Dead In The Water (Rebecca Schwartz Mystery #4) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series)

Sadie busy?”
    “God, I can’t remember… . ” He looked as if he were genuinely trying to.
    I took pity on him. “I was just kidding.”
    “Oh. Guess you think I’m the kind of guy that—”
    “Honest, I don’t think anything.” Anything much. “Listen, two important things.”
    “Two!”
    “Two. Remember when you came over to Julio’s yesterday? Before I was your lawyer?”
    He nodded.
    “You sounded as if you were worried about your job, with Sadie gone.”
    “That wasn’t because Sadie loved me so much. I guess she thought I’m pretty much of a good-for-nothing asshole like everybody does. Listen, I still do my art, you know? Nobody thinks so, and I hardly have time with Amber and all, but I do, goddammit, I do!” His face was decidedly red now, but not from the sun, and not from anger.
    I steered him back to the subject. “So if Sadie wasn’t your special advocate, why were you worried?”
    “Because that goddamn Warren Nowell hates my guts. I just met that bastard a few years ago, but I feel like I’ve known him my whole life. You know that? This town’s like that.”
    I waited.
    “His mother was my fifth grade teacher, can you believe that? The teacher from fuckin’ hell. Ran her goddamn classroom like fuckin’ Auschwitz. Bitch. Goddamn harpy.”
    He belched, a faraway look in his eyes—or maybe he was just having trouble focusing.
    “You know what she used to do? We had this mother-fuckin’ white rat in there, and this little kid named Willie-little Willie Oppenheimer—he was terrified of rats. Couldn’t stand to look at the thing. Started to shake whenever it was time for the science lesson and we had to feed the animals—we had some snakes, all kinds of things, they didn’t bother Willie. The rat was all that did.
    “Well, that bitch of a Nowell, she told him the only way to get over it was to make friends with the thing you’re afraid of, and she said a certain day was the day he was going to have to feed the rat, and the poor kid stayed home, but I guess he couldn’t stay home forever. So he came back and she made him do it, and he was shakin’ and sweatin’ and turnin’ blue and everything, but she made him do it anyhow.
    “He must’ve moved too fast or something, he was so scared—I don’t know exactly what happened, but the rat ran up his shoulder and got loose in the room. Kid was so scared, he peed his pants. So was that enough for Mrs. Adolf Nowell? Not even close.
She didn’t let him go home
. Made him sit there the rest of the day with his pants soaking wet.
And
she tried to make him catch the rat, but he got sick.”
    “You mean threw up?”
    “Nah, I think he almost fainted. Had to put his head between his knees and lie down on the floor and everything. Smelling of pee the whole time.”
    Pretty horrible, but was he ever going to get back to the point?
    I said, “So you hold Warren’s awful mother against him?”
    “Hell no!” His fingers closed into a fist, with which he banged the table. People would have stared again if there’d been any left, but we were living it up in lonely splendor. “Warren’s a goddamn wimp. I can’t stand a wimp, can you?”
    “I thought you said he was the one who hated you.”
    “He knew about Katy and me.”
    “I don’t understand. Why would he care?”
    “Because he was a goddamn wimp! Because he could never get a woman like Katy in a million years.”
    “What are you getting at, Ricky? He wouldn’t need one—he’s got a perfectly good wife, and doesn’t strike me as the roving-eye type. Frankly, I don’t buy jealousy as the reason he hated you.”
    He laughed, too far gone to get his feelings hurt. “You’re a sharp one, you know that? Pretty sharp lawyer I got. Okay, okay, he wasn’t jealous. He was a snob. Katy was his mother’s best friend—they went to college together or something—that’s how Warren got his damn job in the first place. With a little help from ‘Aunt Katy.’ That’s what he called her. He didn’t like the help messing with her. It was that simple.”
    “How would he even know you were seeing her?”
    “He saw us at a party once. He saw her looking at me. Katy never was good at hiding her feelings.”
    Right. I decided to admit what I knew: “Frankly, Ricky, I hear Warren has good reason other than ‘Aunt Katy’ to be angry with you. I hear you like to bait him.”
    He looked astonished. “Bait him?”
    “That’s what I heard.”
    He rested his chin on his