Angel Sleuth (22 page)

“All right, but then I’ve got to go. I got to work at one in the afternoon on that Thursday and went directly to the residents who ate their lunch in their rooms, and I collected their trays. One of them was Ms. Hatfield. I was about to knock on the door when I heard some man in her room yelling at her, and she was yelling back. Ms. Hatfield never yelled.

“‘You keep your mouth shut,’ he said. ‘You keep away from Leda,’ Ms. Hatfield replied. I don’t know what they were talking about, but they were furious with one another. I could hear it in their voices. I moved on to the next room, collected the lunch tray there, then went back to Ms. Hatfield’s room. The man was gone. That’s when she gave me the music box and made me promise to give it to Leda. ‘It’s very important,’ she said.”

Bethany snatched her cap off her head, clapped it against her leg and looked down the darkened street. Kaitlin didn’t know if the young woman was worried about who might see them talking or whether she was looking for the Camaro so she could escape.

“Think. Think. Who was the man in Ms. Hatfield’s room?”

Bethany began walking again, her head down, swiping her cap back and forth across her tattered jeans. “I don’t know, but it was an older man’s voice, not one of the interns. Most of the staff on duty that evening was female. I just don’t know!”

“It’s okay. It may come to you if you just let it go for now.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t get the music box to Leda before she died. Maybe it could have saved her life.”

“I don’t think so, but you can save some other lives by telling me everything you know about what’s been going on at ARC. Did you send those letters to Leda’s newspaper column?” Bethany was either genuinely confused at this question or she should be auditioning for community theater.

“Probably it was Ms. Hatfield or Lily.” Kaitlin was talking more to herself than to Bethany. She put her hand on Bethany’s shoulder.

“But you know what’s going on up there, don’t you? You tried to warn me with that note in my car. Things are being stolen from the residents, aren’t they? Do you know who the thief is and what’s being taken?”

She shook off Kaitlin’s hand and refused to answer.

By now the walk was taking them down to the Kinderkill. Kaitlin could hear the rush of the waters in front of them, the nearest streetlight behind them on the far corner. She would have preferred they return to a better lit street and said so to Bethany.

“I’m being picked up down here by my ride.” She turned away from Kaitlin and looked up the street as if anxious to be done with the meeting.

Kaitlin repeated her question about the thefts and the identity of the thief or thieves.

“I know something about that place, but not everything.”

“Look at me!” Kaitlin said. She wanted to grab her and shake the truth out of her, but she tried to keep her voice calm. “Who’s doing the stealing?”

“I can’t say.”

“Yes, you can, unless you want a lot of other people to get hurt or even be killed like Barbara Bartlett.”

From the expression on her face Kaitlin could tell she didn’t know about Barbara.

“Barbara’s dead?” she asked. Her face grew white with shock. Kaitlin needed answers, so she ignored Bethany’s reaction.

“Murdered. Now, who’s stealing from the residents at ARC?”

“Oh, I am!” Her voice sounded like the wail of an injured animal. “But I didn’t mean for anyone to die.” She spun away from Kaitlin who grabbed her and held her to comfort her but also to make certain she couldn’t run off.

“Calm down now. Why are you stealing? And what are you taking?”

“I took money and jewelry from the residents in the dementia and Alzheimer’s wings. Most of them don’t even know their stuff is gone. Some of them forget what they have from day to day. It’s easy. It never gets reported, or if it does, no one believes what they say.” Her eyes filled with tears and she began sobbing. “Barbara’s dead? Oh, God, no.”

“There’s nothing you can do to help her, but you’re going to have to return all the things you’ve taken, and you’ll have to go to the police.” Kaitlin was confused. What could possibly make this usually responsible young woman do such a thing? “But why?”

“There’s a lot more to this, but I don’t know what all is going on. All I know is that it’s getting dangerous for us. We’re going to go away, get new identities, hide out and never come back here.”

“We? What ‘we’ are you talking about?”

“Hiram and me. We’ve been seeing each other for a few months now. Things are getting hot up there at ARC, and Hiram and I know it. Ask your friend, that investigator, about it. Hiram and I are going to get married and leave the country before something bad happens.” This young girl and Hiram, the drunken ersatz welder? Kaitlin couldn’t believe it, but she tried to hide her shock from Bethany.

“Something bad has already happened, and you’re part of it,” Kaitlin said. Maybe it was time to try to scare some sense into her.

Before she could say more, the beat-up Camaro turned the corner and pulled up to the curb. Kaitlin expected to see Hiram in the driver’s seat, but instead a young woman with blonde hair was driving the car.

“My friend, Emma. I’m staying with her. My parents know I’m not at my grandparents’ house, but they’re telling everyone that’s where I went. I didn’t tell them much about what’s happening at ARC, and they don’t know about Hiram, but they know I’m scared. Hiram promised to come get me as soon as he puts some money together. He said he had one last job to do before he could go. I’m sorry I can’t help you. I’ve done all I can.”

She bolted away before Kaitlin could stop her and jumped into the car. It sped down the lane and took an abrupt right onto the highway out of town.

* * *

“My men are following the Camaro. It’s heading east out of town.” Jim turned his head toward Kaitlin, but she gave no reply. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“I’m terribly worried about Bethany. She’s in this over her head, and she’s going to get hurt,” she said. She couldn’t get the idea of Hiram and Bethany out of her mind.

He pulled the police cruiser into the restaurant parking lot and walked around to open her door. Kaitlin continued to sit in the car while Jim stood at the open car door.

“Kaitlin?”

“I’m really not hungry. I want to go home.”

“Whatever madam wants,” he said.

She looked at his face lit by the parking lot lights to see if he was being sarcastic and decided he wasn’t.

They rode back to her house in silence.

“You’d better come in,” Kaitlin said when they pulled into the drive.

“That’s not necessary. We can talk tomorrow if you like.”

She reached into her backpack and pulled out the music box. “We should talk about what Bethany told me. She also gave me this.”

He fiddled with the key, turning it back and forth. “It doesn’t work.”

She pulled him through the front door and into the kitchen. “I thought for sure you could fix it.”

She scrounged around in her kitchen “everything” drawer and extracted a screwdriver. Jim sat down at the counter and removed the screws from the bottom of the wooden box.

“No wonder it doesn’t work. The mechanism is gone, replaced by all these sheets of paper.” He handed them to her.

She unfolded the sheets of paper.

“They’re blank.” The disappointment was obvious in her voice. She took a counter stool beside Jim and told him in detail about Bethany’s and her conversation.

“There’s something I want to ask you about ARC. Bethany said you knew something of what was going on there. My bet is that you know a lot of what is going on at ARC, but you haven’t told me anything. I’d like to know what I’ve stepped into being an ombudsman. But more importantly, I have friends there, and I’d like to know if they’re in any danger.”

For a moment she thought he was going to evade her question. He moved around on the stool, then got up and began pacing around her kitchen. He returned to the stool, cleared his throat and spoke. She found his words carefully chosen.

“It’s an ongoing investigation that is taking a turn none of us suspected. If we had enough information, we’d make a move. Right now, that’s all I can say.”

“With that vague explanation, I’m still expected to go on with my volunteer work?”

“You could quit, if you want, you know. The authorities are keeping a close eye on the facility, so I doubt you’re in much danger now.”

“Let’s see.” She poked a finger into her cheek as if trying to figure out a difficult puzzle, and her voice took on an edge. “Being bopped on the head, having my office broken into, letters stolen then planted on me and almost getting run over by a car are not dangerous? And what about Leda and Barbara? They’re dead! And that’s not dangerous for anyone?”

She was certain her neighbors could hear her shouting through the open windows, but she didn’t care. She liked this man, at least, she thought she did. Now she wasn’t so sure. It seemed to her his job was getting in the way of his humanity and compassion.

“Barbara and Leda may well have been involved in criminal activities associated with ARC.”

“So their being dead is okay because they were criminals anyway? I don’t think so.”

“Look, this case is big, so big the Feds…” She didn’t let him finish.

“Oh, I get it. If the case were just local or regional, you’d be worried about the safety of those people, but since it’s federal, well then, the safety of the ARC residents and the deaths of a few criminals don’t worry you.”

She could tell by the clenching and unclenching of his jaw and the way he was slapping the screwdriver in the palm of his hand that he was getting upset. Clearly he didn’t expect the conversation to go in this direction or for her to find his stance so offensive.

“You make me sound like I don’t care. I’m doing my job here the best way I can.”

“Ah, well, good then. I guess almost dinner tonight was you doing your job. In that case, thank you so much for the lovely evening. I’m sorry my concern for my friends’ safety got in the way of my appetite.”

She shoved at his back, and he caught his balance by standing up. They both looked surprised she was able to exert enough force to move him off the stool. Once he was on his feet, she used the momentum to propel him through the kitchen and living room and toward the front door.

“About this evening…” He turned in the open doorway toward her and held out a hand in a gesture of helplessness or frustration. If it were meant to placate her, it wasn’t working. She grabbed her backpack off the couch, scrounged around for her wallet, and extracted several bills. These she slapped in his open palm.

“Gas money.” She opened the front door, pushed him out onto the porch, and slammed the door in his face. Then she snapped off the front porch light.
Let him stew out there in the dark,
she thought. If he stumbled down the stairs and sued her, she didn’t care…much.

He must have stood on the porch for a long time in the dark, because it was several minutes before Kaitlin heard his footfall on the steps. Finally, his car engine came to life, and she heard him drive off.

* * *

A big case, he’d said. Now what could that be? She was lying in bed trying to sleep, but her mind was too active. She picked up the phone and dialed Mac’s cell.

“Shouldn’t you be getting some sleep?” he asked. She thought she heard sounds in the background. Like someone was with him.

“I’m all alone here with a lot of questions buzzing around in my brain. I thought I should share, and since Mary Jane isn’t here, not that I’d tell her anything now anyway, I thought of you.” There was silence on the line for a moment as if he’d covered the receiver.

“Go ahead.”

“Is someone there with you, Mac? If Mary Jane knew, she’d be livid.”

He ignored the question. “It’s one in the morning. What’s up that can’t wait until a decent hour?”

“Jim said it was some big case associated with ARC, so I was thinking. It couldn’t be tobacco and firearms. ARC isn’t much of a place for smoking or guns that I know of.”

“I…”

“Organized crime? Maybe.”

“I…”

“Not prostitution, surely not prostitution?”

“Oh, surely not…”

Images of geriatric ladies in frothy negligees danced in Kaitlin’s head. Unlikely. Drugs? She thought of Lily and her 81 milligram aspirin, and she knew she was on the right track. So she hung up on Mac, delighted with the conclusions the two of them had arrived at in their midnight talk.
What a great team they could be.

She smiled into the darkness of her bedroom.
Gotcha, Jim Wallace, and in more ways than you know.
She had held back when she told him about Bethany’s and her conversation. She hadn’t revealed Bethany’s relationship with Hiram. Maybe she didn’t believe it herself then, but once she saw the blank papers in the music box, she knew.

Frederica Hatfield’s secret was in that music box. Whatever it was, she placed it there hoping to slip it to Leda. She would never have stuffed blank papers in there. No, the music box contained something important, something that someone removed. Bethany held back on her, too. She had to have told Hiram about the music box, and he replaced the papers with blank sheets without letting Bethany know he did it. If she knew he tampered with the contents, she wouldn’t have bothered giving it to me. Kaitlin had to find Hiram, and she had a plan.

* * *

Early the next morning Kaitlin wanted to expedite her strategy to meet Hiram as soon as possible. She was going over the intricacies of it and about to make the critical phone call when Mary Jane called up the stairs.

“Your mother’s here.”

Kaitlin slipped on a robe and dashed down the stairs. Mary Jane answered the door. Kaitlin watched the two women embrace warmly. When did these two establish such a friendly relationship, she wondered?

“It’s ten in the morning and you’re not up yet?” asked Arlene. Her arm was still around Mary Jane’s shoulder.

Kaitlin noted that her mother, as usual, was dressed as if she were attending a gallery opening rather than visiting her daughter. She wore a champagne-colored silk suit, matching shoes and bag. An abstract patterned coral and teal scarf draped around her neck. The diamonds on her hands glittered in the morning light as she played with the tie in the scarf.
That’s got to be expensive
, Kaitlin thought and again thanked the gods for Harold, her mother’s husband and his wide open bank account.