The Ghost Goes to the Dogs, page 1
Praise for the Haunted Bookshop Mysteries
“Full of riveting twists!”
—First for Women
“Utterly charming. . . . An entirely absorbing mystery.”
—Mystery Scene
“A magnificent cold case mystery!”
—Fresh Fiction (fresh pick)
“Jack and Pen are a terrific duo who prove that love can transcend anything.”
—The Mystery Reader
“I highly recommend the complete series.”
—Spinetingler Magazine
“A charming, funny, and quirky mystery starring a suppressed widow and a stimulating ghost.”
—Midwest Book Review
“The plot is marvelous, the writing is top-notch.”
—Cozy Library
Berkley Prime Crime titles by Cleo Coyle
Haunted Bookshop Mysteries
The Ghost and Mrs. McClure
The Ghost and the Dead Deb
The Ghost and the Dead Man’s Library
The Ghost and the Femme Fatale
The Ghost and the Haunted Mansion
The Ghost and the Bogus Bestseller
The Ghost and the Haunted Portrait
The Ghost and the Stolen Tears
The Ghost Goes to the Dogs
Coffeehouse Mysteries
On What Grounds
Through the Grinder
Latte Trouble
Murder Most Frothy
Decaffeinated Corpse
French Pressed
Espresso Shot
Holiday Grind
Roast Mortem
Murder by Mocha
A Brew to a Kill
Holiday Buzz
Billionaire Blend
Once Upon a Grind
Dead to the Last Drop
Dead Cold Brew
Shot in the Dark
Brewed Awakening
Honey Roasted
BERKLEY PRIME CRIME
Published by Berkley
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
penguinrandomhouse.com
Copyright © 2023 by Alice Alfonsi and Marc Cerasini
Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.
BERKLEY is a registered trademark and BERKLEY PRIME CRIME and the B colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
A HAUNTED BOOKSHOP MYSTERY is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
Ebook ISBN: 9780698188686
First Edition: May 2023
Cover illustration © Scott Zelazny
Interior design adapted for ebook by Cora Wigen
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Once upon a time, a boy loved a dog.
Half a century gone, and he’s still missed.
To Eric . . .
Foreword
Animals have been a staple of the mystery genre since Edgar Allan Poe penned the first modern detective story featuring literature’s first amateur sleuth. While the genesis of The Murders of the Rue Morgue remains a mystery, The Ghost Goes to the Dogs had a definite origin. It sprang from the fact that we’ve written dozens of mysteries in which cats appear (no surprise, since we care for many rescued felines), but we never gave dogs their day. Consequently, this book is dedicated to Marc’s cherished childhood friend, Eric, who helped inspire this story. Likewise, Alice’s fond memories of dog-sitting duties for her sister’s sweet canines, Sparky and Fred, as well as her admiration for Dorothy’s best friend, Toto (created by author L. Frank Baum), served as inspirations, too.
Although The Ghost Goes to the Dogs marks the ninth entry in our Haunted Bookshop Mysteries, our hard-boiled ghost has been haunting the cozy streets of Quindicott, Rhode Island, since 2004. A grateful tip of the fedora goes to our publisher for their faith in this series, not only with the release of this title, but also The Ghost and the Bogus Bestseller, The Ghost and the Haunted Portrait, and The Ghost and the Stolen Tears, all of which we wrote following a decade-long hiatus (after penning the first five entries).
We especially wish to thank our brilliant and insightful editor, Tracy Bernstein, along with everyone on the Berkley team who worked to transform our words into this beautiful publication. Spirited thanks also goes to our longtime agent, John Talbot, and the many loyal readers of our Haunted Bookshop series for your belief in us and our characters. Your love of Jack and Pen continues to keep both alive, and we look forward to sharing many more of their adventures with you.
As for our other works and worlds, you can learn more about them (and us) by visiting coffeehousemystery.com and cleocoyle.com.
—Alice Alfonsi and Marc Cerasini
aka Cleo Coyle, New York City
CONTENTS
Prologue
1. The Language of Canines
2. A Loyal Companion
3. Sparky Always Barks Twice
4. Car Chases Dog
5. Mistress in Distress
6. The Deer Hunter
7. A Friend in Need
8. Mail Call
9. Sparky’s Tale
10. Pizza the Puzzle
11. Cat-astrophe
12. A Boy and His Dog
13. Punchy Pillow Talk
14. Nightcap
15. Doggy Business
16. The Mug Next Door
17. Jack’s Type
18. Comings and Goings
19. A Dog Walk in the Park
20. In the Garden
21. Gun Control
22. Out to Lunch
23. Event Planning
24. Puppy Dogs’ Tails
25. Bed, Bath, and Beyond Hearsay
26. Here Comes the Judge
27. Wash Away Your Troubles
28. News Hounds
29. Key to Disaster
30. A Bowl of Riddles
31. Pets on Parade
32. Mystery Guest
33. Animal Crackers
34. Loyal to a Fault
35. Family Affairs
36. A Sight to See
37. The Swindler
38. The Aces High
39. Jack’s Jackpot
40. Who’s That Girl?
41. Remote Worker
42. Where’s That Girl?
43. A Walk in the Trailer Park
44. Shocking Developments
45. Wrestle Mania
46. Robbing Hoods
47. A Tale of Two Totos
48. A Dangerous Doggy Business
49. Case Overload
50. Return to Larchmont
51. Motivationally Speaking
52. Collision Course
Epilogue
About the Author
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This little creature . . . was just a dog . . . altogether amusing and companionable . . . With Tags, as she called him, she went farther and farther afield after the housework was done, coming home with glowing cheeks . . . And almost every evening Captain Gregg visited her and told her tales of the sea . . .
—The Ghost and Mrs. Muir by R.A. Dick
(aka Josephine Aimee Campbell Leslie)
Prologue
I’m a lone wolf, unmarried . . . and not rich . . . I like liquor and women . . . The cops don’t like me too well . . . and when I get knocked off in a dark alley . . . nobody will feel that the bottom has dropped out of his or her life.
—Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
New York City
Friday, April 18, 1947
5:45 p.m.
“Hiya, Mr. Shepard. Want your messages?”
“Sure, Doris. Lemme get a load off first.”
As Jack hung up his trench coat, he heard Doris snap her gum.
“Suit yourself, Mr. Shepard. But I gotta leave real soon!”
“Hot date, huh?”
“You bet! Me and the girls got tickets to see Frank’s new movie, It Happened in Brooklyn. He’s so dreamy. You seen it yet?”
“No, honey.”
“Well, I cannot miss it!”
Doris was the younger cousin of Jack’s regular secretary, who’d been out for most of the week (on a date with a dentist). He didn’t mind since he’d been tied up giving trial testimony in three different cases: two Cheating Charlies in divorce proceedings that made the Battle of the Bulge look like the Ice Capades and one case of a young woman who’d gone missing and then caught the big chill. He’d been hired to track her down, and he had—too late.
Jack still felt the gut punch of defeat over that one.
All of nineteen, she’d flown fresh as a newly hatched bird out of some midtown secretarial school and landed in his office with bubble-gum cheeks, a bouncy yellow ponytail, and the kind of blindingly sunny disposition that made Jack want to shove on dark glasses and head for the nearest gin mill.
The past decade alone, Jack had seen the rise and fall of a madman named Hitler, devastation in European and Pacific theaters, and history’s first god-awful atomic bomb.
The defining moment of Doris’s young life (as she’d informed Jack with breathless detail over morning coffee) wasn’t D-Day or V-E Day, but Columbus Day 1944—the day she’d been lucky enough to wedge herself into the Paramount Theater with thirty-six hundred other squealing, swooning bobby-sox girls to witness the crooning of a skinny kid from Hoboken named Sinatra.
The unlucky ladies (twenty-five thousand of them) became a crushing pink wave that washed over Times Square, leaving traffic rerouted, shopwindows smashed, and some of New York’s Finest with their most bemused riot duty in recent memory.
According to one of Jack’s old partners in the PD, the bobby-sox blitzkrieg required twenty radio cars, seventy patrolmen, sixty-two traffic cops (twelve of them mounted), six sergeants, and forty temporary badges who’d been pulled from parade duty on Fifth.
“Ain’t life grand?” Doris chirped, filing her nails.
Jack blew out air.
Leaving the postage-stamp reception area, he moved into his office proper, shrugged off his best navy blue suit coat from his acre of shoulders, rolled up his shirtsleeves, loosened his tie, and settled into the creaky chair behind his desk.
As he considered his day—and the whole lousy world at large—he rubbed the dagger-shaped scar on his jaw, reached for the bottle in his drawer, and knocked back a satisfying shot of single-malt therapy.
“Okay, Doris. What have you got for me?”
“First message,” she announced before snapping her gum. “From Assistant District Attorney Donovan’s assistant. Ain’t that comical? An assistant has an assistant?”
“Barrel of laughs,” Jack said. “What’s the message?”
“ ‘Judge Hoffman moved Monday’s proceedings to Wednesday. Kindly remember to be on time and wear proper tires for your courtroom appearance.’ ”
“Uh, Doris, I think you meant to write attire. What do you think?
“Oh, Mr. Shepard, you’re right! I guess I heard it wrong, but I figured maybe it was a park-in deal. You know, like that theater in New Jersey?”
“There are no park-in courtrooms in the tristate area. Not yet, anyway. Go on . . .”
“Sure thing! Message two was from a lady who wouldn’t leave her name.” Doris squinted at the note card. “ ‘I would like to hire you, but I need to know your rates, your address, and could you be the street?’ ”
“I think she meant discreet. She leave a number?”
Doris nodded. “Gramercy 5-3—”
“I’ll ring her back next week. Anything else?”
“A Mr. Larsen called. Says he has two Great Danes and would like to schedule your walking services.”
“You pulling my leg?”
“No, sir! You wanna see the note?”
“Must have been a wrong number. That it?”
Doris shook her head. “I got four more calls asking about your dog-walking services—”
“Hey, what’s the idea? You trying out for vaudeville?”
“No, Mr. Shepard. I swear the messages are on the up-and-up! Plus I got three more asking about your canine-kenneling rates for summer weekends.”
“Your cousin’s coming back Monday, right?”
“She sure is. Her bad tooth got pulled without a hitch.”
“Send her some flowers for me—and leave her a message on your desk. Tell her to straighten out Ma Bell ASAP.”
“I will, Mr. Shepard, but I don’t think it’s a phone company mix-up. Didn’t you see that dog story in the afternoon paper?”
“Which paper?”
“This one.” Doris ricocheted to her desk and back, then handed him one of the many daily rags. “You’re in it!”
Doris pointed to the picture of a well-heeled society matron posing with her Pekingese. “DOGNAPPED!” screamed the headline. “PRIZEWINNING POOCH IN PERIL!”
The story revealed how the little lapdog with the long pedigree was kidnapped from her loving mistress by an “insensitive brute,” but reunited with her grateful grande dame due entirely to the heroic efforts of one Mr. Jack Shepard, “lover of creatures great and small.”
The overwrought feature included exaggerated details of Jack’s recently closed case, along with his address and phone number and a fake quote from Jack himself: “In this dog-eat-dog world, I’ll do anything to help my four-legged friends.”
The dognapping story was mostly true, though some of it was complete fiction, including the line extolling the virtues of Jack Shepard’s “reliable dog-walking services.”
Smelling a rat, Jack searched for the byline, which explained everything—
“Timothy Brennan,” he spat.
“You know him?” Doris asked.
“Yeah, I know him . . .”
A yellow journalist and a degenerate gambler, Brennan had a penchant for making up quotes, double-crossing sources, drinking his lunch, and pretzeling facts when it suited—or amused—him.
Identifying Jack not as a licensed private investigator, but as an expert in “doggy business,” was obviously a case of the latter. Jack could have run it all down for Doris, but he didn’t want to burn her little pink ears off with the curses he’d surely utter in the process. Instead, he checked his watch.
“Quitting time. You run along now, Doris.”
“Thanks, Mr. Shepard. Oh, hold the phone. I got one more!” she cried, waving the message like a winning bingo card.
“Just hand it to me, honey, and you can go.”
“Okey-doke!”
As the young woman made her earsplitting exit, Jack held his breath. After the screeching of a desk chair, slamming of a file drawer, and bang of the front door, Doris was finally off, headed for that date with her celluloid boyfriend.
At the blessed sound of silence, Jack sat back, put his feet up, and sighed. Peace in our time. Sipping another shot of Scotch, he glanced at Doris’s last message card, expecting another load of doggy business.
It wasn’t.
A man named “Muggsy” had called. At the sight of that moniker, Jack felt his muscles stiffen.
Myles “Muggsy” Malone was a Hell’s Kitchen hothead famous for his short temper and long switchblade. A few years back, he gutted some poor sixteen-year-old kid during an argument over a dice game. Nothing new for the locals who lived in the tenements and worked on the docks. Only this time, there was a hitch.
The victim’s older sister, Irene, was a real looker, and she’d married well. Outraged at the police’s lack of enthusiasm for tracking down the man who tried to fillet her little brother, Irene hired Jack to find Muggsy Malone, drag him into the nearest precinct, and make sure he did time.
Jack complied.
Little brother recovered and testified, putting Muggsy behind the eight ball, with a hefty fine and sentence to two years of hard labor, less on good behavior.
Well, Malone obviously made parole, and he wanted Jack to know it.
I’m out of the joint where you put me and back in town.
I’ll be seeing you, Shepard. I owe you payback.
Expect me soon.
“So much for peace,” Jack muttered, and knocked back the rest of his drink.
* * *
* * *
Hours later, loaded gun by his bedside, Jack was back at his apartment alone, a rarity for a Friday night.
Stretched out in pajama bottoms, twiddling his thumbs over his bare chest, he’d been staring at the bedroom ceiling. The pounding rain and cracking thunder were loud enough to split Zeus’s eardrums, but nature’s racket wasn’t the reason he couldn’t get any shut-eye.
Jack couldn’t stop thinking about Muggsy Malone’s message.
