by Annie Knox
“Fair enough.”
“Now if you’re done demolishing that tarte, let’s see if any of the waitstaff can tell us something about Sherry and her mystery man.”
It didn’t take us long to get an answer.
CHAPTER
Sixteen
Our waiter didn’t recognize Sherry, but he signaled to his manager, a compact man in impeccable gray slacks and a navy sport coat.
“We were wondering if you recognized the woman in this picture,” Sean said.
Before Sean could lay the picture down on the table, the manager spread his hands in a halting gesture. “I’m sorry, but we value our guests’ privacy. I wouldn’t feel comfortable . . .”
His voice trailed off as he happened to glance down at the picture.
“Oh, her,” he snapped. “Yes, how could I forget this one?”
“Her name’s Sherry Harper.”
“I know. She told me about fifteen times, all while she made an almighty racket about our duck.”
“What, she didn’t like it?” Sean asked innocently.
“She didn’t even order it! She questioned the waiter about how the duck had been raised, whether it was free range or not. The poor man did not know, and that woman started quite a ruckus.”
“Free range ducks,” I said. “I didn’t even know that was a thing.”
“Well, yes, of course,” the manager huffed. “Any fowl can be raised outside a pen, and in fact we source our ducks, chicken, and geese from free range farmers, but that is not the point. The point is that she started yelling at my waiter because he couldn’t answer her question.”
“Oh dear.”
“‘Oh dear,’ indeed. When I intervened, she began grilling me about everything on the menu. Were the potatoes organic, were the beets genetically modified, had the apples been picked by workers with fair labor conditions? Yes, no, and yes, by the way. I assure you that the food we serve is of the highest quality, from ethical and sustainable sources. But she would not be satisfied by anything I had to say. At least her companion had the good grace to try to calm her down.”
Sean interrupted the manager’s tirade. “It’s actually her companion we were interested in. Did you recognize him? Or her?”
“It was a man,” the manager said, “but I don’t know who he was. Nothing really stood out about him. White, middle-aged, average build . . . maybe a little portly, like one of those former athletes who’s starting to show signs of age. I do remember thinking he looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him.”
I sighed. We’d hit a dead end.
“You might ask Ken,” the manager said. “As soon as that Sherry woman saw him coming out of the kitchen, she had a fit. I’m quite certain he recognized them both.”
“Ken?” Sean said.
“Yes, Ken West.”
“What was he doing here?” I asked.
The manager narrowed his eyes. “You’re not like this one, are you?” He stabbed his finger at Sherry’s face in the photo. “You’re trying to find some scandal so you can ruin my business like this one”—he stabbed at Sherry’s face again—“ruined Ken’s.”
I raised my hands in a placating gesture. “No, no. I didn’t mean that to sound like an accusation. I just know Ken—personally, I mean—and I was wondering why he would have been out here.”
Despite my protestations that I didn’t have any ulterior motive for my question, the manager had decided to tar me with Sherry’s brush. He answered, but his words were measured and his tone wary. “He does a little cooking for us. Strictly as an independent contractor. You have a problem with Ken, you take it up with him, you hear?”
Honestly, I didn’t have a problem with Ken—other than the possibility that he might be Sherry’s killer—but I was hoping he might be able to shed some light on Sherry’s mystery man.
• • •
Despite the looming threat of a murder indictment and the chaos of our new business venture, Rena insisted we invite Sean and Carla Harper over for dinner.
“His time is valuable,” she said, “and he’s insisting on representing me pro bono. If he’s going to be my lawyer for free, the least I can do is make him a lasagna.”
“Mmmm.”
“Look, I know you’re probably not dying to spend an evening with Sean and Carla, but you’re going to encounter the two of them together eventually. Might as well control the situation, prepare for it.”
We invited them to my house because Rena’s house was perpetually occupied by her father, who was perpetually fifty percent drunk and one hundred percent mean. As a result, I got my first opportunity to really meet Carla Harper on my home turf.
The Harpers were northern Minnesota’s answer to the Kennedys: a family dynasty of money and power dating back to the industrial revolution. They started coming to Merryville to spend summers at their rambling lodge on Badger Lake, but by the early 1960s the family’s center of gravity had shifted away from the business hub of Minneapolis and the political hub of Saint Paul to the leisure hub of Merryville. There was no need to stay close to the Twin Cities because, by the 1960s, the family business was simply letting their old money accumulate new money like a chunk of ice accretes snow as it rolls down a hill.
I had a case of the nerves at the idea of both this daughter of privilege and my old, estranged friend seeing my apartment. The space itself—the third floor of 801 Maple—had charm: dormered ceilings, window alcoves, gleaming wood floors. But Casey and I had furnished the apartment during the lean years of his residency. I’d handmade the curtains out of discount calico. I’d hand painted the dining table and the mismatched chairs (the table was a twin to the red one in Trendy Tails, only painted a sunshine yellow). And the couch. Oh, the couch. We’d scavenged it from Casey’s parents’ basement, where it had been clawed by generations of cats and stained by generations of Alter children. I’d made it over by hand stitching pieces of calico, including scraps from the curtains, in a crazy patchwork pattern. I thought the effect was both practical and charming, but it was a far cry from what my guests—both young lawyers—were probably used to.
Sean and Carla arrived promptly at eight, after we’d locked up Trendy Tails for the day, and just as Rena pulled her spinach lasagna from my oven and set it on a trivet to rest. Their knock sent Packer into a frenzy of barking and lunging and leaping.
“It’s so lovely to meet you both,” Carla said, her voice all crisp consonants and perfectly formed vowels, without even a hint of the nasal, upper Midwestern accent in it. She carried a miniature rose bush in a terra cotta pot adorned by a bright blue satin bow.
“Likewise. You two make yourselves at home,” I said, taking their coats and the hostess gift and waving them toward the heart of my apartment with its patchwork sofa and high-backed velveteen chairs. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“Wine would be wonderful, if you have it,” Carla said.
“Ditto,” said Sean.
While they settled together on the sofa, Sean’s arm draped across its back to rest casually behind Carla’s shoulders, I slipped into the kitchenette and studied her while I opened a bottle of Merlot. When I peeked through the pass through I saw Jinx trying to insinuate herself between Sean and Carla.
Jinx is what I call an aggressive snuggler. With the exception of Rena and me, Jinx will not tolerate anyone initiating snuggling with her. Snuggling must be on her terms. But when she decides she likes you and she wants to sit on your lap, she will not be deterred. Once there, she will make sure you pet her exactly as she wants to be petted (in fact, she prefers if you keep your hand still and let her move her head and body around beneath it). And every time you so much as glance away, she manages to wiggle a little closer to your face.
Sean didn’t seem to mind Jinx’s heavy-handed hints and her increasing violation of his personal space, but Carla was left swatting away Jinx’s tail as it swished in her face. I caught her wiping her hand on the arm of the sofa after touching Jinx’s tail. Apparently no
t a cat person.
I pulled my eyes away from Jinx’s shenanigans to get a really good look at Carla.
I’d technically met Carla back in the mid-1990s, when I was a counselor at the Soaring Eagles Adventure Camp and Carla had been a counselor in training. But nothing about that tween girl—with the outline of her training bra vivid beneath her T-shirt, her retainer lending her an insipid lisp, her hair a nest of flame-colored knots, and more elbows than sense—prepared me for the stunning woman who walked through my front door.
Unlike her statuesque mother, Carla was trim and petite. I had several inches on her, but somehow she held herself with such poise that she seemed taller. She wore tailored black pants—which would undoubtedly attract every cat hair in my apartment—and a crisp white blouse, the collar popped around a luxurious length of floral-patterned silk that formed a luscious arabesque about her long, pale neck.
I suddenly felt frumpy in my jeans and my fisherman’s sweater. Frumpy and a little plain.
Don’t get me wrong; the McHale girls are no slouches in the looks department, but if she were half a foot taller, Carla Harper could have been a model. She had eyes as wide and blue as a prairie sky, long auburn hair tamed to fall in sinuous waves about her shoulders, and one of those full, pouty mouths that make men think simultaneously of bedrooms and bridal parties.
I shared a glance with Rena. “Hot,” she mouthed.
No kidding.
I squared my shoulders and headed back to the den.
“So, Carla,” I said, handing her a glass of wine, “I understand you’re an attorney, too.”
She took a sip of the merlot and for a second it seemed her lips tightened. She was probably used to much finer wines than what I had to offer. But she didn’t make a fuss. Instead, she smiled sweetly.
“Delicious,” she murmured. “Yes, I practiced for a couple of years in Chicago, but when Grandpa Gene died and I took over the management of the trust, I moved back to Merryville. That was, heavens, five years ago now.”
“It must be interesting work,” I said, taking a seat in one of the oversized arm chairs that flanked the sofa.
“Sometimes. I spend so much time managing the trust, I don’t take on many clients and most of my work is transactional.”
I had no idea what that meant, but since she sounded disappointed I nodded in commiseration.
Sean must have sensed my befuddlement because he came to the rescue. “Carla did a lot of litigation, courtroom work, in Chicago. Now it’s mostly drafting contracts and getting signatures. Important work, but maybe not as exciting as strutting her stuff in front of a jury.”
“Ah.”
“Come on, folks. Dinner is served,” Rena called from the kitchen.
We adjourned to the dining area, and for a few minutes, we were consumed with dishing up Rena’s ooey-gooey delicious spinach lasagna, a lightly dressed salad, and golden garlic bread.
“What about you?” Carla asked. “Tell me how you started designing clothes for animals.”
I cleared my throat. “Well, it’s silly really. I studied fashion design at Wisconsin, and then when I moved back here, I didn’t really have anyone to design for. I made my aunt Dolly a dress for a wedding once, and my sister Lucy a formal for one of her sorority functions. But for the most part, my fashion degree was simply gathering dust.
“Then one day, I was taking Packer for a walk, and it was raining. He didn’t want to go, and kept tugging the leash to go back home. Every time he’d step in the grass, he’d do this little high-stepping move, like he didn’t want to get his feet wet. I knew I could buy him little booties online, but I figured I could make them myself for about the same price, and I could make them fit his personality.”
“His personality?” Carla asked.
“Yeah, Packer’s a bit of a dork, but he’s always trying to pal around with the bigger dogs at the dog park. I decided he needed some bad-ass boots to make him look a little tougher. So I used a black duck cloth and tricked out the tops with tiny silver studs. Then I decided that the whole look really needed a coat. And then a hat. By the time I was done, Packer looked like he was ready to ride off to Sturgis with the Hell’s Angels.”
“Which, by the way,” Rena interjected, “doesn’t fit his personality at all. That dog is about as tough as a newborn kitten.” She pointed at Packer, sitting on the threshold of the kitchen, staring at us mournfully. He made pitiful whining noises when he realized we were talking about him.
Hate to break it to you, buddy, I thought, but cheese and dogs don’t go together. You’ll have to settle for a couple of dog treats later.
Sean laughed. “He could be a tough guy if he wanted to. Look at those choppers.”
At that moment, Packer’s whole body rocked with a violent sneeze and he buried his head under his paws. Tough guy, indeed.
“But that’s the thing with fashion,” I said. “People dress for who they want to be, not who they are. I imagine if Packer had his choice, he’d be a tough guy. So I dressed him like one.”
Carla was watching me with a polite smile on her face, but Sean seemed genuinely amused.
“I like that. ‘People dress for who they want to be, not who they are.’”
“Right,” I said, momentarily letting my mouth get ahead of my brain, “like Sherry. Dressing to be a rebel peacenik instead of a trust-fund baby.”
For a second, there was dead silence at the table. You could have heard a rat tinkle it was so quiet.
“Oh dear. Carla, I’m so sorry. I didn’t think.” The words tumbled out of my mouth in a mad rush of mortified apology. “There’s a reason they call me Dizzy Izzy.”
Carla dabbed at her lips with her napkin. “It’s really okay,” she said. “You’re absolutely correct. Sherry did work hard to distance herself from the rest of the Harper clan. Which is why we weren’t especially close. At least, not since we were little girls spending our summers out at the lake house.”
“It sounds idyllic,” Rena said wistfully. Thanks to the charity of local church groups, she’d been able to attend summer camp, but there were certainly no lake houses in Rena’s childhood.
“It was. When we were little,” Carla said. “Now the cousins are scattered across the country, and most of my parents’ generation has moved to Arizona or died, so hardly anyone uses the place. It just sits there, empty. A waste, really.”
She looked around the table as though she suddenly realized she was baring her soul to virtual strangers.
“If the Harpers weren’t such a sentimental bunch, we’d probably sell off the land.”
From what I’d seen of the Harper clan, “sentimental” was not a word I’d use to describe them . . . at least any of them other than Sherry.
“The bottom line,” Carla said, “is that time has a way of changing everything, from real estate to relationships.”
That comment brought the conversation to a screeching halt. After that philosophical bombshell, it was hard to figure out where to go.
Sean stepped into the breach. “So, Izzy, tell me more about your work. Is designing for animals the same as designing for people?”
“Actually,” I said, grasping hold of his conversational lifeline, “cutting clothes for a dog or cat is a lot different than cutting clothes for people. Let me show you.”
I pushed away from the table to stand, and indicated that Sean should do the same. “You’ll be my model.”
“I have been called a dog a time or two,” he drawled. Then he laughed, just a low rumble in his chest. I wondered how old he was when his laugh started sounding like that, like the faint harbinger of a coming summer storm. His laugh struck me like a tuning fork, eliciting a harmonic vibration in my sternum.
I shook myself, disturbed by my inappropriate reaction. “Very funny, mister. So, first, with dogs and cats, the angle of the head relative to the body is totally different. Here, tip your head back.” Sean complied and I studied him with narrowed eyes. “Just a bit more. There, that’s abo
ut right. Feel how the collar of your shirt cuts into the back of your neck? I have to adjust for that.
“And the forelegs. They’re not just like arms. See, raise your arms to shoulder height.”
He spread his arms out to either side.
“No, not in a Jesus way. In a zombie way.”
Sean and Rena laughed. Carla’s lips tightened, and I worried that I’d offended her by making a joke about Jesus. “Sorry,” I mumbled with a nod in her direction.
Sean put his arms out straight in front of him.
“What do you feel?” I asked.
“Well, my jacket is stretched across my back.”
“Exactly. And in the front, there’s extra fabric bunching up at the joint. And finally, there’s the gravity problem.”
“I’ve never thought of gravity as a problem,” Sean quipped.
“In general, it’s not. But when you wear a shirt, gravity works in your favor. It pulls the hem down so it lays flat around your waist.”
I reached out to demonstrate by running my hands around his waist, but caught myself just in time. I glanced Carla’s way, and saw she was glaring daggers at me.
I cleared my throat. “Well, for animals, gravity is not good for the lines of an outfit. Gravity pulls the front of the garment toward the ground.
“When I design for animals, I have to take all of these things into account. I don’t just cut down the patterns, I have to alter their fit around the neck and arms, and I have to find some way to keep the lower end of the garment from dragging in the dirt.”
Sean smiled and nodded appreciatively. “You know your stuff.”
“Yes,” Carla chimed in, her voice as cold and sharp as an icicle shattering on cement. “If someone’s going to make clothes for animals, it’s important to do it right.”
I swear Rena actually leaned forward as though she might go for Carla’s throat. I grabbed her gently by the sleeve and pulled her back. I glanced at Sean out of the corner of my eyes. His head was cocked, and he was studying Carla like he’d never seen her before.
I plastered my most gracious smile on my face. “You’re absolutely right,” I said breezily. “I’m not exactly curing cancer, here, but it makes people happy, and I like to have standards.”