“Hi. I’d like to talk to Detective Devereaux or Detective Inwood.” She made no move, so I added, “It’s about the murder of Stan Larabee. I have some information that might be useful.” Or not. Since they were the trained professionals, they were the ones who would be able to figure it out.
“Your name?”
“Minnie Hamilton.”
“I’ll see if one of them is available.”
I hummed the Jeopardy! song to myself a few times and eventually the tall and thin detective came out into the entryway. Devereaux or Inwood? I couldn’t remember.
“Miss Hamilton. You have something for us?”
“Hi, Detective. I heard a story yesterday that I think you should know about.” I looked around. There wasn’t anyone else in the small lobby; there also weren’t any chairs. Not even a bench. “Should we go somewhere else?”
“A story,” he said flatly.
“Not a made-up story. Something I heard.”
“Secondhand knowledge, then.”
Irritation started to climb up the back of my neck. “A young woman overheard a conversation between Stan Larabee and a woman. The woman made a statement that could be construed as a threat.”
“Uh-huh. Construed as a threat. So it wasn’t really a threat.”
“She said, and I quote, ‘Not if you were the last man on earth. I daresay the next time I see you will be at your funeral.’”
“So you’re quoting the girl who was eavesdropping on the woman who was talking to Larabee?”
Said like that, it sounded lame. Still. “Yes,” I said.
He looked at me. Down at me, since he was more than a foot taller. “Their names?”
“The young woman’s name is Lina. I don’t know her last name, but she works at the Lakeview Art Gallery.”
“Uh-huh.” He made no move to take out the notepad I could see sticking out of his shirt pocket. I itched to yank it free and write the information down myself. “And the woman’s name who made the purported threat?” he asked.
“Caroline,” I said. “Caroline Grice.”
He blinked once, then said, with zero inflection, “You think Caroline Grice killed Stan Larabee.”
The irritation zoomed up into my skull and exploded in my brain. “What I think is that last week I was told to pass on any information about Stan’s murder. So I’m passing along what I heard. What you choose to do with it is up to you.”
He sighed. “Miss Hamilton, thank you for coming in. But we hear stories like this all the time. Sometimes they’re true, sometimes they’re not. We’ll sort it out, though, don’t you worry about that.”
“I’m not worried. I’m just trying to help.”
“And we appreciate it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment.”
He nodded and left, abandoning me to wrestle with my irritation all by myself. I felt head-patted and . . . and managed. I hated that feeling. Just because I was young and female and short didn’t mean I was brainless.
“Or clueless,” I added, walking out of the building with fast yard-swallowing strides, thinking furious thoughts.
What a waste of time that had been. He hadn’t taken anything I said seriously. Maybe—I smiled a cruel smile—maybe I should send him a copy of Little Girls Can Be Mean. You’d think police officers would be glad to listen. You’d think they’d be happy to hear anything that might help an investigation. You’d think—
I stopped short.
An appointment, he’d said. Some appointment.
I watched the tall, thin detective get out of his car and walk through the front doorway of the most popular diner in town.
Chapter 9
It was almost nine p.m. when I left the library, but thanks to the time of year and the combined geographic facts of being north of the forty-fifth parallel and being at the western edge of the Eastern time zone, there was still almost an hour of daylight left to me.
I walked home through the backstreets of Chilson, avoiding the busy main downtown blocks, thinking about dinner. There might, just might, be some spaghetti sauce in the freezer, and I was pretty sure there was a box of spaghetti in the cupboard. Yesterday I’d picked up salad-type items, so the only thing I needed would be—
Thud!
A man’s voice called out. “Ow!” (Pause.) “That freaking hurt!” (Pause.) “A lot!”
I was close to the marina, just outside Rafe’s house. Or what would be a house when he finished redoing the roof, siding, wiring, HVAC, and plumbing of his century-old fixer-upper. I stepped gingerly onto the warped porch floorboards, wood creaking underneath me, went up to the front door, and knocked. “Rafe? It’s Minnie.”