The Call of the Woof Read online

  The Call of The Woof

  A Marcia Banks and Buddy Mystery

  Kassandra Lamb

  a misterio press publication

  Contents

  Books by Kassandra Lamb

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Epilogue

  Author’s Notes

  About the Author

  Published by misterio press LLC

  Edited by Mary Kennedy

  Cover art by Melinda VanLone, Book Cover Corner

  Photo credit: silhouette of woman and dog by Majivecka (right to use purchased through Dreamstime.com)

  Copyright © 2017 by Kassandra Lamb

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used, transmitted, stored, distributed or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the writer’s written permission, except very short excerpts for reviews. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or by any other means without the publisher’s/author’s express permission is illegal and punishable by law.

  The Call of the Woof is a work of fiction. All names, characters, events and most places are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Some real places may be used fictitiously. The towns of Mayfair, Florida, Buckland Beach, Florida, and Collinsville, Florida are fictitious as are Collins and Buckland Counties.

  The publisher does not have control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites and their content.

  OTHER BOOKS by KASSANDRA LAMB

  The Kate Huntington Mystery Series:

  MULTIPLE MOTIVES

  ILL-TIMED ENTANGLEMENTS

  FAMILY FALLACIES

  CELEBRITY STATUS

  COLLATERAL CASUALTIES

  ZERO HERO

  FATAL FORTY-EIGHT

  SUICIDAL SUSPICIONS

  ANXIETY ATTACK

  POLICE PROTECTION

  The Kate on Vacation Novellas:

  An Unsaintly Season in St. Augustine

  Cruel Capers on the Caribbean

  Ten-Gallon Tensions in Texas

  Missing on Maui

  The Marcia Banks and Buddy Mysteries:

  To Kill A Labrador

  Arsenic and Young Lacy

  The Call of the Woof

  A Mayfair Christmas Carol (novella)

  Patches in the Rye

  The Legend of Sleepy Mayfair

  The Sound and the Furry

  A Star-Spangled Mayfair

  Lord of the Fleas

  My Funny MayFair Valentine

  Unintended Consequences Romantic Suspense:

  (written under the pen name, Jessica Dale)

  Payback

  Backlash

  Backfire

  (coming 2021)

  ~~

  Bartered Innocence

  (coming 2020)

  Chapter One

  I had a dizzying moment of déjà vu when Jake Black called.

  “Marcia, I need you to take Felix.”

  “Wha’?” Okay, so I’m not a brilliant conversationalist when dragged out of a sound sleep at three-thirty in the morning.

  “I need you to get Felix for me. They’ve got him at Buckland County Animal Services.”

  “Huh? Why?”

  “Janey and I have been arrested.”

  “For what?”

  “For robbery.”

  “Tell me you’ve called a lawyer,” I said, now fully awake. The last time a client of mine had been incarcerated, he’d used his one phone call to call me, instead of an attorney.

  “Yeah, Janey’s using her call for that. But I’m not at all sure what animal services will do with Felix. I don’t know that they’ll realize he’s a valuable service dog.”

  Adrenaline shot through my system. Surely the public shelter wouldn’t destroy or adopt out an animal belonging to someone who was only accused of a crime, not convicted yet. But I understood Jake’s concern. Mix-ups happened.

  My feet hit the floor with a thud. “Okay, I’ll get over there first thing in the morning.”

  Jake blew out a sigh. “Thanks.” He told me where to find the keys to their house, hidden in a fake rock, and gave me the security system code.

  “I know it’s a lot to ask,” he said, “but could you stay at the house? I mean live there, you don’t have to stay all the time. For a day or two, until we get this straightened out.”

  “Actually that solves a problem I have. I could use a place to stay for a few days. Keep me posted.”

  I sat on the edge of the bed—in the tee-shirt I’d swiped from Will to use as a nightshirt—and tried to wrap my brain around the Blacks being arrested for robbery.

  Jake Black had regaled me last year with stories of his misspent youth when I’d trained with him and Felix. But he was now in his forties, a business owner, combat veteran, husband of twenty-some years, father of a college-aged daughter.

  And his wife? Janey Black was a sweetheart, the type of person who’d drive back to the grocery store if a cashier gave her too much change.

  I shook my head.

  It was unlikely I’d get back to sleep at this point, so I threw on capris and a loose-fitting tropical shirt. I ran a comb through my hair—I was retraining myself to think of it as auburn rather than brunette, now that the Florida sun had blessed me with red highlights. Pulling the long strands up into a ponytail, I stared at the circles under my eyes. They were almost as dark as the brown irises.

  Still I opted to forego makeup. I had a dozen things to do before I could make good on my promise to get Felix.

  Today, my Black Lab-Rottie mix, Buddy and I were moving out of our house temporarily, while an exterminator fumigated it for termites and then a contractor repaired the damage the little buggers had done.

  Now, if you live in the Northeast you might be thinking, Fumigate? For termites?

  But these are not your standard, run-of-the-mill termites. Florida always likes to be bigger and better in the bug department, with flying two-inch palmetto bugs instead of roaches and drywood termites in addition to the regular kind.

  The latter had gotten into the rafters of my cement-block cottage and my roof was about to fall in.

  I’d packed up some things that might be damaged by the fumigation process, and a neighbor had offered to store the boxes for me. But I still needed to gather my clothes and some belongings Buddy and I would need for the next few days.

  At a little after six, I carried the first of my storage boxes next door. Edna Mayfair and her nephew were early birds. I knew they’d be up.

  I knocked on the frame of the screen door. The inside door hung open to catch the slight morning breeze. The cottage didn’t have central air.

  September might mean cooler temperatures for most of the country, but not in central Florida. Down here, it’s still relentlessly in the nineties with high humidity day after day, until at least mid-October.

  “Come on in,” Edna called out from somewhere in the recesses of the house.

  I
stepped into the front room of the shotgun cottage she was renting. It smelled faintly of mildew and dogs. I walked on through to the kitchen, where I found her and Dexter already poring over the plans for their new motel while munching on their breakfast cereal.

  Dexter, barefoot in cutoffs and a tee-shirt, jumped up to take the box from me. “I’ll put it in the spare room.”

  He was about my age—early thirties—but I tended to think of him as younger, probably because he was a brick or two short of a load. But he was a sweet guy, always eager to help.

  “Marcia, help us out here,” his great aunt said from her lawn chair next to a wobbly card table.

  Guilt tightened my chest. I hated that Edna, in her eighties, had lost everything she owned and had to start over, because I’d attracted a crazy person to our little town of Mayfair—a crazy person who’d burned down her motel.

  But Edna didn’t seem to hold it against me. She was moving forward with what bordered on glee.

  She stabbed a finger at the drawing on the table. “We can’t decide between Gothic columns for the porch, or a more Victorian look.”

  I glanced over her shoulder at the artist’s rendition of the new motel, and decided I could stop feeling guilty. The building depicted in the drawing was a lot bigger and nicer than the one that had burned down.

  “The Gothic ones are classier,” I said.

  Of course, any guest who took one look at Edna would realize “classy” was the wrong adjective. As usual, her gray hair stuck out in all directions and today’s muumuu displayed a chaotic array of brightly colored hibiscus blooms.

  I gave a slight shake of my head. “But Victorian would probably fit the small-town ambiance better. Where are Bennie and Bo?”

  “Out back. Go on out and say hi.”

  My mind brought up an image of the derelict property’s backyard—a tangle of palmettos, wild flowers and weeds that would require a machete to get through it. Besides, saying hello to her rambunctious Springer Spaniels would take up precious time. They would both demand a thorough ear scratch.

  “I’d better not. I’ve got to get going. Hey Dexter, can you help me with the rest of the boxes?”

  He did, and we stowed them in one of the two bedrooms that some previous owner had tacked onto the back of the original master bedroom. It was blessedly cool compared to the front part of the house.

  “Don’t worry, Marcia. We keep the window shakers on all the time back here.” Dexter gestured toward an air conditioner rattling away in the main bedroom’s window. “You won’t get any mold in your things.”

  That was a relief. Mold was a constant threat in humid Florida.

  Buddy and I made it to Buckland County Animal Services Center as they were opening. The young woman who greeted me couldn’t have been nicer. “We’ve kept Felix quarantined, considering how valuable he is.”

  I quietly let out a sigh of relief. Not everybody understood what went into training a true service dog. You didn’t just give them some obedience lessons and slap a vest on them. It took six months of intensive work to train them, and the not-for-profit agency I trained for charged ten thousand dollars for each dog, which didn’t even cover all the costs. The rest were made up with grants and donations.

  There was a little bit of discussion with the young woman about whether she could legally release Felix to me. I’d brought my copy of his training certificate, but I didn’t have anything in writing from Jake.

  Felix’s frenzied greeting of me helped cinch the deal. When he saw me, his naturally mournful-looking eyes lit up and his whole rear end wiggled, not just his stubby tail. He scrambled across the tiled floor, his nails clattering and scraping.

  “Well, he certainly knows you,” the woman said with a chuckle.

  I crouched and hugged Felix, then gave him my signal for down—a hand parallel to the floor moving down a few inches. He immediately plopped down on his belly.

  Buddy assumed the signal included him and he lay down beside the brindle boxer-and-something-a-lot-bigger mix. I’m not a huge fan of brindle, but Felix’s coat has a lot of gold mixed in with the darker shades of black and tan. On him, brindle looks good.

  I smiled at the animal control lady. “You can call the jail if you like and see if they’ll let you talk to his owner.”

  She shrugged. “I guess that isn’t necessary.”

  She led me over to a counter and handed me some paperwork to sign. Always, there is paperwork. “What all’s involved in learning to do what you do?” she asked.

  I looked up from the papers into her smooth twenty-something face, framed by frizzy brown curls. Her fresh eagerness made me feel old, even though I’d probably only been on the planet a half dozen years longer than she had.

  “You mean train dogs?”

  She nodded. “Service dogs for injured veterans, like you do.”

  “We mostly work with vets with PTSD and other psychological issues, but some of them have physical injuries too.” I quickly scanned the pages in front of me and signed. I handed the papers back to her. “Each organization does things their own way. For the agency I’m with, you train under another trainer, usually the director, Mattie—Mathilda Jones.” I dug one of Mattie’s cards out of my purse. “Give her a call. There’s far more need for trained dogs than there are trainers to produce them. You’d be doing important work.”

  The woman grinned and took the card from me. “Thanks. Can I tell her we talked, uh…,” she glanced at my name that I’d printed on the papers, “Ms. Banks?”

  “Sure.” I gave her a big smile, snapped the leash I’d brought on Felix’s collar, and the dogs and I headed for the Blacks’ home.

  I’d been there before, during the final stages of Felix and Jake’s training as partners, but I’d forgotten how big it was. The sprawling rancher, on an acre of carefully landscaped lawn in a neighborhood of equally large houses, proclaimed that its owners were upper middle class—in income at least, despite the fact that they acted like “plain folks,” as my mom would say.

  I’d just retrieved a set of two keys from the fake rock when I thought I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. I glanced over to the freestanding three-car garage that housed the Blacks’ motorcycles and Jake’s workshop. It baked in the mid-morning sun, nothing more than little lizards scuttling around it.

  I jogged in that direction, the dogs on my heels. The house could fall into a sinkhole and Jake might not even notice, but if anything happened to his garage and the bikes inside, he’d go ballistic.

  A shadow wavered across the huge white door.

  I jerked around and saw a pants leg as someone climbed into an oversized white pickup parked on the street.

  Air rushed out of my lungs. That’s what I’d seen in my peripheral vision, a shadow of someone walking to their vehicle, projected against the garage by the slanting sun.

  Nonetheless I made a circuit around its perimeter, again the dogs acting as the rear guard. Everything was locked up tight.

  I was about to turn back toward the house when Felix started sniffing around the side door of the garage. I walked over.

  Crapola!

  That sure looked like fresh scratch marks around the deadbolt. Had someone tried to pick the lock? Worse yet, had someone actually gotten inside?

  I turned back toward the street, but the white truck was gone.

  Chapter Two

  Inside, I found Felix’s bowls in the kitchen and freshened his water, then poured some in Buddy’s travel bowl and put it on the floor nearby.

  A key rack, in the shape of an Army helmet, caught my eye by the kitchen door. The keys were labeled but there wasn’t one marked garage. I opened drawers until I found the inevitable junk drawer. Rooting through it, I discovered several random keys.

  Leaving the dogs to lap up some water, I went outside with those keys. The second one I tried fit the lock on the side door.

  The garage was the neatest one I’d ever seen. On one side was a workshop area. Three motorcycle
s were parked on the other side, one with three wheels rather than two—like a giant tricycle.

  Jake’s sidecar, where Felix rode, sat along one wall. Nothing seemed amiss, so I locked up and headed back toward the house.

  A weird feeling crept up my neck, a sense of being watched. I spun around. But the driveway was empty, as was the section of the street that I could see from here. A slight breeze rustled in the line of trees that separated the driveway from the neighbor’s property.

  I shrugged off the creepy feeling and went inside.

  By the time I’d called the motel in nearby Ormond-By-The-Sea and delayed my reservation for a day, I’d decided that I was overreacting to a few scratches, a shadow and someone innocently climbing into a vehicle.

  After all, white pickup trucks were a dime a dozen in Florida. If I remembered correctly, Jake even had one.

  Leaning my butt against the edge of the kitchen counter, I smiled to myself at the motherism—a dime a dozen. Then the smile grew wider as I realized I no longer reacted negatively when I thought or said some old-fashioned phrase picked up from my mother. My unusual name—pronounced Mar-see-a rather than Marsha—along with my prim and proper speech patterns, had gotten me teased a good bit as a kid, but I was working on that, along with some other things, with my counselor.

  Unfortunately, I’d had to suspend my counseling sessions for a couple of months due to finances. Not only were the fumigation and repairs costing me a bundle, but I’d had to forego starting with a new dog once Jenny, my latest trainee, was placed with her new owner. Living in a motel room was not conducive to the early stages of training a service dog.