Um. “I’ll have whatever you’re having,” I said, which was how I ended up drinking a Soft Parade from Short’s Brewing out of a bottle.
Carmen sipped her wine and murmured, “I suppose it’ll be better when it warms up.” Then she said, “I thought you knew almost all of these lawsuits were settled out of court.”
“How would I have known that, exactly?” Leese asked. “I’ve been downstate since I graduated from high school. And it’s not like Dad ever talked to me about his business.”
“And whose fault was that?” Carmen asked. “All you had to do was pick up the phone.”
Leese glowered. “Phones work both ways.”
This was going nowhere in a hurry. “So,” I said, pushing at the tallest pile, “none of these ever went to court?”
Carmen huffed, but said, “That’s right. Dale was always trying to do his best for his customers”—I could feel Leese starting to say something, so I gave her a small kick in the shins— “but you just can’t satisfy some people, no matter how hard you try.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Leese muttered.
“Right,” I said quickly. “It’s too bad, but there are a lot of unhappy people in the world. So all these cases were settled amicably?”
Carmen looked at the stacks of folders. “Well, I don’t know about amicably. They were settled, though, and that’s the important thing.”
I pointed at the remaining piles. “And these are the cases that went to court.”
Carmen flipped through the papers. “Some people, you know? Projects always start out so much fun, and then before you know it, they’re complaining about something silly. I mean, who would think that a little problem with a septic system would make someone sue you?”
“If that ‘little problem’ was raw sewage backing up into my bathtub—” Leese began, but I cut her off.
“How about we sort these a little further?” I suggested. “Recent cases and old cases maybe.”
Carmen shot Leese a glance, but followed my suggestion. Going with the debatable assumption that three years was enough time for home construction wounds to heal, I put aside any paperwork older than that.
I looked at the remaining pile. It was still more formidable than I’d hoped. Now what?
“Cases he lost and cases he won,” Leese said. “See where that gets us.”
Where it got us was two piles, one tall and one not. “These were so unfair,” Carmen said, tipping her refilled wineglass at the higher stack. “The judge wouldn’t listen to Dale, no matter what he said. That case there? That one cost me a trip to Italy.”
“And these?” I pointed at the far shorter stack.
Carmen smiled. “Let’s just say they didn’t end well for the homeowners.” She took a sip of wine and said, “We went to Italy after all, just a little later than I’d hoped.”
I caught Leese’s eye roll, but thankfully Carmen didn’t. Leese pulled the papers toward her and started to flip through them. “Two cases, looks like,” she said. “One was Daphne Raab and the other was Gail and Ray Boggs.”
“Summer people.” Carmen waved the names away. “Well, not the Raab woman, but the Boggses were classic summer people.”
“So if they’re not from here, they deserve to be cheated?” Leese asked.
“Who’s talking about cheating?” Carmen put down her glass. “The judge herself said they didn’t have a solid case. Dale didn’t do anything wrong.”
Leese drew in a breath, but I jumped in fast. “These are definitely names to give to the police, I’d say.”
For the first time in what felt like years, Carmen and Leese agreed on something.
“Excellent,” I said. “Leese, will you have time tomorrow to look these two over? See if you can find anything that looks, I don’t know, weird?”
Leese squared up the papers. “Sure,” she said evenly. “I lost three more clients today, so I don’t have much else to do.”
“Oh, honey.” Carmen reached over the table, jewelry tinkling, and put her hands over Leese’s. “I’m so sorry. I wish there was something I could do.”
“Thanks.” Leese withdrew one of her large hands and patted her stepmother’s far smaller ones. “There’s not, but thanks anyway.” She half smiled. “On the plus side, a Bob Blake called me today. He said he has a complicated estate and lots of friends he’s willing to recommend me to if I do a decent job.”
“Well, there you go.” Carmen smiled. “This will all work out, I can just feel it.”
I was happy she felt so positive because, as I stared at the stacks and stacks of folders, I was getting the creepy crawly feeling that things were going to get a lot worse before they got better.
Chapter 9
The next day, I pulled out my cell phone the instant I cleared the library’s front door at lunchtime. Outside the wind was up and was bringing in a scattering of low, dark clouds. My personal opinion, substantiated by absolutely nothing except wishful thinking, was that it wouldn’t rain until after I got back to the library, so I started pushing buttons.
“What?” Kristen snarled.
“It’s early to be so cranky, isn’t it?” I asked. “How could so much have gone wrong when it’s barely noon?”
“You want a list?”
No, not really. “Would a gossipy question from me irritate you or make you feel better?”
She laughed. My best friend was nothing if not mercurial. “Depends on who you’re asking the question about.”
“Dale Lacombe.”
“Hmm. Hang on.” She covered the phone—pointlessly, since I could still hear everything—and bellowed, “Misty! Harve! If we can’t get that salmon, we’re going to have to come up with something else. Start thinking.”
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.”