Лори Касс - Tailing A Tabby

I glanced at it and my mouth fell open. “This is exactly right. How on earth did you do that?”

“Felt right, I guess. Sometimes you just gotta go with your gut, you know?” He tromped out into the afternoon sunshine without another word.

But I wasn’t paying attention to his lack of social niceties. Sometimes you just gotta go with your gut, he’d said. And what had my gut been trying to tell me?

“Mrr,” said Eddie, who moved to the passenger’s headrest.

I patted his head absentmindedly. What was my gut saying? I really didn’t know. I wasn’t even sure it was saying anything at all.

• • •

When I got home, I let Eddie out of his carrier, made sure his food and water dish were at the required levels, then headed out again.

The screen door to the marina’s office banged shut behind me. Chris looked up from the boat parts he had strewn across the countertop. “Hey, Minster. What’s up?”

“I’m looking for Greg. Is he around?”

“Oh, man.” Chris put down the greasy whatever it was. “You haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?”

“Greg’s in the Charlevoix Hospital. Just this afternoon, he fell off his roof. Almost got killed, I guess. Broken legs, broken arm, and who knows what happened to his insides… Minnie, hey, Minnie!”

But I was already out the door and halfway to my car.

• • •

“He said what?” Greg snorted out a laugh. “You got to be kidding.”

I smiled. “Well, you know Chris. There’s no story he hears that he can’t make better by adding a few exaggerations.”

“A few?” Greg gestured at his arms and legs. “No broken bones, and no internal injuries. There isn’t much he got right.”

“Except,” Tucker said, “the almost-got-killed part. Because it was a close call, Mr. Plassey.”

“I’m fine.” Greg moved to sit up but winced and flopped back down. “Well, almost fine.”

Tucker looked at him over the top of a clipboard. “You dislocated a shoulder, damaged a number of ribs, and sprained an ankle. I wouldn’t call that fine.”

“Hey, I been worse.” Greg winked at me.

By the time I’d reached the Charlevoix Hospital, Tucker had talked Greg into staying at the hospital overnight and the three of us were a cozy group in Greg’s newly assigned hospital room.

“What happened, anyway?” I asked. “Chris said you fell off your roof.”

“At least he got that part right.” Greg grinned. “I was up there looking at the flashing around the chimney. There’s a leak up there somewhere. I been using that wooden ladder of my dad’s for years and never thought to check it. My own stupid fault, you know? I leave it out back of the garage—no surprise it fell to bits.”

“Did you ever think that someone tampered with it?” My voice sounded loud in the small room.

Greg stared at me, then started laughing. “Oh, right. Who’s going to do that? Because I have so many enemies.”

Tucker was also looking at me. He opened his mouth but then shut it.

His eyes were so blue I thought I might be looking into pieces of the sky. His smile was so warm I thought I might kiss it. And I suddenly thought that I might be falling in love with him.

“Hello?” Greg said. “Are you two still here?”

Tucker murmured that he’d be back later, gave us nods, and went off to do busy doctor things. I tore my gaze away from Tucker and turned my attention back to the man in the bed.

“How long have you known Brett Karringer?”

“My buddy Brett?” Greg frowned. “Why?”

Excellent question. Unfortunately I didn’t have a good answer prepared. “He looks a lot like someone I met the other day. I was wondering if they were related somehow.”

“Oh. Well, I only met him a couple months ago. He lives downstate, but he seems okay. A little intense, if you know what I mean, but okay.”

“Has he ever dated anyone up here?”

“No idea.”

Internally, I cursed the male gender for their stereotypical tendency not to talk about anything of importance. What I needed was a connection from Brett to Carissa, and I didn’t have one. Even a vague one would be good, but I had nothing.

“Say,” Greg said. “You want to watch the ball game for an inning or two?”

About as much as I wanted to watch grass grow, but I studied the lines of pain and weariness on his face, smiled, and said, “Sure.”

• • •

When I got home, I explained Greg’s accident to Eddie.

“So, what do you think?” I asked. “Accidental or intentional?”

Eddie, who was sitting on the back of the dining bench, rotated around so that his back faced me.

“Hey, don’t be like that. I’m sorry that you had to spend the evening inside, but you know I have to figure this out. The police still think Cade did it and—”

Eddie was paying no attention to my explanation. The newspaper on the dining bench must have suddenly needed scratching, because he jumped off the seat’s back and onto the paper and started ripping it to shreds with his clawed feet.

“Hey! Cut that out!” His current paper of choice was a freebie supplement to the Petoskey newspaper. The Graphic was a guide to everything fun that was going on in the area, which mostly meant weekends, but there were—

My brain suddenly spun off into a direction it had never gone. Weekends. Greg Plassey had been whacked on the head with that golf ball at a weekend tournament. Trock Farrand had almost been run off the road when? On a weekend. Hugo Edel’s boat had blown up on a weekend, and it had been on a weekend, a Friday night, that Carissa had been killed. Okay, Greg’s ladder escapade was a weekday event, but the ladder could have been damaged on a weekend.

“Everything happened on a weekend,” I said softly. “Do you think it matters?”

Eddie opened his mouth in a silent “Mrr” and jumped back onto the back of the bench, where he sat and started cleaning his left front paw. To get the newsprint off, no doubt.

“Well,” I told him, “since you think it matters, maybe I should call a detective.” Eddie had no response to that. I took that as confirmation, found the number for the sheriff’s department, and dialed. Since it was getting close to ten at night, of course there was no detective around. I left a message to call.

“Think one of them will?” I asked Eddie. He stared at me, unblinking. “Yeah, I don’t think so, either.”

Which meant it might be time for another trap.

Chapter 19

A few minutes later, my cell phone rang. “Ms. Hamilton? Detective Devereaux returning your call.”

Within the hour? A new record, folks! “Thanks,” I said, and launched straight into everything I’d found out, from the visits of Carissa’s ex-boyfriend to Crown Yachts and Trock’s set. I told him about my suspicions regarding the accidents, and about what had happened yesterday to Greg Plassey.

I told him all that and about the weekends and everything else I could think of and when I was done, the detective said, “Thank you for the information, Ms. Hamilton. And we appreciate that you stopped by to drop off that note you received.”

Somewhere in there I heard the warning signs of an upcoming qualifying sentence. “But… ?”

“There’s been a development in the case against Mr. McCade.”

All the muscles in my body tightened. “It’s that nurse’s aide, isn’t it?” I blurted out.

For a moment I heard nothing from the other end of the phone. Then I heard the distant sounds of a file drawer slamming. Devereaux was still there; he just wasn’t talking. Which could only mean he didn’t know what to say, and to me that could only mean that I was right. They’d discovered that Heather, Cade’s aide the night Carissa was murdered, had lied.