“What’s that?” Julia asked.
Mr. Zonne declined to answer, but after being peripherally involved with Rafe’s home renovation for three years, I could guess. Dale had purchased cheap materials. Or he’d been late starting the project and even later finishing. Or he modified the floor plans without talking to Mr. and Mrs. Zonne. Or his subcontractors were rude. Or he didn’t come back to finish the punch list. Or he didn’t clean up the site. Or it had been all of that and he still demanded full payment.
“Have they arrested anyone for the murder?” Mr. Zonne asked. “No, never mind. I can see from your exchange of glances that they haven’t. And with that particular victim”—he shook his head—“I imagine it’s going to take a long time to winnow down the suspect list to a manageable size.”
That seemed to be the common sentiment from everyone except the widow. Who, now that I thought about it, hadn’t seemed to be suffering from an overabundance of grief.
Then again, everyone grieved in their own way. Maybe Carmen didn’t like to display her sorrow to strangers, which I essentially was. Not that she seemed to have a problem communicating any number of other emotions, notably impatience and irritation, but maybe those were masking the grief.
“Mrr!!”
All three of us turned. Eddie was on the dashboard, standing on his back feet and pawing at the front window.
“What, pray tell, is your cat doing now?” Julia asked.
If he was Lassie, he would be trying to tell us that someone was in danger and we’d spend the rest of the time before the commercial break trying to figure what, where, when, why, and how. But since he was Eddie, other possibilities were far more likely. “He probably thinks that spot on the windshield is a cat toy.”
“Really?” she asked doubtfully. “I’ve never seen him get so excited about a toy. A treat, yes. A toy, no.”
I looked out the window. “New explanation,” I said, nodding. “See?”
Julia and Mr. Zonne caught the direction of my glance, which was aimed at the lot on the far side of the church, where a house was being built. Pickup trucks filled the driveway and men wearing tool belts were hammering away. More to the point, one of the workers was throwing a ball for a golden retriever, who was happily tumbling after it.
“Such a plebeian response,” Julia said, sighing. “I thought better of you, Eddie.”
“Mrr!”
“I think you could be a little more understanding,” Mr. Zonne said, not very seriously. “Not responding to an instinctive response is difficult.”
“You hear that?” I leaned over the console and scooped up my cat. “We need to be more understanding.”
“Mrr!”
He squirmed around, trying to get down. “How about a treat?” I reached for the cabinet that held the canister.
“Mrr,” he said more quietly.
“Okay, how about two treats?” I asked, but before I completed the sentence, he started purring, giving me little choice but to snuggle him close and kiss the top of his head.
Cats. The world’s best manipulators.
• • •
The rest of the bookmobile day went past quickly, as most bookmobile days did. We checked out books to toddlers and to grandpas. We assisted homeschooled youngsters with finding books that would help them write reports and we helped middle-aged folks find everything from a book on the history of Bolivia (“That’s at the main library, but I’ll bring it next time”) to fiction that would help them while away the hours in a surgical waiting room.
“Another fine day,” Julia said, yawning and stretching as we pulled away from the day’s last stop, at a convenience store. The owner kindly allowed us to use his restroom and I, in return, purchased more cat treats. “The husband and I are headed to Petoskey for dinner. How about you?”
“Not sure,” I said, which was mostly true, but not entirely, because all afternoon I’d been thinking about Dale Lacombe and how he’d died and some of the possibilities for why he’d died. I’d come to the conclusion that I needed to call Carmen, and did so the moment after I shut the door to the bookmobile garage.
“Dale’s last job?” Carmen asked. “It’s on Valley Street, a mile or so outside of town. The guys are trying to finish up before Thanksgiving. Why?”
I thanked her for the information and slid the phone into my backpack. “Do you want to go out there?” I asked my feline companion. When there was no reply, I leaned forward to look into the front of the cat carrier, which was buckled into my sedan’s passenger seat. Eddie was sound asleep and snoring the slightest bit. All the adoration from his fans must have tuckered him out.
“Well,” I said out loud, but quietly so I didn’t disturb his beauty rest. “Looks like this decision is up to me. And I say there’s no time like the present to talk to Dale’s employees.” Detective Inwood and Ash would no doubt have talked to them already, but since I wasn’t law enforcement it was possible I might get different responses.
I started the car, aimed it in the direction of Valley Street, and soon found that Carmen’s sense of distance was not the same as mine. When she’d said “a mile or so,” I’d expected to drive roughly a mile before I’d see signs of a home under construction. At five miles, I was sure I’d missed it and was making ready to turn around when I saw a piece of plywood two feet square stuck on a post at the end of a rutted driveway and covered with the fluttering documents that were the various permits needed for construction.
“Are you ready?” I asked Eddie, but either he didn’t have an opinion or he was still sleeping, because there was no reply.
I guided the car on a strategic path to avoid the worst of the ruts, which was impossible because the ruts had been created by vehicles much larger than my little car: pickups, delivery trucks, forklifts, bulldozers, and front-end loaders, for all I knew. As I neared the two-story house, I counted four pickup trucks. I also noted that the exterior looked close to completion.
This was good, considering it was early October and the weather could turn to winter any minute. What was bad was the fact that no landscaping whatsoever was in place. And if, as Carmen said, they were trying to get the house completed before Thanksgiving, and if the exterior wasn’t done, it seemed unlikely that the interior had progressed very far. None of that boded well for the owners.
For me, it all combined to firm up a conclusion I’d come to a couple of years ago, when Rafe had dealt with a brand-new and really expensive furnace that didn’t work: I never wanted to build a house. Some people loved the experience, but I was quite sure I wasn’t one of them.
With that firmly in mind, I parked next to a white pickup that had the Tonedagana County seal on the driver’s door, checked to make sure Eddie was still sleeping, and got out.
“I don’t care what Dale told you,” a man in khaki pants, work boots, and a nylon jacket was saying loudly. “I’m telling you that you can’t do anything else on this house until I approve the mechanical inspection, and I won’t do that until the water heater is working.”
Three other men, all dressed in brown Carhartt jackets in various stages of age and grime, faced the man. “You got to be kidding me,” said one of them.
“This doesn’t make any dang sense,” said the second guy.
“Yeah,” said the guy standing next to him. “What does the mechanical have to do with plumbing? Running the pipes is all we want to work on.”
“Take it up with the state,” the first man said, who I was now certain was one of the county’s inspectors, out on a Saturday, no less. “I can provide contact information for the officials who write the building code.” The builders muttered darkly, but didn’t ask for names and phone numbers. “Right,” the inspector said. “As soon as that water heater is functional, give me a call and I’ll come out.”