Лори Касс - Lending А Paw

He glanced at my hand. Hesitated. Shook it briefly. “Nice to meet you,” he muttered, going back to his computer.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” I asked. He grunted, but I couldn’t tell if it was one of agreement or disagreement. Still, it was a reply of sorts, so I kept going. “Not that it matters, of course. I’m not from here, either. Turns out that spending your childhood summers up here doesn’t count at all. If you didn’t graduate high school here, you’re not from here. Actually”—I made a hmm sort of noise—“you have to be born here. A friend of mine, his parents moved up here when he was starting middle school, and he’s not considered a local.” Which annoyed Josh to no end, but there was nothing he could do about it.

“Where are you from?” I asked.

He hunched away from me and typed rapidly.

“I don’t care, really,” I said. “Just curious. It’s a standard question. I bet a lot of people have asked you already, right?”

“Too many,” he muttered, whacking at the keyboard keys.

“Sounds familiar,” I said, laughing. “I tell people I’m from Dearborn, and next thing they want to know is, what high school did I go to? Then it’s what year did I graduate? After that, we’re talking restaurants and what street I lived on. Conversations like that can go on forever.”

He gave me a pointed look. I smiled. “But lately all anyone wants to talk about is Stan Larabee. You know, the man who was killed? Well, not so much talking about him, but who killed him. I’ve heard all sorts of theories, from my boss to his sisters to some guy named Chris. Some people even think I did it.” I laughed heartily. “Since you’re not from here, I bet your theory has less baggage than anyone else’s.”

Either he’d managed to turn off his ears, or he was intentionally ignoring me. I talked louder.

“Outside points of view can be very helpful. If you know anything about Stan, anything at all, you should tell the police. You look like an observant man; I bet there’s something you know. I bet—”

He slapped his laptop shut, stood, and walked away without even the courtesy of a backward glare.

There were two ways to interpret that little scene, I thought, watching him stalk off, his legs stiff and his shoulders set. One, that he was trying to become a hermit and was well on his way to success. Two, that he knew something about Stan’s death that he didn’t want to share.

I stood and walked the rest of the way home, thinking that I wasn’t ready to cross Bill D’Arcy off the suspect list. Not by a long shot.

Five seconds after I walked in the door, I walked back out again. Rafe. I needed to ask Rafe about working on my electrical stuff.

• • •

The lights were on in his house, which, when he was done restoring it to its original status as an early-nineteen-hundreds Shingle-style cottage, would be a showpiece. Now, however, it was a cobbled-together mess of tiny apartments on the inside and was covered on the outside with the widest variety of siding seen anywhere but a lumberyard. The former owners hadn’t exactly been concerned with aesthetics.

I knocked on the front door. “Rafe? It’s Minnie. I know you’re in there—I can hear that horrible music you play.”

“No one’s here.”

Uh-oh. Rafe always defended his music. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing. Go away.”

I banged on the door with my fist. “Let me in or I’m coming in anyway.”

The door swung open slowly, making a creepy screeching noise. Rafe stood in the doorway. “Has anyone ever told you what a pain in the heinie you can be?”

“Daily. What’s the matter with your arm?”

He was holding it away from his side at an awkward angle. “Nothing.”

I stepped inside. “Let me see.”

“Aw, Minnie, don’t—”

“Let. Me. See.”

Once again, the Librarian Voice did the trick. His shoulders slumped and he let me pull him into the brightness cast by the halogen work lights scattered around the entryway. “It’ll be fine,” he said. “It just needs a little more time.”

I pulled at a corner of the first aid tape and started tugging. “This might hurt a little.”

“Jeez, Min, that stings like a you-know-what. Do you have to?”

With one quick rip, I yanked off the tape.

“Ow!”

“Quit being such a baby,” I said. “Now let me see your stitches. Come on. Show me.”

“Don’t want to,” he muttered, but held out his arm.

I took hold of his wrist, pulled off the gauze, and turned the wound to the light. I sucked in a quick breath. “We’re going to the hospital. Now.”

“Aw, Min—”

“Rafe Niswander, your arm is red and puffy with infection. Next thing is you’ll get those red streaks and then you’ll get a staph infection and then they’ll cut off your arm, but by then the infection will have gone too far and you’ll spend two weeks in the hospital sliding toward an early death, all because you wouldn’t listen to me.”

“Can’t die, I got too many things to do.”

“Rafe.” I swallowed. “Come to the hospital with me. Please.”

He looked at my face. I don’t know what he saw there, but for once he didn’t argue.

• • •

Forty-five minutes later, we were back in Charlevoix’s emergency room. The attractive Dr. Tucker Kleinow came in as I was helping Rafe up onto the hospital bed.

“Back again?” he asked. “Another problem with your saw?”

“Nah,” Rafe said. “Minnie here is all worried about that cut you sewed up a while back. Tell her it’s okay, will you? She’s getting on my case something fierce.”

I crossed my arms. “Only because you’re not taking care of yourself. If you had, this wouldn’t have happened.”

Dr. Kleinow snapped on gloves and examined Rafe’s arm carefully. “You definitely have some infection going on. Did you fill the prescription for antibiotics that I gave you?”

“Sure did,” Rafe said.

I glared at him. “But did you take them?”

“Well, yeah.”

“ All of them?”

“Not all in a row, like,” he said. “I forgot a couple of days and it looked good, so what was the point, right?”

I drew in a long breath, the better to yell at him with, but the doctor stepped in between us. “I’ll clean this up again, if you two don’t mind putting a pause on your argument. You can yell at your husband on the way home.”

“My . . . what?” Surely he hadn’t said what I thought he’d said.

Rafe chuckled. “Don’t know what’s funnier, thinking that she’d marry me, or that I’d be dumb enough to ask her.”

I frowned. “Was I just insulted? Because it sure sounded like it.”

Dr. Kleinow looked from one of us to the other. “Siblings?” He looked a little closer, undoubtedly noting the complete lack of family resemblance. “Adopted, maybe?”

Rafe and I shook our heads. “We’re just friends,” I said. “Neighbors.”

“Only relatives are allowed with the patient in the examination room,” the doctor said.

Rafe and I looked at each other. We shrugged simultaneously. “Everybody must have thought we were married,” Rafe said. “I can see it. Did you hear how she was ragging me for not taking those pills?”

“She was right,” Dr. Kleinow said.

“Oh, sure, take her side,” Rafe said. “The cute girl’s always right, is that it?”

“There are worse reasons to take sides.” The doctor grinned. “Now, let’s get a closer look at that arm.”

• • •

After another forty-five minutes, Rafe was cleansed, rebandaged, and more or less beaten into submission about taking the newer and much stronger prescription. His post-emergency-room care, however, was being more problematic.