ILL-TIMED ENTANGLEMENTS (The Kate Huntington mystery series #2) (29 page)

Skip was feeling a bit paranoid. Too many people were dying for no apparent reason. What if there was something other than Scotch in that bottle? He didn’t want to go from being an investigator of these murders to a suspect.

Now he was wishing he hadn’t touched the damn bottle. For a second, he contemplated wiping it clean. But if the Scotch had been tainted, he would be destroying evidence. Both his conscience and his police training wouldn’t let him do it.

He checked Mrs. Carroll’s pulse again. About the same.

Pocketing his handkerchief, he walked out of her office, leaving the door open. The salesman and the couple were gone. Skip could now hear an approaching siren. Making sure the outer door of the building was unlocked so the paramedics could get in, he headed back toward Betty’s building.

It was a good thing that Skip did not wait for the paramedics.

•   •   •

Rob hadn’t thought he could get any more frustrated, but now he was. Neither Carla Baxter nor the Murphys had answered their doorbell. They could be out somewhere, or huddled in their apartment unwilling to open the door. Or they might have moved out like so many of the other residents. The Villages was starting to look like a ghost town.

As he was walking back to Aunt Betty’s building, his cell phone rang. He checked caller ID. It was his admin assistant. “Hi, Fran,” he said into the phone.

“Sorry it’s taken us so long to get your info, Boss. It’s been kind of crazy around here lately.”

“I’m the one who should be apologizing for abandoning you and Beth to the craziness.”

“No problem, Boss. You need to be doing what you’re doing. As to whether you can take your aunt out of there and bring her home with you, the answer seems to be yes. In PA, the order to not leave the jurisdiction has no legal standing except if given by a judge. It took Beth so long to determine that because she was looking for a statute that doesn’t exist. But there’s a risk that by leaving you may force this detective’s hand to make an arrest.”

“Yeah, we’re afraid that’s what he might do,” Rob said.

He stopped walking, a vague plan forming in the back of his mind. He hated to ask his paralegal to work late on a Friday evening, and on a
pro bono
case at that, but this situation had become totally impossible. “Fran, ask Beth to look through Pennsylvania case law to see if there’s anything relevant to this situation.”

“What are you looking for?”

“I’m not sure. I guess relatively recent cases, as in the last couple decades, where there were acquittals because all the state had was motive, means was a weapon of convenience and opportunity involved evidence that the accused had been at the scene at some point in the past, but not necessarily at the time when the crime was committed.”

“You got something up your sleeve, Boss?”

“Maybe. I just might go to the Lancaster chief of police and threaten to sue his… you-know-what off, if my aunt isn’t allowed to leave the area, since his police department can’t guarantee her safety in her own home.”

Fran chuckled. “Boss, I’ve got teenaged sons. Trust me, I’ve heard the word
ass
before.”

Rob chuckled in return. “Knee-jerk reaction at this point. Aunt Betty’s been snapping ‘Robert, watch your language’ at me every time I let even a damn or a hell slip out.”

Rob thanked Fran, asking her to pass along his gratitude to Beth as well, then disconnected.

Staring across the road, eyes out of focus, he was contemplating his game plan, when he was suddenly slammed from the side. As he flew sideways, the tires of a car careening up onto the sidewalk came within inches of the soles of his shoes.

Whoever had tackled him was up off of him again in a flash. He heard a roaring engine, screeching tires and cursing. Then Skip Canfield was standing over him offering him a hand up.

“What the hell just happened?” Rob asked, as the other man pulled him to his feet.

“I came around the corner and saw a car coming right for you,” Skip said. “Driver had a cap on, pulled down to hide his face. Or her face. Could’ve been a woman. Only caught the first letter and one of the digits of the license plate.”

“Could’ve just been a resident whose driving isn’t what it used to be,” Rob said, as he brushed himself off.

Skip gave him a skeptical look. “Then why’d he take off instead of stopping to make sure you weren’t hurt? Nope, looked like it was intentional to me.”

“You see anything else?”

“Big dark car. Looked like an older model. Olds or a Buick, maybe.”

“The guy, or gal, could be out of it enough that they didn’t even realize they’d almost hit somebody,” Rob said.

Skip shrugged again. “It happened fast, but that wasn’t my impression. Seemed like he was aiming right for you. Then he floored it before I could get his tag number.”

Rob was still convinced that Canfield was overreacting to an elderly driver’s miscalculation. He leaned over to examine a grass stain on the knee of his khaki slacks. Without thinking it through, he said, “Let’s not tell the ladies about this. It’ll just worry them.”

By the time Rob straightened up, Skip had cleansed the annoyed expression from his face. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. They need to know, so they’ll be more alert.”

Rob just looked at him for a beat. “Thanks for your quick response.” He offered the other man his hand.

Skip shook it.

Rob knew Canfield was right, but he couldn’t bring himself to admit it directly. “
I’ll
tell Kate and Liz, but not in front of Aunt Betty,” he said instead.

Skip didn’t say anything.

•   •   •

Kate jolted awake when Liz came into the living room. “Sorry,” Liz said, dropping into an armchair. “I didn’t realize you were asleep.”

Kate sat up, rubbing her gritty eyes. The gesture reminded her of Edie. When she was tired, she would rub her eyes with her chubby little fists.

Liz saw the longing look on her friend’s face. “Kate, you should go home to Edie. This has turned out to be way more than you signed on for.”

“I may do that, soon. I can’t just yet.” Kate stopped, not sure how much to say to Liz. She didn’t want to put her in the middle. “There are some things that are up in the air, that need to get resolved first.”

“He said you were royally pissed about the background check. If he’d told me he was going to do that ahead of time, I would’ve stopped him. Kate, he wasn’t thinking. He has Fran and Beth run checks all the time, for whatever’s in the public records on witnesses, including his own. And even his own clients sometimes. He can’t afford to get into court and have some skeleton fall out of somebody’s closet that he didn’t know about.”

Kate digested that for a moment. “Later, when we go back to the motel,” she said, “can you and Betty ride with Skip so he and I can talk?”

Liz nodded.

“Has Rob said anything else, about me and Skip?”

Liz shook her head. “We haven’t exactly had a lot of down time for in-depth conversations. And Rob may be an enlightened man, but he’s still a man. I’ve learned the hard way not to push him to talk before he’s ready, when something’s bothering him.”

“Do you have any insights into why he’s reacting this way?”

“Actually yes.” Liz reached over and gave Kate’s hand a squeeze. “Sweetheart, if you had told Rob over lunch one day that you thought you had met someone you were interested in dating, he would’ve been thrilled for you. And if you had then told him the guy was Skip, a man he knew and had good reason to like and trust, he would’ve been even happier.”

“But instead this has all evolved while he’s under a lot of stress,” Kate said.

“Well, yes, that’s part of it. But I think the bigger problem is that he’s watching the process unfold. You’re not just telling him about it over lunch. He’s actually
seeing
you develop that easy, non-verbal communication with Skip that you had with Ed. I felt a twinge of grief myself earlier, when you and Skip were joking around so naturally…” Liz’s voice grew husky. “I thought, ‘That’s the way she was with Ed.’ And I almost started crying.”

Kate swallowed the lump in her throat. “Thank you for telling me that, Liz. It helps. I didn’t realize how hard it would be for him, and you, to see me… with someone else.”

After a moment, she added, “I keep telling Skip it’s too soon for me. I’m thinking it’s too soon for all of us.”

Liz’s voice became a bit sharp. “Don’t let our reactions stop you, Kate. When
you’re
ready, you go for it. We’ll adjust.”

Kate smiled at her.

Rob’s key in the lock announced his return. The others came in right behind him. “Neither Baxter or the Murphys answered their door,
again
,” he said.

“No luck with Morris either,” Skip reported. “I’ll try again tomorrow morning. But I did have a conversation, if you could call it that, with Mrs. Carroll.”

As they all found seats, Skip filled them in on his meeting with the drunk director, including how it ended and his anonymous call for an ambulance. “She was out cold when I left her.” He gave Rob a meaningful look.

Kate caught the look and lifted an eyebrow at him. Skip gave her an almost imperceptible shake of his head. She wasn’t sure what that meant.

Rob saw the exchange and scowled at Skip. Kate resisted the temptation to throw something at both of them.

She was giving a sanitized account of their meeting with Mrs. Forsythe when Betty came out of the bedroom to join them. “I think we can take the Forsythes off the prime suspects list,” Kate concluded with a grimace.

Skip grinned at her. “You really hate to have to admit that, doncha?” he teased.

“Aunt Betty, do you think Ellen Forsythe is right?” Rob asked. “Was Morris friends with Jeff?”

“I never heard anything about them being good friends,” Betty said. “But they could’ve been friends and I wouldn’t necessarily have known it. Henry almost never eats in the cafeteria. He’s quite antisocial.”

“So I’ve noticed,” Skip said.

“We couldn’t find Joe,” Rose said. “But I caught up with Jennings earlier. Claims he didn’t know Morgan well. He was a bookkeeper at Armstrong. Didn’t even seem to know that chloroform was hard to get.”

“I think we can eliminate him then,” Kate was saying, when the doorbell rang.

Rob looked through the peephole. At least Lindstrom wasn’t holding any papers in his hand this time. As he unlocked and opened the door, the others were debating what they should do for dinner, get room service again from the Indian restaurant or go to the cafeteria first before going back to the motel.

“If you go to the cafeteria, you’d better keep a sharp eye on your food and drink,” Lindstrom said as he stepped into the apartment. “I got a preliminary report from the M.E. Turns out Jeffrey Morgan may have been dead before he went over that railing. No signs that he tried to catch himself. Even a suicide will instinctively put his arms out. Should be some soft tissue damage and broken bones in his wrists or arms.”

Betty and Kate both winced. Lindstrom gave them an apologetic look and decided against mentioning any more of the graphic details. “Medical examiner thinks he was poisoned. We’ll know more when the tox reports come back.

“So considering the fact that there have been attempts made against several of you, I wouldn’t advise eating or drinking anything that someone else around here could’ve doctored. I know how these folks have been plying my officers with refreshments. I figured they were doing the same thing with you and thought I’d better warn you.”

Rob looked confused. “Attempts against several of us? What attempts besides the ones against Aunt Betty?”

“The attack on Kate and Mr. Canfield,” Lindstrom said.

Rose and Mac turned to stare at Kate and Skip. Rob clenched his teeth against a surge of anger. She
had
been keeping something from him.

After he closed the door behind Lindstrom, Rob turned to Kate with fire in his eyes. “What the hell was he talking about?
What
attack against you two?”

With a sinking heart, Kate realized Liz wasn’t the only one she hadn’t told about the falling pot incident. Trying to keep her voice calm, she said, “Skip and I were walking through the atrium on Monday, when a potted plant almost hit us. One of those ones around the railing of the upper level.”

Rob stared at her for a beat, then exploded. “Somebody tried to
kill
you, and you didn’t even bother to tell me!”

“Calm down, Rob, please,” Kate begged. “We didn’t keep it from you intentionally. It’s just with everything else that’s happened, it slipped our minds.” Too late, she realized that the
we
and
our
were probably not good word choices.

She looked at Rob’s furious face. Under the anger in his eyes was hurt. “Oh, Rob!” Stepping closer to him, she grabbed his big hand in both of hers. “I wasn’t keeping secrets from you. I honestly just forgot to tell you. I didn’t even realize until just now that I
hadn’t
told you.”

Liz stepped forward and put her hand on her husband’s arm. “Hon, calm down,” she said softly, but then couldn’t think of anything else to say to diffuse the situation. The three of them stood frozen in a tight little circle.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Kate said, looking up at him. “I’d never keep something like that from you intentionally.”

Rob looked down into her worried eyes. Wrapping his arms around her, he choked out, “Shit, Kate, you could’ve been killed.”

Betty opted not to censure her nephew’s language.

Kate slipped her arms around Rob’s waist. “But I wasn’t.” Her voice was muffled against his chest. They clung to each other for several seconds.

When Rob let her go, he reached into his pocket for his handkerchief and gave it to her. She hadn’t even realized that she was crying. He swiped his arm across his own damp cheeks.

Skip was having trouble sorting out the jumble of emotions he was experiencing, but he decided to take the high road. He fished his own handkerchief out of his pocket and stepped forward, extending a hand to grab Rob’s. “Sorry, man. We should’ve told you. Things have just been happening so fast.”