Wrong Side of the Paw

by Laurie Cass

  “Leese?” I called. “It’s just Minnie.” And Eddie, but I didn’t feel the need to announce that, especially if she was with a client.

  There was no answering reply.

  Huh.

  Well, maybe she and her client were deep in a serious discussion and didn’t want to be interrupted. I stood there, listening, and heard nothing except the hum of Leese’s refrigerator.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  Eddie, however, had no words of advice.

  “That’s a first,” I muttered as I walked up the few steps to the kitchen. I set the cat carrier down and gave my cat a long look. If I left him in the carrier, he was bound to start howling again, and I didn’t want to interrupt Leese’s consultation.

  I set the carrier on the floor and unlatched the door. “Be good,” I said, and set him free.

  Eddie, being Eddie, continued to stay inside. As I watched, he pushed himself into the back corner and made himself small. Which is a hard thing for a thirteen-pound cat to do, but cats are amazing creatures.

  I went to the cupboard for a bowl, added water, and put it in front of Eddie, who didn’t even sniff at it. I rolled my eyes at my contrary cat, returned to the cupboard, and got myself a glass of water.

  Still, I didn’t hear a sound from the front room.

  Was it possible that Leese had gone somewhere and left the lights on? It didn’t seem likely, but the complete silence was getting on my nerves. I tried to remember what the tire tracks in the snow had looked like, how filled they’d been with snow, but I’d been so busy with my thoughts that I hadn’t paid much attention.

  I stood at the sink, peering out through the window at the driveway, but couldn’t tell. A tire track expert I was not. Besides, the afternoon was already growing dark.

  “Well.”

  Leese was gone. She had to be.

  Feeling a little like a creepy burglar, waltzing into someone’s home when it was empty, I washed my cup, dried it, and put it away. I did the same with Eddie’s untouched water bowl and was about to head out when I decided to poke my head into the front office, just to make sure everything was okay.

  I crossed the kitchen and the formal dining room, which was functioning more as a library than anything else, and went into the front hallway, where there was a door to her office. It stood slightly open. By this time I was ninety-nine point nine percent sure that Eddie and I were the only ones in the house, so I pushed at the door with little concern.

  Leese was sitting behind her desk, staring at me with wide eyes. She yelled something, but I couldn’t hear what she said because her mouth was gagged shut. Her ankles were tied to the chair and her hands were tied behind her back.

  I rushed forward, hands out, reaching for her gag, wanting to help, wanting to find out if she was okay, when strong male hands grabbed at me from behind.

  “Don’t move,” growled a deep voice.

  Chapter 18

  I kicked and struggled and bit and clawed, but his strength soon overpowered me. He pulled my wrists behind my back and quickly looped duct tape around them.

  “There,” he said, panting a little from the exertion. He shoved me forward, making me stumble, and I discovered that it’s remarkably hard to recover your balance when your hands are tied behind your back.

  He pushed me again, this time into a chair, taped my wrists to the chair’s back, then held my kicking legs down as he taped my ankles together. As he crouched to tape my ankles to the chair, he started talking. “What were you doing out there anyway? I thought I was going to die of old age in here, waiting.”

  I stared at our captor. This was the guy with the walker who had practically bitten my head off when I’d offered to help. He was the guy who had sat near Ash and his mom and me at the Three Seasons. Bob Blake. He must have heard everything we’d said. At some point we’d talked about the Lacombes, but had this guy been there for that part of the conversation? I couldn’t remember.

  Leese was making noises through her gag of duct tape.

  “Now, now,” said the man. “None of that. Your loving brother and sister will be here soon enough and then we can all have a nice long chat.”

  I stared at him. “You’re Simon Faber.”

  “Nicely done, Miss Librarian!” He stood and clapped a few times. “Miss Lacombe here had no idea who I was. She was expecting Bob Blake and that’s who she saw coming in her front door.” He laughed. “You’d think an attorney would be more aware of the potential for personal danger, but there she stood and welcomed me into her home. If I’d known this would be so easy, I would have done it years ago.”

  His face suddenly darkened. “She should have recognized me. All of them should have. They ruined my life and now they don’t even acknowledge me. What kind of people are these? How could they not know?”

  I didn’t like how his face was edging from bright red to white. His temper had been more even-handed a moment ago, so in hopes of returning to that more pleasant time, I asked a question. “Done what?”

  Faber had been limping toward Leese with his hands balled up into fists, but he stopped and turned. “Sorry?”

  “You said if you’d known it would be this easy, that you would have done this years ago. What are you planning on doing?”

  “Killing them, of course,” he said. “And I apologize in advance, Miss Hamilton, for being the cause of your early death, but collateral damage happens.”

  “This isn’t a military operation,” I managed to say.

  “Ah, but it is war,” Faber replied with a grin, his good humor apparently restored.

  I studied him. A happy Faber seemed much less likely to lash out in anger, and at this point, keeping him happy was the only thing I could think of that had any possibility of bringing this situation to a positive conclusion.

  “War?” I asked.

  “Certainly.” He limped to the front window and looked out toward the road. “They should be here by now. If they’re Lacombes, I’m sure they’re driving too fast, even on roads with so much snow on them. I hope they don’t have an accident, not at this late date.”

  “Why is it war?” I persisted.

  He spun. “Look at me,” he ordered. “Just look at me.”

  So I did. He stood shifted to one side, favoring his left leg. His right hand was curled up into an odd shape. One shoulder was hitched slightly higher than the other. His unfocused eye, I realized with a start, wasn’t his own; it was a prosthetic. His face, where it wasn’t taut from plastic surgery, was creased with lines and wrinkles and I had no idea if they were the result of aging or pain. Or both.

  “I’m not even sixty years old,” he said, “and I look like I’m eighty. I was thirty-six years old when Dale Lacombe crossed the centerline and hit my car. Thirty-six. The prime of my life! My peak earning years still ahead of me. Decades of activity. And what do I get instead? Years of surgeries, years of pain, years of suffering, and half the time I can’t even walk without the use of that thing.”

  He glared over my shoulder and I turned my head just enough to see his walker standing in the corner of the room.

  “So, yes, Miss Hamilton,” he said, “this is war. They invaded my life the moment of the accident, and they’re all four to blame. Dale Lacombe said so himself. They took away everything I’d accomplished and turned it to dust, and I intend to do the same thing to each of them.”

  His face firmed with resolution. I quickly asked, “What had you accomplished?”

  “Not nearly enough,” he snarled. “I could have done great things. I was on my way to fame and fortune when this happened. My fiancée left me and my parents went to an early grave trying to take care of me. I’m alone and I know exactly who to blame.”

  I suspected I wasn’t getting the entire truth, but I suspected even more strongly that this wasn’t the time to accuse him of telling a one-sided story.
“What kind of things were you working on?”

  “What kind?” He blinked. “You want to know what kind of things?”

  “Sure.” Because I couldn’t come up with anything else that would keep him talking that didn’t have the name “Lacombe” attached to it, and that would be sure to get his temper going. “Tell me about them. I’d like to know.” Sort of.

  He pursed his lips. “At the time of the accident, I was top sales guy for the biggest computer company in the country. But that was only temporary. I had plans and they were about to come true.”

  “What kind of plans?”

  “I was having conversations with venture capitalists,” he said. “I had plans for half a dozen new businesses. All it would take was a little bit of seed money and I’d be on my way.”

  And I was growing more and more certain the guy was delusional. If he’d owned a place on Janay Lake with money left over for cars, he must have made a good living as a sales rep, but what he’d said sounded unrealistic.

  “Wow,” I said, doing my best not to sound sarcastic. “I’m not sure I’ve ever had one good idea about a start-up business, let alone six. Opening a bookstore is about as original as I’d probably get.”

  “Bookstore.” He snorted. “No one reads anymore. I don’t know how you keep your job.”

  The verdict was in: this guy was definitely delusional. I smiled politely. “Your ideas were better, I’m sure.”

  “Electronics,” he said. “Twenty-three years ago, I knew where the world was going to go. All I needed was capital. Putting songs into digital form and selling them? That was my idea first.”

  “Really?” I made my face show surprise. From what I’d been told, a number of people had had that idea, but it had taken a while for technology to catch up with the dreams.

  “Count on it. I had dozens of ideas that were stolen from me. Laptops were my idea. Those robotic vacuum cleaners were my idea. Cell phones were my idea.” He waved his arms around. “Look around. Every personal technological device you see was my idea first.”

  “Tablets?” I asked. “Was that idea stolen from you, too?”

  Faber frowned. “What? Don’t be ridiculous. Those are a fad.” He switched his attention back to the window. “I see headlights.” He glared at me as he limped by the chair. “I should have taped your mouth shut. Keep quiet when they come in or I’ll make your death long and lingering instead of fast and almost painless.”

  Almost? I couldn’t breathe for a moment. This guy was a lunatic. A killer. And he was practically salivating at the chance to do it again.

  I waited until he’d made his way to the front hallway. “Are Brad and Mia really on their way here?” I whispered to Leese.

  She shook her head.

  I closed my own eyes for a grateful half second, then snapped them open again. Either the headlights Faber was seeing were imaginary or there was a passing car. Then I had another thought. If Faber had forced Leese to make a phone call, maybe she’d done so to someone with whom she shared some sort of emergency code and that person was mustering a law enforcement team and rushing to our rescue.

  “Is anyone else coming?” I asked. “Police?”

  Once again, she shook her head.

  Well, at least Mia and Brad wouldn’t be walking into Faber’s trap. “Can you move your hands at all?”

  She nodded.

  “Seriously?” Excitement flooded through me. “How much? No, you can’t answer that with a yes or no. Do you think you can get them free soon?”

  I could see the tape across her mouth crease as she smiled and nodded.

  “Great.” I felt a smidge of hope. Maybe we would get out of this in one piece. “Do you have a plan for when you get your hands loose?”

  Her shoulders sagged a little and she shook her head.

  After a short pause, I whispered, “Right. We’ll work on this together. I don’t suppose you have a gun anywhere? No, that’s okay, we can do without.” Somehow. “There has to be something we can use as a weapon.”

  With an increasing sense of urgency, we both scanned the room for possibilities. The desk lamp? Maybe, but its aerodynamic capabilities were limited. Though Leese’s laptop was heavier, it would be even harder to grasp, especially if her hands had, if mine were any indication, been losing circulation for some time.

  “How about a letter opener?” I whispered.

  Leese’s eyebrows went up fast, then down again slowly. She nodded, but gestured with her chin to her desk.

  “In a drawer?” I asked, and wasn’t surprised when she nodded. “That’ll work,” I said confidently, or as confidently as I could manage at the time. “When you get free, give me a sign. I’ll distract him and—”

  Faber’s returning footsteps cut me off to silence.

  “Where are they?” he snarled at Leese. “You said they’d be here in thirty minutes and it’s been over an hour.”

  “The roads are slippery,” I said quickly, because I’d seen Leese’s chin go up. We did not need her to go all defiant and let Faber know Brad and Mia were not en route. If he knew that, what was there to stop him from killing us right then and there?

  A teensy part of my brain started to wonder how he planned to kill us. I’d had a recent and very bad experience with a long sharp knife and hoped that wasn’t his plan. Of course, if I had to die an untimely death, did I have a preferred method? It wasn’t anything I’d ever thought about in a serious way.

  “They live here,” Faber snapped. “They should know how to drive in the snow.”

  I nodded. “Sure, but this is the first snowfall. People forget the details.”

  He studied me for so long I had a hard time not squirming. “Is this a delaying tactic of some sort?”

  Of course it was. “Just giving an explanation.”

  “Librarian.” Faber grunted. “You probably give explanations every day. Here’s a question for you. Explain why I’m here now, today, twenty-three years after the accident. Explain that, Miss Marion Librarian.”

  I hesitated. Had to, really, because I had no idea.

  “Explain!” he screamed, and it came to me with a calm clarity that, for the first time in my life, I could well be talking to someone who was truly insane.

  With no experience to guide me and no training, I had to rely on my instincts. My first instinct, which was to dive into research mode at the computer, wasn’t useful in the least, so I went to the second tier of thinking out loud. I usually had Eddie for this—

  Eddie! Where was my Eddie?

  I pushed that fear away and tried to concentrate. This was suddenly even harder to do than it had been, because Faber limped over to stand behind Leese. He put his hands, strong from years of using a walker, around her throat and smiled.

  “Explain,” he said in a normal voice, “or I’ll kill her right here and now.”

  My brain, which I’d always relied on to give me answers when I needed them, blanked out completely. All I could see was Leese’s fear and those fingers pressing deeper and deeper into her neck.

  “Something changed for you,” I said quickly. “Something went wrong.”

  “Correct, but a little vague.” He tut-tutted. “And here I thought librarians always had all the answers.”

  We did, but we usually had some resources at our disposal and weren’t being faced with the imminent murder of a friend. I had to say something, so I started pulling guesses out of thin air. “Someone died. Your mother or father.”

  Faber kept pressing.

  “You had a disappointment.”

  “My life has been a disappointment for the last twenty-odd years,” he said. “Try harder.”

  Leese’s face was turning a nasty shade of red. Guesses spilled out of me. “You lost your job. You can’t find work. You’re going bankrupt. You have cancer. Your house burned down. Your house was fl
ooded and insurance won’t cover it. Your driver’s license was revoked.”

  Through all of my increasingly stupid theories, Faber smiled and gripped even tighter.

  And then, with a sudden leap of certainty, I knew. “Your doctors have told you there’s nothing more they can do for you. You’re going to be in pain the rest of your life and there’s no hope for improvement. The only thing that’s going to make you feel better is getting your revenge on the Lacombes.”

  “Took you long enough.” Faber’s voice was back to a snarl, but he released Leese. Her breaths rushed in and out, and I watched helplessly as she attempted to swallow.

  A cold anger settled down onto me. Yes, the man had problems, and I was sorry for the pain he’d been enduring for years, and which might have been the thing that had twisted his mind, but no amount of pain could provide justification for what he’d done to Dale and for what he planned to do yet tonight.

  Faber smirked at Leese. “You don’t look like such a high-and-mighty lawyer anymore, do you?”

  More proof that the guy had lost the power of rational thought. Leese was about the least pretentious attorney in the world. Not that I knew all of the world’s attorneys, but I’d met more than my fair share, and from that random sampling, I had a good idea of where she landed on the self-aggrandizement scale.

  Distraction. What we needed was another reason for Faber to leave the room. Leese needed only a little more time to work her hands free, then she could grab the letter opener, and together we’d subdue Faber.

  I fake-opened my eyes wide and darted a look toward the window.

  “What do you see?” Faber asked.

  “N-nothing.”

  “You saw headlights, didn’t you? Didn’t you?” he yelled.

  “N-no,” I stuttered, and this time it wasn’t an act, because the reality of our situation was taking hold in the deepest parts of me. This man meant to kill us.

  “You’re lying,” he said. “This is what happens to liars.” He grabbed the roll of duct tape, ripped off a piece, and slapped it across my mouth. “Now sit tight, girls, and I’ll be right back,” he said cheerfully. “And this time I’ll bring back a nice surprise.” He limped off, whistling.