Lending a Paw(60)

My efforts weren’t working very well, so I was easily distracted by the sight of a man sitting on the bench outside the Round Table. A familiar-looking man. I’d seen him at the library . . . yes. It was Bill D’Arcy. He’d checked out a monstrous pile of books. He was on Rafe’s list of suspects. And he was sitting there, typing away on his laptop, catching the Round Table’s free Wi-Fi.

Was using free Wi-Fi provided by a restaurant when you weren’t inside the restaurant itself weenie-like behavior? I wasn’t sure, and made a mental note to ask my mother next time we talked. Mom was always good for making sure my moral compass pointed straight north.

I crossed the street and sat down on the bench. “Bill D’Arcy, right?”

The look he gave me was guarded, but not overtly hostile. “I am.”

“Hi.” I smiled wide and held out my hand. “Minnie Hamilton. I’m assistant director at the library. We met the other day when you were checking out a bunch of books.”

He glanced at my hand. Hesitated. Shook it briefly. “Nice to meet you,” he muttered, going back to his computer.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” I asked. He grunted, but I couldn’t tell if it was one of agreement or disagreement. Still, it was a reply of sorts, so I kept going. “Not that it matters, of course. I’m not from here, either. Turns out that spending your childhood summers up here doesn’t count at all. If you didn’t graduate high school here, you’re not from here. Actually”—I made a hmm sort of noise—“you have to be born here. A friend of mine, his parents moved up here when he was starting middle school, and he’s not considered a local.” Which annoyed Josh to no end, but there was nothing he could do about it.

“Where are you from?” I asked.

He hunched away from me and typed rapidly.

“I don’t care, really,” I said. “Just curious. It’s a standard question. I bet a lot of people have asked you already, right?”

“Too many,” he muttered, whacking at the keyboard keys.

“Sounds familiar,” I said, laughing. “I tell people I’m from Dearborn, and next thing they want to know is, what high school did I go to? Then it’s what year did I graduate? After that, we’re talking restaurants and what street I lived on. Conversations like that can go on forever.”

He gave me a pointed look. I smiled. “But lately all anyone wants to talk about is Stan Larabee. You know, the man who was killed? Well, not so much talking about him, but who killed him. I’ve heard all sorts of theories, from my boss to his sisters to some guy named Chris. Some people even think I did it.” I laughed heartily. “Since you’re not from here, I bet your theory has less baggage than anyone else’s.”

Either he’d managed to turn off his ears, or he was intentionally ignoring me. I talked louder.

“Outside points of view can be very helpful. If you know anything about Stan, anything at all, you should tell the police. You look like an observant man; I bet there’s something you know. I bet—”

He slapped his laptop shut, stood, and walked away without even the courtesy of a backward glare.

There were two ways to interpret that little scene, I thought, watching him stalk off, his legs stiff and his shoulders set. One, that he was trying to become a hermit and was well on his way to success. Two, that he knew something about Stan’s death that he didn’t want to share.

I stood and walked the rest of the way home, thinking that I wasn’t ready to cross Bill D’Arcy off the suspect list. Not by a long shot.

Five seconds after I walked in the door, I walked back out again. Rafe. I needed to ask Rafe about working on my electrical stuff.

• • •

The lights were on in his house, which, when he was done restoring it to its original status as an early-nineteen-hundreds Shingle-style cottage, would be a showpiece. Now, however, it was a cobbled-together mess of tiny apartments on the inside and was covered on the outside with the widest variety of siding seen anywhere but a lumberyard. The former owners hadn’t exactly been concerned with aesthetics.

I knocked on the front door. “Rafe? It’s Minnie. I know you’re in there—I can hear that horrible music you play.”

“No one’s here.”

Uh-oh. Rafe always defended his music. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing. Go away.”

I banged on the door with my fist. “Let me in or I’m coming in anyway.”

The door swung open slowly, making a creepy screeching noise. Rafe stood in the doorway. “Has anyone ever told you what a pain in the heinie you can be?”