Read Online An Equal Opportunity Death by Susan Dunlap - Free Book Online Page B

a mile away.
    The road was dark. Houses and businesses were locked, with flood preparations made and the owners gone. The water had saturated lawns on either side of the road, and it wouldn’t be long before the road itself would be inundated.
    The canoe rental was located in what once had been a large wooden barn. In summer the canoes were either at the dock or on the main floor there. Now they were suspended from the sloping roof like oblong chandeliers above the muddy dirt floor. The only dry area was the raised wooden platform behind the counter and the storeroom in the rear.
    I pulled up by the storeroom door. The Fernandez’ old VW van was gone, which meant Patsy wasn’t home yet. She worked, in some clerical capacity, at Solano Construction, the company that was laying the sewer pipe. It wouldn’t be long till she arrived.
    I knocked. “Paul?”
    In a minute he opened the door.
    “Oh, Vejay. Well, come in.”
    I held out the paper bag (minus the beef stew). “I thought I might convince you guys to share some brandy.”
    Paul smiled. “I’d say that was a safe guess. Come on in. Have a seat while I pour. Patsy shouldn’t be too long.” He was shouting. Music, heavy on drums and horns, came from speakers in opposite corners of the small room. Paul turned down the volume on his way to the sink.
    The room resembled nothing so much as the back room at PG&E except that while the other was tan, this was boat gray. Like the PG&E room, these walls were covered with metal cases holding mysterious metal objects of odd shapes and unknown purposes, presumably canoe stuff. As a storeroom it might have been satisfactory, but as a home it was awful. And while Paul and Patsy had added a leather sofa, an oriental rug, the elaborate stereo, and a television, the effect did not convert the room into a home, but only cluttered the storage room.
    Still, it was warm. Gargantuan space heaters occupied the two free corners, making the room more comfortable than any place I’d been in this month—certainly cozier than my house.
    I took one of the filled brandy glasses from Paul and sat on the leather ottoman.
    “What have you been up to?” he asked, settling on the sofa.
    “I’ve been suspended from work and interviewed twice by the sheriff. How’s that for starters?”
    “Suspended? How come?”
    “My boss doesn’t believe I was sick yesterday.”
    “Well, what business is that of his? You have sick leave, don’t you? What is he, a doctor or something?” Paul leaned forward, almost propelled off the sofa by his indignation.
    I took a sip of my brandy, thinking that I liked Paul.
    “Mr. Bobbs, my boss, feels it’s obvious to the community as a whole that I wasn’t sick, and he doesn’t want PG&E to look foolish.”
    “What’s your union doing? They shouldn’t put up with that.”
    “The union? I completely forgot about them. It just happened this afternoon. And then I charged down to the sheriff’s office.”
    Paul pulled back the slightest bit. It was apparent that while being suspended from work was a very acceptable circumstance for a friend, going to the sheriff’s office of one’s own volition was definitely suspect.
    “Sheriff Wescott told my boss that I’d had two drinks at Frank’s. I figured that was not the type of information he ought to be passing on. So I went to tell him that.”
    “Chewed him out, huh? How’d he take that? I’ll bet they don’t get a lot of lip here, these sheriffs. Well, good for you. Told them where to get off, huh? Here, let me get you some more brandy.”
    I hadn’t finished what I had, but I let Paul refill the glass. Which question should I ask Paul first? I wanted to take advantage of the glow of the brandy and the camaraderie we were sharing over my supposed tongue-lashing of the sheriff.
    “It seems odd none of us ever saw each other in San Francisco,” I said as Paul settled back onto the sofa.
    “Big place.”
    “I suppose. Still, you get around. You lived