Collared For Murder

by Annie Knox

  “Oh, she can’t show Tonga,” Ruth said, chin tucked to keep her words from traveling.

  “Why not? He’s a beautiful cat. I thought that was the whole purpose of her helping coordinate this show.”

  Ruth clucked softly. “No, ma’am. Tonga is a beautiful cat and was building up enough points to be a grand champion, but then he bit a judge.”

  “No!”

  “Yes. Burmese are playful cats. The judge was trying to engage Tonga, but she was using a cat toy held between her finger and her thumb instead of one on a dangle. Tonga went for the toy, but got the judge’s finger instead.”

  “So he wasn’t aggressive or anything. Just playing.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Phillip banned the cat from competition. Tonga’s strictly a pet now.”

  “If she’s not showing Tonga, why is Pamela even here? I haven’t seen her with another cat.”

  Ruth shook her head. “No. No other cat. She’s here in her capacity as a breeder.”

  “I didn’t know she ran a cattery.”

  “Oh my, yes. Exotipaws. She breeds both Burmese and Tonkinese. I’ve tried to tell her to stop bringing Tonga to competitions, but she just won’t listen to me.”

  “Why should she leave him at home?”

  “Because he comes from her cattery and, rightly or wrongly, he’s been banned from show for being overly aggressive. That cat is a constant reminder to potential buyers that Exotipaws cats are a gamble.”

  “I still can’t believe I didn’t know about her breeding business.”

  “As I said, Pamela is not the best businesswoman. The cat-breeding business is largely word of mouth, and that’s not doing her any favors. She’s already got a strike against her because she’s so unpleasant to be around. What’s more, she hasn’t come up with a strategy to separate herself from the biting incident and, in fact, keeps making matters worse by carrying Tonga everywhere she goes. I’ve told her again and again: no one wants a biter. I can’t imagine she’s making much money off of her breeding operations.”

  “So if she’s not showing and she’s not a reputable breeder, why on earth did Phillip Denford put her in charge?”

  “Pamela has been lobbying to coordinate one of the annual shows for years now. I think that’s one of the big reasons she had her little fling with Phillip, to butter him up. Phillip’s not really the sentimental type, so I can’t imagine that swayed his mind any.

  “To be perfectly honest, I think Pamela may have blackmailed him just a scooch. Not that their affair—or any of Phillip’s affairs—was really secret, but there are secrets and there are secrets, you know?”

  “No.”

  “Well, for example, we all know most politicians are corrupt, but we let it slide. But when there’s a news story about one of them doing a specific corrupt thing, we get all mad about it. It was that way with Phillip’s affairs. As long as he was discreet, everyone else—and I mean everyone else—was willing to be discreet, too. Act like it didn’t really happen. But if Pamela came forward, no one would be able to deny the truth anymore. The M-CFO would be forced to confront Phillip’s . . . lapses, shall we say. There would have been an outcry to have him step down as chair of the committee.”

  “I get it.”

  “What’s more, it would mean that Marsha Denford couldn’t keep pretending she didn’t know either. She’d have to decide whether to publicly support a cheating spouse or get a divorce.”

  With that, Pamela Rawlins’s motive shriveled. If she’d had the affair to get the position of coordinating the cat show, she’d gotten what she wanted. And if she wanted anything else from him, the threat of exposure would be her currency. There was certainly no need to kill the man.

  That left Mari as my prime suspect . . . the young girl having a fling with her boss. But how would that fling lead to motive for murder? I’d have to keep pressing if I hoped to find out.

  * * *

  Red, White & Bleu was Merryville’s newest restaurant, the creation of erstwhile caterer Ken West. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Ken—though he had been good to and good for my dear friend Taffy, who had started dating him about the same time I started dating Jack—but the restaurant was a huge asset to our little historic neighborhood. Ken served steaks, chops, hearty salads, and delicious home-style desserts in a relaxed, publike environment. I tended to have my favorites at the various eateries in town, and at Red, White & Bleu, I could happily devour a dish of their truffled mac and cheese and a slice of their house-made raspberry-studded almond pound cake every day of the week.

  I met Peter, Marsha, and Pamela at the restaurant. As soon as we took our seats around the rough-hewn pine table, I realized that I was a bit of an outsider. These people weren’t all just involved in the cat show; they were part of Phillip Denford’s inner circle.

  “How nice you could join us,” Marsha said, the slight slur in her words unmistakable.

  “Yes. I’m surprised to see you here.” Pamela didn’t sound surprised. She sounded annoyed.

  “Peter invited me,” I said, laying my napkin in my lap and leaning back so the server could fill my glass with water from a large glass pitcher he left on the table.

  Peter smiled at Pamela. “I’ve been talking to Izzy here about theartisanway.com.”

  “Oh?” Pamela responded.

  “Yes.” Peter caught my eye. “Pamela was one of the first artists to sign up for the Web site. She is an amazing quilter.”

  “Really? I’d love to see your work sometime,” I offered.

  “It’s on the Web site.”

  Okay, so Pamela did not have the warm fuzzies for me. I couldn’t imagine why she would be upset that Peter had invited me to consider selling my wares on his Web site. Unless she was an owner? But even then, one would think she’d want more storefronts on the site, and the marketability of my product had been proven in my brick-and-mortar store.

  Maybe she just didn’t like me. To be fair, I might not like me either, if I were her.

  “Your town is really quite lovely,” Marsha said, breaking the sudden, inexplicable tension.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I may be a little partial since I grew up here, but I actually like living here better than I did in Madison.”

  “How long were you in Madison?” Peter asked.

  “Eight years,” I responded. The number always took me by surprise. My time in Madison seemed so brief and long ago, yet Casey and I had been there for a significant percentage of our lives. “I went to the U and then stuck around while my then-fiancé attended medical school.”

  “Are you a small-town girl, then, coming home after so long in the big city?” There was a note of condescension in Marsha’s voice, but I chose to ignore it.

  “I never really thought of myself as a small-town girl. I had plans to move to New York, in fact. But Merryville now caters to such an upscale tourist trade that we have all the amenities of a big city but without the traffic.”

  Marsha and Peter chuckled politely, but I couldn’t even get Pamela to crack a smile.

  “I have to admit,” Peter said, “when Pamela reported back to my father that this might be a suitable town for the M-CFO’s silver anniversary, I thought she might have lost her mind.” Pamela blinked at him slowly, clearly not amused. “But I’ve been pleasantly surprised.”

  “Me too,” Marsha said. “Why, your little coffee shop . . . What is it called?”

  “Joe Time,” Peter said.

  “Right. So clever. Joe Time. They make their own flavored syrups, and I’ve been able to keep up my lavender latte habit. It’s the hot new flavor, you know.”

  Peter shivered theatrically. “I don’t know how you can muck up perfectly good coffee with all that milk and sugar and candy flavoring.”

  Marsha reached across the table to bat playfully at his arm. “We can’t all be coffee purists like you, Peter.
”

  “Sorry I’m late.” Mari Aames bustled up to the table and slid into the last remaining chair. “I had some things to take care of.”

  “Really, darling?” Marsha oozed. “Are we working you too hard?”

  Mari flushed. “No. It was, actually, uh, personal.”

  I fought to keep my hand from trembling as I took a sip of my water. I knew where Mari had been. She’d been having coffee with Jack. For more than two hours. Jack had assured me I had no reason to be jealous, and I trusted him more than I trusted myself, but a little corner of my mind wondered just how personal that coffee date had been.

  “So maybe we’re not working you hard enough?” Marsha asked with a small smile.

  “I . . . uh . . . You know I love working for you, Mrs. Denford. I love being busy. I promise. I just needed to pop out to pick up a couple of things. It only took a couple of minutes.”

  “Oh, relax, Mari,” Pamela said. Her patience for the younger woman seemed especially short.

  “Yes, relax dear,” Marsha crooned. “I am just teasing you. You’ve been working yourself ragged the last week. You’re entitled to have a few hours to yourself.”

  I wondered about Mari’s comment about working for Marsha Denford. I’d been operating under the assumption that she was Phillip’s girl Friday and that she had little to do with Marsha. It seemed that Phillip’s death had changed Mari’s employment situation pretty dramatically. The question was whether Mari would rather report to Phillip or to Marsha.

  When the server came to take Mari’s order, he brought a round of prosecco to the table. “Compliments of the house,” he said.

  I looked to the bar and saw Ken standing there, a portfolio open in front of him, a pencil poised in his hand. He raised the other hand in a jaunty salute, and I waved back.

  “How lovely,” Marsha exclaimed.

  “Yes. Ken West, the proprietor, is a friend.” Of our own accord, he and I probably wouldn’t have had much to do with each other, but thanks to his romance with Taffy, we were friends-ish—by default.

  Once the glasses were passed around, I raised mine in toast. “To Phillip. May he rest in peace.”

  “To Phillip,” the others muttered, and then there was a moment of silence as we all sipped at the bubbly.

  As we set our glasses down, I saw that Peter, Pamela, and Marsha had drained their glasses in a single gulp, while Mari and I had each taken only a sip. You could tell who at the table actually had to work that afternoon.

  “If it’s not too painful,” I said, “what was Phillip like? I met him a few times during the planning of the show, but those meetings were brief and all business.”

  Peter cocked his head and smiled at me. “All business?”

  “Yes. I mean, for me the show is all business.”

  “Mmmm-hmmm.”

  “My husband was a shrewd man. He had a passion for cats and for business, and he didn’t mess around with either one,” Martha said.

  We put the reminiscing on hold then while the server passed around our orders. I didn’t eat meat, but I could appreciate the rich aroma of Marsha’s lamb chops and Peter’s shepherd’s pie. Outstate Minnesota caught a lot of guff for bland, unsophisticated food, but everything on the table looked like it could have come from a high-end restaurant in Minneapolis or Chicago.

  As I tucked in to my mac and cheese, a homely dish elevated by the use of an especially sharp aged cheddar and earthy truffle oil, I thought about what Marsha had said. Shrewd. That struck me as an odd adjective for a woman to use to describe her newly departed husband. So unsentimental. But given that Phillip seemed to have been something of a cad, too, I could imagine that their relationship had not been as romantic as most other marriages.

  Peter’s smile spread into a grin. “Well put, Marsha.”

  The happier Peter seemed, the more annoyed Pamela got. “I was honored that he trusted me with coordinating the show this year. He had high standards, and being chosen to lead the twenty-fifth anniversary of the show meant the world.”

  Mari narrowed her eyes. “He let you pick the place, Pamela. Everything else, he left for me to decide. I’m the one he trusted. He might have given you the title of coordinator, but I’m the one who actually made all the arrangements. He didn’t even let you see the design for the prize before the jeweler delivered it the first day of the show.”

  “Hush, now, Mari,” Marsha crooned. “No one is doubting how much work you put into the show. We’re all aware of what you did for my husband. Every last thing.”

  I got the sense that there was a whole lot more being communicated at that table than a simple observer such as myself could comprehend. The relationships between these people ran deep and, it seemed, so did the resentment. I wanted nothing so much as to crawl inside their heads and understand why Peter was so amused, why Pamela was so annoyed, why Mari was so defensive, and why Marsha was so . . . whatever Marsha was.

  CHAPTER

  Fourteen

  As much as that pound cake was calling my name, I didn’t think I could stand much more of the odd company and fraught atmosphere, so I asked for my check and scooted out of the Red, White & Bleu as soon as I’d swallowed the last of my mac and cheese.

  After that awkward lunch, I decided that I was so close to home it would almost be a crime not to stop by the store to check in on Wanda and maybe take poor, neglected Packer for a walk. It would be good for Wanda, good for the dog, and good for me.

  When I walked in, I found Wanda actually helping a customer—a woman with a rat terrier on a leash, who seemed to be interested in purchasing him a trench coat. Because the coats were made to order, Wanda was kneeling on the ground, trying to take the wiggly dog’s measurements.

  “Hi,” I said, extending a hand to the dog owner. “I’m Izzy McHale. I’m the owner.”

  The woman smiled and took my hand. “So nice to meet you! I love your store.”

  “Thanks.”

  Wanda had hooked our jerry-rigged tape measure to the dog’s collar and was stretching it down his back, trying to keep it straight down his spine.

  “I’m Sandra Lowe.” She tugged gently on the terrier’s leash. “Savage, here, and I just moved to town from Detroit. Well, and we brought my husband and youngest daughter, too.”

  “Detroit? My gracious, that’s a long way. What brings you to Merryville?”

  “Retirement.”

  “Really?”

  “I know,” she said with a laugh. “Our friends all think we’re crazy, moving north instead of south. But my husband, Jesse, and I are avid outdoorsmen. We like to cross-country ski, snowmobile, hunt, fish, hike . . . you name it. Minnesota is like paradise. We were all set to move into one of the units at The Woods at Badger Lake, but Mr. Olson let us know a couple of months ago that there was a slight delay in getting the units move-in ready. We decided we didn’t want to wait until next spring, so we rented a place just outside of town and here we are!”

  Dear heavens. A couple of months ago? Hal Olson, our mayor and the man who founded The Woods at Badger Lake, had known since April that the whole project was on hold and might not ever get started again. Yet he hadn’t told these investors—these buyers—that there was even a delay until a couple of months ago? That was nuts.

  “So you already bought a condo?”

  “Oh, yes. We came out last summer to see the site and fell in love with the lake. And Merryville. We bought unit number one!”

  Last summer. Hal Olson hadn’t even owned the land for the development the summer before. He hadn’t bought it until October. If he was showing people the property before he owned it and selling condos that weren’t built, he was definitely putting the cart before the horse. But, of course, he’d probably needed those first few condo sales in order to pay the contractors who were doing the work. . . . I was no business wiz, but the whole situation seeme
d pretty sketchy to me.

  “Have you been out to see the unit since you got to town?” I asked carefully.

  “No, not yet.” Sandra frowned. “We’ve touched base with Hal a couple of times, but he’s so busy with being mayor and all, it’s been hard to pin him down.”

  Yeah. Busy being mayor. I was certain that wasn’t the only reason Hal was ducking the Lowes’ calls. He couldn’t very well drive them out to the site by the lake and let them see the piles of wood and rebar sitting idly in the sun. But it wasn’t my place to let this woman know that her future home was currently an abandoned construction site.

  “And now I read in the Merryville Gazette that Hal’s wife, Pris, may be in some sort of legal trouble. Something about a theft and a murder? We met Pris when we came to visit last summer, and it just doesn’t seem possible that she could be involved with anything so . . . so criminal.”

  “We’re all hoping that matter gets cleared up soon,” I said.

  “You’re a local. Is there anything we should be concerned about?”

  They ought to be concerned about the fact that they’d picked up their lives and moved three states over relying on a condo that might never be built. But, again, I couldn’t bring myself to tell Sandra that.

  “I promise the trouble with Pris is nothing to be concerned about,” I hedged.

  “I should certainly hope so. I don’t want to sound selfish, but we’d really like to see our condo, and I don’t imagine we’ll be able to pull Hal from his wife’s side while she’s in this predicament.”

  Funny thing was, while Pris was in this predicament, Hal seemed perfectly content to keep his distance.

  “How old’s your daughter?” I asked, trying to steer the conversation away from The Woods at Badger Lake.

  “Krista will be a senior in the fall. She’s not happy with us for moving her away from her high school before her very last year,” Sandra confessed.

  “Wanda here will be a senior this fall, too. Maybe she can take your Krista under her wing.”

  Wanda cast me a sidelong glare before smiling up at Sandra. “Happy to do it!”