Page 86 of Dead & Breakfast
Closing his eyes, Arthur massaged his temples and tried to focus on the facts. George Roth was dead, and Brody Young was in critical condition. He’d solved the first case, but the second…Unless…the cases were connected…but perhaps not in the way he’d originally thought. He’d believed Brody Young had murdered the mayor, that whoever hurt Brody was out for revenge or else had some unrelated motive, but there was another option.
Maybe Brody hadn’t killed the mayor at all.
Maybe the same person had committed both crimes.
Jumping to his feet, Arthur raised his hand in triumph…and let it fall to his side with a soft smack. Now he had two unsolved cases instead of one.
“One step forward, two steps back,” he lamented, leaning against the bars with a sigh.
Silence punctuated by the odd scratching noise was his only reply. He wished terribly that he had someone to talk it through with. He was better at deductive reasoning when he could puzzle through things aloud. All the fictional detectives had a sidekick for this very reason. Even Rumble would be a better conversation partner than the empty jail cell.
If he couldn’t talk, at least he could walk—back and forth along the short length of the jail cell. On the third turn of the small square, his shoe met something soft and he nearly tripped.
There was a squeak, and Arthur found the source of the noise. A little gray mouse scurried away, through the bars, leaving a trail of crumbs from Arthur’s half-eaten dinner in its wake.
“Must be nice to be so small,” he said, rather alarmed to find heenvied a mouse. Despite it all, Arthur smiled. The mouse was cute, though he probably wouldn’t have thought so if it had been in his kitchen. “Don’t suppose you have any idea who killed the mayor?”
Though he’d spoken quietly, the mouse paused and turned its beady eyes on Arthur.
“Don’t run off, little friend, I won’t hurt you. You’re lucky Rumble isn’t here, though.” That sent another spike of pain through Arthur’s chest. He missed Rumble already. It was silly. She was only a cat.
The mouse’s nose twitched, but it didn’t return to the crust of bread it had stolen. Instead, it turned to fully face Arthur, paws clasped together in front of it as though it were a child settling in for story time.
Arthur sat on the floor. From this vantage point he could still see the mouse. “You want to hear what I’ve got so far?”
He didn’t wait for a response. Not that he expected to get one from a mouse.
“Here’s the thing, I thought Brody had to be the one who killed the mayor, but what if he didn’t? Motive, means, and opportunity…” He ticked them off on his fingers. “He just doesn’t have all three. He didn’t seem to have any dealings with him directly, and it’s not like Brody was interested in local politics. Yes, his friends were vandals, but that’s not exactly the slippery slope to real crime people seem to think it is. So why would he kill the mayor? There’s no good reason for that.”
The mouse blinked a few times and dragged its crust around to nibble while Arthur carried on.
“Yes, of course, you’re right. There is nogoodreason to murder someone, I suppose.” Arthur shrugged and scooted closer to the bars. “I just can’t figure out who would want to attack Brody. It doesn’t make any sense.”
The mouse, finished with the small scrap of bread it had stolen, began to look around the office—probably for its next snack—tiny nose twitching furiously.
“Here you go, buddy.” Arthur ripped another corner of bread from his sandwich. He couldn’t bring himself to eat more than a few bites, though he had availed himself of the chips, finding comfort in the simple combination of salt and potatoes. “Someone may as well eat it.”
The mouse scurried forward to take the bread from Arthur’s hand and went to town, nibbling at the crust with renewed vigor.
“While I have you here,” Arthur began, hooking his fingers around the bars and leaning in close toward the mouse before continuing on. “What if I’m making a mistake in considering both attacks as independent incidents? What if—and hear me out on this—Brody and the mayor were attacked by the same person?”
The mouse didn’t dignify that with a response. Probably because it was a mouse, rather than any qualitative judgment of Arthur’s theory.
“Yes, yes, you’re right, of course. Go back to the basics. Motive, means, and opportunity.”
The mouse had said no such thing, but in this moment, on the floor of a jail cell, without his husband or his cat or even a friend in sight, Arthur found it easier to pretend his subconscious was a hungry rodent than to face the fact that he was talking to himself.
“Motive is a dead end, really—pun not intended.”
The mouse looked at him expectantly.
“Okay, fine. Pun intended. No one’s perfect.” He wished Sal was there to appreciate it. “But really, motive doesn’t get me very far. If Brodydidn’tkill the mayor, maybe he knows who did, so they might have tried to kill him to keep him from ratting them out.”
The mouse stared unblinkingly.
“Really? You’re a mouse, not a rat. Don’t tell me you take offense.” Arthur shrugged and tore another piece of bread from the remains of his sandwich. “Noted.”
He rocked back and crossed his legs beneath him as he pondered this new thread of inquiry. If he took motive out of the equation and instead focused on means and opportunity…
