Free Collared For Murder by Annie Knox Page B

crimes were committed, does she have it in her to steal and kill?”
    “There are times when I actually enjoy Pris’s company, but I’m always aware that her moral compass is a bit askew. Under the right circumstances, I could see her as a killer.”
    Sean sighed. “Yeah, that’s the impression I got, too. And whatever happens, I can’t let her get in front of a jury. She’s so . . . so . . .”
    “Superior? Dismissive? Snide?” I offered.
    He laughed. “Yes. That. All of that.”
    “Listen,” I said, “I know our friendship took a real blow that night of the storm.” The night an eighteen-year-old Sean Tucker pledged his love to me and begged me to dump my boyfriend. The night I shot himdown and told him I didn’t love him. The night he rode his bike off into the darkness and the rain and commenced a fifteen-year stretch of silence between us.
    “It did,” he conceded.
    “But we’re still friends, right? We’ve gotten past that bitterness?”
    He blinked, considering. “I’m not sure I’ll ever be totally past that, Izzy, but yes, we’re still friends.”
    I sighed in relief. “Then I have a major favor to ask. As your friend. If you haven’t really talked with Pris about the theft and the murder, could you still back out of representing her?”
    Sean tilted his head to one side, brow furrowed in puzzlement. “I suppose so. In fact, I have a fairly full schedule these days and was thinking of referring her to my friend Rudy over in Wild Rapids. He’s got more experience working murder cases, and he wouldn’t be going into the case with the baggage of actually knowing Pris.”
    “You mean he doesn’t already think she’s shady?”
    Sean smiled. “I wouldn’t go quite that far, but I certainly know Hal and I don’t hold him in particularly high esteem. I’d like to think I’m a professional and could give Pris zealous representation no matter what my preexisting thoughts about her and her spouse may be, but why risk it?”
    “Thank you.”
    “Like I said, I’m not really doing it for you, thoughI’m glad the decision makes you happy. But why would you want me to give up representing Pris? What difference does it make to you?”
    “Because, before this is all over, I may need your services more.”

CHAPTER
    Seven
    R ena and I arrived at the show bright and early the following morning. Once again, Jinx did her turn as fashion model while wearing hot-pink neck and mitt ruffs. The effect was a sort of seventies bell-bottoms-and-poncho look, and the hot pink set off my big girl’s black-and-white fur to perfection. Since she clocked in at nearly twenty pounds, I had her set up in a crate for medium-sized dogs because cat kennels were just too cramped for her to spend an entire day in.
    I’d had Jinx for several years, having surprised myself by adopting her at an event at the Merryville mall. As she’d aged, she’d started slowing down, her body becoming more lean. Still the cat had swagger. She looked at me through the bars of the kennel, andI could swear I saw her wink at me. Unlike many cats who get skittish around strangers, Jinx lapped up the attention like sweet cream.
    Rena offered to man our stall for the morning while I wandered the show a bit, trying to locate Gandhi. I took a handful of our cards to hand out as I hunted.
    I made a complete circuit around the ballroom, watching the fanciers tending their furry charges and scanning the floor for a glimpse of Gandhi. I couldn’t decide whether I hoped he was in the room with all the cats—where he was prey, but where I might actually find him—or that he had escaped into some other part of the hotel—where he would be on his own, a life that seemed to work for him, until some disgruntled guest or health inspector got the little guy exterminated.
    I’d finished a lap of the room, with one potential guinea pig sighting (it turned out to be a plush cat toy), and was on my way back to our booth, when someone tapped me on