Pouncing on Murder (19 page)

He might have said “Mrr,” but then again it might have been my imagination. Sighing, I headed up to the library, figuring that my day could only get better. And it did until I went into the break room in answer to Holly’s e-mail of
Got something for you. Come and see!

I grabbed my empty coffee mug and headed out. Holly’s chocolate chip cookies were on my list of the top ten best cookies ever, and her peanut butter fudge was better than my mom’s, something that I’d never told my mom and never would.

I was in the mood for cookies, so when I walked through the door, my anticipatory smile went flat when I saw there were, in fact, no cookies on the counter. Or fudge. Or brownies or even cupcakes. Instead Holly was sitting at the break table, sorting through a packet of paint samples.

“What’s that?” I asked, filling my mug with coffee. I hoped either Holly or Josh had brewed this pot and not
Kelsey, who was still trying to convince everyone that coffee thick enough to use as frosting was the best kind.

“They’re for Josh,” She pushed the long rectangles into half a dozen piles. “You know darn well that he’ll just paint every room in his house beige if we don’t help him, so what do you think?” She pointed at the small stacks. “Living room. Kitchen and dining. Master bedroom. Bathrooms. Study slash guest room.” Frowning, she asked, “Do you think he has three bedrooms?”

I had no idea. “Pink? You really think there’s any chance he’ll paint even a small bathroom pink?”

“It’s not pink.” Holly picked up the sample and peered at the tiny writing. “It’s strawberry blush.”

“It’s pink,” Josh said.

Holly and I turned. Our coworker was standing behind us, eyeing the wide variety of colors with disfavor.

“Oh, good,” Holly said. “You’re here. These are the colors you should think about for your living room, and these are—what are you doing?”

He was feeding coin after coin into the soda machine, was what he was doing, and not paying any attention to her at all.

“Come on, Josh,” she said, wheedling, “don’t you want to look?”

“Not really.” He pushed a button and a can rolled down.

“Sure you do.”

“Nope.”

Don’t worry, Holly,” I said. “It’s not your fault. Most men don’t see the importance of decorating. They like the results, just not the work that goes into it.”

Josh gave me a sour look. “Who asked you?”

I wondered if Eddie had somehow been snoring on Josh’s head last night, too. “Did you sleep okay?”

He snorted. “What, because I don’t want to paint my bathroom pink means there’s something wrong with me?”

“No,” I flashed back. “It’s because there’s so obviously something wrong with you that makes us think there’s something wrong with you.”

“Yeah,” Holly said. “You’re being really cranky. Are you sick?”

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Josh said. “I’m out of here.” He stalked away without even bothering to open his soda.

“He can be such a jerk sometimes.” Holly looked at her rainbow of colors. “We’re just trying to help.”

“We?” I echoed. “How did I get dragged into this?”

“Fine.” Holly shoved all the paint samples together into a small heap, got up, and tossed them into the wastebasket. “I can’t believe no one cares about this. You’re both being jerks. Just plain jerks.” She stomped out.

I shook my head at them both and did some stomping of my own on the way back to my office. But even before I sat down in my chair, I knew I’d have to do something about the situation to make sure it didn’t take a festering turn into a permanent rift. It wasn’t likely to, but a little reassurance never hurt.

Thinking fast, I typed an e-mail message to them both.
Sorry I was cranky just now. I didn’t get much sleep and I’d like to blame Eddie. Would that be okay?

After I hit the Send button, I opened up the bookmobile’s summer stop schedule, but before I could start working on it, I heard the ding of an incoming e-mail.

It was from Holly:
That darn Eddie. I’m okay blaming him if Josh is.

Ten seconds later, there was another ding. This one was from Josh.
He’s a pretty big cat, so yeah, I bet he can take the blame.

And just as I finished reading that e-mail, a second one came in from Josh.
But it was really the new video game I bought yesterday. I was up half the night figuring it out. Sorry.

And then came the final one from Holly:
And Wilson has an earache, so I’m sorry, too.

Smiling, I went back to my spreadsheet, a little surprised at how happy their e-mails made me. Reassurances, apparently, were a good thing.

•   •   •

By lunchtime, I decided that if I could add another reassurance or two to my life, it could only be a better thing. My conversation with Kristen the night before about families and siblings had combined with my lack of sleep to trigger a question that needed answering by two different people.

My previous research had given me the phone numbers I needed, and as I walked out the library door, I thumbed on my cell and pushed the proper buttons for calling person number one.

“Good morning, Denver Fire Investigation Unit.”

“Hi,” I said. “Can I speak to Dennis Gill, please?”

“Is Captain Gill expecting your call?”

I blinked at the title but remained undaunted. “No, but it’s about his father’s estate.” Sort of.

“One moment, please.”

The phone went silent. I was just starting to assume that I’d be dumped into voice mail when the silence ended. “This is Dennis Gill. How can I help you?”

I introduced myself the same way I’d done with his older brother, said that I’d been a friend of his father’s, was sorry for his loss, and that I was calling because I’d heard a developer was trying to convince them to sell the property.

There was a chance that Mike had told his brothers about my phone call, but it had sounded as if they didn’t talk often, so there wasn’t much risk I’d get called on it. Besides, I could always say that I’d heard more rumors about the property being sold and just wanted to double-check.

This was all because I’d realized, at three in the morning, that taking the word of a complete stranger about what could be a very lucrative development deal might not have given me an accurate picture of reality.

“Sell Mom and Dad’s place?” Dennis asked. “That’s the furthest thing from our minds. Yeah, we could probably make a bundle selling it to Stanton, but with Dad gone, we’ve decided we need to make a real effort to get together. It’s too easy to let the years go by, you know?”

I murmured that keeping up the house might be an expensive endeavor, and that property taxes didn’t usually go down.

“Sure,” Dennis said, “but Dad left behind some
decent assets. With some investment luck, the income will pay for everything and maybe even a little more.”

“That sounds great.” I paused, then said, “I think your dad would have been very pleased to hear all this.”

He gusted out a sigh. “I hope so. He was hard to figure out sometimes. Not a big talker, even when Mom was still alive.”

I smiled, thinking of Henry’s typical communication-by-grunt. “No, but he was a master at getting his point across in one syllable or less. Best ever, if you ask me.”

Dennis laughed. “Thanks for calling, Minnie. And let me know if you hear more rumors about the property being sold. I’d like to know where they’re coming from.”

I promised I would and ended the call. One down, one to go, and I was only halfway to downtown. Plenty of time for another. I thumbed the phone again.

“Northeast Networks, how may I direct your call?”

“Kevin Gill, please.”

“One moment.”

I got an earful of a techno version of “You Are My Sunshine” and was on the verge of deciding to call back later when the music broke off and a man said, “This is Kevin.”

Two minutes later, Kevin Gill was laughing. “Sell Mom and Dad’s place? Not a chance. Mike and Dennis and I practically made a blood oath that condos won’t go on that property in our lifetimes.”

I smiled. “What about your children?”

“You know, we talked about that,” he said. “I have a buddy who’s an attorney and he says if we really want to lock up the property we should think about adding deed
restrictions. We just might do it, too,” he added thoughtfully. “And if we tie up Dad’s money in a trust, make all the money go to the maintenance and taxes for the place, we can guarantee it’ll stay in the family.”

I wondered how that might work a few generations down the line, when there might be dozens of Gills, but there are only so many things anyone needed to think about, even me, so I thanked Kevin and let the thought go.

With the second reassurance of the day complete, I was ready for lunch. And since by this time I was all the way downtown and right in front of Shomin’s Deli—how serendipitous!—I opened the door.

Inside, the brick-walled, wooden-floored, and tin-ceilinged restaurant was a relatively busy place. Relatively, because with almost half the tables occupied and three people in line, it was very busy for April. In summer, “busy” would mean a line out the door and strangers would be sharing tables, which could sometimes be a lot of fun, but I was fine with the April emptiness.

Of the three people in line in front of the glass display cases, one was a library patron whose name I couldn’t remember, one was a minister from Aunt Frances’s church, and the third was Felix Stanton. It had taken me a second to recognize him, since he was wearing a tweed blazer over brown pants and dress shoes instead of a canvas coat and hiking boots, but I made the connection before the blank look on my face became too fixed.

I nodded at the first two and said hello to Felix.

“Minnie, right?” he asked. “Good to see you.”

I had a quick internal debate. Resolved: that it is best to share all information at all times. Since the winner of the debate was the part of me who thought that open sharing couldn’t possibly be a good thing when a killer might be wandering around, I kept my chats with the Gill brothers to myself.

“How are things going?” I asked. “Any new projects for the summer?”

He smiled affably and rocked back a little on his heels. “Have a number of things on the back burner,” he said. “Just working on which one to bring up front first.”

“Anything you can talk about?”

“Too early to say.” He smiled down at me. “But if you’re looking for a nice piece of property, just stop by the office and we’ll hook you up with something quality.”

At this point in my life, my financial priority was paying off the last of my student loans, not saddling myself with a mortgage, but I smiled at Felix. “I’ll keep that mind.” Then, before he could turn away, I said, “After I saw you the other day at Henry’s place, I ran into a neighbor of Henry’s, Cole Duvall.”

“And how is Cole?” Felix asked. “I haven’t seen him or his wife in some time.”

“Well, here’s the thing,” I said. “Cole said you’d been talking to Henry for months about developing his property, but you told me that you’d only recently approached Henry’s sons.” In the time it had taken me to speak those two or three phrases, Felix’s face had gone bright red. I hoped the man didn’t have a heart condition and kept going. “So either Cole has it wrong or I do, and I was just wondering which—”

“Are you saying I’m a liar?” Felix thundered.

The scent of coffee-flavored breath assailed me, but I looked at him calmly and didn’t step back. There were many occasions for which I was grateful for being height-efficient, and this was another one. A lifetime of being shorter than everyone over the age of thirteen had inured me to intimidation by size and/or voice.

“No,” I said evenly, “I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on.”

Felix, now at the head of the line, turned away from me and tossed a bill on the counter. He looked back over his shoulder and said fiercely, “Anything that’s going on is none of your business, little missy. Just keep yourself to yourself.”

He snatched up the cardboard container that the young man at the register had pushed toward him, then stormed out.

“That was weird,” I murmured. I’d anticipated either a blank look or a smiling evasion, but to be blasted with vitriol over a simple question was so unexpected that I wondered what was going on inside Mr. Felix Stanton. Not that it was necessarily murder-oriented, but you had to wonder.

“Don’t take it personally,” a familiar voice said.

I turned and saw that Pam Fazio was standing behind me. “Thanks,” I said, laying down the money for my upcoming sandwich. “I appreciate that. I certainly didn’t
expect to be berated in public by someone I barely know.”

“Well,” Pam said, opening her wallet, “I’ve known him for quite a while and he gets like this every so often.” She grinned. “He’s being even more Felix-ish than usual, is all.”

“Here you go, Minnie,” the counter kid said. “One Swiss cheese and olive on sourdough with Thousand Island dressing.”

I thanked him and took my sandwich. “So,” I asked Pam, “I shouldn’t lose any sleep over this?”

She shook her head, tossing her short black hair around. “Nah. He’s like that with everyone these days, right, Evan?”

The counter kid rolled his eyes. “You got that right.”

I shook off the icky feeling that had crept onto my skin during the unexpected confrontation. Onward and upward—there was something else I needed to do. “I have a quick question for both of you, if you have a second.”

“Sure.” Pam handed over her money to Evan, who nodded.

“A little while ago,” I said, hoping the story I’d manufactured was believable, “there was this guy in the library, and I think he left something behind. A nice leather notebook.” This wasn’t completely a lie—I had indeed found a notebook. Last summer, but still. “He was short, not much taller than me, with bright red hair.”

“Sounds maybe familiar,” Evan said, “but I haven’t seen anyone like that, not that I can remember.”

Pam grinned. “Short, eh? Looking to pick on someone your own size for a change?”

“No one’s my size.” I sighed dramatically. “I gave up on that a long time ago.”

“Well, like my grandma says,” Evan said seriously, “you never know what’s around the corner.”