Dead Dogs and Englishmen Read Online Free PDF

into eating. I really had to get to Traverse, to the Northern Statesman . I’d write my story there at the paper, turn in the film I’d taken of the house and the body being brought out. Most of all, I needed to talk to Bill. I had two small stories to do, but I could use more. I’d figured my August bills ahead of time and had a slight shortfall that could be taken care of by a couple more human interest pieces. Maybe I’d call Jan Romanoff at Northern Pines Magazine . She paid better, but most of the work there was done by staff.
    This waiting to hear if I had a chance with my manuscript was driving me crazy. What I should have been doing was beginning a new book. That’s what writers were always told. I was thinking maybe not another mystery. Maybe the great American novel instead. Something that would knock Jackson Rinaldi’s Chaucer book right out of the literary waters.
    Not that I was competitive or anything.
    But I had an idea to write a book about a bunch of homeless women living in a small wood down in Detroit. There was a time, back when I was in Ann Arbor, that I volunteered at a homeless shelter and sat with women who always had a new dream to tell me about, the biggest dream being a home of their own. Maybe I could get a good novel out of that. I had notes. I had characters. I had my place. All I needed was the time, and the actual belief that I could ever compete with my ex in the literary world.
    What I seriously had to do, beyond a competition that lay only inside my head, was get busy finding a job that paid enough money to keep me there in Northern Michigan, although soon I’d have a few jars of fish—since Harry was willing to teach me how to can the stuff. With such bounty I’d surely live to gripe another year. And dream another dream of publishing a novel that would turn Jackson Rinaldi green with envy.
    â€œYou know, Emily …” Eugenia shook me right out of my writing reverie as she sat across from me with a heavy plunk against the plastic seat.
    â€œHeard you and Dolly found a dead woman over on Old Farm Road,” she said.
    I didn’t even bother to wonder how the news had gotten back to town so fast. Something in the water, I was beginning to think. Or a kind of specialized Leetsville radar—picking news from the air.
    â€œKnow who she was yet?”
    I shook my head.
    â€œIf you describe her maybe I can help.”
    I read her my notes. She shook her head. “I’ll start asking,” she said. “But you know how these workers come and go. If she was a wife or a girlfriend … well …” She shrugged. “And, hey, I heard there was a dead dog out there, too. Now that’s a really sad thing.”
    I nodded, used to Leetsvillians’s take on news, and launched into what was foremost on my mind. “Harry said something that’s got me worried. You know, just what you were talking about—how we have to watch out for each other.”
    She nodded. “You mean the deputy, don’tcha.”
    I nodded. “He said people are saying she’s different.”
    â€œMeaner, I’d say. Well … not exactly.” She thought awhile. “Short with everybody, is what I hear. Don’t come in here hardly at all. She’s got that grandmother with her. Maybe Cate’s doing some cooking. Don’t even see Cate much any more.”
    â€œYou said ‘not exactly meaner.’ So what is it exactly?”
    She thumped her hands on the table top. “Something dif-
ferent. We all seen this kind of thing before and that’s why we’re worried. Not in Dolly, mind you. But the gettin’ mad stuff. Something’s going on that’s got her in a twist. We’re just hoping it’s not bad. You know, like cancer.” She leaned closer. “Seen enough of it and we don’t want Dolly goin’ through anything. And not all by herself. She’s so damned hardheaded.