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CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

I’d told myself yesterday that I’d be satisfied with cleaning up loose ends by talking with Donna.

Twenty-four hours later and another Donna chat and we’d gone the opposite direction.

To make it worse, it was still early morning as we gathered our pack for departure.

Although I did look forward to telling Kit about Donna’s theory of downwardly mobile families. They’d hit it off during Kit’s visit and she’d appreciate this.

As Gracie jumped gracefully into the back of Clara’s van, I heard a telltale crackle.

“Turn around, Gracie.”

She pretended not to know what I wanted.

Until Clara, trying to untangle the leashes of the other two dogs, walked LuLu alongside the van and Gracie spun around to watch.

That gave me access to her fluffy backside.

Her sable coat camouflaged dead leaves. I’d learned to run my hand down to find the texture of hitchhikers.

During the height of dead leaf season, she could pick up enough to join an orchestra’s percussion section. Even now, when I thought they were gone, she displayed a knack for finding and securing them about her person.

I found one and it came out easily, teasing me into false confidence.

But the next crumbled into dust in my hand, except for shreds that clung to her fur.

I combed through with my fingers and got a few more particles.

A third one was even more stubborn, seeming to be inextricably bonded with the fur.

I thought I’d need scissors, but Lulu jumped into the back then, Gracie jumped forward to greet her — long time no-see, you know — and the leaf and attendant fur came free, with no indication Gracie even felt it.

I dropped all I’d found onto the gravel parking lot and helped Clara guide Murphy in.

I’d settled in the passenger seat, but Clara, in the driver’s seat, had made no move to turn on the engine.

“Clara?”

She looked straight ahead. “I want you to know, I called Teague. This morning. Before I picked you up. I figured he’d already be working and you wouldn’t mind a couple more minutes before I got there. And... Anyway, I called him.”

“I don’t think that’s—”

“Not to try to wheedle information out of him. I apologized. I shouldn’t have said what I said about the department not looking into Derrick Dorrio’s murder. Well, I guess I didn’t say it right out, but the way I said what I said... it was pretty obvious.”

How many people would have hidden behind not being explicit and pretended they hadn’t meant what they clearly had? Not Clara. She owned up to it and she apologized.

My heart swelled. But I said very evenly, “No, you shouldn’t have indicated they — he — wouldn’t do their jobs.”

“I’m sorry. I told him that and now I’m telling you. Because I know how you feel about him.”

And just like that, she had me flustered.

How could she know how I felt about him when I wasn’t totally sure of how I felt about him...? Or was it that I wouldn’t let myself be sure until I told him all.

Apparently unaware of my inner fluster, she added, “That doesn’t mean I don’t think we can do their jobs better than they do a lot of the time.”

“We have advantages.”

“I know, I know. Not being as scary as the sheriff’s department, so people will talk to us.”

“Not needing to make the evidence court-worthy,” I added.

“That, too.” Finally, she looked at me. “Still, we’re pretty darned good.”

I grinned back at her. “We are.”

She made a show of checking the rearview mirror. With the canine trio milling around it probably showed only dog heads, so not the safest time to back up. And she didn’t try.

“You’re going to tell Teague about Derrick and Payloma, aren’t you?” she asked.

“You want me to because you think it points to her as the possible murderer of Derrick?”

Her lips flickered in a nearly suppressed curl. “Of her sister, first.”

“Which would clear Derrick of that murder. Got it. But, you know, Clara, Mamie asked us to help Robbie over the murder of his father, not his mother. Though, of course, we’ll look for the murderer, no matter who it is.”

“How could it not be the greatest help in the world for him to know his father didn’t kill his mother?” Not waiting for my agreement, she added, “Payloma also could have killed Derrick. She said she didn’t go to the hospice center, but that’s shaky.”

Having the murderer be his aunt wasn’t exactly ideal, I thought but didn’t say. “Why would she, after all this time?”

“She wanted to all along, but couldn’t get to him because he was in prison,” she said promptly.

“She had a couple years before he was convicted.”

“Maybe it was too hot to try to kill him then. More people could have known — or remembered — about their affair and pointed at her. Or she thought it would be enough for her if he was convicted, but she realized it wasn’t.”

“Not the strongest argument,” I complained. “Though we should follow up to see if she was seen around the hospice center. And, yes, I will tell Teague about this.”

“Eventually, sure.”

Her attention shifted to backing up — the dogs had subsided in the back seat and presumably allowed the rearview mirror to do its intended job.

“There’s another aspect,” I said. “It could be another motive for Derrick to have killed Jaylynn. If she found out about his affair with Payloma, there could have been a blowout over that.”

“That’s a stretch.” But I could tell from her voice it made her unhappy, which meant it wasn’t a big enough stretch for her to dismiss it completely.

So I was surprised that, as Clara shifted into drive, she gave a little bounce, her excitement instantly transmitting to the dogs, who swirled around in back like big chunks in a small blender.

“If you get the dogs going...” I let my grumble trail away.

“Sorry.” She pulled out of the parking lot. “But I did think of something else.”

And then she went silent, making me ask, “What did you think of?”

“If other people think the way you do, trying to make Derrick look guilty—”

“I didn’t—”

She talked over my protest that, unlike her, I was being unbiased and logical.

“—that means Yale and Beverly Dorrios could be unhappy about it coming out, too.” I didn’t get why that pleased her until she added, “And so will Emil. Another instance of that branch of the family bringing down his name.”

A familiar sound came from the back.

“What?” Clara asked me.

Only then did I realize I’d been staring straight ahead, lips parted, for who knew how long.

“Gracie crackled,” I said.

“Crackled? Oh, you mean she has more leaves stuck on her? She was like a wet sucker dropped into them in the fall, but I wonder where she finds them now. It’s so cute.”

“You think it’s cute because she isn’t trying to mulch the inside of your house. But I was thinking about this situation. And how the pieces of the past are like the dead leaves caught in Gracie’s coat.”

“Oh, that’s good, Sheila. Like you can’t really see them, but they’re carried along with.”

“And when you try to get your hands on one it can disintegrate into dust.”

“Well, that’s a little pessimistic. I think we’re doing okay.”

“And,” I continued, “when you think you have them all, you pick up a slight echo — or in the case of dead leaves, a crackle — and know there’s one you missed.

Probably more than one because some are so wound up with her fur they don’t make a sound.

You find shreds that say there is or could be or was something there, but you don’t know what or if there’s more and if there is, where. ”

“You know what you need, Sheila?”

“What?”

“A breakfast treat from the cafe.”

I couldn’t disagree.