Lending А Paw

Chapter 20

The next evening, Kristen and I sat out on the marina’s patio. My best friend was smart, brave, strong, and able to cook soufflés without a recipe, but she hated boats with a passion. Wouldn’t have anything to do with them. Wouldn’t even sit on the houseboat’s deck while tied up to the dock. I’d long since given up trying to jolly her out of her fears and had brought out a freshly opened bottle of red adult beverage and a couple of glasses.

“When I hired Larry,” she said, “I asked around about him. I knew him in high school, but hadn’t seen him since. Everybody said he was a great chef, but that managing money was his weak point.” She snorted. “I’m such an idiot. I remember thinking, well, gosh, I’m hiring a chef, not a manager. What do I care about his financial skills? But this was all about money, wasn’t it?”

On the ride back to my car, Detective Devereaux had told me what they’d already found out through some fast investigating.

Larry, aka Kyle, and his wife had lost their house to foreclosure a few months ago. They’d rented that place in the valley because it was dirt cheap. His wife had hated it. Devereaux had already tracked down her phone number; she said she’d left Kyle and moved downstate to stay with friends while she was looking for a job.

The captured Kyle had told the detectives that he was headed south that morning to talk her into coming home, that he was going to call the police from a pay phone at a rest stop somewhere and give an anonymous tip that I was locked in the barn.

Kristen rolled her eyes. “And they believed him?”

I shrugged. They hadn’t, but I had. Or I’d wanted to. Thinking that he’d left me there to die wasn’t going to improve my dreams any, and since I’d escaped, I’d decided to accept the explanation.

Kristen sipped her wine. “Man, this is good. Where did you get it?”

“You gave it to me for Christmas.”

She nodded absently. “There’s one thing I haven’t been able to figure out. Why did Larry think he was going to inherit anything?”

I looked at the never-ending blue sky. “He thought Stan liked him.” I remembered what Larry had said, the night Caroline and I had eaten dinner together. From Stan’s undoubtedly offhand comment about money being easy to come by, Larry must have built up a fantasy of inheritances and money owed from long-ago wrongs. And I heard again what Larry had said, the first time I’d met him, about his dreams of building a restaurant.

Had it really been all about money?

I’d had a lot of time to think about Kristen’s question, out there in the barn, and I still didn’t know. I’d had time to think about the farmhouse, about Stan, about his shady business practices, and about his six sisters. I’d thought about genealogy and how the sting of injustice can survive through generations. I’d thought about how Stan’s sale of the farmhouse had started his empire, and how it had ruined his relationship with his sisters forever. I’d thought about families and money and motivations and hatred, and standing there in the warm sunshine outside the barn, I’d asked the detectives if they knew the maiden name of Kyle’s grandmother.

They’d looked at each other. “No idea,” Inwood said. “Why?”

When I suggested that it might be Larabee, they both gave slow nods and pulled out their cell phones. Devereaux got the answer first, from his sister-in-law who’d grown up in that part of the county.

He’d nodded. “Larabee. How’d you know?”

I didn’t say anything, but watched as Deputy Wolverson got into the patrol car, started it up, and drove off, taking Larry away.

“Say, I forgot to tell you, Ms. Hamilton,” Detective Devereaux had said. “We recovered a bullet from one of the bookmobile tires. What do you bet the bullet was fired from a gun Mr. Sutton owns? And it’ll be easy enough to get witnesses to testify that Mr. Sutton knew the bookmobile lady was trying to find Stan’s killer.”

I’d frowned. “It will?”

Devereaux had chuckled. “Sure. Everybody knew.”

When I was relating this part of the story to Kristen, she sat up so suddenly that wine slopped over the side of her glass. “Shot?!” she yelled. “Larry shot at you?”

Oops. “I never told you about that? Well, it was only a few days ago. And nothing happened, so—”

“Nothing happened?” She sent me her fierce I-could-make-life-miserable-for-you-if-I-wanted-to look. “My best friend gets shot at by one of my employees—shot at!—and she doesn’t think I might want to know?”

“It wasn’t me, it was the tires. And at the time I didn’t know it was Larry.”

“Kyle,” she muttered. “Should have known from the beginning that guy was trouble. Anybody named Kyle who’d rather go by Larry is bound to have a screw loose.” She squinted a little. “Of course, he looks like a Larry, doesn’t he?”

“If you live in the town where you grew up, it can be hard to get rid of a nickname.” Or a reputation.

When I’d called Aunt Frances last night, I’d told her that not only was Stan’s killer in jail, but none of it had been her fault. Not in the least. She hadn’t believed me at first, but I’d eventually convinced her. After her tears had stopped, we’d made a pact to rehabilitate Stan’s reputation. It would take time, but with two determined women on the job, maybe it wouldn’t take so very long.

“Yeah, well.” Kristen sipped her wine. “I just hope when he gets out of jail, he comes to me looking for work.”

“Why’s that?”

“So I can beat him over the head, of course.” One-handed, she used an imaginary bat to do the job. “By the way, what’s going on with that hot doctor of yours?”

I looked at her sideways. “You were there our whole first date. What don’t you already know?”

“Oh, come on, it was funny. Yeah, I see you trying not to laugh. Don’t laugh, Minnie, don’t laugh. . . .”

I swiped off my smile with the back of my hand. “So how about a double date, me and Tucker, you and Mitchell Koyne?”

She nodded. “Good idea. How about Friday?”

My jaw dropped. “You . . . you’re going out with Mitchell?”

“Why not?” She shrugged. “He’s about our age, can almost speak a complete sentence, sometimes has a job, and of course I’m not going out with him, you goofus.” She laughed. “Had you going there, didn’t I?”

I rested my head against the chair’s back and blew out a huge breath. “For a second I thought I’d created a monster.”

“The only monster around here is in jail,” she said. “And now I’m short a chef three days before the Fourth of July. You know, if you’d been more considerate of your friends, you would have waited until after the holiday to get tossed in that barn.”

“I’ll try to do better next time.”

She grinned. “Good. So, now that we know what happened, who’s going to get Stan’s money? Is the library going to make out like a bandit?”

“From the number of attorney letters I’ve seen on Stephen’s desk, I’d guess it’ll be tied up in courts for months, if not years.”

Kristen snorted. She wasn’t a big fan of the lawyer breed.

“On the other hand,” I said, “both Caroline Grice and Gunnar Olson have sent nice donation checks.”

“Hey, congratulations!” Kristen held out her glass to tink with mine, but before the glasses clinked, she looked down. “Hmm. Minnie, methinks you might have an escapee.”

“Mrr.”

Sure enough, it was my rotten cat. “Eddie, what are you doing out here?” I’d left him inside the boat with the windows shut and the door . . . The door. I’d left the solid door open, leaving only the screen door latched. Wonderful. Eddie had learned how to open the screen door. Simply outstanding.

He bumped my shin with the top of his head, jumped up onto my lap, and turned around one, two, three times. When he finally settled down, he was facing Kristen. “Mrr,” he said to her, dipping his head.

She laughed. “And to you, Mr. Bookmobile Cat.”

I petted his thick fur. Eddie, the bookmobile cat. Eddie, the cat who had found Stan. Eddie, the cat who’d ripped up the Grice genealogy research that had been a waste of time. Eddie, who’d gone ballistic when he’d seen Audry. Eddie, who had nearly scratched a hole in the door when I’d left for the farmhouse.

I stared at him. Had he actually guided me toward the answers? Pushed me in the right direction when I was taking the wrong path? Tried to warn me of danger?

My hand stilled and I looked down at him. He looked up at me and our gazes met, my brown eyes staring into his yellow ones.

Nah. It was my imagination. Had to be. Eddie might be smart, but he wasn’t that smart. No cat was.

He shut one eye, then opened it again.

“Did he just wink at you?” Kristen asked. “He did! He winked at you!”

“I hope not,” I said slowly. “I really, truly hope not.”

Eddie shut both of his eyes.

And purred.