“Did he ever come to your office?”
“Yes, he must have been there a dozen or more times. But I don’t see how that would help him get the contract. I never saw it before, so it’s not as if he could have found it by searching my desk. And all of the staff are always careful not to leave the mayor’s door unlocked when he’s not there.”
“Still—he was there, frequently,” I said. “Who knows what happened? Maybe the other staff members aren’t all as careful as you are.”
“Yes,” she said. “It makes you think, doesn’t it?”
And she did appear to be thinking intensely. To my relief—and even more to Caroline’s and Rose Noire’s—she had stopped crying. She still sniffed occasionally, but she was staring at her hands, lost in thought. Trying to figure out if Parker had taken advantage of his access to her office? Considering whether one or more of her coworkers might be rivals for his affection? Or maybe just contemplating how satisfying it would be to throttle him. I wondered if someone should warn Maudie that some of the mourners at the funeral might still have a posthumous bone to pick with the deceased. Maudie probably knew how to deal with that far better than I did, as long as she was forewarned.
“Thank you,” Louise said. She smiled briefly at me—not much of a smile, and it didn’t reach her eyes, but it showed she was trying. She glanced briefly at Caroline and Rose Noire to include them in it. And then she got up and walked toward the door.
“Louise,” I called after her. “Do yourself a favor: talk to the chief. Tell him what you told us. If this contract is connected with the murder, the more he knows how Parker got it, the better. It always goes over better with him if you volunteer information instead of waiting for him to track you down.”
She blinked, then nodded weakly.
“And if you can think of anyone else who works down at the town hall that Parker might have been trying to seduce so he could milk her for information, he’d love to hear that, so you might as well make their lives miserable, too.”
She smiled faintly at that, and went out, shutting the door carefully behind her.
As I watched her leave, I found myself thinking that adultery wasn’t the only reason the woman who had come to Parker’s shop might not have wanted to be seen in his company. If you worked for the mayor and had begun to figure out that Parker might be dangerous to know—
“You’re a lifesaver,” Caroline said.
“Poor thing,” Rose Noire said. “It must be so difficult to realize that he was only using her.”
“You never know,” I said. “When she’s not crying, she’s rather pretty. I didn’t know Parker that well, but I don’t think it’s impossible that he could have been interested in her for her own sake.”
“He wasn’t serious about anyone,” Caroline said.
“I didn’t say serious, I just said interested,” I countered.
“So you think he found out about the contract by accident?” Caroline asked.
“Or from some other source,” I said. “She strikes me as honest. And she’s not the only person in town who would have access to it. What about that other Corsican who was dating Parker. Vivian. Where does she work?”
“Couldn’t be her,” Rose Noire said. “She’s a nurse. Works down at Caerphilly General.”
“Oh, right,” I said.
“Louise is the most likely,” Caroline said. “And I don’t care how careful she thinks she was about the mayor’s office—it wouldn’t be that hard to get around her.”
“She has a very trusting nature,” Rose Noire said.
“Yes, she’s as sweet and innocent as a baby rabbit, and has about as many brains,” Caroline said.
“She’s not stupid—just gullible about men,” Rose Noire said.
“So you don’t think she could have killed Parker?” I asked.
They looked at each other.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Caroline said.
“You never know, when there’s so much negative energy in a situation,” Rose Noire said. She was wringing her hands, clearly uncomfortable with the topic. “I don’t like to … you know.”
“You don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but you didn’t like Parker,” I finished for her.
“I don’t like to speak ill of anyone,” she said. “And I didn’t dislike Parker. I just—”
“You just didn’t like him hitting on you,” Caroline said.
“He hit on you?” I asked.
“Well, of course,” Rose Noire said. “He hit on everyone.”