Page 19 of Little Bitter Truths
“Detective Whitlock knows I’m here,” I added, “which means it wouldn’t be a good idea to shoot me.You’re Clive, right?I believe you two spoke before, right after Wren died.”
He stared me down for a long moment and then lowered the rifle.
“You’ve got some nerve busting into my house the way you did,” he muttered.
It wasn’t the first time someone had said that to me, and it wouldn’t be the last.
He gestured toward the couch.“Sit.”
The fabric on the couch was stained in ways I didn’t care to analyze.
“I’d rather stand,” I said.
His eyes hardened.“I said sit.”
Right.
Upper hand.
He had it.
I didn’t.
I lowered myself onto the edge of the couch, careful not to lean back and get the full experience.Clive disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a beer in one hand and the rifle in the other.Using the edge of the counter, he popped the cap and raised the bottle to his lips.Then he leaned against the wall and looked at me.
“Well?”he said.“You broke into my house.Might as well get to the point.”
I tipped my head toward the dartboard.“I came here to talk to you about Wren.”
His eyes followed my gaze.
For a moment he said nothing, and then he snorted.“If you’re here, I’m guessing you know where I worked and what went down there.”
“I do, but I’d like to hear your version of the story.”
“The first couple months at the senior care center were fine.Then she started calling me into her office.”
“Because of mistakes you’d made.”
He nodded.“Said I was messing up medication charts.Giving wrong pills.Missing doses.”
“Were you?”
His jaw tightened.
“At first I was sure she was wrong, even when it happened multiple times.”He laughed once, his tone bitter and short.“I admired her when I first started, and I thought she was one of the good ones.But after she started blaming the mix-ups in medication on me, I began to think otherwise.”
“Did you ever threaten Wren?”
“When she fired me, I may have said something about her regretting the decision.”
“Sounds like a threat to me.”
He took a hearty swig of beer.“Look, I was mad.Real mad.Even thought about slashing her tires or keying her car, but I didn’t.”
“What stopped you?”
For the first time since we started talking, his expression became lighter.
