Secrets and Specters

by Raven Snow

  “I’ll ask,” said Lady. She knew that Dom’s gifts had a lot to do with keeping a proverbial and literal eye on the town. When she had first met him, he was defacing public property with graffiti. His eyes were everywhere, and they saw everything important. Well, not quite everything. “I doubt he’ll go for it.”

  “Probably not,” Dom agreed, not sounding too bothered by having his offer shot down. “You ready?” He nodded to the door.

  “As ready as I’m gonna be.” Lady walked to the door and held it open for Dom. He entered first.

  The shop was larger than it had looked on the outside. The front was small, but the doors to the back were open. Lady could see an entire workshop beyond them. She could hear metallic sounds, like someone was working. A little brass bell above the door jingled loudly.

  “Be there in a minute!” called a voice from the back. Lady and Dom stepped up to the counter. It wasn’t long before a man emerged from one of the doors. He was an older man, balding and sunburned. His overalls had dark stains on them, and he was holding a dirty rag that he was currently wiping his hands with. “Can I help ya?”

  Lady opened her mouth to say something. She glanced to Dom and then back to the man. She was already thankful she had brought the former along. Knowing what to say was tough. She really should have practiced it before she had come in.

  “We had some questions,” said Dom, answering for her.

  The man put his rag to one side and leaned against the counter. “Sure. Whatcha wanna know?”

  He thought they needed help with repairs. Lady really didn’t want to correct him. Man, this was awkward. “Actually, I was… I was wondering about someone who used to work here.”

  The man frowned. “What was his name?”

  Lady swallowed. “Lawrence?” she said, slowly.

  The man’s expression darkened considerably. He took a step away from the counter and crossed his arms over his chest, closing himself off. “I thought this was over with,” he grumbled, mostly to himself. “What? Are you with the news? Did you hear about Beatrice? Jesus, is nothing private anymore?”

  Beatrice? Lady shook her head quickly. “No, I’m not with the news. I’m—”

  “Are they asking about Lawrence? Did I hear that right?” The metallic sounds in back had stopped. Moments later, a second man stepped out from a door and sidled up to the counter. He was younger than the first man by, at least, a decade or two. He might be his son, though he was still older than Lady. His face was heavily-lined and his hands visibly calloused. He looked like someone who had lived a rough life.

  “My friend here has some questions, yeah,” Dom said, his tone level.

  Were this conversation happening in a less hostile environment, Lady might have found it novel that Dom had just referred to her as a “friend.” That was nice. Did he mean it? No time to wonder about that. It looked like they were about to get kicked out of an A/C repair shop. That would be a first.

  “Yeah, and who’s your friend?” The question was directed at Lady herself. The younger man had moved closer. He was a lot taller than she was, not quite so tall as Dom but still intimidating.

  Lady wasn’t going to mention Conners. It sounded like these people might not take too kindly to his name. They seemed to have some kind of fondness for Lawrence. God, she hoped they weren’t family to him. She hadn’t come in prepared for that. If that was the case, they were right to kick her out. Heck, she might kick herself out. “I just have some questions.” Why? Why did she have questions? They were going to ask that, and she couldn’t tell them the truth. Think! She needed to think!

  “Why?” asked the man, like she had expected him to. His tone was cold, and he continued to loom.

  “I’m… um…” Think! “I’m marrying into the family,” she blurted. Dom looked down at her. He was judging her. She could feel it. “The mayor’s family, I mean.” She grabbed Dom’s arm. “My fiancé here is his nephew.” God, this was awkward. She prayed Dom would play along.

  “Through marriage,” Dom added, not blowing her cover. Bless him. “The mayor is married to my aunt.”

  The man’s frown didn’t waver any. He looked at Dom. “I thought you said she was your friend.”

  “My best friend. That’s why we’re getting married… I guess.”

  “And what does any of this have to do with you coming here?”

  “And I haven’t lived in Dark Lake all that long. I only just heard about… everything that happened several years ago. It just— It horrified me. Honestly, I’m trying to decide if I should even invite the mayor and his family to my wedding. It was keeping me up nights, so my boyfriend—”

  “Fiancé,” corrected Dom.

  “My fiancé suggested I do a little digging. You know, ask around.”

  The man raised an eyebrow and looked at Dom again. Dom shrugged. “I dunno, man. She’s really big on, like, political correctness and stuff.”

  Lady switched up her tactics. “I know that this is a business and your time is valuable.” She reached into her purse. “I’m willing to pay you.” She hoped pulling out her wallet didn’t offend anyone.

  It didn’t. “Fine. Step into the back… Did you… Did you two bring a cat in here?”

  Lady looked down to Lion sitting at her feet. She picked him up and attempted to discretely put him into her tote bag. “He’s a support animal,” said Dom.

  “Like one of those helper monkeys?” asked the older man.

  “Yeah,” said Dom. “Exactly like a helper monkey.”

  Lady wanted to melt into the floor.

  The younger of the two men shook his head in an exasperated fashion and gestured grandly with one hand as he stepped toward the door behind the counter. “Well, come on back. Don’t let the cat down or anything.”

  Lady was thankful Lion was at least amenable to staying in her bag. With the book in there, she had to transfer the bag to both arms as she walked around the counter. Dom placed a hand on her shoulder as he nudged her on ahead. “Come on, Honey.”

  Lady winced and hoped no one saw her do it. She had the feeling that she wasn’t going to be living this one down for a while. “I panicked,” she muttered.

  The older of the two men stayed out front. He got a ledger from under the counter and laid it out where he could look over it, busying himself with something or another. Lady was thankful for some privacy. It felt less intimidating with only one hostile presence looming over her.

  The back of the shop had exposed wood walls and a high ceiling. There was a bunch of tool boxes and big square hunks of metal. There were hoses on tables and filters propped against walls. “What’s your name?” asked the younger man as he pushed together a couple of large, apparently heavy boxes.

  “I’m Lady.” Lady couldn’t even think about completing her lie with a fake name. That was too much to keep track of.

  “Dom,” said Dom, maybe thinking the same.

  “That short for Dominic?”

  It wasn’t. “Sure.”

  The man nodded. “Well, I’m Jeff.” He took Dom’s hand and shook it when he saw that it had been offered.

  Lady hastily put hers out as well. He shook it, his grip firm and his palms hard. “Nice to meet you.”

  The man grunted, not finding their encounter nearly as pleasant as all that. When he let go of her hand, he still stood there, watching her. Lady stared right back at him, not sure what he was waiting for.

  “Honey.” Dom cleared his throat. “Light of my life, aren’t you going to pay the man for his time?”

  “Huh? Oh. Oh, right!” Lady still had her wallet out. She opened it up. Fortunately, Ms. Poole paid in cash. Not that she paid her much. Her last payday had been three days ago or she’d probably have less than twenty bucks to her name. Something told her twenty wasn’t going to cover it. Her fingers hovered over the bills as she considered an amount that wouldn’t be rude. God, she hoped Ms. Poole reimbursed her for this. “Is this enough?” she asked sheepishly, handing over a fift
y.

  Jeff looked at the money and his stony expression softened a bit. He sighed. “Yeah, that’s plenty.” He took it, folded the bill, and placed it in his front shirt pocket. Maybe Lady had misread him. He wasn’t trying to extort her or anything. More likely he just didn’t take too kindly to strangers barging in and bringing up old, dead coworkers. That was, of course, assuming that coworkers were all they were.

  “Take a seat.” Jeff motioned to the boxes he had pushed together. He sat on the stool in front of them.

  Dom sat and Lady did the same, placing the bag with Lion in it in her lap. She prayed he would stay there until they were finished talking. As soon as she was sitting still, he curled up on top of the library book and closed his eyes. The odds of getting out of here without embarrassing herself further were looking good on the pet cat front.

  “So, what do you want to know?” asked Jeff.

  Lady had plenty of questions, but she figured she should start with the basics. “You worked with Lawrence, right?”

  Jeff nodded. “I was the one who got him the job here. We went to high school together.”

  “And, you were friends.”

  Jeff raised his shoulders in something approximating a shrug. “I don’t know. If you asked me a few years ago, I might have answered different. It’s different in hindsight. Sometimes you realize you never knew a person as well as you thought you did.”

  Lady nodded like she had personal experience with that sort of thing. It wasn’t like she had anyone she would call a close friend in her past. There was Otsuya, but her turning out to be a ghost felt different somehow.

  “He fell into some trouble after high school,” Jeff continued. “He went away to prison for a while. Drugs. He looked me up when he got out. Had to get a job for his parole and knew my old man owned this place. We used to work for him during the summer, earn extra cash.” Jeff shook his head like the memory was painful now. “I had my doubts, but he swore up and down he had changed. I’m not a fan of addicts, but he was in recovery. Heck, I took him to a couple of meetings myself. He never slipped there as far as I could tell. I was proud of him. He got married, had a kid. He really turned it around.”

  Lady’s heart sank in her chest some. “He had a kid?” She hadn’t heard about that. Did Conners know that the man he had killed had a kid? Probably.

  “Well, has a kid. I guess that’s more accurate. I hadn’t thought about him much until recently.” Jeff’s gaze went distant and thoughtful. “Let’s see, I suppose he’d be about… middle school or high school. Yeah, thereabouts.”

  “How’s he doing?” asked Lady, ignoring Dom looking her way. It was a little off topic maybe, but Lady still wanted to ask.

  “He’s had it pretty rough. I expect he’s not doing all that well right now.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Jeff hesitated. His gaze moved from Lady to Dom, like he wasn’t sure what they had paid him was enough to reveal all of his dead friend’s business. Finally, he shrugged. “It’s not like I’m all that close to the family. Jeff was a friend, but I only met his wife and kid a couple of times. After he died, I saw them at the memorial, shook their hands and told them how sorry I was. I never saw them after that, not even out and about in town. It was my old man who told me his wife died, Beatrice. It wasn’t in the paper or anything. He heard it from a friend of a friend.”

  “Oh,” Lady said quietly. “How did she die?”

  “She’d been sick for a while. It’s not like it happened suddenly or anything. I hope that means they had plans in place for the kid.”

  “I hope so too,” Lady said, absently. She knew what it was like to be in the system, knew it was especially tough when you were an older kid.

  “She was actually sick well before Lawrence died,” Jeff continued. “She was in and out of the hospital a lot. The bills were really tough on the both of them. You know how hospitals take you for all you’re worth. He was picking up all the extra shifts he could. Not that there was much to go around. We’ve only got as much work as we do customers, and work can be slow sometimes.”

  “Do you think that’s why he… did what he did?” asked Lady.

  “Why he tried to rob the mayor, you mean? Yeah, I hope so.” Jeff laughed mirthlessly. “That sounds bad, doesn’t it? I dunno. It hurt the business when he did what he did. No one wanted to hire us for a long time after they heard about that. Even now, business ain’t what it used to be. Folks don’t want to hire someone they think might case the joint for robbing later. It’s a good thing we’re the only dedicated heating and cooling place in town, I guess. So, yeah. I’m hoping he was trying to do right in his own misguided way. I can get trying to help your wife and kid. He was desperate and he made a stupid plan. It sounds better than the idea that he used us. I hope he didn’t do it to anyone else. We had old clients accusing us, but they never found anything that stuck.”

  “And what do you think about… about how he died?” Lady was still uncomfortable talking about this, like she might get kicked out at any moment for saying the wrong thing.

  Jeff seemed to take this subject easier than the news of Beatrice. He re-situated himself on his stool, frowning thoughtfully. “See, that’s where I always get hung up,” he said, like this was something he had given a lot of thought over the years. “I don’t get why he had a gun. He hated guns. He never owned one.”

  “Where’d he get the one he had on him then?” asked Dom. Lady wondered the same. She hadn’t heard anything about the gun belonging to someone else.

  “Well,” began Jeff, backpedaling. “Obviously, he had a gun. I don’t know when he got it. I think I heard it belonged to his wife. I’m surprised he was okay with the thing being in his apartment. The Lawrence I knew was nervous around guns. I remember ‘cause I used to make fun of him for it.” Jeff lowered his voice some, like the memory shamed him. “My dad and I go to the shooting range a lot. We invited him along more than once. Hunting too. He was never interested in either. He said he couldn’t shoot and didn’t seem interested in learning. I think he had an uncle who got killed robbing a gas station. Guy behind the counter had a sawed-off. He swore that wasn’t it, but… I dunno. Guess it doesn’t matter now. I told him he should get a gun and learn how to shoot anyway, be able to defend himself. Seems stupid looking back on it.” The way Jeff was looking at the floor, Lady wondered if he didn’t blame himself a little. Maybe he thought it was him who had convinced Lawrence to get a gun. If he hadn’t been armed, he’d probably still be alive.

  “Didn’t sound like he knew how to use it,” said Dom. “The gun, I mean.”

  Jeff looked up. “Yeah. If I’d known he had one, I would have insisted he come with us to the shooting range. It’s only dangerous to have a gun if you don’t know how to use it, if you ask me.”

  Guns had always made Lady uncomfortable too. She remembered her foster brothers finding the ones their parents kept for protection and holding them just to make her nervous. “Do you think the gun was planted?”

  “That was my first thought,” Jeff said with a nod. “But, I dunno. Like I said, I think it belonged to his wife. I think I remember hearing that, and no one argued it so it’s not my place to doubt ‘em. Obviously, I didn’t know Lawrence as well as I thought I did from the start.” He fixed Lady with a serious look that made her squirm. “Look, I don’t know why you’re asking all these questions, and I don’t know what you’re hoping to hear from me.”

  Lady opened her mouth to repeat part of her lie about being Dom’s fiancé. She couldn’t remember it fast enough and it died on her lips. It was just as well. Jeff didn’t trust her, but that didn’t seem to matter all that much to him.

  “I don’t like cops and I don’t like the mayor, but… I don’t see anything backwards about what happened.”

  That was a relief to hear. Lady had been worried that Jeff would have nothing but venom for Conners. Not that she would have blamed them, and not that it should have mattered. She didn’t expect she would be
speaking to him again after this. Why did what other people think of Conners matter to her so much?

  “His son and wife didn’t feel the same. Can’t blame them. Nothing ever came of it, of course. I guess if there’s one thing I hate most about this whole thing, it’s that. A grieving family wants someone to blame, you know? With the mayor involved, I don’t think they had anywhere to turn. He made sure any of their complaints got crushed before they made it to the right ears. Not that I’ve got any room to talk about right and wrong. It’s not like I helped them out any. I was still mad about how Lawrence had abused our trust and our business, truth be told.”

  Lady thanked Jeff for his time. She walked to the end of the block in silence. It was only when the shop was out of sight that she stopped to think about what she had just been told.

  “What’s on your mind, my sweet?” asked Dom in his usual monotone.

  Lady glared up at him. “I was thinking on my feet,” she said in her defense, though she doubted it mattered. Dom still wasn’t going to let her forget about what had just happened.

  “Does this mean the wedding is off then?”

  Lady planted an elbow in his side. “Shut up. It worked, didn’t it?”

  “Paying the guy fifty bucks worked. I’m not sure he believed we were engaged for a minute. I’m not sure he cared.”

  Lady thought the same. “You’re just frightened by my quick-witted genius.”

  “Something like that.”

  Lady changed the subject. “So, what do you think?”

  “About what?”

  “About everything we heard back there.” Lady motioned in the direction of the A/C shop.

  Dom crossed his arms against a cold breeze that was coming through. “I’m still not sure what you were hoping to hear. Is this really something that’s gonna be solved by going door to door asking people questions?”

  “You think it was just a coincidence?”

  “Think what was a coincidence?”

  Lady huffed, a little frustrated that he wasn’t following what she was thinking. Not everyone could be as quick-witted as she was… or a mind reader. “Beatrice! The wife. She just died. I haven’t checked the dates, but I bet it lines up with when Conners’ nightmares started getting violent.”