Лори Касс - Gone With The Whisker

When my cell rang just before one that afternoon, I snatched it up. “Lauren, thanks for calling me back.”

“Had to,” she said soberly. “There’s quite a story, and it’s not pretty.”

I clutched the phone tight. “Tell me.”

“Back in the day, Lowell was an excellent all-around athlete, not a star, but good enough to get an athletic scholarship to a small college. He probably figured he was all set.”

Something bad was coming, I could feel it. “Until?”

“Until the last semester of his senior year. He was taking a government class, but wasn’t taking it seriously, if you know what I mean, and he flunked. But it was a required class, so it kept him from graduating on time, and kept him from going to college on that scholarship.”

“Nicole taught the class?”

“You were always the smart one,” Lauren said. “The ugly part is that when Lowell found out he’d flunked—at that school the seniors get their grades before the underclassmen finish up—he barged into Nicole’s classroom and screamed that she’d ruined his life. On his way out, he slammed the door so hard it bounced open again. Nicole had been headed toward the door by that time and it caught her on the shoulder. She hadn’t been ready for it, of course, and fell and hurt her back.”

“Oh, no,” I breathed.

“Yeah, it was a real mess. Nicole ended up with horrible back pain, and, as you can imagine, lots of lawyers got involved.”

I thanked her again, and we chatted a bit longer, vowing to talk more. Afterward, I sat quietly, thinking about what I’d learned. Nicole had a chronic back injury. No wonder she swam for exercise. No wonder she’d so often looked unhappy. She hadn’t been innately cranky; she’d been suffering.

It was indeed an ugly story. And one I needed to pass on to Detective Hal Inwood.

* * *

I’d worked through lunch with my cell phone turned up on my desk so I wouldn’t miss Lauren’s call, and now I felt a sudden need to get out into the sunshine. Every library day I tried to get outside right after lunch, and there was no time like the present. As I breezed past the front desk, I nodded to Donna. “Headed out for my walk, but I’ll be back soon.”

“That’s what you say now,” Donna said, nodding gravely. “But with that nasty humidity gone, I’d take advantage. It’s supposed to heat up again this weekend.”

“Oh, ew.” I made a face. “Then don’t worry if I don’t come back until tomorrow.”

Donna laughed. “Don’t worry, I’ll cover up your dirty little secret.”

My steps, which had heretofore been brisk, slowed a bit. Did everyone have a secret they wanted to hide? Possibly. Even probably. And some people surely had more than one. But how serious were the secrets? How desperate might someone be to cover theirs up?

I wondered all that as I walked through the lobby. Breathing in the fresh clean air and feeling a warm-but-not-blistering sun on my face made me feel a little better, but as I started my new favorite walking loop, the one that went past the renovation of an old hotel about the same age as Rafe’s house, my thoughts returned to the hypothesis that everyone had secrets.

This, of course, brought up an obvious question. What were my secrets? I’d led a mild, librarian-like life. Never knowingly broken a law if you excepted speed limits, which I did. Never hit anyone other than my brother, which didn’t count because he was nine years older than me and I’d never stood a chance of hurting him, and even at the time I’d only been eleven. Never cheated on my taxes, never—

“Oh.” I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. Because there it was, the memory I’d shoved to the back of my brain for years, the knowledge of that ill-fated ninth grade geometry quiz. The one whose questions made no sense at all to me, so I’d leaned over to look at what Jayne Smithson, the class math whiz, was writing down. The geometry teacher had, naturally, seen what I was doing, which I hadn’t known until the quizzes were returned and I’d seen my 0 grade and a stern See me after class .

That was indeed a secret I wouldn’t want the town to talk about. Sure, cheating on a quiz twenty years ago wasn’t in the same category as burglary or embezzlement or grand theft auto, but—

Creak!!

I frowned and slowed, wondering at the loud, and oddly metallic, sound. Where on earth had it come from? I was in front of the hotel, but there weren’t any workers in sight. To the left, there was nothing out of the ordinary. To the right, there was nothing.

Creak!!

I suddenly had the sense to look up.

And saw a large object tumbling end over end, going down, down, down . . . getting bigger and bigger and bigger . . .

I bolted, running as hard as I could as fast as I could. The air whooshed, and behind me, something hit the ground with a huge thump!!

I stopped, mainly because I wasn’t sure I could run any farther, and bent over, hands on my knees. The only noises on the entire street were of me panting and of my heart thudding.

When I could stand upright and breathe like an average human, I turned around and walked back. Lying on the ground, shattered into a zillion pieces, were the remnants of what looked like an old air conditioner.

I looked up. All of the tall double-hung windows had been replaced a few weeks ago, and all were closed.

Except for one.

After a short eternity, I pulled my cell out of my pocket and dialed. “Um, Detective Inwood? This is Minnie Hamilton. Sorry to bother you, but there’s something you need to see.”

Chapter 17

Ash arrived with Hal Inwood, and after one look at my face, he put his arm around my shoulders and ushered me into the front passenger seat of their unmarked police vehicle.

“You’re going to sit here until I come back for you,” he said in a gentle but firm voice. “If you get up before then, I’ll handcuff you and put you in the back seat.”

I laughed. Or at least, I tried to laugh, but it came out more like a sob. Which, since I wasn’t given to crying in front of police officers in general and Detective Inwood in particular, showed me Ash was right and that I should sit down. “Then I guess I’ll stay.”

He settled me down, gave my shoulder a squeeze, and hurried off. I closed my eyes and put my head back. Ash had left the door open, and a soft breeze was curling around my ankles. A small patch of sunshine inched its way across my lap; birds twittered.

I felt myself relaxing and was, quite possibly, asleep when a knock on the car roof made me jump.

“Awake,” I said. “I’m awake.”

“That’s obvious,” Hal Inwood said dryly. “We’ve cleared the building. No one’s here.”

I climbed out of the car. No way was I going to enter into a conversation with Hal at an exaggerated vertical disadvantage. Given my tidy and efficient height, I’d long ago grown used to being almost a foot shorter than most men, but unnecessary height discrepancies weren’t to be borne.

“What did you find out?” I asked, glancing at the bits of metal that had almost killed me.

Hal pulled his notebook out of his shirt pocket and flipped through pages. “The general contractor for the renovation project said no one was scheduled to work today, as they’re waiting for the furnace installer to get back from vacation. I contacted all the subcontractors, and none of them had any worker stop at the site for any reason today.”

A funny feeling formed in my stomach. “And the air conditioner?”

Hal shut the notebook and looked up. “It was an old one, one of the window units used when this was still functioning as a hotel. There are a pile of them stacked up in a corner, waiting for someone to take them away.”