Sick Puppy: What Doesn't Kill You Super Series of Mysteries, #12

By Pamela Fagan Hutchins

Murder-by-fire. A catfishing squatter. Will Maggie get her life back before the killer claims the one thing she has left to lose?

 

"Hutchins' Maggie is an irresistible train wreck—you can't help but turn the page to see what trouble she'll get herself into next." Robert Dugoni, #1 Amazon Bestselling Author of My Sister's Grave

 

Junker and former alt-country rocker Maggie Killian tucks tail back to Texas with Louise, the mutt her bull-riding ex foisted on her in Wyoming after he gave another woman his heart. Maggie runs straight to Gary Fuller—her long time best friend-with-benefits and the biggest Texas country music star since George Strait—but arrives too late to save him from dying in a fire. She just wants to lick her wounds in her own bed with nothing save a bottle for comfort, but Maggie's short term renter refuses to budge from her home. Soon her small town sanctuary is overrun with Nashville bigwigs, Gary's trailer park family, and grief-crazed fans feeding the fires of media speculation about the bodies in her wake.

 

With Maggie barely functional enough to fight back and law enforcement hell bent on scapegoating her, she begins to suspect Gary's death wasn't an isolated incident. To save her livelihood and sanity, she's gotta woman-up before everything and everyone she loves goes up in flames, too.

 

Sick Puppy is the second standalone book in a trilogy featuring sharp-tongued protagonist Maggie Killian from the addictive What Doesn't Kill You romantic mystery series. If you like nerve-racking suspense, electric characters and relationships, and juicy plot twists, then you'll love USA Today best seller Pamela Fagan Hutchins' Silver Falchion award-winning series.

 

˃˃˃ See why Pamela wins contests and makes best seller lists.

• USA Today Best Seller
• #1 Amazon Best Seller
• Top 50 Amazon Romantic Suspense and Mystery Author
• Silver Falchion for Best Adult Mystery
• USA Best Book Awards Cross-Genre Fiction
• Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, Romance, Quarter-finalist

˃˃˃ Once Upon A Romance calls Hutchins an "up-and-coming powerhouse writer."

If you like Sandra Brown or Janet Evanovich, you will love Pamela Fagan Hutchins. A former attorney and native Texan, Pamela splits her time between Nowheresville, Texas and the frozen north of Snowheresville, Wyoming.

 

˃˃˃ The reviews are in, and they're good. Very, very good.

"Murder has never been so much fun!" — Christie Craig, New York Times Best Seller

"Maggie's gonna break your heart—one way or another." — Tara Scheyer, Grammy-nominated musician, Long-Distance Sisters Book Club

"Hutchins nails that Wyoming scenery and captures the atmosphere of the people there." — Ken Oder, author of The Judas Murders

"You're guaranteed to love the ride!" — Kay Kendall, Silver Falchion Best Mystery Winner

 

˃˃˃ Catch more adventures with Maggie and her friends in the What Doesn't Kill You romantic mysteries.

 

Scroll up and grab your copy ofSick Puppy today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: SkipJack Publishing
• Release date: Apr 5, 2019
• ISBN: 9781939889812

Pamela Fagan Hutchins

Pamela Fagan Hutchins is a USA Today best seller. She writes award-winning romantic mysteries from deep in the heart of Nowheresville, Texas and way up in the frozen north of Snowheresville, Wyoming. She is passionate about long hikes with her hunky husband and pack of rescue dogs and riding her gigantic horses. If you'd like Pamela to speak to your book club, women's club, class, or writers group, by Skype or in person, shoot her an e-mail. She's very likely to say yes. You can connect with Pamela via her website (https://pamelafaganhutchins.com)or e-mail ([e-mail]).

Book preview

PROLOGUE

On her way out the door, Maggie Killian grabs the shotgun her best friend Michele keeps there on two wooden pegs. It’s for scaring off whatever needs scaring. Coyotes, bobcats, prowlers. The gun is only a 20-gauge, but it makes a powerful noise. If there’s someone still at Maggie’s house, Maggie can blast a few shots outside the bedroom window. Maybe it will scare off an intruder like it does the varmints.

Shotgun under one arm and keys in the other hand, Maggie runs to the truck. She opens the truck door, and Louise jumps in first, without permission. She hadn’t even known the dog followed her out the door. Putting her back in the house will take too long, so she lets it slide. She’ll make her stay in the truck when she gets to her house. Maggie lays the long gun on the floorboard, business end pointing toward the passenger-side door. Louise settles on the seat above it.

Maggie peels out of the driveway and onto the road, taking the turns like Bess is on rails. The shotgun slides and bangs into the passenger door. To have lived in Texas all her life, nearly, and not have a gun rack behind her seat—it feels unpatriotic. And dangerous. She wishes she had one now.

She drives by an oil derrick lit up like a Christmas tree. A flare burns pressure off an oil well across the road. She hits a patch of old pavement on the mostly gone-back-to-dirt road as she takes another curve. The tires squeal. She slows down. All she needs now is a wreck and the delay and publicity of a DWI. But she’s too jacked to drive the speed limit. There’s no calming her down, even with the cooling night air blowing in the open windows, not after the night she’s had. The day. The week. The month. The life.

Maggie reaches her house in record time, ten minutes door to door from Michele’s. A car is parked partially out of sight from the road behind a copse of trees, but in front of the house. Light spills out two of the windows.

The rubble of her antique and junk store is no longer lit up for crime scene technicians, but Maggie’s headlights illuminate the yellow tape barricade as she pulls into the parking area. She skirts it and drives over the lawn, like her guest must have. When she’s close, she angles Bess toward the house, pointing the high beams through the front door and down the central hall.

Maggie rolls the window down halfway, tucks the shotgun under her arm, and holds Louise at bay while she shuts the truck door. Marching toward the front of the house, she calls, Stay, over her shoulder.

Louise howls in her best sad-coyote imitation, but Maggie ignores her.

She bangs on the front door of her house. She’s not surprised when there’s no answer, but the car is here. The woman must be. Maggie isn’t leaving.

She walks around the house. At the master bedroom window, she shouts, I know you can hear me.

Maggie pauses, listening. She hears a moan. A sex moan. Who would have sex with this woman? She’s attractive, but such a robot. And a bona fide head case.

She hears a muffled yell, then an impact and a grunt. It gets her attention. If that’s sex, it’s not the good kind.

Are you okay in there?

She presses her face to the window, her chin above the ledge. There’s a little sliver not covered by the curtains, big enough to see into her bedroom. It’s a small room. All the rooms in her old farm cottage are little. Her queen-size four-poster bed takes up most of the space, leaving just enough room for a rustic bedside table, a tall antique dresser, and a matching dressing table with a gilded mirror. Her favorite painting, Front Porch Pickin’, hangs over the head of the bed. A large urn on the dresser usually holds fresh flowers. Now, dead sunflower heads loll over its side. She’d left them for her guest before her drive to Wyoming. Her white duvet is in a heap on the floor. The overhead fixture is out, but a lamp she’d made from an old milk jug sheds light on two people on the bed. She almost pulls back, the thought of the woman mid-coitus giving her a wave of nausea. But she can’t force herself to look away.

Feeling like a voyeur, she realizes what she sees. Someone is tied to the four posts, spread-eagle, naked. Not a woman. A man. Her guest crawls over to him and throws a leg astride his hips. She has a cigarette in her mouth, the end a glowing red.

What the hell?

She stomps her feet on the ground, hard, then softer, then softer still, but doesn’t leave. She keeps her eyes on the woman through the slit in the curtains. Let the woman think she’s given up. She isn’t going anywhere.

The guest takes a drag on the cigarette then stubs it out on the man’s chest. He barely reacts save for a light moan into a gag in his mouth. Leslie tosses the butt away, stands up, and pours the contents of a bottle of Balcones all over him. Maggie’s skin crawls. The woman sets the bottle upright on the bedside table. Then she walks out, leaving the man tied there, alone.

Bess’s headlights are still pointing into the house. Maggie can’t get away much longer with the charade that she’s given up and left. She hoists herself onto the window sill, struggling to get a better look at the guy, wondering if she should call 911. Then she sees his face.

Horror washes over her.

It’s Hank Sibley. Her Hank, and he’s tied up in her bed, with this strange woman, covered in Balcones, and this isn’t sex, good or bad. It’s some awful other thing that she doesn’t have time to understand.

She bashes one of the window panes out with the butt of the shotgun. As fast as she can, she batters the wood frame to bits and the other panes with it. She lowers the gun inside the window, drops it to the floor, then pulls herself in after it. Her landing is rough, the glass digging sharply in her palms. She rolls onto her knees beside the shotgun and looks up. The first thing she sees is the woman, back in the room on the other side of the bed from her, setting down a gas can and lighter.

The second thing she sees is Hank, and once she does, he is all she sees. Up close, his predicament is even worse than she’d thought from outside. His mouth is gagged with a blue-and-white scarf. Each wrist and ankle is held fast in a noose that holds him fully extended. The material doesn’t look like rope. More like a plastic-encased steel cable. He’s naked, like she thought. His hair is matted and dark with sweat.

As her inspection crosses his face, he opens his eyes. I’ll get you out of here. Hang on, Hank. She imagines the two of them under a big Wyoming sky, riding side by side on a mountainside, and tries to send the image to him, but his eyes flutter closed again.

The woman’s voice brings her back. This will be perfect. The finale to the drama. Your Wyoming lover dumped you, he shows up in Texas to tell you once and for all to stay out of his life, you drug him, tie him to your bed, and set the house on fire for revenge, then, overcome by grief, you shoot yourself as you’re going up in flames with him. Murder-suicide.

Maggie looks up at this stranger and into the short, lethal barrel of a steel gray handgun. Like hell it will.

ONE

BEFORE:

Maggie brakes for a tumbleweed the size of a small pickup. The giant weed rolls across Highway 87, bouncing off a DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS sign before resuming its course south. In the rearview mirror, the New Mexico sunset is a Technicolor backdrop to the zombie chorus line the dead bush and its brethren form on a barbed-wire fence. They’re like the display of coyote carcasses Maggie’d seen a few miles back. If the hanging coyotes are a warning to predators, what are the tumbleweeds warning? By the brown, barren look of things, the fauna thinks the message is for them.

She rescues a whipping strand of hair from her ChapSticked lips. Lipstick and a headband had been out of the question when she left Colorado Springs without sleeping, in a hellfire hurry to get back to Giddings. Home. Her home.

She turns to the panting border collie–corgi mix in the passenger seat. The dog’s black-and-white hair is levitating, but the wind is hot. This is as good as it’s gonna get, Louise.

Louise whines, circles, then sticks her nose out the window.

Maggie’s phone plays a portentous series of chords on the seat beside her. She’d set new notification tones last night, as soon as she was out of Wyoming. Time for change, across the board. This sound is for a text, and it tells her two things. First, she’s back in the land of cell service. Second, her phone survived being thrown at the door of the bathroom stall in Raton, after flaunting a text from Hank, the love of her life and breaker of her heart.

Hank’s text had read: Was it something I said?

Something he said. Funny.

Defying death now, she presses the phone for his contact information. His picture pops up, and she enlarges it. He’s in profile, smiling and showing off his delicious dimple. A Stetson covers his dark hair. His shirt is open at the neck, right where she used to like to kiss him.

Well, not anymore.

She puts the phone down, stretches her eyes wide, and rolls her neck. With another vat of coffee, she can make it to Wichita Falls for a few hours—she prays—of sleep, leaving her an easy five hours tomorrow. Driving outside the hot hours is appealing, due to her broken air conditioner. And pretty much any hours the sun is out are hot in Texas in mid-September.

Maggie switches feet on the accelerator to give her aching right foot a stretching break. No air conditioner and no cruise control. Worst of all, her tush doesn’t appreciate the long hours driving. When a thirty-seven-year-old woman gets bucked off a muscle-bound draft horse six feet at the shoulder, it isn’t pretty, and Maggie had bitten the dust only the day before, courtesy of Hank’s Percheron Lily. A sad pang takes her by surprise. It’s not only Hank she’s going to miss. She’ll miss Lily. The mountains. The wildlife. Everyone at Piney Bottoms Ranch.

A lone woman walking on the shoulder of the highway catches Maggie’s attention. A long gray French braid hangs down her back. As Bess and the trailer pass her, she turns and makes eye contact with Maggie. A shiver runs up Maggie’s arms. The woman’s face is ghostly white. A blue scarf encircles her neck. Maggie takes her foot off the gas. Should she stop and offer her a ride? But the pale woman wasn’t hitching.

Maggie powers on, regardless, restless dog beside her.

An hour and forty-five minutes later, the speed limit drops as she enters Amarillo. Maggie switches off Lucinda Williams, who’s rasping about why she Changed the Locks. She scans for radio stations on the new stereo in Bess, her vintage pickup. Magenta vintage pickup, a color never intended by the Ford Motor Company, Maggie is sure. But it suits Bess, and Bess suits Maggie. She loves every rusted spot on the underbelly and dent in the hide of the truck’s close-to-seventy-five-year-old body.

Maggie catches the tail end of a commercial that doesn’t sound like it belongs on Spanish-speaking, Christian, or talk radio, so she stops. The commercial ends, and a pop song with a hip-hop edge comes on. There’s something else to it, too. Steel pans, maybe?

Maggie groans. Her finger hovers over the scan button.

Louise makes retching noises.

I know. It’s not my thing either.

Over the wind and highway noise, Maggie recognizes the song and the singer. A hit from last year: Bombshell by the It Girl of the moment, Ava Butler. Maggie was the It Girl once upon a time, too, before she pissed it away. Maggie hates Ava Butler, and not just because Ava’s success makes Maggie feel like Jennifer Anniston reading an Enquirer article about Angelina Jolie’s perfect Brad Pitt babies. No, Maggie hates her because the two women costarred in a cheesy musical in Waco, Texas, and Ava stole Maggie’s part.

And Maggie holds grudges.

Louise retches again. Her sides begin to heave, and her legs quiver.

More than just good musical instincts? Oh. Oh no. Louise, wait. Stop. No!

Leaving the station as-is, Maggie puts her blinker on and veers across three lanes of traffic—setting off a barrage of horns—toward an abandoned building with a buckled blacktop lot. When she’s pulled in far enough that her trailer isn’t sticking out in the road, she grabs the leash and snaps it on Louise. She doesn’t want Louise blowing chunks on the driver’s side, so Maggie scoots across the bench seat, maneuvers over the stick shift and sick dog, and opens the passenger door.

Ouch. Her sore tush complains about the sudden activity. She gives the leash an awkward tug. Come on, Louise.

Louise doesn’t budge. Before Maggie can make it past the line of fire, Louise deposits two cups of soggy dog food and cheeseburger across the seat, the floorboard, and Maggie’s hobo bag, boots, and jeans.

In a voice more empathetic than angry, Maggie says, Oh, Fucker.

Louise wags her tail. In their one week together, Louise has decided that Fucker means I love you in Maggie-speak.

Quit smiling at me.

The dog flops down in the vomit, like she’s just too weak to stand another second.

Oh no, no, nooo. Maggie shakes her leg to dislodge vomit from her boot. She counts back the days since she’s slept. Three, maybe? She can’t take this. So much for Wichita Falls.

A police cruiser pulls up behind her truck, lights wigwagging.

Perfect.

The cop takes his time running her plates. Given her recent problems with the law in Wyoming, Maggie decides to sit tight and wait for him, half in and half out of the truck, instead of cleaning up like she wants to. A few minutes later, a stocky officer with red hair and a full but not bad-looking face saunters to the passenger side. Maggie doesn’t have to roll down the window, at least, which is good, since she’s managed to get dog barf on her hands.

Good evening. I’m Officer John Burrows, Amarillo Police Department. Are you having a problem, ma’am? The cop bends down to peer in the door, hand on his holstered gun. His voice is small-town West Texas. Give her five more minutes and she’ll place the county, ten and she’ll peg his town. Sound and Maggie are friends, and she’s great with accents, especially Texas ones.

Maggie points at Louise. My dog just barfed all over the place. And me.

He coughs and steps back. Are you aware you made an unsafe lane change before you exited the roadway?

Maggie sighs. I used my blinker.

You cut off traffic.

"Louise had just done her Linda Blair-in-the-Exorcist impression."

His expression is stony. Maybe he hadn’t seen the movie. The vomit scene. Or maybe he has zero sense of humor. License and insurance, please.

Do you have a paper towel or something? My hands are covered in dog puke.

He lowers his Ray-Bans and squints friendly green eyes over them at Maggie, Louise, and the vomit. Sorry, no.

The longer I sit here, the worse it’s going to smell. I have dirty laundry I could use for cleanup, but it’s on my utility trailer. Can’t you just write me a ticket while I get out and start scrubbing?

That’s not protocol, ma’am. I need you to hand me your documentation and remain in the cab. He slides his aviators into his shirt pocket.

Of course you do. She wipes her hands on her thighs and slips open her bag, trying not to transfer barf from the bag to her person while she does. The officer’s attention is on a flip pad of ticket forms. She swipes her license through the vomit before she holds it out to him. License.

He takes it without looking up. When he notices the vomit, he grimaces, pulling one finger at a time away from the license. Then he glares at her.

She pretends not to see him as she rummages in the tiny glove box for her insurance card. When she finds it, she manages to leave a perfect set of puke prints on the paper. Her lips twitch. Here you go, sir.

He pinches it by one corner. Wait here.

Can I please clean up now? I know my license matches the registration you pulled on the truck, along with my clean driving record and up-to-date insurance. Please?

Louise wags her tail, each sweep stirring up wet chunks and sending them flying.

Fine.

Maggie retrieves dirty laundry and wipes down the interior, the dog, and herself—not that it does much good—while still maintaining the presence of mind to flip off two truckers and a carload of teenage boys who honk and shout at her as they pass. She rebags her dirty laundry and tucks it under the trailer tarp, then fastens the bungee cords.

The officer reappears by the truck bed as she’s walking toward the cab. I’ve written you a warning.

Really?

Really. Sign here. He taps his ticket pad, handing it and a pen to her.

She verifies that everything on the ticket is correct, then signs her name.

He tears off the ticket. Please be more careful.

Yes, sir. Maggie salutes as she takes it.

Also, my sister and her husband own a hotel. The Sundowner. They take pets. You can clean yourself and the pooch off better. He offers her a business card. Tell her I sent you.

Thank you. I might do that.

It’s downtown. Right next to Pumpjack’s. And tonight is karaoke night there. It’s a big draw. Fun.

I’m not feeling much into fun.

His jaw flexes, eyes sparkle. I know who you are. Maggie Killian. You’re famous for fun.

She raises her eyebrows. Lies, all lies. I promise.

Think about it. Seriously, it’s the place to be on Thursday nights in Amarillo.

It hits her. You’re going, aren’t you?

Finally, he grins. I am. And I would really love it if you’d sing ‘Buckle Bunny.’

Her music seems a lifetime ago to her. A really long, hard lifetime. Maybe. And thank you. For only giving me a warning, and for the info about the hotel. I’ve had a really bad week.

He nods in sympathy. I read the article online.

The How the Mighty Maggie Killian Has Fallen article posted on an entertainment blog last week had made her sound like a train wreck. Correction: an even bigger train wreck.

She doesn’t bother telling Burrows that the article isn’t a fraction of what made her week bad. That she spurned a Unabomber-type fan—Rudy—in Wyoming, where she’d gone to win Hank back, under the pretense of shopping for junk at estate sales. That the fan then used a tire iron to bash in the head of Chet, the cowboy she’d had a one-night oops with after Hank introduced her to his much younger, Sunday school–teaching girlfriend, Sheila. How Bess broke down, leaving her stranded at Hank’s ranch, where the police zeroed in on her as the murder suspect and basically put her on house arrest in Wyoming. That meanwhile in Texas someone vandalized Flown the Coop, her antique shop, at the very same time the crazy fan invaded her Wyoming cabin and stole Hank’s rifle and her two most treasured possessions—Hank’s Frontier Days bull riding champion belt buckle and a guitar strap embroidered by her mother. That the same rifle was used to kill a neighboring rancher—Patrick, who had taken her out to dinner—and to shoot Hank while he was out riding with Maggie. How Maggie managed to run for the crazy fan’s cabin, find the rifle, buckle, and guitar strap, shoot the crazy fan, leave him for the sheriff, and get help for Hank in time to save his life. Then, just when Maggie thought she and Hank might have a chance, Sheila announced a baby on board and her engagement to Hank.

Yeah, it was a sucky week.

Maggie parts ways with the officer and takes his advice on the Sundowner.

An hour later, Maggie strips out of her vomit clothes and puts them in a tub of hot water. She scrubs them with the thin bar of hotel soap. After she rinses the laundry and hangs it to dry, she drags Louise into the bathroom.

Maggie tries to lift her. The dog turns herself into something like a cruise ship anchor. "Come on, Louise."

The dog shrinks heavily into the floor.

Maggie jerks Louise up and into the tub. She washes the dog’s long fur three times. After a thorough rinsing, Maggie pitches the soap into the trash and grabs the remaining towel. She’s already used the other one—plus the hand towels and the tiny tube of shower gel—on the interior of the truck. The squatty dog leaps from the tub and shakes, flinging water from her body.

"Lew-eeze. Thanks a lot."

Maggie buffs her dry.