CELEBRITY STATUS (The Kate Huntington mystery series #4) (10 page)

            They heard the slamming of the side door of the van followed by little feet pounding up onto the porch.

            “Guess I missed my opportunity,” Skip said, dropping a kiss on the top of his wife’s head as he walked by her, headed for the caffeine.

            “Afraid so. But we’ll make another one soon, I’m sure.” Kate grinned at him. He returned the grin as the kids came tumbling into the room, chattering at top volume about the fun they’d had at the park.

            While Skip ate a late breakfast, the kids, made hungry by fresh air and exercise, had an early lunch. “Actually, darlin’,” he said to Kate, who had joined them at the table, “I may need to take another nap this afternoon, and I don’t mean that the way I normally would. I have a surveillance job this evening and I need to be alert.”

            “On a Saturday night?” Kate said, not looking happy. “Couldn’t you assign it to somebody else?”

            “I’m afraid we’re stretched a bit thin right now.” Skip grimaced. “We’ve been getting a lot of new cases lately. Good word-of-mouth, it seems, is starting to get around town.”

            “Well, that’s called good trouble,” Kate said with a smile. “I’m not surprised you guys are getting so popular.”

            “Yeah, but the work’s coming in a bit faster than we can hire more people, or get them trained. Mac’s now full-time, and I’ve finally convinced Ben to train as an investigator, but it’s still not quite enough hands on deck at the moment. So I’m doing this job tonight myself, just a surveillance gig.” He wasn’t about to tell Kate any of the worrisome details. “I’ve got to leave about five, to find a good spot to watch from, should be home by ten though.”

            Kate nodded. “I’ll hold down the fort, sweetheart, but tomorrow is definitely going to be your day of rest.”

* * *

            Skip made a second slow circle around Elise Thomas’s block, trying to make it seem like he was looking for a particular house number, so nobody would call the police to report a suspicious character casing the neighborhood. He decided the clump of trees between her house and her neighbor’s would be the best spot to have a good view of the back door and also most of the approach to the front of the house. He would have to make a circuit around to the other side periodically to make sure no one was sneaking onto the property from that direction.

            He parked three blocks over and called Elise. “Hi. Skip Canfield. I’ve found a good spot to watch the house from, but it’s on the boundary line with your neighbor to the left. Do you mind if I knock on their door and tell them what’s going on? I don’t want them to see me out there lurking around and think I’m a prowler.”

            Elise hesitated a moment and then agreed. “Try not to give them too many details if you can help it, though. I’m kind of a private person, don’t really like my neighbors knowing too much of my business.”

            “I can relate. I’ll be as vague as I can. Give me about half an hour, then you and the kids can go.”

            “Okay, we usually get home about nine-thirty.”

            “See ya then and, hopefully, I will have nabbed your bad guy for you.”

            Skip walked over to Elise’s block and up the sidewalk to her neighbor’s front door. He was raising his hand to knock when the door opened and a teenaged boy came barreling out. Skip just got a quick impression of pimply pale face under greasy dark hair, baggy tee shirt and drooping jeans as the kid shoved past him. A man in his late forties came into the doorway. “By eleven, Jack, or you won’t be going out next weekend at all,” he yelled after the kid. The boy ignored him and turned left, toward the main drag two blocks away.

            “Kids today,” the man said, shaking his head. “They’ll make you old before your time.”

            “Mine are still preschoolers,” Skip said.

            “Enjoy them while they’re cute, sir, cause that’s what they morph into eventually. What can I do for you?”

            Skip introduced himself, showing the man his private investigator’s license, then said, “Your neighbor, Elise Thomas, thinks you all might have a prowler. She’s hired me to watch her house for a few nights and see if I can catch him.”

            “Hmm, I haven’t seen any strangers in the neighborhood lately, but I don’t blame Elise a bit. A woman living alone with her kids. I’d be nervous in her shoes if I thought someone was hanging around.”

            Skip politely turned down the man’s offer to help, then pointed out the hiding place he had chosen. “I’ll be making a circuit around Elise’s house every fifteen minutes or so,” he said.  “Didn’t want you to see me out there and think
I
was the prowler.”

            “Gotcha. Happy hunting.”

            Elise and the kids left at six. By eight, Skip, despite the catnap he’d gotten in that afternoon, was wishing he’d brought a thermos of coffee. By eight-thirty, he was making his circuits of the house more often, mostly to keep himself alert. By nine-fifteen he was resigning himself to the idea that he might have to spend another Saturday night doing this. When Elise got home he was going to suggest she get the locks changed, and invest in an alarm system to keep her and her kids safe between now and then.

            At nine-thirty-five he was on the far side of the house when he heard car doors slamming in the driveway. Elise and the kids were home. He decided to make one more circuit around back before going to the front door to talk to her.

            Skip came around the corner of the house and froze when the lights going on in the kitchen revealed the silhouette of a man standing outside the kitchen door. Skip expected the guy to run but he didn’t. Instead, he moved into the shadows beside the door.

            Skip eased slowly along the back of the house, trying to decide if he should draw his gun sooner instead of later. Perhaps better to keep his hands free until he saw what he was up against. He eased a little closer.

            The man had his back to Skip and was peering around the edge of the window in the door into Elise’s kitchen.

            When Skip was close enough to reach out and touch the guy, he heard the sound of a key slipping into a lock. He lunged for where the door knob should be and clamped down on a skinny wrist with his right hand. The guy swung toward him and the light from the window glinted on metal. Skip’s left hand was up in the air in an instant, grabbing the guy’s other wrist.

            He was staring into the face of the pimply kid from next door.

            Skip had the kid face down on the ground, both arms twisted up behind his back in the next second. He was wishing he’d thought to bring handcuffs when he saw what was lying next to his right knee. He wasn’t about to use the coil of rope to restrain the kid, however. It was evidence.

            The kitchen door opened and Elise let out a stifled scream.

            “Call the police,” Skip said. “Then find me something to tie this guy up.”

            “Jack?” Elise said, recognizing the side of the kid’s face that wasn’t mashed against the ground. “You can let him up, Skip. He lives next door. My babysitter is his girlfriend.”

            “That would explain how he got his hands on a key,” Skip said, without moving. “He had a knife and a rope this time. Looks like he was going to take a lot more than jewelry.”

            Elise blanched. She dug a ball of heavy twine out of her junk drawer and brought it to Skip, then picked up her kitchen phone to dial 911.

            At eleven, Skip called Kate from his truck, on the way to the police station. He told her the case had gotten a bit more complicated than expected, but all was under control and she shouldn’t wait up.

            At a little before one in the morning, after signing yet another official statement, he was about to part company with the detective handling the case. “Would you make sure my name stays out of this as much as possible,” he said. “My wife’s a worry wart. If she finds out I go around tackling knife-wielding rapists, I’ll be flippin’ hamburgers for a living.”

            The detective nodded. “Been there, done that. Now I’m divorced.”

            “Not an option,” Skip muttered under his breath, as he headed out the door of the police station, sketching a little wave in the detective’s direction.

            At home, Skip once again slipped into the bedroom, sat down gently on the side of the bed and nudged his shoes off. Putting his cell phone, set on vibrate, on the nightstand, he reached over and set his alarm clock for eight to go to church with his family. Skip sat for a moment, debating whether to just lie down or to get undressed first.

            He decided he really didn’t want to sleep in his clothes another night. Getting up to quietly undress, he thought about the night’s work. He was dog tired, but it was a good tired. This case had been a lot more satisfying than all the mess lately with Cherise, even though they would bill Elise Thomas for a fraction of what they were making on the Martin account.

            Easing between the sheets, Skip let out a small sigh and drifted off.

            His wife waited until his breathing had slowed into the rhythm of sound sleep, then she padded quietly around the bed and turned off his alarm.

* * *

            Kate was late for church. The kids had been particularly cranky and resistant to going, but she wasn’t about to have them running around the house, disturbing their father. If anyone had earned the right to sleep in this morning, it was her husband.

            She hastily parked the minivan, then hustled the kids to their Sunday school rooms. She just barely noticed the people who were climbing out of several cars and vans, assuming they were other latecomers, as she raced across the breezeway to the church itself.

            She slipped into the sanctuary from the vestibule just as the processional hymn was ending. Kate found a spot at the end of a pew, Mary Peters smiling at her and sliding over to make room.

            “The Lord be with you,” Elaine Jackson’s powerful voice echoed off the walls of the sanctuary.

            “And also with you,” the congregation dutifully responded.

            Elaine, the fifty-something, black rector, looked quite imposing in her white robe and bright green chasuble. “Let us pray,” she said.

            Kate had trouble staying awake as the prayers and the readings droned on. She hadn’t slept well the last two nights, waiting for Skip to come home. But when it came time for the Prayers of the People, she perked up. She offered her own silent prayer of thanksgiving that her husband was safe.

            She was drifting off again when Mary nudged her. Sym Peters, Mary’s husband and the head usher, was standing beside Kate indicating it was time for her row to go up to the altar for communion.

            She knelt at the altar rail. Elaine firmly pressed a paper-thin host into her outstretched hands. “Kate, the body of Christ, the bread of heaven,” the priest said.

            Kate mouthed, “Amen,” thinking again how nice it was that Elaine said each person’s name as she gave them the host. The chalice appeared in front of her and she dipped the host halfway in the wine. “The blood of Christ, the cup of salvation,” the chalice bearer droned.

            “Amen,” Kate said under her breath and put the wine-soaked host in her mouth. She pushed up from the altar rail to move quietly back to her seat, head down, contemplating the blessings in her life.

            There was a flash of light. Then a voice called out, “Mrs. Canfield, look this way.” She looked up in confusion. Standing in the open double doors between the church’s vestibule and the sanctuary were a half dozen men and women, some holding cameras.

            Another flash of light captured Kate’s confused face.

            “Get out of God’s house!” Elaine’s voice boomed from behind her.

            The ushers formed a line and moved past Kate. They were all middle-aged or elderly men, but with righteous indignation fueling them, they started shoving the reporters and photographers out of the vestibule and through the outer doors.

            Kate stood frozen in the aisle of the church, trying to process what was happening.

            A voice called out. “Mrs. Canfield, did you know about Cherise Martin?”

            A feeling of dread was spreading from the pit of Kate’s stomach outward. She raced down the aisle after the ushers’ receding backs. “My kids,” she cried out to Sym. He took her elbow, then extending the other arm like the football quarterback he had been many decades before, he rammed through the crowd of yelling reporters, heading for the building that housed the Sunday school classrooms. Another usher followed in their wake, his arms spread to hold back the swarm. The remaining two ushers stood guard at the sanctuary doors.

            A voice cut through the clamor. “ Are you going to divorce him?” Another voice yelled, “How are the children coping?”

            Kate snatched Edie from her Sunday school room with no explanation for her startled teacher. Dragging the child by the hand, she hurried down the hall to the two-year-olds’ room, where Billy was happily playing with blocks. His face brightened when he saw his mother. “Look, Mommy,” he said, pointing to his lopsided tower.

            “It’s nice, Billy, but we have to go now. We have to go home to Daddy.”

            Responding to the urgency in Kate’s voice, Billy said, “Daddy sick?”

            “No, sweetheart,” Kate said, struggling to keep her voice calm. “But we have to go, now!”

            Sym and the other usher, Bill Jacobs, did the best they could to ward off the paparazzi as Kate hustled her children out to the van and strapped them hastily into their seats.

            As she slammed the side door and turned to open the driver’s door, a camera flashed in her face. She jumped into the driver’s seat and squealed out of the church parking lot, reporters and photographers scattering. She thought maybe she had clipped a couple of them with her fender. She smiled grimly.