“Possibly,” I hedged. “We’re looking into another death with similar symptoms. And my guys are still reading obits. We haven’t heard from Spencer, Titus’s enforcer yet, but I expect to very soon.”
“When?” Austin stopped and turned so suddenly I almost collided with him. “When do you expect to hear?”
“I don’t—” I took a step back so I could focus on his face. “Whenever he gets the information we’re looking for. Or reaches a dead end. And I can’t tell you when that will be—”
“Charley—”
“—but I can tell you I’m expecting an update. I left my phone in my truck, though, so if you’d like to—”
“Yes. Thank you.” He took the lead again, which meant he knew exactly where I’d parked.
We walked in silence, while I tried to ignore the frigid draft wafting beneath the shirt he’d lent me.
My truck stood alone in a gravel lot at the edge of the woods, just beyond the last cabin in the Lakeshore complex. About five hundred feet from the lake in question, where shifters in cat form loved to splash around on warm summer evenings.
Titus had spent a lot of money to help build our little community, but the common run was among the most effective of his purchases.
“Where’s your car?” I glanced toward the lake, then up the dirt road leading to the lot.
“I caught a ride from the bar with Doug Myers. He said he lives in one of these cabins?”
“Yeah. That little one-room, over there.” I pointed through the dark toward a small structure to the west, where smoke rose steadily from a crumbling stone chimney. “He’s a good guy, if a little nosy.” I pulled a pair of pants from the gym bag in the back seat of my crew cab and stepped into them. “Get in the truck.” In the drivers’ seat, I picked my phone up, still connected to the charger. “Damn it.” I tapped the darkened screen, and nothing happened. “It’s dead.”
Austin buckled his seatbelt. “The charger doesn’t work when the car’s not running.”
“I know that, smartass. But it was plugged in during the whole drive over here.”
“And that might have been helpful,” he said, one corner of his mouth twitching. “If it had actually been connected to your truck.” He lifted the cord from the center console, demonstrating that it was not, in fact, attached to the USB port in my dashboard.
I growled, pointedly ignoring him as I started the engine and headed down the dirt road toward what passed, in these parts, for civilization.
The Fat Cat was completely dark when I pulled into the parking lot, then circled around to the rear entrance. Davey, Vance, and Billy had closed up nearly two hours earlier.
In my office, I pulled on the rest of my clothes and returned Austin’s shirt, then I settled into my desk chair while my computer booted up with groans akin to an aging rocket trying to blast off.
“It shouldn’t take that long to load, you know.” Austin leaned forward in the left-hand guest chair to peer at my screen. “You need a new one.”
“No oneneedsa new computer. People just like to say they have the latest bells and whistles. But most things function just fine with neither bells nor whistles.”
I considered myself to be a prime example.
He gave me an amused look. “So, we’re defining bells and whistles as a processor manufactured in this century?”
“Funny. My desktop is fine.”
“Your desktop is slow as—”
“Ha! It’s up.” I pointed at the monitor.
“Your mouse creaks like my grandfather’s hip. Is that amechanicalmouse? Is there a littleballrolling around inside?”
“You missed your calling. Why are you not on stage, making fun of people for a living?” I asked as I opened my email. I stifled a groan as new messages appeared, seventy percent of them spam. “Why is email even a thing? Who thought it was a good idea to trade paper junk mail for electronic crap?”
“The trees. The entire world’s population of trees thought that was a good idea,” Austin said while I deleted the unsolicited messages one at a time, to be sure I didn’t miss anything important.
“No, I do not want to try a new shampoo or open a new bank account.”Click. Click. “I don’t care what faces the British royal children made during some parade last week.”Click. “And I don’t intend to donate to— Oh, Titus wrote back. I clicked on the message. “He’s forwarded an email from Spencer Cole, one of his enforcers, who’s also an ER triage nurse. Can’t imagine he has much time to go on patrol…” I mumbled as I scrolled down to Spencer’s message. I’d met him once and found him both genuinely nice and easy to talk to. I suspected he had a great bedside manner.
“Okay, so it turns out that the hospital Spencer works for, in addition to being part of the largest network of providers in Tennessee, is also sister-network to a system with facilities in four other states, all of which were accessible to some degree from Spencer’s intake desk at work. He apologizes for the delay, saying he had to wait until they had a really slow night, in order to search the records without being seen. And he’s included a—”
