A Dashie Discovery (A Mobile Groomer Mystery #1) Read online

  A DASHIE DISCOVERY

  A MOBILE GROOMER MYSTERY, BOOK 1

  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

  Dedicated to my husband.

  Thank you for FINALLY reading one of my books and saying “Hey, your stuff is actually good.”

  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

  Chapter 18

  Acknowledgments

  More Books Like This

  About the Author

  WHISKMYS (WĬSKʹMƏS)

  ABOUT THIS BOOK

  Hi, I’m Leslie Winters, and when I left Houston for my hometown of Pecan, Texas, I needed a do-over in a big way. So I set up shop in my dad’s old shed and took on clients less likely to run off with now-cheating exes.

  My pet-grooming business turned out to be a pretty fun way to make ends meet… until I dropped off two tough Pomeranian clients at their home, and found their dead owner waiting for us.

  Then local law enforcement finds me at the scene, and my dachshund finds the murder weapon right in front of them. Oh, boy!

  Now I’m out to solve the crime before a certain dreamy detective tries to collar me for the crime. But someone is on my tail, and they’re making it clear they don’t want me to investigate.

  After a few close shaves, I’m now more determined than ever to solve this case. Can I figure out whodunnit before I wind up in deep do-do or worse?

  1

  Miss Paisley and Daisy Williams clawed their way onto my table.

  Stubborn as mules in quicksand, these two ladies got more attention around town than all my other clients put together.

  You’d think two little five-pound Pomeranians would be easy to handle, especially when most of their weight consisted of light brown poufy hair. But you would be wrong. Nevertheless, their humans paid me a pretty penny to get them fluffed out in the trademark Lion trim Pomeranian owners loved, even when the Texas humidity wasn’t cooperating with their double coats of fur and neither were the dogs.

  “Paisley,” I whined, at my wit’s end. “If you would just sit still, this would all be over soon, Hun,” I chided, trying to push back my bangs. A fight with the water hose and a fidgety Jack Russell had matted my black fringe to my forehead.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have cut my bangs, and maybe I needed a better set-up than my dad’s old shop he used to fiddle around with his tools. But now was my dog grooming shed. Since that would happen anytime soon. I had to work with what I got.

  The little tan ball of fur looked up at me from the metal table, her beady little black eyes practically staring into my soul. I bought the metal table at a pawn shop closer up the way toward Crab Apple Canyon. If I went east, toward Dallas, it would probably cost twice as much.

  But the old catering cart from a flea market worked when I couldn’t pay more than ten dollars for the piece.

  The only thing scarier than fear of tetanus from a used table or a Pomeranian’s yip would be the scowl from her mama, Mrs. Tiffany Williams, if I didn’t have her puppies ready before she headed to the church for the ladies Bunco night.

  Every Wednesday, like clockwork, the women of a certain age in my town of Pecan, Texas, on the west outskirts of Dallas toward Oklahoma, got together at the church hall for the dice game and potluck.

  I kept one hand on the dog, so she wouldn’t leap from the table, sighing to the heavens at my luck to have these two firecrackers needing my expertise at the last minute. Fumbling toward the wall rack, I dug into my secret stash. Usually only for emergency cases, but if I didn’t get these girls done and groomed soon, it might be an emergency.

  As soon as I had the can of Cheez Whiz in my hand, Paisley finally dropped her rear onto the table, her tongue wagging as she stared at the little white container, ready for me to draw a line of yellow cheese on the table for her to lap up.

  “That’s better,” I cooed, trailing the stream of cheese in front of her nose. Paisley snorted, then dropped her snout to the curled yellow cheese, darting her tongue out and lapping it up.

  Primping and puffing Pomeranians while bribing them with cheese wasn’t exactly where I saw myself in my early thirties.

  But a divorce and moving back to small-town Texas was never on the agenda either.

  I’d been a hairdresser in Houston. A mildly successful one.

  Ignore the bangs, a desperate post-divorce decision. Along with the hips from a lot of mom’s home cooking.

  The last few years in Houston, I got by simply fine while I tried to ignore my husband’s wandering eye. But when a client showed up pregnant, saying Archie was the dad, I knew it was time to pack up my blow dryer and head home.

  Pecan, Texas, set in the shadow of Crab Apple Canyon, population three thousand, already swarmed to Mrs. Bev’s hairdressing salon. I wasn’t about to compete with the preacher’s wife for customers. Though, if I was her, I might have switched up the same gray pixie cut and dark-rimmed glasses made popular by Vidal Sassoon and Mia Farrow in the sixties, but that wasn’t my business.

  And since I couldn’t compete with Mrs. Rosemary’s Baby, I figured grooming dogs really wasn’t all that different from blowing out Texas beauty queens. Still the same amount of claw marks and a lot of yapping.

  The shop I set up was basically a sink and worktable in my dad’s garage that he reluctantly let me use, with only a few gripes. Not that the man had actually touched any of the tools gathering dust there for years. He was about three years away from retiring from desk jockeying at the chip factory. He didn’t do much when he got off work other than whittling on the front porch or falling asleep to late-night talk shows.

  So, Dad had no use for the shop now covered in dog fur. Paisley and Daisy were some of the worst shedding offenders, but the Williams were my best clients, and I wasn’t going to turn down business over a small mountain of dog hair. Especially if it would get me out of my parents’ house sooner rather than later.

  Ma waddled into my workspace from the back porch. “How were the girls today, Les?”

  She didn’t get out much since Texas summers lasted until October, and she preferred the air conditioning 24/7. But if she was coming down from her recliner perch near the back screen door, then something was up.

  She stood in the doorway of the s
hop, the light glow of the afternoon sun streaming in behind her.

  “They were…well…they were them,” I yelled over the yapping of the freshly-shorn and shampooed Poms as I tried to secure a sequin bow to Paisley’s head. I’d given the difficult duo a little trim around the ears, as they say.

  I kept my eyes on the little dogs, with only the occasional glance at my mom. The little girls would take the first chance they got to bolt.

  Usually, Bandit, my-rescued, ten-pound, chocolate-brown dachshund, the only thing I got in the divorce aside from my ancient SUV, was there to keep watch by the back door of the shop, but he was out sniffing for food as usual. Spring was prime crawfish season, and there wasn’t a hole that he didn’t love to dig in and chow down.

  He’d probably need another bath as well once I got the girls delivered to their mama.

  I made the mistake of glancing up as I sat Miss Paisley back down on the table.

  Ma fiddled with her ever-present turquoise cross necklace, usually securely pressed into the fabric of her floral house dress.

  Who the heck wore floral and polyester in this heat?

  Former Miss Pecan, Anna May Winters, that’s who. Her-colored-every-six-weeks-on-the-dot blonde curls sitting in a frizzy halo around her head, only tamped down by enough hair spray to leave a giant hole in the ozone over our heads.

  I quickly looked down at my own outfit.

  Leggings and a t-shirt, both covered in dog hair. My stick-straight black hair in a messy bun. If Ma wanted to argue about what I was wearing while leaving the house, as she often did, I was going to have to make a quick exit.

  “Ma, is everything okay?” I didn’t really want to know the answer, but I was a polite southerner, after all.

  She twirled that necklace around a full turn before she finally tossed her arms out. “Okay, fine, Leslie, it’s too hot out here to beat around the bush.”

  She paused long enough to pull a battery-operated fan from her fanny pack and blow it against her face. “Archie called the house again.”

  Even in the heat, my ex’s name could bring a cold chill down my spine, shocking me like an early frost. “What did he want? He has my cell phone number.”

  Not that I would have picked up while I was working. Or anytime for that matter.

  “Heavens, I don’t know, Leslie. He was jabbering on about being sorry and begged me to have him call ya.” She shook her head, the whirring of the fan buzzing between us.

  Ma clucked her tongue. “I bet his mama’s been bothering him again. That woman always thought she was God’s right-hand woman, sitting in the front row at church every Sunday, looking down on everyone she passed in her giant Suburban. Now she’s got a divorced son and a soon-to-be grandbaby out of wedlock. Ain’t that some karma?”

  Ma didn’t need to remind me.

  Mrs. Blank and I never saw eye-to-eye as it was. She never thought anyone was good enough for her Archie, even his high school sweetheart, who didn’t do a darn thing but support him through real estate school and numerous moves all over Texas.

  Now every time she saw me in town, she was just as sweet as a Fredericksburg Peach. Probably hoping I didn’t tell the town gossip mill about her golden child.

  She was just lucky one of us knew how to keep our mouth shut.

  “I have to deliver the dogs to the Williams’ ranch. If Archie calls again, just let it go to voicemail or something.”

  I finally got Daisy into her little pink harness just in time for the Poms to start their yapping again.

  “You’re gonna have to talk to Archie someday, you know,” Ma called over the dogs.

  “Maybe someday I will, but first I gotta get these dogs home before Bunco,” I yelled, grabbing the dogs’ fancy leather leashes complete with gold trim. The things had to cost more than my own purse and were way too nice to use as doggie accessories.

  “We’ll be home soon, girls. Don’t worry,” I cooed as Ma put her hands on her hips.

  “I swear, Leslie, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re ignoring not only Archie but me as well.”

  Well, duh.

  But I wasn’t going to tell her that.

  My parents had been nice enough to take me back in. Even with the gossip mill of a one-stoplight town.

  As soon as I got on my feet again and maybe found a nice salon that I could rent a chair from, in the suburbs and the housing market was reasonable enough to find a house or cheap apartment with a low pet fee, I’d be out.

  That’s what I’d been saying the past six months, too. Packing my spare tips away in a sock drawer and the rest of my money going toward pet grooming supplies.

  I was the only game in town for now, but surely there would be someone else coming up behind me soon.

  But I didn’t plan on staying back in Pecan forever.

  As if Bandit knew I needed him, his little heels scraped against the wooden porch and made his way past Ma’s legs and into the little shop. The scent of pond water and sunshine greeting my nostrils before he poked his little furry head up.

  “Bandit, my stars. Again?” Ma called.

  Paisley and Daisy started up their barking again as they spotted the little-silver clawed creature dangling out of Bandit’s mouth.

  “Girls, quiet. It’s just a crawdad,” I yelled, trying to balance the dogs on my hip, their leashes flying around as they tried to squirm out of my grip.

  Bandit rounded Ma’s heels as she fluttered her hands, screaming like a banshee which did nothing to calm the dogs squirming against my chest.

  The leashes went flying as two balls of fur flew out of my arms, running after the little lobster trying to make its way to the closest water source it could find.

  It didn’t get too far before Bandit had it back in his mouth, tossing it in the air then back on the ground.

  Paisley and Daisy did an excited yip, and before I could stop them, both girls decided to roll in the now-deceased little crustacean on the floor.

  “Girls! No! No!” I picked them both up as quickly as I could, both of them now fidgeting wildly in my arms. Which of course, did nothing to help the scent of fish now wafting off their just groomed bodies.

  “Good heavens, Bandit,” Ma called, putting her hand to her chest and looking down at my dog, who snorted before rolling over the dead little mudbug himself, an almost smile on his snout.

  “Well, I guess I’d better give these girls another rinse,” I muttered.

  “You’d better. I don’t know why he insists on bringing those things around all the time. Do you think other dogs do that?” Ma asked.

  I shrugged, putting the dogs back in the big tub that Daddy usually used for cleaning up after working on the lawn, but I had now repurposed as my dog bather.

  Ma huffed. “Okay, well, as long as you’re good in here, I’ll head inside.”

  Bandit hopped up to his back legs, whining up at Ma.

  “Oh, fine.” She gave him a little scratch behind the ears. “You’re lucky you’re cute, even if you do get into everything.”

  He snorted in response.

  Which is what I wish I could have done too.

  But now I had to rinse the dogs and get them ready again. If I were even a minute late, who knew where my already tarnished reputation in Pecan would be because of my little Dashie’s discoveries.

  2

  Bandit rode shotgun, his ears blowing in the breeze of the air conditioner. He’d been my constant companion since I first saw his picture posted on the Crab Apple Canyon Shelter Facebook page. The runt of a litter abandoned near the railroad tracks, Dashi was no bigger than a can of pinto beans in the photo. Families looking for a pet had snapped up his better-looking brothers and sisters, leaving him as the lone pup staring at the camera with those big, beady black eyes and floppy brown ears.

  My ex, Archie, didn’t want a dog. He had just graduated from the real estate program at the community college, and I was working at a small salon inside Walmart. We’d been married only a few months a
nd living in a beat-up studio apartment on the sketchy side of Crab Apple Canyon. When Archie got home from passing his real estate exam and said he found a job in an office in San Antonio, I agreed to move. On one condition: we adopt the little puppy at the shelter.

  Now, years later, it was just me and my trouble-making dog. He may have been still awake in the front seat, feeling the breeze through his ears, but the two little Pomeranians snored in the backseat.

  Guess the second bath had knocked them right out and good timing before we drove through downtown Pecan.

  If one could even call it that.

  My parents’ house was at one end of the Pecan grove, the town’s namesake that lined a small walking trail and the sidewalk up to the courthouse. Each tree followed a cobblestone path past the post office, two Mexican restaurants, and a couple of little shops that seemed to rotate as boutiques or resale shops every few months.

  Since it was a historic main street, at least the exterior of everything looked great, with the same wrought iron awnings and pillars lining each little storefront. No matter what was inside. This month we had a new antique store, aka grandma’s junk shop, in place of a former baby boutique and a furniture restorer replacing a gluten-free bakery. That place only lasted about a month in town before they chose not to renew their lease, and the owners headed back to Dallas.

  But the town still had something incredibly charming about it that had people coming back and settling in the shadow of Crab Apple Canyon.

  Past the small town square, Pecan Baptist, the first of one of the three Baptist churches in town, and even farther past the only bar in town, The Boot and Saddle, you’d finally come to the Williams Ranch.