Collared For Murder

by Annie Knox

  “Did you get pictures of Hal with another woman?”

  Pris laughed. “I wish. No, it’s just that I’ve been holding out for half of Hal’s fortune. With the fortune gone, half of nothing is nothing. I figured I might as well make an escape. So I got dressed up to meet the lawyer, then changed into more cat-show-appropriate clothes when I got back.”

  “But why hide this from the police?”

  “Because, like I said, with Phillip’s death and the Department of Natural Resources on the brink of ruling in our favor, our future earning potential was looking up. Now it’s worth biding my time, seeing if Hal can fix his finances and get us back to the standard of living I’ve grown accustomed to.”

  “But still. Tell the police. Just because people know you saw a lawyer doesn’t mean you have to go through with the divorce.” I leaned forward in my chair, willing Pris to see that her lie was unnecessary and if Ama took her information to the police—or, worse, the press—Pris could be ruined.

  “You don’t understand, Izzy. If Hal divorces me, I get nothing.”

  “But why would he divorce you? You’ve been together for years.”

  “Hal has political ambitions. The position of mayor is just the first step in what Hal hopes will be a long and successful political career. But he knows what people think of him. He’s got this good-ol’-boy image that might work in Merryville but would be a tough sell for statewide office. I’m his polish. That’s why he’s kept me all these years.”

  “So, you’re still his polish.”

  “Not if I go to a lawyer. Then, suddenly, I become a chink in his armor. I become the marital problem that will haunt his campaigns. I become an embarrassment. At that point, he’s just as good without me as he is with me. As long as there’s still hope for a financial windfall, I can’t have Hal dumping me.”

  CHAPTER

  Nineteen

  I was blessed with some of the best friends a girl could hope to have, but sometimes that girl just needs her mom.

  My parents still live in the house in which I grew up, still host dinners every Sunday afternoon to bring us all together, so I’m truly going home when I visit them.

  The living room hadn’t changed a whit since I was a child. My parents were comfortable, but too frugal to go buy new furniture just because the plaid sofa and burnt-umber chairs were no longer fashionable. I sat in the corner of the sofa that had always been mine and pulled a needlepoint throw pillow up to my chest.

  My dad, a tall man with hair the color of frost, came over to ruffle my hair and kiss my forehead. Then he slipped through the pocket doors that led to his study, pulled out one of his beloved history books, and kicked back his recliner.

  My parents had both taught at Merryville High, Mom, English and Dad, history and geography. Retired now, they each continued their passion in life. Where my mother focused her energies outward, continuing to tutor adults for their GED exams and assisting the community theater with their productions of classic plays, my dad had drifted farther and farther into himself. He seemed to delight in the stories we told over Sunday dinner, but he kept to himself. We all knew he continued to love us dearly, but he’d long since realized that the problems of daughters are often best managed by mothers. So he didn’t even question why I’d shown up on a random afternoon; he just kissed me and disappeared.

  “So what’s going on, Izzy?”

  “I just wanted to see you.”

  My mother cocked her head. “That’s lovely, dear, but with all you have going on, ‘just seeing me’ could have waited until Sunday. Tell me what’s really going on.”

  “Would you be willing to take on a guinea pig?”

  “Well, that’s certainly not what I was expecting.”

  “It’s Gandhi. We’ve finally captured him, but I don’t know what to do with him. Rena can’t take him home because Val would try to eat him. I have the same problem with Jinx. I’m just not sure where he can go and be safe.”

  My mom smiled. “Tell you what. You can bring him over here for a few weeks and then, just before school starts, you can find an elementary school class in need of a guinea pig. Fair?”

  “Fair? That’s brilliant. I never would have thought of taking him to a school, but it’s genius.”

  “Now, my precious girl, tell my why you’re really here. That guinea pig makes a great excuse for you to drop in, but I can tell you’re troubled.”

  I stared into the middle distance for a few moments, allowing the silence to build between us. When I spoke, my voice didn’t sound like my own.

  “I think I just needed to be reminded that real love and honest marriages do still exist. I just talked to Pris, and you know what a sham her marriage to Hal is. And I’ve been talking with everyone about the Denfords, and it seems their marriage was even worse. While Hal at least attempts to keep his shenanigans a secret, Phillip Denford was having an affair with his secretary right under his wife’s nose. And while Pris is a little low on friends at the moment, she does enjoy ruling the women of Merryville with her mighty will. From what I can discern, poor Marsha is left with no support, save her stepson and several prescriptions for numbness.”

  I sighed. “And then there’s my own life, with Casey claiming to love me for all those years only to leave me when our dreams were about to come to fruition.”

  “Well, I can’t speak for the Olsons or the Denfords, but you did make a mighty mistake trusting that Casey Alter.”

  I clutched my pillow tighter and stared at my mom. She was a trim woman, much shorter than her girls, with a halo of salt-and-pepper curls and expressive amber eyes. In her day, she’d been a babe, and she was aging well.

  “Mom, how can you say that? It’s not like I could have known that Casey was going to dump me.”

  My mother leaned back in the oversized armchair she favored. “I don’t see why not. All the rest of us could see it coming a mile away.”

  “Well, for the love of Mike, why didn’t one of you tell me? Prepare me for the heartache?” If I’d come looking for tea and sympathy, I’d come to the wrong woman. My sister Dru came by her straight-talking honestly, a clear mimic of my mother.

  “I would have done anything to spare you that misery, but telling you wouldn’t have done a lick of good. You were in love, and if one of us had said something ill about your beloved, it would have caused a rift in the family. Besides, your father and I have always believed it was best to let you girls make your own mistakes and learn the lessons from them.”

  I rolled my eyes. “What lesson did I learn from wasting seventeen years of my life? The whole thing seems to have made me afraid of any sort of commitment.”

  “Not true. You and Casey were both caught up in the life you had planned together. I’m not saying you didn’t love him, but at least part of your feelings stemmed from your dreams of the future. You were always talking about how great your life would be when you moved to New York, like the city was some magic drug that would fix all your problems. What I hope you learned is that real love is in the here and now. You have to love someone for who he is, not who he’ll become.”

  I twined a lock of hair around one finger and thought about what she’d said. It was true that Casey and I’d had every step of our lives planned out, and I was in love with our destination. I put up with a lot of crap from him because I thought it would all get better.

  “Mom, I’m afraid he broke my heart too bad.”

  My mother left her chair to come sit by me and wrap her arms around me. “Baby, you have the biggest heart I know. Casey may have rattled it, but it’s not broken. Look at how close you’ve grown to Jack.”

  I pressed my cheek to her sweater. “That’s just it. I love Jack, but I’m having a hard time committing to the relationship. I just don’t quite feel like I’m all in, you know?”

  Mom pulled away and brushed the hair from my eyes so
she could look into them. “People always say that love is fast and exciting in the beginning and then the fun fades. But that’s not true. Love is like a roller coaster. There is a thrilling rush of anticipation as you climb that first big hill, but then, for a moment, you’re teetering at the top and you think, ‘Wow, this was a terrible idea.’ The biggest rush is when you let yourself fall over the other side. That’s where you are now, darling girl. You’re at that magical terrifying height, and all you have to do is let yourself fall.”

  “Are you saying I’m overthinking things?”

  My mother laughed. “Absolutely. But it’s not your fault. It’s in your blood. Look at how Dru dithers over every decision, and Lucy is going to lead that Xander on a merry chase before he gets her to settle down. And I have to admit, I made your father propose three times before I got the courage to say yes.”

  “You’re right,” I mumbled. “It’s in my blood.”

  That’s what Ruth Kimmey had been trying to tell me before she died. It’s in the blood. It had nothing to do with cat breeding and everything to do with people breeding. The only blood relatives I knew from the cat show were Peter and Phillip Denford. Was Ruth trying to tell me that the son had more in common with the father than it appeared? If so, what could the connection be?

  “Mom, you’ve been a huge help.”

  “Aren’t I always?”

  I wrapped my arms around her and hugged her back before standing to go. “You’re always a help, but today even more than usual. And, for what it’s worth, I’ll let myself fall. I promise.”

  * * *

  The night of the masquerade ball that would close the M-CFO Silver Anniversary Retreat, Rena and I were working at Trendy Tails, trying to figure out how much we’d made at the show. The numbers looked good, and I went to get a bottle of wine for a quick celebratory toast before we had to start getting ready for the ball.

  When I returned from the kitchen, glasses and bottle in hand, Rena was just putting her phone in her pocket. “That was Shane at the Silent Woman, letting me know that I need to come pick up my dad.”

  “Really? It’s only six.”

  “Dad’s drunk doesn’t really have a schedule. I can do this alone,” she insisted. “Lucy and Dru will be here any minute, and I don’t want to spoil the fun of getting dressed up for you all.”

  “I know you can handle it, but I’d feel better if I came with you to make sure everything goes down okay. If there’s a herd of bikers moving through town, the Woman can get a little rowdy. Just let me do this for you. Besides, it won’t be any fun getting ready without you there with us.”

  We took Rena’s car, a hoopty Korean compact whose odometer had given up counting the miles long ago, when it rolled over 124K, and drove out of the historic district and into Merryville’s light industrial center.

  The Silent Woman smelled of rancid beer, ammonia, and despair. It was located, quite literally, on the wrong side of the tracks: it backed up to the railroad tracks that ran along Merryville’s south side. While it’s not the sort of establishment I frequent, I’d been to the bar several times in my day, primarily on the same mission I was on today: bailing out Rena’s dad when he’d outstayed his welcome.

  That’s right. Outstayed his welcome. It’s an impressive feat to be so drunk that even the Silent Woman wants to oust you. Normally, they let people stay as long as they paid their tabs. Fall asleep? No problem; you weren’t hurting anything. Start singing at the top of your lungs? Not great, but the injury was aesthetic, no more than skin-deep. But Bruce Hamilton went through stages of drunk the way other people go through stages of grief, and some of them weren’t pretty. Take a swing at a bartender? That got you thrown out of the bar and possibly thrown into the drunk tank.

  In fact, if Bruce weren’t such a good customer, he’d probably be in custody instead of facing off against his waif of a daughter, debating how, when, and why he would leave.

  The temptation to weigh in to their conversation was strong, but I’d learned long ago that it was a mistake to mess with the volatile dynamic between father and daughter.

  “Can I buy you a drink, pretty lady?”

  The man sat at the bar, jeans riding low so that he was sitting on the waistband, a loose black hoodie hanging from his shoulders. Oily strands of dark hair fell across a face that was almost handsome. I couldn’t pinpoint what was off—the set of his eyes, the shape of his nose, the gap above his upper lip—but something made him look vaguely troll-like. He clasped a glass of beer like he was warming his hands by it.

  “I think I’ll pass. But thank you.”

  “You’re a tall drink of water,” he continued.

  “Thank you?”

  “Aw, that’s definitely a compliment. I like tall women. You’re maybe even taller than me, but that’s okay.”

  “I have a boyfriend,” I blurted.

  He threw back his head and cackled. “I got a woman, too. Doesn’t mean we can’t conversate a little over a couple of beers.”

  “Leave her alone, Jonnie.” Rena moved to stand between us, as though she would protect me from this creep. I had no doubt that Rena was tougher than I was and she knew how to fight dirty, but I outweighed her by a good forty pounds. I loved that she still felt the need to play the part of guard dog.

  “You ready to leave?” I asked.

  “Nah.” Rena sighed. “Dad’s not budging. It’s going to be a police kind of night. I promised Shane”—the owner of the bar—“that I would stick around until they get Dad packed off to the PD. He won’t come with me, but he won’t put up as much of a fuss with the cops if I’m around.”

  Rena’s dad was a longtime alcoholic. His drinking predated his wife’s death, but when Rena’s mom died during Rena’s junior year in high school, her dad went off the rails. Rena had been taking care of him ever since, and taking care of him often meant negotiating the best way to get him to a safe spot to sober up.

  “Well, if you’re waiting for the cops, you have to have a drink with me. Can’t just stand there, right?”

  “Since we’re waiting for the cops,” Rena said to Jonnie, “you might want to boogie.”

  “Why?” I asked, studying my suitor with narrowed eyes.

  “Izzy, meet Jonnie G. Merryville’s most active fence.”

  “Come on,” Jonnie protested. “I do faxilitate the sale of goods from one person to another, and like any businessman, I take a small cut of those transactions. But I’m not a fence. Near as I know, all those transactions are perfectly legalistic.”

  “Just because you don’t ask the questions doesn’t mean you don’t know the answers. You’re a fence.”

  Jonnie chuckled. “Don’t go libeling my good name in front of your foxy friend, Rena. Not cool.”

  They nattered back and forth the way I’d traded insults with my sisters when we were younger, poking at sore spots but with no real sense of malice. I half listened to them while the wheels in my mind were turning.

  “Uh, Jonnie. What kind of goods do you help people sell?”

  “Why? You have something to unload?”

  “No. I was just wondering if you helped people sell jewelry.”

  “Occasionally. More often I transact in electronics and, uh, construction materials, but I’ve been known to find buyers for the occasional trinket.”

  “You ever do anything like that for Pris Olson?”

  Rena tilted forward on her toes, as anxious for the answer as I was.

  Jonnie pursed his lips and considered me thoughtfully. “I’m not sure it is in my best interest to discuss my client list with you. Hot or not.”

  I reached into my purse for my wallet. I held it aloft. “I’ll settle your tab for the night.”

  He laughed. “Aw, Ms. Izzy, people are gonna think you’re sweet on me.”

  I looked around the bar. Other than Bruce Hamilton and Shan
e, who was tending bar that night, the only other person in the room was a middle-aged woman in overly tight leather pants. She rested her teased blond head on one hand and took lackadaisical stabs at the cherry in her glass with a cocktail stirrer.

  Given our limited—and wasted—audience, I wasn’t worried that much of Merryville would hear that I’d settled Jonnie G’s bar bill.

  I caught Shane’s eye and nodded in Jonnie’s direction, eyebrows raised in question.

  “Twenty-two,” he called back while he slopped a dripping bar rag across the pitted surface of the bar.

  I looked up at the whiteboard above the liquor bottles. Jonnie must have been drinking imports. I reached into my wallet and pulled out a ten and a twenty and slapped them on the bar.

  “Pris Olson,” I demanded.

  “You know, the cops have already asked me about this.”

  That didn’t surprise me. Jack was a good detective, and he wouldn’t attempt to lock someone up for theft without consulting with the local fence.

  “Did you answer their questions?”

  “Well, a legalistic citizen such as myself must cooperate with the law when they come calling.” He shrugged. “Still, they didn’t pay no bar tab,” Jonnie said, his lips oozing into a sly grin.

  “But I did, so what do you know?”

  “Well, mebbe I have heard the name of Pris Olson. And mebbe I have heard she might be in need of services from someone like me.”

  “Have you actually spoken to her?”

  “Mebbe.”

  The twinkle in his eye told me he had definitely spoken with Pris.

  I felt dizzy. Maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe she’d fooled me again. Maybe Pris really was so hard up for cash that she’d stolen the jeweled collar dangle.

  “What the cops didn’t ask,” Jonnie continued, “was when Ms. Pris had inquired about my services.”