Collared For Murder

by Annie Knox

  That is, until she and Jolly started dating. Jolly had eight years on us, and she was comfortable in her own skin. With midnight hair, soft amber eyes, and a gently curvy body that she clothed in long dresses and her own nature-inspired jewelry, Jolly defined “earth mother.” She and Rena were peanut butter and chocolate: starkly different but oh so good together.

  Jack and I regularly went on double dates with Rena and Jolly, so there was nothing unusual about Rena inviting us to dine with them, but I could tell that the evening was special somehow. If nothing else, Rena was wearing a dress, and when I asked what the occasion was, she actually blushed.

  As usual, I didn’t bring much to the table other than a couple bottles of chardonnay. I was an adequate cook, but I was surrounded by greatness. Jolly, who had a knack for putting together a good cheese board, had laid out brie, fig preserves, sliced fresh stone fruit, a sharp manchego, and some delicate sesame crackers. We sat around the cherry-red table, sipping wine and munching on cheese while Rena put the finishing touches on her famous portobello tacos. Along with a simply dressed salad of mixed greens, baby beets, and goat cheese from a farmer one county over, they would be dinner. And Jack had brought dessert: a mascarpone-and-raspberry tart with a crisp chocolate crust.

  Seriously, with the three of them in my life, it was a miracle I wasn’t as big as a house.

  Jack spread a cracker with fig and brie, then topped it with a slice of plum and held it to my lips. While he wasn’t usually all that affectionate in public, Jolly and Rena didn’t count as public.

  As he leaned in to kiss a crumb from the corner of my lips, Val—Rena’s chocolate roan ferret—popped her head up above the edge of the table. She’d scrambled into Rena’s vacant seat and was eyeing the spread with eager eyes. Before she could decide which of the many tasty tidbits she should try to snatch, Jolly whisked her up into her arms.

  “Bad girl, Val. I thought we were teaching you table manners.”

  Val wriggled out of Jolly’s arms, took a flying leap onto a pile of kitty capelets, and then slithered herself away to frolic in the front of the store.

  Rena bumped open the kitchen door with her behind and carried in the tacos in one hand and the salad in the other, all the while trying not to trip over Jinx, who was doing figure eights around her legs. She set the dishes on the table and we started passing them around.

  “So, uh, Jolly and I have some news,” Rena said, her plate piled with food she had yet to touch.

  She reached out her hand, and Jolly brought hers up to nestle inside it. For a few seconds, they simply stared at each other, loopy smiles on their faces.

  Jolly giggled for no apparent reason, then cleared her throat. “We’re getting married.”

  I nearly choked on a piece of beet. “What?”

  “We’re getting married,” Rena repeated, the grin on her face growing wider.

  “That’s great news,” Jack said, pushing back from the table and walking around to give them both big bear hugs. I leapt to my feet and followed suit.

  “I’m so happy for you two! When did you decide to get hitched? When’s the wedding? Tell me everything,” I insisted.

  Rena laughed. “There’s not that much to tell. We’d sort of been dancing around the idea for a few weeks, but then I finally decided to just ask. Scariest five minutes of my life before she said yes.”

  Jolly gave her a playful punch in the arm. “It was no more than two minutes, and you knew I’d say yes. I wasn’t very subtle when I showed you a design for wedding bands.”

  “I was still nervous.”

  “So when are you going to do it? What are the plans?”

  “There are still a lot of decisions to make, but we’d like to get married in October. We were thinking of a destination wedding. Renting a couple of cabins on the north shore of Lake Superior for a few close friends and family and getting married on the beach with a bonfire.”

  I sighed. “That sounds so romantic.”

  “Way to set the bar, ladies,” Jack said.

  I caught his eye, and we both blushed.

  “Do you want to see the design for the rings?” Jolly asked. She was already out of her chair and rummaging in her purse.

  “Dang it.”

  “Is the drawing missing?” Rena asked.

  “Yes. I swear it was here.”

  Rena sighed. She got up from the table and walked over to the big oak armoire in the front room of the store, dragging her chair behind her.

  “Val?” I asked.

  “I imagine so.” When we’d first opened Trendy Tails, Rena had brought Val with her all the time. Packer got along fine with the ferret, and other than a mutual raising of hackles when they both wanted to sleep on top of the armoire, Jinx and Val basically ignored each other. But like many ferrets, Val was a tiny thief. Eventually, she stole one too many wallets from our customers, and Rena started leaving her at home during the days. In the evenings, though, she brought Val so the beastie wouldn’t get lonely.

  Rena climbed on top of the chair to reach the top of the armoire and felt around up there for a few seconds. While she was searching the top of the cabinet, Val herself leapt onto the chair Rena stood on and climbed Rena like a tree. She sat on top of the armoire, looking offended, while Rena looted the space.

  Rena returned to the table with a handful of goodies she’d found: a scrap of paper, a fountain pen, and a round gold locket without a chain.

  “There it is,” Jolly said, taking the scrap of paper from the pile.

  She handed it to me. On it she’d sketched a beautiful ring: two vines loosely entwined topped by a single rose blossom that held a gem at its heart.

  “Oh, Jolly. It’s gorgeous.”

  She blushed. “Thank you. It’s us, the two vines. Wrapped around each other but with space between us, and the rose is our love. Beautiful but, like all things in this world, fragile.”

  As she explained her work, she gently stroked the back of Rena’s head. Rena reached up a hand so they rested their clasped fingers on Rena’s shoulder. My heart melted for my dear friend.

  “What else did you find?” I asked.

  “The fountain pen looks like something Richard Greene would own. I’ll walk it over to him in the morning, see if it’s his. The locket, I have no idea.”

  Jolly reached down to take the locket from the table. She tsked softly. “See, that’s just sloppy work,” she said. “The jump ring that held the locket to a chain is bent. That’s why I like to fuse everything.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Well, like that collar dangle I crafted for Phillip Denford. I hung it by a jump ring from the top of the wire cage. But instead of just bending the jump ring into place, I soldered it. Once it was awarded to the winner, I would have had to snip the ring apart so the dangle could be removed for evaluation by the gemologist, but in the meantime—while it was hanging on that table where people and animals were jostling it—it would stay in place instead of knocking against wires and possibly marring the finish on the platinum.”

  Rena smiled up at her. “You’re so talented.”

  “Oh, shush. I’m just careful with precious things.”

  Okay, as happy as I was for the two of them, the goo-goo eyes and sweet nothings were getting to be a bit much. I took the locket from Rena’s hand.

  The outside of the locket was etched with the profile of a cat. I popped open its catch. Inside, there was no picture, just an engraving. G.A. from P.D. Always.

  I closed the locket and handed it to Jack. “Does that look familiar to you?”

  He turned it over in his hand. “No. Should it?”

  “I swear I saw Pamela Rawlins wearing a locket just like this.”

  “But her initials are P.R.”

  “Exactly. And she hasn’t been in the shop since the cat show started. So who does
this one belong to?”

  CHAPTER

  Twelve

  After dinner, the four of us lolled at the table, nibbling on Jack’s luscious tart. If I hadn’t been stuffed from all the food that came before, I would have wolfed down half the dessert. As it was, I was already thinking ahead to how delicious the tart would be for breakfast the next morning.

  “So. About that locket,” Jolly said. “I confess I’m intrigued.”

  “Well, I checked the armoire the last time Val was here, the day before we started setting up for the cat show, so it has to belong to someone who visited recently. Very recently.”

  I sighed. “We’ve hardly been here. If anyone would know who came in, it would be Wanda.”

  “Really?” Rena remarked. “You think Wanda would know?”

  “No, not really.”

  The bottom line was that Wanda was a lovely girl who was generally on time. I trusted her to be polite to the customers and to call 911 if anything caught on fire. But she was seventeen. Trendy Tails was just a job for her, and a low-paying job at that. Even when we had customers, she spent as much time on her phone as actually helping them. And she was none too bright. She’d friended me on social media, but posted all the time about the smelly dogs and sheddy cats at “TT.” Like I needed a code breaker to know what she was talking about.

  Ingrid might have been right that Wanda was on track to be a teen mom, but I hoped she dodged that bullet. Poor child could barely keep her own life together. I couldn’t imagine her being able to care for a child. And if she moved into the house? I’d never be able to hire more competent help.

  In any event, the odds that Wanda could remember who had come into the store over the past few days were slim to none.

  “Well,” Jolly said, “it’s probably someone related to the cat show. Maybe those lockets are some sort of Midwestern Cat Fanciers’ Organization baubles. The equivalent of the gold watches that corporations used to give to long-serving employees.”

  “No. They were more personal than that. Inscribed. But I think you’re right that it must be someone who is involved with the M-CFO. Otherwise, Pamela Rawlins having a similar necklace is just too coincidental.”

  I tapped the tines of my fork on my plate. “G.A. Who could that be? I’ve met a Sharon Andrews, a Donna Avilar, and a Toni Ackerson. All A’s but no G’s.”

  “And why would anyone from the cat show come to the store when they could do their shopping right there in the middle of the ballroom? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Well, the one person from the show who has definitely been here, other than Phillip Denford, of course, is Marigold Aames.”

  “But she would be M.A., not G.A.,” Rena said around a mouthful of tart. Jolly frowned at her, and Rena grinned, showing off teeth covered in cookie crumbs. “Oh, come on. You don’t love me for my table manners.”

  “G, G, G,” I muttered. “Wait, Jack! When Mari Aames was here, you called her Goldilocks.”

  “Oh right,” he said. “Old bad habit. When she was in high school, everyone called her Goldilocks, back when she had a bad perm and braces. She hated the nickname, but I picked it up from her high school friends who also attended UMD. She spent so much time trying to retrain us all to call her Mari.”

  “See,” I said, “that’s even more intimate. Not only is the locket engraved, but it’s engraved with an old pet name. The sort of thing a lover would know about.”

  Rena looked at me cockeyed. “Are you suggesting that the locket was a token from a lover? Because if so, that suggests that Pamela Rawlins and Mari Aames both had flings with the same man. The two women couldn’t be any more different from each other. I can’t imagine the man who would be attracted to both of them.”

  “I can,” I said. “Phillip Denford. P.D. He was attracted to everything with two X chromosomes. Lord knows he ogled me enough when he came by Trendy Tails.”

  Jack stopped with his fork halfway to his mouth. “He did what?”

  I smiled and patted his arm. “Easy, tiger. The man’s already dead.”

  He grumbled but went back to eating his tart.

  “Ah, but what did they see in Phillip Denford?” Rena asked.

  “I don’t know. He certainly wasn’t my cup of tea. But Ruth Kimmey told me that there were rumors about Pamela and Phillip last year. I don’t like to put too much stock in gossip—”

  “Really?” Jack asked.

  I scowled at him. “Really. On its own, I wouldn’t have thought there was anything to Ruth’s rumor, but when you combine the rumor with the matching lockets and the inscription from “P.D. . . .”

  Rena leaned back in her chair and reached out to clasp Jolly’s hand. “If Pamela and Mari were both having affairs with Phillip Denford, that gives them matching motives to go along with their matching necklaces.”

  * * *

  We all pitched in to clean up the detritus of our feast, and then Jolly and Rena took their leave.

  Jack leaned against the kitchen counter, an enigmatic smile on his face.

  “Do you have to get going?” I asked.

  “Only if you want me to.”

  What did I want? Jack and I had been dating for several months, and we’d managed to become more physically comfortable around each other with every passing day. If I’d thought for an instant that Jack was looking for a cup of tea or a beer, I would have ushered him up to my apartment already. But that slow, hot smile coupled with the way his body had relaxed, like he didn’t want to appear threatening, told me that Jack Collins was looking for more than tea.

  It had been years since I’d been physically intimate with a man—since my fiancé, Casey, left me. I didn’t know what to do.

  Finally, something in me broke. I enjoyed the relationship Jack and I had built so far, but I wanted more. From him.

  “Stay.”

  I took him by the hand and led him up the back stairs to my third-floor apartment. The dormer ceilings and small rooms made it difficult for a man Jack’s size to negotiate the landscape, but he did his best.

  We sat on my couch, a thrift-store find that I’d covered with patchwork pieces to hide the threadbare canvas beneath.

  He slipped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me in so my cheek rested against his solid chest. I could hear the syncopated rhythm of his breath and his heartbeat.

  “You’re tense,” he said. “You know you’re safe, right? That I won’t hurt you.”

  “Of course,” I replied, lifting my head to look him in the eye. “I know you would never physically hurt me.”

  “Gee, thanks. I would have thought we could take that for granted. I didn’t mean just physically. I meant what I said the other night. I love you. I will protect your heart as well as your body.”

  “Oh.”

  “You know I love you and you know I want you, but I’m the one who’s in the dark here. Where do you see this relationship going? Do you love me back?”

  I rested my head back down, more to hide from his intense gaze than to cuddle. “You have to understand. I’ve made plans before, and they all fell apart. It’s hard for me to forget that.”

  He pulled away, putting a little distance between us so I couldn’t hide from his eyes. “But you have to. Casey was a fool to give you up, and he’s gone now. I’m the man standing before you, pledging his love and asking for some sense of where our next steps will take us.”

  I took a deep breath. I thought of Ingrid and Dolly and Rena, throwing themselves into the fray of life, craving the good so much that they were unafraid of the potential heartache. “I . . . I care for you deeply. I think of you all the time. I’m happiest when I have you in my sights. If that’s love, then I love you, too.”

  “And what do you want out of life? We’ve never talked about this, always just putting one foot in front of the other.”

  “I want to
be happy. I’m not particular on how happy happens.”

  “Kids?”

  “I think my mother would kill me if I didn’t at least try. And, yeah, I think I would like to be a mom. You?”

  “Oh, absolutely. I want to coach soccer and teach a kid to fish and help him with dioramas of dinosaurs for middle school science class.”

  I grinned. “What if you have a girl?”

  “Same plan.”

  My grin melted into a giggle.

  Jack pressed his fingertips to his forehead, eyes closed, like a medium receiving a message from the great beyond. “I think I see happiness in our future.”

  “How far in the future?” I teased.

  “That’s going to depend on a number of factors,” Jack said, his voice a husky growl. He leaned forward to graze my earlobe with his teeth. “But let’s get started soon.”

  CHAPTER

  Thirteen

  Mari Aames or Pamela Rawlins. That was the question.

  The next day of the cat show brought with it a front from the south: low-hanging clouds, perpetual drizzle, and the occasional rumble of thunder from afar.

  As soon as we got the booth set up, I went off in search of Pamela Rawlins, planning to pick her brain—subtly of course—about her relationship with Phillip Denford. I’d be having lunch with Pamela, Peter, Mari, and Marsha later that day, but I wanted to catch Pamela alone so I might catch her off guard.

  I knew that the Siamese, Burmese, and Tonkinese cats were showing in ring six first thing that morning, so I headed in that direction, expecting to find Pamela showing Tonga. The ring was packed, but I thought tall, black-clad Pamela would stick out.

  I was wrong. Pamela was nowhere to be found.

  On my way back to the Trendy Tails booth, I swung by Ruth Kimmey’s table to ask if she’d seen Pamela that day. I noticed that Ranger had accrued a number of multicolored ribbons that were now attached to his hutch.

  “Pamela?” Ruth asked.

  “Yeah. I thought she’d be showing Tonga, but she’s not at the ring.”