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McCrae woke up late to Fido’s wet, rough tongue licking his face. He scrambled awake, looking for the time. “What took you so long?” he declared to the dog, jumping out of bed and into the shower. When he got out, Fido was waiting for him by the bathroom door. His breakfast was late.
McCrae fed him and grimaced at the time: 9:50 am. No one would get on him about being late after
the all-nighter he’d pulled the night before. It was just that he had a lot of things to do.
He heard a message come in on his way to the station at the same time his cell started ringing. Seeing that Quin was calling, he answered the line first. “McCrae.”
“Tanner Stahd just passed away,” Quin said.
“Oh . . . shit . . .”
“You’re coming in?”
“On my way.”
“Corolla just called. Check your messages.”
McCrae was struggling to accept the news that Tanner was gone. He read his text and saw it was from Corolla, saying he’d allowed Ellie O’Brien, Zora DeMarco, and Amanda Forsythe into Tanner’s room just before he died, but he’d been there too, and he could swear they’d never gotten near him. The doctor had decreed that Tanner’s injuries were just too severe for him to recover, and the body was in the hospital morgue. Delta Stahd was already there.
If he hadn’t been so close to the station, he would’ve turned around and gone to Laurelton General right then. As it was, he wheeled into the lot and jumped up the back stairs two at a time. For some reason, he’d believed Tanner would be all right, even with the seriousness of his injuries. Impossible to imagine that he was gone forever.
And now it was a homicide.
Who killed him? Why had they done it?
He needed to find out the motive. He didn’t believe Delta had murdered him, even if Quin acted like she was the prime suspect. It just didn’t ring true to him that Tanner had been killed over a crumbling marriage or a workplace affair. Yes, it was a crime of passion. The multiple chest wounds told that story. But Delta stabbing her husband over and over again? He couldn’t see it. The motive had to lie elsewhere, but where and with whom?
He ducked his head into Quin’s office and said, “I’m going to the hospital.”
“Sit down a minute.”
McCrae was already a half step away and had to reverse himself.
“Just for a minute,” Quin reiterated, gesturing to the one other chair in the room.
McCrae did as his superior had suggested, though it was way outside of Bob Quintar’s playbook. The man didn’t have talks with coworkers at his desk, or anywhere else. He was quiet and methodical and occasionally had to take a meeting, but his way of working was with minimal conversation. Not that he couldn’t carry on a meaningful conversation when called upon, but his day-to-day modus operandi was to speak as few words as possible.
“I know how you feel about Delta,” Quin said. “I don’t feel the same way. She’s beautiful and possibly deadly. She’s not the girl you went to school with.”
“I don’t remember saying she was.”
“All those girls . . . Bailey’s friends . . .” He looked grim.
The attack on Tanner was making Quin relive his daughter’s death. McCrae hadn’t told him he’d found the bartender, James Carville, not wanting to get his hopes up, but now he did.
“Where is he?” Quin demanded, half-rising from his chair.
“He recently landed in Eugene, apparently. He’s staying with a sister and working at a local bar, the Duck-Duck Inn. I’ll go see him as soon as we get a grip on the attack on Stahd.”
“I should be interviewing him,” he said tautly.
“You should not be interviewing him. You’re Bailey’s father. If the guy knows something about Bailey and Penske and that night, I’ll find out.”
Quin looked about to argue but kept himself in check. McCrae got up to leave again, and the older man added, “Corinne called Hurston.”
McCrae stopped short and gazed hard at Quin. “What?”
“You didn’t say anything to her about Carville, did you?”
