lint and a pair of gold wire-rimmed glasses. She stood in the front row of the circle and met Jack’s gaze dead-on while everyone around her gasped in horror.
“No comment,” Jack replied.
That triggered a flurry of smothered cries and whispers.
Scissors, murder, dead
, the crowd breathed. Poor Jack had completely lost control of the situation.
“Can we leave?” someone from the back of the crowd chimed in.
Jack’s jaw muscles bunched. “Half of you just showed up, and now you want to leave?” he snapped. He took a deep breath, blowing it out slowly. “I apologize. But the answer is no, you cannot leave. Not until the police have gotten statements from each of you.”
“But if there’s a murderer in the room, are we even safe?”
“Yes.” Jack sighed. “The lights are on and the police are here. You should all be perfectly safe.”
Pris Olson stepped inside the fairy ring of onlookers, her beauty-queen features pulled tight in an expression of righteous indignation. “This is ridiculous. You know who we are and where you can find us. Why do we have to wait until everyone has been questioned?”
Jack had little patience for Pris’s overblown sense of self-importance. He was a simple man and got a little prickly when others put on airs. “Mrs. Olson,” he responded formally, “I am not going to stand here and debate with you about police procedure during an official investigation. But you were planning to spend the day in this room anyway, right?”
“Working,” Pris sniped. “I was planning to be here running my booth and earning a living. With the show on hold, we’re all just going to be twiddling our thumbs.”
“I’ve got a cribbage board,” the bespectacled woman offered helpfully.
Pris’s eyelids fluttered. “How nice for you. But I honestly have better . . .” She trailed off, apparently realizing she was about to insult the company of the very cat enthusiasts whose business she wanted to attract.
She sighed. “Lovely. I haven’t played cribbage in years.” She offered a thin-lipped smile and began taking a step backward into the crowd. As she did so,however, she caught her spiked heel on one of the metal electrical casings that crisscrossed the ballroom floor. For a moment her arms pinwheeled and she tottered first to the left, then to the right. In the end, though, she couldn’t save herself: Pris Olson, once the queen bee of all of Merryville, Minnesota, fell flat on her face in front of an entire roomful of cat lovers.
The crowd gasped, one giant collective inhalation.
As her knees hit the ground, she reached out her arms to break her fall and, in doing so, lost control over her spacious Coach shoulder bag. The purse slid down her arm, spilling its contents as it, too, struck the ground. Papers and lipstick tubes and even a compact hair iron skittered across the floor. And then . . .
As we all watched in wonder, a shiny silver ball emerged from the recesses of the Coach bag and rolled—wobbling on the delicate wires that composed its surface—straight toward Jack Collins, stopping when it hit his foot.
As one, the crowd exhaled a mighty “oooohhh” and then grew deathly silent.
It was the platinum collar dangle, its diamond and emerald glittering in the bright overhead light, making soft tinkling noises as the dangle got knocked around inside its wire cage and eventually came loose of its mooring to the cage. It was the platinum collar dangle that had gone missing during the blackout, and it had been in Pris Olson’s purse.
CHAPTER
Six
“O ver my dead body.” Jack shifted in his chair, began tipping it back onto its two back legs, but then caught my mother’s eye and let the chair fall on all fours.
“Nice turn of phrase,” Rena quipped.
Rena, Dolly, Jack, and I were clustered around the table that dominated the Trendy Tails barkery, a space that had once been a dining room, back when the grand old Victorian at 801 Maple had been a single-family
“No comment,” Jack replied.
That triggered a flurry of smothered cries and whispers.
Scissors, murder, dead
, the crowd breathed. Poor Jack had completely lost control of the situation.
“Can we leave?” someone from the back of the crowd chimed in.
Jack’s jaw muscles bunched. “Half of you just showed up, and now you want to leave?” he snapped. He took a deep breath, blowing it out slowly. “I apologize. But the answer is no, you cannot leave. Not until the police have gotten statements from each of you.”
“But if there’s a murderer in the room, are we even safe?”
“Yes.” Jack sighed. “The lights are on and the police are here. You should all be perfectly safe.”
Pris Olson stepped inside the fairy ring of onlookers, her beauty-queen features pulled tight in an expression of righteous indignation. “This is ridiculous. You know who we are and where you can find us. Why do we have to wait until everyone has been questioned?”
Jack had little patience for Pris’s overblown sense of self-importance. He was a simple man and got a little prickly when others put on airs. “Mrs. Olson,” he responded formally, “I am not going to stand here and debate with you about police procedure during an official investigation. But you were planning to spend the day in this room anyway, right?”
“Working,” Pris sniped. “I was planning to be here running my booth and earning a living. With the show on hold, we’re all just going to be twiddling our thumbs.”
“I’ve got a cribbage board,” the bespectacled woman offered helpfully.
Pris’s eyelids fluttered. “How nice for you. But I honestly have better . . .” She trailed off, apparently realizing she was about to insult the company of the very cat enthusiasts whose business she wanted to attract.
She sighed. “Lovely. I haven’t played cribbage in years.” She offered a thin-lipped smile and began taking a step backward into the crowd. As she did so,however, she caught her spiked heel on one of the metal electrical casings that crisscrossed the ballroom floor. For a moment her arms pinwheeled and she tottered first to the left, then to the right. In the end, though, she couldn’t save herself: Pris Olson, once the queen bee of all of Merryville, Minnesota, fell flat on her face in front of an entire roomful of cat lovers.
The crowd gasped, one giant collective inhalation.
As her knees hit the ground, she reached out her arms to break her fall and, in doing so, lost control over her spacious Coach shoulder bag. The purse slid down her arm, spilling its contents as it, too, struck the ground. Papers and lipstick tubes and even a compact hair iron skittered across the floor. And then . . .
As we all watched in wonder, a shiny silver ball emerged from the recesses of the Coach bag and rolled—wobbling on the delicate wires that composed its surface—straight toward Jack Collins, stopping when it hit his foot.
As one, the crowd exhaled a mighty “oooohhh” and then grew deathly silent.
It was the platinum collar dangle, its diamond and emerald glittering in the bright overhead light, making soft tinkling noises as the dangle got knocked around inside its wire cage and eventually came loose of its mooring to the cage. It was the platinum collar dangle that had gone missing during the blackout, and it had been in Pris Olson’s purse.
CHAPTER
Six
“O ver my dead body.” Jack shifted in his chair, began tipping it back onto its two back legs, but then caught my mother’s eye and let the chair fall on all fours.
“Nice turn of phrase,” Rena quipped.
Rena, Dolly, Jack, and I were clustered around the table that dominated the Trendy Tails barkery, a space that had once been a dining room, back when the grand old Victorian at 801 Maple had been a single-family
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