"And?"
"Fred said he didn't know."
"Tazio?"
"The question was leading. Uh, 'Isn't your relationship with the county building inspector sometimes adversarial?' 'No,' she said. Then they hit her with Mychelle's death. Could it be related to these new questions about the worthiness of her design? That kind of thing. Again, she was amazingly cool and she said, 'I don't see how it could be.' And someone obviously had pumped those guys because they asked about Mychelle wanting a meeting with Tazio Monday morning. Tazio said that wasn't uncommon and, in fact, she had been looking forward to it and was shocked when she received the dreadful news. I mean the goddamned interviewer all but accused her of having a hand in Mychelle's murder. Sensationalism."
"Jacks up the ratings. They don't care if they ruin careers and lives."
"But you would have been proud of Tazio."
"How do we know she isn't involved?"
"Harry, you have a suspicious mind."
"Well-maybe. Why don't you call Tazio and see if she needs emotional support or anything? You're good at that."
"She doesn't have our network. We should both call her." Susan meant Tazio hadn't grown up with all of them and was a newcomer. "What are you going to do? I know you're up to something." Susan hoped Harry would tell her.
"I'm going to eat macaroni and cheese. Then I am going to call Coop to see if she can pull up on the computer all those buildings Mychelle had inspected in the last two years. Pull up the paperwork."
"Clever girl."
"Actually, I bet Coop's already thought of it."
"Are you really going to make macaroni and cheese?"
"Yes."
"Microwave?"
"No. Never tastes as good. Cold rolled back on us. Have you been outside? I need macaroni and cheese."
"Darn," Susan softly said.
"What's the matter with you?"
"Now I want some."
"Come on over. I'll make enough for both of us."
"Thanks, but that doesn't solve the problem of my extra ten pounds."
"Oh, Susan, you are not fat."
"You haven't seen me naked recently."
"Do I have to?" Harry laughed. "And we had this discussion."
"You know what I'm going to do? Now I'm going to make macaroni and cheese. Ned doesn't really need it, either." She sighed. "Bum."
"Ta-ta," Harry laughed and hung up the phone.
When she walked into her kitchen, the phone was ringing. Miranda told her about the interviews. Then BoomBoom called, which surprised Harry. Fair called. Herb called. By the time she made her macaroni and cheese she was starving but she fed the animals first.
After she ate and cleaned up, she called Cooper who had indeed pulled up everything on the county computers. Nothing seemed amiss.
They batted ideas back and forth, none of them illuminating.
Mrs. Murphy sauntered back into Harry's bedroom where she caught sight of herself in the full-length mirror on Harry's door.
She stopped. She leapt sideways. She huffed up. She jumped sideways to the mirror. She spun around. She leapt upward, her paws outstretched, her formidable claws exposed. Then she performed a backflip, again attacking her own image.
Tucker ambled in during this fearsome performance. After five minutes of hissing, smacking, and subduing the mirror, the tiger cat hopped onto the bed.
"Cats are mental." Tucker giggled.
"I heard that." Mrs. Murphy peered over the edge of the bed down at the corgi.
"So?"
"Death to dogs." Mrs. Murphy dropped down onto her canine pal, pretending to shred her. Then she shot back up on the bed, ran a few circles on it, flew off at the mirror and for good measure smacked her image one more time.
Pewter now entered the room. "What a mighty puss."
"Smoke and mirrors." Mrs. Murphy swept her whiskers forward, puffing out her chest.
Tucker lifted her head. "What did you just say, Murphy?"
"Smoke and mirrors."
"I think that's what's going on. Smoke and mirrors." Tucker sat up as the two cats stared at her, then looked at one another. Tucker had hit the nail on the head.
30
Where is he?" Matthew Crickenberger stormed into Fred Forrest's office in the county building.
Sugar McCarry, a twenty-one-year-old feisty secretary whose fingernails had half-moons painted on them, simply said, "I don't know."
"You're lying to me, Sugar. I know you're covering up for that sorry son of a bitch!"
"Mr. Crickenberger, I don't know where he is." She stood up, putting her hands on her hips. "And I don't much like your attitude."
"I don't give a good goddamn what you don't like." He strode over to Fred's desk and with one arm swept everything off it. "You tell him to keep his goddamned big mouth shut. You tell him he is a lying sack of shit. You tell him if I see him I will create a whole new face for him, one without teeth. You hear me?"
"I hear you. Now if you don't get out of here right this minute, I'll call security."
"Go ahead. I know what's going on in this office. Gambling, and, Sugar, you're playing with fire." He walked out, not bothering to close the door behind him.
Sugar heard his footsteps retreat down the hall, the green, black, and white squares of the linoleum floors so highly polished they appeared wet.
Breathing shallowly, she put her finger on the pushbutton phone. She was going to dial security but thought perhaps this was too big for the security in the county office buildings, housed in old Lane High School. Instead she called the Sheriff's Department.
Deputy Cooper, just finishing writing up a fender bender at the main library only a few blocks away, arrived within fifteen minutes. Sugar told her everything as accurately as she could. She injected no personal feeling into her report.
"Did you know that Fred called a press conference to question the plans for the sports complex?"
The surprise on Sugar's face proved she didn't know. "What?"
"Look, I don't know whether Tazio's plans are good or not. They're beautiful, that's what I know, and I know that Matthew Crickenberger has built large structures and done a good job. So he won the bid. Up to this point I don't recall there being a public denouncement of anything Crickenberger has done-not from your department. From the public, yes. Any kind of development is seen as bad by some people, but, Sugar, do you have any idea, any idea at all, what is going on?"
"No."
"Did Fred come down especially hard on H.H.?"
"No." Her eyebrows shot upward. "Why do you ask that?"
"H.H. was in the running to build the complex and now he's dead and so is Mychelle."
"They had the funeral over in Louisa County. Her people are from Louisa."
"I know," Cooper said.
"I went. Fred went. Maybe he's stirred up. You know how some people get. They have to take out their emotions on someone."
"Yes. You don't appear too upset over Mychelle's death." Cooper hit her with a zinger.
Sugar's nostrils flared, a blush of color rose to her already rouged cheeks. "I didn't like her, Deputy. No point in pretending, I really couldn't stand her. She thought she was better than me. Thought she could give orders. I think she just loved giving orders to a white girl but that doesn't mean I wished her dead. I just wished she'd get another job or that I would."
Cooper folded her arms across her chest. "I believe you."
"I don't care whether you believe me or not," Sugar sassed. "I am sick of all this. Fred's been a real shit. He's never been Mr. Wonderful to begin with but lately he's been-nothing's right. I don't take his phone messages right. I don't reach him on the road fast enough. I don't-well, you get the idea. And then Mychelle. I tell you what, she played him like a harp. Oh, out in public, on the site, she deferred to him. Mr. Forrest this and Mr. Forrest that and he ate it up, ate it up. She could get anything out of him she wanted. This place has been no fun. Not Fun Central. I'm looking for another job. Not in government. No pay anyway. I can do better."
Cooper chose not to be offended by her tone. "I hear you."