Collared For Murder by Annie Knox Read Free Book Online Page A

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 thefirst 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.

CHAPTER
    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 hadpurchased. 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