Sleight of Paw (32 page)

I couldn’t keep the frustration out of my voice. “And Ruby doesn’t deserve to be blamed.”

His jaw clenched.

“Eric, please,” I pleaded.

He stared past me and I waited, the silence stretching out between us. Finally he looked at me. “Yes, I was with Justin. And yes, he did start drinking again. He thought . . .” Eric stopped for a moment. “He thought he could control it. He thought he could drink and not get into trouble.” Anguish was etched into every line on his face.

“It doesn’t work like that,” I said.

Eric slowly shook his head.

“You met him at the Drink.”

He nodded. “I walked down here and called a cab.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t want Susan to know where I was going, or that it was Justin I was meeting. It seems stupid now.”

“Justin was drinking?”

He nodded.

“And what about you? What got you started?”

He swiped a hand over his face and leaned back against the edge of the desk. “I ordered a Coke and I tried to talk some sense into Justin. He kept saying he could drink and not have it mess up his life. He said he’d been drinking for a couple of months and he’d kept it under control.”

He rubbed his palm over his mouth as if he were trying to rub the words away. “I went to the can. When I came back I must’ve picked up the wrong drink.” He stared at his feet. “I had the drink and I knew . . . I knew but somehow I didn’t . . . I couldn’t put it down, and Justin was talking the whole time about how he could keep it together, and I thought about all the times I’d seen him in the past two months and he’d seemed normal and it did look like it was working.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “And I took the second drink. And then I couldn’t stop.”

He looked away, and when he looked back his voice was stronger. “We ordered another round. And then another. And then . . . And I don’t remember much after that.”

“You have no idea how you got home?”

“I woke up on the cot here. It was maybe two a.m. I . . . stuck my head in the sink and ran cold water over it, and I walked home.”

“Did you talk to Justin?” I asked.

“Yes. He came in not long after Agatha’s body was found and the police were everywhere.” Eric threaded his fingers through the back of his hair almost, as though pulling it out by the roots. “He said we had a few drinks, we talked about old times and then we walked down here.”

“Walked?”

Eric nodded

“That would’ve taken an hour at least,” I said. “Are you sure Justin didn’t have Ruby’s truck?”

“I’m not sure of anything, Kathleen.”

“There’s something else I need to ask you,” I said.

“What?”

“You did argue with Agatha about the envelope the night she died, didn’t you?”

He nodded. “You saw us.” He pointed toward the main part of the diner. “What you didn’t see was we fought about it again. She was outside later that night. I got her to come in again to get warm.”

“Why did you argue? What did you think was in the envelope?”

He put both hands on the surface of the desk on either side of himself. I could see he was struggling with how to answer.

“Eric, what was in that brown envelope is really important. Anything you tell me is going to help.”

He looked at me warily. “You know, don’t you?”

“Yes.” I said. There didn’t seem to be any point in dancing around it.

Whatever he saw in my face seemed to convince him he was right. He studied his feet for a moment. “Last week—Monday, I think it was—I picked up Susan after work. I overheard Agatha having an argument with Ruby about the envelope. About the baby.”

He tipped his head and looked at me. “My old man took off when I was about thirteen. I have no idea where he is. Hell, he could be dead, for all I know. Harry Taylor wants to know this child. I told Agatha she was wrong. I thought she should give him that chance, give both of them that chance.”

He sighed. “She wouldn’t consider it. We were standing right here. I tried to grab the envelope and the corner tore.”

The piece Hercules had found. I couldn’t help feeling let down that he didn’t have the entire envelope.

“She was angry. She told me she was disappointed in me.” He gave me a twisted smile with no warmth in it. “And what did I do? I went and got drunk. She would have been even more disappointed if she’d known that.”

“You made a mistake, Eric, and you fixed it and you’re still fixing it. I think Agatha would be proud of you for that.”

“I’m not drinking,” he said.

“I know. Susan said you’ve been doing the meetings. What about Justin?”

“I don’t know. I’ve only talked to him that one time. I have to stay away from him if I’m going to stay sober. But . . . but I’m pretty certain he’s still drinking.”

He wiped his hands on his jeans. “If he is, everything he has, his whole life, is going to be destroyed.”

I just nodded. I didn’t say what I was increasingly convinced of. That Justin had already destroyed someone’s life.

Agatha’s.

I
promised Eric I’d let him know what else I found out, and walked back to the truck. I wasn’t due at the library for several more hours, so I drove home, feeling a little pinch of pleasure at not having to climb Mountain Road by foot. I made a new pot of coffee and sat at the table, trying to figure out what to do next.

Owen came wandering in and I scooped him up onto my lap. “Justin killed Agatha,” I said to him. “I’m sure of it.” He looked at me and I stroked the fur under his chin. “It’s just a little too convenient that he steered me toward Eric. He tried to set me up and I almost fell for it.”

I remembered how both cats had reacted to Justin. “You and your brother weren’t fooled that easily.” That got me his fake-modest, pseudo-embarrassed head bob. Then he jumped to the floor to investigate something by the basement door that looked suspiciously like a disembodied funky-chicken part.

I slumped in the chair as Hercules came in and wound around my legs. “How do we prove Justin took Ruby’s truck?” I asked Hercules. “She left it in the studio lot. She told me Justin had driven her home and then they got into an argument and she didn’t feel like going back and getting it.”

I closed my eyes and tried to picture the parking lot behind the studio building. Ruby’s truck had been there when Maggie, Roma and I had left for the community center. And Maggie had said it was there when she’d headed home. So Justin had taken it sometime after Maggie had left for the night. If it had been any other night somebody might have seen Justin. But the entire town had been at the auction or over working on the Winterfest site.

That parking lot was tiny, squeezed in behind the building. Each tenant had a parking spot, and that was it. It couldn’t be seen from the street, so it would have been surprisingly easy for Justin to take the truck and return it unseen.

“Unless,” I said aloud. Both cats turned to look at me. I was already on my way to the phone.

“Does the studio building have surveillance on the parking lot?” I asked when Maggie answered her phone.

“Why, hello, Kathleen. So nice to hear your voice,” Maggie said sweetly.

“Hi, Mags. How are you? Does the building have a surveillance system?”

“You mean a camera? No.”

“Crap on toast,” I said, grinding my teeth together.

“Why do you want to know if there’s a camera on the parking lot?”

I looked at my watch. I didn’t have a lot of time, but I had enough.

“I’ll tell you later, I swear. I have to go now.” I hung up over her protests and went back to get my coat.

“I have an idea.” I told the cats. “Cross your . . . paws. I’ll be back.”

I drove downtown again. The universe, karma, someone was smiling on me, someone was on my side. How would I have done all of this without the truck?

I drove along Main Street and checked out the building to the right of the old school that was now the River Arts Center. There was no sign of a security camera. I cruised the block again. Same for the building to the left.

The third time around, I pulled into the lot, into Ruby’s empty parking spot, and got out to look around on foot. There were no cameras. I smacked the side of the truck with my hand and said some very unlibrarianlike words.

The truck was hard and cold and my hand hurt. I stood there rubbing it and looking around in frustration, when I realized I could see part of Everett’s office building. If I could see the office, then the office could see the lot.

I got back in the truck, turned around successfully in the small lot, and drove up to Henderson Holdings’ offices.

Lita was at her desk. She smiled when she saw me. “Hi, Kathleen. You’re about five hours early for the meeting.”

I smiled back. “Hi, Lita,” I said. “This is going to sound a little strange, but do you have security cameras on the building?”

She nodded. “Yes, we do.”

How was I going to explain that I wanted to look at the footage to see if Justin had taken Ruby’s truck?

“You want to see the footage from last Wednesday night,” she said.

“The police were already here, weren’t they?” I dropped onto the chair in front of her desk.

“The cameras don’t show the old school at all. I’m sorry. There was nothing recorded that could help Ruby.”

I rubbed the space between my eyes. Nothing was working. I couldn’t exactly go to Marcus and explain that I knew Justin killed Agatha because he had elastics on his arm and smelled like hair gel.

I stood up. “Thanks, Lita,” I said. “I’ll see you this afternoon.”

There was a plaque by the door and I would have missed it if I hadn’t dropped my gloves and bent to pick them up. I had the same simple plaque in the library. The school gave one to every business that participated in the student work-experience program.

I stood there with one hand on the door, my thoughts falling over themselves. Kate, my co-op student, had been working on a mixed-media art project with a couple of her friends. The kids had mounted webcams on a rotating base at various spots around town and were editing the footage to create a dizzying 360-degree look at Mayville Heights.

That’s why there had been a camera in the second-floor storage room for the past ten days. They kept having trouble with the signal and feed. They hadn’t been able to get all the cameras working at the same time.

“Kathleen, are you all right?” Lita asked.

I turned around and walked back to her desk. “I’m fine,” I said. “Lita, do you have a co-op student?”

“Yes. Brandon.”

I let out the breath I’d been holding. The universe was back on my side. Brandon was one of Kate’s friends.

“Did he ask you about setting up a webcam for a school project?”

She laughed. “That child is persistent.”

“And did you say yes?”

“I did,” she said. “He was extremely persistent, Kathleen.”

“Where’s the camera?”

Lita pointed up over our heads. “Up in a little closet we use to store office supplies.” Her expression changed then. “Do you think that camera might have recorded the parking lot down at the studio?”

I held out both hands. “I don’t know.”

Lita stood up. “Let’s find out. I’ll get Brandon.”

Waiting for her, I thought about calling Marcus. What would I tell him? I didn’t know if the webcam had recorded anything useful at all.

Lita came back with Brandon, whom I remembered from the setup in the library.

“Hello, Ms. Paulson,” he said. “Mrs. Gray said you want to look at what we’ve been recording.”

“Please, Brandon. I do.”

He shrugged and set his laptop on Lita’s desk. “Sure thing.” He hit some keys and muttered to himself, then tilted the screen back a bit more, shifted sideways and said, “There you go.”

Lita and I both leaned in. The live image feed was clear and mostly showed an area of the downtown and the water.

“There,” Lita said, pointing to the bottom right corner of the screen.

I could see a slice of the studio parking lot. “That’s it,” I said. I touched the corner of the screen. “That’s part of the back wall of the building.”

She nodded. “There is the edge of the door. Those are the first three parking spots.” She turned to me. “Which one is Ruby’s?”

“Two,” I said. I turned to Brandon, who seemed to be trying not to look bored. “Brandon, were you recording last Wednesday night?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Is there any way to look at what you recorded?”

He gave me that pitying look that computer-savvy kids give to adults like me. “Sure. What time?”

Agatha had died sometime between two and three a.m. Eric had met Justin about ten.

“Try nine thirty,” I said. Brandon started hitting keys again.

Lita gave me a smile and held up two crossed fingers.

“Okay, here is Wednesday night at nine thirty.”

Lita and I exchanged glances and I looked at the screen. There it was. Ruby’s truck, or at least the back end, in the bottom corner of the image.

“Can you fast forward that?” I asked.

“You mean advance the time?” Brandon said.

I nodded.

“Where to?”

“Fifteen minutes ahead.”

“Sure,” he said, but I caught the eye roll as he ducked his head over the keyboard.

Ruby’s truck was still there at the forty-five-minute mark. I felt a flicker of excitement. “Show me ten thirty, please,” I said.

The quality of the image from ten thirty wasn’t as clear, and it cut out for a minute.

“We’ve been having problems with the Wi-Fi signal,” Brandon explained.

“How about two a.m.?”

The truck was still in the spot.

“Two thirty, please,” I said. I could feel my heartbeat thumping in the hollow at the base of my throat.