Authors: Sarah Biglow
Forgive and Forget: (A Geeks and Things Cozy Mystery Novella #2) (Geeks and Things Cozy Mysteries) (2 page)
The car ride was silent as Kalina and Chris made the short journey to the hospital. Chris had the air blasting and, despite the heat outside, her arms broke in goose bumps. She tried to read his expression in the rearview mirror but he wouldn’t meet her gaze.
“Chris, don’t be mad at me. I swear I didn’t mean to stumble on a dead man on my morning run. And I promise I’ll stay out of the way.”
He didn’t respond at first. His hands tightened around the steering wheel and his knuckles turned pale. “I’m not mad at you, Kal. I just… After what happened with Dan Cahill I thought… I thought things would go back to normal. We don’t have people getting murdered in this town.”
She reached over and pressed her hand reassuringly against his shoulder. “I know.”
Chris had taken Captain Cahill’s vendetta harder than most. She couldn’t really blame him. His mentor had fallen hard from grace. It was a tiny consolation that Chris had managed to broker a plea deal for the real culprits behind Alice Beech’s murder and Samuel Gordon’s false conviction. Andrew Paxton and his father would be spending the next decade behind bars. Before either of them could say anything more, her phone buzzed and the store’s number flashed on the screen.
“Sorry, I need to take this,” she said and hit ‘Accept’. “Hello, this is Kalina, how can I help you?”
“Aunt K., it’s me,” AJ said on the other end of the line. “I came by the shop but you aren’t here. And you hung up earlier.”
Kalina bit the inside of her lip. She’d forgotten she’d given him a key in case of emergencies. She should have expected his end-of-summer restlessness to result in an earlier-than-promised visit. “I know. Something came up. I’m not sure when I’ll be back to the shop.”
“I can handle things if you want.”
“That’s sweet, but no. You aren’t old enough and you don’t actually work at the shop. Just close up and lock the front door for now, okay? People can deal with waiting for their comics a little longer today.”
“Okay. Oh, there’s some sort of delivery scheduled for this afternoon. I checked the calendar. What should I do about that?”
Kalina opened her Calendar app and saw she was expecting a delivery of new Valiant Comics. “Damn. I’ll handle it.”
“What’s going on? You sounded kind of freaked out earlier.”
The hospital loomed ahead of them. “I’ll fill you in later. I have to go.”
Chris eased into the parking lot and pulled into a spot near the doors to the emergency room without another word. Kalina shoved her phone back into her pocket and climbed out of the passenger seat. She didn’t see the ambulance that had transported Nadine but she assumed it had beaten them there. Chris turned to look at her and his expression softened for a moment.
“I’ll make dinner up to you,” he said and kissed her cheek.
“Don’t even worry about it. Just focus on your job. We have plenty of time for dinner dates.”
She resisted the urge to take his hand as they walked into the hospital side by side. True to her word, she stayed quiet as he asked the young man at the registration desk where to find Nadine. Chris finally ushered Kalina out of the waiting room and back to a small, curtained-off area. Nadine lay on a bed with an IV already hooked up at the crook of her elbow. She looked less frantic, her eyelids drooping heavily. The paramedics had at least tried to clean the blood off her hands.
“Miss Larrabee, I’m Detective Harper. I’m with the police. Do you remember meeting me at your house?”
Nadine nodded her head but didn’t speak. Kalina moved to sit beside her old friend and pressed her hand gently against Nadine’s blanket-covered knee. Just enough to let the woman know she wasn’t alone.
“Do you mind if I ask you a few questions about what happened?”
Nadine’s gaze flickered in Kalina’s direction and tears glistened. Kalina gave the woman a smile. “I’ll be right here. Detective Harper just wants to help.”
Nadine wet her lips and sat up a little straighter. “Okay.” Her voice cracked on the last syllable.
Chris retrieved a small pad and pen from his pocket and sat on a stool on the other side of the bed. Kalina felt Nadine tense up beneath the blanket. She had to fight to keep from interfering. She knew Chris was only doing his job by questioning Nadine.
“Can you tell me what happened to your father?”
“I… I found him on the driveway this morning.”
“So the blood on your hands was from checking on him?”
“Y-yes.”
“Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt your father?”
“No. I hadn’t been in his life until recently. We had a falling out after my mother…”
Kalina bit her tongue—wincing at the pain—to keep from interjecting to ask about Mrs. Larrabee. Fresh tears rolled down Nadine’s cheeks as Chris simply nodded in understanding.
“So you didn’t hear anything at all last night?”
“I don’t remember… It’s all kind of a blur. Please, I’m tired. I’d like to rest now.”
On cue, a nurse clad in pale purple scrubs appeared, chart and a plastic container of pills in hand. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to come back later if you have more questions. The doctor has ordered that Ms. Larrabee be sedated.”
Nadine’s eyes grew to the size of quarters and she tried to wiggle away from the nurse as she approached. “No. I don’t want them. Get away from me!”
Chris had already moved to get out of the way of the medical staff and he grabbed Kalina by the wrist, pulling her free as more staff in scrubs flooded the tiny area. They held Nadine down until someone got the medication into her. Kalina’s pulse quickened as she watched how the girl she’d known for years was manhandled into submission. There were missing puzzle pieces in all of this and she was going to find out exactly what had happened.
With Nadine safely unconscious—at least for now—Kalina and Chris headed back to the parking lot. The day continued to heat up and Kalina wiped the sweat from her neck before slipping back into the passenger seat.
“Can you drop me at the shop?” she asked.
“Yeah, sure. I need to head back to the scene to make sure it’s being processed.”
“You don’t trust Jimmy?”
Chris shrugged. “He’s still pretty green and I think it would make him feel better if I was there.”
The engine hummed to life and silence fell between them. Kalina wanted to ask Chris what he knew about Nadine’s past and her mother but she kept quiet. He would no doubt tell her to stay out of it and that this was a police matter. She still refused to believe that Nadine was capable of harming anyone, let alone her father. Chris took a sharp left onto Main Street and pulled up in front of Geeks and Things, the car still idling.
“I’ll call you if I can get away later.” He kissed her cheek again.
She returned the gesture, holding it a little longer than necessary. “Bye.”
Kalina shivered in the heat and watched Chris pull away and disappear down the street. She fished her keys from her pocket and jammed them into the lock on the shop’s front door. The sign read ‘Closed’ so at least AJ had done as she’d asked. She could do a little archive browsing from the comfort of the shop and be there for the new shipment before trying to find out what she could about the crime scene. She flipped the light switch by the front door and waited for the energy-efficient bulbs to brighten the storefront. Turning the sign to ‘Open’, Kalina headed for the small bathroom and a waiting change of clothes. She would have loved a shower but there was too much to do.
Slicking her damp hair back into a tiny, messy bun, she took up residence behind the front counter and sent AJ a text letting him know the shop was back open. Almost immediately, her phone flashed with a request to FaceTime. She tapped the ‘Accept’ button and waited for AJ’s face to fill the screen.
“Hi, Aunt K.,” he said.
“Hey. Is there something specific we need to talk about?”
“Not really. I just wanted to check in.”
“Things are fine here. I should be around for the next few hours anyway.”
“I mean about whatever happened this morning.”
Kalina massaged the bridge of her nose. She loved her nephew and his sense of curiosity but she didn’t want him to go running off with wild theories about what happened, especially when she wasn’t even sure anyone else in town knew Mr. Larrabee was dead. “I know I said I’d fill you in but there aren’t enough pieces for me to make sense of it right now. When I know more for certain, I’ll tell you.”
“It happened again, didn’t it? Someone’s dead and there’s something weird about it.” AJ’s face lit up as he spoke. She thought she saw a hint of fear beneath the curious expression.
“I need you to keep this to yourself. The police are still investigating and we don’t need to panic people if there’s no reason. I’m sure everything will turn out fine.”
AJ bit his lip and looked away from the camera. “If you say so.”
“Look, you can still come by later if you want but I need to take care of things around here, okay?”
“Yeah. Okay.”
The screen went dark and the connection died. Kalina set the phone down on the counter and massaged the cramp out of her hand from holding the phone steady. She hated that she couldn’t give her nephew more reassurance that everything would be fine but that couldn’t be helped right now. Blowing out a breath, she booted up the tablet and connected to the internet. Her first stop, logically, was Facebook. She scanned through her list of friends but Nadine didn’t come up. Either she didn’t have an account—unlikely even for their generation—or Kalina had never gotten around to adding her as a friend. Even if she could find a friend in common, there was only so much information she could glean from the other woman’s profile and what she was searching for wasn’t likely to be available to casual viewers.
Closing down the app on her tablet, she brought up a browser window and logged into the library website, quickly navigating to the periodicals and the newspaper archives. If something happened right after high school, it would have made the paper. Ellesworth was small enough that most big events—good or bad—made the front page. Unlike the last time she’d needed to do a newspaper search, the editions she needed were all digital. Biting her lip in concentration, she selected ‘2000-2001’ editions and typed ‘Larrabee’ into the keyword search.
A front page article from July 2003 appeared at the top on the results page.
Local Family Rocked by Tragedy
By: Angeline Reagan, Contributing Writer
Independence Day is meant to be a celebration of our country’s birth as a democracy, but for one local family, the holiday will forever be remembered as a day of loss. Coming home from a late night celebration, Edwin and Michelle Larrabee were involved in a collision that left Edwin with several lacerations and a broken arm. Unfortunately, his wife is reported to have suffered severe head trauma and is presently in the intensive care unit at Ellesworth Hospital.
The couple’s nineteen-year-old daughter, Nadine, was reportedly asleep in the backseat and suffered only minor cuts and bruises. Officers on scene refused to release any information about whether Mr. Larrabee was intoxicated, however eyewitness reports note that he swerved to avoid an oncoming truck, which was driving in the wrong lane.
Kalina set her tablet down on the counter and sighed. How could she have missed something so huge? Her parents would have told her the news, right? She tried to remember if they’d let her know that Nadine’s mom had been in a serious accident but she came up blank. She hit the back button and found a second reference in the last edition for July. Her chest tightened and she fought back tears as she picked up the tablet again.
Obituaries
Michelle (Marcus) Larrabee
Michelle Larrabee of Ellesworth, Massachusetts passed away on July 28, 2000 from complications after a car accident left her in a critical condition. Michelle is survived by her husband, Edwin, and their nineteen-year-old daughter, Nadine.
Michelle was an active member in the town’s annual Solstice Fair committee and served on several church boards. She had a passion for poetry and spear-headed open mic nights at the local high school. Services celebrating Michelle’s life will be held at the local church on July 31, 2000.
“Oh, Nadine. I’m so sorry,” Kalina whispered to the empty store.
She felt like the worst friend in the world. She’d gone off to Boston to pursue her dreams in the big city and left her best friend behind. Nadine must have felt so alone losing her mother like that. Did she blame her father even if it wasn’t his fault? Could there actually be some motive Kalina hadn’t considered before?
No matter how much she didn’t want to admit that the girl she’d once known was capable of such a horrific act, she had to admit she didn’t really know the woman she’d found sitting on the front steps. She chewed on her lower lip, debating what to do next. There was probably very little chance that Chris had already obtained useful information but that didn’t mean she couldn’t snoop around a little later on.
The bell above the front door rang, signaling a customer, and Kalina quickly dried her eyes and closed down the browser. The tall, burly form of Andrew Chambers loomed on the other side of the counter. He slammed down a handful of comics.
“Good morning, Mr. Chambers.” She fixed him with a smile. “Can I help you with something?”
“You can stop selling this crap to my kid.”
Kalina glanced down at the pile of Daredevil comics and back to Mr. Chambers. “I’m sorry you don’t approve of your son’s reading habits but parenting him isn’t my job.”
“He’s supposed to be reading books. Not this … stuff.”
Kalina cleared her throat and leaned forward on her elbows. “Maybe you should be happy he’s reading anything at all rather than spending his time stuck online. You may not think he’s learning but he is. And if what he’s buying makes you uncomfortable, talk to him. But as long as he’s not buying issues that are too highly rated for his age group, I’m going to keep selling them.”
She spun around on her stool and straightened the hem of her blouse. “If that’s all, I have some inventory I need to get to. Have a nice day.”
Mr. Chambers grabbed the comics and with a scowl he stalked out, slamming the front door behind him. Kalina shook her head and let out a slow breath. “Jerk.”