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  Not to mention, a former murder suspect I’d helped clear. Just like I’d cleared several others—myself included.

  I helped pack up cookies and cupcakes as people bought them, then rang up their orders at the register. I spent a half hour or so at Icing, chatting with customers and enjoying it, as always.

  Then it was time to return to the Barkery.

  Dinah seemed to have things well under control, even though the shop was delightfully crowded. As I entered, a guy came in with two golden cocker spaniels on leashes—he was someone I didn’t recall seeing before. And even if I didn’t remember him, I’d have remembered his dogs.

  “Hi,” I said, greeting him. “Welcome to Barkery and Biscuits.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “Nice shop.”

  “I think so,” I said with a grin. I introduced myself as the owner of both the Barkery and Icing, and gave his dogs—Duke and Prince—some introductory treats. He introduced himself as Henry.

  He bought a nice selection of biscuits and other treats for his dogs, which made me happy. The dogs seemed happy, too, and even on their leashes they traded nose sniffs with Biscuit in her enclosure.

  “Thanks a lot,” Henry said as they got ready to leave.

  “Thank you,” I countered. “Come back anytime.”

  “We will,” he said, and then they left.

  As the morning progressed, things slowed a bit, which was okay with me. In addition to having a shift to do at the vet clinic that afternoon, I had an urge to go get a quick cup of coffee at Cuppa-Joe’s, my favorite hangout in Knobcone Heights—mostly because its owners, whom I called the Joes, were like substitute parents to me.

  I needed a dose of their presence, just because.

  And so around eleven that morning, I checked with both Janelle and Dinah. They were fine with my leaving for an hour or so. I put my beloved Biscuit on her leash and we headed out the door.

  The summer air was warm, which was not surprising, but fortunately it wasn’t too hot. I allowed Biscuit to take her time as she sniffed the sidewalk along Summit Street, and also in the town square across the street from the stores. My dog enjoyed the park area, with its grass and knobcone pine trees, and as usual I figured she’d like to spend more time there. Instead, we kept walking.

  Cuppa-Joe’s wasn’t far away, just on the other side of the square along Peak Road. It consisted of a one-story sprawling building, with a couple of patios outside and in the center. With Biscuit along I generally preferred finding a spot on a patio, although ever since the Joes adopted their adorable dog Sweetie, who also hung out at the shop a lot, it wasn’t always necessary.

  Sure enough, when I walked inside the large main room that smelled like—what else?—coffee, with Biscuit beside me, I saw Sweetie, who kind of resembled my pup, lying in her usual corner beneath a table. Joe and Irma Nash, a.k.a. the Joes, sat at that table.

  They weren’t alone. Several people sat with them, and a few others stood around them. Interesting. Their place was often busy, but I didn’t recall ever seeing the Joes so engaged in conversation with so many customers.

  Some tables in the room were available, but I didn’t choose one. Instead, I approached the Joes. Not that I anticipated a place would open up for me there, but I wanted to at least say hi.

  Irma saw me coming, and she stood up and gestured invitingly. I smiled, and Biscuit and I kept walking in that direction while avoiding tables, chairs, and other people. In the meantime, Irma had apparently said something to one of the guys with them, since by the time I got there he had stood up, stolen an empty chair from a nearby table, and put it down for me.

  I knew it was for me because Joe had stood up, too, and held out his arms for a hug before telling me to have a seat.

  Both Joes were in their sixties. They’d seemed to adopt me as one of their kids when I’d first arrived in Knobcone Heights. Joe looked his age, with receding gray hair and lots of wrinkles on his face that I chalked up to the fact that he was nearly always smiling. Irma, on the other hand, resembled a lovely senior model, with perfect makeup and stylishly cut and highlighted brown hair. Today, both wore casual jeans with slightly more formal shirts tucked into them. Joe’s shirt was gray, and Irma’s was a frilly peach.

  “Hi.” I raised my voice to be heard over the loud rumble of conversations throughout the room. “Good to see both of you. All of you,” I amended. A few people around the table were occasionally customers at my shops, too. But I was of course happiest to see my dear buddies the Joes.

  “You too, dear.” Irma, sitting beside me, reached over and squeezed my hand. When people began talking again around us, I quickly realized that her gesture was simultaneously one of affection and a request for me to be quiet.

  What was that about?

  I found out quickly.

  “Does he have any family around here?” asked Mr. Harbin, a tall guy with thin shoulders. I didn’t know his first name, but I remembered that his dog was named Remus. Harbin had brought him into the vet clinic a couple of months ago with injuries from a car accident. I believed the dog was okay. But I wondered who Harbin was talking about.

  I figured it out nearly immediately. Someone else at the table, a woman I hadn’t met, gave a shudder. “You don’t really think he’ll come back to Knobcone Heights, do you?”

  “Where else would he go?” Harbin asked. “He lived and worked here before. Unless he’s got family someplace else, I bet we’ll be seeing him around. Maybe a lot.”

  I glanced at Irma, and she turned her head to look at me.

  “Are we talking about—”

  “Mike Holpurn,” she finished. “The man who’s about to be paroled.”

  Two

  So word was spreading in this town. Not that I was surprised. Dinah had seen it mentioned on TV that morning, and she wouldn’t have been alone.

  But all the hoopla about it concerned me even more.

  “Can anyone tell me about this Mike Holpurn and what happened with him?” I asked, breaking into another conversation that had erupted beside me about whatever family or other contacts Holpurn might still have in this area. I was interested in that topic—but first I wanted to hear more about what occurred back then.

  Since Holpurn had confessed to the murder of the mayor as part of his plea bargain, he had to be guilty. But why had he done it?

  And why, after admitting it, was he being paroled after only ten years?

  Would his parole, and possible return to this area, cause any problems in town? Any danger?

  Maybe I was worrying too much—but I’d gotten involved in solving local murders lately, too many of them. I had no interest in having any more deaths occur around me … especially if a convicted murderer showed up.

  I hadn’t spoken loudly, but suddenly all attention around the table seemed focused on me: from the Joes and Mr. Harbin, four other men, and a couple of women.

  “You mean you don’t know?” asked the woman sitting catty-corner to me. She didn’t look familiar so I assumed she didn’t have a pet, or at least not one that would have brought her to my Barkery or vet clinic. And I didn’t recall seeing her at Icing, either. She appeared around the Joes’ age.

  I shook my head. “I’ve lived here for about five years, and I gather that whatever happened involving Holpurn occurred a while before that.”

  “Yeah, about five or six years before,” Harbin said. “It was one very nasty situation.”

  “It sure was,” said another guy, standing behind Irma at my side.

  But I still wasn’t learning anything. I looked at Joe, then Irma. “I’d like to hear about that nasty situation,” I said. “I gather the mayor he killed was a woman.” The current mayor of Knobcone Heights was also a woman, Sybill Gabbon, and I knew her a bit because she’d recently adopted a couple of dogs from Mountaintop Rescue, at one of the adoption events we’d held in the
Barkery.

  “That’s right,” Irma said—and that was when the server Kit, whom I genuinely liked, happened to come over at the wrong time to take my order. In her mid-twenties, she had cute, curly blond hair and pink cheeks, and as usual she wore a knit shirt with a coffee cup logo on the pocket, a yellow one today.

  Fortunately, Kit apparently recognized that it wasn’t a great time to do more than find out what I wanted. “Coffee and cream today?” she asked—which was currently my usual.

  “Yes, please,” I said.

  Kit quickly surveyed the others around the table. All either had cups or glasses in front of them or in their hands. “Anyone else?” she asked nevertheless.

  Everyone was fine, and Kit hurried off.

  I looked back at Irma expectantly, hoping she got the message and would describe what had happened in the past with Holpurn. It wouldn’t necessarily explain what was going on in the present, with his parole, but it would start to answer my questions.

  But it was Joe who started talking next. “Here’s the situation as I recall it.” His expression, as he looked at the others around us, didn’t encourage anyone to interrupt him with their recollections, at least not yet.

  He proceeded to talk about Mayor Flora Morgan Schulzer, who’d been the first female mayor of Knobcone Heights. “She was a nice lady,” Joe said.

  “She sure was,” Irma broke in, and Joe didn’t shush her even with a look. “She used to come here a lot and even hold official meetings and parties here now and then.”

  “Best I recall,” Joe continued as Irma finished, “she was having the mayor’s residence renovated. It’s a nice-looking mansion with historical significance around here, but it needed some upgrades. Maybe it needs more now, but—anyway, the city hired our biggest and presumably best local construction company, Knobcone Construction, to do the work.” He paused. “Mike Holpurn was one of its employees. He was in management, as I recall, but he also did some of the construction work.”

  The rest of the story flowed from him, and I didn’t think I was the only one staring at Joe raptly. Apparently the mayor had gotten appropriate approvals to have the renovations done at the city’s expense. They’d put the job out for bid, and the esteemed local construction company had provided the best quote. The work was started, and the mayor and her husband moved into a city-funded condo while it was being worked on.

  “But Mayor Flora was apparently a stickler for things to be done as she mandated,” Joe said. “That was the case regarding city business. I remember some of the controversies in the news back then, from the time she assumed the office. And her precision and criticism apparently carried over to her residential project.”

  Not many people got to see how things were going, Joe said, but apparently there were issues regarding the updating of some of the rooms, including the kitchen, living room, and master bedroom, that the mayor criticized harshly after insisting she be allowed to observe what was going on.

  My coffee arrived then, and I thanked Kit while Joe pointed at his own nearly empty cup. Kit nodded, and some of the others around us also requested refills of their drinks.

  While orders were being given, I pondered what Joe had said so far, and my mind raced ahead to where this was probably going: The mayor had disparaged what the contractor—represented at the site by Holpurn—was doing. Obviously, Holpurn wouldn’t be happy about it, whether or not she was correct. Maybe he’d even criticized her back. That wouldn’t be surprising, I thought. Again, whether or not the mayor was in the wrong.

  But to murder her for it?

  My thoughts were definitely engaged as I waited to learn more. For surely there had to be more to it.

  But there wasn’t. Or at least not in the story Joe told. Critical Mayor Flora had visited the site often, spent some time there, and let the world know of her displeasure, plus other things she wished to have fixed.

  Management at the construction company—higher-ups to Mike Holpurn—had criticized her in response, which didn’t cause her to back down in the least. Apparently just the opposite. But some rumors had circulated, too, about what she thought of the workers.

  Then one day, when the mayor visited the site, she didn’t return to her office on time. Her staff started looking for her … and finally located her. Her body was found in the torn-apart master bedroom of the residence being remodeled. She had been skewered by a large screwdriver.

  “There was a lot of horror around here then,” Joe said, and Irma nodded vehemently. “The police investigated, and everyone at the company was considered a suspect for a while.”

  “Everyone the mayor knew was a suspect,” Irma insisted. This turned out to be a good time for Kit and other servers to bring a coffee pot and additional containers to refresh the rest of the drinks, including mine. Plus, I ordered a tuna salad wrap that I ate quickly, since I had a shift at the veterinary clinic that afternoon and otherwise wouldn’t have time for lunch.

  The conversation wound down, though I realized that the usual loud hum of discussion in the rest of the coffee shop had stopped, as others also were listening to Joe’s description.

  He didn’t know what had led Mike Holpurn to finally admit his guilt and enter a plea. His prison sentence was for much longer than ten years, as Joe recalled. It was for life.

  But that had apparently changed.

  I didn’t think I was going to learn much more as the discussion morphed into speculation about Holpurn’s motive for killing and for entering into a plea bargain. Nor could I tell myself exactly why I cared. Just for Dinah’s research? No.

  But the fact that a situation like this, complete with a murder, captured my attention really bothered me. I hadn’t intended to turn into an amateur sleuth. It had just sort of happened to me.

  Well, at least this time I didn’t need to try to find the killer. He’d already been found and sent to prison. The fact that he was now paroled was interesting, but it really wasn’t my concern.

  Even so, I hung around for a few more minutes, reaching down to pet Biscuit more frequently since she seemed to be getting restless. Was it just from hanging out there, or did she have something she needed to do?

  Either way, I used her as my excuse. I pulled my wallet from my small purse and extracted money for my coffee, wrap, and a generous tip, then placed it on the table and rose.

  “Bye, everyone,” I called. Then, to the Joes, I added, “I’ll want to hear if anyone reaches a conclusion about … well, any of this. Biscuit and I will be back soon.”

  “I hope so,” Irma responded, blowing me a kiss.

  “You’d better,” Joe grumped, then smiled.

  Biscuit and I headed around tables to the coffee shop’s door, then hurried across the town square back to my shops. Stopping, of course, now and then as Biscuit insisted.

  The park within the town square wasn’t very crowded, despite it still being summer vacation for local kids, but Summit Avenue was crowded with cars and the sidewalks along both sides were busy. We nevertheless made good time getting to the Barkery, which had quite a few patrons now, many with dogs. Some of the people peered into our display cases, and others sat at the few tables eating treats from Icing and feeding their dogs treats from the Barkery.

  I quickly shut Biscuit into her enclosure and approached the counter, where Dinah was busy serving customers and taking care of their purchases. “Hi,” I said. “Has it been this busy since I left?”

  She glanced at me, holding a white bag of dog treats. “Pretty much.” Then she turned back to the customer facing her over the counter and handed the bag to her. “Here you are. I hope Jojim likes it all.” She leaned over and looked at the terrier mix that sat on the floor beside the T-shirt-and-jeans-clad lady.

  “I’m sure he will. You were so sweet and generous with the samples.” The lady looked at me, apparently recognizing that I was in charge, and I just smiled.r />
  “So glad he got to try some,” I said, in essence patting my assistant on the back for what she’d done.

  And it had clearly been good. This lady’s order seemed extensive.

  Soon she had placed her chipped credit card into the reader to pay, and then, after Dinah gave her a receipt, she left, Jojim leashed at her side.

  A few more people with dogs had been peering into the glass display case. Fortunately we still had a good supply of treats. I went behind the counter to bring out a few samples, and as I passed behind Dinah I had to tell her, “No time to talk about it now, but it seemed like everyone at Cuppa’s was talking about … the subject of your research this morning.”

  Her round face lit up as she grinned in surprise. “Really? Wow, I’ll want to hear all about it.”

  “Not much to say,” I told her, “but we’ll talk later.”

  I doubted I’d have much time to discuss it, though, before I had to leave again, this time for my shift at Knobcone Veterinary Clinic. Well, I’d be with Dinah in the evening—but I didn’t really want to talk about a murder at her birthday party.

  We’d figure out sometime to talk soon, though. I felt sure of it. Dinah wasn’t one to give up on anything regarding research.

  For now, though, I headed into Icing to see how Janelle was doing there. That shop was busy, too, which made me happy. Since it was August, there weren’t any holidays around the corner to make people feel obligated to load up on cupcakes or cookies or other treats, like with Christmas or Halloween. Therefore these folks must be here because they liked our products—enough to brave the crowds on a normal weekday. Or because they were all planning to come to Dinah’s party at the resort tonight … not likely. I’d invited several people, of course, and Dinah might have invited others as well, but I hadn’t issued an open invitation to the world.