Page 10 of The Murder Inn
“Hey! Henry! Look at you! All grown up! Come over here, would ya? I want to have a little chat with you!”
Henry grabbed at my hand as I gripped his arm. “Whoa, Bill, slow down a minute!”
I marched the jerk around the back of the house and slammed him into the wall of the brick garage. I gave him a slap upside the head that made him yowl with pain and humiliation like an angry teenager.
“Ow! What thefuuuuu—”
“I was just listening to you filling the girlfriend in on your little string of predictions,” I seethed. Henry tried to push past me, but I shoved him hard into the bricks again. “You were just saying your mom’s lights are going to start flicking off one by one now that Pop’s not around. Tell me more about that!”
“Oh shit,” Henry said. He put his hands up, gave me his father’s grin full of big, square teeth. “Bill, come on. I was only joking.”
“That’s good! That’s good!” I nodded. “Because I’d hate to have to putyourlights out. And believe me, that’s exactly what I’d do if I believed what you said back there. Those weren’t the words of a loving son. You sounded more like a vulture circling above a wounded deer, waiting for it to roll over and die.”
“Jesus.” Henry’s grin was ugly and hard now, his eyes everywhere but on mine. “Look, man, I’m here with my new lady. I was trying to impress her.”
“Yeah, she looks like a real catch. Better keep an eye on that one.”
We looked over to where Nick was distracting Henry’s girlfriend from our little meeting. Nick was pointing to the trees at the end of the long driveway, sweeping his hand over thehorizon. The girl was nodding, now and then glancing at Nick’s biceps straining against the sleeves of his shirt.
“Bill, Bill. I’m just emotional, OK?” Henry put his hand on my shoulder. I slapped it off. “My dad just died. I didn’t mean any of that stuff! There’s no need to spread this around, OK? I’m just talking trash. And this girl’s different from the rest of them, OK? She’s an artist.”
“Henry, let me just leave you with a prediction of my own,” I said and poked Henry hard in the chest. “Right now, your priority is charming the kind of woman who’d let you talk about your own mother like that. Like she’s an old dog you’re getting ready to abandon on the side of the highway. Well guess what? You keep going down this path, and you’re going to arrive in a world of hurt, my friend.”
I saw the truth of my words flicker behind Henry’s eyes. All his arguments and defenses faltered on his lips.
“Let’s see if I’m wrong, huh?” I said, as I walked away.
CHAPTER NINE
THERE WERE PEOPLE singing in the kitchen of the inn when Sheriff Clay Spears got home from duty. The setting sun made rainbow patterns through the stained-glass panels in the front door as he pushed it open, and his ears were filled with “Love Is in the Air,” by John Paul Young, coming from the back of the house. The inn’s residents always sang in the kitchen. Bill’s wife, Siobhan, had been the worst offender. Maybe, after her death, there was some unconscious effort to honor her by carrying on that joyful practice. Clay had passed by and seen even the grumpiest of residents participating, even ex–criminal overlord Vinny Robetti sitting in his wheelchair peeling potatoes and humming Sinatra.
Susan and Angelica got to the big bursting chorus just as Clay came in and dumped his bag in the corner.
Vinny was at his usual station at the little table and chairs, chopping carrots.
“You wanna sit here, you gotta work,” Vinny said, pushing a chopping board toward the sheriff without looking up.
“Can I join the choir?” Clay asked.
“No. Any more of this and you’ll get my ears bleeding.”
Clay took up a knife reluctantly and started chopping. Susan put a beer in front of him.
“How’s crime in Gloucester?” Susan asked. “Anything you can give me to beef up my contribution to the local rag? I’m sitting on a wild story about the anniversary of a flagpole installed in the town square.”
“It’s quiet,” Clay answered. “Just how I like it. Tonight’s game night, and for once it’s my night off. So everybody get out your lucky turtle’s foot, or touch wood, or drink holy water, or do whatever it is that you do when you want the universe to behave itself. Because if I get called out to a major case before the seventh-inning stretch, I’m gonna…”
Everyone waited for Clay to issue some violent threat. He searched his mind for something these people might believe him capable of, but nothing presented itself. Everyone knew he had been violent approximately once in his entire life, and that was in response to two men trying to kill him and bury him in the woods.
“Well, I’m gonna get really upset,” he said eventually.
“Can we go back to the turtle’s foot?” Susan paused by the oven, a saucepan in hand. “You mean rabbit’s foot, right?”
“Whatever,” Clay said.
“In Lithuania, particularly in rural households where tradition holds strong, it is forbidden to whistle indoors,” Angelica proclaimed as she delicately peeled an onion. “It’s bad luck.”
“OK, so no whistling. Not until the game’s over,” Clay said.