Wrong Side of the Paw

by Laurie Cass

  “My dear Barbara.” He glared at her, but a smile tricked up one side of his mouth. “Nothing is beneath me artistically. At least that’s what what’s-his-name in New York said.”

  “Pish,” she repeated. “Critics are clueless.”

  My ears twitched at the repetition of two C words in a three-word sentence. Was this the beginning of a new game? The McCades and I had a habit of randomly choosing a letter and then finding words starting with that letter to fit whatever ongoing conversation was at hand. Winning the game wasn’t quite as much fun as beating Rafe at a five-dollar bet, but at least losing didn’t cost me anything.

  Honk honk!

  This time it wasn’t Cade; it was the car behind them. I glanced up and recognized the vehicle as Rafe’s. I stepped back. “See you two later,” I said to the McCades. “We’ll get together before you head to Arizona, right?”

  Waving and agreeing, they drove off and Rafe rolled down the passenger’s window. “What’s up, short stuff?”

  I shook my head sadly. “At some point you’re going to realize that you’re not as funny as you think you are.”

  “Oh, I know I’m not funny,” he said cheerfully. “But can I help it if other people think I am?”

  “Yes.” Then, before he could ask how, exactly, he was supposed to help it, I quickly said the first thing that popped into my head. “I moved up to the boardinghouse last night.”

  “Figured that when I didn’t see any lights on in your boat this morning. I had a late meeting last night; otherwise I would have helped.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I know what your version of help is like. Supervision from a distance with a beer in one hand.”

  He grinned. “Someone’s got to do it. I have to say, though . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “Go ahead,” I said, dramatically standing tall and jutting out my chin. “Whatever you have to say, I can take it.”

  Rafe smiled. “This may be too much for you.”

  “Hah. I come from a long line of strong women. I can take anything.”

  “Okay, then.” He shifted his gaze away, and when he looked back, his face was clear of fun and laughter. He looked sincere and serious, which was so unusual that I steeled myself for anything from the worst joke in the world to the news that his mom had been diagnosed with some incurable disease.

  “I’ll miss you,” he said quietly.

  “You . . . what?” I stared at him, and the world around me shifted.

  There was a slight pause, then he said, “Mostly Eddie, of course, but you, too. Who’s going to hand me tools?”

  The world righted itself; Rafe was back to joking. “Try thinking ahead,” I suggested. “I hear it can work wonders.”

  He grinned crookedly. “Like you’d know?”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but a car was coming, so I stepped away from Rafe’s car and waved him away.

  Rafe drove off and I watched him go. He missed me. He hadn’t been joking about that; he really missed me. “I miss you, too,” I whispered after him. Because I realized that I did. We spent a lot of time together in the summers, living so close, and I would miss his banter and laughter and . . . him.

  “Don’t be stupid,” I muttered. Rafe and I have been friends for twenty years. If there had ever been anything more, we would have figured it out years ago.

  With that settled, I took one step in the direction of lunch, then came to a sudden halt. For some reason, meeting up with the McCades had reminded me of a small task that needed doing, and since there was no time like the present, I reversed direction and went into the toy store, the bells attached to the front door jingling merrily.

  “Hey, Minnie.” Mitchell, who was standing too close to the top of a stepladder for my comfort, waved at me. “What’s up?”

  I tipped my head back to look at him. “You, it looks like.”

  “Me? What . . .” Then he laughed. “Oh, I get it.” He reached, readjusted the large hanging model airplane to a slightly different angle, then clambered down the ladder and looked up at his handiwork. “Bet no one dusted that thing in years.”

  I could see why, since it was snugged up next to a tall ceiling and no one would ever notice the amount of dust on it, but I was glad Mitchell was taking such a proprietary interest in the store he was managing. “You did a nice job,” I said.

  “You’re the second person who said that to me in six months.”

  No one should get that little encouragement, and I made a mental note to compliment the library staff more often. “Who was the other one?”

  “The contractor I worked for last summer.” He grinned. “The county building inspector was doing his thing, and it was my framing he was looking at. My boss said he couldn’t think of a time when that inspector walked away without writing him up for something.”

  My attention went sharp. “Was that Ron Driskell?”

  “Yeah, that’s him. My boss couldn’t stand him, but I always figured he was just doing his job. Kind of a crappy one, if you ask me, but I suppose someone has to do it.”

  “How did Driskell feel about your boss?” From Mitchell’s puzzled expression, it was clear he had no idea what I meant, so I kept going. “Did they get along? Were they friendly? Did they argue on job sites?”

  “Oh, I see what you’re saying. No, they were good, far as I ever saw. Talked about sports a lot. Driskell’s a Lions guy and my boss is a Packers fan, but they were both fans of the Tigers, so it was all okay.”

  “Was Driskell like that with most contractors? Get along with them like that?”

  Mitchell shrugged. “I only worked for that one builder. All I know for sure is that he’s a black and white kind of guy.”

  So Dale Lacombe and Ron Driskell might have had a special—and acrimonious—relationship. Interesting.

  “Doing any shopping today?” Mitchell smiled down at me from his six-plus feet of height. “Something for Sally’s birthday next month? If she’s still into horses, I have the perfect thing.”

  Another astounding by-product of Mitchell’s new job was the realization that his memory for arcane facts and figures was being put to productive use. My older brother, my only sibling, had two daughters and a son, and Mitchell already knew not only their names but also their birthdays, favorite colors, interests, and current career indications.

  “She’s all about horses,” I said, “but I’ll stop by some other time to talk about presents. I wanted to tell you that we have a small stack of books for you. I know Donna called a couple of times and I wanted to make sure you’d received the message.”

  Mitchell made a face. “I don’t see myself coming in there for a while.”

  “But your fines are all paid up.” I frowned. “You can check out anything you’d like. I even found a copy of Philip Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? for you.”

  “Yeah, well.” He blew out a breath. “It’s that new director. Jennifer what’s-her-name. She’s . . . she’s not from here, if you know what I mean.”

  Ash’s mother had said something similar about Carmen. “She could be from Timbuctoo and still be a good library director.”

  He shrugged. “Don’t care where she’s from. She just doesn’t belong. All she wants to do is change things. Like everything we were doing before was wrong.”

  I did agree, actually, but felt compelled to defend my boss. “She’s new and she’s trying to impress the board, that’s all. I wouldn’t take her need to change things as a true criticism.”

  “Yeah?” Mitchell’s hands flexed. “Then why did she tell me I shouldn’t be reading stuff like Robert Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy? That I was a grown man and should be reading things to improve myself, not reading science fiction written for fourteen-year-olds.”

  “She did?” I asked weakly.

  “And she said there was no reason for anyone ove
r the age of ten to spend their time on a jigsaw puzzle, not when there were so many things in the world that needed doing.”

  The library’s reading room had a table that was practically dedicated to the assembly of jigsaw puzzles. There was a tall stack of the puzzles up in the Friends of the Library book sale room, and they seemed to wander downstairs on their own.

  I couldn’t think of a time when there wasn’t a puzzle going on that table, and there was almost always someone sitting there, putting in a piece or three. It was quiet entertainment for dozens of people and I’d seen everyone from third-shift workers at a local factory to a state legislator doing their bit.

  “Well,” I said uncomfortably, “that’s just her opinion. She’s entitled to thinking whatever she wants about jigsaw puzzles. Maybe she had a bad experience as a kid, or something.”

  Mitchell gave me a disbelieving stare. “With puzzles?”

  “Um.” I searched for a reason; any reasonable reason would do. “When she was a kid, she could have been doing a jigsaw with a great uncle who had a heart attack.” Not a bad reason at all. Nicely done, Minnie! “He’d had a heart condition for years, but that fateful day he clutched his chest, gasping for air, and fell to the floor, right next to Jennifer.” I was feeling quite sorry for the young version of my boss. “She called nine-one-one, but it was too late. He was gone. Maybe since then, she hasn’t been able to look at a jigsaw puzzle without remembering how helpless and how sad and traumatized she felt that day.”

  He snorted. “And maybe I’m going to win the lottery. She’s not a nice person and she doesn’t belong here. I’m not going back to the library until she’s gone.”

  “Stephen was here for almost ten years,” I reminded him.

  “Then,” Mitchell said grimly, “it looks like I won’t go to the library for ten years.”

  “We’ll miss you,” I said, as seriously as I could, because there was no way Mitchell could stay away from all our books and all our magazines. I gave him two weeks at the outside.

  • • •

  The next day was a bookmobile day, a fact that Eddie figured out the moment I pulled his carrier from the boardinghouse’s front closet. Aunt Frances watched him stand at the ready while I opened the wire door and arranged his fluffy pink blanket.

  “Most cats,” she observed, “run and hide when the cat carrier comes out.”

  “Eddie is not most cats.” I held the door open. “Sir, your carriage awaits.”

  “Mrr,” he said, strolling into the carrier and flopping down into an Eddie-sized heap.

  Aunt Frances laughed. “That was definitely a ‘thank you.’”

  “He is just a cat, you know.”

  “Eddie,” my aunt said. “Did you hear what she said about you?”

  “Mrr!”

  Later that morning, when I passed on the exchange to Julia as we started the preparations at the first stop, she looked at Eddie, who was sitting on his new favorite perch, the corner of the front computer desk.

  “Have you forgiven her yet?” she asked him.

  He stared her in the eye and inched forward. “Mrr!”

  Julia shook her head, sighing. “Sorry, Minnie. He might not get over this one for quite a while.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You and Aunt Frances are two of a kind.”

  “What kind is that?”

  Julia and I turned at the familiar voice. “Leese, I didn’t hear you come in,” I said. “And of course I’m different from those two. I’m shorter, for one thing.”

  “Like that’s a real difference.” Leese plopped her pile of return books on the back desk. “At the core, you’re the same.”

  She was so wrong. “I hate to cook, I can’t do sudoku for beans, and the only time I watch the evening news is when someone I know might be on it.”

  Leese stood in front of the selection of new books and pulled out Louise Erdrich’s most recent release. “Superficial. I only know your aunt a little, but I’d bet that all three of you would do anything for a friend or family member, that you have the kindest hearts I’ve ever come across, and that you find every possible opportunity to laugh.”

  It was an interesting point of view, but my brain danced back to the first part of her sentence. “Speaking of family, how’s Brad doing?”

  She slumped. “He’s been better. The brewery is still trying to figure out what went wrong. They’re running some sort of lab tests on that beer and those won’t be done for a week or so.”

  Julia and I exchanged a glance at her tone. It was one of worry, anxiety, and concern. Which brought to mind something I’d been wondering about for a while. It probably wasn’t the best time to ask, but if I waited for the perfect time, I could be waiting until doomsday.

  “How is it that you and Brad and Mia are so close?” I asked. “You have the same father, but not the same mother, and you weren’t raised together, but the three of you are as close as full siblings. Maybe closer.”

  Leese stared at the opening page of LaRose and didn’t say anything.

  Uh-oh. Clearly I’d stumbled smack into an uncomfortable subject. “Sorry,” I said quickly. “I didn’t mean to pry. Forget I asked, okay?”

  “No.” Leese shut the book gently and turned to face us. “It’s all right.” Her eyes tracked Eddie, who jumped down from the desk and walked a circuitous route around Julia and me to bump the top of his head against Leese’s shins.

  She hunched down and scratched the top of his head. “It was a long time ago,” she said in a quiet murmur that Eddie must have liked, because he started up a loud purr. “I was at Dad and Carmen’s for the weekend. I hadn’t wanted to go, but Mom didn’t give me much choice. This was when I was in middle school, a new teenager, sullen and unhappy with the world.”

  Smoothly, she shifted sideways out of her crouch to sit on the carpeted step. Eddie, still purring, jumped up onto her lap and all but burrowed inside her jacket. She smiled, gave him long pets that wafted stray bits of Eddie hair into space, and kept talking.

  “I was thirteen, Brad was nine, and Mia . . .” Her voice faltered. “Mia was only seven.”

  Julia and I didn’t move; I was barely breathing from not wanting to interrupt what was so obviously hard for Leese to talk about.

  “I don’t even remember where we were going,” Leese said. “You’d think I would; it was unusual for the four of us to be together without Carmen, but I really have no idea what we were supposed to be doing.”

  There was so much tension in the air, I could almost see it floating around with the Eddie hair.

  “It’s been years since I’ve talked about this.” Leese flicked us a glance. “Everything is clear in my memory, but I haven’t had much practice putting it into words.”

  “Take your time,” Julia said, using all her stage powers to sound encouraging and comforting.

  Leese snuggled Eddie into a hug, something he didn’t particularly care for. He eyed me over the top of her arm, but made no move to escape.

  “Brad was in the front seat,” she said, “because it was his turn. Mia sat behind Dad, which put me behind Brad, and there couldn’t have been a worse arrangement.”

  Her faint smile was brief. “We started fighting. I’m sure I started it. I was that kind of kid. It didn’t take long before all three of us were arguing. He this, she that, it wasn’t me, you know the kind of thing. Dad told us to be quiet, but we escalated. I started kicking the back of Brad’s seat; he started thumping backward, trying to do I don’t know what, and Mia was pinching me. All three of us were yelling, Dad was yelling, and then . . .”

  She closed her eyes and the words fell out of her, one after another.

  “And then Dad turned he was yelling at me at Brad at Mia at all of us and he wasn’t watching the road and the car started to swerve and I saw what was going to happen I could see it and I screamed but he didn’t know
why I was screaming and he swerved and he crossed the centerline and we hit that car head-on it was just a little car and—”

  The torrent of words came to a sharp halt. It should have been quiet in the bookmobile, but I could hear the horrendous echo of that long-ago crash, the rubber screeching, the metal crunching, the glass breaking.

  After a long, terrible moment, Leese drew in a shuddering breath and opened her eyes. The noise of the accident faded away and was replaced by the sound of Eddie’s purrs.

  When Leese started talking again, her voice was long and thin. “Dad was driving a big SUV. We hit a little red convertible. A man was driving, and he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. He was thrown out of his car, and—” She stopped and buried her face in Eddie’s fur. “I can still see him hitting the ground,” she said shakily. “I dreamed it again last night, I . . .”

  She sighed and rubbed at her face with the heels of her hands. “Anyway, that’s why Brad and Mia and I have a different kind of relationship than most half siblings. We haven’t had a single argument since the day of the accident.”

  The car crash hadn’t been their fault, and on some level I was sure she knew that, but I also knew nothing I could say would convince her that she didn’t deserve part of the blame. So instead of wasting my breath and her time, I moved to sit on the step beside her and put my arm around her waist.

  After a while, she stopped crying, but my mind kept on whirring and went in a whole new direction. Could this accident be the reason for Dale’s murder? Could there be a connection?

  Then the rational part of my brain started working again. No, that didn’t make any sort of sense. The poor guy had died, and it had been more than twenty years ago. What connection could there possibly be at this late date?

  Most of me was convinced, but there was a small part of me that went on wondering.

  Chapter 13

  A bare minute after Leese had finished her story, a mother and her three homeschooled children jumped aboard the bookmobile, all three filled with boundless energy and enthusiastic questions about their current project of learning about the constellations. Julia shepherded the group to the appropriate section as Leese wiped her eyes with the tissue I offered.