Paws For Murder

by Annie Knox

  The Silent Woman, though, drew a harder crowd. A lot of long-haul truckers played a game of pool and raised a few before sacking out in their sleeper cabs in the Woman’s generous, edge-of-town parking lot. Herds of bikers on their way to Sturgis from points east would peel off the highway to have a cheap beer at the Woman every summer. And the local regulars were a far cry from the Chamber of Commerce and Lutheran Ladies set: all looking to raise hell and kill brain cells.

  The bar itself looked like hundreds of others scattered across northern Minnesota: posters for Jaeger and St. Pauli Girl beer (the latter displayed more for the busty blond models than for the beer itself), a cement floor littered with used pull tabs, the faint acrid scent of ammonia and rotting bar fruit in the air.

  It was dismal.

  And it was where Rena’s dad used to drink, before the stroke that rendered him homebound.

  Most of the time, Rena had left her dad to his own devices, happy that he’d chosen to drink in a bar instead of in their home. But on exactly three occasions she’d begged me to come with her to the Silent Woman to find him: when Rena needed the checkbook to pay the gas bill before it got cut off in the dead of winter, when she decided to warn her dad that the cops were looking for him after he plowed his car through a line of mailboxes on his way to the bar, and when she had to find him to let him know his mother had died. Every single time, he’d been sitting exactly where Nick was sitting that morning.

  “Sean!” Nick sat bolt upright on the scarred wooden stool. At first I thought he was sober. Sick, but sober. In the dim light from the shuttered window, I could see the yellow cast to his pallor. Without the bulk of his winter coat to pad him, I could make out the knobs of his spine through the thin fabric of his stained T-shirt. Yet, despite his skeletal physique, his face was round, puffy, eyes sunk in bruised-looking flesh.

  “Hey, Nick,” Sean said, resting a hand on his shoulder as he climbed onto the stool next to him. “How’ve you been, man?”

  “Fan-effing-tastic. Love of my life just died, man; how do you think I am? I’m an effing wreck.” He frowned. “Did win seven bucks playing pull tabs, but mostly I feel pretty shitty.”

  I suspected that Nick was a wreck long before Sherry died, but that didn’t diminish the pain of her passing.

  “I’m real sorry about Sherry,” Sean offered. “I know that must be hard for you.”

  Nick sniffed, mollified. “Yeah, well, I just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Take it one day at a time.”

  Sean and I exchanged a look. The irony of Nick invoking that mantra of sobriety—one day at a time—was not lost on either of us.

  “That’s a good attitude, Nick. Haven’t seen you in a while.” On the drive over, Sean informed me that he had represented Nick in two DUI cases, so Nick not seeing Sean was really a positive step in Nick’s life. “You been staying out of trouble?”

  Nick giggled, the alcohol allowing his mood to turn on a dime. “Haven’t been arrested, if that’s what you mean.”

  The bartender, a beefy guy with a half-inch plug stretching each earlobe and a tattoo of a dragon coiled around his neck, leaned in. “No more DUIs for Nick because he sold me his car. Ain’t that right, Nicky?”

  On the one hand, I knew Merryville was a safer place because Nick Haas no longer had wheels. But it saddened me to think that was the only thing keeping him out of legal trouble.

  Nick giggled again. “Got my very own limo service,” he said. “Don’t need a car.”

  Sean and I both looked at the bartender, who shrugged. “His mom.”

  Well, that was just dandy. Guy hits his mom when he’s drunk, but she’s willing to shuttle him to and from the bar. I was pretty sure that wasn’t part of the Al-Anon playbook.

  “Tell your mom ‘hi’ for me,” Sean said. Given Nick’s perpetual state of inebriation, I imagined that Sean had talked more with Mrs. Haas than with his actual client.

  “Nick,” I said, “we wanted to talk with you a bit about Sherry. Would that be okay?”

  His lopsided grin melted away. “Aw, man. Effing-A. Girl broke my heart.”

  “How long did you two date?”

  Nick reached out a hand, swiping it across the empty expanse of the bar, feeling for a glass that wasn’t there. The bartender cocked a brow at Sean, who sighed but nodded.

  The bartender pulled a beer, pale as lemonade, in a hazy pint glass. Nick grabbed it right out of the barman’s hand and took a long swig.

  He giggled. “Never drink anything other than American beer before noon.”

  I guessed everyone had to have standards, but this particular line in the sand didn’t seem to be holding back Nick Haas’s demise.

  Nick threw back the glass again, downing over half the contents. He swayed a little on his stool before finding his balance. “Me and Sherry, we were together off and on since high school. It was weird not knowing what she was up to, you know? We shared everything, and I guess I thought we’d always be together. She got me, you know? No one else gets me.”

  “You loved her,” I said.

  “Effing-A.” Nick finished off the beer with one last swallow.

  Sean and I exchanged a pained glance over Nick’s head. Poor Nick. He might have loved Sherry to the best of his ability, but I doubted he could love anything or anyone more than the booze.

  Sean pulled the wrinkled and chewed bar napkin from his jeans pocket and laid it gently on the bar.

  “Sherry had this with her when she died. Do you know why?”

  I held my breath. There were a dozen completely innocuous reasons for Sherry to have had a Silent Woman napkin with her that night, but I desperately wanted the napkin to be some sort of clue to her death.

  Nick reached out a short, square-tipped finger and traced the edges of the napkin gently, as though he were tracing the lips of a lover.

  “Gandhi got ahold of this, huh?” He smiled. “Cute little guy, but he chewed holes in all my good T-shirts.”

  “Nick, did you give Sherry this napkin?” The night of the grand opening, when Nick and Sherry were fighting in front of Trendy Tails, he’d said they’d been separated for a couple of months. If Nick gave Sherry the napkin, it would have had to be that night. The question was, did he give it to her before or after the fight?

  He dropped his head and looked up at me through his lashes. With a lopsided smile quirking his lips and a “you got me” glint in his eyes, I could see the ghost of the boy he had been, impish and charismatic.

  “Yeah. I know you told me to leave that night, and I did. Took Razor home and kenneled her. But I couldn’t leave things with Sherry like that, so I walked back uptown.”

  The truth likely had more to do with his fight with his mother and needing a place to stay than any desire to make amends with Sherry, but I let Nick tell his story the way he wanted to.

  “She was just giving up on her picketing when I got there, and I followed her around the side of the building to the alley.”

  “Why to the alley?” I asked.

  “She had some trash to get rid of. A paper plate covered in foil. She went to the alley to use the Dumpster.”

  His account squared with what Ken had said. Sherry hadn’t eaten Ken’s food; she’d thrown it away. Why she pitched the food but kept the plate, we’d probably never know.

  “Did you fight again?” Sean asked.

  Nick’s head tilted to one side. “No. Not really. First, she said she was sorry for what she’d said that evening. She didn’t really think I was a loser, and someday I’d understand why she needed her space. Then she told me to leave, and I swear I turned right around. But then she stopped me and asked me for a ride.”

  Stupid, considering Nick had been drunk as a sailor on leave that night.

  “At first I thought that was weird, because she only lives a couple of blocks from your store, Izzy. Then I thought, ‘well, maybe she wants an excuse to spend more time with me.’ I told her I’d sold the car, but I’d walk her home if she w
anted. But she waved me off, said that wouldn’t work. Guess she was going someplace other than home.”

  “Did she say where?”

  “No. I asked, but she just hemmed and hawed. Wouldn’t give me a straight answer. She sneezed, and I handed her the napkin. Always have a few in my jacket pocket. She’d already pulled out a tissue, but she took the napkin anyway.”

  He seemed to take comfort in that fact—that she would accept his gesture of kindness. No matter what you might say about Nick’s lifestyle choices, he clearly loved Sherry Harper beyond reason.

  I thought of Gandhi’s baby sling and all the odds and ends Sherry had tucked in there, maybe thinking they would come in handy, and I could picture the scene: Nick handing Sherry the crumpled napkin and her taking it, in case she needed another tissue later. But there was no later for Sherry, no chance to put all those napkins and strings and soy sauce packets and half-empty lip balms to good use.

  “What happened then?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Nothing. I can take an effing hint. She didn’t want me around, so I left. Called it a night. Hit the hay.”

  I didn’t know Nick Haas well, but even I knew that taking an “effing hint” was not his strong suit. And something about the twitchy way he fiddled with his glass as he spoke told me we weren’t getting the truth from Nick Haas. At least not the whole truth.

  “You just left, huh?” I pressed.

  “Yes.” He pronounced the word with exaggerated care, and there was a hint of a threat in his tone.

  I narrowed my gaze to study him, and he glared right back at me. He wavered on his barstool, but his stare was rock solid and turning meaner by the second.

  “Tell me more about Sherry,” Sean said, trying to defuse the sudden tension. “You two had split up before she died, right?”

  “Not my choice, man. Girl broke my heart,” he reiterated. “Said I didn’t have ambition. But that was the whole point. She used to go on and on about how her family only cared about money and stuff, you know? How she loved me because I lived in the now. I’m still right here, in the now, but suddenly that wasn’t what she wanted.”

  “You two had broken up before,” Sean said.

  Nick sighed, a dreamy smile ghosting his lips. “Yeah, we fought a lot. After a big fight, Sherry would always walk out and swear it was the end. But she always came back to me.”

  I thought back to the night of the grand opening and the look of unleashed rage on Nick’s face. Those must have been some wicked fights. I couldn’t believe Sherry would keep going back for more of that.

  “This time was different though,” he said. “No fight. Just ‘I need my space,’ and then out the door. I begged and pleaded with her for months. Gave up booze and weed.” He waggled his glass at the bartender, asking for a refill. “Well, mostly at least. But none of it mattered. She was always too busy to even see me. When I went to her apartment, she just yelled at me through the door. ‘Go away.’”

  He sniffed and then literally shook off his gloomy mood. “You know Sherry, always had irons in the fire.”

  I didn’t bother to point out that ruining my business had been one of those irons. It didn’t seem like the right time to mention it.

  “But whatever she was up to the last few months, she said it was the most important thing she’d ever done. More important than me, I guess.”

  He dropped his head to his hands, and I was afraid he would start weeping. “Worst of all, she was seeing someone new, someone who had ‘apser . . . aspirations’ and ‘connections.’ Someone who could really help her out.” Nick sneered while sketching quotes in the air with his fingers. He snorted. “I had an aspiration, too. Just one: to love Sherry. What’s wrong with that?”

  I could have delivered a dissertation about the dangers of living only to love someone else and having no personal goals beyond the circle of that love. But I held back for two reasons. First, Nick Haas was already so stinkin’ drunk that I didn’t imagine my words would be able to seep through the alcohol haze. Second, what? Sherry had someone new? Another guy?

  Holy cats.

  No one had mentioned a love interest for Sherry . . . other than poor, sad Nick, of course. Who was the mystery man? And, perhaps more importantly, why was he still a mystery? Why keep such a low profile?

  “Nick, did Sherry say who she was dating?” I asked.

  He waggled his head slowly. “Nah. I asked, but she said it was none of my business. Whoever it was, I bet he was the one who gave her that effing phone.”

  “What ‘effing phone’?” I asked.

  “That cell phone she was carrying.”

  Aha! I knew I’d seen Sherry with a cell phone the day she came in to Trendy Tails. It had a pink anarchy sticker on the back and the corners of the case had tiny tooth marks, evidence that Gandhi had shared some quality time with the phone.

  “Why do you think her new boyfriend gave it to her?”

  “Sherry knew all about cell phones, man. They give you brain cancer. Plus, they let the government listen to your conversations. Big Brother, man. No way Sherry would have bought a cell phone for herself.”

  I snagged Sean’s attention. “If she had a phone, wouldn’t the police have pulled her phone records? Maybe she called someone that night.”

  “I have a friend on the force. He said they pulled Sherry’s home phone records but no cell records.”

  “Why wouldn’t they have gotten the cell records?”

  “Maybe they don’t know about the phone. The phone wasn’t on her when she died. It must have been a burner phone, like drug dealers use: a prepaid phone with prepaid minutes bought at some big box store. No contract to trace. I bet with the phone itself, the cops could trace it back to whoever purchased either the phone or the minutes, but right now, I don’t think they even know it exists.”

  “How do you know this stuff?” The Sean I remembered knew about medieval history and classic rock. He didn’t know about the standard operating procedures of drug dealers.

  “Occupational hazard,” he answered with a smile.

  Sean leaned in across the bar. “Nick, you know the police think Rena killed Sherry, right?”

  Nick sputtered in disgust. “Rena? No way, man. Not Rena. She’s good people. Heart of gold.”

  “Do you know who might have wanted to hurt Sherry?” I asked. “Someone who was mad at her?”

  He raised his glass in a solitary toast. “Sherry was an effing warrior. People don’t know what to do with all that righteous power, you know? Half of Merryville wanted her out of the way because she held up a mirror, you know? Forced them to see themselves for who they really are.”

  “Any one more than the others?”

  “I can’t think of anyone. That Prissy woman acted like Sherry was gum on the bottom of her shoe, but she never threatened Sherry or anything. She just thought Sherry was a lowlife because she hung around with me.”

  I imagined Pris’s contempt for Sherry had as much to do with Sherry’s public displays of crazy as her choice of romantic partner. Still, disdain didn’t seem a likely motive for murder, especially since Pris actually seemed to enjoy demeaning people. Why would she want to eliminate one of her favorite targets?

  We’d hit another dead end.

  If Sherry had been stabbed or shot, I might have looked closer at Nick. After all, he’d admitted to coming back after their fight and being in the alleyway where Sherry died, and we knew from his encounter with Sherry and from his mother that Nick was in a genuinely dangerous mood that night. But Sean was right. Sherry’d been poisoned. As angry as he was, I couldn’t imagine Nick getting his act together enough to stage a poisoning—finding the water hemlock, drying it, somehow slipping it into her food. The guy didn’t even have a car.

  The only progress we’d made talking with Nick was that we now knew Sherry had a new boyfriend. It seemed to be a well-kept secret, so I wasn’t sure how we could suss out his identity. And we knew she’d had a cell phone, but it was missing in action.
Still, they were leads to follow.

  “The police didn’t find Sherry’s cell phone,” I said. “You don’t happen to know where she kept it, do you?”

  “Nah. Only saw her with it once. The night she died. She got a text, right as I was leaving the alley. Couldn’t believe my Sherry was texting like some middle-class suburbanite.”

  Rena had gotten a text the night of Sherry’s death, one that prompted her to take Packer out for a walk. Was it possible that Rena and Sherry were in communication? I immediately put the thought out of my mind. Rena had said the text was from Nadya Haas, and I chose to believe her.

  “I saw her stick the phone in Gandhi’s sling,” Nick said.

  “But I found the sling, and it wasn’t there.”

  Nick shrugged. “I don’t know, man. What can I say?”

  Someone else must have been in that alley between when Nick left and when I found Sherry’s body. Someone who took the cell phone. Her killer, perhaps?

  “Thanks for talking with us, Nick,” Sean said. “We’d better get going. We’ll see you round.”

  We were both sliding off our barstools when Nick shifted on his, hiking up his grungy Vikings T-shirt and rooting around in the pocket of his jeans.

  “If you want to look around her place for that phone, you can borrow my key.”

  Both Sean and I froze.

  “You have a key?” Sean asked.

  “Sure,” Nick said, as though having a key to his ex-girlfriend’s apartment was the most natural thing in the world. “We had a deal that I wouldn’t use it unless it was an emergency or Sherry said I could. I always respected Sherry’s privacy like that, but I guess that don’t matter much anymore.”

  Sean and I exchanged a glance. I could see the wheels turning behind his eyes. The phone couldn’t possibly be in Sherry’s apartment, as there hadn’t been time for her to go home after seeing Nick and then make it back to the alley to die. Still, access to her apartment might yield a clue to the mystery man’s identity.