Drool Baby (A Dog Park Mystery) (Lia Anderson Dog Park Mysteries) Read Free Page A

"I'll have Peter ask them to post only pretty girl traffic cops in that speed trap. Maybe the next time you get a ticket,
    it'll be worth it."
    "If only," Marie said. "Any way he can request pretty, gay, girl cops?"
    "I can always ask."
    Jim stood up and picked up his walking stick. "Fleece and Kita and I have to go."
    "I'll walk out with you," Lia said. She held up a hand to the group in an abbreviated wave. "See you tomorrow." Honey and Chewy saw her walking away and
    stopped playing. They ran to catch up.

Chapter 2
     
Saturday, August 18
     
    "Gina left me again," Roger announced to the early morning crowd at the Mount Airy Dog Park. "I want to kill myself." He was a tall, gaunt man, with a
    reddish beard that had a stripe of white down the middle. The hair peeking out from under his ball cap was gray. He was nearing sixty, and he had the
    rode-hard look of a wind-burned cowboy.
    Lia looked out over the dog park, a ridge of land abutted on three sides by more than a thousand acres of forest. She lifted her face and felt the breeze
    that often blew over the ridge. She'd been running her two dogs at the park for four years. Now she was beginning to dread the mornings when Roger showed
    up because he could always be counted on to share his latest domestic drama. But Honey and Chewy had to run and mornings were best, Roger or no Roger. The
    lithe artist sat on top of a picnic table and concentrated on her coffee, inhaling the hazelnut scent. She'd let the others handle Roger for now.
    Jose was a prematurely bald man of Italian descent with the build of a ball player and a Fu Manchu mustache. He heaved a big sigh. "Roger, you know we
    talked about this. You been drinking beer and staring at your gun again, haven't you?"
    "Yeah," Roger admitted. "I wanna shoot myself, but I can't do it."
    "Oh! Don't do that!" Marie exclaimed from her perch beside Lia. "The mess will cost a fortune to clean up and make it impossible to sell the house in this
    market. Hanging's better, but be sure to go to the bathroom first, maybe take an enema."
    "Marie!" Anna admonished from Lia's other side.
    "Just trying to help." Marie shrugged her dainty Asian shoulders and flipped her zebra striped bangs. "If he's going to do it, he should do it properly.
    Right, Roger? You could gas yourself, but that might blow up the house. An overdose of sleeping pills will leave nasty blue blotches all over your body.
    Then there's always the risk someone would find you and pump your stomach. There's carbon monoxide poisoning, but you'd have to clean out the garage first.
    I think you should commit Hari-kari on Gina's doorstep."
    "You want me to stick myself with a knife? How do you expect me to gut myself if I can't pull the trigger?" Roger turned to Jose, "You do it. I'll give you
    my gun."
    Jose rolled his eyes, "No, Roger, I'm not going to shoot you."
    "Surely Gina isn't worth dying for," Anna said.
    "She's not," Jose answered. "She takes his money and lives off him and runs around and never gives anything back." He turned to Roger. "Why do you let her
    treat you like that?"
    "I love her," Roger insisted. "I can't stand to be alone. I'm not like you."
    Lia had been content to let this conversation proceed without her input up to now. "Roger, would therapy be so bad? I'm finding it really helpful."
    "The only thing that will help me is Gina coming back."
    "Don't worry about that," Jose reassured. "She'll be back as soon as she needs some money."
    "Too bad Bailey's in the nut house. She'd shoot me. Oops! Sorry, Lia, I didn't mean to bring that up."
    "It's okay, Roger," she said, though it really wasn't. She didn't need reminding that her partner and friend had held a gun to her head six weeks before,
    and was now confined to a psych ward. Lia had a lot to say about how it felt to face your mortality, but talking to Roger always went nowhere.
    Roger had been talking about suicide since he first showed up at the dog park following his wife's death a few years