Solid as Steele (6 page)

“How did you happen to date both Jeanette and Lynn?” the reporter asked.

Jamie muttered her own question. “And how did they get you on the air so fast? Did you rush down there and volunteer?”

“We were all part of the young men's and women's club at church,” he answered the reporter. “They were both wonderful women. Warm and caring.” He paused and swallowed. “It was never serious with either one of them, though.”

The reporter asked, “And you have no idea who would want to harm them?”

His expression turned thoughtful, and he waited several moments before speaking. “I've been pondering it a lot, and I can't come up with anything. All I can say is that they were really nice women who must have gotten involved in something dangerous.”

“Like what?”

He shrugged.

“You think this was something personal with them and they weren't random victims?”

“I guess I was making an assumption.” He lifted one shoulder. “You know…because…”

When the interview concluded, Mack muttered, “It could have been him, and he's inserted himself into the limelight.”

“People do that?”

“Yeah.”

“Doesn't that make it more dangerous for them to avoid getting caught?”

“They think they're smarter than everyone else. Outwitting the authorities is a game with them.”

“Yes, the guy with the funhouse called it a game.” She
stared at the man on the screen. “He doesn't look like the serial murderer type.”

Mack made a snorting sound. “You know how it is when they catch a serial killer. All the neighbors say they can't believe he'd do such a thing.”

“Right.”

“I'm going to do some research on him.”

“Now?”

“No. Let's pack up and go out to breakfast first.”

“Pack up?”

“I'd like to switch hotels.”

“Why?”

“Change of scenery,” he answered.

And then what
, he asked himself. He wasn't exactly sure.

Jamie spoke again, interrupting his thoughts. “I don't work every day, but Sabrina's expecting me to come in this morning. I should call her first and let her know I'm okay.”

“Sure.”

She glanced at her watch, then dug her cell phone out of her purse and called the shop at 43 Light Street. The owner picked up on the second ring.

The transmission was loud enough for Mack to hear both sides of the conversation.

“Jamie, are you all right?” Sabrina asked.

“I'm fine.”

She clenched her fingers around the receiver. “I hate to disappear on short notice, but can you manage without me for a few days if I need to be away?”

“Yes. But where are you?”

“Gaptown.”

“Are you going to tell me why you're there?”

She looked at Mack, then away. “Something came up.”

“About your mom?”

“Partly.”

“Okay, I guess you don't want to talk about it. Or tell me why Mack Steele is with you.”

She cut him another glance. “You know about that?”

“Come on! This building is like a small town. Word gets around. Everybody knows Mack was on duty at the Light Street Detective Agency when you called the night before last.”

Jamie cleared her throat. “As it happens, I'm helping him with an investigation.”

“The murders?”

She sucked in a sharp breath. “You know about that?”

“We have TV stations here, too. It's all over the local news.” She paused. “I gather you don't want to talk about that, either.”

“Not really.”

A moment later Jamie clicked off and stood awkwardly in the middle of the room. “You could hear her?”

“Yeah.”

“I guess everybody in Baltimore knows we're here together.”

He laughed. “No. Just up and down Light Street.”

She snorted. “Yeah.”

His voice turned sober when he asked, “Does that make you uncomfortable?”

“You know it does.”

“We'll make sure everybody understands it's business,” he clipped out, wishing it didn't matter so much to Jamie.

“I'm sorry I'm on edge,” she said in a small voice.

If he'd felt free to react as he wanted, he would have put
his arms around her. Instead he kept his hands at his sides. “Let's get breakfast. The hotel probably has a buffet.”

“I'd rather go out.”

“Where?”

She thought for a minute. “There are some fast food restaurants downtown.”

After Jamie repacked the clothing and toilet articles she'd taken out, they went downstairs, then back to his car, where they rode in silence until they reached the city center.

“Which way?” he asked.

“Right.”

When the tall sign for a familiar chain appeared ahead of them, he turned into the parking lot.

There were no open spots next to the restaurant, so he pulled into a space across the parking area. As soon as he cut the engine, Jamie unbuckled her seat belt and got out.

As she started walking rapidly across the parking lot toward the building, a car shot around the corner.

Mack couldn't see much of the guy behind the wheel because he had a baseball cap pulled down over his face but the car was moving too fast to be in a confined area, and he wanted to yell at the maniac driver to slow down.

He stopped focusing on the driver when he realized that the vehicle was headed straight for Jamie.

“Watch out,” Mack shouted. With no thought for his own safety, he leaped toward Jamie and the speeding car, snatching her out of the way as the vehicle shot past with inches to spare.

Swearing under his breath, he turned her around and held on to her as he craned his neck, watching the vehicle roar out of the parking lot and onto the access road.

When he felt Jamie trembling, he pulled her out of the traffic lane and wrapped his arms around her, holding on tight as he gently rocked her.

“What happened?” she whispered.

“That guy was heading right toward you.”

“I…wasn't looking.”

“Yeah, you were focused on the restaurant door.”

Her head dropped to his shoulder as he stroked her back, holding her protectively against himself, trying to calm the wild beating of his own heart.

That had been damn close. Another couple of inches and the guy would have gotten her.

She could have pulled away, but she stayed in his arms, and he was glad to keep holding her. He wanted to tip her head up so that he could bring her lips to his, but he wasn't going to go that far because the same rules applied
as last night. She'd just had a close call, and he'd be taking advantage of her vulnerability.

She moved her head against his shoulder. “Did you see who it was?”

“Unfortunately, no. He had a cap pulled down to hide his face. Do guys usually drive like maniacs in town?”

“I don't know. I guess some do. Like anywhere else.”

He kept hanging on to her. “We should go in,” he said, although he made no move. “Or do you want to go back to the hotel?”

“We're here now.”

“Okay.” He looked both ways to make sure someone else didn't have them in his sights. Then he reluctantly eased away.

When she wavered a little on her feet, he slung his arm around her waist and held on to her as they went inside.

They got in line, where they ordered coffee and breakfast sandwiches with eggs and sausage.

When they'd taken their trays to a table by the window, they ate in silence. Finally, he cleared his throat.

As she looked at him inquiringly, he asked the question that had been in his mind since the incident. “How much does Clark Landon dislike you?”

She laughed, but there was no music in the sound. “A lot, I guess. He and I never got along.”

“Why?”

“Because he knew I saw he was taking advantage of Mom. But he had the inside track with her, so nothing I had to say about it carried much weight.”

Mack took a sip of water. “You got a letter asking you to come home.” She nodded.

“I don't suppose you have it with you.”

“It's back in Baltimore. I didn't think I needed it.”

Mack nodded. “Could Landon have written it?”

She wiped her lips with her napkin, and he followed the movement. “I don't know. You mean, so he could get me back here and…hurt me?”

“Yeah.”

She shrugged. “He's mean, but I never thought of him as homicidal.”

“What kind of stuff did he do to you?”

She snorted. “Nothing physical. He made me keep my room super neat. Like he cared! Made me do his stinking laundry. Interrogated any of my friends who were brave enough to come to the house.” She shrugged. “I wished I could have afforded my own apartment.”

She took another bite of her sandwich.

“The question is, how did he know where we were going to be this morning?” she asked.

Mack looked at her. “I hate to think he could have followed us to the hotel last night and then waited for us and tailed us when we went out.”

“There aren't many places to stay in town. He could have come around checking the parking lots.”

“Right. Would you call him persistent?”

“He can get focused on something and not let go. Like when a neighbor at his old apartment kept the music on too loud. He complained, and the guy didn't do anything about it. He turned his speakers around so they were facing the wall and blasted the guy. They ended up having a fistfight on the sidewalk.”

“How do you know about it?”

“I heard my mom telling a friend.”

They finished breakfast, and he scanned the area before he let Jamie walk out of the restaurant.

“I guess it was a good idea to pack before we left. Where are we going now?”

“The library. To do some research. We can find another place to stay later.”

Back in the car, she gave him directions to the red-brick colonial-style building across from the Victorian courthouse.

He looked from one to the other. “Eclectic architecture.”

“I guess it was the taste of whoever was in charge of the town at the time.”

After they parked, Mack brought his laptop inside to one of the tables on the far side of the circulation desk and booted up.

“I can do some checking on my computer,” he said.

“On what?”

He lowered his voice. “I've got access to a couple of secure databases where I can research Landon and Aubrey Rollins. Why don't you see what you can find out about Lynn and Jeanette? We can compare notes in an hour.”

“Okay.”

She went back to the desk and he heard the librarian saying that the system kept twenty years of archives of the local paper, the
Times-News.
They also had the
New York Times,
both on microfiche.

“The reading machine is under the balcony,” the woman told her. “Let me show you where to find it.”

The two women headed into the stacks.

As Jamie disappeared from view, Mack felt a small pang. Someone had tried to run her over not long ago, and he realized he didn't feel comfortable with her out of his sight. So he moved from the end of the reading room where he'd been sitting to a spot that allowed him to watch her.

She looked around when he sat down nearby. “You don't trust me?”

“I trust you,” he answered automatically, then realized he'd stopped thinking she was involved in the murders. He was relieved that she couldn't be. Which left him with the inconvenient conclusion that her knowledge really did come from psychic abilities.

She brought his mind back to the two of them when she asked, “Then why did you follow me over here?”

A woman with wisps of white hair escaping from under a knit cap was looking through books on a nearby shelf. She gave them a dirty look. “This is a library. Kindly keep your voices down,” she said in a tart voice.

“Yes, ma'am,” Mack answered automatically, then moved closer to Jamie and addressed her in a whisper.

“You almost got run over a while ago. I want to make sure you stay safe.”

She looked around at the people reading or checking out the material on the shelves. “You think someone would come after me in here?”

“I wasn't expecting trouble in a fast-food parking lot either.”

Jamie nodded tightly and sat down at the microfiche reader. She'd used one for college research papers, and she quickly got into the rhythm.

When she glanced over her shoulder, she saw that Mack was studying his computer screen. Feeling a bit guilty, she switched away from the subjects she was supposed to be researching and took a look at something completely different. Something to do with Craig.

She'd met her future husband when he'd first come to Gaptown working an insurance fraud case. Then he'd come back chasing a kidnapper.

She went to the year of the insurance fraud. A quick search didn't turn up anything, probably because the case
had hit the papers months after Craig's initial investigation. And she didn't remember exactly when that was.

When she scrolled ahead, she found a story about the kidnapping that had brought him back to town. She wanted to read it right away. Instead she printed it out and went back to the subject she was supposed to be researching: the current murder case.

 

M
ACK GLANCED AT
J
AMIE,
then went back to his own research, starting with her mom's boyfriend, Clark Landon, since he could be their most pressing problem. The man hadn't held a steady job in years, apparently, but he'd made bank deposits on a semi-regular basis. Did that mean he had an illegal source of income? Drugs? Maybe up here it was moonshine or stolen freight from the railroad.

Also, as Jamie had already related, the man had been in some minor scrapes with the law. In addition to the fight with the neighbor, he'd been pulled over for DWI a couple of times. And he'd also gotten hauled in after a bar brawl.

Nice guy. The brawl confirmed that Landon had a violent streak, but that didn't mean he'd try to run down Jamie, unless he had a serious anger management problem. Or unless someone had hired him to go after her. Lynn and Jeanette's killer? Did the two men know each other? Assuming the killer was a man. Jamie hadn't seen his face, but her description of the way he operated sounded like he was male.

He made some notes on Landon, then went to the guy who'd dated both Jeanette and Lynn. It turned out that Aubrey Rollins sold real estate for the local office of a national chain. In this climate of declining housing sales, he'd gotten into a dispute with an agent from another company over a commission.

That could indicate that he was either strapped for money or that he was a hard-driving guy determined to get every cent he thought was due him. He was also enterprising. He'd taken advantage of the depressed market to buy a number of cut-rate properties both in town and nearby. Could one of them be the funhouse that Jamie kept talking about?

Mack put the addresses into a file, intending to check on them later.

He was still collecting information when Jamie came back with a stack of papers from the printer, looking like she'd found something interesting.

“What?” he asked.

“You first.”

He glanced around and saw that a couple of patrons were watching them with interest.

“Maybe we could go out for a cup of coffee while we talk,” he said.

She followed his gaze to their impromptu audience and nodded.

When they stepped outside, she asked, “You really want coffee?”

“No, I just wanted a plausible reason to leave, since we were already attracting attention. We're strangers, and we look like we're doing serious research.”

In the car, she asked, “What did you find?”

“Your mom's boyfriend has no steady job.”

“I already knew that.”

“Apparently he's getting income from somewhere.”

She huffed out a breath. “He works for guys who pay in cash.”

“Doing what?”

“Some local moving jobs. Some trucking.”

“Illegal?”

“Could be.”

“He's got some arrests that confirm your assessment of his violent streak.”

“That's not news.”

Mack drove out of the library lot, checking frequently to see if anyone was behind them. As far as he could tell, nobody was following.

“Did you get a chance to look at Aubrey Rollins?” she asked.

“He sells real estate, and he's taken advantage of the downturn in the market to buy some properties. We'll check them out later.”

“Okay, but you got me thinking about coffee.”

They drove back downtown and stopped at a coffee shop where they both bought lattes.

When Jamie ordered hers with caramel syrup, he grinned. “You have a sweet tooth.”

“Try it. You'll like it.”

He did.

When they were back in the car, he asked, “Is there another big hotel chain in town?”

“On Ohio Street.”

As they drove, he took in the city. He'd never been in Gaptown before, and he found he liked it. Many of the commercial buildings were from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which gave the city a charming look.

“This place could be a tourist paradise,” he said. “How did I miss it?”

“It's a little off the beaten track, and I'm not sure that making a couple blocks of Baltimore Street into a pedestrian mall was such a great idea.”

“It's probably better in summer.”

“They need more attractions in the area. You can't keep
a city going on art galleries, restaurants, craft shops and the new hospital complex.”

“You've thought about it a lot, I see.”

“Of course. Everybody from Gaptown thinks about how to boost the city. One interesting thing—doctors and lawyers from Baltimore and D.C. have bought a lot of the big houses on Washington Street and renovated them. If you want a great old house, you can get one a lot cheaper than in the big city.”

She turned from the window back to Mack.

“How long are you planning to stay in town? You're going to run out of hotel chains pretty soon,” she observed.

“I don't know. I'd like to have a lead on the guy with the funhouse before we call it quits.”

He pulled into the parking lot of another national chain. At the check-in desk, he was able to get another suite. Upstairs, he found that the living room had a small kitchen off the sitting area.

“We can buy stuff for breakfast,” he said as he opened cabinets and saw dishes and cutlery.

Jamie lowered herself to the sofa. He pulled out a chair at the small dinette table and sat down facing her.

“Your turn. What did you find out about Jeanette?”

“She was a social worker in Allegany County.”

“About the same age as you and Lynn?”

“A couple of years older.”

“I wonder how well they knew each other.”

“We know they went to the same church.”

“Which is?”

“Emmanuel Parish.”

“We'll put the ministers on our list.”

“As suspects?” she asked in a strained voice.

“I was thinking more of contacts.”

She ran her hand over the arm of the sofa, and he wondered what she was thinking. Probably that she didn't like being cooped up in another hotel with Mack Steele. The feeling was mutual, but they were stuck with it for the time being.