Page 8 of Always Murder

“Yes,” Paul squeaked.

“What did they say?”

“They said I’m fired.”

I tried not to sigh.

“He means,” Bobby said, “what explanation did they give?”

“Oh.Um, that I was stealing packages?”

Keme snorted, but when Millie glanced at him, he clammed right up.

“What exactly did they say?”Bobby asked.

Paul’s face screwed up with concentration; the controller sagged in one hand.“Well, Ms.Hernandez asked me if I knew why she called me in, and I said no, and she said she ‘found that hard to believe’”—Paul even did the air quotes with one hand.“—and then she said they knew I’d been stealing packages, and I said no way, and she said it was only my packages, and I said I wasn’t stealing anything, and she said I was fired and she was going to personally make sure I went to jail.”He thought about it and added, “She was super rude.”

“It wasonlyyour packages?”I asked.

Paul waited, as though expecting more, and said, “Yeah, my packages.That’s why I’m the thief.”And with a level of scorn that would have made a middle-schooler proud, he added, “Supposably.”

“That’s weird, isn’t it?”

Paul shrugged.

“Not necessarily,” Bobby said.“If it’s someone stealing packages from a specific neighborhood, and they happen to be operating at the same time as Paul’s deliveries, it would make sense for all the packages to be ones delivered by Paul.We’ve had the usual uptick in reports of porch pirates.”

“Okay,” I said.“Yeah.”

Bobby didn’t quite smile.“But?”

“I don’t know.”I frowned at the man-child.“Did they say it was all the packages in one neighborhood?”

Paul bounced his controller against his thigh; apparently, this was taking too long.“I don’t know.”

Keme snorted again.

“I mean, no,” Paul said.“I told you what she said.That it was only my packages.”

“See,” I said, “I think that’s weird.”

“It’s just Ms.Hernandez being Ms.Hernandez,” Paul said.

“What does that mean?”Millie said.

“She’s super mean.And she hates me for, like,noreason.”

The adults—and that includes Keme—exercised our collective willpower for a moment so one of us wouldn’t throttle Paul.

“What’d you do?”Millie asked.

“I didn’t do anything—”

“PAUL!”

“I was just looking at it!”

Keme said a word under his breath you can’t whisper in Papa Noël’s ear.

---