by Laurie Cass
Girding up my strength and resolve, I moved on to the other even more distant neighbors, and though not all of them were as disapproving as Bill Wattling, none of them had seen or heard anything that would help.
Leese’s father had been killed at a time they all said had been quiet and peaceful. Which didn’t make sense, because someone must have delivered his body, and that should have resulted in headlights and, if not voices, at least some noise.
I trudged back to Leese’s house in low spirits. I wanted to help her, but I was running out of ideas. What we needed were some brilliant plans, a lucky break, or both, and what I was getting was a north wind in my face.
Shivering against the chill, I put my head down and headed back to Leese’s house.
• • •
The next day was a bookmobile day, but I’d arranged the fall schedule differently. Every third Tuesday, the bookmobile didn’t leave its garage until noon and trundled back home a little after eight. I wasn’t keen on driving around in the dark, but having an afternoon/evening run was giving us a chance to reach folks who worked during the day.
Jennifer hadn’t approved of the idea, saying that people who wanted to come to the library would find a way. I hadn’t cited the reasons why driving to Chilson after a full day of work might be difficult—an unreliable vehicle, the need to take care of children or elderly parents, sheer exhaustion, lack of gas money, and more. Instead, I’d just said I wanted to try this new route and eventually she’d allowed me to go ahead.
Two months in, I was considering the rearranged route a success, but it was a long day, one that left me more tired than I’d expected. When I’d mentioned this to Holly through yawns one Wednesday morning, she’d rolled her eyes and said, “That’s because you’re still coming into the library at eight in the morning. Do us all a favor and take that morning off, okay?”
I’d said I’d consider her advice, and when my aunt Frances told me much the same thing, in much the same tone, only a little harsher (“You’re going to fall asleep and drive into a tree, silly girl. Take that morning off or I’ll tattle on you to the library board”), I sighed and admitted they were probably right. That, and my aunt would definitely have tattled on me. She knew every member of my board and wouldn’t hesitate to use her influence if she thought I was being truly stupid.
So that morning, instead of waking to the beep of an alarm clock, I woke up to a cat’s paw patting the side of my nose.
“Good morning, Eddie,” I said. “What can I do for you?”
He said nothing and continued to pat.
I reached out from under the covers to bat his paw away. “What are you doing?”
“Mrr,” he said, and started using his other front paw on my nose. There is no stubborn like a cat being stubborn.
“What’s wrong with my nose?” I was lying on my side, facing the outside wall of the houseboat. Eddie was snuggled between my shoulder and the wall. “You’ve never complained about it before.”
He kept on patting. The first fifty-two pats I hadn’t minded, but the fifty-third one annoyed me. I rolled onto my back to get away from The Paw. Eddie instantly laid his front half across my neck and started purring.
“Seriously?” I asked. “This is why you were shoving at my nose?”
His mouth opened and closed silently and his purr motor revved into high gear.
There was no doubt: I lived with the weirdest cat in the universe. “This is cozy and all,” I told him, “but I have this feeling you’re going to creep closer and closer to my face and some morning I’m going to wake up suffocated by Eddie fur and then won’t you be sorry.”
“Mrr,” he said quietly, which I took to mean he would be careful not to suffocate me because he couldn’t do without me. It was a nice thought, but he was more likely telling me to be quiet so he could get back to sleep.
“Okay,” I murmured, and I drifted off into that happy place that wasn’t quite sleep and wasn’t quite wakefulness. Then, just as I was spiraling down into certain slumber, my phone rang with Ash’s ring tone.
Trying not to disturb the snoring Eddie, I reached out with my unencumbered hand and felt around on the nightstand. Just before he went to voice mail, I found the phone and hit the answer button. “Good morning.”
“And to you,” he said, sounding amused. “Are you still in bed?”
“Me?” I slid out from underneath Eddie, kicked my feet free of the covers, and stood up. “No. Why would you say that?” I looked outside and saw that the sun was just up. “Do you want to go out for breakfast? I don’t have to be at the library until noonish.”
“I was hoping for a favor. Remember that Shakespeare book you were talking about? I mentioned it to a buddy on the day shift. He’s leaving for vacation after work, and he said he’d like to read it. I don’t remember the title, but it was written by some guy named Bill.”
“Bill Bryson,” I said. “Title is Shakespeare: The World as Stage.” It was a relatively short biography of the playwright, and funny to boot. “I can drop it off.”
“Thanks, that would be great. Just leave it up front and tell them it’s for Luke.”
“I can be there in twenty minutes.” Because I wasn’t about to present myself publicly without a shower and some food in my stomach.
Ash laughed. “You were still in bed, weren’t you?”
“Just trying to keep Eddie happy,” I said, and hung up.
If I’d known what was about to happen at the sheriff’s office, I might have crawled back inside the covers and let Eddie do whatever he wanted to my nose. But since I had no clue, I took a quick shower, dressed even quicker, and grabbed a granola bar on my way out the door.
After a fast walk through downtown, during which I’d waved at Cookie Tom, out sweeping his sidewalk, and told him I’d be back later to buy some bookmobile cookies, I was in the front lobby of the sheriff’s office, standing at the glassed-in front desk and trying not to stand on my tiptoes to look taller.
Yes, I was vertically challenged, but that was nothing to be embarrassed about and there was no reason why a six-foot-tall male shouldn’t consider a woman a foot shorter as a strong, intelligent, and capable human being. I’d come to this realization years ago and since then had made a solid effort to stop trying to appear taller than I was. Why pretend to be something I was never going to be? Besides, high heels made me walk wobbly.
The deputy at the counter slid the glass open. “Can I help you?”
“Hi, I’m Minnie Hamilton and—”
“Oh, hey.” The stocky, brown-haired man nodded. “You’re that librarian who’s dating Wolverson. He said you were bringing in a book for Luke?”
I glanced at his name tag. RODGERS. The name didn’t ring any bells. I’d met a number of Ash’s fellow deputies, but there were dozens. “That’s right,” I said, putting the volume on the counter and sliding it over. The book was mine, one I’d picked up at the used bookstore in town, so I wasn’t going to worry about when I got it back. “Hope he enjoys it.” And since I was in the building, there was no reason not to see if I could get some good information. “Is Detective Inwood around? If he has a minute, I’d like to talk to him.”
“Let me check.” Deputy Rodgers picked up a phone receiver and stabbed at a few buttons. “Morning, Hal. You have a visitor, Minnie Hamilton. Do you want—” His eyebrows went up and his gaze swiveled back to me. “Sure, I can do that.” He hung up the phone and looked at me quizzically. “Hal said to send you to your room.”
My room? Funny. “The detective and I have a history.” I headed to a door that led back to a maze of offices.
The deputy buzzed the door unlocked and I pulled it open. A few steps down the hall, I turned to the right and went into the interview room I’d been in so many times before.
Just as I sat at the chipped laminate table, the gray-haired Detective Hal Inwood came in. H
e’d spent decades as a police officer downstate, retired, moved up north, and had started tapping his toes with boredom within three months. When he would retire for good was a common topic of discussion in the sheriff’s office, and though I hadn’t asked, someone was probably taking bets on the date.
“Good morning, Ms. Hamilton.” The detective pulled out the chair across from me and sat. “Let me guess. You’re here to discuss your donation to the Police Officers Association of Michigan.”
“I’m sure it’s a worthy cause, but I was hoping for some information about Dale Lacombe’s murder.”
“Why am I not surprised. And you should not be surprised when I tell you that I cannot talk about an active investigation.”
“But—”
“Ms. Hamilton, please. We know how to do our job. We have been working diligently to find Mr. Lacombe’s killer, and—”
“You’re looking in the wrong place,” I said. “Leese didn’t kill her dad. Why are you wasting your time trying to pin it on her?”
Inwood sighed. “We are not, as you say, trying to ‘pin it’ on Ms. Lacombe. We are following proper police procedure, which will ensure that all appropriate action is taken.”
“Appropriate?” I asked, my voice a little loud. “Who decides what’s appropriate? Because if you think it’s appropriate to search Leese’s house, you’re nuts.”
Inwood gave me a long look. “All avenues of investigation—”
“Will be explored,” I cut in to finish. “Yes, I know, but please tell me you’re looking at boulevards and highways, too.”
I wasn’t exactly sure what I meant, and I don’t think Inwood did, either, because he had a blank look when the door to the room burst open and Deputy Rodgers rushed in.
“Hal, you have to come out front. Right now.”
Inwood stood. “Ms. Hamilton, please stay here.” Before I so much as twitched, he left the room.
“Well.” I sat back, wondering what was going on. Ten seconds later, before I’d had any real chance to dream up possibilities, a door down the hallway crashed open.
“This way, please,” I heard Inwood say. “We’ll get you settled down and we’ll talk.” Inwood and Deputy Rodgers walked past, a young woman between them.
“It was me,” the woman said, stuttering the words out through heaving sobs. “I did it, it was me.”
“Yes, miss,” Inwood said. “In here, please.” Moments later, a door shut. Firmly.
I stood then, hearing footsteps, sat down fast. Deputy Rodgers poked his head inside the room. “Um, Hal’s going to be busy for a while, so you might as well go.”
“Who was that?” I asked, tipping my head toward the now-muffled sobs.
He glanced in the same direction. “Mia Lacombe. Dale’s daughter.”
This didn’t sound good. With a suddenly dry mouth, I asked, “What was she saying she did?” Horrible sentence construction, but I couldn’t take it back. The deputy didn’t reply, so I stood up and asked again. “What did she do?”
Rodgers shifted his gaze to look over the top of my head. “She confessed.”
No, I told myself. It can’t be true. “To what?”
“Killing her father.”
Chapter 7
“It can’t be true.” Leese’s voice sounded far away. “Mia would never have done that. Never.”
Out on the sidewalk, I shifted my grip on my cell phone and tried to think of a better way I could have told my friend that her stepsister had walked into the sheriff’s office and hysterically confessed to patricide. In person would have been better, but I hadn’t wanted Leese to hear the news from someone else.
“That’s what the deputy said,” I confirmed, then thought of a bizarre possibility. “What does she look like?”
“Not like me at all. Straight and short dark hair unless she’s back to dying it some weird color. She’s skinny and short. Taller than you, though.”
That wasn’t saying much, but her description matched the young woman I’d seen. So much for the possibility of mistaken identity. “When I saw her, she was crying and saying ‘It was me, I did it.’” There was no answer at Leese’s end, so I kept on going. “As far as I know, she’s still talking to Detective Inwood. He’s a decent guy, but he’s not concerned about winning the Nicest Police Officer Award.”
“Right,” Leese said. “Can you do me a favor and tell them I’m coming? Tell them I’ll be acting as Mia’s attorney and that I’m fifteen minutes out.”
“Of course,” I said, and tried not to remember that Leese lived twenty miles from Chilson. “Is there anyone you want me to call?”
“No,” she practically shouted. “Do not call Carmen. Do not call Brad. Let me figure out what’s going on. I’ll call them myself when I learn something. Carmen will go all weepy and Brad will stomp around looking for something to do. Neither one would be any help.”
“Got it,” I said, though I wasn’t sure I agreed with her. Still, it was her family and she should know what was best. “Is there anything else you’d like me to do?”
“Sure.” Over the phone I heard a car door slam and an engine roar to life. “Figure out who really killed my dad.”
“On it,” I told her. “Drive carefully, okay?”
“Every day,” she said, and the phone went silent.
After blowing out a long breath, I looked up at a thick bank of low clouds, and went inside to give Leese’s message. Once that was done, I came back out and tried to think what to do next. I could stay and offer moral support to Leese, but I wasn’t sure I’d be allowed to stay in the room with them.
More than once in the last year or two, I’d had people tell me to let the police do their jobs. They were right; I should have confidence in our local law enforcement and in our justice system. And I did, truly I did. I just didn’t think they moved quickly enough. Detective Inwood and even Sheriff Richardson could only be in one place at a time and there were only so many hours in a day.
I looked up the street to the big clock the chamber of commerce had installed last summer. Looked again, because I couldn’t fathom that it wasn’t even nine o’clock. Was the freakishly expensive thing broken already? I pulled out my cell phone, but it told me the same thing, that it was ten to nine.
“Three hours,” I murmured. There were three hours before I had to start the bookmobile’s route. What could I do in that amount of time that would be useful? What could I learn? What could . . .
“Duh,” I said out loud, startling the elderly man who was walking past. “Not you,” I said, flashing him a smile. “Me. Have a nice day.”
Because I’d figured out what to do. I was a librarian. What I needed to do was research.
• • •
“Dale Lacombe?” Bianca Sims, girlfriend of Mitchell Koyne and one of the most successful real estate agents in the area, studied me. She was blond, intelligent, and energetic, and I was still trying to figure out what she saw in Mitchell. “What kind of information?” she asked. “I heard his guys are going ahead with working on the houses he’d contracted to build, if that’s what you’re after.”
Sort of, but not really. “I came to you,” I said, “because Mitchell says you know all the builders in the area.”
A soft smile drifted across her face. “He’s so sweet. I can’t believe how lucky I was to find him.”
If my former boss had known Bianca was looking for a guy like Mitchell, I was sure he would have made the wedding arrangements himself in hopes of getting Mitchell to spend less time in the library.
“If I had to guess, I’d say Mitchell feels the same way about you,” I said, and her smile went even soppier. As I thought about what I’d say next, it occurred to me that I’d never smiled that way about Ash. Not once. “I’m interested in Dale’s business. Leese Lacombe, his daughter, is a friend of mine and I’m helping with the obituary.”
“Happy to help,” Bianca said. “His death was a shock to everyone.”
Especially Leese. I scribbled on the notepad I’d brought along, testing the pen and trying to push those staring blue eyes out of my memory. “Do you know how long Dale had been a builder?”
“Let’s see.” She leaned back and tented her fingers. “From what I remember people saying, he started working for a landscaper after high school. Then he got his builder’s license and worked for a contractor for a few years before going out on his own. So I’d say Lacombe Construction had been in business for at least thirty-five years.”
Longer than I’d been alive. “If he was in business for that long, he must have had a good reputation.”
At first, Bianca didn’t say anything, then she abruptly pushed herself back from her desk. “I need coffee. Want some?”
In short order, we were standing next to her Keurig coffeemaker, watching first one, then two, mugs fill with the piping hot staff of life. “How much do you really want to know about Dale?” Bianca asked.
A loaded question if I’d ever heard one, and I considered my answer carefully. “The truth,” I said.
Bianca offered me sugar, which I declined, and creamer, which I accepted. “Dale Lacombe,” she said, “built cheap houses and charged a lot for them.”
“Ah.” A number of things suddenly started making sense. Rafe’s reluctance to discuss Lacombe. The relationship that Leese, my by-the-rules friend, had had with her father.
“How he found so many suckers,” Bianca went on, “I don’t know, but he made a good living taking money from people who knew nothing about having a house built. He was always low bid, and you know what? You get what you pay for.”