Миранда Джеймс - Claws For Concern

I walked over. The young man stood and indicated a chair by the desk. I took it while he resumed his seat. “What can I help you with?”

“You’re related to Mr. Delaney?” the young man asked.

I nodded. “By marriage. His father was married to my aunt. Both of them are deceased. I didn’t meet Mr. Delaney until recently, and I don’t know many details of his life. I’m willing to answer whatever I can.”

“Thank you.” The young man had his eyes on his clipboard. “He has his driver’s license and his Medicare card with him. According to the license he lives in Tullahoma. Is that correct?”

“As far as I know,” I said, “that is his permanent residence. He has been staying in an apartment in Athena, however, for the past few weeks.” I gave him the address, and he added it to the form.

“Are you his next of kin?”

I shrugged. “In a way, I suppose I am. I don’t know whether he has any other family. Whether he’s married, divorced, has children of his own, anything like that.”

“For our purposes, you’ll do, if you consent to that.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “Do you have any other questions?”

“No, sir. Thank you for your help.”

I stood and nodded, smiling, then I walked back to the waiting room. The policeman was still with Laura and Frank.

Laura looked unhappy, and Frank looked aggravated. I gathered that perhaps telling the officer they thought the hit-and-run was deliberate hadn’t gone over well.

“What’s the matter?” I asked when I reached them.

“I don’t think he believes us,” Laura said, confirming my suspicion.

I stared hard at the policeman. “Officer, if my daughter tells you she saw that car swerve toward Mr. Delaney, then that car swerved toward Mr. Delaney.”

The policeman put up a hand as if to ward off a blow or to get me to be quiet. “Okay, whatever you say. Now, since you’re the only one here who seems to know the victim, what can you tell me about him? Other family? He seems to be from Tullahoma, according to his driver’s license.”

Once again I went through the bare list of facts I knew about Bill Delaney, omitting, of course, anything about his connection to the Barber case. If the police wanted to delve into his past, it wouldn’t take them long to find it out for themselves.

“So you don’t think he knows anyone here?” the policeman said. “Do you know where he’s staying here in town?”

“I can answer the latter question.” I gave him the address. “As to whether he knows anyone, I don’t know. I’ve only encountered him at the library.” While I was speaking, a memory surfaced. That lipstick Diesel found in the apartment. That must belong to someone Delaney knew.

“I went to see him earlier today, I believe you will remember my telling y’all that in his room a little while ago.”

The officer nodded, and I continued. “While we—my cat and I, that is—were there, my cat found a lipstick on the floor and was playing with it. So someone else had been in the apartment, presumably, besides us and Mr. Delaney.”

“You had your cat with you?” The policeman frowned. “Hey, wait a minute, I know who you are now. You’ve got that ginormous cat, and you take it around all over town with you.”

“Yes, I do. His name is Diesel, and he’s a Maine Coon.” I didn’t feel like giving the man the rest of the spiel about the breed that I usually shared. The size of my cat had nothing to do with the present situation. I was getting irked by this man and his attitude. I glanced at his badge and noted his name. Kernodle . I would remember it.

The policeman must have sensed my annoyance. He turned back to Laura and Frank. “We don’t have much to go on with the description you gave me of the car, but we’ll have to see if anyone else in the area saw what happened. If we’re lucky, maybe someone got the license number, or one of the businesses might have a surveillance camera. We’ll be in touch if we need to talk to you again.” He nodded before he turned and strode out of the waiting room.

“What now?” Frank looked at Laura. “I guess we’d better give up on the movie for today.”

“I’m not in the mood for it anymore,” Laura said. “Maybe next weekend?”

Frank looked at me. “That okay with you, Charlie?”

“Of course,” I said. “At the moment, I don’t have any plans for next Saturday. If anything comes up, I’ll let you know.”

“Thanks, Dad.” Laura hugged me. “You’re the best.”

“Are you going to stick around here?” Frank asked as they prepared to leave.

“I was planning to, but I’m having second thoughts about that,” I said. “It could be a couple of hours or more before I can see Delaney and talk to him. I’m thinking of going home. They can call me if I’m needed. It’s not like I live an hour away.”

“No, there’s nothing in Athena that’s more than about thirty minutes from anything else.” Frank smiled. “One of the perks of living in a small town.”

“Yes,” I said. “After living in Houston all those years, it’s a pleasure not to have to spend an hour in the car to get to a place not that far away.” I did miss a few things about Houston, chiefly its variety of restaurants and bookstores, but not its size or its traffic. “Y’all go ahead. I’m going to stop by the desk and let them know I’m going home.”

Laura and Frank headed for the parking lot. I spoke briefly to the woman at the desk, and I finally noticed her name tag. Rosalie McAlister . I felt bad about not having remembered her name earlier. I thanked her, using her name, after I gave her my home phone number.

“Someone will call you when he’s able to have visitors,” she said.

With that assurance, I left the hospital. On the drive home I thought about the hit-and-run. Why had someone hit Bill Delaney on purpose? A random act of violence? Sadly there were people in the world who would do things like that, I knew. I suspected, however, that there was a personal motive behind this attack.

I didn’t know what Delaney’s personality was like when he was drinking heavily. Was he combative? Aggressive? Or was he the quiet type of drunk who didn’t bother anyone and kept to himself?

If he was the nasty, bellicose sort of drunk, he could easily have made a number of enemies over the years, I reckoned. Maybe one of them had seen him lumbering toward the street and seized the opportunity when he moved within striking distance.

I suddenly remembered something Haskell had told me. Not long after the initial investigation into the Barber murders failed to produce a viable suspect, Delaney had disappeared from Tullahoma. No one, perhaps other than his mother, knew where he had been since then. He suddenly resurfaced in Athena after his mother’s death. In Tullahoma, I presumed. I ought to check on that and find out where she died. Ernie Carpenter might know. I figured there would have been something in the Tullahoma newspaper about Sylvia Delaney’s passing.

I had the uneasy feeling that the hit-and-run was connected to the events of twenty years ago—the Barber case. There was that lipstick in Delaney’s apartment to account for. It could have been left there by the previous tenant, I supposed, but somehow I didn’t think it had. Surely Delaney would have noticed it and disposed of it before Diesel found it this morning.

Delaney’s life could be in danger. If the person who struck him down found out Delaney was still alive, he or she might try again. The man seemed to have no friends, and we were connected by the fact of his father’s marriage to my aunt. My step-cousin.

I knew what Aunt Dottie would want me to do.

By now I had reached home. I turned into the driveway and pulled into the garage. I left the car’s motor and air-conditioning running while I dug my phone out of my pocket. I found Jack Pemberton’s number in my list of calls and tapped the call button. I waited long enough for an answer that I thought the call was going to voice mail, but Jack finally answered.