Paws For Murder

by Annie Knox

  “You were serving foie gras,” Sherry said, punctuating her statement with an accusatory finger. “Do you have any idea what they do to the geese to fatten their livers?”

  I didn’t know. I didn’t particularly want to know. Like Rena, I ate vegetarian, though my meatless life had started more as a way to keep the pounds from creeping on in college, while Rena was a true believer. Still, pureed goose liver didn’t appeal to me in the slightest.

  I was spared the details by Ken throwing up his hands in mock surrender. “Yes, yes, Sherry. It was a grievous sin, and grievously hath I answered it. The geese lost their lives, and I lost mine. All is right with the world once more.”

  Ken came further into the store, carefully skirting Sherry’s position by the rack of kitty capelets, and propped himself against the front counter. He and I were now clearly squared off against Sherry, two against one. Whether I liked it or not, I was part of “Team Ken.”

  He unbuttoned his corduroy-trimmed barn coat and let his leather knapsack slide from his shoulder. The man looked like he’d stepped out of an Orvis catalog. “I have the final menu for tomorrow night, Izzy. I just wanted to go over it and get an update on the estimated number of guests. Didn’t mean to intrude.”

  “You’re not intr—”

  “Well,” Sherry huffed, throwing up her hands in mock surrender, “I see how it is. You’re trying to tell me that you’re worried about the welfare of animals, but you’ve got this monster catering your party. You’re just another cog in the corporate-farming, habitat-destroying, animal-torturing machine.”

  “Sherry, I really don’t thi—”

  She cut off my effort to restore the peace. “Don’t even bother. You’ve shown your true colors. I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

  She turned on her heel, her gauzy saffron-colored skirt billowing around her tights-clad legs, auburn hair swishing dramatically about her shoulders, and stormed out of the store.

  Ken chuckled. “She’s a piece of work.”

  “No kidding. I thought maybe I could talk her out of protesting the grand opening.”

  He shook his head. “No way. She’s like a terrier. Once she’s got hold of something, she just won’t let go.”

  A terrier, maybe, but I still thought “tornado” was a more appropriate metaphor: arbitrary, unstoppable, destructive.

  All I could do was take shelter and hope that her wrath would skip over my little store without doing too much damage.

  CHAPTER

  Two

  Ingrid Whitfield lifted the rhinestone-encrusted glasses from her nose so she could peer closely at a tiny set of fuchsia snow booties. “Are these for a cat?”

  I paused in the act of dusting a glass case filled with bejeweled collars and multicolored toenail tips to contemplate my long-haired Norwegian forest cat Jinx. She looked so sweet, curled in a sleepy spiral atop an old oak armoire, her tail swishing lazily with her soft kitty snores.

  She looked sweet, but I knew better.

  Jinx was eighteen pounds of solid cat, and she would claw me to ribbons if I tried to put shoes on her massive, tufted paws.

  “Definitely not for cats,” I said. “Those booties are designed for toy dogs, like Chihuahuas and min-pins. The snow and ice can do terrible things to their paw pads.”

  Ingrid clucked softly as she let her glasses settle back into place. “Never did understand why people wanted those silly, shivery dogs,” she huffed. “Give me a good retriever or hound any day of the week. A dog that can handle a Minnesota winter without fussy little shoes.”

  “When Packer wore those camo boots last month, you said they were adorable.”

  “That’s totally different,” Ingrid insisted. “Packer looked dashing and rugged in his hunting outfit. He’s such a handsome fellow.”

  I harbored no illusions that Packer the Wonder Dog was handsome. A pug-bulldog mix, he had a dour, wrinkly face with drooping jowls and mournful eyes. Casey, my former fiancé, had fallen hard for him the minute he saw him at the shelter, waggling his stubby tail, tongue lolling like a curl of strawberry taffy. I’d actually been a little jealous of Casey’s infatuation with the dopey dog—until, of course, he left us both. Packer was cute, yes. But handsome? No.

  “Packer’s going to miss you,” I said. I swallowed hard, fighting off another bout of tears at the thought of Ingrid’s imminent departure. “So am I.”

  “I’m going to miss you, too, dear. But this old broad can’t take another Minnesota winter. I need to get myself to sunny Florida before we get snowed in. Leave November first. I’m officially a snowbird now.”

  “You want to take Packer with you? I’m pretty sure he loves you even more than he loves me.”

  Ingrid laughed. “Oh, I could never break up your team, Izzy. But you and Packer are always welcome to visit us in Boca. Jinx, too. Harvey loves animals, and Packer might enjoy running on the beach.”

  I pictured the pooch galloping across a stretch of sand, bouncing in and out of the surf, wheezing with asthmatic delight, while Jinx basked in the melting Florida sun. “You’ve got yourself a deal. As soon as I get Trendy Tails up and running, we’ll all come visit you two lovebirds.”

  “Speaking of the store,” Ingrid said, “I’ve already picked out my outfit for tomorrow night.”

  I smothered a smile. Apart from her sparkly glasses, most of Ingrid’s clothes were better suited for a lumberjack than for an eighty-two-year-old woman. At the moment, she wore a pair of faded jeans, a red checked flannel shirt, a blaze orange hunting vest, and a pair of scuffed hiking boots. I couldn’t wait to see what she’d chosen for the big party.

  “What about you?” she asked. “Are you ready for the grand opening?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean? The place looks great.”

  I had done a lot of work on the space since Ingrid had locked the door of the Merryville Gift Haus for the last time at the end of September. The solid plaster walls boasted a fresh coat of sky-blue paint, the refinished oak plank flooring gave off a mellow glow, and countless small hats and harnesses had replaced the snow globes and duck decoys in the glass display cases, which had been polished until they shone like new.

  All the pieces were in place for Trendy Tails Pet Boutique to open, but I had mixed feelings about the opening.

  After all, this wasn’t part of “the plan.”

  The plan evolved the summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school, about five months into my romance with Casey Alter. The night of the closing cookout for the Soaring Eagles Adventure Camp, where we worked alongside half the kids from Merryville High, we sat beneath a lemony August moon and laid out our future: college together, followed by medical school for Casey, then a general and plastic surgery residency back in our hometown of Merryville, which would allow us to live cheap and pay off debt, and then on to New York City, where Casey would make the beautiful people even more beautiful and I would break into the world of fashion.

  For years, I thought we had it all figured out. We both earned substantial scholarships to the University of Wisconsin, where Casey committed himself to his studies in biochemistry and molecular biology and excelled. I did my part, studying textile and apparel design and forgoing the final year at F.I.T. in New York so I could make him dinner, do his laundry, and save him from anything that distracted him from his work. While he attended medical school and I played Suzy Homemaker, I also made ends meet by designing costumes for community theaters, belly dancers, strippers, clowns . . . anyone who couldn’t buy off the rack in south-central Wisconsin.

  In Madison, the plan worked. Then we moved back to Merryville for Casey’s residency, and it started to unravel.

  During our first few months back home, I’d puttered around our apartment on the third floor of Ingrid’s house, sewing curtains for the windows tucked beneath the gingerbread eaves and slipcovers for our thrift store furniture. But I wasn’t prepared for the lonely life of a surgical resident’s partner. Other
than Rena, most of my high school friends had moved away, and the rest were busy starting their families.

  We added Packer and Jinx to our home in an effort to ease my loneliness, but it wasn’t enough. Bored and broke, I’d taken a job at the Gift Haus on the first floor of the house. I thought I’d be moving on soon. I was just biding my time until my fabulous life in New York got started.

  But then, when Casey completed his residency and got the cushy position in a cosmetic surgery practice on Park Avenue, he announced “the plan” had changed. He’d still be moving to New York to make the beautiful people more beautiful, but he’d be going with Rachel Melbourne, the cute young dietician from Merryville General.

  Not me.

  For the next two years, the house at 801 Maple Avenue contained my whole life. Inertia and grief had kept me working at the Gift Haus on the first floor and living in the third-floor apartment. I knew I needed a new plan, one of my very own, but it was so much easier to lean on Ingrid’s plucky strength, share Sunday dinners with my parents (toting home baggies of leftover pot roast and baked chicken for my pampered pets), and spend my free time stitching up designer duds for Jinx and Packer.

  Ingrid was the one who kicked me in the pants when she announced her decision to close down the Gift Haus and move in with Harvey, the high school beau she’d reconnected with through Facebook. The retired lovebirds had already purchased a cozy condo on the beach in Boca, and were talking about getting hitched in Vegas before the year ended. They were going to live the Midwestern dream, spending the six months of winter in Florida and the six months of summer in Minnesota. Even though Ingrid would be back in May, she couldn’t keep the Gift Haus running with her new vagabond lifestyle.

  Ingrid suggested I should start selling my pet fashions full time. She even offered me a discount on the rent for the store until I got up and running, and my aunt Dolly offered to loan me the money to purchase inventory. Faced with the alternative of unemployment and a return to my old floral-wallpapered bedroom in my parents’ house, I’d said yes.

  Still, I couldn’t help but think that the shop was just another layover on the way to my real life. The sidelong glances my parents shared when I told them about Trendy Tails made me worry that it would be an epic failure. And my sisters, my darling sisters, kept pointing out that I’d gotten a fancy college degree to design clothes for two-legged clients, not furry ones.

  I heaved a steadying sigh.

  “Are you having second thoughts?” Ingrid asked.

  “It’s a little late for second thoughts.” Aunt Dolly’s money was already spent, and Ingrid had passed up a half dozen offers on the house to keep it open for me and for Trendy Tails. I couldn’t go back now.

  “It’s never too late for second thoughts,” Ingrid replied. “What has you worried?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe just that I don’t have the faintest idea how to run a business,” I quipped.

  “Business schmizness. You put a smile on your face, offer people a good product for a reasonable price, and you’ve got a business. All the rest, you just lean on your friends and family. That sister of yours, Dru, she’s an excellent accountant. Been handling my books for years now. She’ll keep you on the straight and narrow.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  “Of course I am. Now, you’re not disappointed about making clothes for pets instead of people, are you?”

  Actually, I wasn’t disappointed at all. I loved sewing the tiny garments, figuring out how to take the latest fashions in the glossy magazines and cut them down into smaller versions that were practical—easy on, easy off, and easy clean—as well as trendy. And I loved the animals themselves, not to mention spending time with people who adored their pets.

  “No, I’m not disappointed. But I’m worried other people are disappointed in me.”

  “Nonsense,” Ingrid huffed. “Who would be disappointed? Your parents? They’ve got a beautiful daughter who’s bravely tackling a new project and who gets to live her dream without moving all the way across the country. Your sisters? They’re sisters, and they’ll always fuss, but they love you like crazy. And your friends? Well, we all think you’re the bee’s knees.”

  I threw my arms around Ingrid in an impulsive hug.

  “Well, then. I guess I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” I said. “I just need Rena to stock the cases for the barkery, and we’ll be set for the big party. Soon, we’ll file the incorporation papers, and Trendy Tails will be official.”

  “‘We’? Did Rena change her mind and decide to make your partnership legal?”

  “No. I feel bad that she’s thrown so much of her own money into the business—buying packaging, cookware, and all the ingredients for her organic pet treats—and I told her I’d love to have her as my partner, but I guess her heart’s just not in it. She’s just helping me with the filing so I don’t screw it up. She was working at Spin Doctor when Xander incorporated, so this isn’t her first rodeo.” The Spin Doctor was the record shop across the back alley from Trendy Tails. With his gentle nature and subtle sly wit, its owner, Xander Stephens, had become a good friend over the last few years.

  As if on cue, the brass bell tied to the front door handle jingled merrily as my oldest and dearest friend, Rena Hamilton, used her hip to force her way into the store. A mountain of sunny orange cake boxes teetered in her arms, hiding all but her spiky purple hair.

  “Little help?” she called from behind her burden.

  I hustled over to assist her, plucking the three top boxes from the stack, and her elfin face emerged. “Holy cow,” she wheezed. “Wasn’t sure I’d make it.”

  “What have you got there?” Ingrid asked.

  Rena slid her stack of boxes onto the farm table we’d salvaged for the old dining room. Rena had sanded down the worn pine table, painted it a luscious cherry red, and decorated the whole thing with whimsical birds and flowers. She popped open the first box. “I’ve got pumpkin-banana pupcakes, carob canine cookies, and salmon kitty crackers.

  “Tonight,” she continued, “I’ll package the suet cakes for the birds, ball the melon for any reptiles who happen to join us, and whip up a bunch of my human chow.”

  “Human chow?” Ingrid wrinkled her nose.

  “It’s fantastic,” I assured her. “A sweet cereal mix with peanut butter, chocolate, and powdered sugar. Once you start munching it, you just can’t stop.”

  Rena opened a second pastry box and started arranging bone-shaped cookies on a plate. “Technically, the people could eat these, too.” To prove her point, she popped a cookie in her mouth. “They’re really good,” she mumbled around a mouthful of carob cookie.

  I laughed. “That’s okay. We can save them for the critters. Ken stopped by a few hours ago, and he has enough fancy people food to feed the Packers’ defensive line.”

  “I don’t suppose he’s making anything vegetarian, is he?”

  “Of course—bruschetta, hummus, some sort of roasted eggplant thingie.” Ingrid was making a face. She couldn’t grasp the notion of human beings not eating meat and didn’t understand why Rena and I would voluntarily consume so many vegetables. I grinned at her. “He’s also making little chicken skewers, crab-stuffed mushrooms, and beef pasties.”

  Ingrid sighed. “I’m going to miss pasties.” Thanks to the Cornish population of northern Minnesota, pasties held a prominent spot at most local celebrations. Tall, raw-boned, and formerly blond, Ingrid could have been a poster girl for the Sons of Norway. But she still loved pasties.

  Rena finished setting out her pet treats and joined us in the main part of the showroom. “Ingrid, do you think you can survive in Florida? No pasties, no lutefisk . . . and you’ll have to give up all your flannel.”

  Ingrid huffed good-naturedly. “Smarty pants. Yes, I’ll survive. I know exactly what I’m giving up: snow shovels and rock salt for the sidewalk. And I’m getting my Harvey.”

  Rena and I sighed in unison. Ingrid and Harvey had a romance for the ages.
Ripped apart when his parents shipped him off to military school, they’d lived their separate lives but never forgotten their first love. Then, sixty years later, a mutual interest in Johnny Mathis and a facility with social networking brought them back in touch. They’d picked up their affair right where it left off.

  “I want a Harvey,” Rena moaned as she sank down to sit tailor-style on the floor. She clicked her tongue against her teeth, and Jinx leapt down off the armoire, rolled her shoulders in a graceful stretch, and then draped herself across Rena’s lap like a heavy blanket. Rena was the only person who could call Jinx like that. I won’t lie . . . It made me a little jealous.

  “You’ll get a Harvey someday, dear,” Ingrid said, her lips curling in a knowing smile. “I had to wait until I was nearly eighty for mine.”

  “So another forty-five years? I guess I can swing that.”

  Rena had worse luck with love than I did. Sure, my breakup with Casey had been tragic and spectacular, but our relationship had been reasonably strong. Rena, however, had bounced from boy to no-account boy since high school, mostly flirting and fighting without any real commitment at all.

  Her problem, as I saw it, was that her outsides and her insides didn’t match. Rena Hamilton stood five foot nothing, but she had enough attitude for a half dozen normal people. She dressed in ripped T-shirts, grungy jeans, and Doc Martens. A row of skull-shaped studs marched up the curl of her ear, and her hair looked like it had been cut (and colored) by a hyperactive six-year-old. In short, she looked like she’d knife you in a dark alley to score a fix of heroin.

  That outside tended to attract guys who wanted to live fast and hard, guys who weren’t interested in forever, guys who liked their women the way they liked their beers: cheap and numerous.

  But inside, Rena possessed one of the sweetest, most loyal souls I knew. She cried at sappy movies, but she’d deck you if you ever commented on it.

  Rena wanted—needed—the boy next door, but she kept getting Sid Vicious over and over again.