The Chocolate Puppy Puzzle by JoAnna Carl

Author:JoAnna Carl [Carl, JoAnna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Mystery & Detective, General, Women Sleuths
ISBN: 9781101563779
Google: Kv6LjOw-Zm4C
Amazon: 0451213645
Publisher: Signet
Published: 2004-12-07T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

I squealed to a stop in Lindy’s drive, ran around the house, and went in the back gate. Lindy was sitting on the back step, petting Monte. He hadn’t rolled over to ask for a tummy rub.

As I watched, he got up and sprinkled the grass. Then he gagged once or twice.

“I called the vet,” Lindy said. “He said it doesn’t sound as if he got enough to be fatal, but he said maybe we’d better take him in. After all, Monte’s a valuable dog.”

“What about Pinto? She’s awfully valuable to your kids.”

“She ate chocolate, too, but she’s a bigger dog. It would take more to hurt her.”

“How do you know the dogs ate chocolate?” Lindy held up a plastic sack. In it were several of the silvery paper squares from baking chocolate, the same stuff I buy at the Superette to make brownies. All of them were torn and chewed. There were also a couple of the squares themselves, still wrapped.

“Baking chocolate?” I was amazed. “I’d been thinking some kid walked by and tossed the dogs a bite of his candy bar. That looks as if somebody threw a whole package into the yard.”

“That’s what I think, too. This was no accident. Someone did it deliberately.”

“Did you see anybody?”

“No, the dogs seemed to be getting along all right, so I was in the house, trying to get the washing done. I think whoever tossed the chocolate in came up the back alley, anyway. The hedge would have kept me from seeing anybody.”

Lindy called her mother and asked her to be there when the kids got home from school. She said she’d already called Tony to tell him what had happened. Then we loaded both dogs into my van and drove the thirty minutes to Holland, where the nearest veterinarian—the one Lindy took Pinto to—was located. The vet’s assistant took both dogs right into the examining rooms and directed Lindy and me to the waiting area.

Lindy had gone to the ladies’ room when Chief Jones came in.

“What are you doing here?” I said.

“Tony Herrera called and said his dog had been poisoned. That’s a crime. I thought the Warner Pier Police Department ought to look into it. The state police are a little too high-toned to investigate a dog poisoning.”

“Why would you think the state police might consider being involved?”

“Ever since Silas Snow was killed, it seems as if all sorts of things are happening to animals and people who were hooked up with Aubrey Andrews Armstrong.”

I clutched his arm. “Nothing’s happened to Aunt Nettie?”

“What could happen to her?”

“I don’t know. You just frightened me.”

“No, Nettie’s all right. Which is more than I can say for Silas. And Vernon says Mae Ensminger is sick. Of course, I ought to bawl out both you and Nettie for making a lot of tracks in your driveway before she called to tell me Monte had been dumped off on your porch.”

“We had to go to work. Why shouldn’t we have left tracks

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