Page 39 of Always Murder

She waved the words away and puffed on her pipe, but amusement—and a dangerously sharp interest—lingered in her face as she studied me.

“You’d better tell him about the cats,” Bobby said, “or he’s going to keep worrying about it.”

Sissy’s eye roll wasn’t exactly flattering.“I don’t drown kittens.It was a figure of speech.”

“Besides,” Bobby said, “she helped the animal shelter build their cat wing.”

“That was an anonymous donor,” Sissy said, and there was no missing the warning in her tone.

Bobby nodded, but one of the things I liked about Bobby was that he could nod and be polite and try to keep the peace, and you never once got the sense that anybody was pushing him around.Nobody, I suspected, had ever compared him to a bedraggled kitten.

“Why do you want Paul?”Sissy asked.

“Because I’m worried something bad happened to him,” I said.And then I laid out the bare bones of what had happened so far: the stolen packages, Paul’s disappearance, the conversation I’d overheard with Anthony.When I was done, I said, “Like I said to Anthony, I wanted to know why you were looking for him.And if you knew where he was.”

“And if we’d killed him,” Sissy said drily.Then she was silent again.Smoke rose in little curling wisps above her, and I was surprised to find the smell strangely pleasant.“This is an unofficial visit, you said?”

“I’m on my lunch break,” Bobby said.

“If somebody around here was looking for Paul—and that’sif, got it?—they’d be looking for him so they could help him understand that he needs to stay out of the neighbor’s yard, so to speak.And make restitution.”

“For trampling the flowers,” I said.

“Exactly,” Sissy said.“For stomping all over a nice, neat flowerbed.”

“But Paul didn’t steal those packages.”

At least, I didn’tthinkhe did; I didn’t want to get into the possibility with Sissy that maybe, yes, hehadstolen them.

All Sissy did, though, was shrug.“I saidif.”

“And you don’t know where he is?”

“If somebody was looking for him,” she said, “they wouldn’t know where to find him, would they?”

“I guess not.”

I glanced at Bobby; I couldn’t think of anything else to ask.(My remaining questions were personal rather than professional, like,How did you become so terrifying?andTeach me your ways.)

Bobby was studying Sissy with an expression I’d seen a few times before.It was somewhere betweenHow did these crumbs get in the bed?andI just came up with a new exercise plan for Dash.“I don’t suppose you’d consider providing some information in a professional capacity.”

Sissy’s face went cold and flat.“I’m not a snitch.”

“I meant more like a consultant.A specialist.Share your expertise—with the understanding that anything we talk about would be purely theoretical.”

“Purely theoretical,” Sissy said slowly, some of the ice thawing.“It wouldn’t look good, me taking money from a deputy.”

“What about a charitable donation instead, then?The Hastings Rock Animal Shelter is doing their holiday fundraising drive.”

The wind picked up again; the air was so wet that it speckled my glasses, and I fought the urge to take them off and wipe them.After letting another cloud of smoke snake away on the breeze, Sissy said, “What kind of expert consultant?”

“Assume Paul isn’t actually the one taking these packages,” Bobby said.“What could explain why all his packages are the ones going missing?We already talked about the possibility that someone is following his truck.But what else could it be?”

Sissy puffed, eyes turned up as she thought.“If it’s not someone following the truck, it might be someone who had another way of knowing where he’d be.Or where he’d been.”

“Maybe someone chose Paul for a reason,” Bobby said.“Someone at CPF who knew he’d already gotten into trouble, so when the thefts were reported, Paul would be the obvious suspect—especially if they only hit his deliveries.”

I thought of Luz Hernandez.Paul had suggested her as the culprit from the beginning, and she hadn’t exactly earned any brownie points with me when I’d tried to interview her.

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