Wrong Side of the Paw

by Laurie Cass

  “Sorry, I was just trying to imagine Rafe getting really mad at someone. He’s the calmest person I know. I’ve never seen him more than mildly frustrated at anyone or anything.”

  The worst display of his temper I’d ever witnessed had been when the local lumberyard had delivered the wrong length of wooden siding to his house. It was special-ordered siding that had taken weeks to arrive. Rafe had looked at the vast piles of wood, uttered one heartfelt curse word, and called the lumberyard to calmly tell them what had happened.

  “So there’s no way he could have killed anyone,” I reminded Eddie. “It’s silly to even consider that.”

  My cat gave a huge sigh.

  “Well, exactly. It’s just ludicrous. He might have mouthed off to Dale, because he is kind of a smart aleck, but the idea of him making a real and serious threat is just . . . is just . . .”

  “Mrr.”

  “Thanks.” I patted Eddie’s head. “That’s just what I was trying to say. I’ll have to talk to Detective Inwood, or maybe Ash, because I promised Carmen to let them know what she’s remembered, but it’s pointless. Yes, people can change, but that was a long time ago, way too long ago for a spoken threat to still carry any serious weight, and anyway, I’ve known Rafe since I was twelve. He’s the same now as he was then.”

  “Mrr.”

  “Okay, maybe not exactly the same,” I said, admitting the truth. “He’s not so skinny anymore, but other than that, he’s the same guy Kristen and I used to ride bikes with all summer long.”

  Eddie, temporarily a lap cat, rotated himself end for end.

  “No, not skinny at all,” I murmured, giving Eddie long pets that would soon create a small pile of cat hair on his back, on the blanket, and on me. “In some circles, he’d be considered trim and fit.” Most circles, if I was going to be absolutely honest with myself. “And the odds are high that some women think he’s good-looking.” Actually, there were probably a lot of women who thought so.

  “Really, he’s not a bad guy.” By all accounts he was the best principal the middle school had seen in years. He was such a decent human being that he had friends who ran the gamut of ages, income levels, education, and ethnicity.

  “He’s actually quite nice.”

  I’d never once, in the twenty-plus years I’d known him, seen him be anything other than kindhearted and generous with his time. He was willing to drop everything to help a friend and do it with a grinning joke. Yes, he had an unfortunate tendency to act the part of an Up North hick, especially if there was some show-off downstater in the audience, and he didn’t always take things as seriously as they needed to be taken, but as a whole, he was a genuinely nice guy.

  I thought back in time to the previous summer. We’d sat side by side on his porch one warm evening and as our hands had brushed each other as he’d handed me something, I’d felt an uncomfortable prickling sensation. He’d touched my hair and the same thing had happened.

  And even as I was remembering, my skin started to prickle again.

  My eyes went wide and I sat up straight. “Oh, no,” I breathed. “It can’t be. It’s not possible.”

  But as soon as the thought had entered my brain, I knew there was no way to unthink it, because it was true.

  I was in love with Rafe Niswander.

  And had been for years.

  • • •

  After a restless night of sleep, I crawled out of bed with eyes full of grit and felt the uneasy knowledge that my life had changed irrevocably.

  “What do you think?” I asked Eddie, but my cat, as per usual, didn’t have any advice to offer when I needed it the most. On the other hand, he did purr like a champ as I slid him into his cat carrier, so I wasn’t going to complain.

  “Breakfast?” my aunt called as my feet trod the last few steps.

  “No time,” I called back. “Errands to run and people to see before I go into work.” Plus, I didn’t want her to see my troubled face. I would explain my newfound feelings to her at some point; just not yet. “See you tonight.”

  But in those few words, Aunt Frances had heard something in my voice. “Minnie?” she asked, walking into the living room. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine.” I closed the door to the front closet and put on my coat, not meeting her eyes. “There’s just a lot to do today.” Sort of. “Ready, Eddie?” I picked up the cat carrier and took hold of the front doorknob.

  My aunt, however, put her foot against the bottom of the door, trapping me inside. “One minute, young lady. You’re not leaving this house until I get a promise that you’ll tell me what’s going on.”

  I tugged at the unmoving doorknob. “Aunt Frances—”

  “Promise. I’m bigger than you and I have nowhere to go. I’ll hold this door shut all day if I have to.”

  “Fine,” I said, sighing. “This week. We’ll talk about whatever this is before another week goes by.”

  “Then you’re free to leave.” She stepped back from the door. “Of course, it would be nice if I could get a hint about the topic we’ll be discussing. If I did, I could do any necessary research before you spill your guts.”

  “Research won’t be needed,” I muttered. “Trust me.”

  “Mrr,” Eddie said, and then we were out the door.

  Five minutes later, before I could lose my courage, I parked in a visitor spot at the middle school. “Be right back,” I told Eddie, and headed inside. It was forty-five minutes before school started. If this was a normal day for Rafe, he’d already be at his desk, knee deep in whatever it was the principals did before school began.

  I stared at the front door, took a deep breath, and went inside. “Don’t let this be awkward,” I told myself. After all, Rafe had no idea of the realization I’d come to twelve hours earlier. There was no way he could possibly know that I loved him, had loved him, would probably always love him.

  “Don’t,” I whispered. If he’d ever had any interest in a romantic relationship with Minnie Hamilton, he’d had numerous opportunities to speak over the years. He’d never said a word. We were friends. And would remain only friends. It would take time, but I’d adjust to this new reality and would eventually move on.

  I gave an involuntary moan of pain. Which sounded so pathetic that I was ashamed of myself. “Buck up,” I told myself firmly, ignoring the bleak emptiness I felt, trying not to think about Kristen’s upcoming wedding, in which both Rafe and I would undoubtedly be playing key roles, and opened the door to the school offices. “Hey,” I called. “You in there?”

  “Hay is for horses,” Rafe called back. “I’d prefer steak and eggs.”

  “Oatmeal,” I said, walking past the counter and his secretary’s desk, still empty at this hour, “is a much healthier choice.”

  As I entered his office, a balled-up piece of paper popped me on the shoulder. “What was that for?” I stooped, picked up the paper, and fired it right back.

  He batted it away and into the wastebasket. “Two points for the big winner. That’s what you get for suggesting healthy food instead of something I might actually like.”

  “Is that what you tell your students?” I asked.

  “I tell them to do as I say, not as I do.”

  “And how is that working out for you?”

  He grinned. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

  I looked away from his smile, that wide, easy expression I’d seen thousands of times but that was now threatening to undo me. “Maybe I will.”

  “You could, but you won’t.” He wadded up another piece of paper and lobbed it at a nearby chair. “Have a seat.”

  “Can’t stay,” I said, but took the time to perch on the chair’s edge. “I just stopped by to tell you something.”

  “Let me guess.” He whistled tunelessly for a moment, then said, “Eddie has finally found a way past his vocal limitatio
ns and is telling you exactly how you should run your life.”

  “He’s been doing that for a year and a half,” I said. “It’s all in the interpretation. No, it’s about Dale Lacombe. I talked to Carmen last night. A while back, I’d asked her if any of Dale’s employees had ever been angry enough to kill him, or if any of them had ever threatened him.”

  Rafe snorted. “Most of them, I’d say.”

  “At the time, she couldn’t think of anyone, but last night she called because she’d remembered one name.” I paused, not wanting to say it out loud, knowing that I had to. “And it was yours.”

  He gave me a blank look. “What are you talking about? I only worked for Lacombe once, the summer between high school and college.”

  “Yes, but Carmen said . . .” I tried to remember exactly what she’d told me. “She said you’d blown up at Dale, gone on and on about how horrible he was as a boss.”

  “True enough,” Rafe said, leaning back in his chair and putting his hands behind his head. “I did say all that. He was the worst boss I’d ever had, and that hasn’t changed.”

  “There’s more,” I said evenly. “She said you blew up at him after he fired you, and that you threatened him. That you told him it wouldn’t take much for an accident to happen on a dark night.”

  For a long moment, there was silence in the room. Rafe’s gaze met mine, and though I longed to go to him, to hold him tight and give him what comfort I could, I met his gaze and didn’t flinch.

  Then he started laughing. Loud and long. “Seriously?” he asked, through spasms of laughter. “She’s going to take that to the cops?”

  “First thing this morning, she said.”

  “Sweet.” As his laughter faded to chuckles, he wiped his eyes with the backs of his hands. “Wish I could be there when she talks to Inwood, because that would be worth something.”

  “It was a threat,” I said, getting a little annoyed. “And Dale Lacombe is dead.”

  “A threat, sure.” He started laughing again. “What I told him was to take a long walk on a short pier. Not very original even at eighteen, but that was all I had. I mean, who fires a kid for picking up litter?”

  “He . . . what?”

  “I was cleaning up a job site,” Rafe said. “He left scraps of paper and wood all over the place, and he said I spent too much time cleaning when I should have been pounding nails.”

  “You were cleaning?” I found that hard to believe, knowing the typical status of his house. It was under construction, but still.

  “Well, I haven’t changed much, so imagine what Lacombe’s job sites looked like if the mess was bugging me.”

  Good point. “Sorry about this. It was my questions that got Carmen thinking.”

  He shrugged. “Don’t apologize. There’s nothing there. It’s not like I killed anyone.”

  Annoyance flashed through me. “Of course you didn’t. But if she tells the police you made a threat, they’ll have to investigate and who knows what could happen.”

  “Nothing,” he said, yawning and stretching. “Absolutely nothing.”

  “What if the school board finds out? Aren’t you worried about your reputation?”

  “Cops coming in to talk to me?” He peered at the ceiling as if it held answers. “I’d say it would help my street cred.”

  I made a rude noise in the back of my throat, proud of myself for acting as if I didn’t have deep unrequited love for the man sitting ten feet away from me. “You’re so gangsta it frightens me. Why do I get the feeling you’re not taking any of this seriously?”

  “Because I’m not. Thanks for caring, though.”

  I looked closely to see if I could detect any hint that he was serious, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. “Do you mean that?” I asked, a little embarrassed about how tentative I sounded. The small silence that followed told me more than I wanted to know.

  Rafe cleared his throat and leaned forward. “Minnie, there’s—”

  “I have to go,” I said quickly, not wanting to hear him say that I had the wrong idea, that he was sorry I’d misunderstood what he’d said about missing me, that he hoped we could stay friends. “But before I go,” I said, “write this down.” I pulled out my phone and scrolled through the contacts list until I got to the downstate phone number I wanted and read it out loud.

  Rafe picked up a pen. “What’s that for?”

  “Daniel Markakis,” I snapped.

  “Isn’t that—”

  “One of the best criminal attorneys in the state.” I slid my cell back into my coat pocket, spun on my heel, and headed out, my heart near to breaking.

  • • •

  The rest of the day, I tried to keep myself busy so I didn’t have time to think. I did, however, make a quick afternoon phone call to Detective Inwood and sounded him out about Carmen’s accusation about Rafe. The detective said he had talked to Carmen, and though he didn’t outright laugh, he seemed to take her report almost as seriously as Rafe had, for which I was extremely grateful.

  “Not that I’m going to communicate that to Rafe,” I told Eddie that night. “Did you count how many times Julia asked if I was coming down with something?”

  Eddie, who was sitting upright on one of the kitchen chairs, looked at me with unblinking eyes and made no comment.

  “Me, either,” I said, “but it was a lot.” Even a few patrons had asked if I was feeling all right. I’d spent a lot of time staring vacantly into space, and more than once, I’d jumped high when someone had tapped me on the shoulder.

  I opened the refrigerator door and took out a container of leftover spaghetti. “But I’m not sick. Just distracted.”

  “Mrr.”

  “Glad you understand,” I said, forking the spaghetti onto a plate and sliding it into the microwave. “There’s a lot going on in my head, you know.”

  “Mrr!”

  “You want me to list them all? Okay, Aunt Frances is going to marry Otto and move in with him. The boardinghouse will be sold.”

  Eddie jumped down and came over to bump my shins with the top of his head.

  “Yeah, I know. It’s sad, but like they say, all good things come to an end.”

  “Mrr!”

  “Not done with my list,” I said. “In addition to those big changes in my life, there’s also this little thing going on at the library. You know, that Jennifer is about to sell irreplaceable assets for the sake of a computer system we don’t need, not to mention the fact that she’s making everyone’s life miserable.”

  Or at least that’s what Holly, Josh, Donna, Kelsey, and every staff member other than Gareth kept telling me. And if Gareth didn’t do his custodial and maintenance work after the library was closed and everyone was gone, he would probably be complaining, too.

  I was trying to convince my coworkers that we’d get used to her and she’d get used to us, but Jennifer had been director for almost three months now, and if anything, the situation was growing worse.

  “We’re going to lose Donna,” I murmured. She’d already retired from one career and would do without the extra income if she got fed up with Jennifer. “I don’t want to have to replace her,” I said. “Finding someone with her range of skills will be next to impossible.”

  The microwave dinged and I pulled out my dinner. “Even if we did find someone, who else is going to work for the wages we can afford to pay?” Working in a library was, to my mind, the best job in the world, but no one did it to get rich.

  I sat at the round oak table and twirled spaghetti around my fork. “And then there’s Leese.”

  “Mrr,” Eddie said.

  His little kitty voice hadn’t come from his chair. “Where are you?” I looked around, but didn’t see him. “Anyway, Leese is worried about Mia and Brad, and I’m worried about Leese. Mia and Brad are in trouble at their respective workplaces, they�
�re all working through their father’s death, and the fact that no one’s been arrested isn’t helping.”

  I chewed and swallowed a forkful of spaghetti. “When I talked to Detective Inwood this morning, all I got was the standard response about investigating everything.” Sighing, I ate another bite. “But from his tone of voice, it doesn’t sound as if they have anything solid.”

  “Mrr.”

  “If you want, sure, I’ll talk you through everything I’ve learned. First off, no one except Carmen seemed surprised that Dale was murdered. That makes narrowing down suspects hard from the get-go.”

  An odd noise emanated from the broom closet, whose door, I now noticed, was open a few inches.

  “Detective Inwood and Ash were looking at all the employees that Dale had ever fired,” I told the closet, “and they’re talking to all his clients from the last few years.” When I’d talked to Inwood, I’d obliquely mentioned the possibility that Dale and/or Carmen had been having extramarital affairs. There’d been a long telephone silence, Inwood had sighed, then I’d heard noises I’d interpreted as a new page in his notebook being flipped and a pen being clicked to writing position.

  I was pretty sure that Inwood figured I was just trying to distract him from making a case against Brad or Leese as the murderer, and he was probably right. Then again, since there was no way Brad or Leese had killed Dale, the detective should be thanking me for saving him time and effort.

  “If Brad was going to kill his dad,” I said to Eddie, “it would have been while they were working together, not now. And Carmen and Dale had such an odd marriage, why would it explode into murder now? And it doesn’t seem like it was anyone involved in one of the lawsuits.

  “And then there’s the building official, Rob Driskell. He was definitely not a fan of Dale’s. Him killing Dale in a fit of anger makes a lot more sense than Brad or Carmen doing it.” Not that murder necessarily made sense, but you had to start somewhere. “If the detective and Ash are going to keep looking at Brad, I’m going to have to work harder on—”