Collared For Murder (13 page)

“What do you think happened?” Ama asked. She held up a hand and smiled. “Purely off the record. I swear.”

“Honestly, I don’t know. I’ve heard rumors that Phillip had affairs with Pamela Rawlins and one of the cat fanciers, a woman named Ruth Kimmey. The affair with Ruth was a long time ago, though. My source—if you can call her that—thinks that Pamela slept with Phillip only to get the position of coordinator of the show, so her relationship with Phillip doesn’t seem like much of a motive, but Phillip also got one of Pamela’s cats banned from shows and, in the process, took a major bite out of her breeding business.
Mari Aames was having an affair with Phillip, too, but she seemed to worship the man. And I know that Phillip and his son, Peter, weren’t exactly close, but I don’t see that Peter had any real incentive to kill Phillip. In fact, Peter’s starting a new business, and he’s made references to a silent partner. I think it may have been his father.”

I tugged on Packer’s leash to keep him from actually standing on top of Jordan.

“In short, I can’t find a single person who liked the man, other than the apparently lovelorn Mari, but I don’t have any credible suspects for who would have wanted him dead except for me and Pris. And we didn’t do it.”

“Are you so sure about Pris?”

I explained that I’d seen Phillip that morning, though I left out our topic of conversation.

Ama shook her head. “You’re assuming that she would have had to go all the way home to get changed out of any bloody clothes. But if she’d
planned
to kill Phillip that morning, she would have had a change of clothes on her. All she would have had to do was slip into the ladies’ room and scrub up a bit.”

Ama made an interesting point. Pris did carry around that huge tote bag, which could have easily hidden a spare outfit. Forget about getting to the ladies’ room. Pris had a nice little secluded area for her grooming operation in the corner of the room. I suddenly
remembered the flatiron that had skidded out of Pris’s bag when it fell off her arm and disgorged the collar dangle. She could have even redone her hair after killing Phillip.

But if that was the case, if she’d committed the murder and then gotten cleaned up at the North Woods Hotel, why would she have left again as soon as the show got started? I didn’t care what Jack said. If Pris had been at the show right before or after the blackout, I would have seen her.

“Listen,” I said. “You were there that morning. When did you first see Pris?”

“Jeez, I don’t know. It’s hard to say. There was so much going on, and I wasn’t paying particular attention to Prissy.” She reached out a hand. “Jordan, give that rock to Mommy. We’ve talked about this before. Rocks are not food.”

The little boy handed the rock to his mother and then blissfully returned to wrestling with my dog.

“Your pictures,” I said. “Would you do me a huge favor and go back through the pictures you took that day? See when you first spot Pris and where she is at the time?”

Ama looked at me like I was nuts, but she nodded. “Like I said, Izzy. I owe you. I don’t see what good it will do, but I’ll look for you.”

Fifteen

B
y the time I got Packer back to Trendy Tails and my own self back to the cat show, Rena was about ready to kill me.

“‘Lunch,’ you said. ‘Doggy bag,’ you said. Yet here I am at two in the afternoon, no lunch in sight.”

“I’m so sorry. Lunch was so weird, I wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. I couldn’t stand the thought of spending any more time with that crew, so I didn’t want to stick around to wait for another order of mac and cheese.”

“You had the mac and cheese? Ken’s mac and cheese? Salt in the wound, my friend. Salt. In. The. Wound.” She shook her head at me, deep disappointment in her eyes. “Besides, if you were in such an all-fired hurry to get out of there, why are you so late?”

“Because I took Packer for a little walk, which turned into a long conversation with Ama Olmstead. I have her going through the pictures she took the morning Phillip died to see what she can figure out about who was where and when. Especially the cagey Pris Olson.”

“Izzy!”

I looked over my shoulder to find Ruth Kimmey bearing down on me from behind. “Izzy McHale, I have to talk to you. I have the most interesting bit of news.”

Behind her, I saw Pamela, Mari, Marsha, and Peter, apparently just now returning from our lunch. They must have stayed for dessert. I raised a hand to wave hello, and Peter waved back. He looked pointedly between me and Ruth, reminding me without a word of our conversation about Ruth’s wilder days.

I could feel the heat spreading across my face. Ruth frowned and glanced over her shoulder at the group of M-CFO bigwigs. Her frown deepened when she caught sight of our little lunch bunch.

“What’s the news, Ruth?” I asked.

“Not here,” she said. “Can you walk with me outside?”

I looked at Rena, who glowered back. “I’ve really got to man the booth while Rena takes a break and gets some lunch.”

Ruth glanced down at her wrist, where her charm
bracelet hung. “Dang it. I always forget I don’t wear a watch anymore. Stupid cell phones.”

I pulled mine out of my pocket. “It’s two fifteen.”

“The finals of the agility competition will be starting at three. Do you think you can meet me out by the course around two forty-five?”

I looked at Rena, whose eyebrows were now completely flat. “Yes?” Rena rolled her eyes but nodded.

“Great. I’ll get T.J. to watch Ranger, and I’ll see you soon.”

*   *   *

I didn’t know what Ruth Kimmey had to tell me, but up until that point she’d been a font of valuable information. After all, she knew the cat-show attendees far better than I did, and her powers of observation would make her a better PI than my aunt Dolly could ever hope to be.

A sudden influx of business from a group of tabby owners who had just finished a conformation round kept me tied up at the Trendy Tails table for longer than I’d expected. Even with Rena back, I had to stick around to help, so I was late going to meet Ruth. I made my way out of the hotel’s side door and down the gentle slope to the tent where the agility course remained in place. People were already gathering for the finals of the agility competition.

In a crowd full of women, I usually had a solid height advantage, but the agility competition seemed
to attract more men, and a small herd of strapping Scandinavian men blocked my view. As politely as I could, I made my way toward the front of the crowd, searching for Ruth and earning myself a few choice curse words from the people I outmaneuvered.

I made it all the way to the front of the crowd, but still no Ruth.

Once again, my female lunch companions managed to project absolute contempt for one another as they sat at the judging table. Pamela consulted her phone for the time and called the group to order. The first contestant up was a younger woman, maybe in her late twenties. She wore a long cotton jersey skirt topped by a sleeveless tunic and a broad-brimmed sunhat on her head. Her cat, a gray tiger-striped tabby, wore a kelly green collar that matched his owner’s hat to a tee.

The cat took its place at the starting line, and the young woman pulled a play wand out of a canvas knapsack. With a nod from Pamela, they were off.

The tabby went up the ramp, across the bridge, and down the ramp, through the first nylon tunnel, then out, then into the second nylon tunnel, and then . . . nothing. The young woman stood at the far end of the second tunnel, bobbing the cat toy and growing visibly more distressed by the second, but the cat didn’t appear.

Instead, the tunnel started rocking and bulging, as though the cat were wrestling with something inside.

The young woman finally knelt down to see what had become of her feline friend. She gasped loudly and promptly passed out, her body pitching forward and bunching the nylon tunnel up around whatever was obstructing the cat’s progress.

Only it wasn’t a whatever at all. It was a whoever.

A delicate hand extended from the end of the tunnel. I immediately recognized the delicate charm bracelet dangling around the limp wrist. It was Ruth Kimmey.

That’s when I noticed that the crossbar from the final hurdle in the course was not resting on its uprights. Instead, it lay next to the second nylon tunnel, one end of the white post smeared with red.

By that point, everyone in the crowd had cottoned on to what was happening. Another body in their midst. Another murder.

For my part, I felt a pang of sorrow at Ruth’s passing. She’d been kind to me, showing me the ropes of the cat show and telling me what she knew of the players in this strange performance. And whatever her last bit of information had been, whatever had prompted her to invite me out to the agility field, she’d taken it to her grave.

I couldn’t help but wonder if, had I been on time, I could have saved Ruth Kimmey’s life.

*   *   *

It took the police a lot less time to clear the people from the crime scene the second time around. Most of
the onlookers were already on file as witnesses in the first murder, and no one had seen a thing. At least, not that they would say aloud.

I went back inside as soon as I could. After stopping to tell Rena what little I knew, I made a beeline for Ruth’s table. The police had cordoned it off already, leaving poor T. J. Leuzinger standing outside a ring of crime-scene tape, Cataclysm Ranger draped over her shoulder and tears pouring down her face.

“Oh, T.J. I’m so sorry for your loss,” I said.

“Poor Ranger,” she said, looking at me with a puzzled expression. “What happens to Ranger? Ruth’s horrible husband had Ranger neutered just to hurt her. Ranger can’t go live with him.”

I hushed her softly and petted Ranger’s head. “I don’t think you have to worry, T.J. Ranger isn’t their child. He doesn’t just automatically get custody. Legally, Ranger is stuff and will belong to whoever is her heir.”

“I don’t know,” she said, her voice approaching a hysterical pitch. “She never said. She doesn’t have children. But I think she has a sister in Illinois.”

“There you go. I bet Ranger will belong to the sister in Illinois. And if the sister doesn’t want him, I’m sure she’ll just let you have him. You’ll take good care of him if it comes to that. Ranger’s in good hands.”

I made a mental note to have Sean draft my will.
I’d already had to take care of one murder victim’s orphaned animal, and now seeing T.J. freaking out about what would happen to Ranger, I realized I should be responsible and make sure that there was a plan in place for Packer and Jinx if something should happen to me.

“T.J.,” I said softly, “Ruth said she had something to tell me. I was supposed to meet her outside, where she died. It might be really important. Did she tell you what it was?”

“Something to tell you?” I could see the wheels spinning in T.J.’s mind. “Yes. Oh yes, she did say something. But it didn’t make any sense.”

“What was it?” I prodded.

“She’d run upstairs to get another sweater. You know, she would never just start the day dressed right and she always found herself cold. I don’t know how many times I told her to just put on a sweater first thing in the morning—”

“T.J. She went to get a sweater, and . . .”

“Oh. Well, she came hustling back into the ballroom, no sweater to be seen, and told me she had to tell you something important. ‘It’s in the blood.’ That’s what she said she needed to tell you. ‘It’s in the blood.’”

“Did anyone else leave the ballroom at the same time Ruth did? Or thereabouts?”

“I honestly wasn’t paying attention. Right before
Ruth left, the two of us had been talking with Marsha about plans for next year’s show. It won’t be nearly as elaborate as this, but Marsha’s determined to make it special in honor of Phillip. Anyway, she’d just left to take her afternoon nap when Ruth decided to get her sweater.”

“Afternoon nap?”

“Oh yes, every day. Marsha’s not a well woman. I would never say this to her face, but I think she should limit her travels with Phillip and stay home to rest. And I don’t think it’s the best idea for her to take on the major task of organizing next year’s show. That will take a lot out of her.”

“What, exactly, is wrong with her?”

“I don’t know.”

I suspected I did: clonazepam and the occasional cocktail. That would certainly explain the need for a nap.

T.J. shifted Ranger on her shoulder.

“Do you want me to hold him for a while?”

She sighed and offered me a watery smile. “That would be great.” She placed the cat in my arms. I was so used to holding Jinx, my sweet, massive kitty, that Ranger felt insubstantial as I held him against me.

“T.J.? Do you know much about Mari Aames?” It was a long shot, but since we were standing there shooting the breeze . . .

“Oh, Mari. Bless her heart, but Phillip runs her ragged. Or I guess he did run her ragged. Now it will be up to Marsha to keep her employed. Frankly, I don’t know why she’s worked for the Denfords as long as she has. They pay her a pittance.”

I leaned in close. “I heard a rumor that Mari and Phillip were, you know . . .”

At first T.J. just stared at me, but then she caught on and laughed. “I can see where people might think that. After all, everyone knows Phillip had a wandering eye, and Mari was positively dazzled by him. But I was talking to Phillip the day before he died, and he said that he was planning to let Mari go after the show.”

I was stunned. “Really? But she seems to do such a wonderful job.”

T.J. shrugged and reached out to take Ranger back. “He hinted that her adoration was a little much. That she was too clingy. I saw her in the bathroom that same day, vomiting and weeping after Phillip had criticized some decision she’d made. I think Phillip needed an assistant made of stronger stuff.”

T.J. cuddled Ranger like a baby and began idly rubbing his tummy, eliciting a deep, rumbling purr from the cat. “Come to think of it,” T.J. mused, “I saw Mari running out of here at about the same time Ruth went up to her room. I can’t remember whether it was
before or after, but she had her hand over her mouth and looked to be fighting back tears. Some other crisis, I suppose.”

It’s in the blood.
Something Ruth saw or heard during the last hours of her life led her to that cryptic statement. And got her killed.