Wrong Side of the Paw

by Laurie Cass

  Mia had been a patient of Corinne’s. Was it for her anorexia, or something else?

  Their father apparently had a history of fighting with his adult children. Why?

  But most of all, I wondered why they were finding it so easy to believe that Dale had been murdered.

  Chapter 8

  The next morning, my desk phone rang as I worked through the amazing number of e-mails that had accumulated since the last time I’d sat at my computer. Some were pure spam, some were solicitations, some were from other librarians, others were from patrons who thought an e-mail to me was the best way to get the library to purchase a new book.

  And it probably was the best way, since the mention of any book I hadn’t heard of sent me straight to the nearest search engine for more information. One of my New Year’s resolutions had been to put all those requests into a separate folder and go over them when I had time, but here it was October and the habit had yet to get started.

  “No time like the present,” I told myself, and clicked on my e-mail program’s “New Folder” function. After typing “Book Requests” as the folder’s name, I started moving e-mails around. Three went into the new folder, six got deleted, and then there was . . .

  I studied the subject line. “Software Pricing Request,” it said, from a salesperson I’d met a few times.

  Odd. I hadn’t requested any software pricing. And I never would have requested anything from this particular company. Their stuff was fantastically expensive and was designed for large library systems with multiple branches.

  Frowning, I clicked on the e-mail. “Dear Jennifer,” it started. “Congratulations on your new position with the Chilson District Library. We’re so glad you reached out to us regarding our new and comprehensive product line. Enclosed you will find materials that will explain what we can do for—”

  My phone rang. Still reading, I picked up the receiver. “This is Minnie. How can I help you?”

  “Have you read your e-mail this morning?” Jennifer demanded.

  I sat back. “I have, and I was just going to call you.”

  “There was no reason for Dave to copy you on that e-mail,” she said. “I certainly didn’t tell him to.” She waited, but since she hadn’t asked me a question, I didn’t say anything. “I suppose you’ve read it?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “So you know why I’m trying to cut the library’s budget.”

  “Not really,” I said slowly.

  She blew out an annoyed breath. “If I’m going to drag this library into the twenty-first century, we need this software. It can do a wide variety of things that we can’t do now, and if we’re going to grow, we need to make this kind of capital investment.”

  Absolutely it could do things we couldn’t; the question was, did we need to do them? What was the return on the investment? What would we have to sacrifice to make the purchase, and would the sacrifice be worth it?

  But I’d worked with her long enough to know that if I asked those questions, she’d accuse me of throwing up roadblocks instead of finding a way to make her idea work. So instead, I said, “The library board looked at this software during the renovation. At that point they decided it wasn’t a good fit.”

  “Good,” Jennifer said. “Then they’re already familiar with the company. This is a more recent product line. It’s much better than the old one. You should see all features it has!”

  She sounded excited, so I sat up and started scrolling through the e-mail. Dave the sales guy, however, had made a strategic error—he’d put the price sheet first. I gasped at the five-figure number, but Jennifer was still talking.

  “Once it’s up and running, it’ll save money. I’m familiar with the earlier version of this software system—the last library where I worked had invested in it and I’m sure the same thing will happen here.”

  As she went on, blithely talking about all the wonderful things the new system would do for us, I started thinking about all the horrible things that could happen.

  Because I wasn’t sure how spending thousands and thousands of dollars could save money.

  Because we didn’t have thousands to spend.

  Because to find that kind of money—and the accompanying permanent service agreements, which were in the four-figure category—more than minor cuts would have to be made.

  Which meant one of two things. Either programming cuts would have to be made, or staff would be laid off.

  Permanently.

  • • •

  It took the rest of the morning for me to shake off the foreboding that Jennifer’s call had created in me.

  I considered writing a note to the library board, telling them how I felt about Jennifer’s push for the new system. I considered it so seriously that I clicked the button to create a new e-mail, but just before I started typing, I came to my senses and deleted the entire thing.

  If I were director, what would I think of an employee going to the board without my knowledge? Not much. Which meant that if I wanted to object to this potential purchase, I should make my objection to Jennifer. And to do that I needed facts and figures. Which meant a fair amount of work, but it had to be done if I wanted Jennifer to listen to me.

  But first, it was time for lunch.

  “Anyone want something from the Round Table?” I asked at the front desk.

  “Onion rings,” Donna said. “Double order.”

  The fat-laden order was completely out of character. “Really?”

  She sighed. “No. I brought a salad. My knee has been a little sore and I haven’t been able to do full workouts this week.”

  “Five-mile runs, then, instead of ten?” I asked.

  “No, I’m still doing tens. Just not doing wind sprints in the middle.”

  I looked at her, but she seemed dead serious. “Right. Well, if you change your mind, I have my cell with me.” I turned and almost ran smack into Mitchell Koyne.

  “Hey, Minnie,” he said. “Bianca said you stopped by. Glad you two are getting along in spite of . . .” He kicked one foot against the other. “You know.”

  Many many months ago, Mitchell had asked me out on a date. My method of gently refusing him must have been confusing because he persisted in thinking that I harbored romantic feelings for him.

  “She seems very nice,” I said, carefully not looking at Donna. The entire library staff had eventually learned of Mitchell’s offer and Donna was undoubtedly now grinning with great glee.

  “Yeah.” Mitchell beamed. “She sure is.”

  I edged toward the front door. “How’s the toy store, now that you’re the manager?”

  “Yeah, the cool thing about that? I get to make the schedule. I need to work the weekends, because they’re the busiest, you know, but I can come here on my days off.” He grinned. “Especially now that I got my fines paid off.”

  He had indeed. We’d taken a ceremonious photo, which I’d promptly e-mailed to Stephen, who had yet to reply. “The only sure thing in this world is change,” I said.

  “What? No, I paid in bills. Mostly twenties.”

  I smiled. There was no one like Mitchell.

  “Of course, now that I’m working so many hours, I won’t have as much time to read.” He sent the stacks a forlorn glance. “Kind of sucks.”

  “I know what you mean,” I said. My childhood daydreams of becoming a librarian so I could read all day had been dashed early on. Though I wouldn’t want to do anything else, I often wished I had more time to read the books I recommended.

  Then I recognized the odd situation: Mitchell and I were commiserating about our mutual lack of free time. Wonders truly never did cease.

  “You hear about Mia Lacombe?” Mitchell asked.

  “She was released,” I said a little stiffly.

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying, you know?” He looked ar
ound then moved so close to me that I had to look almost straight up to see his face. “You working on it?” he asked in a loud whisper. “Dale Lacombe’s murder?”

  Not so very long ago, Mitchell had had delusions of being a private investigator. That phase, thankfully, was over, but for some reason he continued to think that I took part in active criminal investigations at the sheriff’s office.

  “Leese is a friend of mine,” I said.

  “Right.” He nodded vigorously, which dislodged his baseball cap. “That’s what Bianca said. If you need help, just let me know, okay? I mean, I’m pretty busy, but I’ll do what I can.”

  The idea of a helpful Mitchell was more than a little appalling. “Thanks, but I’m sure the sheriff’s office has it covered.”

  “Want to know what I think?” Mitchell resettled his cap. “I bet it was some guy who used to work for Lacombe. He was one of those guys that thinks he’s always right, you know? He’d fire anyone who disagreed with him, over anything it seemed like. He was always working shorthanded. Half the time he had guys working for him that didn’t know what they were doing.”

  Mitchell started telling a story about a buddy that Dale fired, and though I tried to pay attention, all I kept hearing was, “I bet it was some guy who used to work for Lacombe.”

  • • •

  Since the previous night’s conversation had been completely hijacked by Leese’s stepfamily, I’d texted her that, if she wanted, I would stop by that night so we could have a one-on-one conversation. Her reply had been a thumbs-up, so after work I walked back to the houseboat and fed Eddie before I headed out to Leese’s.

  He ate fast enough to give himself indigestion, licked his nonexistent lips a few times, washed his whiskers, bumped my shin, then jumped onto the boat’s dashboard and curled up for a nice long look at the seagulls.

  “You realize that you’ll never catch one, right?” I asked.

  “Mrr,” he said confidently.

  I wanted to tell him how wrong he was, but I also didn’t want to burst his little kitty bubble, so I kissed the top of his head and drove to Fat Boys Pizza to pick up our dinner order. Half a veggie sub for me (“Yes, Mom, I’m eating my vegetables”), half an Italian sub for Leese, and a full order of cheesy potato wedges for us to split.

  The food was still mostly warm by the time I pulled into Leese’s, so we dove right into our meal. This time, we were almost done eating when we heard the slam of a car door.

  Leese, who’d been in the act of trying to convince me to eat the last three potato wedges, instead grabbed two of them. “To give me strength,” she said.

  Up the stairs came the brassy hair of Carmen. “Oh, good, you’re here, too, Minnie. You can help with this.” She dropped a box on the kitchen table. “Oof, this is heavy! But the police want me to go through everything. They want to know about any of Dale’s clients, about anyone who might have held a grudge against him.” She pulled out a chair and sat. “There are three more boxes in the car. I’ll start on this one while you go get the others.”

  I pushed the last potato wedge over to Leese. “You might need this one, too.”

  She snorted out a laugh. “I say we split it.”

  Half an hour later, piles of thick folders were strewn across Leese’s kitchen. On the table, on the chairs, on the half wall that marked the stairway, on the counters, even on the microwave. An hour after that, every folder was sorted into alphabetical order and checked to confirm that the contents matched the labels.

  Leese stared at the largest set of piles. “Dad had this many lawsuits against him? I knew he had a few, but . . .” She shook her head, muttering something that sounded a lot like, “Could have used more potato wedges.”

  “Don’t be silly.” Carmen, her fingers and wrists glittering with jewelry, waved at the reams of paper dismissively. “Why don’t you be a good girl and make me a margarita?”

  “Because I don’t have tequila, limes, or Cointreau,” Leese said shortly.

  “White wine, then.”

  After a long pause, during which I seriously considered making up a fast excuse and running for my car before the family tension became any tighter, Leese got to her feet. “Minnie, would you like anything?”

  Um. “I’ll have whatever you’re having,” I said, which was how I ended up drinking a Soft Parade from Short’s Brewing out of a bottle.

  Carmen sipped her wine and murmured, “I suppose it’ll be better when it warms up.” Then she said, “I thought you knew almost all of these lawsuits were settled out of court.”

  “How would I have known that, exactly?” Leese asked. “I’ve been downstate since I graduated from high school. And it’s not like Dad ever talked to me about his business.”

  “And whose fault was that?” Carmen asked. “All you had to do was pick up the phone.”

  Leese glowered. “Phones work both ways.”

  This was going nowhere in a hurry. “So,” I said, pushing at the tallest pile, “none of these ever went to court?”

  Carmen huffed, but said, “That’s right. Dale was always trying to do his best for his customers”—I could feel Leese starting to say something, so I gave her a small kick in the shins— “but you just can’t satisfy some people, no matter how hard you try.”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” Leese muttered.

  “Right,” I said quickly. “It’s too bad, but there are a lot of unhappy people in the world. So all these cases were settled amicably?”

  Carmen looked at the stacks of folders. “Well, I don’t know about amicably. They were settled, though, and that’s the important thing.”

  I pointed at the remaining piles. “And these are the cases that went to court.”

  Carmen flipped through the papers. “Some people, you know? Projects always start out so much fun, and then before you know it, they’re complaining about something silly. I mean, who would think that a little problem with a septic system would make someone sue you?”

  “If that ‘little problem’ was raw sewage backing up into my bathtub—” Leese began, but I cut her off.

  “How about we sort these a little further?” I suggested. “Recent cases and old cases maybe.”

  Carmen shot Leese a glance, but followed my suggestion. Going with the debatable assumption that three years was enough time for home construction wounds to heal, I put aside any paperwork older than that.

  I looked at the remaining pile. It was still more formidable than I’d hoped. Now what?

  “Cases he lost and cases he won,” Leese said. “See where that gets us.”

  Where it got us was two piles, one tall and one not. “These were so unfair,” Carmen said, tipping her refilled wineglass at the higher stack. “The judge wouldn’t listen to Dale, no matter what he said. That case there? That one cost me a trip to Italy.”

  “And these?” I pointed at the far shorter stack.

  Carmen smiled. “Let’s just say they didn’t end well for the homeowners.” She took a sip of wine and said, “We went to Italy after all, just a little later than I’d hoped.”

  I caught Leese’s eye roll, but thankfully Carmen didn’t. Leese pulled the papers toward her and started to flip through them. “Two cases, looks like,” she said. “One was Daphne Raab and the other was Gail and Ray Boggs.”

  “Summer people.” Carmen waved the names away. “Well, not the Raab woman, but the Boggses were classic summer people.”

  “So if they’re not from here, they deserve to be cheated?” Leese asked.

  “Who’s talking about cheating?” Carmen put down her glass. “The judge herself said they didn’t have a solid case. Dale didn’t do anything wrong.”

  Leese drew in a breath, but I jumped in fast. “These are definitely names to give to the police, I’d say.”

  For the first time in what felt like years, Carmen and Leese agreed on s
omething.

  “Excellent,” I said. “Leese, will you have time tomorrow to look these two over? See if you can find anything that looks, I don’t know, weird?”

  Leese squared up the papers. “Sure,” she said evenly. “I lost three more clients today, so I don’t have much else to do.”

  “Oh, honey.” Carmen reached over the table, jewelry tinkling, and put her hands over Leese’s. “I’m so sorry. I wish there was something I could do.”

  “Thanks.” Leese withdrew one of her large hands and patted her stepmother’s far smaller ones. “There’s not, but thanks anyway.” She half smiled. “On the plus side, a Bob Blake called me today. He said he has a complicated estate and lots of friends he’s willing to recommend me to if I do a decent job.”

  “Well, there you go.” Carmen smiled. “This will all work out, I can just feel it.”

  I was happy she felt so positive because, as I stared at the stacks and stacks of folders, I was getting the creepy crawly feeling that things were going to get a lot worse before they got better.

  Chapter 9

  The next day, I pulled out my cell phone the instant I cleared the library’s front door at lunchtime. Outside the wind was up and was bringing in a scattering of low, dark clouds. My personal opinion, substantiated by absolutely nothing except wishful thinking, was that it wouldn’t rain until after I got back to the library, so I started pushing buttons.

  “What?” Kristen snarled.

  “It’s early to be so cranky, isn’t it?” I asked. “How could so much have gone wrong when it’s barely noon?”

  “You want a list?”

  No, not really. “Would a gossipy question from me irritate you or make you feel better?”

  She laughed. My best friend was nothing if not mercurial. “Depends on who you’re asking the question about.”

  “Dale Lacombe.”

  “Hmm. Hang on.” She covered the phone—pointlessly, since I could still hear everything—and bellowed, “Misty! Harve! If we can’t get that salmon, we’re going to have to come up with something else. Start thinking.”