Authors: Christy Evans
Lead-Pipe Cinch (18 page)
I’d just have to find a way to ask him the next time I saw him. And I had to make sure there was a next time.
chapter 20
I stood on the sidewalk a moment longer, looking at the corner where Stan’s rented Lincoln had disappeared. I was amazed at how happy I had been to see him, and how angry I had been to see Blake.
Well, duh! One had treated me kindly, offered me the opportunity to salvage a little dignity, and been pleased to see me.
The other had dumped me with a voice mail, humiliated me in public, and apparently spread some nasty lies about my departure from Samurai.
The voice mail hurt, but the lies made me angry. Richard, and by extension the rest of the company, thought I waltzed out the door with a pot of money. They were more likely to think of me as the owner of the castle, not the ditchdigger.
I left the Beetle at the curb and walked down the street to Doggy Day Spa. My conversation with Stan was too weird not to share with somebody, and I trusted Sue.
When I opened the door, I was greeted with a chorus of barking from the kennels at the back. Sue was at the grooming table with a sheepdog puppy, and his brother was in the kennel, complaining loudly about the separation.
Astrid McComb stood next to Sue, absorbed in watching her comb out the sheepdog’s coat.
Sue did that a lot with her clients, instructing them in the proper care of their dogs. Sometimes it cut down on the trips to the groomer, but she said it mostly cut down on the complaints about her fees.
“When they know how much work it really is to bathe and clip and groom their dog, they figure they’re getting a bargain.”
Compared to the fees I’d paid in San Francisco, they definitely were.
Sue patiently combed and clipped, all the while talking soothingly to the puppy. I waited to one side, unwilling to interrupt the lesson.
Astrid took the comb from Sue, and timidly ran it over a section of the sheepdog’s coat. Sue encouraged her, and she was soon combing and crooning, just as Sue had done.
Sue left Astrid with the puppy and walked up front to where I waited. “She adores those puppies, but she’s a little intimidated by their care.” She looked at Astrid and back at me. “She’ll be fine. Just needs a little encouragement and some practice.”
“You’re good with the dogs
and
the owners.”
and
the owners.”
“What are you doing here? Two visits in the same week without the dogs is a bad sign, Georgie.”
“Subtle much, Gibbons?” I shook my head. “I just had breakfast with Stan Fischer—the guy from San Francisco I told you about—and I don’t know what to think.”
“You mean like is he one of the bad guys? I heard the sheriff is saying it wasn’t an accident.”
“No, I don’t think he’s one of the bad guys. I told you, he was the one person who was good to me when I left San Francisco.” I glanced up to be sure Astrid was still busy with her puppy. “It was something else. Something I don’t want to talk about in front of anyone.”
Sue took the hint. “I’ll be through here in a few minutes. Why don’t you go back and take a look at the computer? I would appreciate it if you would check that the backups are working right since you fixed it the other day.”
I retreated to Sue’s office and logged on to her computer. I poked around in the system, checking that her firewalls were intact and her virus protection was updating correctly.
I pulled out her backups and checked that they were working properly. I did everything except what I really wanted to do: get on the Internet and see what I could find out about the current status of Samurai Security.
It seemed odd that I had not done an online search before now, but I had tried to put it all in the past. Checking up on the company would only reopen the wounds. Checking up on Blake bordered on stalker behavior. I’d managed to avoid both.
But now the temptation was nearly overwhelming. There might be a clue to Blake’s murder. The sheriff might not recognize it since he didn’t know the people involved like I did. It would be a way I could help with the investigation.
Justification much, Neverall? If I wanted an excuse to Google Samurai Security, Stan’s offer should be adequate. But I had turned down his proposal, so there was no reason to look. Was there?
Wade’s question from the previous night rattled around my brain. Why had I left high tech?
I could go on forever about the dreadful working conditions, the long hours, the complete immersion in work to the detriment of everything else in my life. I could talk about the whirlwind pace, the exhaustion, the meals eaten at my desk or around a conference table in the middle of the night.
But was that really the reason? Maybe it was the realization that Richard Parks—or someone like him—could do my job in a heartbeat and do it better. I was no longer the hot young thing, out to set the computing world on fire.
Maybe that was what Blake had fallen for; the top dog who led the pack. And when he saw that position slipping he didn’t care about what was left.
I dismissed that opportunity to wallow in self-pity.
I’d told Wade I loved what I was doing, and it was true. I still enjoyed messing with Sue’s computer, and Barry’s. It felt good to solve a problem, to make the machines run faster and smoother, to protect them from worms and viruses.
That was one of my favorite parts, actually. The feeling that I had defeated some bozo whose idea of fun was to damage or destroy the computers and data of complete strangers.
It was even better when we were able to trace the source of the infection and find the person responsible. Sometimes it was just a kid with the electronic equivalent of a can of spray paint. But sometimes it was more than that.
Was that why Stan’s offer had tempted me? The chance to beat the vandals out there?
Or was it that I wanted to prove I still had what it takes, to prove to myself and the board of Samurai Security that they had made a mistake when they booted me out?
Maybe my decisions weren’t as much in the past as I wanted them to be.
I was resisting the urge to just poke around a little when Sue came back to the office.
“Coast’s clear,” she said, sticking her head around the door frame. “But I need to stay up front. Come on up when you’re through.”
“I’m through,” I said, pushing aside the temptation and standing up.
I followed Sue to the front of the shop. Astrid and the sheepdogs were gone.
Sue set to work cleaning and disinfecting the grooming table, sink, and floor. “I’ve got a standard poodle coming this afternoon. You don’t mind if I keep working while we talk, do you?”
“Since I barged in on you in the middle of your workday I really can’t complain about you actually working, can I?”
“Suppose not,” Sue answered as she sprayed the grooming table with a plastic bottle. “So what was so important that you barged in—as you put it—in the middle of the workday?”
“I had breakfast with Stan, like I told you.”
“And Astrid couldn’t overhear that? I think perhaps you’re getting a little too invested in the whole keeping-secrets thing.”
The disinfectant stung my nose and I sneezed.
“Bless you.”
“Thanks. That stuff stinks.”
“But it stinks in a clean way. The customers like to know the place is clean when they bring in their pets.
“And don’t try to change the subject.”
I rolled my eyes. Miss Roller Coaster Conversationalist telling
me
not to change the subject.
me
not to change the subject.
“I mean it,” Sue said. “You still haven’t told me why we had to wait until Astrid was gone.”
“I wasn’t sure she’d be very happy with the idea of a member of her plumbing crew being offered the chance to design her new security system.”
“Are you serious?” Sue dropped her cleaning rag and grabbed me in a bear hug. “That is sooo cool! You’re really good at that stuff, and I bet McComb’s paying big money for the new system.” She retreated to her cleaning again. “And who isn’t in favor of big money?”
She turned and looked at me. “No wonder you think this Stan is one of the good guys.”
“I turned him down.”
“You did
what
?”
what
?”
“I turned him down. There’s no way I can do the job, Sue. I’m totally out of touch.”
“But you take care of my computer, and Barry’s. And you have all that equipment set up in your house. You know this stuff, Georgie. How could you say no?”
“Because I don’t know that much, not really. Not at the level the McCombs would need. Think about what they do. They worked at the leading edge of the industry for a lot of years. Their computers are going to be light-years ahead of yours and Barry’s. And me . . .” I shook my head. “No. there’s no way I could do that job.”
Sue straightened up from sweeping hair into a dustpan. “No one said you had to do the job.” She emptied the dustpan. “Just take it.”
I wondered if I looked as puzzled as I felt.
Apparently so. Sue put her hands on her hips. “After the way they treated you? Why shouldn’t you just take the money, do what you can, and leave the rest for them to finish?”
“That’s the most ridiculous idea you’ve had yet.”
“Is it? What do you owe these people? They took your company, they treated you like dirt, and now they want you to pick up the pieces when their hotshot consultant gets himself killed?” She slammed her hand down on the grooming table. “Nothing, Georgie. That’s what you owe them!”
“I didn’t say I owed them anything. But Stan told me some stuff that makes me wonder.”
“Like what?” she challenged.
“Like Blake told him he wanted to ask me to come back to Samurai, that they needed me. That what happened between us didn’t matter as much as the future of the company.”
She snorted. “He should have thought of that before he left you that voice mail.”
“But here’s what doesn’t make sense, Sue. Why was he killed up here? What was he doing that made him a target?”
“If his history is any indication, he was probably being a total jerk. But I don’t think that’s what you meant. Besides, how do you know it had anything to do with what he was doing here? Maybe somebody followed him or something.”
“And they just happened to be out at the McComb site?
“No. I’ve been thinking about this ever since I heard. Something changed. He made somebody angry, or he got in someone’s way.”
Something niggled in the back of my head. “There was one person,” I said. “Someone who asked an awful lot of questions about Blake and what he was doing here.”
“There was? Who?”
“Gregory Whitlock—”
“Not this again! You don’t like the man, which I totally understand, so every time something bad happens you want to make him responsible.”
“This is different. I mean, yeah, I suspected him when Martha Tepper disappeared, but I only thought he was trying to make money by cheating her. I never thought he killed her.”
Sue shook her head. “You were ready and willing to believe he was responsible for everything that happened.”
“Not really,” I argued. “Not once we knew she was dead.”
“So if he wasn’t a murderer then, what makes him one now?”
“I didn’t say he was a murderer. I said he asked a lot of questions about Blake. Sue, he practically gives me the third degree every time I see him.
“It’s creepy.”
“Because he is your mother’s boyfriend.”
“Not because he’s my mother’s boyfriend.” I leaned over the grooming table, putting my face close to hers. “Because he kept asking questions about the guy, and then he ends up dead.”
Sue threw her hands in the air. “So he was asking questions? So what?”
“It just seemed like—” I sputtered to a stop. Maybe she was right. Maybe I wasn’t being fair to Gregory. Yeah, and maybe monkeys . . .
“Okay, whatever. But, Sue, his questions were creepy. He kept asking about things I really didn’t know, and trying to make something out of the argument at McCombs’; like I was doing something wrong.”
“You mean like screaming at the guy in front of the entire crew? Like that?”
I made a face. “You think that wasn’t such a good thing to do?” I asked sheepishly. I hate it when she’s right.
“Not good, no. You know the sheriff’s going to be wanting to talk to you again, now that he knows it wasn’t an accident.”
I bit back an expletive. Barry’s training was taking over even off the job. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. You don’t really think he’d suspect me, do you?”
Sue refused to look at me.
“Does he
already
suspect me?”
already
suspect me?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice was low, her tone miserable. “I know he’s upset that your friend—former friend, ex-partner, whatever—was murdered here in Pine Ridge.”
She finally looked at me, her eyes begging for understanding. “He takes the safety and security of this town very seriously, Georgie. He just wants to find whoever did it and lock them up.”
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