Cat's Claw (A Pecan Springs Mystery)

There’s a… a gun.”
    I could’ve asked why Ramona was wandering through the neighborhood kitchens, but I didn’t. Urgently, I said, “Tell her not to touch a thing. Tell her to call nine-one-one, then go around front and stand on the curb until the cops get there.”
    Ruby repeated my message. Ramona must not have processed it, so Ruby repeated it again before she closed the phone, biting her lip.
    “She says she’s already done all that, and there are cops on the scene. I’ve got to go over there, China. Will you go with me?”
    “No,” I said automatically. “I’m sorry. I’ve got to go home and cook supper for—”
    And then I remembered. Brian’s school baseball team was playing at Seguin this afternoon, and McQuaid had picked Caitlin up after school to go and watch the game. Afterward, they planned to have supper with Mom and Dad McQuaid, who live in Seguin. I would have joined them after I closed the shop, but McQuaid hadn’t had a chance to spend an evening with the kids lately.
    Ruby was looking at me plaintively. “Please?” she whispered tremulously. “I don’t want to do this by myself. Ramona is— Well, you know.”
    I knew. But hubcaps and toe-biting fish are one thing. Dead bodies are something else altogether.
    “Okay,” I said, deciding. “Let’s go.”

Chapter Two

    “That about does it for now, I guess,” Deputy Chief Clint Hardin said in his slow drawl, getting out of the chair on the opposite side of the chief’s desk. Hardin was six-two with burly shoulders, craggy face, unflinching dark eyes. Impressive in his dark blue uniform. A cop’s cop. Looking up at him, Sheila thought with a tug of irritation that he never missed a chance to use his height and size to make a point with the women on the force, including (or maybe especially) his boss.
    He picked up the file from the desk. “If we get anything actionable on the blackmail, I’ll let you know, Chief. But you can look for an arrest on the trespass and burglary charges in another—” He looked down at his watch. “Fifteen, twenty minutes. You’ll get the word when it happens.”
    “Good job, Captain,” Sheila said, although she knew that the arrest was more Bartlett’s work than Hardin’s. The deputy chief had a reputation for taking credit for his subordinates’ work when it was good and giving them hell when it wasn’t. Not a positive character trait, in her opinion. But Clint Hardin had spent the better part of his nearly twenty-year career developing and perfecting it and wasn’t likely to change.
    She rolled back the black leather desk chair and stood up. The massive chair had belonged to the former chief, Bubba Harris, and was muchtoo large for her—another of the things about the Pecan Springs Police Department that didn’t fit but were hard to change. It was the chief’s chair. She was stuck with it.
    “Pass that word along to Bartlett,” she added, “and put a note in his file. This one is dicey, considering who’s involved. Bartlett handled it well—this part of it, anyway.”
    The commendation would go through channels, of course, but Sheila would take a minute to speak to Jack Bartlett herself. He was in charge of PSPD’s four-person detective unit. Young, newly promoted, and ambitious, he’d go by his gut when Hardin would’ve gone by the book. On the surface, the case had seemed minor, a random break-in at a local computer firm, Kirk’s Computer Sales and Service—one of a string of several break-ins at other small businesses. But as things turned out, it wasn’t the size of the crime that was important; it was the status of the criminal whose shadowy image had been caught on video. A prominent citizen who was going to be mightily embarrassed when his arrest became public later today.
    But desperate people did desperate things, and George Timms—who was about to find himself printed, mugged, and booked for criminal trespass and destruction of property—must have been very desperate. According to his attorney, Charlie Lipman, Timms was being blackmailed. He had broken into the business in an attempt to retrieve the incriminating evidence, then removed some of the shop’s items to cover up his purpose and make it look like a burglary. Lipman hadn’t yet said what the evidence was or who the blackmailer was, and that part of the investigation was still pending. The attorney was no doubt holding the information back as leverage for the plea deal he was expecting to work