A Basket of Murder: A Pet Shop Cozy Mystery (Pet Shop Cozy Mysteries Book 4) Read online

  Tony is a stocky guy with a bushy black mustache. He’s originally from Staten Island, which means he talks with his hands a lot and leaves off the “h” when he says “hey” (so it’s like, “Ey!”). Jerry, on the other hand, is laid-back and soft-spoken. He’s a couple years older than me, about to hit the big four-oh—which we like to taunt him about whenever the chance comes up—but he takes it with a smile and a shrug.

  “Will, perfect timing,” Sammy tells me. “Tony here was just asking about what it’s like to run your own business.”

  “Oh? Are you thinking about striking out on your own?” I ask Tony. Then I cup a hand to my mouth and say in a stage whisper, “Should you be saying that in front of the competition?” I jerk a thumb towards Jerry, which gets a laugh.

  “Nah, nothing like that,” Tony says. “The old man wants to franchise Sockets & Sprockets, open a couple more locations. I figure I can get a piece of that; run my own shop.” By “the old man” he means Mr. Casey, who owns the auto shop and the adjacent gas station.

  Holly, the proprietor and bartender of the Runside, brings me a Whale of an Ale (what can I say? They know me here) and puts down a small bowl of water for Rowdy, patting him on the head as he lays partially beneath the table at my feet.

  “Thanks, Holly.” To Tony I say, “Well, it’s a lot of work. You’ll need a lawyer on retainer and a good accountant. You have to track expenses, pay employees, take care of all your taxes. Then there’s advertising, paying rent and utilities, equipment costs…”

  Tony waves a hand in the air. “No biggie. I got it all figured out. Besides, I’ve been saving up for a long while now. No more nine-to-five for this guy. I wanna be the boss, you know?”

  “How about you, Jerry?” I ask. “Are you thinking of doing the same?”

  “Oh, no. Not me,” he says with a small smile. “I’m fine where I’m at.”

  “Yeah, this guy likes gettin’ up at the crack of dawn and working for somebody else,” Tony scoffs. “Just a regular good ol’ boy, aren’t you, Jerry?”

  “I’ve got plenty going on already,” Jerry says quietly. Sammy glances over at him, and for the briefest of moments I see an eyebrow raise and a half-smile, some sort of strange exchange between them. “Besides,” Jerry adds, “I think I’m getting too old to go changing my whole lifestyle.”

  “That’s definitely true,” I say.

  “Be retiring real soon, huh?” Sammy adds.

  “Practically one foot in the grave,” Tony chimes in.

  Jerry chuckles and checks his watch. “Alright fellas, I got to get going. I told Carla I’d take a look at Garrett’s car tonight before she got home. I’ll see you around, huh?” He shrugs into his jacket, tosses a twenty on the table and heads out.

  “Guess I should get ramblin’, too,” Tony remarks. “The wife gets cranky if she doesn’t get her pre-bedtime foot rub.” He grins and rises, and in a few moments it’s just me and Sammy left at the table.

  “What was that about?” I ask him.

  “What was what about?”

  “You and Jerry. That weird, furtive look. I saw that.”

  Sammy shrugs. “It was nothing. Guy’s just got a lot going on. He’s pushing forty with a live-in girlfriend and her eighteen-year-old son that hates him. Can you imagine?”

  “I guess that is a lot,” I murmur—because yes, I can imagine at least half of that scenario. “Speaking of, let me tell you what I found out today.”

  “Uh-oh,” Sammy says with a smile. “Sounds like we might need another round for this one.” He waves to Holly for another couple of pints.

  CHAPTER 4

  * * *

  “Tho’s the world’s most adorable little kitty? You are! You’re the world’s most adorable little kitty!” The next morning, Sarah paces the length of the shop floor as she cradles Basket in one arm, bottle-feeding him with the other.

  Nearby, I stack bags of dog food for a sale and shake my head, grinning. I’ve caved to the notion of having a shop-cat, and instead decided to just find the humor in it.

  “So,” I say, clearing my throat. “How was girls’ night out?”

  “Oh, it was good,” Sarah tells me. “But Anna couldn’t make it—some work emergency—so it was just me and Karen.”

  My heart skips a beat. Just the two of them?

  “That place has really good queso dip, by the way.” She glances over at me, and I assume I’ve gone a shade paler because she half-smiles and asks, “So what did Sammy say about it?”

  “Huh?”

  “Come on, Will. He’s your BFF. I know you talked to him about it. And he probably offered some words of wisdom, as usual. So, what’d he say?”

  She’s right, as she tends to be. “Well, Sammy said that I need to understand that people have a capacity to change, and that I should give Karen the benefit of the doubt. He also said that my perception of women as chatty and having nothing better to talk about than me is mildly sexist, and I need to get over that.”

  “Hmm. Wise as ever.” She winks at me and adds, “But we totally talked about you.”

  “Wait, what? What’d you say? What’d she say? Sarah, come back!”

  She laughs and paces to the rear of the store. At the same time the front door opens, and as I turn to greet what I assume is a customer, instead I see Sammy.

  “Hey, speak of the devil…” I trail off. His normally coifed black hair is mussed, and his eyes are wide in alarm. “What’s up? Something wrong, Sammy?”

  “Will, I need to talk with you,” he says urgently in nearly a whisper.

  I glance left and right. There are no other customers in the store and Sarah’s out of earshot. “Okay… What is it?”

  “Will,” he rubs his face with both hands and says, “Jerry Brahms is dead.”

  “What?! How?”

  “He was found late last night in his garage,” Sammy tells me. “But that’s not the worst part of it.” He lowers his voice even further, to the point I can barely hear him, and adds, “I’m sure it was murder.”

  “Whoa, hey. Slow down a second, pal. I don’t even know what’s going on—”

  “Hey, Sam!” Sarah says brightly, approaching us. “Have you met Basket, the world’s most precious little kitten?”

  “I have not yet,” Sammy says, his demeanor suddenly changing to a hearty smile. “Wow, look at him. That is a ridiculously adorable cat. Listen, Sarah, you mind if I borrow Will for just a few minutes? I need help moving something at the barber shop.”

  Now that’s especially weird. I’ve never heard Sam lie to anyone, least of all Sarah.

  “Not at all,” she says. “Take him.”

  “Great. Back in a flash.”

  I grab my coat and follow Sammy outside.

  ***

  I walk quickly to keep up with Sammy, who digs his hands into his coat pockets and lowers his head as he talks a mile a minute.

  “So here’s what I know. Jerry went home to work on Garrett’s car—that’s Carla’s kid. The garage door was open. He had the back tires off. Carla came home close to midnight and found him. Now, what looks like happened is that the jack tipped and the wheel well crushed him. But I don’t think that’s what happened at all. Jerry’s been a mechanic for almost twenty years; no way he’d get lazy about jacking up a car. I think someone waited until he was directly under the wheel well, and then jostled the car or did something to sabotage the jack.” He looks over at me, his eyes wide. “Are you listening?”

  “Yeah, I am.” To be honest, I’m still stuck at the part where he said “Jerry’s dead,” but I don’t mention that. “Sam, how do you know all this already?”

  “Because I went to Jerry’s house last night—”

  “You were there?”

  “Yes, but for something completely unrelated—”

  “What reason would you have for going to Jerry’s house at midnight? Couldn’t you just have called him?”

  “Loo
k,” Sammy says sharply, “the reason I was there isn’t important. What’s important is that the cops were already there when I got there. I saw it all with my own eyes. Then Patty told me to go home.”

  “Did she ask you why you were there?”

  “I told her I was driving by and saw the flashers. Got curious. Look, we’re getting off track. The point is, I believe Jerry was murdered, and…” He stops walking and stares me in the eye. “I want you to look into it.”

  “Look into it,” I repeat.

  “Yes. You have to admit, you’re pretty keen on figuring out these kinds of things and—”

  “Whoa, wait. Sam, I’m not getting mixed up in this. The police will handle it, I’m sure.”

  “The police don’t know everything,” he says simply. “Jerry and I were good friends. We hung out at the Runside together. We played racquetball at the rec center. I’ve known him for years. I don’t think this was an accident at all.”

  “You’re kind of freaking me out here. Do you know something that might be important about this?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “But you believe it’s murder.”

  He nods. “So will you?” His eyes plead with mine. “I’m asking as your friend—as your best friend.”

  I think for a long moment, and then I shake my head. “No, Sammy. I’m sorry, but unless you can give me more to go on, I can’t just assume it’s murder and interfere. That’s illegal, and I have nothing to do with it, and—”

  “I think I might be next,” he says suddenly.

  “What? Why on earth would you think that? Why would there even be a ‘next’?”

  “I’m sorry, Will, but I—”

  “You can’t tell me.”

  “No.”

  “Sammy, what the heck are you mixed up in?” I sigh heavily. “Alright, so what if this turns out to have just been an accident?”

  He shrugs. “That’s the best-case scenario. I’d have nothing to worry about. But I wouldn’t get your hopes up. I think someone tried to make this look like an accident.”

  “So you think it was murder, and you have reason to believe—reason that you can’t tell me—that you might be a target for the next ‘accident.’”

  “That’s right.”

  “Sammy, you understand this sounds crazy, right?”

  “I know it does.”

  I groan. “Alright, let me just digest all this for a little bit, okay?”

  “And then you’ll look into it?” he asks eagerly.

  “I… will look into it as far as I can without getting myself into any trouble,” I tell him.

  “Thanks, Will. Thank you. You’re a good friend.” He gives me a brief hug. “I have to get back to the shop. We’ll talk later, okay?”

  He hurries off down the street, hands plunged into his pockets and head low, while I run the strangest conversation I’ve ever had over in my mind. Why can’t Sammy tell me what he knows? Why was he at Jerry’s house so late at night?

  If nothing else, Sammy’s definitely piqued my curiosity—as much as I hate to admit it.

  I walk slowly back to the Pet Shop Stop. Almost as soon as I enter, Sarah looks over at me with her brow furrowed in concern.

  “You okay?” she asks. “You didn’t hurt your back, did you?”

  “What? Hurt my back…?”

  “Helping Sammy.”

  “Oh. No, uh, it was a piece of cake.” Wait, what am I doing? I’m not getting in the habit of lying now. “Sarah, he didn’t need help moving anything. He needed to talk.”

  “Everything okay?”

  “No. Not even a little bit.” I tell her all about the conversation we just had and Sammy’s odd behavior. At the end of it, I expect a flurry of questions—much in the same way I reacted to it—but instead Sarah asks only one.

  “Well, you’re going to help him, right? I mean, he’s your best friend. He’s always been there for you.”

  “Yeah,” I mutter. “Of course I’m going to help him.”

  CHAPTER 5

  * * *

  I decide that the first move on the part of “reluctantly investigating pet shop owner” should be to talk to the police. Not only have I known Chief Mayhew personally for years, but she’s the one that gave me the information about becoming a PI, after helping out on not one, but three different murder cases over the last year or so.

  So just a couple hours after Sammy’s visit, once I’m certain that everything is in order with the shop and that I’m not heaping too much responsibility on Sarah’s shoulders, I head downtown to the police station to have a chat with my good friend Patty.

  “What do you want, Sullivan?” she asks me when I knock gently on the frame of her open office door.

  “Hey, Chief. Good to see you. You’re looking especially vibrant this morning.”

  Truth be told, she looks tired as all get-out. She glances up at me from her paperwork without actually lifting her head. “Close the door.”

  I gulp and do so. As is her custom, she folds her hands on the desk between us before she starts speaking.

  “Seaview Rock has always been a very nice place to live,” she tells me. “Our crime rate, over the last eight years since I’ve been chief, has been astonishingly low. But now, for whatever reason, we’re looking at our fourth murder inside a year. And each time, you’ve been nearby. That’s a little disconcerting, right?”

  “I could see how one might think so,” I say carefully.

  “Now here we seem to have another one, and lo and behold, Will Sullivan is nowhere around! A miracle, right?”

  “You’re right. Nowhere to be found.”

  “Yet… here you are.”

  I force a smile. “Here I am.”

  “So what do you want, Will?”

  What I really want, if I’m being honest with myself, is for the police to have found evidence that Jerry’s death was just a tragic accident. What I really want is to tell Patty that I plan to look into his death and for her to adamantly refuse, and to threaten to lock me up if I get involved. I know, it sounds like I’m being a bad friend, but I still can’t help but think that the best course of action is to let the police handle it.

  “I admit that I don’t know a lot about the circumstances of Jerry’s death,” I say, choosing my words carefully. “But I have reason to believe that it might possibly have been murder.”

  The chief stares at me blankly. “Yeah. We know.”

  “Oh. You do?”

  “Yes, Will. Believe it or not, the police are capable of solving things without you traipsing around.”

  “Traipsing? I don’t traipse. If anything, I plod. Sometimes I schlep—”

  “Look, I know that you guys liked to hang out and drink at the Runside, so if you think you’re going to solve this guy’s murder, I can tell you confidently that we’ve got it handled. If you’re fishing for information, I can only tell you what I’ve already told the media.”

  “Sure, shoot.” Any info is better than no info, and hopefully whatever Patty can tell me will satisfy Sammy.

  “Alright. We already have someone in custody,” she says.

  “You do?”

  “We have reason to believe that there was foul play. A dent in the rear fender near the wheel well of the car Jerry was working on suggests that it was kicked, and that it caused the jack to tip and the car to fall on him. The wheel well severed his spine; he died instantly. The only person that was home at the time was Garrett Kunkle, the son of Jerry’s girlfriend. It’s no secret that Garrett disliked Jerry, and the kid has some priors; he’s been in and out of this station more than you have in the past year. So we’re holding him under suspicion of murder.”

  “Oh!” I exclaim. “But… he’s just a kid.”

  “He’s eighteen, which by definition means he’s not a kid.”

  I furrow my brow, thinking. I mean, on the one hand it seems awfully open-and-shut. But on the other hand, it feels�
�� too easy.

  “So that’s it then?” I ask her. “You have your guy, cased closed?”

  “Of course not. We still have to do our due diligence of finding hard evidence or getting a confession out of him—and Garrett has clammed up. His original statement is that he fell asleep in his room listening to music, and never heard a thing. His mom woke him up after she got home and found Jerry in the garage. Since he told us that, he hasn’t said a word.”

  “And no one saw anything? No neighbors or passers-by?”

  “No. It was pretty late at night; estimated time of death is around ten p.m. Carla got home around midnight and called us right away. Why, what are you thinking, Will?”

  “I don’t know. It just doesn’t feel right to me.”

  She chuckles. “It doesn’t feel right? You’ve gained an investigative intuition after all your vast experience?”

  I roll my eyes. She’s not wrong, though.

  “Alright, Will. This is the part where I tell you not to get involved, and don’t go sniffing around where you shouldn’t, et cetera.”

  There’s what I was looking for—an out. What a good friend I am, right?

  “Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to get on your bad side, Chief. You got it; I’ll stay far away from all of this. Have a great afternoon.” I rise and head for the door.

  With my hand on the knob, the chief says, “Oh, Will?” Without even looking up from her paperwork, she says, “Let me know what you find.”

  I gulp. “Sure thing, Chief.”

  CHAPTER 6

  * * *

  Right after the chief’s strange and confusing warning that wasn’t really a warning, I get back into my car and immediately call Sammy. He answers on the third ring, and I tell him about my meeting with Chief Mayhew.

  “I don’t believe it for a second,” Sammy insists. “Garrett isn’t the world’s greatest kid, and he definitely wasn’t Jerry’s biggest fan, but to kill the guy?”

  “What if it was an accident? What if Garrett only meant to hurt Jerry, and not kill him?” I suggest.