Uncommon Grounds (13 page)

I wished him a nice weekend and ducked in the door. We all work together, Tony said, and it gets done. I looked around the store. With Patricia gone and Caron acting so distant, it was not only harder to get the work done, but it was getting downright lonely.

I hoped now that Caron had told Bernie, she would be more herself. I was worried about her. While I was fairly certain that Pavlik didn’t consider me a serious suspect any longer, I thought Caron still was. It was a good sign, though, that the sheriff had taken the time to go to the recount. It meant he hadn’t ruled anything out. Yet.

As I flipped the “Closed” sign in the window to “Open,” I saw Bernie drop Caron off at the curb. She leaned back in and kissed him before turning toward the door. Caron was my friend. I would do what I could to help her, and if that meant ratting on Way Benson or Roger Karsten, even better.

The rest of the afternoon sped by, a mad blur of lattes and biscottis. It was my turn to close since Caron had opened. By the time I finished vacuuming, I’d made up my mind to call Pavlik the next morning.

He saved me the trouble. He was leaning against my van in the parking lot when I walked out of the store. He still wore the dark suit he’d had on at the funeral.

As I approached the van, he straightened up and I noticed that the Caravan had left powdery white traces on the back of his suit coat. I started to tell him, but he interrupted.

“Ms. Thorsen, I need to talk to you.” He looked grim. “We can do it at your home or at my office.”

Now what did this mean? I wiggled my fingers vaguely toward the store. “Couldn’t we talk here?”

He nodded toward the assorted people in the parking lot and storefronts who were casually, or so they thought, watching us. “No.”

Well, I sure didn’t want to go downtown, so I might as well show the copper what great digs I had. Besides, Frank was there and I had a sudden vision of sheepdog drool streaming down one of Pavlik’s well-pressed pants legs. I told him to follow me home.

Unfortunately for me and fortunately for Pavlik, Frank was a perfect gentleman. He did snuffle a bit on Pavlik’s pants, but the sheriff didn’t seem to mind. “Don’t worry, I have a dog at home.”

He knelt down to give Frank a good rub on his belly. Yes, belly. Frank, upon seeing a strange man enter my home, immediately rolled over on his back, his pink tongue lolling out one side of his mouth.

“You’re pathetic,” I told him.

Pavlik finished the scratch and stood up, a smile on his face. “How old is he?” Dog people ask the same questions about dogs that kid people ask about kids. Except kid people usually don’t ask which breeder you use.

“About two,” I said, leading him into the kitchen. “He’s my son’s. He left him with me when he went off to college.”

Now, a kid person would have asked which college, Pavlik was concerned about the dog. “He’s a big guy. A dog like this needs plenty of exercise.” He looked around my tiny house, ready to slap me with a dog abuse citation, no doubt.

I sank down at the table and waved him to do likewise. “I know, I know. A neighbor boy comes over after school and walks him when I can’t. He really is too big for this place, but there was no choice. Me or the pound.”

Pavlik nodded. He was looking positively congenial. It must cut down on headcount in the office to be able to play “good cop/bad cop” all by himself. “Same with my dog. She’s not perfect, but I couldn’t let them put her down.”

“What kind of dog do you have?” I pictured a German shepherd or a Doberman. I wasn’t disappointed.

“A pit bull.”

My God, a pit bull? “You’re a police officer, how can you own a pit bull?” I sputtered.

He rose in defense of his dog. “You know, a pit bull, or any other kind of dog for that matter, is not intrinsically evil. It’s the people who train them to rip each other apart who are evil.”

“Rip each other and people apart,” I pointed out. “You can’t tell me they aren’t aggressive dogs to start out with.” I pointed to Frank, who was lying with his hairy chin on my shoe. “You could never get a dog like Frank to fight.”

Pavlik looked weary all of a sudden, but his eyes met mine head-on. “You could if you starved him and made him fight other dogs for scraps of food. You could if you alternated beatings with praise to keep him off balance. Gave him food one time, and beat him with a two-by-four the next. Any dog can be made vicious.”

Pavlik stood up and paced to the counter. “We busted a pit bull ring in Chicago. God, you should have seen those dogs. Scared, hungry. Absolutely berserk. The lame ones they used as bait for the healthy ones. Give them a taste of blood.”

“And your dog?” I asked, feeling sick.

“I found her in a filthy cage. No food. No water. She was so weak she couldn’t stand. She was little more than a puppy herself and they had been using her for breeding. Litter after litter.” Pavlik leaned against the kitchen counter. “The only people she had ever known had abused her. And you know what?”

I shook my head.

“When I opened the cage she came to me. Slid on her stomach, her tail—what was left of it—wagging this tentative wag. Like she expected to be hit, but hadn’t quite given up hope of better from me.” Pavlik smiled sadly. “When I scratched her behind the ears, she flipped over on her back, just like Frank did before.”

He shook his head. “Even with all the abuse she suffered at human hands, she still had to try.”

Okay, so I’m a sucker for dog and kid stories. By this time, I was blinking back tears. “So how long have you had her?”

“About three years now. But enough about dogs.” He sat back down, getting all official again. “I need some information from you.”

Talk about a change of subjects. And personalities. But if Pavlik wanted information, I was happy to give it to him. I filled him in on Summit Lawn School and told him what Sarah had said about Way’s involvement. “So, you see? Way Benson could have implicated Caron to cover his own tail.” I looked to Pavlik for agreement.

And got none, of course. “Why would he have killed her now? It’s no different than when you theorized that Rudy Fischer did it. Mrs. Harper lost the election. If the ballot was legal and if it was for Mrs. Harper, it only meant a tie. Why would Benson kill her before the coin toss, even before the ballot was opened?”

“Maybe he knew who it was for. It is missing after all. Why would somebody steal it, if it wasn’t important?” I was dancing around his point and we both knew it.

Pavlik folded his arms. “We’re taking the word of an eighty-year old woman there even was a ballot.”

“Because she’s eighty, she’s automatically unreliable? You know, much like pit bulls, old people should be judged on an individual basis. Sophie Daystrom is not senile.” But she was a bit of a pit bull, I had to admit.

He raised his hands to ward me off. “Okay, okay, but I don’t think this town board thing has any bearing on the case. It’s just clouding the issue. Right now, I’m more interested in Mrs. Harper’s affair with Karsten.”

Maybe I would have more luck pitching Roger as the prime suspect. “Sarah Kingston, Patricia’s campaign manager, told me that Patricia had kissed Karsten off.” I leaned forward in my seat and waved my finger to make my point. “Not Karsten, though. No, he says he stopped seeing her because she wouldn’t divorce David. Now there’s a motive for you. The spurned lover. It all fits.” I sat back in my seat and crossed my arms, satisfied.

Pavlik was staring at me, fascinated. “Why do you do that?”

I looked around uncertainly. “Do what?”

“Start acting like some kind of bad TV private eye all of a sudden. It’s like talking to someone with multiple personalities.”

“Oh, please, that’s like Sybil calling Eve schizophrenic.”

He thought about that for a second, then opened his mouth and closed it again. I wasn’t sure if he’d gotten the allusion, but at least it had shut him up.

“All I’m trying to do is help,” I added.

Pavlik rubbed his chin. “Okay, so if you want to help, tell me everything you know about David Harper.”

“David? You think David did this?” I leapt to David’s defense, ignoring the fact that even I had entertained the notion he might be involved.

“Listen,” I protested, “you didn’t see David when he came into the shop and found Patricia dead. He was devastated, I would swear to it.”

“I know, I heard all about it from Donovan.”

I didn’t like the way Pavlik said Gary’s name. “You know, Gary Donovan has more experience than you’ll ever have. Police force, Secret Service, corporate security and now police chief. You owe him some respect.”

Pavlik’s eyes narrowed. “I show people respect when they earn that respect. Donovan did a lousy job at the crime scene.”

“We didn’t know it was a crime scene,” I pointed out.

“Any intelligent adult could have seen there was something wrong. It should have bit him in the ass.”

I shook my head and bit my tongue. I was afraid I was doing Gary more harm than good here.

Pavlik switched subjects. Now there was a surprise. “If Mrs. Harper was the target, and since there haven’t been any attempts on you or Mrs. Egan, I think we can be fairly sure of that—”

“Attempts on us?” He was being pretty matter-of-fact about something he had never even mentioned before. Especially when that something involved my life and Caron’s. “Were you doing anything to prevent these possible attempts?”

Pavlik smiled. “We’ve been keeping an eye on both of you.”

I remembered the car out in front of my house Monday and Tuesday nights. Protection or surveillance? It amounted to the same thing in this case. The car hadn’t been there last night. “You gave up pretty easily, didn’t you?”

“It was unlikely that either of you was the target for the same reasons it’s difficult to believe that Mrs. Harper was: How could the killer know who would use the machine first?”

It seemed like we were going in circles. Nobody could have done it, because no one would have done it. “But Patricia was killed.”

“So maybe it was sabotage gone wrong.”

“You think we have our competitors worried?”

He glared at me and continued. “Or someone knew Mrs. Harper well enough to be sure she would go in early and make herself a latte. Now you and Mrs. Egan, arguably, knew her well enough, and her husband knew her well enough. Maybe even Sarah Kingston.”

I thought that was a stretch. Actually, all of it was a stretch and I told him so. Then I asked him pointedly what he wanted to know about David.

“Everything. I can’t find anything on him.”

“I’m not surprised, David is about as white bread as they come. He owns his own consulting firm. I think he’s in market research, Patricia said. Consumer goods. David couldn’t—”

“How long have they lived here?” Pavlik interrupted.

“Let’s see. David’s been in Brookhills forever, but Patricia and the kids moved here three or four years ago when she and David got married.”

“Mrs. Harper was divorced?” Pavlik perked right up and even I got excited at the thought of a bitter ex-husband running around out there.

Then I remembered. “I’m pretty sure Patricia is a widow,” I said. “Caron would know for sure.”

“Mrs. Egan doesn’t seem to want to talk to me anymore,” Pavlik said, making a note. “Her husband’s an attorney?”

I nodded. Bernie’s specialty was patent law. Pavlik had better watch out or Bernie might slap him with a trademark. I didn’t tell Pavlik that, of course, I was still steamed at his crack about Gary.

“I assume Mr. Egan knows about the affair between his wife and Mr. Karsten by now.”

I nodded. “Caron told him.”

“But from the civil way they spoke at the funeral, I don’t think that Mr. Harper knows about his wife’s affair with

Karsten.” He was watching me carefully.

“I don’t think so either,” I said slowly.

“But,” he continued, still watching me, “the son, Sam, certainly doesn’t care for Karsten.”

So Pavlik had seen the exchange, or the lack of exchange, between Sam and Karsten, too. But he couldn’t seriously suspect Sam. He was just a kid. “You don’t think Sam killed his mother, do you?” I asked incredulously.

“If it was Karsten who was dead, I might look at the kid. But not his mother. Not like this.”

I nodded in agreement and we sat in what might have been mistaken for companionable silence for a moment. Then I stood up. “If you don’t have any other questions, Sheriff, I have some things to get done tonight.”

Pavlik stood as well. “I think that’s all for now.” He hesitated. “I was going to stop for a sandwich on the way home. Would you like to maybe go...”Helet it trail off.

It had been a long time, but I was fairly certain Pavlik had just asked me out. My mouth fell open. “Umm, thanks, but I don’t...”

“Eat?” Pavlik grinned. “Okay, I guess I’ll just have to go it alone.”

After I’d seen him out, I leaned against the door until I heard the engine start and then moved aside the curtain to watch the car pull away.

I don’t eat?

Swift.

Admittedly, not my finest moment. But, still, wasn’t this a teensy bit odd? I mean, in three separate conversations, the man had accused me of being, in turn, manic, schizophrenic and a murderer. And then he wants to do dinner?

Why?

Well, regardless of his motives, I wasn’t ready for interspecies dating—and I was quite certain Pavlik was a whole different kind of animal than I was used to.

The animal I was used to gave me a nudge with his nose.

I let the curtain drop. “Want to watch a little TV?” I asked.

Frank barked.

He was right. First we needed to order a pizza.

By the time the news and Letterman’s monologue was over, Frank was snoring and the pizza box was empty. Hey, it was a medium and Frank loves sausage and green olives.

I went to throw the box away and stopped with my hand hovering over the kitchen trash.

The wastebasket.

Patricia drank her lattes without sugar, so why were there two empty sugar packets in the wastebasket at the shop the morning she died?

I set the pizza box on top of the basket and wandered out to the front window. In my mind’s eye, I could see David picking up the two sugars yesterday as he left the store carrying an identical drink to the one Patricia usually drank. Identical, that is, except that David took sugar in his.