ILL-TIMED ENTANGLEMENTS (The Kate Huntington mystery series #2) (3 page)

Kate smiled.

About two weeks after her husband’s death, she had started having imaginary conversations with him. At first she would talk to him and then decide what he would probably say in return, scripting both sides of the conversation herself. But after awhile, Eddie’s soft baritone had started responding on its own. Or at least it seemed that way.

She was fairly sure the conversations were just a product of her lively imagination, but every now and then Eddie would say something that took her totally by surprise. These little internal chats had helped her cope with the loss of her husband–a devastating blow that, at first, she had not believed she would survive.

She had never told anyone, not even Rob or Liz, about these conversations. She knew even they would think she was crazy. And she never intended to tell anyone either. These special moments with the love of her life were too precious to share.

Kate was now off the highway and entering Lancaster. She shifted mental gears again and started searching for Abbeyville Road. A half mile down that road she spotted the sign, nestled in a clump of evergreen bushes–
The Villages of Lancaster, A 55+ Adult Community.

Driving along the entrance lane, the word
tranquil
came to mind. The property was beautifully landscaped. Kate passed a white, one-story building on the left, labeled as the administration building by a discreet wooden sign. Then on either side of the lane were several taller look-alike buildings–red brick, with a large ground-to-roof section of glass in the middle of the slightly peaked front. According to Rob’s directions, the three-story recreation center would be on the left around the next curve, and across from that building would be the road leading to Betty’s building.

When Kate turned onto that road, she found her way blocked by a police car, parked crosswise with lights flashing. She stopped, as a young uniformed officer got out of the car and approached her.

Lowering her window, she asked, “What’s going on, Officer?”

The officer ignored her question. “Road’s closed, ma’am.”

“What’s going on?” Kate asked again. It couldn’t be a simple medical emergency. They wouldn’t close off the whole road for that.

“I’m not at liberty to say, ma’am.”

“Officer, I’m here to pick up one of the residents to take her to a very important meeting. And I’ve just driven for two hours to get here.” Kate tried to keep the whine out of her voice. She hated the thought of having to drive home, and then do this all again another day, because of something that undoubtedly had nothing to do with Betty.

“Who is it you’re here to see, ma’am?” the officer asked.

When she gave him the name of Elizabeth Franklin, his demeanor suddenly changed. “I’ll move my car. Take the second left and ask for Detective Lindstrom.”

With a growing sense of dread, Kate followed his instructions, passing a strip of woods on her right and a parking lot and another building on her left. As she turned into the second parking lot, she was immensely relieved to see Betty standing in front of her building, looking up at a tall, lanky man next to her. He was wearing a light blue business suit. Kate parked as close as the emergency vehicles clogging the lot allowed.

Ducking under yellow crime scene tape and dodging the uniformed officer who tried to stop her, she raced toward the elderly woman. As she got nearer, Kate was shocked by what she heard. The man in the business suit was reciting the Miranda warning to Rob’s aunt.

Kate ran across the last part of the hot asphalt and came to an abrupt halt next to Betty. “What’s going on here?” she gasped, out of breath.

The man held up a hand to stop the officer who was about to grab her arm and drag her away. Then he turned his attention to Kate. She caught a hint of humor in his light blue eyes before they turned hard and unreadable. Reddish-blond hair was blowing across a forehead that sported a summer tan.

The breeze caught Kate’s short curls and blew some into her face. She impatiently shoved them aside and was about to repeat her question when the man introduced himself. “Detective Andrew Lindstrom. And you, I presume, are the young woman, friend of the family, whose name Mrs. Franklin couldn’t remember.”

“Yes, Kate Huntington, friend of her nephew,” she huffed out.

“That would be the lawyer nephew, Robert Franklin.”

“Yes. Now what’s going on?” Kate repeated her question, trying not to sound as impatient and scared as she was. “Why were you reading Betty her rights?”

“I was informing Mrs. Franklin of her rights because she insisted I do so.” His tone, along with an aborted eye roll, implied that he wished people would not watch so many crime shows on TV. “She also insisted that she wasn’t going to answer any questions until you arrived.”

Kate turned to Betty. “Did you call Rob?”

“He’s in court. Can’t be reached,” the detective answered for her.

Kate felt a nervous flutter in her stomach. Apparently she was going to be Rob’s stand-in as lawyer now as well. “What’s this about? Why do you want to question Betty… Mrs. Franklin?”

Betty reached out and put a hand gently on Kate’s arm. “Doris is dead, dear. She was murdered.”

Kate’s mouth fell open at the word
murdered
. She stammered, “Who’s Doris?”

“Doris is…
was
the woman who said I stole her idea,” Betty said.

Holy shit!
Kate caught herself before she said it out loud.

As much to buy time as anything else, she said, “We need to take this inside, out of the heat.” Even at ten o’clock in the morning, the July sun was relentlessly beating down on them.

She noticed several of the elderly residents trying to inch their way past the police barricade around the building, no doubt hoping to eavesdrop on the detective’s interrogation. Another good reason to move inside.

Detective Lindstrom had also seen the residents creeping in their direction. He gave a moment’s consideration to taking Mrs. Franklin to the police station for questioning, but the old lady had to be at least eighty. Best not to stress her too much, just in case she wasn’t the killer.

“Can’t go into this building,” he finally said. “It’s a crime scene.”

“There are conference rooms in the recreation center,” Betty said in a matter-of-fact tone, gesturing toward the three-story building in the distance.

Both Kate and the detective eyed the labyrinth of crime scene tape, wooden barricades, police cruisers, coroner’s wagon and ambulance that stood between them and the recreation building, and the groups of elderly residents and curious staff, gathered on the sidewalks of the roadway.

“Ladies.” The detective gestured toward an unmarked police car parked a few yards away. As he opened the passenger door and solicitously helped Betty into the front seat, Kate shielded her eyes from the bright sun and squinted into the back. The detective said, “No grill. I don’t usually transport prisoners.”

Kate opened the back door and climbed in. The backseat was an oven and the air conditioning had very little time to make inroads into the heat before they were in the recreation building’s parking lot. When the car came to a stop, Kate pulled on the door handle. Nothing happened.

The detective, in the meantime, had circled the front of the car and was opening Betty’s door. In a very gentlemanly manner, he assisted the older woman out onto the sidewalk.

Kate banged on her window. The detective reached over and opened the door from the outside. “Sorry. The inside door handles are disabled,” he said, a hint of humor in his eyes again.

He turned to escort Betty into the building with a light hand on her elbow, reaching forward to pull open the building’s door for her.

Betty beamed up at him. “Such nice manners, young man.”

Kate, following behind them, rolled her eyes, thinking,
When a policeman who suspects you of murder is being nice, you can bet he has an ulterior motive
.

The detective caught the end of the eye roll as he reached behind to keep the door open for Kate. He flashed her a quick grin over the elderly woman’s head.

Not sure what to make of this guy, Kate schooled her face into a neutral expression. “I’ll be right in. Don’t say anything, Betty, until I get there.”

“Of course not, dear.”

Once the door closed behind them, Kate yanked her cell phone out of her purse and hit the speed dial for Rob’s cell. It went straight to voicemail. “Hi,” she said after the beep. “Don’t know if anyone left you a message earlier or not. They may have just called the office. The woman who accused Betty of plagiarism has been killed, and I’ve got a real bad feeling the police think Betty did it. I’ll try to keep a lid on the situation until I hear from you. Call me ASAP. Help!” The last word came out as a squeak.

•   •   •

Inside a young woman at a reception desk pointed Kate toward a small conference room where Betty and the detective were sitting at a table. Kate sat down and placed her cell phone in front of her, willing it to ring soon.

“Now, then,” the detective began, “perhaps Mrs. Franklin would be willing to answer my question as to her whereabouts between eight p.m. last night and eight a.m. this morning?”

“I’m not sure I should allow that,” Kate blurted out.

The detective, running out of patience, said, “Has she been ruled incompetent? Do you have her power of attorney?”

Betty gasped indignantly. She looked as if she were about to take back her compliment regarding his manners.

“Of course not,” Kate said.

“Then she’s an adult and it’s up to her to decide if she wants to answer me or not. Mrs. Franklin?”

“I’m afraid it’s not a very interesting answer. I was in my apartment. Since I had to be up early this morning, I went to bed promptly at nine. The alarm was set for five-thirty, but I woke up before that, about five. Laid in bed for a few minutes and then got up. I showered and got dressed. Had to finish packing a few things. Then I walked over here for breakfast a little after seven. The cafeteria’s in this building.

“My nephew said…” Betty paused, reaching for the younger woman’s name. Eureka, she remembered it. “Kate might get here as early as nine, so I left the cafeteria at eight-thirty to be back at my apartment and ready to go. But I couldn’t get in the building. The security guards had the doors blocked. I guess someone had found poor Doris by then and you were on the way.” She nodded toward the detective.

“Were you with anyone or did anyone see you during that time frame?” he asked.

“Not until breakfast. There’s a few of us from the writers’ club who usually eat together. Doris usually does too, but we weren’t too surprised when she didn’t join us this morning, considering what…” Betty’s voice trailed off, her expression sad.

The detective wasn’t ready to pursue the considering-what-happened angle just yet. He had heard from another resident about the confrontation in the writers’ club meeting the day before, but he wanted to clarify the alibi, or lack thereof, first. “Did you wake up during the night? Hear or see anything?”

“Just to go to the little girls’ room once.”

“With all the tension yesterday, and a big day ahead of you today, I’ll bet you didn’t sleep too well,” he said, sounding sympathetic.

“Then you would lose that bet, young man. I take antihistamines for my allergies. They knock me out. I sleep like a rock.” Betty’s matter-of-fact tone said she wasn’t buying the sympathetic routine. He’d blown his nice young man act with his sharp retort to Kate. Betty was now on guard.

“But you did wake up once, to answer the call of nature. What time was that?”

“I have no idea, Detective. I didn’t bother to put my glasses on nor turn on the light. I keep a nightlight on in the bathroom, so I can find my way. It felt like I’d been asleep for awhile so it was probably around one or two in the morning. But that’s just a guess. I went right back to sleep, a few minutes after my head hit the pillow again.”

“Okay.” The detective paused to make a few notes in a small pad he had removed from the inside pocket of his suit jacket. “So why did you not want to tell me this until Mrs. Huntington arrived?”

“It’s not that I didn’t want to tell you, young man. I just knew my nephew would be angry with me if I answered your questions before she got here.”

“That he would,” Kate agreed.

“Tell me about the writers’ club meeting,” the detective said.

“Not much to tell there either. Doris accused me of stealing her idea, which I didn’t. But I was so taken by surprise, I couldn’t even think of what to say to her. And before I could find my voice, she stomped out.”

“I understand she threatened to sue you,” the detective said.

Betty didn’t say anything.

“Bet that would have created quite a mess in your life,” he prompted after a moment.

Betty shrugged. “Life gets a little messy sometimes, young man. You don’t get to be my age without knowing that. I figured my nephew and his friend, and my agent, they’d help me get it straightened out.”

“It could mean your book didn’t get published after all. That would have been more than just a little mess. Lots of bucks and your reputation on the line. Maybe no publisher would ever want to deal with you again.”

“Actually, that’s not quite accurate,” Kate interjected. “Mrs. Franklin has three bestsellers on the market. It’s unlikely that this situation would have kept her from getting published again. Indeed, many well-established authors get accused of plagiarism at some point. Someone who thinks they can get some money out of them. You know, ‘pay me and I’ll go away’ kind of nuisance suits.” Kate had no idea if that was true but it sounded plausible, and she wanted to deflect this line of questioning if possible.

Betty might have trouble remembering names but her mind was otherwise quite sharp. She took her cue well. “Yes, it was more of a nuisance than a mess, really.”

But the detective was not so easily deflected. “So would you have agreed to pay Mrs. Blackwell money, to make her go away?”

“Certainly not,” Betty said, in an offended tone. “I did not steal her idea. I had proof that the subplot she claimed was hers had been in earlier drafts of my book, written
before
she talked to me about her novel.”