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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

When Clara pulled into the driveway in her van, with LuLu in back, I was about as ready to go with Gracie and Murphy as I was going to be.

It was gray. It was windy. It was cold. Worst of all, it was still early. A fact that had slammed into me along with the door slamming behind Teague. Funny how he could make me forget.

Clara had insisted on this departure time and that she’d drive.

Good thing.

First, her van does a little better in the snow than my sedan. The roads were fine in town, but experience told us the parking lot at the dog park would not have received the same attention.

Second, I couldn’t imagine trying to get all three dogs into my back seat, especially for the post-dog-park-wet-and-messy trip home.

Third, if I had to start the ball rolling on this day, the ball might sag in a deflated blob.

I would have voted to stay home curled up with a book.

If I’d been the driver, I would have had a bigger vote.

With Clara’s van in the driveway, it was infinitely harder to say, Staying home today, cuddled up with the dogs and a book .

Especially because the dogs recognized the sound of her van and were raring to go.

She accepted my grunted response to her chipper Good Morning , then said, “I checked the news stories from the time of Jaylynn’s murder.

They said it was nearly two hours between when the call came in to the sheriff’s department shortly after eleven about hearing a possible shot and when the patrol officer found Jaylynn’s car. Do you think...?”

“I don’t think anything yet.” I softened my early-morning response. “It’s another piece of information.”

“It would give someone plenty of time to set the scene or to remove anything incriminating. Although they couldn’t very well have counted on that, right? They had no way of knowing ahead of time that it would take two hours for someone to come.”

“Uh-huh.”

She left me in peace then. As peaceful as it got with the three dogs taking turns bashing against the back of my seat.

When the van passed the turnoff to the Torrid Avenue dog park, four heads turned to watch the road not taken slip away.

Since mine was the only head in that group with the capacity for spoken language, I said, “Clara?” while the other three turned far more eloquent accusatory looks toward her.

“I thought we’d stop by Kentucky Manor. It’s not far out of the way.”

“We’re not dressed to go visiting.” Not only the state of our respective outfits, but the number of layers employed presented a less than flattering outline. Heck, getting in the van devolved into a plop because the layers made it hard to bend at waist or knees.

“Oh, we’re not going to visit ,” she assured me. And, yes, she assured cheerfully. “A reliable source told me Rose Gleiner should be getting off her shift and walking out as we get there.”

“Rose—? Who?”

“You remember—” No, I didn’t. Not at this hour of the morning.

Possibly in a couple more hours I would.

“—that’s the hospice nurse Mamie told us about, the one who said there was something wrong about Derrick Dorrio’s death and insisted on the sheriff’s department getting involved and stood in front of the door. ”

Oh, yeah. Her.

“And there she is,” Clara added, nodding toward the upright figure of a tall African American woman emerging from the building. With few other people here at this hour, Clara parked right in front of the building. “C’mon. Be good.”

Pretty sure the first order was for me, the second one for the dogs.

I levered my non-bending self out of the van seat and trailed Clara.

“Ms. Gleiner?” she called.

The woman stopped, waiting without expression. Under a dark blue winter jacket, she wore slightly lighter blue pants that appeared to be scrubs. Her thick-soled black shoes resembled expensive running shoes bearing a brand-name I didn’t know.

Her short, neat Afro showed patches of gray, in keeping with horizontal wrinkles on her forehead and across her throat. She had slanted shallows beneath her direct eyes that appeared to be permanent, rather than the result of working an overnight shift.

As I joined them, Clara was saying, “...and this is Sheila Mackey. We hope for a few moments of your time. You might not have heard about our efforts in other situations, but—”

“I know who you are.” Her straight, firm mouth didn’t reveal how she felt about that fact any more than her words did.

“We’d like to take you out to breakfast and—”

“No.”

Good thing she said no to that. The dogs would not have taken well to a breakfast-long delay in their arrival at the dog park, which they knew downright well was just-over-there.

“We know you’ve been working overnight. Another time, then—”

“No. I’ve talked to the authorities. I’m not talking to you about this... murder .” She didn’t quite spit the word, but you got the feeling she would have liked to. “It’s not what I expect and I won’t be any greater part of it than my civic duty requires. Good day.”

Her straight-backed stride gave an impression of strength. As if we’d needed another one after that brush-off.

“For someone who deals with dying all the time, she was pretty sniffy about murder being beneath her.”

Clara, I noticed, didn’t make that comment until Rose Gleiner was out of hearing range.