“You don’t understand what we’re going to do—” he began. And then he stopped and shriveled slightly, his already stooped shoulders hunching even more.
“What he’s going to do,” he said. “Not me and the mayor anymore. Just the mayor. He’s the one who got all of you into this in the first place. Go yell at him.”
I hadn’t been yelling, but maybe he was expecting me to. The county board probably hadn’t whispered when they’d fired him this morning.
“I’ll be going up to the mayor’s office as soon as I take that peace lily downstairs.” I trundled the luggage cart over to the plant and hefted it. Not the giant mutant peace lily I’d been led to expect. It wasn’t any bigger than the one they’d showed me on the sidewalk.
“That’s all I need,” I said.
He didn’t answer. He had picked up a silver frame from his desk. It held a picture of him with Francine and a slightly younger version of the son who was on Timmy’s T-Ball team. He was staring at it with a gloomy expression on his face.
I felt a momentary twinge of sympathy. Not for Mann, but for Francine, and maybe a little for the kid, who was one of the least bratty of Timmy’s teammates. What happened to the boy if Francine decided not to move on with her husband when he found a new job? Or maybe when Mann decided that even without a new job he didn’t want to stay in Caerphilly another minute?
Not my problem. I glanced around, saw no other plants, and began turning the luggage carrier around.
Mann slipped the silver frame into the box and strode toward the door.
“You can tell them to come up now,” he said.
“Tell who?” I asked.
“Whoever the county’s sending to inspect my boxes,” he said. “I told them this morning I didn’t want to take them until someone did that. I want proof that I didn’t take anything but my own personal property.”
He was standing in the doorway, glaring at me.
“Or is that your job?” he asked.
“No, I’m just here for the peace lily,” I said. “But if you like, I’ll see if I can find someone to take care of it for you.”
He turned and strode off. I had a little trouble getting the luggage carrier over the doorsill, and by the time I got it out into the hall, the elevator had already gone.
“Jerk,” I said to the closed doors. “You know how slow these elevators are. You could have held it.”
Then again, did I really want to endure a long, slow, awkward elevator ride with the man who had helped the mayor in his plot to seize our home?
A man who just might be a prime suspect in Parker Blair’s murder. The mayor wasn’t the only one with a motive to stop Parker’s investigation. After all, when his discoveries were made public, they had cost Terence Mann his job. What if he’d thought that killing Parker would keep them from coming to light? What if he was the one afraid the macaw’s prattle would implicate him? In my eagerness to see our dishonest and obnoxious mayor brought down, was I overlooking the real culprit?
I pulled out my cell phone and called the chief.
“What now?” he said. “A dognapping? Or perhaps a hamster heist?”
“Terence Mann just finished packing his personal effects and wants someone to come and verify that he’s only taking what belongs to him.”
“And this is your business because…?”
“It isn’t, but I was moving a county-owned plant out of his office and he decided to use me as the audience for his dramatic exit. He’s left his box of personal effects, and for that matter, his whole office, wide open. I have no idea if the county board really did demand some kind of inspection of what he took—”
“More likely he just wants to cause someone extra work,” the chief said.
“But just in case, I figure no one would complain if you did the inspection and made sure anything valuable or confidential was secure.”
“And snoop around while I’m there?”
“If you don’t want to, tell me who else I should call,” I said. “I suppose your lack of interest means he isn’t on your suspect list.”
There was a silence. I could hear something. Footsteps on a hard surface. Someone saying, “Hello, chief.” A truck engine roaring by. The chief was outdoors, apparently, and walking somewhere. It was probably a full thirty seconds before he spoke.
“Unfortunately for Mr. Mann, he doesn’t have an alibi for the night of the murder. His wife was working at the hospital and he claims, not surprisingly, that he was home asleep in his bed.”
“So he is a suspect.”
“He hasn’t been ruled out,” the chief said. “As it happens, I’m already on my way to the town hall, so I’ll drop in while I’m there. Are you still in the county manager’s office?”