Лори Касс - Wrong Side Of The Paw

My cat heaved a sigh and brushed the back of my wrist with his tail.

Smiling and oddly comforted, I patted him on the head. “You’re not so bad, for an Eddie. Some days it really does seem as if you understand what I’m saying.”

“Mrr,” he said.

“Okay, yes, you understand me,” I said, still patting. “Sorry I insulted your intelligence. But we need to have a talk about your activity level. If you keep on like you’re going, all this flopping around and sleeping and hardly anything else, you’ll weigh fifty pounds by springtime and that’s going to shift the houseboat’s center of gravity something fierce.” It wouldn’t, of course, but he didn’t know that.

He also wasn’t paying any attention to me, because the dulcet tones of his snores were starting to reach my ears.

I gave him a few pets and stood. There were choices to make and I had to get going on them. First, figuring out a dinner that wouldn’t involve actual cooking. Then I had to choose between the upstairs bathtub and the downstairs bathtub. Downstairs was the deep claw-foot tub, but upstairs was a modern built-in version with massage jets. Which one would be better for thinking?

“Decisions, decisions,” I murmured, and was halfway to the kitchen when I heard my cell phone ring.

I switched directions and pulled the phone out of my backpack just before the call slid into voice mail. The name of the incoming caller surprised me. “Hey, Carmen,” I said. “How are you? How’s Mia doing?”

“Mia?” She sounded surprised. “Fine, as far as I know. Why wouldn’t she be?”

“No reason,” I said, trying to sound casual. If Mia didn’t want to talk to her mom about her suspension from work, that was her business. “Just checking.”

“Are you still helping Leese?” Carmen asked. “Finding out who killed my sweet Dale?”

“Absolutely.” Not that I’d made much progress, but you never knew; I could stumble across something any second that would solve the murder. And the sooner the better, because last time I’d talked to Leese, she’d eventually admitted that she was down to a small handful of clients with Bob Blake the only new one on the horizon. “Why do you ask?”

“Before, you asked about employees that didn’t get along with Dale, about workers who might have hated him enough to kill him.”

“That’s right. The police asked you the same thing, didn’t they?”

“I’d rather not talk to them ever again,” Carmen said. “The last time they stopped by, they all but accused me of—” Her voice caught. “They asked me if I’d—”

“If you’d killed him?” I asked gently.

“I couldn’t believe it!” Her outrage blew loud and strong into my ear. “Can you? I gave that detective a piece of my mind, believe me, and he went away with his tail between his legs. But now I remembered something, and the last thing I want to do is talk to that man.”

“Carmen, if you have information, you need to tell the police yourself.” I paused. “What did you remember? Maybe I can tell if it’s important enough to tell the police.”

“Back a few years, Dale hired this guy who was nothing but trouble. He didn’t want to work, didn’t want to pull his share. All he wanted to do on hot days was sit in the shade and put his feet up.”

Her tone of outrage came through loud and clear. “Dale fired him?”

“Of course he did,” Carmen said. “He had every right to. And what does the kid do but blow up at him, run on and on about what a horrible boss Dale was and how it wouldn’t take much for an accident to happen on a dark night.”

It sounded like a possibility, maybe even a strong one. “What’s his name?”

“That Indian,” she said. “You know, the one who works at the school.”

Quickly, I mentally ran through the list of teachers and staff. The only Indian I could remember was Laila Mahajan, who’d taught third grade, but she’d only been in Chilson a year on an exchange program and I didn’t see how she could have anything to do with Dale’s death since she’d moved back to Mumbai in July. “Which school? The elementary school?”

“No, no,” she said impatiently. “The middle school. I know you know him.”

And how, exactly, did she know this? I wandered into the bathroom to choose a scent of bubble bath. “Sorry, I don’t—”

“He used to be a teacher,” she said, “but he worked for Dale right out of high school.”

“If he’s not there anymore, I doubt I’ll—”

“Why can’t I remember his name?” she asked. “He’s still there, just not a teacher. He’s . . . ah,” she said with satisfaction. “Got it.”

A sudden clench of my insides told me what she was going to say.

“It was Rafe,” she practically spat. “Rafe Niswander. And you’re right about calling the police. I’ll do it myself first thing tomorrow morning.”

Chapter 16

“It’s not possible,” I said. “It’s just not.”

My conversation with Carmen had left me so wobbly that I’d given up on the bathtub idea for fear of accidental drowning and instead huddled at one end of the couch with a blanket pulled over me.

“There’s just no way,” I said, repeating what I’d already told Eddie over and over again for the last half hour. “First off, it’s just ridiculous to think that Rafe would kill anyone, even in the heat of anger.” I paused, both in talking and in petting my cat. After half a second, he picked up his head and gave me The Look, so I started petting again.

“Sorry, I was just trying to imagine Rafe getting really mad at someone. He’s the calmest person I know. I’ve never seen him more than mildly frustrated at anyone or anything.”

The worst display of his temper I’d ever witnessed had been when the local lumberyard had delivered the wrong length of wooden siding to his house. It was special-ordered siding that had taken weeks to arrive. Rafe had looked at the vast piles of wood, uttered one heartfelt curse word, and called the lumberyard to calmly tell them what had happened.

“So there’s no way he could have killed anyone,” I reminded Eddie. “It’s silly to even consider that.”

My cat gave a huge sigh.

“Well, exactly. It’s just ludicrous. He might have mouthed off to Dale, because he is kind of a smart aleck, but the idea of him making a real and serious threat is just . . . is just . . .”

“Mrr.”

“Thanks.” I patted Eddie’s head. “That’s just what I was trying to say. I’ll have to talk to Detective Inwood, or maybe Ash, because I promised Carmen to let them know what she’s remembered, but it’s pointless. Yes, people can change, but that was a long time ago, way too long ago for a spoken threat to still carry any serious weight, and anyway, I’ve known Rafe since I was twelve. He’s the same now as he was then.”

“Mrr.”

“Okay, maybe not exactly the same,” I said, admitting the truth. “He’s not so skinny anymore, but other than that, he’s the same guy Kristen and I used to ride bikes with all summer long.”

Eddie, temporarily a lap cat, rotated himself end for end.

“No, not skinny at all,” I murmured, giving Eddie long pets that would soon create a small pile of cat hair on his back, on the blanket, and on me. “In some circles, he’d be considered trim and fit.” Most circles, if I was going to be absolutely honest with myself. “And the odds are high that some women think he’s good-looking.” Actually, there were probably a lot of women who thought so.

“Really, he’s not a bad guy.” By all accounts he was the best principal the middle school had seen in years. He was such a decent human being that he had friends who ran the gamut of ages, income levels, education, and ethnicity.