Wrong Side of the Paw

by Laurie Cass

  “Sorry I came apart like that,” Leese murmured, pushing herself to her feet. “I don’t, usually. Thanks for listening.”

  “What happens on the bookmobile stays on the bookmobile,” I said. “And I’m glad we were here.” I also thought her mini-breakdown had probably been overdue. Even if she and her father hadn’t had much of a relationship, Dale had still been her father and some grief would have to be worked through.

  “And now,” Leese said, tapping her pile of new books, “I need you to play librarian so I can go home and drown my sorrows in fiction.”

  “An excellent way to spend a weekend,” I said.

  She smiled. A weak version, but still a smile. “Is that what you’re going to do?”

  Not exactly. “Fiction is always a priority in my life,” I told her, which was true, though it didn’t exactly answer her question. Luckily, she didn’t notice that particular detail and went away with her books.

  Julia, who’d overheard my last exchange with Leese, gave me a look that was Oscar-worthy in its complexity. One glance, and she clearly communicated sympathy, skepticism, and curiosity, along with a small dollop of exasperation. “Let me guess,” she said. “You’re not planning on reading tonight.”

  I grinned. “Eventually, sure.”

  My coworker rolled her eyes, but Eddie, who had remained sitting on the step after Leese had deposited him there, came over to bump me on the shin.

  “Mrr,” he said.

  I took his reaction as a clear indication that my plans for the post-bookmobile afternoon were good ones, so after work I dropped him off at the boardinghouse, kissed him on the top of the head, and headed out again.

  This time I drove to a construction site on Janay Lake. My discussion with Mitchell about Ron Driskell, the building inspector, had got me thinking. The man himself had certainly seemed to harbor ill feelings toward Dale Lacombe, and I wondered how many people were aware of that fact.

  Thus, my next step in learning more about the relationship between Dale and Ron Driskell was to trespass on a building site. Howard Upton, according to my local sources (Kristen, Rafe, Donna, and Aunt Frances) was one of the most reputable builders in the area. He was also one of the most expensive. One Friday phone call to the county’s building department provided me with the location of Upton’s current construction projects, and the chatty staff person also told me that Upton was behind on the biggest house.

  “Saturday?” the guy said. “Oh, I’d lay money he’ll be working Saturday. Sunday, too. He promised the owner he’d have it done in time to host the family Thanksgiving dinner and they’re still roughing in the plumbing.”

  Through hanging around Rafe’s fixer-upper, I’d learned what that meant in a limited sort of way, and what it meant for certain was that Howard Upton had a lot of work to do in the next five and a half weeks.

  The building department staffer gave me enough information to locate the house. (“Address? Well, I don’t know if I can give you that. But it’s past the gas station and across the road from that farm with the fieldstone barn. You know what one I mean?”)

  I did, and it didn’t take me long to drive the few miles out of Chilson and locate the site. The raw dirt and bare foundation were big hints, as was the driveway that was filled by half a dozen pickup trucks with open tailgates and in-bed toolboxes with the covers raised high.

  At the site where Dale Lacombe’s crew had been working, the grounds had been littered with the detritus that came with construction: bits of cardboard and insulation, short snippets of wire, and stockpiles of dirt and stone. The workers’ trucks had been parked higgledy-piggledy, and the trucks themselves had been coated with various combinations of rust, dirt, and dents.

  This site was different. Here, there was no litter or debris of any kind. There was bare dirt, but it was raked smooth and looked ready to accept plants. The trucks were parked in an orderly fashion at the side of the house and every vehicle looked, if not new, at least clean and tidy.

  By the time I walked halfway to the front porch, I’d already chosen Howard Upton as my future builder—assuming I won the lottery, of course, which wasn’t likely to happen because I never played—and was toying with the location for my fantasy home when a woman who looked to be a few years older than myself walked out the front door and onto the porch.

  My first assumption, that she was the owner, went by the wayside when I noted her work boots, tool belt, and nylon jacket, which was the same color as one of the trucks next to the house—the truck with an Upton Builders logo emblazoned on the driver’s side door.

  “Afternoon,” she said cheerfully. “Looking for someone?”

  Upton was definitely going to build my imaginary house. A contractor who hired personable help, female personable help at that, had to be something special. “Hi,” I said, walking forward. “I was hoping to talk to Howard Upton, if he has a minute.”

  She laughed, making her brown ponytail bounce up and down. “Howie hasn’t had a spare minute since 2011, but I’m sure he won’t mind talking to you. Go on in.” She tipped her head in an ushering motion. “Tell him Nan sent you in,” she said, trotting down the porch steps. “And tell him I’ll be right back with that corner piece,” she called as she climbed into one of the trucks.

  As her engine started, I turned to the front door and frowned. Though the opening was for a door with an arched top, the door in place was rectangular with a piece of plywood filling in the gap. Odd, I thought, but opened it and went in.

  From outside, the noise had been a dull roar. Inside, my ears felt assaulted by a cacophony of noises, ranging from the whine of a circular saw to the whunk whunk of a firing nail gun to the metallic screech of ductwork being assembled. I counted five men and one woman hard at work, and from the sounds of the footsteps above my head, there were at least two more people upstairs.

  I stood near the door, not wanting to get in anyone’s way, and waited for someone to note my presence. Soon enough, one of the men, a guy wearing sawdust-covered jeans and a Ferris State University sweatshirt, glanced up. He nodded at me, put down the drill he’d been using, and motioned me outside.

  Back on the front porch, he asked, “Can I help you?”

  “Sorry to barge in when you’re so obviously busy,” I said, “but I was hoping to talk to Howard Upton if he has a couple of minutes.”

  “That’s me.” He took off a work glove, held out his hand, and we shook.

  I was a little surprised by his age; I’d expected someone with such a stellar reputation to be in his fifties, but this guy couldn’t be that much older than I was. I introduced myself, and before I could say anything else, he gave me a solid slap on the shoulder.

  “You’re Frances Pixley’s niece,” he said, grinning. “It’s thanks to her that I got into construction. Before she started at the community college, she taught high school wood shop, remember? In two years I went from a kid who’d never touched a power tool in his life to a kid who won first place in the state woodworking competition with an inlaid dining table. She’s a great teacher and it’s a crying shame the high school dropped their industrial arts classes.”

  “She says the same thing.” And she did, often. It was understandable why Chilson and so many other schools had done so—they were expensive to run and difficult to staff—but it was still a shame because the benefits were so obvious. I smiled at Howard Upton. “I’ll tell her you said hello.”

  “Please do.” He tipped his head at the house. “What do you think? Are we going to finish by Thanksgiving?”

  It seemed unlikely, but what did I know? “You have lots of activity going on in there,” I said. “It’s like an ant hill that’s been stepped on.”

  Upton laughed. “Sounds about right. Frantic, but with a method.”

  I’d been thinking more along the purely frantic lines, but I let him keep his version of the simile.

&
nbsp; “So how can I help you?” he asked.

  Instead of the thinking-about-building-a-house story, I said, “I was hoping to talk to you about Ron Driskell.”

  He studied me. “Why?”

  “Sorry, it’s just . . .” I sighed. “Dale’s daughter, Leese, is a friend of mine. She just started a new business but she’s losing clients left and right because of her dad’s murder. I want to help, that’s all.”

  A loud crash echoed inside the house, followed by shouts and laughter. Upton rolled his eyes. “Leave the room for one minute and what happens?” But he was smiling as he spoke and made no move to investigate. “Okay,” he said. “I understand you want to help. What I don’t see is why you’re talking to me.”

  “Sorry.” And I was, because I’d asked the wrong question. Nicely done, Minnie. “What I should have asked was, what do you think about Ron Driskell?”

  “Our beloved building official?” He smiled, but this time it had a distinct sardonic cast.

  I began to scent a clue. “Mr. Driskell has a reputation?”

  Upton shrugged. “He won’t let builders cut any corners. He’s black and white, no gray allowed.”

  “I don’t see the problem. Isn’t that what building inspectors are supposed to do?”

  Another shrug. “Not for me, but for some guys, yeah.”

  “Because you don’t cut corners?”

  Upton grinned. “Let’s go with that.”

  I suspected that I’d simply spoken the truth and that he hadn’t wanted to do what might have been interpreted as bragging. My mental list of builders for my fantasy house went from a penciled listing with him at the top to a list of one with his name in permanent marker.

  “Does Mr. Driskell have a temper?” I asked.

  “Sure, if you poke at him with a stick.”

  “A stick?”

  “Metaphorically speaking,” Upton said. “Take last summer, for instance. There was this builder who needed a foundation inspection. Driskell’s office said it would be three days before an inspector could get out there. The builder decided he couldn’t wait and started laying the floor joists anyway.”

  “That’s bad?”

  “Very. When Driskell finally showed up, he went ballistic. Kicked at a pile of blocks and broke a toe.” I expected Upton to laugh, but he shook his head. “That kind of thing doesn’t do the construction trade any good. Sure, the builder shouldn’t have started without the foundation permit, but Driskell shouldn’t have lost his temper.”

  Hmm. “Was that an isolated incident, or are there other stories like that?”

  Upton launched into a complicated tale about low-flow toilets being replaced by toilets from Canada. Though I lost the story’s thread less than halfway through, I understood the ending of that and the three other incidents Upton told me about before heading back to work.

  The ending, the conclusion being: Ron Driskell had a horrific temper that had, more than once, ended in an outburst of violence.

  • • •

  Thoughtfully, I drove back to Chilson. The sun was just starting to slide down below the trees when I parked in the boardinghouse driveway and went in through the front door.

  “There you are,” Aunt Frances said. “Your cat has been worried sick about you.”

  Eddie was, at that particular moment, stretched out long on my aunt’s legs, which were up on the couch and covered with a new fleece blanket that I suspected she’d purchased because she thought Eddie would like it.

  My furry friend, who didn’t look worried about anything, picked his chin a quarter of an inch off the blanket and looked in my general direction. “Mrr,” he said, and let his chin drop back down.

  “He had a hard day on the bookmobile.” I leaned over the couch and patted his head. “All that sleeping tires him out something fierce.” I glanced at what Aunt Frances was reading. “Is that one of the scrapbooks?”

  She nodded. “An early one.”

  On a rainy afternoon the first year my aunt had opened the boardinghouse, she’d unearthed a blank scrapbook in the attic, brought it downstairs, plopped it in front of two bored boarders, and challenged them to fill it up before the end of the summer.

  They’d taken up the gauntlet with zest and from thence forth, every inclement boardinghouse day had become a group scrapbook activity day. Pages were crowded with handwritten notes, stick-figure sketches, beautifully drawn sketches, and maps to favorite places. Taped and glued in were cardboard coasters and napkins, ticket stubs, newspaper articles, pressed flowers, photos, and even small plastic baggies holding grains of sand from favorite beaches.

  Since then, there had been a boardinghouse scrapbook for every summer—and for eventful summers, sometimes more than one.

  I sat on the other couch. “Do I detect a wistful expression?”

  My aunt smiled and turned a page. “It’s that time of year. The guests have been gone long enough for me to recover physically, but not long enough that I’ve learned how to do without them.”

  “Physically?” I frowned. “I didn’t know you needed a recovery time.”

  Aunt Frances laughed. “Dear niece. You do realize that I’m almost thirty years older than you are. Cooking and cleaning for six other people would take a lot out of anyone, let alone someone in my age bracket.”

  “Hire someone to help,” I said.

  She looked up. “As I recall, you suggested that last summer. And I still feel the same way as I did then, that any outside help would change the atmosphere, make it impersonal.”

  “But—”

  She shook her head. “If it means we have to end the boardinghouse, then so be it. I am not going to budge on this one.”

  There was a short silence. “You shouldn’t have to work so hard,” I said softly.

  “Don’t you see?” she asked, just as softly. “I like to. I enjoy this and I always have. At least until now.”

  “Until Otto.”

  “Yes.” She shut the scrapbook. “But Otto and I would never have met if it hadn’t been for the boardinghouse. And what about all the other couples who have met here? It would be a shame . . .”

  Sighing, she leaned over and tossed the scrapbook to the coffee table, slightly dislodging Eddie in the process. Though he gave a mild murmur of protest, he didn’t do anything dramatic, like relocate.

  “Distract me,” she said. “I need to think about something else.”

  I put my feet up on the table. “Leese stopped by the bookmobile today. We got talking about her and her half siblings.”

  “Brad and Mia.” Aunt Frances nodded. “In spite of their parents, they’ve grown into fine young adults. Who would have guessed?”

  “Yeah, about that.” I slid down into a comfortable slouch and tried not to be jealous that Eddie preferred my aunt’s lap to mine. “Leese was telling us about a car accident from a long time ago. Leese was about thirteen, and Dale was driving. They crossed the centerline and hit a small convertible head-on.”

  Aunt Frances gave Eddie a long pet. “I remember. A lot of people turned against Dale after that. He tried to blame his children’s argument for the accident.” She snorted. “He should have pulled off the road, not tried to discipline them at fifty miles an hour.”

  “Leese says the accident was the last time she and her half siblings had a real argument.”

  “At least something good came out of it,” Aunt Frances muttered. “The man driving the other car certainly suffered enough.”

  Eddie’s head bounced up. “Mrr!” he said.

  I patted my fuzzy pal, a little puzzled at her turn of phrase. “I suppose death is the worst kind of suffering.”

  “What?” Aunt Frances frowned at me. “He didn’t die. Who told you that? He was hurt very badly, though. And didn’t deal with it well, from what people said.”

  “Mrr.”
r />   My aunt looked at Eddie. “What did I do this time?”

  “Mrr!”

  “You breathed?” I suggested.

  “Ah. That’s it.”

  Eddie jumped to the back of the couch and glared at Aunt Frances. “Mrr!” He turned and gave me a hostile look. “Mrr!” Then he jumped to the floor and thumped his way up the wooden stairs.

  Aunt Frances and I looked at each other.

  “So,” she said. “What are you up to tonight?”

  I laughed, then remembered what was on the agenda for the evening.

  And sighed.

  • • •

  After giving Eddie—who had crawled into the back of my closet and made a nest of my summer flip-flops—an air kiss, I hurried down the stairs and out the front door. Aunt Frances and Otto were already on their way out for dinner with friends, and if I didn’t hurry, I was going to be late to meet Ash.

  Late would be bad, but even worse was I still didn’t have the right words to start the conversation we needed to have. I’d stopped by the Three Seasons the night before to talk to Kristen about it and she’d rolled her eyes at my attempts. “It’s not a speech,” she’d said disgustedly. “You can’t rehearse this kind of thing. Just open your mouth and start talking.”

  “If I do that,” I said, “I’ll start talking about something that’s easier to talk about. Say, the best way to achieve peace in the Middle East.”

  “Don’t be stupid. All you have to do is focus.”

  In spite of the dire danger of receiving another eye roll, I asked, “Should I ease into it or do I start right in?”

  “Focus,” she’d repeated, and now that I was on my way to meet Ash, I was doing my best to keep her advice foremost in my mind.

  The only problem was, my brain was filled with things to think about. There was Leese’s dad, her brother and sister, her stepmom, and Leese’s business. There was my new boss, the outrageously expensive software program she wanted to purchase, and Mitchell’s refusal to enter the library until she was gone. There was the question of what Eddie might be doing to my flip-flops, my aunt’s upcoming marriage, and the possible dissolution of the boardinghouse.