“They should have,” Javi muttered as he braced his hand on the ground to push himself up.
Chapter Twelve
ReidLassiterwasaman who responded well to a suit.He was still agitated, but the bristle he’d greeted Cloister with had dulled.He stood on the doorstep of his house with his arms tightly folded, fingers pinched around his elbows.
“Miles is very private,” he explained.“He hates people in his space.Even me.It’s why we moved here.So it wasourspace.The other night really freaked him out, and if…when he comes home…I don’t want him to realize that I’d let it happen again.”
Cloister wadded the suit he’d been handed—cashmere, cobalt blue, silk-lined—inside out in his hands.The man-handling made Javi wince a little internally, but he understood the reasoning.
“It’s not a problem,” Cloister said.“This hasn’t been washed since it was last worn?”
Reid gave a chuckle that didn’t last long and shook his head.“It’s dry-clean only,” he said.“One of his favorites.He was going to take them to his man this week, but…”
He trailed off.
Cloister stepped away and crouched down to offer the coat to Bourneville.As the clipped “such” set her to sniffing at the armpits and collar, Javi looked back at Reid.
“So the prowler broke into your house, but he was released without charge?”he asked dubiously.
Reid’s mouth twisted into a grimace.“Apparently, he’s not well or something,” he said.“His sister called them and got angry and…apparently, he used to live here, and he’s not been well.So he was just ‘confused,’ but I shouldn’t worry because he’s been ‘given a good talking-to’ and he knows not to come back.”
He let go of his elbows in order to pointedly hook his fingers around the phrases that irritated him the most, although the way he spat them out was emphasis enough.
“Did he?”Javi asked.“Live here?”
Reid started to answer, stopped, and tapped the toe of his foot on the porch nervously.
“I don’t know,” he said.“It was a foreclosure.I heard about it through work.Miles thinks we bought off the heirs of a little old lady who passed, but I’m not sure who actually lived here before.It was the perfect house, and it just fell into my lap.I just…I didn’t want to know anything that might put me off.Maybe that was a mistake if it was a crazy peeping tom or something, but…”
He gave an expressively fatalistic shrug to finish off the “too late now” sentiment.Javi nodded his acknowledgement.He could follow up with the sheriff’s department if it came to that, but odds were a sympathetic deputy had cut the prowler some slack.
Plenty was a town in the process of a painful demographic shift from rural farming community to commuter town.It wasn’t hard to find people who resented the banks and who knew someone who’d been displaced to make way for a blow-in from the city with disposable income and a dry cleaner they preferred.
Like Reid.
Like Javi, he supposed.
Bourneville gave the collar of the jacket one last snuffle and then gave a shrill yip as she shuffled back down the path, ready to get to work.Cloister signaled for her to wait as he stood up, the suit jacket dangled from one hand and the lead looped around his wrist.
“Unfortunately, nobody let you and Miles know about that,” he explained.“So Miles had no reason not to keep his usual routine and take his morning run.”
Reid took a deep breath and made a dramatic gesture.“And when he didn’t come home, I didn’t know I should panic.I mean, I was worried, obviously, but about an accident or anepisode.Not about…God, I don’t even know what I should be worried about.Some crazy homeless man killed my husband because I have a house?”
That was an impressive bit of guilt-dodging on the fly.Javi didn’t point that out.
“Don’t assume the worst,” he told Reid.“An accident is more likely than anything else.My…partner…does a lot of SAR.You’d be surprised how often the outcome is just a bizarre story for future cocktail parties.”
“But not always,” Reid said.“And Miles…he’s been hurt before.I love him, and he’s so strong in his own way, but I don’t know…”
He broke off and bit his lower lip hard.Fear cracked through the hard shell of resentment and anger for a moment, before he quickly spackled it back over.It was safer to be agitated, in motion.It meant less time to think.
“And the sheriff’s department doesn’t even care,” he said.“They won’t do anything, not even listen to me.Well, if anything does happen, I’m going to sue.Maybe they’ll listen then,”
Cloister gathered up Bourneville’s lead to get a good grip on it.
“He left at five a.m.,” he said.“The clock’s not run down on forty-eight hours yet, so it’s not technically a missing person’s case.”
Ah.So technically, it wasn’t a problem for a private citizen to get involved.
