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

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 poutyexpressions 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