Cat's Claw (A Pecan Springs Mystery)

coffee table. “This is the note you wrote?”
    Tina glanced at it, swallowed once, and said, “Yes. I thought maybe if I helped him a little bit, he would—” Coloring, she stopped, but Sheila knew what she had been about to say. She had hoped that being helpfulto Larry might convince him that she was on his side, that she was his friend. He might be grateful. “Yes,” she said, in a lower voice. “Yes, I wrote that.”
    “And you sent him three photocopies of insurance premium notices, along with the note?”
    “Yes.” Tina hesitated, biting her lip, as if she was trying to decide how much to tell. Obviously, she was weighing the possibility of losing her job against helping the police.
    “I’m sure this is difficult for you,” Sheila said. “But the more I know now, the sooner we’ll find out what happened to Larry Kirk.”
    Tina thought another moment, then came to a decision. “I found the premium notices by accident when I was cleaning up some old files,” she said. “When I asked Ms. Harmon where I should file them, she got really red in the face and snatched them away, which made me curious. So I—I looked on her desk until I found them. I copied them.”
    “Why?” Sheila was making notes.
    “Well, the notices had Larry’s name on them. And the way she acted, it seemed like they were kind of important. Secret, even. Like this was something I wasn’t supposed to know anything about.”
    Sheila kept writing, and after a minute, filling the silence, Tina went on.
    “At the time, I just thought it was a little weird. Ms. Harmon is that way sometimes, sort of like a drama queen, even over little things. But when I told Dorrie about what happened—that’s my sister, she’s really smart—she said she had just that week read an article that might explain things.” She fished for the tissue and blew her nose. “Dorrie tore it out of the magazine and gave it to me. When I first read it, I thought it was kind of funny—what it’s called, anyway. ‘Dead peasant.’ That’s when I made the copies and wrote that note to Larry. I just thought he ought to know. After all, it was his life that was worth a million dollars.”
    “I see,” Sheila said, noting the term.
Dead peasant
rang a bell and she remembered something she had heard in a radio news broadcast a few months before. She looked up. “Did you give him the article? Do you know whether he read it?”
    “Yeah. He called me up as soon as he got my note and said he’d like to have a copy. So we met for coffee at the diner over on Nueces, and I gave it to him. But I ran into him a week or so later, at Wong’s, where he sometimes gets takeout.” She looked away, half-guiltily, and Sheila wondered if she had gone there, hoping to see him. “When I asked him about it, he said he couldn’t do anything. It was water under the bridge. He didn’t want to talk about it.”
    Sheila made another note. “Water under the bridge? What do you think he meant?”
    Tina shifted uncomfortably. “He said he asked her about it and she wouldn’t let him off the hook. Those are his exact words. ‘She won’t let me off the hook.’”
    Sheila stopped writing. “Who? Who is ‘she’? What hook?”
    “Jackie Harmon.” Tina twisted her hands together in her lap. “She’s the one who owns the company I work for. My boss.” She laughed mirthlessly. “Dead peasant. Real cute, huh? Well, at least she doesn’t have one of those policies on me.”
    Jackie Harmon
. Sheila thought of the email on Kirk’s computer, the one she had printed out.
Yes, you did sign the consent form at the same time we set up the health insurance package. It sounds like the matter has slipped your mind. Sorry for any misunderstanding, but I’m afraid it’s water under the bridge now
. It had been signed
Jackie
.
    “Do you have a copy of that article? The one you gave Larry?”
    Tina nodded. “Actually, I’ve got the original. Want it?”
    “Yes, please.”
    Tina got up and left the room. In a moment, she was back with a piece of paper in her hand. “If you’d like some coffee,” she said, “I can make it while you’re reading.”
    “Coffee would be great,” Sheila said.
    “Black?”
    “Perfect,” Sheila replied, and settled back in the chair to read.
    HOW MUCH ARE YOU WORTH?
    by Michael Bailey
    Most of us know how much we’re worth, on paper, at least. But some of us might be surprised to learn that we are worth more dead than alive—to our