Page 123 - Labelle Gramercy, On the Case

Soaked to the Bone

“Yes, we’d really appreciate your help, Mr. Foss. The
circumstances of your employer’s death are not completely
understood, so it would be useful to know his condition when you
last saw him.”
You could almost see the answer pinballing through his head,
bouncing off a sidelong eye glance, bumped backward by twitching
brows, knocked downward after tapping a spring-loaded cheek
muscle, finally avoiding the tilt of his head by rattling against a usually
buttoned mouth. Out it came.
“Well, ma’am, as I said, I’m late because of my truck, which is
getting old. I only work here four hours a day, sometimes in the
morning, like today, but on Tuesdays I come at 1:30 so I can put out
the trash barrels. Mr. Fish doesn’t like them out on the street too
early because he thinks it looks low-class and he told me once the
price of living up here in the hills is not having an alley where he
could keep the trash out of sight. I mean, when I told my friend Phil
about that—that’s Phil Thiemann, you can check that with him, I
didn’t just make it up—he laughed and said what Mr. Fish meant was
all the people who work for him, not just real garbage. I don’t agree
with that. Do you, Miss Cora?”
“Oh, of course not,” I prevaricated shamelessly. “Our boss truly
appreciated all the people he depended on.”
“Right, right.” Gene nodded eagerly, wobbling his wattles. “I
know he did ask me to park down the street sometimes when guests
were coming, but I figured he just wanted to leave them space to
park. Not much curb up here in this circle. More driveway than curb,
almost.”
He fell into a sort of ruminative reverie, computing, one supposed,
the ratio of Camino Costoso frontage dedicated to public versus
private use. Labelle would be prodding him in a matter of
milliseconds, I judged, so I played good cop.
“That’s true, Gene. Good point. I think he felt that way about my
car, too.” Even though it was newer and more expensive than his
own son’s. “So you saw him yesterday afternoon before you took the
bins out to the street?”
He snapped to. “Right. He was just coming out of the sliding glass
doors to the backyard when I finished cleaning the pool. That was
the only time I laid eyes on the man yesterday. Sometimes I don’t see

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