Лори Касс - Wrong Side Of The Paw

She waited a beat, then nodded. “First I have to thank you for calling and checking up on me. I should have called you back right away, but . . .” She sighed. “I wasn’t up to it and I’m sorry.”

I remembered the message I’d left for her to call. I’d worried a little about the silence, but had decided to wait another day or two before trying again. “No need to apologize,” I said.

“Okay, then. First off, no matter what you hear, they didn’t arrest me. I was held for twenty-four hours in the county jail for cause, and was released after the medical examiner’s preliminary findings came out. My father had been dead longer than they’d thought. With so much time having passed between the murder and finding him in the truck, the window of opportunity expanded exponentially.”

I’d followed her words, but got lost in the syllables toward the end. “So what you’re saying is anyone could have done it?”

“At this point they’re not even saying if it was murder.”

“Um . . .”

She rolled her eyes. “I know; why else would his body end up in the truck if it hadn’t been murder? The sheriff is just being cautious, I suppose.”

“Cautious” wasn’t a word I would have used to describe the almost frighteningly capable Sheriff Kit Richardson, whose toughness was legendary. Some of the stories about the fifty-something sheriff had to be apocryphal, but with my own eyes I’d seen her take down a man a hundred pounds heavier and a foot taller with little more than a fierce glance. And she was an Eddie fan, so all in all I found her to be a role model of the highest order.

“They’d like to arrest me, though,” Leese said conversationally.

My eyebrows went up. “You sound pretty calm about it.”

“Only on the outside. My guilt would be an easy resolution for them. Father and daughter get into an argument, daughter kills him—either accidentally or not—and she hides the body in his truck until she can find a way to get rid of it.” She made a tossing gesture. “The Mitchell River Valley is only a couple of miles from that church where you stopped the other day.”

I didn’t need a map to see what she meant. Planning the bookmobile route had carved Tonedagana County’s features deep into my brain cells. “They think the state forest is a good place for . . .”

“For disposing a body?” She shrugged. “It’s a big place. Winter’s coming on. With a little work you could bury a body and have it hidden until spring, if not longer.”

I shied away from thinking about the logistics and zeroed in on something else. “That truck was your dad’s?”

She made a noise that wasn’t quite a snort but wasn’t exactly a laugh, either. “For the first time in years, I asked my dad for a favor, and that’s the piece of crap I got. It needed more work than my SUV did.”

My eyebrows wanted to go up, but I kept them firmly in place. “You and your dad didn’t get along?”

“Let me think how to answer that.” She stretched her legs out straight, her heels thumping the floor. “And the answer is no, not since I was three years old. That’s when he took off for greener pastures. If I was lucky, I saw him every other weekend. If I was unlucky”—she grimaced—“I saw him more often.”

“Rafe Niswander and Kristen Jurek are friends of mine,” I said. “Kristen said you’re a great softball player.”

“That, from the blond bomber?” This time Leese’s smile looked real. “I’d love to see her again. And Rafe, too. Is he still as cute as ever?”

I blinked. Somehow I’d never thought much about Rafe’s looks. Of course, now that I was thinking about it, he did have a lot going for him. White teeth, high cheekbones, easy smile, thick black hair, and a flat stomach that didn’t reveal how much beer he seemed to consume. “He’s mostly annoying.”

“Same old Rafe, then.” She laughed softly.

“They said your dad came to a lot of your softball games.”

“Only until it became obvious I wasn’t good enough to get a college scholarship. After that, my stepmother was the one who brought my step-sibs to the home games.”

That hadn’t been how I remembered Kristen telling it, but no doubt Leese had a better memory for those events. “What was with your SUV?”

She made a face. “The transmission went out a week ago. My car guy said if I didn’t mind waiting, he could get me a rebuilt one cheap, but I’d have to wait until the summer people were gone.”

Wincing, I said, “Even a rebuilt is expensive, isn’t it?”

“Which is why I sucked it up and asked my dad for a loaner. My law practice is going to take a while to be profitable and I don’t want to spend more of my savings than I have to.”

“He had an extra truck?”

She nodded. “He’s one of those guys who always looks like he’s having a party, there’s so many vehicles in the driveway. But when I asked to borrow one for a couple of months, he tried giving me this long sob story about how he needed all the trucks for his crew. I got tired of it halfway through, opened my wallet, pulled out some bills, and held them out. The look on his face was priceless. I was so proud of myself for shutting him up that I almost laughed.”

Her gaze drifted away. “I got a friend to drop me off at his house later that day, and when I drove off in his truck, he didn’t even come out, just stood in the doorway watching me with his arms crossed. It was the last time I saw him until . . . until two days ago.”

I came around and sat down next to her, putting my arms around her as she started to sob. Because even if her father hadn’t been much of a dad, he was the only one she would ever have.

And now he was gone.

Chapter 4

Early the next morning, Ash and I arrived at the Round Table at the same time, me walking up to the downtown diner from the marina, him getting out of his SUV, which he’d driven from the sheriff’s office, all of two blocks away. I might have made fun of him for this, but he looked exhausted. The only problem working the night shift, he’d said, was that he couldn’t sleep during the day. I was proud of him for stepping up to volunteer, but was starting to be concerned about the toll it was taking on his mental state, not to mention his body.

His shoulders were rounded with fatigue, and his handsome, square-jawed face, typically ruddy with health and good cheer, was an odd shade of gray. But when he caught sight of me, he straightened up, smiled, and held the glass door open for me. “Ms. Minnie,” he said, bowing and waving me in.

“That reminds me of something I’ve always wanted to ask,” I said. We walked past the PLEASE SEAT YOURSELF sign and slid into our regular booth.

The round table after which the restaurant had been named decades ago was in the back. It was also empty, as it usually was on Sunday mornings until the churchgoers started filing in. Monday through Saturday, however, it was the unofficial official table for a geezerly group of men, a group certain they had the answers to the world’s problems.

I avoided that table as much as possible. They thought I was a youngster who needed much instruction, particularly from them, and this made me so cranky that, whenever they snared me in a conversation, I could almost feel the smoke coming out of my ears.

Ash knew all this, and for my protection and theirs, he’d suggested meeting for a Sunday breakfast instead of Saturday.

The menus were sitting upright on the table behind the basket of jams and jellies. Ash pointed in their direction. “Going to walk on the wild side and have something new?”

“Maybe next week. But let’s get back to the question I’ve always wanted to ask.”

“You’re not going to make me think, are you? Because I’m pretty sure my brain went to sleep when I clocked out.”