“Let’s get you two into your apartment, and I’ll go check out the fire door situation.” Detective Mathers suggested when I expressed my concerns over the fire door having been Maggie’s only possible means of entry through the laundry room.

“Sounds good to me.” I replied exhaustedly. “C’mon Maggie. Let’s go home.”

Maggie didn’t need any coaxing. She led the way, and truth be told, it was all I could do to follow her. At this point in the evening, or was it morning? All I could think of was climbing in my warm, soft bed and putting some delicious dream space between myself and anything even remotely connected to Mabel’s murder.

My happy thoughts were intruded upon by what I have come to know as a ‘something is definitely wrong with this picture’ yip from Maggie, my most intuitive companion. The detective, none the wiser- as he doesn’t speak Maggie- pressed ahead through the open apartment door. 

“Oh my god! What happened here?”

My first thought was that the bath water that had originally alerted me to something being amiss upstairs in Mabel’s apartment, had seeped down the hall and into the living room and we were walking into a swamp.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. As I crossed the threshold into what has always been the safety and security of my own apartment, all I could think was, ‘I have seen the devil.’

Scrawled across the wall above my bomber jacket brown leather sofa, in dripping red spray paint, that couldn’t have looked more like blood if it had actually been, were the vicious words, ‘The only good dog, is a dead dog’.

The not so cryptic threat was driven home even further, when I lowered my eyes and saw Maggie’s better than down dogie bed, slashed to ribbons in a crumpled mass- haphazardly thrown atop the distressed leather of the sofa- and my poor Maggie trying like hell to push the loose fiberfill back into what was left of the extra plush cushion that had been her home within a home since the day she retired from her life as a competitive sled dog, and came to live, what was supposed to have been the easy life,  with me.

“She won’t be having any more doggie dreams on that bed.” was all I could think to say.

“Or in this apartment if I have anything to say about it.” Detective Mathers interjected sternly, as for the second time this evening I felt the warm strength of his arm circle comfortingly around my waist. 

“You two are coming home with me.”

This addition to Maggie’s Mid-night adventures was inspired by the phrases provided by the OLWG #22:

1. I have seen the devil
2. What happened here?
3. She won’t be having anymore

Maggie’s adventures can be read in their entirety by following the Category header, Maggie’s Story.