Swamp Monster

  LIA ANDERSON DOG PARK MYSTERIES

  by C. A. Newsome

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  A SHOT IN THE BARK

  DROOL BABY

  MAXIMUM SECURITY

  SNEAK THIEF

  MUDDY MOUTH

  FUR BOYS

  SWAMP MONSTER

  Swamp Monster

  Lia Anderson Dog Park Mystery 7

  C. A. Newsome

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, places and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events is coincidental.

  SWAMP MONSTER

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  Copyright © 2020 by Carol Ann Newsome

  “Gypsy” Copyright © 2019 by Carol Ann Newsome

  Cover Design by Elizabeth Mackey

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  All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Two Pup Press

  1836 Bruce Avenue

  Cincinnati, Ohio 45223

  * * *

  Version 1.03 February 13, 2021

  * * *

  Newsome, C. A.

  Swamp monster: a dog park mystery/ C. A. Newsome

  Pages cm

  ISBN 9781947085053 (paperback )—ISBN 9781947085046 (ebook)

  1. Murderers—Fiction. 2. Murder Investigations—Fiction 3. Cincinnati (Ohio)—Fiction. 4. Mill Creek Valley (Ohio). 5. Crime—Kentucky—Newport—Fiction. I. Title.

  For everyone who ever lost a furry soulmate

  and everyone brave enough to raise a puppy

  Contents

  Water

  Interlude

  Day 1

  Fire

  Day 2

  Day 10

  A Dream Realized

  Day 11

  Day 12

  Rose

  Day 13

  Day 14

  Ding Dong

  Day 15

  Day 16

  A Plan

  Day 17

  First Run

  Day 18

  At the Barn

  Day 19

  A Bovine Encounter

  Day 20

  Earth and Iron

  Day 21

  A Troubling Offer

  Day 22, Morning

  Day 22, Afternoon

  Day 22, Afternoon, continued

  Day 23, The Wee Hours

  Day 23

  A Friend Appears

  Day 26

  Into Thin Air

  Day 27

  Day 28

  Epilogue

  The Swamp Monster Song

  Author's Note

  Acknowledgements

  Lia Anderson Dog Park Mysteries

  About the Author

  Water

  Saturday, May 16, 1987

  Inches of water separated Andrew from life, blurring the face he’d opened his door to hours earlier. Pressure built in his lungs, screaming for a release impossible while a size-eleven boot pinned him to the bottom of his claw-footed tub. The brass studs on his costume ground painfully into his chest. He allowed his eyes to bulge and calculated: he had ninety seconds, two minutes tops.

  Ninety seconds. Lifetime to an impatient punk. I may be old, but I can still wait you out.

  He thrashed weakly, a panic play for an audience of one, designed to bring an early end to the current dunking. Counted to three, released a whisper of breath. Closed his eyes to slits. Went limp. Counted ten, fifteen.

  The last breath of air escaped, rising in a cloud of tiny bubbles, obscuring what little he could see. The boot vanished. Hands dove into the water, jerking him into a sitting position.

  Water, rolling off his face, streaming out his nose. He convulsed, coughing his insides raw, the intake of air like fire. No point trying to run. His opponent was much younger, too strong. He wouldn’t make it out of the tub. It pissed him off, this nobody punk catching him with his guard down.

  Thank God Jenny isn’t here.

  “Ready to talk, old man? I’ll let you live.” The punk sat back on the closed toilet lid, one sodden work boot propped against the rim of the tub, dripping on the puddled floor as he flipped a coin lazily in the air, waiting.

  Andrew forced the words out in a voice ragged from repeated drownings. “You’re a fool chasing a chimera. I’m not who you think I am.”

  The coin fell, bouncing on the floor as the sneering face thrust forward. “I’ll kill you and pull this house apart.”

  “That coin,” Andrew croaked, “is all you’ll get.”

  The punk stood. The foot returned, poised against Andrew’s sternum. “Last chance. Raise your hand if you change your mind.”

  Andrew sucked in air as water closed over his head for the seventh time. The need to breathe built under that oppressive leather boot; pressure, and pain like knives. He’d been certain the punk would realize the stories weren’t true when he almost drowned the last time. His only chance was to finesse, buy time with promises until he could escape.

  He’d escaped before.

  But I had Rose that time.

  What was the point? How long before the punk realized he was being played? An hour? Two? Then what? At sixty-eight, he no longer had the reflexes to exploit the openings inexperience would provide. His current predicament proved that.

  He wished he believed in God. If there was a God, if he could see Rose again…. But the world was too cruel, too selfish to be under the auspices of a benevolent intelligence. Hypocritical to call for divine intervention now, while facing eternal nothingness.

  Andrew’s lungs exploded. Bubbles rushed to the surface, a school of fish in a feeding frenzy. The boot stayed. Oblivion crept along the edges of his vision.

  Encroaching darkness brought awareness: whatever waited in the void, he wasn’t ready to confront it. He struggled—and failed—to lift an arm exhausted by repeated torture.

  In the last moments of Andrew’s life, Rose occupied his mind. Rose and what had never been.

  Interlude

  Tuesday, March 5, 2019

  Lia Anderson stood in the entry corral of the Mount Airy Dog Park, staring into gloom unrelieved by the sun rising behind a solid wall of cloud cover. The park, a repurposed picnic area surrounded by more than a thousand acres of urban forest, was empty.

  The leash looping her wrist tugged. Her silver schnauzer hated to wait. Chewy was a simple dog, always living in the present. Beyond the gate, there were smells to smell, squirrels to chase, trees to mark.

  She couldn’t go in, not yet.

  The white metal canister she held weighed less than two pounds. There was something wrong about this container—one that held fourteen years of love, loyalty, and adventures; the sum total of a dog’s life, a very good dog’s life—something so wrong about it weighing so little. Worse for the container of that life to be bland and sterile, suitable for a stash of cheap ribbon candy, the kind that hangs around forever until it forms an ugly mass as hard as concrete.

  Honey had been her center for all of her adult life: the one she counted on, her one constant through college, starting her own business, through disastrous boyfriends and the terrifying beginning of her relationship with Peter. Her heart, her rock, a better mother than her own had been, now reduced to ashes. She wondered if there would ever be anything big enough to fill the hole.

  She couldn’t bear putting Honey in one of the schmaltzy urns available at the crematorium, so she hadn’t bought one. Bailey suggested painting the can. But her talent was for design, not emotion: pleasant arrangements of shapes and colors that some found evocative but were never intended as such. Painting the depth of her feel
ings for Honey was beyond her. She was left with this blank white can that showed nothing and contained everything.

  Chewy tugged again.

  “You don’t linger in the past, do you, little man?”

  He barked, leaning against the leash.

  Honey’s death had been almost without warning. Her healthy, happy dog stopped eating. A visit to the vet and a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer—so common in golden retrievers—days before that one bad day when she looked so miserable, couldn’t be tempted with favorite treats or even hamburger, wouldn’t drink water, wouldn’t get up, wouldn’t move at all. Then a quiet death in her sleep before Lia could decide if this was the day she had to put her down.

  A blessing, not having to make that final decision, not having to watch Honey suffer the way some dogs did. But Honey’s passing drove home an important truth: Everyone leaves you. The only one who doesn’t is the one you leave behind when you die.

  The sound of a motor in the parking lot below drew her attention to a small, familiar truck with a cab on the back and almost as much rust as Lia’s ancient Volvo 240. The woman and bloodhound who emerged were of a pair, tall and lanky and beaky, with red hair (though Bailey’s retained its glory with chemical assistance), easygoing and difficult to ruffle.

  Lia could never decide if Bailey’s defining feature was her hands or her eyes. The hands, nicked and calloused from her gardening business, were an extension of her thoughts, mobile and fluttering and graceful as a pair of pet birds. But her eyes—large, luminous, bulging slightly—looked into you with old-soul compassion, and love that saw you as you were meant to be.

  Lia waited for woman and dog to hike up the curving service road to join her. Chewy and Kita sniffed noses. Bailey said nothing, just put a warm arm around Lia’s shoulder. Lia turned, folding into Bailey’s embrace.

  When Lia’s hiccuping sobs stopped, Bailey rubbed her back. “You don’t have to do this now.”

  Lia kept her cheek pressed into Bailey’s jacket. “She wants to be here, with her friends. Not stuck in this stupid can.”

  “Do you want me to go with you?”

  Lia turned her head from side to side, wiping tears and snot onto Bailey’s jacket. “I need to do this alone.”

  “Okay, then. If anyone shows up, I’ll shoo them away. Can I buy you breakfast afterwards?”

  “I don’t know if I can eat. I’ll let you know when I’m done.”

  Bailey opened the gate. Inside the corral, Lia bent down and unclipped Chewy, stuffing his leash in a cargo pocket. She set the canister on top of the trash bin and struggled with the lid. Bailey moved in, pressing strong, scarred thumbs under the rim, pushing just enough to loosen it. “There you go.” She held the inner gate open.

  Lia stepped into the park. Chewy bolted, leaving long streaks in the heavily dewed grass. Lia followed behind, dribbling bits of ash and bone as she said goodbye to her dog.

  Day 1

  Saturday, April 20, 2019

  Terry Dunn spotted the prosthetic leg jutting from a branch overhanging Mill Creek. He laid his paddle across the bow of his canoe and adjusted his bifocals. Canoeists and kayakers cut around him, their snarky comments audible on the water.

  He squinted at the leg, a relic of last week’s flood left high by receding waters. Made of wood and corroded metal and rotting leather, it was an archaic, fantastical thing.

  The tree limb and its faux-human counterpart formed a whimsical juxtaposition, as if a steampunk superhero leapt into the branches. In the next instant, the leg would whisk from view as this mysterious hero continued on a mission to prevent the assassination of President Harrison or the bombing of the New York Stock Exchange. Danger, and the fate of the free world resting on his shoulders. At the center, a beautiful, enigmatic woman with glossy sable hair, skin like pale silk, and midnight pools for eyes.

  Terry wanted it.

  In the stern, his roommate, Steve, said, “What’s the problem?”

  Both men were in their sixties and of similar build—though Steve was round versus stocky, had a Van Dyke instead of a brush mustache, and protected his bald scalp with a white Panama instead of the camo ball cap Terry wore over his buzz cut. Diametrically opposed in mindset, no one—including Terry and Steve—understood why they hadn’t killed each other.

  Terry flapped a hand in dismissal as he calculated the best path through the flotilla of canoes and kayaks participating in the Mill Creek Yacht Club’s spring float.

  “Hold up a minute.”

  Mill Creek was a glorious slice of secret wilderness, cutting invisibly through the city at the bottom of a deep gully bordered by industrial properties, railways, and highways. Captains of industry once dumped toxic waste into the waterway with impunity—a state of affairs lasting more than a century, until reclamation efforts began in the nineties.

  The creek’s hidden nature also meant few people were aware of the recent flood. Today’s float trip—the first of the year—had been up in the air due to the fast-running water. They’d made the final decision that morning, with Commodore rubbing his chin and Dick poking his tongue in his cheek until they decided the superb weather pushed the odds in favor of proceeding.

  The creek had yet to return to normal levels, spilling over banks and climbing up the gully. Muddy tree trunks rose out of the swollen waters like columns in a forgotten temple dedicated to an ancient deity.

  “Treasure, two o’clock.” Terry shoved his paddle hard, fighting the current and ignoring the protests of other paddlers as he cut across their path.

  Steve added muscle to the task. “I can’t believe Commodore didn’t spot it first.”

  “Too close to 666. Everyone wants their rest stop.”

  “Watch the rocks.”

  “Water’s too high. It’s not a problem. When we reach the tree, swing around so you’re downstream.”

  They worked silently, maneuvering the canoe under the prosthetic. Steve jammed his paddle into submerged rocks to hold their position. The canoe rocked.

  Terry laid his paddle aside. “Hold ‘er steady while I stand up.”

  “Capsize us, and you can forget watching The Expanse on my Prime Video account.”

  Terry waved the threat off, mentally crossing his fingers that it wouldn’t come to that. He stared into the canopy and planned his attack. Even a man who’d been robustly active all his life had to pay close attention to logistics when he reached the age of sixty-seven.

  He positioned his feet to maintain balance, planted his hands on the bench and rose slowly, shifting to counteract the boat’s movement. The leg remained four maddening inches beyond his outstretched hand.

  “Too bad we didn’t come last week. I could have pulled it out of those branches without standing.”

  “Last week a stunt like that would have put both of us in the water with your drowned body caught in a strainer next to mine and that leg laughing at us.”

  “Hand me my paddle, will you?”

  Steve grunted. Terry felt the paddle tap his kidney. He reached behind for it, never taking his eyes off his prize. If he nudged the leg just so ...

  “I’m going to drop it in the water on the lee side. Don’t let it get past you.”

  He ignored the eye roll most likely happening behind his back and reassessed his balance. The canoe wobbled as he raised the paddle. He edged it higher, inserting it between the prosthetic and the most likely branch. A slight twist of the blade and the leg popped out, neat as an extracted tooth. It splashed into the creek, bobbed, and drifted. Terry returned to his seat as carefully as he’d left it while Steve fished the hunk of flotsam out of the water.

  Leg in hand, Terry bumped his bifocals up on the bridge of his nose and examined the fine grain of the waterlogged wood, the detailing in the metal, the elegant line where the shin swooped into the foot. He grinned at Steve. “An exceptional find.”

  Steve removed his panama and wiped the pink skin on top of his head. “I hope it was worth the effort. What the hell do you
want with it, anyway?”

  “He’s a dragon, not an it. He’ll make a perfect figurehead. Better than Commodore’s, better than Dick’s. I shall name him Smaug.”

  “Whatever you say, Bilbo.”

  Terry drew two fingers delicately along the length of the shin. The finish was long gone, but the wood was sound. He made a moan of pleasure.

  “You call that thing ‘Precious’ and I’m dumping both of you in the water,” Steve said.

  “Commodore’s bear will hide in shame after Smaug takes his rightful place.”

  Terry retrieved a tangle of bungee cords from the waterproof bag in the belly of the boat and applied himself to mounting the leg upside-down to the bow in imitation of Viking longships.

  “Ahoy! What do you have there?”

  Commodore, founder and longtime president of the Mill Creek Yacht Club, pulled his canoe alongside. The aqua teddy bear strapped to Commodore’s Mud Turtle was number five, one through four having rotted off over the years.

  Terry leaned back so Commodore could admire his new acquisition.

  Sun glinted off Commodore’s glasses as he examined the artificial limb. “A gift from the storm gods. It’s been outside a long time. Wonder where it was hiding.”