Past Malice by Dana Cameron Page A

alarm to suggest a break-in, but what I’m willing to guess is that poor Mr. Fisher startled someone who intended just that. I can’t guess why, though. We don’t keep a lot of cash on the premises, ever, and anything that might be of value in the house is generally too large to be carried off easily or too recognizable to be easily disposed of.”
    I had to agree; there wasn’t much in the house that was fantastically valuable. Most of the rooms were decorated to illustrate different periods of the house’s use, and most of the objects weren’t actual belongings of the Chandler family but things accumulated along the way to furnish the rooms and give an idea of how each space was used through time. The furniture was good, but there wasn’t anything that would make a break-in worthwhile. Or make killing poor Justin Fisher worthwhile either.
    “I’m betting it was just one of those unhappy accidents that plague our society these days. Stupidity that is complicated and escalated by the use of violence. But that’s something you’d know something about too, isn’t it?”
    “I beg your pardon?” I instantly knew what he was talking about but couldn’t believe that he would mention again. It was a ghoulish prying that was in the poorest taste, as far as I was concerned, especially after I’d made it clear how much the topic bothered me when he brought it up after the board meeting. Anger made a mask of my face and I could feel my jaw muscles tighten. “What is it that you mean, Aden?”
    “I mean that you’ve experienced this violence I describe firsthand.” His words were as hard as I felt my face going. It was an aggressiveness that was totally inappropriate to the situation, bringing up what had happened at Penitence Point, as he seemed to know about it.
    “Yes. So have many people.”
    “It just occurs to me that you might feel Justin’s death more keenly than others of us, because of that. I mean, we knew Justin well, but I could see how his death, the very fact of finding his body, would have a profound effect on you.”
    Although his words sounded like sympathy, they struckme as being more of a probe, and I found myself disliking Aden intensely. He might as well have asked “What makes you tick?” and been no less offensive, as far as I was concerned. It was the pain from my teeth clenching that reminded me to relax a little before I chipped a tooth or said something I shouldn’t.
    Before I could figure out what to say in response to this, Aden withdrew. “Look, I’m only trying to say that I know you had an awful shock yesterday and that you must be feeling it acutely. I’m an oaf: I try to be sympathetic and end up trampling all over the sensibilities of the other person. I’m sorry if I offended you.”
    I wasn’t satisfied; it occurred to me that Aden always knew exactly what he was saying and how it would affect the other person. His behavior was that of a curious kid with a dissecting kit, scalpel in eager hand. His persona as a jovial eccentric was a mask for something far less amusing or attractive.
    “While you are here, working on the site, I do feel responsible for you, so I hope you’ll let me do anything I can to help you with your work. Through all this.”
    And if I wasn’t completely mistaken, he was reminding me that I was working here on his say-so and was there just a hint of admonishment should I decide to speak my mind? Maybe I wasn’t in the best state, but my instincts are good and getting better all the time, and I was pretty certain that was exactly what was going on.
    “Well, unless you can speed up the police investigation, so I can get back to work out there, I guess there’s nothing you can do,” I said lightly. “So I’ll just have to pretend that I’m out there for a sail too, while I head for the library today. Actually, if I were out there, it wouldn’t be a bad way of studying the site. I mean, when you get down to it, so much of the traffic along