Лори Касс - Lending А Paw

She named a cop show I’d heard Josh and Holly discuss, but since I didn’t have a television on the houseboat and watched very little at the boardinghouse, I couldn’t offer a sound opinion on the actor’s hotness.

“That must have been exciting,” I said.

“Yeah, I keep hoping somebody else famous will walk in.” She looked at me hopefully. “I don’t suppose . . .”

“Sorry. I live here in town.”

“Oh.” She deflated. “Have you ever met anybody?”

“Nope. Famous people don’t hang out at libraries very often.”

“You work at the library? That’s pretty cool.”

She didn’t sound sarcastic. “I think so. And I just started driving the bookmobile.”

“The bookmobile?” Her enthusiasm was back, better than ever. “That’s really cool! You really drive it?”

“Forward and backward.”

Lina giggled. “I can hardly back up our Mini Cooper without hitting something. You must be a really good . . .” She stopped and looked at me with a changed expression. “Hey, wasn’t it someone on the bookmobile who found that dead guy? Was that you?”

This wasn’t how I’d expected to lead into a conversation about Caroline, but hey, I could adjust. I nodded.

“Wow, that must have been awful.”

“Yes, it was.” Then, “Thank you for saying that. Most people are just curious.”

“Oh, I’m curious.” She grinned. “I just have really good manners.”

I laughed. “My mother always said manners will take you places you can’t get to any other way.”

“Sounds like my mom. So do the police know who killed him?”

“As far as I know, they don’t have any suspects.”

“That’s too bad.” She sighed. “Mrs. Grice is pretty upset about it.”

“I heard they’d been seeing each other.”

“Yeah, for a little while now, but not—” She came to a screeching halt.

“Not what?”

“I shouldn’t say, I really shouldn’t.” She bit at her lower lip.

It was time to bring out my big gun. The Librarian Voice. “Lina,” I said sternly. “If you know something, you have a duty to share it.”

“Yes, but—”

“This is murder. There’s nothing worse.”

She gripped her hands tight. “Okay. Okay, you’re right. It’s just . . .”

“I know,” I said much more softly. “It can be hard doing the right thing.”

“Yeah.” She sighed. “This was like the week before Mr. Larabee died, right? Mrs. Grice stopped by to check out some new art. She’s standing right there”—Lina gestured at a spot on the wood floor in front of a large abstract painting—“and Mr. Larabee comes in the door, all loud and big.”

That was Stan.

“He walked real fast over to Mrs. Grice and started saying something about how she needed to listen to him. Mrs. Grice, she’s always so nice? But she went all cold. She said, ‘If you wish to discuss a personal matter, I prefer that we do it in private.’ So they went in the office and shut the door behind them.”

“So you didn’t hear what they were talking about?”

Lina colored. “I did kind of walk over that way. I mean, Mr. Larabee’s nice and all, but he was so much bigger than Mrs. Grice and I thought if he got mad and she got scared, that I could . . . do something.”

As good a justification for eavesdropping as there could be. “But you didn’t hear anything.”

“Just that Mrs. Grice was talking a lot and Mr. Larabee hardly got a word in.” Lina half smiled. “It was kind of funny until . . .” Her smile fell away.

“What?”

She looked at the office door. “Until they came out. The door opened and Mr. Larabee said something I couldn’t hear. Then Mrs. Grice said, clear as anything, ‘Not if you were the last man on earth. I daresay the next time I see you will be at your funeral.’ And she left. Mr. Larabee stood there a minute; then he left, too.”

Lina hugged herself. “But she didn’t mean it. I mean, that’s just something people say. You never mean something like that. You just don’t.” She looked at me, fear on her face. “Right?”

• • •

I spent most of Sunday night trying to figure out what to do about Lina’s story. The girl flat-out refused to go to the police. “I can’t do that, not to Mrs. Grice. She’s so nice. I’m an art major and working in a gallery is going to look great on my résumé. I mean, if the police go to her, she’d know I told and she’d fire me for sure.” So if the police were going to find out about the incident, they’d have to find out from me.

• • •

Monday morning, the air of the public entry to the Tonedagana County Sheriff’s Office smelled stale and confined and vaguely threatening. I knew it was all in my head, but even still, in the short time I stood there, waiting for someone to come to the window, I decided that if no one showed up in the next ten seconds, I was out of there.

I counted down fast to two and was turning to leave when a woman’s square face appeared in the window and gave me a quick once-over before the glass slid open. “Can I help you?”

“Hi. I’d like to talk to Detective Devereaux or Detective Inwood.” She made no move, so I added, “It’s about the murder of Stan Larabee. I have some information that might be useful.” Or not. Since they were the trained professionals, they were the ones who would be able to figure it out.

“Your name?”

“Minnie Hamilton.”

“I’ll see if one of them is available.”

I hummed the Jeopardy! song to myself a few times and eventually the tall and thin detective came out into the entryway. Devereaux or Inwood? I couldn’t remember.

“Miss Hamilton. You have something for us?”

“Hi, Detective. I heard a story yesterday that I think you should know about.” I looked around. There wasn’t anyone else in the small lobby; there also weren’t any chairs. Not even a bench. “Should we go somewhere else?”

“A story,” he said flatly.

“Not a made-up story. Something I heard.”

“Secondhand knowledge, then.”

Irritation started to climb up the back of my neck. “A young woman overheard a conversation between Stan Larabee and a woman. The woman made a statement that could be construed as a threat.”

“Uh-huh. Construed as a threat. So it wasn’t really a threat.”

“She said, and I quote, ‘Not if you were the last man on earth. I daresay the next time I see you will be at your funeral.’”

“So you’re quoting the girl who was eavesdropping on the woman who was talking to Larabee?”

Said like that, it sounded lame. Still. “Yes,” I said.

He looked at me. Down at me, since he was more than a foot taller. “Their names?”

“The young woman’s name is Lina. I don’t know her last name, but she works at the Lakeview Art Gallery.”

“Uh-huh.” He made no move to take out the notepad I could see sticking out of his shirt pocket. I itched to yank it free and write the information down myself. “And the woman’s name who made the purported threat?” he asked.

“Caroline,” I said. “Caroline Grice.”

He blinked once, then said, with zero inflection, “You think Caroline Grice killed Stan Larabee.”

The irritation zoomed up into my skull and exploded in my brain. “What I think is that last week I was told to pass on any information about Stan’s murder. So I’m passing along what I heard. What you choose to do with it is up to you.”

He sighed. “Miss Hamilton, thank you for coming in. But we hear stories like this all the time. Sometimes they’re true, sometimes they’re not. We’ll sort it out, though, don’t you worry about that.”

“I’m not worried. I’m just trying to help.”