Paws For Murder

by Annie Knox

  “Okay,” Rena said. “So Sean will be here soon. Maybe we can all go pay Jolly a visit.”

  • • •

  Jolly Nielson had nearly a decade on her sister, and her hair was the blue-black of a crow’s wing while Taffy’s was the color of sun through honey. Still, the family resemblance was uncanny: warm amber eyes, soft curvy bodies, and sweetly rounded features.

  Jolly’s studio and store were on Oak, right between the Spin Doctor record shop and the Grateful Grape. Sean, Rena, and I found her polishing a tray of hammered silver bangles. Jolly made jewelry that echoed natural forms, often using simple elements to create beautiful and unusual pieces, like polishing river rocks instead of using gems or using a willow wand to create a mold for casting a segmented silver necklace. Her work was wildly popular with Merryville’s upscale tourists.

  She greeted us with hugs all around.

  “I hope you don’t mind that we brought Packer,” I said, indicating the wheezing dog at my feet. “I’m always looking for opportunities for him to burn off a little energy, but I can take him for a turn around the block while you all talk.”

  “Nonsense,” Jolly said. “He can’t hurt anything here, and I love dogs. He’s a welcome guest.”

  She dropped to one knee, and Packer pulled his leash from my hand as he bounded toward her, raining sloppy kisses all over her face.

  “Packer!” I hissed, mortified by his bad manners.

  “Really, I don’t mind. Love is love, in all its forms.”

  Jolly stood again, and Packer dropped onto his haunches at her feet, staring up at her with frank adoration.

  “Well, look at this! The three musketeers back together again,” Jolly laughed. “You three used to be thick as thieves. It takes me back to see you all in one place again. Back to summer camp and twilight games of capture the flag. Those were good times.”

  Although Jolly was a little older than we were, and significantly older than her sister, she’d stuck close with Taffy during their summers in Merryville. They were always on the outside, of course, just seasonal friends, but she was right that those carefree summer days were some of the best memories I had.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “This is a little awkward,” Rena said, “but we were wondering if you’d heard anything about Sherry Harper being in a romantic relationship with a woman.”

  “Ah, taking advantage of my position as queen bee, I see. What makes you think Sherry was dating a woman?”

  Now it was Rena’s turn to blush. She opened her mouth to speak, and I thought she might spill the beans about her long-ago fling with Sherry, but Sean cut her off.

  “We don’t know that she was. We just know that she was involved with someone other than her longtime boyfriend, Nick Haas, and we haven’t ruled out the possibility that the someone else was a woman.”

  “Maybe this will help,” Sean said, handing Jolly the picture with the half-shadowed human figure it. “We found this in Sherry’s apartment.”

  Jolly raised an eyebrow. “Snooping in her house? You guys are pretty serious about this, aren’t you?” She clucked her tongue but took the picture and studied it.

  “Well,” she said, “I hate to break it to you, but this isn’t Sherry’s mystery date. This is her aunt Virginia.”

  “How can you tell?” Rena asked.

  Jolly set the photo on a table covered with glittering silver on luscious black velvet. We gathered around to see. “Look here,” she said, pointing at the blur of the woman’s right arm. “You see that little flash?”

  Just at the edge of the blurry figure, there was a white spot in the photo, a flash of light off metal.

  “Right beneath that flash, you can see one of the charms on a bracelet. It’s pretty small, but it’s distinct. A bunch of grapes with tendrils of grapevines. I made that charm for Virginia myself.”

  My heart sank. One step forward, two steps back.

  “Sorry,” Jolly said. “And as far as her love life went, I can’t help you. Sherry dated a couple of girls in her younger days, but I think she was just experimenting. Lately, I haven’t heard any scuttlebutt about Sherry at all.” She smiled sadly.

  “Well, that’s not entirely true. I mean, I do have an ear for gossip, and not just of the same-sex variety, and there’s always gossip about Sherry.”

  “Heard anything lately?” Sean asked.

  Jolly hummed softly, staring at the ceiling as she thought. “The other morning, I was at Joe Time getting a peppermint mocha latte.” She stopped suddenly, eyes wide. “Oh dear, you girls can’t tell Taffy I was there. She made me swear off coffee a year ago, tried to get me hooked on this detoxing herbal tea. She’d be crushed if she knew I was cheating on my promise.”

  “Your secret is safe with us,” Rena said. She cast a sidelong glance in my direction. “Turns out we’re pretty good at keeping secrets. Now, what did you hear at the coffee shop?”

  “It was probably nothing. Lois Owens from First National was talking to Diane Jenkins about Sherry. Appears she’d set up camp outside the bank manager’s office for a whole day, refusing to budge until he met with her. When he did, Lois said all the tellers could hear Sherry screaming away in his office. Once Sherry left, the manager told his assistant he wouldn’t take any more calls or appointments for the day.” Jolly chuckled. “Lois said the guy keeps a bottle of whiskey in his desk drawer, and all the tellers were going to take up a collection to buy him another one after that kerfuffle.”

  “Any idea what kind of bee Sherry had in her bonnet?” I asked.

  Jolly shrugged. “No. Probably one of her harebrained protest plans.”

  That made sense. Nick had said that Sherry didn’t trust banks, only dealt in cash. I couldn’t imagine what would have drawn her to First National other than a chance to raise heck.

  “I don’t think it means anything,” Jolly added. “That girl might have been on the side of the angels, but she did have a knack for rubbing folks the wrong way.”

  “Did you have a run-in with Sherry, too?” I asked.

  “Just once, and only indirectly. Only a few days before she died, actually.”

  My ears perked up. “What happened?”

  “She got mad at her aunt because Virginia let me onto the Harper’s lakefront property to pick some flowers and gather some rocks for my work. Nothing valuable or endangered, but Sherry still threw a fit. I think it had less to do with me taking the rocks and twigs and more to do with Virginia being the one to let me onto the property.”

  “Why do you say that?” Sean asked.

  “Well, she didn’t even look at what I had in my bag—two dead tree limbs, about six rocks, and three pine cones. If she’d looked she’d have realized that I wasn’t harming anything. Instead, she yelled that Virginia didn’t own the property and she needed to remember that she wasn’t a real Harper.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Sherry,” Rena said.

  I had to agree. For all her faults, everything pointed to Sherry being generous with her worldly belongings. She gave Nick a key to her apartment so he’d never be homeless, and she even gave me the last of her ginseng . . . despite thinking I was a terrible person for opening up a pet boutique. She may have used the Harper money to get by, but I’d never heard of her lording it over other people that she came from such a distinguished family . . . especially not her aunt Virginia, with whom she’d always been close. The whole incident really did seem out of character.

  “In any event,” Jolly said, “I haven’t heard a peep about Sherry involved with anyone—male or female—other than poor old Nick. I can’t speak for the straight population, but if she were seeing a woman, I would know. Unless it was someone from out of town.”

  Out of town. Of course!

  After we bid Jolly goodbye and bundled out of her store, I floated my theory to Sean and Rena.

  “When I was going through Gandhi’s sling, I found a receipt for dinner for two at the Mission in Lac du Chien. Maybe she was meeting
a significant other there. Could be someone from out of town. Rena, you said she was part of a whole network of activists, so maybe she met someone from Minneapolis or Madison.”

  “It’s possible,” Sean conceded. “It might even be someone local who was willing to drive a few miles to keep his affair with Sherry a secret.”

  “Only one way to find out,” I said. “We go to the Mission and see if anyone remembers Sherry and her dining companion.”

  “Don’t look at me,” Rena said. She pointed at her hair. “I’m not really the Mission’s usual clientele. They wouldn’t tell me anything.”

  “That just leaves us,” I said, giving Sean a hopeful look.

  He dropped his head. “Carla’s going to kill me, you know. We haven’t spent an evening together since Sherry died.”

  I struggled to keep my expression neutral and to quell the pang I felt in the pit of my stomach. Jealousy? Surely not.

  “You don’t have to come with me,” I said. “I could drag along my aunt Dolly, or even Ingrid.”

  He laughed. “Somehow I can’t imagine you making much headway with either one of them as your sidekick.” He sighed, but a trace of a smile still lingered. “All right,” he said. “It’s a date. I’ll call for a reservation. Tomorrow at eight?”

  I couldn’t tell if he was happy to go with me or whether obligation drove him to say yes. The boy who wore his heart on his sleeve had become a cipher, and I couldn’t help thinking I was partly to blame for that.

  CHAPTER

  Thirteen

  Late the next afternoon, I was adding silver studs to a shearling-lined leather motorcycle jacket—cut for a golden retriever—to match the studded leather boots I’d made for him the night before. As I punched in the final stud, I was startled to see Jack Collins from the Merryville PD bounding up the steps outside Trendy Tails. For a moment, I lost all sensation in my body. He was coming to arrest Rena. I had to signal her somehow, keep her from leaving the kitchen, hide her in the pantry.

  Then my brain processed the fact that he wasn’t in uniform and that he was holding an amazingly fat beagle in his arms.

  The brass bells above my door tinkled as he pushed open the door, sending a rush of bitter cold air swirling through the shop. I shivered before I mustered a smile for him.

  “Hey, Jack. What can I do for you?”

  He wheezed as he lowered the beagle to the floor where it immediately flopped on its stomach and let out a little doggy groan.

  Jack pointed down at the dog. “This is Pearl, my mom’s dog. She doesn’t like the snow. Had to carry her from the dang car.” He paused to glare down at the offending animal. “My mom can’t carry her, especially in the snow and ice, and I’m tired of having to drive by twice a day to shovel a little clear spot in the yard and heave Pearl to it so she can do her business.”

  “Ah. I can help.” I ducked out from behind the counter and led Jack over to the selection of snow booties. “Sometimes it can be a little tricky getting these on the dogs, but I don’t think Pearl’s going to put up much of a fight.” As if to prove my point, Pearl let out a very unladylike belch and rolled onto her back.

  “Since her, um, tummy is so close to the ground”—in a way no beagle’s should be—“you might want to consider one of these fleece jackets, too. They button at the front of the neck and down the dog’s back, so they’re really easy to get on.”

  “Huh.” Jack studied all of the fleece items carefully. He picked up a pair of lavender booties and matching jacket. His face reddened and he cleared his throat. “It’s my mother’s favorite color.”

  “She’ll love them,” I said. “And so will Pearl. But, uh, you might go up a size or two in the jacket.”

  Jack looked over at Pearl and heaved a sigh. “Yeah. I keep telling my mother she shouldn’t feed the dog chips and dip. But apparently Pearl likes French onion, and my mom can’t say no.”

  I died a little inside at the notion of Jack’s mom feeding her dog that crap. But it was my job to sell clothes for pets, not to judge their owners.

  As I rang up Jack’s purchase, he cleared his throat again. I glanced up to find his face and throat consumed in another furious blush. For an instant I saw grade-school Jack, a clunky fireplug of a kid who stuttered when the teacher called on him in class and who took numerous beatings on the playground just because his mom had told him he wasn’t allowed to hit kids smaller than he was . . . and every kid was smaller than Jack.

  “Uh, Izzy?”

  “Yes?” I started wrapping Pearl’s new outdoor gear in tissue, sealing it with one of our bright purple paw print stickers.

  “I stopped by Joe Time this morning. Ran into Jolly Nielson. And Ken West.”

  I paused a moment, but then continued slipping his purchase into a silver paper bag.

  “Jolly said you’d been asking her about Sherry,” he continued.

  There was no sense lying. “Yep.”

  “Look, I know Rena’s your friend, and you must feel pretty bad that Sherry died during your party and all, but you should be careful poking around in police business.”

  I looked him straight in the eye. “Am I doing anything wrong? Breaking any law?”

  A flash of hurt lit his hazel eyes. “Well, no. I know Sean’s got to ask questions for his client, and you’re not doing anything wrong, per se. I’m just worried about you. I know the police in this town, we seem like a bunch of donut-eating doofuses, but sometimes this job is really dangerous. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

  My heart melted a little. It was true, I’d always taken Jack for a bit of a doofus, but his concern seemed genuine.

  “I’ll be careful,” I said with a smile.

  I waited until Jack had hefted Pearl back into his arms before I handed him his bag, and then I held the door for him so he could balance Pearl and the package.

  Before I could push the door closed against the icy wind or Jack could get down the steps, Richard Greene materialized at the foot of the stairs, blocking Jack’s way.

  “Officer Collins,” Richard barked. “You should issue this woman a citation.”

  “For what?” I asked.

  “For public nuisance. You can do that right?”

  Jack cocked his head. “Well, yeah, but is she? I mean is she causing a public nuisance?”

  Richard crossed his arms across his chest, heels dug in for battle.

  “Not directly,” Richard said, “but she’s the instigator.”

  I rubbed my arms briskly, trying to stay warm without my coat. “I don’t think I’ve instigated anything.”

  “Yes, ma’am, you certainly have. It is because of you that I have a rodent in my store, destroying my belongings.”

  This again. I sighed.

  “Richard, I’ve told you that the guinea pig is not mine. It was Sherry’s. I’m happy to help you try to trap him, but you really can’t blame me for his presence in your store.”

  Jack shifted Pearl in his arms. “Sir, I don’t think this is a police matter. Perhaps you and Izzy could work something out?”

  Richard opened his mouth to argue.

  I cut him off. “Tell you what, Richard, I’ll come over right now to help you track down Gandhi. Let me just tell Rena to mind the store.”

  He nodded brusquely. I could tell the solution didn’t sit well with him, but he wasn’t in a position to argue.

  I ducked back into the store, glancing down at my watch as I called for Rena. Gandhi better surface quickly, because I had a datelike investigation to get ready for.

  CHAPTER

  Fourteen

  “There, in the map.” Richard Greene pointed at a wall unit packed with rolled maps, his finger gnarled by age and arthritis, but his tone and determination harkening back to his days in the military. It was that tone that brought me running to save Gandhi when Richard stuck his head inside Trendy Tails to inform us he was calling an exterminator.

  I followed his gesture. Sure enough, two button eyes peered out at us from a m
ap tunnel.

  I clicked my tongue softly against my teeth and extended a hand with a piece of carrot. “Come on, little guy. Come get some delicious carrot.”

  Gandhi’s nose twitched in his tiny auburn face.

  I kept up a steady mental monologue, silently willing Gandhi to take my bait: Yummy, yummy carrot. You need to come out now, little friend, or Mr. Greene might fry you up for his supper. And wage a private war against Trendy Tails to boot. Come on. Yummy, yummy carrot.

  The nose twitched again, and I was sure the pig was about to cave, when suddenly he bolted.

  Quick like a bunny, I dashed to the wall unit, hoping to catch sight of Gandhi before he disappeared again, but no luck.

  I glanced at my watch. I only had twenty minutes before Sean would be picking me up for our trip to the Mission, and Gandhi was nowhere to be seen.

  “Mr. Greene, I don’t think this is working.”

  “Your powers of observation are stunning, Miss McHale,” he snapped bitterly. “How do you propose to remedy this problem?”

  “I’ll get you some humane traps, help you set them with some greens and carrot to try to lure him out. We’ll get him, Mr. Greene. I promise.”

  “You better be right. I’ve been an upstanding member of this community for sixty-nine years. I believe I can call in a few favors and get that planning and zoning board meeting moved up a bit. One way or another, this animal nuisance will be eliminated.”

  • • •

  I dressed in a rush, spritzing on a little perfume to cover the scent of moldering paper that clung to my skin and slapping some mascara on my eyelashes so I’d look a bit less frazzled. Jinx sat on my dresser, tail flicking occasionally, but otherwise unmoved by my antics. I sometimes wondered if that cat thought I was just a big monkey, dancing around for her amusement. Packer, on the other hand, leapt frantically around the room, trying to help but managing only to get underfoot as I tugged on a pair of reasonably dressy boots. A quick barrette to hold back my hair, as I’d worked up a bit of a sweat hunting guinea pig and my wavy hair had worked its way into Medusa-like curls.