CELEBRITY STATUS (The Kate Huntington mystery series #4) (29 page)

            Kate looked over at him in the gathering dusk. “Skip Canfield,” she said with mock sternness, “I have something to say to you and I don’t want any back talk.”

            “Uh oh, what’d I do now?”

            “I have gotten the better end of this deal, and don’t you ever forget it.”

            He grinned at her. “My daddy used to say that a good business deal was when both parties believed they had gotten the better deal.”

            Kate’s heart did a funny little flip at the sight of that grin.

            Skip sighed again. “What could be better than sitting on a porch in the clean mountain air, sharing a sunset with the woman you love?”

            Kate waited a couple minutes as the last of the colors drained from the darkening sky. “Sharing a big feather bed with her, maybe,” she finally answered him.

            Skip stood and pulled her to her feet. Grinning down at her, he said, “Yup. That could be better.”

* * *

            Rose called Kate’s cell phone at noon on Sunday. “Coast is clear. You can come home,” she said. There was a chuckle in her voice.

            “What’s going on?” Kate asked.

            “Media did the right thing for a change. The mainstream media that is. Two TV stations were there Friday, covering your departure. Only their spin was how horrible it is that the tabloid press are harassing an everyday family. Just ’cause the husband and father happened to cross paths with a celebrity in the line of his work.”

            Fortunately there had been no mention of Mac brandishing his pistol by Channel 2, and Channel 13 had stated only that “armed guards were necessary to keep the overzealous tabloid media at bay.” The third major station in Baltimore, Channel 11, had picked up the story on Saturday, showing footage of the Canfield’s empty house, the front walk strewn with flowers and notes offering support.

            “It’s been a slow news weekend, so they’ve repeated the story several times,” Rose continued. “Went by your house this morning and gathered up the notes. Want me to open them?”

            “Yeah, do that.” Kate heard paper rustling for a couple minutes as Rose opened, skimmed and stacked the letters.

            “Almost thirty of them, all sympathetic, except one lady who calls Skip an evil man and encourages you to divorce him.”

            “Trash that one.”

            “Already did,” Rose said.

            Kate thanked her, then told Skip what had happened. They packed up their family and went home.

* * *

            Rose was quite satisfied with how her weekend had gone.

            She had tripled the guards at the farm, fearing the paparazzi would descend there, even though the article on Friday hadn’t mentioned the address. She’d sent Ben to supervise the men, while Skip and Kate were out of town. But all had been quiet in Howard County. If the reporter who’d written the lovers’ quarrel article was hanging around, he was staying well out of sight. And he was apparently keeping the knowledge of Cherise’s address to himself.

            On Saturday, Rose had spent some quality time with her man. They’d had a long talk that morning, which was saying something, since neither of them was really what you’d call a talker. At noon, they had headed for Towson Town Center to grab some lunch, and then check out jewelry stores.

            As she drove to Columbia early Monday afternoon, Rose turned her left hand on the wheel to admire the small ruby–her birth stone–surrounded by tiny diamonds.

            They had decided not to tell anyone, just see how long it took for people to notice the ring. So far no one had. She wasn’t surprised by Dolph’s obliviousness this morning. She would have been by Skip’s, if he weren’t still recuperating from the emotional wringer he had been through the last few days.

            She grinned. Once he did notice, she was really going to enjoy ribbing him about how long it took the big bad detective to detect that his partner was engaged.

            Rose had spent the morning checking out local security companies. She’d found two possibilities and had an appointment with the owner of the most promising one for four this afternoon, at Cherise’s farm. Tom McPherson had said he would need to see the property before he could give her a detailed proposal and firm price.

            In the meantime, Rose was headed to Columbia to interview Johnny Troop.

            Troop lived in an apartment building overlooking Lake Kittamaqundi, in the center of the planned city in Howard County. Rose discovered why Troop had turned down their offers of a bodyguard. The building had state-of-the-art security. The staff had stopped just short of a full body pat-down.

            She was in the middle of a verbal tussle with the concierge over whether or not she would be allowed to retain her handgun while in the building, when a girl-next-door type stepped off an elevator and approached the desk. “It’s okay, Frank. I’ll take our guest up now,” the wholesome-looking young woman said to the concierge.

            “Yes, ma’am,” the man said, his tone now deferential.

            The woman turned to Rose and held out her hand. “Sharon Millington,” she introduced herself. “I’m Johnny’s fiancée.”

            Rose took the proffered hand. It was slender, cool and dry. “Rose Hernandez.”

            They made small talk, awkwardly, in the elevator as it rose smoothly to the tenth floor. Millington led the way into a surprisingly modest-looking apartment.

            Rose had only met Johnny Troop once before, at the concert at Merriweather. Today he seemed much smaller and less impressive than he had on stage. He was about five-seven, slender and pale, his straight dark hair tied back in a ponytail. He looked the part of the poet/songwriter.

            His fiancée, a brunette with big brown cow eyes, was not a particularly large woman, but she had an inch on him and probably outweighed him by twenty pounds or so.

           
No wonder he sits on a stool while performing
, Rose thought, as Millington introduced her. Troop just nodded.

            Once they were all seated on the plain beige sofa and brown leather recliner in the living room, Rose was at a bit of a loss as to where to start. She hadn’t anticipated interviewing Troop in front of his fiancée.

            Start at the beginning, with the basics. “Private Investigating 101" Skip had called it when Rose was first starting her training.

            “As you know, Mr. Troop, Cherise Martin has been getting weird, and sometimes threatening, anonymous notes for some time. My partner and I have not only been providing bodyguard services for her, we’ve also been investigating the source of those notes.”

            “I thought you’d figured out who was doing it and scared him off?” Troop said, opening his mouth for the first time.

            “We had and did. But there have been some new notes recently. Cherise didn’t tell you about them?”

            “Johnny communicates as little as possible with Cherise, outside of their work together.” The fiancée’s tone was cool.

            “We’re pretty sure the notes up through the box with the dog head in it were sent by one of Cherise’s ex-boyfriends.”

            Troop’s face had gone even paler at the mention of the decapitated dog. Millington showed no reaction.

            “And Thompson has taken off,” Rose said. “But these recent notes sound very different from the previous ones, so we’re working under the assumption that they’re being sent by someone else.”

            “And this has what to do with us, Ms. Hernandez?” Sharon Millington asked. Rose was beginning to think that her looks were deceiving. The sweet girl next door, she was not.

            “Well, that’s what I’m here to find out,” Rose said. Sharon bristled. Troop looked confused.

           
Damn!
Rose thought, wishing she had asked Skip to come with her. She knew her own strengths and weaknesses, and tact was not on the list of the former.

            “Please don’t take this the wrong way, Mr. Troop. We have to investigate all possibilities,” she said.

            “Cut to the chase, Ms. Hernandez,” his fiancée said.

            “There are a couple of indicators that the new notes could be coming from you, Mr. Troop. Are they?”

            Johnny suddenly threw up his arms and jumped up out of the recliner. “That woman is such a pain in the arse,” he said. He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and started pacing back and forth.

            Rose was not too comfortable sitting while he was standing, but she didn’t see how she could politely get up, not without making the situation more confrontational.

            “And these indicators are?” Millington’s tone was icy.

            “The note-sender is now referring to Cherise as ‘my love,’ as Mr. Troop did during their fake romance.” Rose was watching Troop’s expression and body language as he paced around the room.

            “You said indicators, plural,” Millington said.

            “Lots of things point to the probability that this guy knows Cherise. It’s not just some random fan, and the latest note implied she should be able to figure out who he is.”

            “You keep saying he, Ms. Hernandez,” Millington said. “Have you eliminated the possibility that the note sender could be a woman? Personally, I think that Sarah what’s-her-name’s a bit creepy.”

            “What makes you think it could be Sarah?” Rose asked.

            “She gives Cherise little adoring looks all the time. Maybe she’s a closet lesbian who’s fallen in love with her boss.”

            “Or maybe she’s just a bit star-struck,” Rose said. But she had to admit the woman had a point. They hadn’t actually looked at Sarah all that closely, other than the routine background check they had done on all of Cherise’s employees. They’d found no police record, not even a traffic ticket. Googling her name had produced no hits that had anything to do with this particular Sarah Hamilton. The woman seemed to have led a very unexciting life.

            “Cherise is setting me up,” Johnny Troop abruptly announced, as he marched back over to perch on the edge of the recliner. “That bitch is setting me up.”

            Rose stared at him. “In what way, Mr. Troop?”

            “She told you she thinks it’s me, didn’t she? She’s using these damn notes to screw with me, as payback.”

            “Why would she do that?” Rose asked.

            “Because the last few months, when we were supposed to be play-acting that we were lovers, she was making it quite clear to me, and to Sharon–”

            “
Especially
to me,” Millington said with venom in her voice. “Cherise wanted the fake romance to be a real one, Ms. Hernandez.”

            “I told Jim Bolton I was done pretending to be her boyfriend,” Troop said. “She was all over me every time we went anywhere.”

            “Which explains why Bolton jumped on the story about Cherise and my partner as an excuse to announce that you two had broken up.”

            Troop nodded.

            “Do you think she’d really fallen for you?” Rose asked. “Or did she just want the forbidden fruit?”

            “More likely the latter,” Troop said. “Cherise has trouble believing that any man can resist her charms. I think she saw me as a challenge. The more I didn’t want her, the more she had to have me.”

            Rose resisted the temptation to nod and agree with his assessment. Cherise, after all, was their client. “Did she ever date married men?” Cherise had claimed she didn’t but Rose wasn’t sure she trusted that. “Maybe there’s a jealous wife out there who’s trying to mess with Cherise’s head?”

            Troop shook his head. “No, her old man ran around on her mother, and she hated him for it. I think that’s why she’s so screwed up when it comes to men. But she has a strict rule. No married men.”

            Standing up, Rose said, “Thank you for your time, folks, and congratulations on finally being able to be officially engaged.”

            “This isn’t for public consumption yet,” Sharon Millington said, as she rose from her seat, “but Johnny and I were married in Bermuda two weeks ago.”

            “Does Cherise know that?” Rose asked.

            “No, but you may feel free to tell her.” For the first time, Sharon Millington-Troop smiled. It was not a nice smile.

            As Rose headed toward Cherise’s farm, she mentally scratched Johnny Troop off her suspect list, and added Sarah. And Troop’s new wife for good measure. That malicious smile had made the hair stand up on the back of Rose’s neck.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

            Harry Bailey was more than happy to show Tom McPherson and Rose around the farm. He was obviously proud of what they had accomplished in the four years Cherise had owned the property. “This was all overgrown with bushes and weeds when Ms. Martin bought the place,” he said, gesturing across the rolling hills of green grass. “Now we got six acres in pasture, a paddock, a riding ring. The barn’s been refurbished. We grow hay, oats and corn on the rest of the land. I mix our sweet feed myself. Ms. Martin likes it that everything the horses eat is grown here. Says she likes to be in complete control of their diet.”

            “Seems like a lot of trouble and expense for just four horses,” McPherson said.

            Bailey shrugged. “She’s got the bucks, and she pays well for Bobby’s and my time.”

            “Is there enough to do, to keep both of you busy?” McPherson asked.

            “Sure is. Bobby also does most of the maintenance on the buildings. He’s pretty handy. He helps me with the crops some too. I’m only part-time. Retired actually. Worked at Beth Steel for forty years. I was gettin’ bored and cranky hangin’ ’round the house all the time. The wife tossed me out one day, sayin’, ‘Don’t come back til you’ve got a part-time job.’” Bailey chuckled.