Page 54 of Death on Gallows Path

Clara’s eyes widened. “She’d been in his stuff? Willow? In what stuff?”

“Like papers, from what he said. In his office. I said I found it hard to believe because she was so good with the dogs. And he said being good with dogs didn’t have anything to do with being a thief. I asked what she stole and he said he hadn’t figured it out — yet. That she’d gone through papers in his office, but that he was too smart to keep his cash or other valuables in obvious spots, so she hadn’t gotten away with any of that. But he was going to check if she was behind some things he thought were fishy.

“I said, aw, c’mon, she’s a kid. She wouldn’t do something like that. He said she was the only person who had the house code and was there without somebody being around.”

“Yet he kept paying her to walk Lucifer.” I didn’t let as much skepticism as I felt come through, aiming to simply point out the discrepancy.

“He might not have. He just said it Thursday night, the night before he died when we were all at dinner, before training. It wasn’t until yesterday that I realized someone had been in my files, too.”

“What—?”

Clara cut off my question. “Dinner? Before training? You left the dogs in a vehicle while you ate dinner? It was unusually hot that night, too. Do you know how hot vehicles get? Do you know—?”

Bryon went into a defensive crouch — without actually moving — and interrupted her. “It wasn’t that hot.”

“It was twenty-five degrees warmer before last night’s front and inside a vehicle gets hot so fast, no responsible person would leave a dog—”

I jumped in. I was in sympathy with Clara’s scolding, but if we wanted to talk more to Bryon, this might not be the best approach.

“What did Pammy and your wife say about Damon saying Willow was a thief?” I asked.

“Nothing. They’d gone to the ladies’ room together.”

* * * *

“That was convenient.” Disbelief and disapproval added bite to Clara’s words as we settled into the van. “Damon supposedly points a finger at Willow over vague going through his papers, but only to Bryon because the wives happened to be away from the table. And then he says he has to get inside. Running away, I say.”

I tactfully didn’t bring up that he might have been running from her thunderous disapproval of leaving dogs in vehicles during meals. “It’s possible, though.”

“What would Willow want in his papers, for heaven’s sake?”

“That would be interesting to find out, wouldn’t it?”

She clicked her tongue.

We’d hit a dead end here — at least until we could talk to Willow Yost again.

“I’ve got to get home to work,” Clara said. “I’ll call when I finish and we can take the dogs to the park then, if that works for you.”

“Sure. That outfit of Zoley’s . . .” I started. “It wasn’t exactly mourning, was it?”

“Well, Pammy’s the one who’s been widowed.”

“Yes. Although if we’re right about Zoley having an affair with Damon, you’d think she’d be a little torn up.”

Her hmm accepted the validity of that point.

“The other thing is, how are we going to find out about the Pammy-Damon relationship? Usually, the person to ask would be the closest girlfriend, but considering we suspect that friend of fooling around with the husband, that’s a no-go . . .”

“I might have an idea,” Clara said slowly. “But I need to check something first. I’ll get back to you.”

Did I want to bug her to tell me what she was thinking? Of course. But I’d made similar statements at times and she’d restrained herself from bugging me. Fair was fair.

Going for full noble, I volunteered, “Zoley saying she’d told her husband over and over that it didn’t bother her that Damon made a lot more money than him was interesting.”

She nodded. “Which was actually poking at him. That would irk anybody.”

“Uh-huh. And if he knew about his wife and Damon — that’s if they were fooling around, which we don’t know for sure, so—”