Puddles And The Vermont Murder

Puddles gave a small huff through his nose, then took one careful step, as if he was trying to decide whether the smell was friendly or not. Maren glanced at her sisters - Lila would be right behind her, and Ivy usually walked with her hands busy, like she couldn’t stand still. Today, Ivy held a paper bag with raffle tickets. Lila’s hair was pinned up the way it always was when she planned to help, even if she didn’t say she planned.

“What are you two doing?” Lila asked, her eyes following Maren’s stare. She smiled at Puddles. “He looks like he found a clue.”

“I mean… maybe,” Maren said. She didn’t want to sound silly, but the smell kept tugging at her thoughts, pulling them away from pretzels and toward the side of the building. “It’s near the town hall.”

“That’s where buildings smell like buildings,” Ivy said, trying to sound cheerful. Her voice landed on the word buildings like it was a simple answer. Still, her eyebrows lifted when Maren pointed.

The town hall doors opened and a gust of cooler air brushed over Maren’s cheeks. Under that, the wrong smell slid through - sharp and dusty, with a hint of something sweet that didn’t belong outdoors in July. It wasn’t loud enough to point at, but it was strong enough to make Maren’s stomach feel a little tight.

“It’s like… old paper,” Maren said, then shook her head because it wasn’t really paper. “Or like when something gets spilled and then someone tries to hide it.”

Lila tilted her head. “You’re sure?”

Maren nodded. “I’m sure enough that I don’t want to ignore it.”

A man in a beige vest walked past with a stack of flyers. A woman laughed near the fountain. Someone’s bicycle bell went ding-ding. Maren forced herself to breathe like she was just waiting for her turn to buy raffle tickets. She didn’t want to make a scene. She only wanted the truth to sit still long enough for her to look at it.

“Maybe we can just… check,” Ivy said, already moving her paper bag to one side as if she could shuffle the plan into existence without anyone noticing.

Lila’s eyes narrowed, not mean - just careful. “We can check, but we’re not running around town hall like we’re in a play.”

“I’m not,” Maren said quickly. “We’ll do it like normal. Like we’re just passing by.”

Puddles stood up and pressed his nose toward the ground, sniffing along the edge of the walkway where the brick met the grass. Maren watched his paws. He didn’t pull hard on his leash. He moved like he was reading a story written in smells.

“Okay,” Lila said, softer now. “Normal passing by.”

They started forward with the same pace as the people around them, but Maren’s eyes stayed fixed on the side entrance area. The shrubs there were thick and neat, and the brick wall was shaded. A narrow path led to a small door with a heavy lock. Maren had seen it a hundred times without thinking about it.

Now her nose insisted it mattered.

Puddles tugged once, gentle but certain, and Maren followed him, careful not to bump anyone. The square’s noise softened as they moved closer to the town hall. Even the fountain sounded farther away, like it was behind a wall of sound.

“You’re stepping on a leaf,” Ivy whispered, as if the wrong leaf could ruin everything. Her hand hovered, then she nudged her sandal off it.

Maren leaned down. “It’s not the leaf.”

The smell thickened near the locked side entrance, turning from faint wrongness into something sharper. It reminded Maren of wet string and warm metal. Her throat tightened, and she swallowed once, tasting lemonade from earlier in the day, as if her body wanted to pretend everything was fine.

Puddles suddenly stopped and stared at the brick wall beside the door. His ears pointed forward. He didn’t bark. He didn’t whine. He just stood very still, like he was listening to the smell itself.

“What is it?” Lila asked.

Maren crouched so her face was closer to where Puddles was looking. The brick was clean in most places, but here, near the bottom edge, there was a pale smear. Not paint. Not mud. It looked almost like someone had wiped something away quickly, leaving a thin streak where the color didn’t match.

Maren reached out, then pulled her hand back. She didn’t want to touch it wrong, or smear it more. “It looks like something got rubbed.”

Ivy leaned in, her ponytail brushing her shoulder. “Maybe someone dropped something.”

“Maybe,” Maren said, but the smell didn’t feel like dropped something. It felt like hidden something.

Puddles took two small steps closer and sniffed the seam where the brick met the door frame. Then he backed up, nose still working. His paws shifted, and he scratched lightly at the ground one time.

Maren felt her heart thump - not from fear, but from the feeling of finding something you weren’t supposed to find. Under the faint dust on the path, her sister’s hand moved quickly, careful, and picked up a tiny object that looked too small to matter.

It was a small button.

Not a cute jacket button either. It was dark and plain, with a faint shine. The kind you might find on a coat someone wore to work.

Ivy held it up between her fingers. “Where would this come from?”

Lila’s mouth tightened, and for a second Maren saw a different look in her sister - one that said Lila was thinking about grown-up problems. “Not from the raffle stand.”

“Maybe from a uniform,” Maren said, and then stopped herself. She didn’t know what uniforms were nearby. She only knew that the town hall was full of papers and keys and people who came and went.

The locked side entrance door sat quiet, like it was waiting for someone to open it. No one stood there. No one watched. The town square noise rolled on, cheerful and normal, as if nothing was wrong anywhere.

Maren stared at the lock. The keyhole looked clean, but the metal around it had a thin scratch, like something had bumped against it. Not a big scrape. A small mark. Enough to suggest someone had tried.

“Puddles,” Maren said softly, “is that why you came?”

Puddles nudged the button toward Maren with his nose. Then he looked at her face, eyes bright, as if he was asking her to understand.

Maren did understand something: the smell wasn’t just a weird smell. It was pointing. It was leading them to a place that had been touched.

A man walked by again, carrying a stack of papers under his arm. He glanced at them and then at Puddles. “Afternoon, folks. You folks with the dog show today?”

“No,” Lila said politely. “Just… taking a look around.”

The man smiled and kept walking, the moment passing like a leaf on a stream. Maren forced herself to breathe out slowly.

Ivy tucked the button into her pocket like it was something fragile. “So what do we do with this?”

Maren looked back at the smudge on the brick and the scratch near the lock. The evidence sat there, small and quiet. It didn’t shout, but it didn’t belong to the town’s usual tidy ways.

“We tell someone,” Maren said.

Lila’s eyebrows rose. “Who?”

Maren’s mind ran through names she’d heard at the town hall - people who helped with events, people who worked behind desks. She didn’t want to pick wrong. She didn’t want to accuse anyone without proof.

But she couldn’t ignore it either.

“The person who knows about keys,” Maren said, and then she realized how that sounded. She tried again, slower. “The person who keeps the town hall safe. Maybe the clerk.”

Ivy nodded, then hesitated. “But what if they say we’re imagining it?”

Maren looked at Puddles. He was still sniffing, careful and calm, like he had decided the world was safe enough to investigate. “Then we show them the button. We show them the smell we noticed. We say we’re not sure, but we saw something.”

Lila’s shoulders loosened a little. “Okay. We can do that.”

They stepped back, letting the busy square swallow them again. Maren kept her eyes on the side entrance as they moved away, but she tried not to stare too hard. She and her sisters walked like they belonged there, like they were just three sisters out for a normal afternoon.

Still, the wrong smell followed them in small pieces. It clung to the air near their clothes, and every time Maren inhaled, it tugged her thoughts back to the button in Ivy’s pocket and the scratched lock.

At the edge of the square, they passed the town hall notice board. A flyer fluttered in the breeze. Ivy pointed at it, but Maren’s gaze didn’t stick. Her eyes kept drifting toward the building, toward the place that had felt different.

“What if it’s nothing?” Ivy asked, trying to make her voice lighter.

Maren wanted to believe that. She wanted to believe the world was simple. But the smell had been too steady, and the smear on the brick had looked wiped, not washed away by rain.

“It might not be nothing,” Maren said. “It might be something someone didn’t want people to notice.”

Lila stopped walking, just for a moment, and looked at Maren the way she did when they were deciding whether to take a shortcut across a field. “You’re thinking about the bad kind of something.”

Maren nodded. “I am.”

Puddles sat beside her and rested his chin on her knee. His fur was warm, and his breath was steady. The comfort of him helped Maren keep her feet on the ground. She wasn’t alone in this.

They reached the front steps again, where a few people lined up for information. Maren could hear the clerk’s voice inside, calm and busy. Papers rustled. A printer clicked. The sounds were normal. The town hall looked normal.

But Maren remembered the locked side entrance and the wrong smell that had grown stronger near it. She remembered the little button, dark and plain, like a silent message.

“What do you say?” Ivy asked.

Maren swallowed. The word murder sat in her mind like a pebble that didn’t belong in her shoe. She hadn’t meant to think it. She hadn’t planned it. But the clues - someone trying a lock, a smudge wiped too quickly, a button that didn’t match the day - made her imagination reach for the darkest answer.

“I say we noticed a smell,” Maren said carefully, choosing each word like stepping stones. “And we found something small that might be from a person’s coat. And we think someone tried to get into the side entrance.”

Lila nodded once, determined. “We say it kindly. We don’t guess names. We just tell what we saw.”

Maren squeezed Puddles’s collar gently, feeling the solid comfort of the leash in her hand. The town square was still lively, still bright, still full of people who were laughing and buying tickets. That was good. It meant the town wasn’t falling apart.

It also meant the secret could be hidden in plain sight.

When they stepped toward the clerk’s desk, Maren kept her face steady and her voice small and respectful. The clerk looked up, smiling, ready to help with whatever questions came next. Maren opened her mouth, and the words felt like they had to climb a hill before they could reach the air.

“We noticed something near the locked side entrance,” Maren began, and she held her breath only for a second, just long enough to feel Puddles press into her leg.

The clerk’s smile didn’t disappear, but it changed shape, becoming more careful. “Near the side entrance?”

Maren nodded and reached into Ivy’s pocket only to point, not to pull anything out yet. “Yes. There was a strange smell, and we saw a mark on the brick. We found a small button.”

The clerk’s eyes flicked toward the side entrance, as if the building itself had suddenly become important. Behind Maren, the town square continued to hum with everyday sounds, but right there in front of the desk, something new had started - something that made Maren realize a mystery could begin with a smell and a tiny piece of cloth, and that paying attention could keep people safe.

End of chapter one. 5 more chapters in the full book.