Bloody Hound

By Lisa Haneberg

The Mystery Writers Guild Conference is about to kick off in Galveston. But when a dead body is found in the convention center, hundreds of armchair sleuths insert themselves in the investigation. Local police hire Xena's team to help make sense of the chaos and find the killer before their prime suspects go home to bloody their literary crime s

• Language: English
• Publisher: Written Pursuits
• Release date: Sep 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9798986835112

Book preview

Bloody Hound

A Spy Shop Mystery

Lisa Haneberg

Copyright © 2022 by Lisa Haneberg

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. All the names and characters are either invented or used fictitiously. Many of the Galveston place names mentioned in the book are real but used fictitiously.

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing, 2022

ISBN: 979-8-9868351-1-2

Written Pursuits Publishing

838 High Street #269

Lexington, KY 40502

www.writtenpursuits.com

Cover design by Stuart Bache, Books Covered, Ltd.

Book design by Polgarus Studio

Editing by Jim Spivey, Jennifer Barricklow, and Cara Blake Coppola

For the Lexington Writer’s Room

Writing well is not a solitary act.

Table of Contents

Prologue

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

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Request for Reviews

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Bloody Hound

Give me a decent bottle of poison and I’ll construct the perfect crime.

— Agatha Christie

Very few of us are what we seem.

— Agatha Christie

Prologue

Wednesday, May 16

3:00 p.m.

A/V tech Carver White marched like a drunk penguin through the already crowded main hallway of the convention center and used his key card to enter the empty grand ballroom. Except he wasn’t alone. Carver, a weed-for-breakfast kind of guy, was there to set up recording equipment for the opening keynote address of the Mystery Writers Guild International Conference but instead found what looked like a dead body.

Carver rubbed his eyes and prayed under his breath as he walked up to the gray-suited lump of a woman slumped over in the auditorium’s front row. He bent down to get a better look at her face and then noticed her name badge: Matilda Matthews, author. Devon, Great Britain. A blue keynote speaker ribbon hung from the plastic badge holder around her neck. Carver read the disturbing note pinned on Matilda’s lapel.

The world will be a better place without you belittling innovators who craft more modern, dare we say mysterious, murder mysteries. Who made you God? No one. Tit for Tat (your rule #8). Poetic!

Carver jerked back, teetered, and almost fell on her. He winced at the foul smell from what looked like moist vomit on the front of Matilda’s lavender silk shirt.

Bloody hell, he said in a fake English accent. Her face was a frightening shade of pale green/blue/yellow. He held his phone within an inch of her nose to check for breathing. Seeing there was none, he slapped his thighs and whispered every curse word his woozy brain could muster.

Carver White then sat three rows behind the deceased author, stared at her silver hair wrapped in a bun, and pondered his next move. It pissed him off this situation might complicate his already messy life. He couldn’t tell his manager, Daddio, and risk getting a third and final disciplinary write up for tardiness. Carver was too old and lazy to find a new job. And he sure as hell didn’t want to call the police, who’d detect he was as high as the moon, then find and confiscate the drugs he kept stashed in his employee locker, car, and apartment. No way he’d risk getting his name or picture in the news where his ex-business partner, to whom he owed a shitload of money, might discover he’d been hiding on Galveston Island.

Betting that Matilda’s keynote speech would be canceled and, hoping this colossal disturbance would keep his boss occupied and out of his hair, Carver slipped through the auditorium’s back door, sped down the service hallway and out the loading dock door. Ten minutes later, he walked out of the nearby Kroger with a six-pack before crossing the street to the beach. He then took off his shirt, rolled up his pants, and sat on a sand dune across from the convention center.

Carver watched and waited for someone else to discover Matilda Matthews’s corpse. After two beers, he heard sirens coming from both ends of Seawall Boulevard and saw police, fire, and emergency medical vehicles converge on the center’s front entrance. Carver strummed his big, jiggly belly and nodded in relief.

***

4:30 p.m.

Inside the convention center, a ghastly carnival of looky-loos hounded anyone wearing a uniform. Word of Matilda Matthews’s death had metastasized throughout the conference’s attendees and activated the crime-fiction writers to help lawmakers find the killer. Their smart devices, notebooks, and pens were at the ready. Captain Ethan Slaughter, who led the major crimes team for the Galveston Police Department and looked the part wearing a sport coat, unfashionable tie, and sensible shoes, became a target for the sleuth-makers’ rapid-fire questions.

A tall man in the middle of the gaggle shouted and held up his phone. Is there a murderer walking among us?

Anyone in custody? asked a woman who’d pushed to the front of the crowd, angering those around her.

Another woman crouched down to sneak under the crime scene tape, but an officer stopped her. Take your hands off me. She stepped closer and smiled. Tell me the time of death. She then bent forward to give the officer a look down her tight-fitting blouse.

The officer looked.

The woman grinned. Unless you’d rather respond to my sexual harassment complaint.

We’re not taking questions. Slaughter announced as he groaned and rolled his eyes at the officer. He then ordered the venue’s staff to lock down the convention center and called for more street cops to help with crowd control.

***

5:00 p.m.

Fern Green squeezed past the barrier and tromped up to the captain. How long are you planning to lock us in here? We’ve got social gatherings planned at local bars this evening and our very full conference schedule resumes tomorrow at eight.

Slaughter looked at the middle-aged woman dressed in head-to-toe lime green.

I’m the conference director. Fern tapped on her name badge, which was festooned with several stickers and hung around her neck by a green lanyard.

Slaughter smiled for the first time all day. Glad you’re here, Ms. Green. I’d like to ask you a few questions, starting with: Do you know when the victim arrived and why she might’ve been in an empty ballroom?

She was our opening keynote—she might’ve gone into the auditorium to check the space. Fern looked at the messages on her phone. Around noon. I welcomed her myself, although she didn’t seem interested in talking with me.

Was she upset? the captain asked.

Indifferent, she replied. Turned down my offer to buy her dinner last night after she checked in, too. Said she was tired.

Where was she staying?

We booked her in a nice room at the Tremont.

Where did she go after you greeted her?

Asked where the bookstore was located so she could sign her books. Fern shifted back and forth on her heels. This is tragic, but I’m responsible for two hundred people here for a professional conference. I need to know how this is going to affect my schedule. She handed Slaughter a program for the five-day conference.

He had more questions, but the interruptions continued. A short woman in a red hat jumped up and down while waving her arms. I did it! I’m your suspect! I shot Mallory!

She wasn’t shot, you idiot, and her name was Matilda, a man near the woman said. She was given a drug overdose.

I drugged Matilda! the same bouncy woman yelled.

No, I drugged Matilda! a large man in a pink Hawaiian shirt and giant magnifying glass hat shouted.

Several conference attendees unsecured and edged the crime-scene tape closer to the auditorium door. Officers either didn’t notice or have the bandwidth to intervene.

Captain Slaughter worried the swarming conventioneers—all potential witnesses and suspects—would muck with and compromise evidence they’d need to catch the person responsible for Matilda Matthews’s death. He and his detectives split the crowd into manageable groups, which were then moved into guarded conference rooms that the convention center staff had hurried to set up with water stations and rows of chairs. The last group waited outside the ballroom with Slaughter while an additional room was being readied.

He needed more help, and reinforcements from Houston would take too long to arrive. Slaughter texted a local private investigator and hoped he’d not regret involving her in what was already a big mess.

Chapter 1

Day 1, Wednesday, May 16

3:30 p.m., two hours earlier

I stared at my security system feed and watched him lurking, looking around, and walking back and forth in front of my two-story concrete-and-steel house on Twenty-Ninth Street. The man glanced at the front door, down at his phone, and then up to the second floor. He was a thin dude who wore blue jeans, a dark short-sleeved shirt, and a black cowboy hat that looked too large for his head. And he had a long, straw-colored wily beard I assumed was fake. Who, aside from members of ZZ Top, grew facial hair like that?

No one is who—if for no other reason than the complicated hygiene issues.

The man slipped along the north side of my house and kneeled. Was he praying, planning, or waiting for something or someone? I shifted in my chair and reached for a banana MoonPie out of the large, assorted bowlful I kept for tense situations that required my complete attention.

Although burglaries were on the rise in Galveston, even stupid or inebriated crooks would conclude that my home, with its rock-solid structure and visible security cameras, wasn’t worth the work or risk. That meant I was dealing with a drunk asshat or an assassin. Assassins don’t care if their expertly applied disguises are featured on the evening news. Some love the attention and use press coverage video clips to market their services on the dark web.

The man stood, stroked his fake beard, and looked up toward the roof. Was he thinking of scaling the side of my house? His prominent, probably prosthetic cheekbones shone in the sunlight and his dark eyes glistened.

Definitely an assassin. I ran through a mental list of people I’d pissed off as I prepared to intervene by strapping on my ditty bag filled with perp-fighting gadgets. The first rule of dealing with an assassin is to beat them to the punch, because they don’t miss.

My office, den, and gargantuan garage were on the ground level, while most of the living space was on the second floor. I glanced again at the computer screen. My adversary had made his way around the back of the house and was creeping toward the garage.

Shit! My mind whirled, because I’d left the sliding garage door open a couple of feet when I took out the garbage after lunch.

I put on my pink swim goggles and nose clip, grabbed the pepper spray from my ditty bag, and rushed on my tiptoes through the den and garage and up to the sliding door. I heard footsteps getting closer as they crunched on the gravel driveway.

THWACK! PFSST!

The assassin couldn’t have known what’d hit him. As soon as I sensed he was within striking range, I jumped through the opening in the sliding door, disabled him with a quick shot of pepper spray, and yanked him into my garage. I then duct-taped his mouth, zip-tied his wrists and ankles, and closed the garage door. After pacing back and forth a few times, I sat on my weight bench and watched him writhe, moan, and try to yell.

I knew from experience the effects of the pepper spray would last sixty minutes or more, but I hoped to get this guy talking sooner. I turned on a fan and doused his red, squeezed-shut eyes with three bottles of water. His black cowboy hat had fallen off in the driveway and I could see his short hair was the same sun-bleach straw color as his fake beard. The man screamed behind the duct tape. He was a feisty assassin, and I imagined his macerated ego couldn’t handle how successfully I’d surprised him.

After ten minutes, I sat him up against a steel beam. His eyelids fluttered and then cracked open. He mumbled and yelled in bursts. I held up the pepper spray canister. If you don’t shut the hell up, I’m going to spray you again.

The man froze and got quiet.

That’s better. I stood, walked up to him, and kneeled. You’re not the smartest assassin I’ve met.

The man shook his head back and forth several times. He made some noise but then hushed when I lifted my ready hand.

I pointed to my ditty bag a few feet away. In addition to this pepper spray, I have a taser gun, dart pen, tactical knife, expandable baton, fishhooks, and a cell phone I’ll use to call my good friends at the Galveston Police Department.

The assassin tilted his head and mumbled what sounded like, Huh?

Shush. I smiled with a flat but vigorous grin—the way I imagined the Joker did when confronting Batman. In a moment, I’m going to pull the tape off your mouth. Which of these gadgets I use and how long the pain lasts is up to you. Are you going to be a good boy?

My new rival nodded like a dashboard bobble-head dog, which seemed a weak move for an assassin. Perhaps he was new to the profession and not yet credentialed.

Wise decision. I pulled off the duct tape. The fake beard didn’t come off with the tape, so I yanked at it.

"ACK! What the hell, woman! You some sort of she-devil?"

The beard, apparently, was real or adhered with professional-grade Gorilla Glue. The assassin spoke with a strong, probably fake, Scottish accent.

I returned to the weight bench to be near to my gadgets, just in case he piped up again. That’s a convincing accent. Learn that in assassin school?

Hell, please listen to me… The man tried to scratch his ear with his shoulder. You’re Xena Cali, right?

His question surprised me, but I remained stoic. So stipulated. Research 101. Not impressed.

You got me all wrong. The man glared at me while trying to lean in my direction. I’m Jules MacGregor. Our mums grew up together in Killiecrankie. I’m in the States on holiday. Your mum gave me your address. Suggested I stop by.

Maybe I hadn’t given this guy enough credit. Finding out my mother was Scottish was easy enough, but him discovering the name of her tiny hometown would’ve required some crafty Internet searches. His accent was sing-songy, harmonic, and quite convincing.

My mother sent you. That’s your story?

Jules nodded. God’s honest truth.

Why were you lurking around my house, Jules from Killiecrankie?

I was a puddle of nerves, to be honest. Practicing what to say to ya. Your mum put the fear of God in me, explaining you was a lawyer and now a private eye and spy shop owner and some sort of acrobat. You was intimidating before I met you and now after all this…I’m ready to crawl under a rock and never bother you again if you’ll let me.

Acrobat. My stomach tensed up and I could feel my cheeks get warm.

She had a name for it and told me you gave up her beloved gymnastics. Broke her heart, I could tell. He looked at me and shook his head as if I was naughty. Said you were headstrong, which I need no convincing of.

There was only one way he could’ve known I traded gymnastics for parkour. I felt dizzy and took off my swim goggles and nose clip. I grabbed my phone and texted my mother.

Did you send a Scot named Jules to see me?

…

I could see she was responding and bit my lip in anticipation.

Yes! Glad he found you.

I grunted. A heads-up would’ve been nice.

Dot’s oldest son. Thought you might enjoy getting to know a true Highland boy. Be nice to him.

Did I tell my jovial, people-loving mother that I attacked and bound Jules, called him a dumb assassin, and then tried to yank off his real beard? No, I did not.

Xena, you still there?

Yes. Can’t believe you think I wouldn’t be

Reviews for Bloody Hound

[Sheri Masala · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent light reading murder mystery, a bit like Jessica Fletcher meets Law and Order. Loved it