Wrong Side of the Paw

by Laurie Cass

  I winced, glad I wasn’t Misty, her head chef, or Harvey, her sous chef. Of course, I was also glad I wasn’t Kristen, either, since if a “Least Likely to Own a Restaurant” Award existed, I would win it every year. But Kristen, in spite of her regular shouting sprees, also had an incredibly loyal and dedicated staff. I was starting to suspect her staff found a bizarre enjoyment in her hissy fits.

  “Okay, I’m back,” Kristen said. “What about Dale Lacombe?”

  “Tell me more about him.”

  “Hmm.”

  “What do you mean, hmm?”

  “It means methinks you’re getting involved, once again, in something you don’t need to get involved in.”

  Nothing new there. “Are you going to tell me about Leese’s dad or not?”

  “Of course I am. But there’s no reason I can’t give you some grief first.”

  “Don’t you have a kitchen emergency?”

  “Well, sure, there’s that.” She covered the phone again. “We have four hours to come up with a new special, folks! And that includes getting the ingredients.” She came back. “Time is of the essence, so I’ll have to delay my grief giving.”

  “So considerate,” I murmured.

  “Yes. Anyway, like I said, Dale Lacombe was a jerk. From top to bottom, inside and out, backward and forward. Everyone I knew who worked for him hated the guy within a few weeks, and the ones who stayed with him longer than six months only did because they couldn’t find another job.”

  Okay, but, “How did he manage to keep his business going if it was so hard for him to keep employees?”

  “Because people are stupid,” she said. Then, before I could get on her for making sweeping statements that were statistically impossible, she added, “It helped that for about ten years his son, Brad, worked for him.”

  “I didn’t know that.” None of the Lacombes had mentioned it. Was that weird? Or not?

  “That’s because you didn’t live here five years ago when the you-know-what hit the fan. I wasn’t on the scene, but it’s kind of like that basketball game when Wilt Chamberlain scored all those points. More people say they saw the fight than lived in Chilson.”

  I had no idea what she was talking about, but somehow I knew what she meant. “So Brad and his dad didn’t get along?”

  “Hello? Have you been listening? Dale was a jerk. How Brad and Mia ended up so normal with Dale for a father is beyond comprehension.”

  And then there was having Carmen as a mother. But even as I had the thought, I felt ashamed. I’d met her in the days following her husband’s sudden death. Forming an opinion about someone’s character based on that time frame wasn’t fair. Or . . . was it?

  I considered asking Kristen that question, but before I could, she said, “Misty just shoved me a note that she has an idea for the special. Can I go now, pretty please?”

  “Sure. Thanks for the info.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’ll send you a bill at the end of the month. See you Sunday.” And she was gone.

  Still walking, I tapped a few more buttons to call Rafe. “Are you busy?”

  “Me? Are you kidding? If I wanted to be busy, I would have taken a real job.”

  Why the man insisted on pretending that he didn’t work himself ragged during the school year, I did not know. “Got a quick question for you. What kind of person was Dale Lacombe?”

  He made a rude noise. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I never met him.”

  “The man’s dead, if you’ll remember. Why are you asking about him now?”

  “Do you really want that answer?”

  “Probably not. Hang on.” He covered the receiver and I heard muffled instructions to his secretary about an upcoming meeting. “Okay, I’m back.”

  “If you have to go, I can call later.”

  “This won’t take long,” he said. “Lacombe was an incredible jerk. People are saying the big question about his murder is why it took so long for him to get killed.”

  I blinked. “That seems harsh.” And somehow, listening to Rafe be so unkind made me uncomfortable. It wasn’t like him.

  “Hey, you asked. And I’m just repeating what I heard.”

  After we disconnected, I made a few more quick calls, asking for people’s opinions about Dale Lacombe from Denise Slade, the president of the Friends of the Library group, to Chris Ballou, manager of the marina. The response that every single one of them gave was, “He was a jerk.”

  But did it follow that being a jerk was what got him killed? Was it something else entirely? Or was it a combination of the two?

  “What to my wondering eyes did appear,” I heard a familiar—and amused—voice say, “but a niece about to walk past her beloved aunt without so much as a hello.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s not how it goes,” I said, coming to an abrupt halt, because my aunt and Otto were both standing in front of me so I couldn’t move forward without either walking around or over the top of them. “Your version doesn’t scan.”

  “Give me a minute and I’ll come up with something,” she said.

  Otto smiled. “We’re going to get some lunch. Would you like to join us?”

  “Sure,” I said. “That will give Aunt Frances time to work on her mangling of A Visit from St. Nicholas.” I made a move in the direction of the Round Table, but they didn’t move with me. “Are you going to the deli?” I asked, turning to go across the street to Shomin’s.

  “Dearest niece,” my aunt said. “You do realize there are other eating options in this town?”

  Of course I did. I was a regular patron of the pizza place and the Chinese-Thai takeout, but I was pretty sure that Otto wouldn’t be interested in either of those. “There’s the bar down by the water,” I said hesitantly, “but I’m not sure . . .”

  “It’s obvious that your horizons need expanding,” Aunt Frances said. “Come with us.”

  Suddenly I knew what she was talking about and I was very conscious of the state of my checkbook. “If you’re talking about Angelique’s, I can’t . . . I mean, I don’t—”

  “My treat,” Otto said. “Besides, since you have to get back to work, you won’t be drinking any wine, and that’s the expensive part.” He grinned, and I was reminded again what a handsome man he was, if you liked the elegant Paul Newman type.

  After a short walk around the corner, we entered the new restaurant that had formerly been a boutique. Since the store had sold women’s clothing and accessories way out of my price range, I’d never set foot in the place. This meant I couldn’t compare then to now, but the current decor of mismatched antique chairs, white linen tablecloths, and fabric-covered walls hung with pastel-based landscape paintings combined to create an atmosphere of understated quiet style.

  The hostess seated us at a table near the front, gave us hand-lettered menus, and departed, saying our waiter would bring us water in a moment.

  “Competition for Kristen?” my aunt asked, taking in the black-painted ceiling and the wooden floor.

  I shook my head. “Different niche.” I knew this because Kristen had obsessed ad infinitum about the new restaurant until I’d threatened to sneak diet soda into her glass of red wine. Only then did she grudgingly admit that a frighteningly expensive restaurant in town wouldn’t change her customer base.

  “It might work to her advantage,” I said. “Even if this place gets busy enough to be a destination, it’s not likely that people will eat here twice in a weekend.”

  Otto, a retired accountant with an astute business sense, nodded. “Clustering makes sense, particularly for a tourist town.”

  My aunt picked up her menu, gave it a short glance, then set it down again. “Before I even think about food, I need to ask if you’re okay. I know you’ll say you’re fine, but it’s been a week since you had that horrible experience of finding Dale La
combe and I want to know if you’re having nightmares.”

  I gave her a sideways grin. “I’m fine.”

  Aunt Frances looked at Otto—See? I told you—then back at me. “I notice you didn’t answer the question about the nightmares.”

  The chair in which I was sitting was suddenly uncomfortable. Apparently my aunt knew more about my sleeping habits than I’d realized. I shifted a little and repeated myself. “I’m fine.” Because I was sure that if I talked about the dreams that I was still having, the dreams with those staring blue eyes, the talking would fasten the images even deeper into my brain and that was the last thing I wanted. The dreams would go away. Eventually. They always did.

  “Hmm.” Aunt Frances studied me. Then, just when I was afraid she was going to play the Aunt Card (Talk to me about this or I’ll call your mother), she said, “I like Leese. It’s only because of her mother that she turned out so well.”

  “You knew Dale?” Of course she did. Though my aunt wasn’t in the construction business, she was a master woodworker and there was overlap between the two circles.

  “To my great regret, yes.” She picked up her menu, but kept an eye on me. “You’re going to work on finding his killer, aren’t you?”

  I grinned. “Might as well keep my eyes and ears open.”

  “Hmmph. The problem with Dale will be narrowing down the suspects. He was a miserable excuse for a builder. He lied to clients. He used cheap materials and billed as if he’d installed high end. He was an embarrassment to the building trade,” she said, enunciating each consonant precisely. “He was a wretched employer and I’m sure he cheated on his taxes.”

  Otto glanced up from his menu. “Did he kick puppies, too?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past him,” she said feelingly. Then she sighed. “But he didn’t deserve to die like that. No one does.”

  It wasn’t like my aunt to be so negative about someone. Her default tendency was to live and let live. “You sound as if you had a bad experience with him,” I said.

  “He owes me thousands for a custom dining table and chairs I made for him.”

  I went very still, suddenly nervous that my aunt was going to be a murder suspect.

  “Oh, don’t look like that.” She smiled. “It was almost twenty years ago. If I was going to pitch him off a tall building, I would have done it then and there.”

  Relief blew through me. “Not that you’re holding a grudge,” I said.

  “What would make you say that?” She laughed. “Speaking of the past, there’s something we want to talk to you about.”

  “Oh?” I was delighted at the use of the “we” pronoun. My aunt had been alone for so long that I hadn’t thought she would ever find a life companion. Or even look for one. “I know I’m too old, but I’m probably still short enough to be the flower girl at your wedding.”

  Aunt Frances ignored my gestures of tossing rose petals from a basket. “It’s about the boardinghouse,” she said.

  “More specifically,” Otto said, “it’s about the future of the boardinghouse.”

  “Oh.” I clutched my menu, making its edges curl around. “It’s your decision, not mine.”

  “Duh,” my aunt said. “But I still want your opinion. You have a stake in this, too.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’ll find somewhere else to live during the winter. I’m sure it won’t be hard to find some summer people giddy to have someone to rent their place in the off-season.” And now that I’d come up with the idea, I was pretty sure it was a solid one.

  “Good to know you won’t be homeless,” Aunt Frances said, “but that’s not what I meant. What I want to know is, do you want the boardinghouse to continue?”

  My throat was suddenly so tight it was hard to talk. “Please tell me you’re not asking me to run the place in the summers,” I squeaked out.

  It wasn’t just the thought of arranging breakfasts and dinners for the six boarders and myself all summer long, which was bad enough. It was also the thought of continuing my aunt’s unspoken matchmaking projects. I still wasn’t sure if I approved of the endeavor, but there was no denying that my aunt’s careful perusal of applications and her subsequent selections had resulted in many permanent partnerships.

  “Not what I asked,” Aunt Frances said. “No offense, but you’d be horrible at it.”

  I put on a fake hurt expression. “Didn’t you always tell me I could do anything I wanted?”

  “And you can. But it also makes sense to play to your strengths, which are library inclined, not boardinghouse related. Back to my question. Do you want the boardinghouse to continue after I marry Otto and move into his house?”

  Though her voice was matter-of-fact, I could tell she was deeply serious. So I thought about it. I thought about the front porch swing and the fireplace. I thought about the dining room that looked over the tree-filled backyard and the bathroom with the claw-foot tub. I heard the slap of the wooden screen door and the mealtime laughter that filled the dining room.

  With a blink, I came out of my memories. “Yes,” I said. “I want the boardinghouse to continue. I don’t want the tradition to end.”

  “Okay, then.” Aunt Frances nodded.

  And that seemed to be that.

  • • •

  I spent the afternoon at the reference desk. My first customer was an elderly gentleman who wanted some help researching an ancestor who may or may not have homesteaded on property in Tonedagana County. After I sent him to the county building, the next person to ask for assistance was a seven-year-old girl who wanted to know how long it would take her to become a doctor.

  Her thin shoulders sagged a little when she’d learned the harsh truth, but her chin had a determined look by the time she walked away. I watched her go, patting myself on the back once again for choosing the best job in the world, when I felt a presence at my elbow.

  “Minnie, do you have a minute?” the presence said.

  I turned. It was Brad Lacombe. “Sure. What can I do for you?”

  “Leese said you were helping her and Mom go through Dad’s papers.”

  “Sort of.” Absentmindedly, I rubbed the backs of my knuckles. My skin still felt dry from shuffling all those folders. “Mostly I just happened to be there when your mom showed up with the boxes.”

  He shook his head. “Yeah. I wanted to apologize for that. There’s no reason for you to get caught up in our mess.”

  “I didn’t mind.” In retrospect, the entire exercise had been interesting. I’d learned a lot more than I’d ever expected to about lawsuits and court documents, plus I’d had the entertainment of listening to the bickering between Leese and her stepmother. There had been tension, certainly, but there had also been a strong current of respect and a feeling of . . . well, of family.

  Brad gave a snorting laugh that was eerily reminiscent of Leese. “Either you’re nuts or you’re lying.”

  I smiled. “Since I’m a horrible liar, I must be nuts.”

  He instantly colored a dark red. “Oh, geez, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . .”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said, laughing. “I’ve been called worse things. And besides, you might be right.”

  “No, I’m pretty sure I’m an idiot. My girlfriend says if I spent half the time thinking ahead than I do apologizing for not thinking, that I’d have time to read War and Peace.”

  His girlfriend sounded like a smart woman. I was about to say so, when another thought caught at me. According to Kristen, Brad had worked for his dad for years. If anyone would know about employee issues, it was him.

  Then again, Kristen had mentioned a huge argument between Brad and his father. She’d said it was five years ago, but the fight could have been the result of an issue that had been festering for a long time and maybe the fight hadn’t resolved whatever the problem was and Brad was still carrying a lot of a
nger toward his father and maybe that anger had gotten out of hand and . . .

  I looked at Brad’s open countenance. Spinning out possible scenarios was easy. Proving they had any basis in fact was something else altogether.

  “What do you think happened to your dad?” I asked.

  “Who killed him, you mean?” His face went tight. “Who killed him and tried to get my sister blamed for it? Who’s trying to ruin her new business?”

  His sister, I noted. Not his stepsister. And he seemed as angry about the damage to Leese as about the death of his father. Though I didn’t want to cast aspersions on the dead, I’d heard enough stories about Dale to think Brad wouldn’t take offense. “I hear your dad wasn’t the easiest employer to get along with. Do you think maybe someone he’d fired could have done it?”

  Surprisingly, Brad grinned. “If the cops are looking at disgruntled employees, I’m probably the best candidate. The whole town knows about that huge fight we had.”

  “Even I’ve heard about it,” I said, semiapologetically, “and it happened before I moved here.”

  “Sounds about right. That fight had been a long time coming. I never wanted to be in the construction business. When you’re a kid you do what your dad tells you, and the whole time I was growing up, he kept saying I was going to work for him when I got old enough. So that’s what I did.”

  “You didn’t like construction?”

  “It was okay,” he said, shrugging. “But it was just a job. And working with my dad sucked. Having me taking over the business was his plan, not mine. I had to quit to get him to see it.”

  Light dawned. “That’s what your argument was about.”

  “I’d been telling him for days that I was hooking up with some guys who were starting a craft brewery. I kept saying what a great opportunity it was, going on and on about their business plan and projected growth and how important it was to be a part of the company from the beginning.”

  “He didn’t catch on,” I said.