Paws For Murder

by Annie Knox

  Hal colored beneath his golfer’s tan. “So much of this auction stuff is just knowing about the opportunities and being in the right place at the right time.” Meaning, of course, that Hal had an in with someone somewhere, and he’d found out about the auction through back channels. “The sales are posted in the Merryville Gazette, and on the courthouse walls. So anyone can participate; they just have to look for the opening.”

  I read the Merryville Gazette every morning. I’d seen the page with the public notices, all in print so fine it looked like ant tracks. I never bothered to try to decipher what those notices said, and I surely didn’t haunt the halls of the courthouse looking for auction notices.

  No, like so many things in life, you had to have connections to learn about opportunities like this one.

  “What brings you down to the courthouse this morning?” Hal asked. “Can’t imagine you spent last night in the hoosegow,” he joked.

  I waggled Packer’s leash. “No, last I checked the jail doesn’t allow pets. I’m here because my neighbor has filed a complaint with the planning and zoning board arguing that the building in which I operate Trendy Tails is zoned residential, not commercial.”

  Hal laughed. “Let me guess: Richard Greene. Old curmudgeon got his own variance to open up the Greene Brigade, but he doesn’t want any of his neighbors to do the same. Virginia Harper had to fight the same fight when she opened the Grateful Grape.”

  “I didn’t know you and Virginia were close,” I said.

  He rocked up on his toes and jingled the change in his pockets. “We’re not. Word gets around, though. Small town and all that.”

  Of course. Hal wasn’t close to Virginia, but he had been close to Sherry. She was probably the source of his intel.

  “It certainly is a small town. And if Richard has his way, I’m going to get squeezed right out of it.”

  Hal laughed again as he clapped a giant paw on my shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. The zoning board wants new business. Richard will make you jump through the hoops, but if you’re patient, you will prevail. Virginia did.” He winced. “But then, Virginia had Carla to help her. Carla had moved back home by then, moved right in with her mom to help her out. Helped her out with the paperwork and all that stuff for the zoning board.”

  Great, I thought. Virginia had a dutiful daughter to help her with Richard Greene’s legal hurdles. If I were going to have legal help, I was going to have to rely on Sean . . . and I still wasn’t sure whether we were actually friends again, or if he was merely tolerating me for Rena’s sake.

  • • •

  When I returned to Trendy Tails from the courthouse, my troubles weren’t nearly over. I arrived to find Richard standing outside my door, a broom in one hand and a flyswatter in the other.

  “It’s now or never,” he said, shaking his implements of rodent war in my direction. “Either you get rid of that damned rodent today, or I call an exterminator.”

  “We just set the humane traps two days ago,” I said, following him into the Greene Brigade. “It takes a while for them to work. Give them a week. Please, I’m begging you.” I couldn’t bear the thought of Gandhi going up against an exterminator.

  “Too late. Your traps didn’t work.” Richard Greene sounded smug, as though he’d known all along that our nemesis was too crafty to be caught in something so banal as a humane trap.

  Sure enough, I made the rounds of the traps situated in out-of-the-way corners of Richard’s shop—so as not to alarm his customers. Each stood empty, its carrot nubbin bait miraculously gone, but the trap door unsprung.

  How had he done it? I was beginning to suspect that the pig could outsmart us all. Gandhi would go down in the annals of guinea pig history as a champion, a lion among pigs.

  “Richard, I don’t know what to say—”

  “Hush! Do you hear that?”

  I froze, listening intently. At first, I could hear nothing but the occasional rumble of a car passing by outside. But then I heard it, a quiet rustling.

  “Where’s it coming from?” I whispered.

  Richard glared at me and shrugged, his message clear: How the heck would I know?

  Carefully, slowly, I crept toward the opposite side of the store, pausing occasionally to listen, but the rustling grew more faint. Richard followed behind me, his makeshift weaponry raised in case he caught sight of Gandhi. I don’t know what, exactly, he planned to do with either the broom or the flyswatter, but I prayed I’d see Gandhi before he did.

  I changed tack, moving inch by inch toward the back of the store. Richard had torn down all the walls of the first floor of his converted house, leaving only broad archways between the front door and the back.

  Step, step, pause, listen. Step, step, pause, listen. Richard started to grumble something about hunting blinds, and I hushed him. The rustling grew louder. I was getting warmer.

  Suddenly, a flash of movement caught my eye. There, on a box right by the back door, sat Gandhi, contentedly chewing on the edge of the cardboard.

  “Get him now, Miss McHale,” Richard hissed, “or I’ll sic MacArthur on him.”

  I kept up my slow progress, doing my best not to draw the pig’s attention.

  I was a mere three feet away, Gandhi seemingly oblivious to my approach, when the back door to the Greene Brigade flew open.

  “Ta-da!” Aunt Dolly struck a pose in the doorway. “Richard Greene, I’ve come to take you out on the town!”

  For me, the next few seconds unfolded in slow motion: Dolly swept her arms in a grand gesture, knocking over the box on which Gandhi sat, startling the pig from his perch, and—before I could get the word “no” out of my mouth—he scrambled out the back door and into the night.

  “Gandhi!”

  But it was too late. Once again, the pig was in the wind.

  “Oh dear.” Dolly’s face fell. “Did I do something wrong?”

  “Wrong? Dorothy Johnston, you are the bee’s knees!” Richard reached out to pull Dolly into the store, spinning her in a surprisingly deft dance move that sent the skirt of her pale rose dress swirling about her legs.

  Dolly’s mouth formed a startled little “oh” before she giggled like a teenager.

  “My heavens, Richard! Whatever has come over you?”

  I suspected Richard wasn’t so much happy to see Dolly come as he was to see Gandhi go.

  CHAPTER

  Twenty-six

  Even with the prospect of a blizzard coming, Ingrid was determined to leave the day after the Halloween Howl, so that evening—after my trip to the courthouse, my misadventure with Gandhi, and an afternoon of stuffing goody bags for the Howl—I closed Trendy Tails a few hours early and we threw a small party in my apartment to send her off.

  “Merryville won’t be the same without you, Ingrid,” Taffy Nielson said, raising a glass of cider in a toast.

  “Good heavens,” Ingrid said. “You’d think I was gonna die. I’ll be back in May, like Persephone, bringing the summer with me.”

  “Are you suggesting that Boca is Hell?” I quipped.

  “Not at all,” Ingrid said with an uncharacteristically coy smile. “Wherever my Harvey is, that’s heaven.”

  “He’s a lucky man, your Harvey. You’ve been a good neighbor,” Richard Greene agreed in a voice hoarse with emotion. “Better than most,” he added, glancing pointedly in my direction.

  “Oh be quiet, old man,” Dolly said, nudging him in the ribs. She looked up at him through her lashes, a knowing smile gracing her lips. After Dolly had inadvertently sent Gandhi back into the wilds of the alleyway, I’d expected his sudden rush of affection for her to fade away, but it seemed my aunt had found her way into Richard Greene’s musty, dusty heart. They’d already followed through on my aunt’s plan to dine together at La Ming, and Richard had asked Dolly to accompany him to the Halloween Howl the next night.

  I had my fingers crossed that some of his affection for my aunt would spill over onto me and Trendy Tails, and maybe she’d be abl
e to convince him to drop his zoning board complaint, but so far, his warmth toward Dolly had not thawed his ire at me.

  As though reading my mind, Richard turned his full attention on me. “Young lady,” he said, his rich baritone voice vibrating with command, “a business is a serious endeavor. Legalities must be observed. Don’t think a trim ankle and a pair of big, beautiful green eyes will sway me from my civic duty to enforce all the terms of the social contract.”

  I sputtered on my cider for a second, before I realized that the trim ankle and beautiful green eyes belonged to Dolly and not me.

  “Yes, sir,” I replied. “I filed my paperwork with the zoning board this morning.”

  Ingrid took a seat on one of my overstuffed chairs. Packer trundled out of the kitchen and flopped forlornly across her feet, whining pitifully until she lifted him to her lap. “Sweet boy. I’m going to miss you, too, buddy.” She slipped him a tiny piece of the smoked sausage Richard had brought, but she wasn’t so quick that I didn’t see.

  “Oh, Ingrid.” I sighed. “You’re going to spoil him.”

  “I’m like his grandma,” Ingrid huffed. “I’m supposed to spoil him.”

  Ingrid ruffled Packer’s wrinkly head, and he scrunched himself into the space between her hip and the side of the chair, his front paws and head on her lap, a blissed-out expression on his face.

  “So, did you see Edna Malicki while you were at the courthouse?” Edna Malicki was the head clerk at the Merryville courthouse, and Ingrid and Edna had a longstanding feud. I think it started over a hinky hand of euchre. Or possibly over a raffle at the Elks Lodge annual Christmas party. Whatever its genesis, the dispute had ended a years-long friendship.

  It struck me as sad, but people in glass houses and all.

  While Ingrid sniped about Edna all the time, she also asked about Edna every chance she got, hitting up my sister Lucy, who worked at the courthouse, for all the dirt. I suspected Ingrid would miss her old nemesis once she moved to Boca.

  “No, I didn’t see Edna. But I did see Hal Olson,” I said. “He bought the old Soaring Eagles camp at auction this morning.”

  While Dolly perched on the edge of one of my kitchen chairs, Richard stood at attention by her side. “Was that today?” he asked. “I’d heard they were auctioning off the land, and I wondered who’d snap it up. Hal Olson, eh?”

  “Yep. He’s planning to turn it into a resort of some sort.”

  Richard huffed. “The Harper men must be rolling over in their graves. To think of the pristine view from the Harper lake house marred by a bunch of condos and shops.”

  “I can’t see the young ones getting fired up about it,” Dolly said.

  “Who, those two pups—what are their names? Veal and Tartan?” Richard asked.

  “Teal and Tarleton,” Rena corrected.

  “Right, Teal and Tarleton. What kind of names are those for grown men? I mean what’s wrong with Steve or David or Mike?” Dolly reached up to pat the hand he had rested on her shoulder, and her touch seemed to soothe him.

  Ingrid shook her head. “I think I’m getting out of Merryville just in time. First, we’re going to end up with that jackass Hal Olson for a mayor, and then he’s going to clutter up our lake with some cookie cutter development. And that’s going to run off all the deer, maybe the birds. The whole place will go to heck in a handbasket, you mark my words.”

  Rena, nestled in a corner of the couch, tucked her feet up under her. “Sad. If ever there was a cause for Sherry to take up, this would have been it.”

  Sherry did like a good cause, I mused, and protecting the land near her family home, the land that she had played on as a child . . . well, that would have been a humdinger.

  I sipped my cider.

  Yes, it was too bad Sherry hadn’t lived to fight this battle.

  I took another sip of cider, and let my mind drift. One by one the pieces began to swim into focus.

  I’d always thought Hal and Sherry were an odd pair. From what Rena had said about Hal, anything with two X-chromosomes would light his fire. But Sherry? I wouldn’t say Sherry had good taste in men, but Hal represented everything Sherry despised. What was she doing with him?

  I thought back to the night Sherry’d died. She’d yelled at Nick, called him a loser, but then she’d looked at the guests of the grand opening and almost pleaded with him, saying he was going to ruin everything. Ruin what? Ruin her relationship with Hal? Surely she wasn’t in love with him. I couldn’t fathom those two worlds colliding.

  If Nick was a reliable source—and there was a pretty big question mark there—Sherry had said she was dating someone with connections, that she didn’t really hate Nick, that someday he’d understand why she had been keeping her distance. Someday, he’d understand why she was dating Hal.

  What was it Hal had said that very morning, about how he’d managed to snag the Anderson property at pennies on the dollar? He had connections, inside knowledge. Sherry had implied to Nick that she needed or wanted connections, and Hal sure had them. But what did a loner like Sherry need with the type of connections Hal could provide?

  Eight a.m. at the courthouse. Sherry had marked today on her calendar, something to do at eight a.m. at the courthouse. We’d all assumed it was another protest, maybe a protest of the auction?

  That made no sense. Why would she cozy up to Hal and try to learn about his business acumen if she planned to protest Hal’s own big money play at the auction. No, she didn’t want to just protest the sale of the land; she wanted to buy it out from under Hal. That’s why she’d been trying to get inside information on what Hal was planning. That’s why she planned to hit the courthouse at eight a.m.

  It was all pure speculation, except for that notation in her calendar—eight a.m. at the courthouse. What if Sherry had decided to save the Anderson property by buying it herself? Her life spent making signs and marching in the rain would suddenly pay off, produce some real change, if she could buy the Anderson property and stop its development.

  Then I remembered the book I’d found in Gandhi’s baby sling—a book on wetlands conservation. A claim that development of the Anderson property would affect the wetlands and throw the lake’s ecosystem out of kilter would hold up construction for years. That might have been her Plan B: If she couldn’t outbid Hal for the property, she’d tie up his attempted development for years with environmental challenges.

  We had assumed Sherry’s text to Carla saying she needed money was just talking about living expenses. But it was more than that. She was calling in her chits for the big bucks . . . the money she would need to buy the Anderson property at auction.

  But if Dru was reading Sherry’s financial documents correctly, there wasn’t nearly enough money to withdraw. Sherry’s account balance was woefully low. Normally, Sherry might not have done anything about that, might not have even cared that the coffers were a little low. But with the land auction looming, she needed the cash right away. She would have been pushing Carla hard, demanding answers.

  “Rena,” I said, “I think I know who killed Sherry, and more importantly, I think I know why.”

  CHAPTER

  Twenty-seven

  I’d already made a fool of myself by accusing two innocent people of murder. This time, I was going to find some actual evidence before I started pointing fingers.

  First thing in the morning, I made my way to the Silent Woman. If it’s possible, the bar smelled even worse, seemed even seedier, in the bright light of morning. I found Nick snoring away in a booth near the jukebox.

  “Nick,” I said gently, trying not to startle him awake. “Nick, wake up.”

  “Wha—?” he muttered as he sat up and rubbed his eyes with the arm of his black hoodie.

  “Nick, it’s Izzy,” I said, as though we weren’t a mere two feet apart. “I need a favor.”

  “Again?”

  “Just a little one, and I promise this will be the last.”

  He glared up at me through eyes a demonic shad
e of red. “Okay, what do you need?”

  “Did Sherry write you any notes, letters, anything like that?”

  “All the effing time. Sherry was a real romantic, you know.” To my surprise, he dug into the pocket of his hoodie. “This is the last note she wrote me.”

  I took it gently, aware that this note obviously meant a lot to Nick. I quickly read it:

  “Spaghetti and a can of spray cheese, Sherry.”

  Very romantic indeed.

  “I know it’s a lot to ask, but could I borrow this for the day? Just the day, I promise. And I’ll take good care of it.”

  He narrowed his eyes, like he wasn’t inclined to trust me, but then he nodded.

  I scooted out of the bar as fast as I could, and hoofed it to the First National Bank, where I called in a huge favor from Lois Owens. Huge. With my evidence in hand, I called Sean with my hypothesis.

  • • •

  I thought Sean would want to talk to Carla alone, but he insisted Rena and I come along.

  “I’m sure there’s a perfectly innocent explanation, and I want you to hear it for yourselves.”

  I wanted to hear that explanation, too, but I suspected we had very different reasons. Even after I explained my reasoning to Sean, he was clinging to his belief that Carla was on the up-and-up. But if Dru thought the returns were hinky, they were hinky. It might have never come to light if not for Sherry’s sudden need for the money to buy the Anderson place. But if Carla was mishandling Sherry’s money, and Sherry was threatening to expose her, that gave Carla a motive for murder.

  Carla’s office was as crisp and tailored as she herself was: a glass-and-metal desk, sleek ergonomic desk chair, abstract prints framed in silver on the walls.

  “This is a pleasant surprise,” she said as she rose to greet Sean with a quick buss on the cheek. When she extended her hand for Rena and me to shake, I could see the hint of confusion in her eyes.

  She gestured that we should all sit in the camel-colored leather side chairs in front of the desk while she returned to her seat behind the desk.