Chapter 46

Letting Cecelia go to the office with me might have been a mistake, I thought later that morning. She'd been there before, but usually for just a few minutes at a time and not very often. This time she walked in, looked around, saw some papers on Marla's desk, and said, "Let me file these while you get to work."

I stared at her, speechless for a moment. Finally I was able to say, "I ain't hired you yet, and I don't know that I'm going to."

"This is a purely volunteer effort, Darvin. All I'm doing is filing a few things that Marla hasn't had a chance to take care of. Now please – your desk is in there."

I nearly made a smart remark about how she was using smaller words than usual, but decided not to. Not knowing what I should say, I shrugged and went into my office, closing the door behind me. I normally do that, and I decided not to alter my habit this time around.

I spent some time writing up my report for Dr. Bernard. My reports to clients aren't deathless prose, but I do like to spend some time on 'em and make sure I'm saying exactly what I want to say. This report was about standard in length, for although the case itself wasn't even two weeks old at this point, a lot had happened.

A lot had happened with me, for that matter. It wasn't quite a week since Cecelia had proposed working for me once Marla was gone, and here she was pitching in uninvited and unpaid. At that Marla must have come in at some point, for I could hear two voices through the door – I couldn't make out what they were saying, but I could hear them. I'd gotten shot at, and I'd shot back with effect. I'd put in hours of time working for people who did things that I abhorred. I'd had an interesting few days, all right. I was suffering from the ancient Chinese curse – I was living in interesting times.

When I got the report done to my satisfaction I printed it off, and while that was going on I began working on my bill. I don't have a sliding scale, but I do tend to give unmentioned discounts to clients who can't pay the full rate. This time, though, I was charging the full rate for both time and expenses, and it added up to a healthy sum. I was glad to see it was so large, for the amount would be a help to me when I presented it to Dr. Bernard. She wasn't going to like me much, but then I wasn't in business to win a popularity contest.

When I had the bill figured, I printed that off too – two copies, one for me to take to the abortion mill, and one for Marla to file. I carried the whole thing out to the front office, where Marla was indeed talking to Cecelia – showing her the system, as far as I could tell. I wanted to growl at both of them, but Marla looked up at me and said, "Are you all right, Darv?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," I said, but her concern had taken the irritation out of my sails. "He fired at me four or five times, and missed every time."

"That's good." She got out of her chair and gave me a hug. "It would tear me up if you'd been hurt."

"Yeah, me too," I said.

Marla let me go. "Cecelia says she's thinking about taking over for me."

"I'm thinking about it too," I said. "And I'm afraid that I don't have any real good arguments against it at this point."

"She'll do a good job, Darv. She's smart and she's run her own business before, so she could probably do a better job than I've done."

I looked at Cecelia, who was pointedly involved in something on the computer that sat on the corner of Marla's desk. "Marla, may I very politely ask you to stay out of this one?"

"Okay." She smiled at me. "And if you need someone to talk to and Cecelia's not around, feel free to call me."

I had plenty of people I could call if I needed to, but I didn't say that – it wouldn't have been polite when she was being a friend. "I'll do that," I said.

"What do you have there?" Marla asked, changing the subject.

"My report and the bill. I'm gonna take the report over today, and the bill whenever Charnock's out of the way."

"Why did you print the bill now, then?"

"Because I'm done. From here it's up to the police."

"If you say so, Darv. But I've never understood some of your ways."

"Neither have I," Cecelia put in, turning around to face us. "I have known him since 1994, and he still befuddles me on occasion."

"I was eight in 1994," Marla said.

"Yeah, well, you're a kid," I told her. "Me an' Cecelia are grownups."

She grinned at me. "Then go do something grown up, Darv. You're interfering with Cecelia's work."

I would have said something, but just then the phone rang, and Marla turned to answer it. After exchanging a few words with whoever was on the other end, she handed it to me. "It's BCSO, Lt. Urban," she said.

"Hello, Lieutenant," I said.

"Mr. Carpenter, I thought I'd let you know that we've apprehended the suspect in yesterday's shooting. When we executed the search warrant yesterday we found papers in his garage that led us to a storage unit, and we staked that out as well as his house and the McCulloughs' house. He appeared at the storage unit this morning, and we arrested him without incident." He hadn't said it, but I knew that APD had been there when they executed the warrant since Charnock lived in the city limits. For that matter the storage unit was probably inside the city limit.

"That's good," I said. "What was in the storage unit?"

"We're still going through that, Mr. Carpenter, and in any event it's part of an ongoing investigation."

"Yeah, I ought to have known that," I said. "I was a cop for a couple of years and I've been doing this for a long time. Sorry for prying."