rattle. “I’m bringing home some medicine Ruth wants to try. I don’t know. The other pills didn’t work.”
They stood in thin rain on a narrow street in the Bowery. In just a few more paces, they’d reach the intersection where they’d split and go their separate ways. They were coming from the evening lecture of their Zaphon professor, Tzaark. The wolf-lizard had blinked and yawned his way through a facilitated discussion about not ignoring the spiritual dimensions of any non-human you encountered.