A Deadly Feast by Lucy Burdette

Author:Lucy Burdette
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books

Chapter Fifteen

He was eating the soup, lifting his spoon with mechanical regularity, chewing and swallowing as if his life depended on tipping the steaming liquid into his mouth.

—Ann Cleeves, Red Bones

Early the next morning, I rode over to Nathan’s apartment to walk Ziggy. To be honest, except for the exuberance of the dog, my guy’s place was not a warm and welcoming space. But Ziggy more than made up for the guy-style furniture, the bare walls, and the refrigerator empty of everything other than grocery store–brand condiments, good beer, and cereal. Each time I saw the dog, he made it clear he couldn’t believe his luck that I’d turned up again. And that right there was the difference between a cat and a dog.

Though I loved Evinrude with all my heart, he would never come running up to fling himself on me and lick my face to show his complete adoration. A cat’s affection was more subtle, expressed by lap lying and purring, all at his convenience. Having both kinds of animals would be a joy, at least for me. I was not so sure that Nathan would interpret the early-morning feline face patting as a sign of Evinrude’s affection. Nor would he appreciate it.

I tiptoed to Nathan’s bedroom, tapped on the door, and stuck my head in, in case he was sleeping. But the bedcovers were neatly made and there was no sign that he had been there the night before. I was tempted, sorely tempted, to rustle through his nightstand and the top of his dresser to look for hints as to what he was up to. He would kill me for that invasion of privacy, and rightly so. So I grabbed Ziggy’s leash and raced him down the stairs and out into the dawn instead.

“Which would you rather do, my little pal?” I asked the dog, who was bounding from one side of my feet to the other, doing his best to wind the leash around my ankles. “Shall we take a fast walk along the Atlantic? Or go to the dog park?”

Those last two words, dog park, sent him into paroxysms of doggy joy.

“Dog park it is, buddy,” I said, “and luckily for you, this happens to be the time of day that Eric goes there with Chester. And Chester and you are a match made in heaven.”

I texted Eric that we were on the way, strapped Ziggy into the crate on the back of my scooter that I use to carry groceries home, and drove to the Higgs Beach dog park located across the road from the water. The city had planned to move the road so the parks and playground could be located directly on the water, but during an infrared survey, graves were discovered and identified as the remnants of an old cemetery, and the renovation was scrapped.

Eric and his dogs were waiting inside the double-latched gates, and Ziggy began to leap and bark when he saw them. “Let me unhook you before you hang yourself,” I told him once we’d made it through the second gate.

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