Collared For Murder (4 page)

Dolly and Jack were almost to the door when Packer suddenly let out a yip and pulled away from Dolly, ripping his leash from her hands. Dolly looked back at me in helpless horror as Packer did a joyous pirouette and landed in a crouch, ready to sprint off to heaven knows where.

Great. I get invited to a potentially life-altering cat show, and I manage to release both a guinea pig and a dog into the mix within the first hour. Brilliant. At least the lights were on.

Without hesitation, I dashed after the dog, praying I’d get to him before he knocked over a table and sent a dozen cats hurtling through space. He started to scamper behind the table holding the grand-prize collar dangle, so I made an end run around the other side, trying to cut him off.

When I reached the back of the table, only a few feet from the ballroom wall, I realized Packer wasn’t running anymore. He’d found what he was looking for.

Packer sat, restlessly shifting his little body from haunch to haunch and occasionally licking his chops with his long taffylike tongue. Right at his feet, a plaid pant leg protruded from underneath the table.

My heart caught in my throat. I reached out a toe to nudge the leg, but I got no response. Passed out, or dead? There was only one way to know.

I stood on my tiptoes, caught Jack’s eye, and beckoned him over. A mischievous smile played across his lips and he gave me a suggestive wink as he walked across the room to join me, but when I pointed at the leg, he sobered right up. Dashing Jack disappeared and Detective Collins took charge.

He met my eyes and, without either of us saying a word, we bent down. That’s when I saw the rusty brown flecks that stained the blush-colored satin puddling on the floor. Jack lifted the fabric with two fingers, and we both peered under the table.

There lay Phillip Denford in a viscous pool of blood, a scrap of white cloth clutched in his hand and what appeared to be a pair of grooming sheers sticking straight out of his neck. I knew dead when I saw it, and Phillip was deader than disco.

I suddenly felt woozy. Alas, this was not the first time I’d been so close to a dead body, but it was the
first time I’d been so close to so much blood, and the scent rested like a bad penny on my tongue. A mixture of horror and fear seared my blood. I stood up, maybe a bit too quickly, and caught my balance on the edge of the table. The stand holding the grand prize teetered precariously from my jostling, and I snatched out a hand to hold it steady.

And that’s when I saw that the jeweled collar dangle was gone.

Five

F
or the first three hours, the ballroom was a madhouse. The Merryville PD had set up a flimsy perimeter of crime-scene tape to cordon off the front corner of the room, where we’d found Phillip Denford and lost the hundred-thousand-dollar collar dangle. I don’t know what I was expecting them to use, but I’d gotten the same yellow plastic tape at Parties Plus for Aunt Dolly’s most recent birthday party. It made the cops’ stuff seem oddly unofficial.

That impression was heightened by the low police presence. A group of officers was out on Highway 59 working a multicar-semitruck accident that had traffic backed up for miles in either direction, and another group had gone down to the Twin Cities to get trained in using the new body cams the department had
purchased. Jack was the only detective on-site, and he was dressed so casually, in cargo shorts and a pale green Henley, that he didn’t look like any kind of cop at all. I counted a meager three officers and two crime-scene techs, including the poor officer trying to man the door to the ballroom.

As soon as the first uniformed officer had shown up, cell phones had emerged from pockets and purses in a wave. Everyone involved with the cat show—from trainers to owners to random family members—knew that something big was happening in the ballroom, and everyone wanted to join the crowd inside so they could watch the drama unfold. The problem was there were two doors off the main hotel hallway that led into the ballroom: the main door up by my vendor table, which opened directly into the crime scene, and the one at the far end of the ballroom, which opened into the space in which Pris had set up her grooming operation. Two doors and only one officer, who was splitting his attention between guarding the main doorway and watching what was taking place behind the prize table.

In short, a steady flow of gawkers had made their way past Prissy’s Pretty Pets, swelling the crowd to nearly twice the size it had been when the first hue and cry had been raised.

Dolly didn’t want to miss a single detail, so she managed to worm her way to the front of the crowd,
closest to Phillip’s body. “It’s research,” she said. “Research for when I become a PI.” Personally, I’d been present at enough crime scenes that the actual mechanics didn’t particularly interest me. In fact, they nauseated me. I put Rena in charge of Dolly, making sure Dolly didn’t plunge past the crime-scene tape to “help,” while I fell to the back of the crowd, tugging Packer along behind me.

When I got clear of the horde, I knelt down to give Packer some loving. He waggled his little butt while I scratched his ears and cooed praises for being such an observant dog. He’d rolled over on his back for a good belly rub when I heard the weeping.

I turned to find Marsha Denford, Pamela Rawlins, and Mari Aames, all of whom must have found their way into the ballroom after Phillip’s body had been found. They stood in the same general area, but they didn’t seem to be together: no hugs, no clasped hands, not even any eye contact. Tears poured from Mari’s red-rimmed eyes, her cheeks mottled and the knot of honey hair on top of her head askew. Pamela’s thin crimson lips pressed into a straight, harsh line. She shifted from foot to foot while her fingers flew over the screen of her smartphone. Both were obviously upset.

Marsha’s behavior was the exact opposite. She also shifted her weight from foot to foot, but it appeared she was simply swaying softly. Her eyes were flat and glazed, and she was making strange pouty
expressions with her mouth, twisting her lips this way and that. I couldn’t imagine what it was like to lose the man you loved, so I hated to judge, but I’d been to college and I knew what “high” looked like.

I stood and walked Packer toward them. He seemed to pick up the mood and became uncharacteristically calm. He homed in on Mari, the one in the most apparent distress, and dropped to his haunches at her feet. She knelt down to greet him, burying her face in his bristly fur, and began to keen softly. “I don’t even like dogs,” she muttered as she clutched my boy close.

“How are you two doing?” I asked Marsha and Pamela.

Pamela scowled briefly at me before turning her attention back to her phone, her fingers never pausing. Even in the broiling summer heat, she was dressed in unrelieved black, a single pendant—what appeared to be a gold locket, a cat etched on its face—her only nod to femininity.

Marsha offered a bleary smile. “You’re so kind to ask.” A pale breath of laughter escaped her. “No one else has bothered.”

That struck me as hard to believe, but Marsha did have a standoffish nature. And, frankly, she didn’t seem particularly upset (though I suspect that had more to do with whatever had shrunken her pupils to pinpricks than with her actual emotional state).

“I think I’m fine,” she continued. “There’s so little point in being anything else.”

I didn’t expect such a Zen-like response from Phillip Denford’s pampered wife. She looked every inch the socialite. Her long red hair had been pulled back in a classic French twist; her vibrant red, low-heeled sandals and matching mani-pedi added a playful touch to her cream-and-navy linen dress; and pearls the size of Concord grapes hugged her earlobes. The only thing marring her look was what appeared to be a small hole by the right shoulder of her dress. What’s more, close-up I could see that her eyes tilted up ever so slightly and the skin on her cheekbones was pulled tight as a drum. Marsha couldn’t have been more than forty, but she’d already had her first face-lift.

“Can I get you anything? Some water or a chair? I’d offer to help you get closer to the investigation, but I’m not sure that’s anything you’d want to see.”

My words elicited another muffled wail from Mari.

“I’m just fine, dear. I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure.”

Over the four months of planning the cat show, we’d met at least a half-dozen times.

“My name is Izzy McHale. I own Trendy Tails, the pet boutique here in town.”

“Oh, of course. Where is my head? Izzy. Phillip spoke highly of you.”

Given my brief interactions with Phillip, he might have spoken highly of my breasts—which he had studied like an appraiser might study a piece of sculpture he was valuing—but he certainly hadn’t spoken highly of my brain. Every suggestion either Pris or I made about the show, from layout to schedule to catering, had been quickly dismissed, and he had clearly thought he could run roughshod over me in a bid to steal my business.

Speak of the devil and she shall appear. As if my thoughts had summoned her, Pris sidled up. She was a pale woman, her eggshell skin and platinum hair a perfect foil for her Nordic eyes, but at that moment her face was so bloodless it was almost gray. Her right hand clasped the handles of the leather tote she wore over her left shoulder like she was ready to make a run for it. I even thought I detected a faint tremor in her left hand when she raised it to brush an errant hair from her eyes.

She was still Pris, though, and she looked as polished as new silver in her summer-weight linen pants and blush-colored sleeveless silk blouse, not a drop of sweat showing despite the eighty-five-degree heat outside and her apparent agitation. In her three-inch heels she was able to catch my eye without tilting her head.

“What a mess,” she muttered. “I blame you, Izzy.”

“Me?” I had found the body, but I didn’t see how
that made it my fault. Besides, I was keeping hush about finding Phillip. I didn’t want to be mobbed with questions.

“It’s your terrible, rotten luck. Everything you touch turns to murder.”

“Murder?” Pamela said, her fingers finally going still. “Who said anything about murder? Was Phillip murdered?” she asked, turning to face me head-on.

Everyone in the room knew that Phillip had been found dead behind the prize table, but Jack had sworn me to secrecy regarding the cause of death.

I raised my hands to indicate I had no idea.

“Phillip had a bad heart,” Marsha said softly.

“I’m sure his heart was rotten to the core. But with this one”—Pris waved her hand in my direction—“hanging about, it’s almost assuredly murder.”

Mari finally stood up, her tear-streaked face the very picture of grief. “He can’t have been murdered,” she whispered. “Everyone admired him.”

Even drugged-out Marsha looked at Mari like the girl was crazy. “Admired and liked are not the same thing, Mari. Phillip was a hard man. I’m sure he had enemies. But,” she added, raising a hand to forestall any comment Mari might make, “he also had a bad heart. I think we should wait for the police to tell us what’s what.”

“Well,” Pamela said, “whatever killed him, we have
to decide what to do about the show. If it were just a single-day event, we’d obviously cancel.”

It seemed obvious to me that the M-CFO would cancel the show no matter how long the event was scheduled to run. You didn’t just pick up and carry on after something like this.

“But we’ve got hundreds of contestants in both the agility competition and the more traditional portion of the show. People have booked out every hotel in Merryville for the next four nights. I’ve been in touch with everyone else on the board and they agree: we need to proceed.”

Marsha, Mari, and Pris all nodded. Apparently, I was the only one who thought the death of the director warranted canceling the event. Before I could voice my suggestion that the whole shindig be canceled, Peter Denford made his way toward our little group. He was walking over from the empty judging ring I’d seen him in earlier, coffee still in tow.

Once again, he was dressed casually in linen and denim. He looked morose, his brooding scowl apparently his default expression, but far from heartbroken. In fact, he lifted the cup of coffee that seemed permanently attached to the end of his arm and took a long swallow before giving us a little wave.

Mari turned and threw herself into his arms. “Oh, Peter. It’s horrible. Just horrible. I am so, so sorry for your loss,” she wailed, her composure crumbling again.

Peter stood there, towering over Mari, one hand hanging loose at his side, the other held carefully away from his white linen shirt to prevent a fashion disaster from a coffee spill. He looked to his stepmother for guidance, but she just shrugged and offered him a tiny smile.

“Good heavens, Mari,” Pamela snapped. “Get yourself together. You’re making a scene.”

“Please give her some slack, Pamela,” Marsha said. “She hasn’t been feeling well. She even called this morning to say she’d be late because of a bad stomach, and you know Mari is not one to shirk from work. I think we can all stand to show her some compassion.”

Compassionate or not, Peter was not willing to be the shoulder Mari cried upon. Peter wrested himself away from her, managing to extricate himself from the tangle of her arms without spilling a drop. When he was free, he handed her his coffee and pulled his stepmother into a warm embrace. “I’m sorry, Marsha. You know I am.”

“I know, darling. Some things just can’t be helped.”

The two of them turned away from us for a moment, heads bent close in conversation. Peter clasped Marsha’s hands, holding them so tightly that I could see the white outline of his knuckles from several feet away.

When he stepped away, Marsha pivoted and collapsed on Pris’s shoulder. Pris hesitated a moment, a
look of uncertainty on her face, then gently raised her hands to pat Marsha on the back. Marsha clasped Pris to her for several minutes, and all I could think about was how Pris would react to having Marsha’s dark eye makeup smeared all over her blush-colored silk shell.

Indeed, when Marsha lifted her head, I caught Pris glancing down at her shoulder, which remained mercifully clean. She caught my eyes as she looked back up, and we exchanged a small knowing smile. We might not be the best of friends, but we’d come to know each other thoroughly since we’d become something like competitors in the Merryville pet-care world.

“Heavens,” Pamela said. “Suddenly everyone’s best buddies.” She sighed before continuing. “Today’s a wash, so we’ll have to move agility to tomorrow morning. We wanted to have the judging in all the rings spread out so visitors could watch everything, but we’ll simply have to double up here and there to make up for lost time. The closing masquerade ball will be held right on schedule.”

Holy cats,
I thought.
Body or no body, the show must go on.

*   *   *

Jack stood in the middle of a wide ring of Midwest Cat Fanciers, as though a force field were keeping the milling crowd at bay. By the time Phillip Denford’s body had been removed by emergency personnel, everyone involved in the show had heard the news and gathered
in the big ballroom despite police efforts to cordon off the scene. Even after a second officer had been dedicated to crime-scene security, guarding the door in Pris’s corner of the room, there were just too many back hallways and service entrances to keep would-be rubberneckers out. Still, the burgeoning crowd didn’t press in on Jack. The cat-show attendees all wanted to be close enough to him to get the scoop on what was happening, but there was some sort of invisible barrier they didn’t want to cross. As though death were catching.

As a result, Jack turned in awkward circles, voice raised, trying to calm everyone down while a couple of county crime-scene techs kept people from backing into the actual taped-off crime scene.

“Did Phillip die during the blackout?” someone asked.

“I really can’t comment on the time of death.”

I understood where Jack was coming from, but I was pretty sure Phillip’s body had been under the table long before the blackout. The blood beneath his body had been dark and sticky-looking, and he wasn’t actually bleeding when I saw him.

“But if it was during the blackout, someone should sue the hotel.”

“That’s really not a question for the police. And it’s certainly not something that needs to be resolved right now.”

“Was Phillip murdered?” This question came from
the opposite side of the circle as the first, and Jack spun around quickly. I don’t know if he was just responding to the question or if he was trying to see which of the dozens of middle-aged women in cat-themed sweatshirts had done the asking.