“Would Ash have a few minutes?”
“Dumping Rafe already?” Carl leaned toward me, batting his eyes. “You know I’m single, right?”
I nodded thoughtfully. “So this is how rumors get started. I always wondered.” Carl laughed and I said, “Ash or Hal. To me they’re interchangeable.”
Carl picked up the phone. “Can’t wait to spread that one around.” After a short conversation, Carl buzzed open the interior door and I was ushered into a small room, one that I’d visited so many times that, during the long periods when I’d sat alone at the battered table, I’d considered carving my initials into the tabletop. Not a very strong consideration, because vandalism was wrong and the table was metal, but still.
I pulled out a paint-chipped chair and thought about purchasing a plaque instead. Next to the door would be a good spot as it would cover that big gouge in the drywall. Or maybe directly across from where I usually sat; looking at a plaque would entertain me far more than flat beige paint.
As I considered the possibilities, two men came in. Detective Hal Inwood first, followed closely by the man I’d for a short period of time thought might be the guy who would accompany me into old age. Deputy Ash Wolverson was an amazingly good-looking guy and one of the nicest people I’d ever met. But no matter how hard we’d tried, we couldn’t get a single romantic spark to flare up. It had been like hanging out with my brother. We’d started as friends, parted as friends, and happily were still friends.
“She hasn’t noticed,” Hal said.
Ash pulled a bill out of his pants pocket and handed it to his superior officer. “I am deeply disappointed in you, Minnie.”
“What are you talking about?” I glanced from one to the other. Hal looked exactly the same as he had the day before. Ash looked the same as he had last time I’d seen him, which was the previous week when Rafe and I had gone bowling with Ash and his mom. “No haircuts, no new clothes.” I glanced under the table. “No new shoes.” Or even new shoe polishing, but I didn’t say that part out loud.
Hal Inwood sat down and spread out what had formerly been Ash’s one-dollar bill.
“Do I get a hint?” I asked.
Ash sat across from me and glanced at the ceiling. “Just one.”
“Okay. What is it?”
Detective Inwood smiled and fingered his dollar. Ash sighed. Neither said a word.
Time ticked away, but eventually I clued in to Ash’s clue and looked up. I stared, wide-eyed. “You fixed the ceiling!” When I’d been in the room before, I’d often entertained myself by seeing shapes in the water stains on the ceiling tiles. Hal and I disagreed, of course, on the identities of the shapes, but there would be no more debates because there were new tiles, all an even flat white.
“A by-product,” Hal said, “of a leak in the fire suppression system. Never would have happened otherwise.”
“You didn’t replace them for my sake?” I put a hand over my heart. “I’m truly hurt.”
Hal did what I figured he’d do, which was ignore my comment. He took a memo pad from his shirt pocket. “To what do we owe the pleasure of your presence this morning?”
The night before, I’d actually thought through how this meeting would go and had continued texting Anya and Collier for some time. “It’s about Rowan Bennethum. I have some information that might be helpful.”
My former boyfriend looked at me. “I just lost a dollar of my hard-earned cash because I thought your powers of observation were keen. Since that’s clearly not the case, do you really think you have some information that will help us?”
“Apples and oranges,” I said.
He grinned and took out his own memo pad. “Give us something good and Hal might not remind you of the ceiling thing the rest of your life.”
That was incentive, so I led with the second best point I had. “Did you know that Rowan had recently started a strict diet? One that didn’t allow her to drink anything except clear liquids?”
Hal looked up from his notebook. “You didn’t mention this earlier.”
Since I’d learned it from Anya the previous night, I couldn’t have. But I wasn’t about to blab that Anya—and apparently Neil, Rowan’s husband—hadn’t thought to mention it, so I shrugged and said, “Well, I’m mentioning it now.” I wasn’t sure how much difference it made, but as the detective had told me many times in the past, you never knew what was going to be important until you knew what was important. As a circular argument, it was one of the best ever.
“Anything else?” Hal asked.
I shifted. Last night, lying in bed, I’d remembered something about Rowan. At the time it had seemed significant, but suddenly I wasn’t sure. “You know the twins are away at college and Neil started working in Lansing last year and is home only on the weekends?” Both Hal and Ash nodded; I nodded back like a delayed bobblehead. “Right. Well, in mid-September, Rowan started a walking routine. She kept to it religiously, never missing a day no matter what the weather conditions.”
Ash’s pen stopped scribbling. “Is that it?”
Hal glanced over. “Look at her. Does she look like she’s done?”
“Well . . .” Ash studied me. “No. She’s leaning forward. Her eyes are open wider than normal and her chin’s up a little.”
Nice to know I gave away so many hints. I made a mental note to work on a poker face. Then again, I’d made that mental note in the past and done nothing to change my behavior, so why burden myself?
“Exactly,” Hal said. “So what would have been a better approach to an interviewee than asking, ‘Is that it?’”
Ash flushed, which was slightly adorable. “It depends on the situation. I could have said nothing and waited for the interviewee to start talking again. Or I could have asked for clarification. Or I could have asked something like, ‘What else can you can remember?’ Or restated what I’d just been told, because that often jogs things loose.”
“Fit the interview style to the interviewee. Always,” Hal said, giving a tiny nod. “Minnie, do you have anything else?”
Hal was writing something on his memo pad, which might mean that his full attention wasn’t on me, making this the perfect time to slide in the question I most wanted to have answered. “Who are you considering as possible suspects?”
“Ms. Hamilton,” Hal said. “How many times have I said we won’t discuss an active investigation?”
I grinned. “Doesn’t hurt to try, does it? Besides, I gave you some good information. Can’t you give me something? I’m not asking for specifics, just some broad generalities.”
Hal put down his memo pad. “Let me guess. So you don’t duplicate our efforts while you conduct your own amateur, unofficial, and completely unsanctioned investigation?”
Put like that, it sounded bad. “On the contrary,” I said primly. “It’s more like making sure law enforcement has all the help it can get. Aren’t you always saying the sheriff’s office is overworked and understaffed?”
Ash winked at me with the eye farther away from his boss. “She’s going to find out anyway,” he said. “We might as well tell her.”
Hal grunted. “I hate small towns.”
Taking that as permission to speak, Ash said, “We’re looking into the bank where Ms. Bennethum worked. Coworkers, of course, because you never know, but also loan applicants she might have recently turned down.”
I frowned. “How would killing Rowan help anyone get a loan?” It didn’t make sense to me. If one loan officer turned down a loan, wasn’t the next one likely to do the same thing?
“Money is a critical factor in many murders,” Hal said. “Add an element of anger and the result can be lethal.”
“So you’re talking about revenge as motive?” I asked.
“All avenues of investigation, Ms. Hamilton.” Hal tucked away his notepad. “Now, unless you have something else, Deputy Wolverson and I have work to do.”
Seconds later, I was out on the sidewalk, walking to the library with my head down against the gusting snow. Hal was right, all avenues did need to be investigated, but revenge? For a denied loan? When there were other banks in town, and dozens more not far away?