A Pom Pom Premise (A Mobile Groomer Mystery #2) Read online

  A POM POM PREMISE

  A MOBILE GROOMER MYSTERY, BOOK 2

  M. ALFANO

  © 2021, M. Alfano

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Proofreader: Jasmine Bryner

  Editor: Helen Page

  Cover Designer: Molly Burton with CoverWorks

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

  Whiskered Mysteries

  PO Box 1485

  Summerville, SC 29484

  CONTENTS

  About this Book

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  More Books Like This

  About the Author

  WHISKMYS (WĬSKʹMƏS)

  ABOUT THIS BOOK

  My dog grooming business has picked up big time, thanks in part to my role in solving a local murder. Now I’ve got more dogs than I can handle—and a fresh case to solve. Who needs time for a personal life, am I right?

  Unfortunately, it seems like everyone had a bone to pick with Joey Atkins, local dog breeder and recent murder victim. Yup, his list of disgruntled clients is more than I can shake a stick at, including a good friend of mine who just might be the prime suspect.

  It’s enough to make me barking mad, especially when the situation turns ruff. Can I sniff out the killer, or will this case have me running away with my tail between my legs?

  1

  “You should put “Leslie Winters, Dog Groomer and Private Investigator” on your business cards,” my best friend, Sophia, chirped from the other end of the line.

  I was wrist-deep in a shampoo for Pastor Dave and Mrs. Bev’s little male poodle, Snickerpoodle. So, I was half-listening to Sophia and half-trying to make sure I didn’t leave any suds in the dog’s wiry curls.

  “Help put one murderer in jail and you think we’re some kind of super crime-fighting duo. Like The Avengers, or maybe more like a younger Cagney and Lacey,” I muttered, holding the phone in the crook of my shoulder.

  “Whoa, I said nothing about me and you. That was all your doing with crazy Mrs. Susan.”

  It was true that I found Mrs. Susan’s brother-in-law face down in his hot tub with a bullet through his head. Then a few weeks later, after questioning local town gossips for a bit, I put the dots together and discovered his sister-in-law thought she’d scare him into putting her and her husband in the will by way of a loaded antique shotgun. Of course, they denied knowing about the bullets in the barrel, but believe that, and I have a bridge to sell you.

  Though none of that made me an investigator, or a detective, like the one from Dallas who was supposed to have dinner with me months ago after the powers that be wrapped up the case.

  He’d texted, but anytime we made plans, something always came up with work.

  Now, instead of dinner with a handsome detective, I was back to shampooing local dogs in my parent’s back shed.

  At least catching Mrs. Susan did drum up some business in time for fall turning into winter.

  The gossip train moved fast in my small-town of Pecan, and when people got wind of what happened, soon everyone was showing up at my door, supposed wanting their dog groomed. But they didn’t fool me, even though I was a champion groomer, I knew my customers really wanted to hear me tell again and again how I took out a killer with a taser and how my dog ran away with her gun.

  And that’s what I had to focus on, the dog grooming business, because I still had a goal of moving out of my parents’ house. Forget about cute Dallas detectives, I told myself as I began to rinse Snickerdoodle or solving crimes, for that matter.

  The sound of gravel crunching beneath tires was a welcome noise and a way to escape the phone call before my chatty best friend could ask anything more about the detective or my crime fighting. My sleepy dashie, Bandit, lifted his head from the floor of the garage. His floppy ears perked as he bounded through the doggy door.

  Luckily, he didn’t start a howl with the neighbor dogs because I wasn’t sure I’d ever been able to get the poodle done if Bandit started up with the barking and every dog for blocks joined in for a big ol’ bark fest.

  “Hey, Soph, I gotta go, someone’s at the door, and I have to get this rinse done, or I may lose Snickerpoodle forever. Then I’ll never be able to go to church because Mrs. Bev and Pastor Dave won’t forgive me for not giving their dog a good wash.”

  “Ugh, fine. Text me later.”

  I hung up the call and slid my phone into my pocket just as Bandit whisked back through the doggie door, followed by the primped Williams family’s Pomeranians, Paisley, and Daisy.

  Though the adorable Poms were my regular grooming customers, they didn’t have an appointment today.

  If their human mama, Mrs. Tiffany, thought they needed some last-minute primping, well, she’d probably convince me to squeeze them in.

  I didn’t have another appointment until later, and after I found Mrs. Tiffany’s husband in the hot tub when I was innocently dropping her dogs off at their house all those months ago, I had a soft spot for the young widow.

  Even if she did burst in like a tornado of blonde curls with the smell of expensive perfume wafting off her bronzed skin.

  “Leslie, it’s been too darn long,” she cooed, holding out her hands to reveal long daggers for nails, freshly painted in carnation pink.

  Mrs. Tiffany was around my age, late twenties, only a few years older than her stepdaughter, and close to twenty years younger than her former husband, the ranch owner, Mr. Williams. Which meant she got a lot of side-eyes in our small Texas town of Pecan.

  But I couldn’t help my little curious smile when I saw her, even though Snickerpoodle had tensed up. Could have been because of her bright bedazzled ‘I love Jesus and Sweet tea’ shirt or the fact I was rinsing the shampoo off his behind.

  “Well, I did see the dogs last week,” I said with my best PR smile plastered on my face. “I didn’t think they were due, but I might be able to squeeze them in after I blow dry Snickerpoodle and drop him off to Mrs. Bev.”

  I would have rather done anything than fight off those little furballs. They tried to nip at me every time I clipped their toenails, but money was money.

  Tiffany put her hands on her hips, chewing on her heavily glossed bottom lip. “Well, actually, I was hoping you’d say you didn’t have anything else planned today because I need your help.”

  I froze, my hand in the air, reaching for one of the towels to dry off Snickerpoodle.

  “With…?” I said, trying to hide my sense of foreboding.

  She rolled her eyes and then waved her hand as if she were swatting away a fly. “Okay, so you know how I told you I was thinking abo
ut getting another dog, and you told me to look at the Crab Apple Canyon shelter where you got Bandit?”

  “Yes…” I asked tentatively, wondering when another Pomeranian would burst out of her oversized handbag or the back of her skin-tight jeans.

  She sighed. Then she tapped her bright pink, high-heeled sandals on the wooden floor. This caused one of the loose boards to pop up and down right under the drying station where Snickerpoodle should be sitting but was doing his best to fly the coop.

  I waited for her to say something, gritting my teeth as I kept one hand on Snickerpoodle and his leash and the other on the towel.

  “Well, they didn’t really have what I wanted, so I checked online. The Facebook marketplace had a guy near Crab Apple Canyon who was breeding Poms…” She let the sentence fade while she fidgeted with her nails, that foot still tapping.

  I focused on Snickerpoodle, mentally hoping she wouldn’t say a name I’d heard rumblings about in passing as I made my rounds in town.

  “Joey Atkins, ever heard of him? I did some digging and found it on his profile. Says he graduated from Pecan High School and figured since it’s a small-town, you may be familiar,” she said, her heavily black-lined eyes wide.

  My stomach fell a few feet. Of course, I knew Joey.

  Pecan was a small-town, and Joey and my ex-husband, Archie, were always buddy-buddy. Even though Joey was a serial con artist.

  Ever since our younger days, and he started charging kids to use the crayon sharpener on his pencil box, I knew he was trouble.

  After we graduated, he went through a slew of small, online businesses that he had no experience running. Mostly, he ran them into the ground. He even tried to buy a local barn and said he was going to re-invent it into an event center. Instead, he put his own mama into debt, trying to fix it up.

  From there, he moved on to bigger scams that still had people trusting the blue-eyed country boy and his tractor repair company that never actually got a tractor repaired and cost farmers more to take it somewhere else to clean up his mess.

  Or the t-shirt making company that took all the band uniform orders, then couldn’t fill them all, so he gave everyone plain t-shirts he bought at the dollar general and pocketed the rest.

  That was the last business I could say for sure he had around Pecan. What he did elsewhere, I couldn’t say.

  Some people said he was trying to start something in the Canyon with dogs, but I tried to keep my head down and ignore it. I figured maybe he and Archie still talked, but I wasn’t friends with him on Facebook or anywhere else.

  Now he was actually breeding dogs? In Canyon, only a few miles from Pecan?

  Something about that had the hairs on my neck standing on end.

  Tiffany smiled expectantly, waiting to know if I’ve I’d heard of him. I told her the bare minimum.

  “Yeah, I have,” I said as nonchalantly as I could, though I was gripping the pink towel so tightly that my knuckles turned bright red.

  “Well, he had the cutest little teacup pom photos on his website. I put a deposit down, even got convinced to add on a vet package that he offered with a local clinic…”

  Her words fell in the air as her eyes looked everywhere but at me.

  My dad’s former tool shed was now filled with framed photos, I’d found on the internet, of various cartoon dachshunds in baths or covered in bubbles. I’d added some little pink pet beds and a few tables near my dad’s old deep basin sink. They served their purpose to make my little shop look professional even though usually no one stayed around while I groomed their dogs. Now it felt like Tiffany was looking over every square inch.

  “Uh-huh,” I said, trying to focus on drying off each little coarse hair on Snickerpoodle instead of seething at the idea that one of my biggest clients might be about to hit me with some really bad news?

  What if this new dog and vet package meant she found a new groomer near the Canyon, too?

  If I lost Tiffany, how was I ever going to be able to move out of my old bedroom?

  Goodbye future apartment closer to Dallas, hello wicker bed forever.

  “Well,” Tiffany said, her voice now perplexed, “all of a sudden, Mr. Atkins just stopped talking. Won’t answer my emails, my calls, or nothing.”

  I held back the sigh of relief. Good. Now someone else could see how much of a jerk that man was.

  Didn’t like him the moment I met him when we were kids.

  Last time I even saw Joey was when he came to visit Archie and me in Houston.

  Not long before my ex-husband left me for a former client at my hair salon.

  Joey was pitching the idea of a taxi-like service from the Canyon to Dallas, that slimy smile on his face as he chugged down all of our good soda and left his greasy black hair all over the bathroom when he left.

  “I’m sorry. That’s terrible.” I hid my smile behind the now fluffed fur of Snickerpoodle. The towel-drying had done wonders, and I knew if I started up the dryer, the two little Pomeranians would go nuts with their barking. So, I was glad just to give him a final brush out before attaching a Texas flag print bandana around his collar.

  “It is, you know. And I think someone ought to confront him about it.”

  I nodded, making sure the bandana was in place, laying just right on the poodle’s soft, gleaming black curls.

  “So, you’ll go with me then?”

  I shot my head up, Snickerpoodle tilting his head the same as I did. “I’ll go where?”

  She huffed, stomping her foot, showing her impatience with my inattention. “To confront Mr. Atkins.”

  I waved a finger. “Oh, no. I can’t do that.”

  “Why? You said you know him. Do you have other appointments or something?”

  “Tiffany…Mrs. Bev will be here any minute to get Snickerpoodle…”

  “And then what?”

  “Well…”

  “You don’t have any other appointments, so I’ll pay you the same rate for getting the full work-up on both dogs if you come help me out.” She batted those too-long-to-be-real-eyelashes.

  A full work up grooming package was my most expensive option. And that money would go a long way in my fund to save up a years’ worth of rent.

  But I shook my head, trying to stay firm. “No, I can’t let you do that.”

  “Come on, Leslie, I really need you. Please? You know the ins and outs of dogs and dog grooming, and after what you did last year to help the detectives and finding Mrs. Susan out…well…I need someone like you to help…”

  I sighed, running my fingers over Snickerpooodle’s coat one last time.

  The last thing I wanted to do was head toward the Canyon and see my slimy former classmate. One who probably wouldn’t be holding a gun to my chest like when I confronted Mrs. Susan, but I still got the same sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Not that I thought Joey was a murderer like Mrs. Susan, but…, and then I thought of having my own one-bedroom apartment in Dallas, and I caved.

  “Okay, Mrs. Bev will be here in a few minutes, then maybe we can take a trip up Canyon way.”

  Tiffany clapped her hands, bouncing on her heels, just as happy as a clam. But that bottomless feeling in my stomach just wouldn’t go away. Maybe it would be all for nothing. Get in, pick out be a new dog for her to fulfill Tiffany’s Pom Pom dreams, and get back in time for a rerun of Wheel of Fortune.

  Or so I hoped.

  2

  I might have been more impressed with Tiffany’s little red, two door sports car if I was the type of girl who liked anything other than my large SUV.

  Or if I wasn’t worried about coming close to dying when I saw her steering with her knees, drinking cold brew out of her Yeti with one hand, and petting the two little Pomeranians jumping in and out of her lap.

  It didn’t help that the closer we got to Crab Apple Canyon, down the winding back roads outside of Pecan, the more my stomach flipped at the thought of hitting a rogue tumbleweed or an Armadillo, for that matter. Those things were tou
gh enough to go straight through a windshield.

  If we drove south toward Dallas, we’d also have to worry about traffic on the highway or the occasional road rager who used their right to bear arms. But going north toward the Canyon, bordering Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas, the drive was more of a light breeze down the two-lane road. The only thing we had to worry about was the occasional trucker or family of Armadillos. Both were possible road hazards.

  The only buzzing around us was the wind whipping the windows as Tiffany cranked up the speed. “So, what made you go with this guy for a Pomeranian anyway?” I asked, breaking the tension that had built up in the silence.

  She hissed through her teeth, pounding one of her fists on the steering wheel. “See? I knew you were going to judge me.”

  I put my hands up, trying to show that I meant no harm, but I also wanted her to keep her eyes on the road. “I’m not judging, just wondering why you would go with this guy instead of a breeder in Dallas. Or anywhere else really with a reputation.”

  Or a shelter, I thought, but she was already in enough of a tizzy that I wasn’t going to bring that up.

  “Well, I was just thinking out loud about another dog at ladies Bunco night at the church last week, and another lady at my table brought up this place.” Her eyes darted from the windshield, back to Daisy, who was licking her Yeti, and back to the windshield. Anywhere but glancing in my direction.

  Which only meant one thing.

  “Was this lady Mrs. Blank?” I asked through gritted teeth, trying to keep my cool.

  “Aw, Les, I didn’t want to tell you because I know how you feel about her, but yes, it was.”