Holly and Trixie meet a strange new dog in Wagtail that leads them right into murder. . . . Holly Miller is looking forward to finally taking a few days to relax. Enjoying an early morning on her terrace, she spots an unfamiliar reddish-gold pooch across the lake. She’s intrigued, but never expects to find the very same dog smiling at her in bed when she wakes up the next morning! Trixie and Twinkletoes appear to accept this cute stranger, but Holly doesn’t know to whom he belongs. Oma thinks the dog looks familiar, and it turns out the wayward pooch belongs to Holly’s cousin Josh. Holly knew her cousin well as a child, but she hasn’t seen him in over a decade. He’s camping with his girlfriend across the lake. Holly returns the cute dog to Josh’s campsite twice, but the second time, Josh and his girlfriend are nowhere to be found. Instead, a guest of the Sugar Maple Inn is dead in their tent. Now it's up to Holly and Trixie to suss out a sneaky killer. Krista Davis is the New York Times bestselling author of the Paws & Claws Mysteries, as well as the Domestic Diva Mysteries. One Few people in Wagtail were surprised by the news that sleeping with a pet in your bed has health benefits for the human and the animal. It reduces stress and increases REM sleep in humans. The animals feel better, too, because it emulates sleeping with their packs. When I rolled over in the middle of the night and Trixie snuggled up to me, that thought drifted across my mind. So it came as no big surprise when I woke in the morning and stared straight into the eyes of a dog. But it wasn't Trixie! The dog had one of those smiling mouths that turn up at the corners. He looked genuinely happy to see me awake. He reminded me of a border collie, but I suspected he was a mix. His fur was long, mostly a reddish gold color. But it was white on his chest and paws, and a white blaze traveled up the center of his face. His tail swished across the down comforter in a joyous rhythm. He was probably less pleased when I sat up and asked, "Who are you?" I stroked his head. Oddly, neither my Jack Russell terrier, Trixie, nor my nosy calico kitty, Twinkletoes, seemed upset by his presence. They must know him, I thought. He looked vaguely familiar. I checked his collar. It had no tags. I scowled at the thought of an irresponsible owner. Maybe he'd had two collars and one of them slipped off? I lived in an apartment on the top floor of the Sugar Maple Inn on Wagtail Mountain. There was a dog door discreetly hidden under a shelf in my dining room. It led to a little-used hidden back staircase that ended two floors down in the private family kitchen, which had a dog door that led to the main lobby of the inn. So it was possible that he belonged to a guest of the inn and had wandered his way to my apartment. Or maybe he'd tracked Trixie's or Twinkletoes's scent. Someone was probably worried sick about this friendly fellow. I patted Trixie and Twinkletoes before calling the front desk. It was early enough for our night clerk to answer. But there had been no reports of a lost dog. I checked the Wagtail neighborhood group online. No new mentions of missing dogs there, either. I was in the shower before it dawned on me that he looked a lot like the dog across the lake. Of course, I hadn't seen that dog up close. There were loads of dogs with similar coloring. And this one wasn't wet, so I doubted that he'd swum across the lake. I dressed in comfortable khakis the color of sand and a periwinkle shirt, glad that I could wear sneakers instead of boots now that it was officially spring. The new dog watched my every move with intelligent eyes. His ears flopped over and were fluffier than the rest of his fur, except for his tail. The three of them followed along behind me as I walked to my terrace. Mr. Huckle, the inn butler, and I had taken to sneaking up to my terrace for teatime in the afternoons while we had a lull in business. Each of us had a set of binoculars. The terrace overlooked the lake and was blissfully out of sight of guests unless they were out on the back lawn. Mr. Huckle always brought a tea cart with a three-tier server of the same goodies being served downstairs in the dining area. Finger sandwiches, chocolate-covered éclairs, miniature cupcakes, and a changing assortment of pastries. We watched a bald eagle couple, long-legged herons, and a host of Canada geese each day. Not that we would ever spy on anyone, of course, but our binoculars drifted daily to the homes on the opposite side of the lake. Soft green new leaves were coming in, closing the spots in between evergreens and slowly occluding the homes, but we had noticed a few tents being erected and the occasional RV parked near the shore. And recently we had seen a dog romping along the shoreline by himself. A dog who fit the description of the one who now placed his front paws on the railing and looked out at the lake. He could be that dog. The one across the lake wa