Лори Касс - Wrong Side Of The Paw

“He . . . what?”

“I was cleaning up a job site,” Rafe said. “He left scraps of paper and wood all over the place, and he said I spent too much time cleaning when I should have been pounding nails.”

“You were cleaning?” I found that hard to believe, knowing the typical status of his house. It was under construction, but still.

“Well, I haven’t changed much, so imagine what Lacombe’s job sites looked like if the mess was bugging me.”

Good point. “Sorry about this. It was my questions that got Carmen thinking.”

He shrugged. “Don’t apologize. There’s nothing there. It’s not like I killed anyone.”

Annoyance flashed through me. “Of course you didn’t. But if she tells the police you made a threat, they’ll have to investigate and who knows what could happen.”

“Nothing,” he said, yawning and stretching. “Absolutely nothing.”

“What if the school board finds out? Aren’t you worried about your reputation?”

“Cops coming in to talk to me?” He peered at the ceiling as if it held answers. “I’d say it would help my street cred.”

I made a rude noise in the back of my throat, proud of myself for acting as if I didn’t have deep unrequited love for the man sitting ten feet away from me. “You’re so gangsta it frightens me. Why do I get the feeling you’re not taking any of this seriously?”

“Because I’m not. Thanks for caring, though.”

I looked closely to see if I could detect any hint that he was serious, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. “Do you mean that?” I asked, a little embarrassed about how tentative I sounded. The small silence that followed told me more than I wanted to know.

Rafe cleared his throat and leaned forward. “Minnie, there’s—”

“I have to go,” I said quickly, not wanting to hear him say that I had the wrong idea, that he was sorry I’d misunderstood what he’d said about missing me, that he hoped we could stay friends. “But before I go,” I said, “write this down.” I pulled out my phone and scrolled through the contacts list until I got to the downstate phone number I wanted and read it out loud.

Rafe picked up a pen. “What’s that for?”

“Daniel Markakis,” I snapped.

“Isn’t that—”

“One of the best criminal attorneys in the state.” I slid my cell back into my coat pocket, spun on my heel, and headed out, my heart near to breaking.

• • •

The rest of the day, I tried to keep myself busy so I didn’t have time to think. I did, however, make a quick afternoon phone call to Detective Inwood and sounded him out about Carmen’s accusation about Rafe. The detective said he had talked to Carmen, and though he didn’t outright laugh, he seemed to take her report almost as seriously as Rafe had, for which I was extremely grateful.

“Not that I’m going to communicate that to Rafe,” I told Eddie that night. “Did you count how many times Julia asked if I was coming down with something?”

Eddie, who was sitting upright on one of the kitchen chairs, looked at me with unblinking eyes and made no comment.

“Me, either,” I said, “but it was a lot.” Even a few patrons had asked if I was feeling all right. I’d spent a lot of time staring vacantly into space, and more than once, I’d jumped high when someone had tapped me on the shoulder.

I opened the refrigerator door and took out a container of leftover spaghetti. “But I’m not sick. Just distracted.”

“Mrr.”

“Glad you understand,” I said, forking the spaghetti onto a plate and sliding it into the microwave. “There’s a lot going on in my head, you know.”

“Mrr!”

“You want me to list them all? Okay, Aunt Frances is going to marry Otto and move in with him. The boardinghouse will be sold.”

Eddie jumped down and came over to bump my shins with the top of his head.

“Yeah, I know. It’s sad, but like they say, all good things come to an end.”

“Mrr!”

“Not done with my list,” I said. “In addition to those big changes in my life, there’s also this little thing going on at the library. You know, that Jennifer is about to sell irreplaceable assets for the sake of a computer system we don’t need, not to mention the fact that she’s making everyone’s life miserable.”

Or at least that’s what Holly, Josh, Donna, Kelsey, and every staff member other than Gareth kept telling me. And if Gareth didn’t do his custodial and maintenance work after the library was closed and everyone was gone, he would probably be complaining, too.

I was trying to convince my coworkers that we’d get used to her and she’d get used to us, but Jennifer had been director for almost three months now, and if anything, the situation was growing worse.

“We’re going to lose Donna,” I murmured. She’d already retired from one career and would do without the extra income if she got fed up with Jennifer. “I don’t want to have to replace her,” I said. “Finding someone with her range of skills will be next to impossible.”

The microwave dinged and I pulled out my dinner. “Even if we did find someone, who else is going to work for the wages we can afford to pay?” Working in a library was, to my mind, the best job in the world, but no one did it to get rich.

I sat at the round oak table and twirled spaghetti around my fork. “And then there’s Leese.”

“Mrr,” Eddie said.

His little kitty voice hadn’t come from his chair. “Where are you?” I looked around, but didn’t see him. “Anyway, Leese is worried about Mia and Brad, and I’m worried about Leese. Mia and Brad are in trouble at their respective workplaces, they’re all working through their father’s death, and the fact that no one’s been arrested isn’t helping.”

I chewed and swallowed a forkful of spaghetti. “When I talked to Detective Inwood this morning, all I got was the standard response about investigating everything.” Sighing, I ate another bite. “But from his tone of voice, it doesn’t sound as if they have anything solid.”

“Mrr.”

“If you want, sure, I’ll talk you through everything I’ve learned. First off, no one except Carmen seemed surprised that Dale was murdered. That makes narrowing down suspects hard from the get-go.”

An odd noise emanated from the broom closet, whose door, I now noticed, was open a few inches.

“Detective Inwood and Ash were looking at all the employees that Dale had ever fired,” I told the closet, “and they’re talking to all his clients from the last few years.” When I’d talked to Inwood, I’d obliquely mentioned the possibility that Dale and/or Carmen had been having extramarital affairs. There’d been a long telephone silence, Inwood had sighed, then I’d heard noises I’d interpreted as a new page in his notebook being flipped and a pen being clicked to writing position.

I was pretty sure that Inwood figured I was just trying to distract him from making a case against Brad or Leese as the murderer, and he was probably right. Then again, since there was no way Brad or Leese had killed Dale, the detective should be thanking me for saving him time and effort.

“If Brad was going to kill his dad,” I said to Eddie, “it would have been while they were working together, not now. And Carmen and Dale had such an odd marriage, why would it explode into murder now? And it doesn’t seem like it was anyone involved in one of the lawsuits.

“And then there’s the building official, Rob Driskell. He was definitely not a fan of Dale’s. Him killing Dale in a fit of anger makes a lot more sense than Brad or Carmen doing it.” Not that murder necessarily made sense, but you had to start somewhere. “If the detective and Ash are going to keep looking at Brad, I’m going to have to work harder on—”