NANOWRIMO IDEA # 4 FRANK AND JOE The mystery of the murdered mutts

NANOWRIMO IDEA # 4

 FRANK AND JOE

The mystery of the murdered mutts

The boys are older. Their days of being amateur sleuths are long gone.  Frank is sixty-eight and Joe is applying for Medicare.  Frank married Callie Shaw right after high school and Joe married Lola Morton in his third year of college.  Frank and Callie’s marriage lasted fifteen years and produced a son, Beau who became a lawyer and now is a local district attorney.  Joe and Lola had a daughter, Anne.  After college, Anne followed her grandfather joining the city police, where she has earned a position as a detective sergeant.  

            Recently, Joe moved in back in with Frank after Lola died of cancer.  The two brothers are living in their family home in Bayport, where Frank sells insurance and Joe is a high school science teacher when he isn’t playing guitar in a local rock and blues band. 

            Detective Anne Hardy tells her father, Uncle Frank, and Cousin Beau about a strange case she is investigating. Someone is killing family pets.  Dozens of dogs.  What is unusual is the dead pooch is found in a local park having been killed somewhere else.  Worse, the methods have all been different; poison, guns, knives, even explosives have all been used with no trace evidence where the crime was committed.  Anne admits everyone in the department assumes the deaths are the work of a disturbed teenage boy.  But she wonders if the crimes are an indication of something bigger. Beau mentions that he is looking into a local hate group.  He wonders if the killings are part of their initiation.  Frustrated Anne admits she is at a dead end. Loving a mystery, the Hardy brothers become involved.