FAMILY FALLACIES (The Kate Huntington mystery series #3) (18 page)

Jones started to say
something but Bradley cut her off. “Of course we will, Mrs. Huntington. I’ve
got some of my granddaddy’s guns myself. I understand.” He smiled at Kate as he
slipped Skip’s gun into an evidence bag he had pulled out of his pants’ pocket.

Bullshit
, Skip
thought, as Bradley put the bag, now wrapped around the gun, back in his
pocket. Skip was about to point out that the gun was loaded, which should have
been obvious. But he thought better of it. He wasn’t sure he minded if this guy
accidently blew his dick off with it. Giving them his easy-going grin, he said,
“Appreciate that, Detectives.”

“We’ll need to talk to
the nanny, son.”

“She doesn’t speak much
English but Rose or I can translate for you.”

“That won’t do,” Jones
said. “We’ll have to take her to the station and use a police translator.”

Rose jumped in. “I wish
you wouldn’t do that, ma’am. She’s my cousin and a recent immigrant from
Guatemala. The police there are often corrupt and everyone has good reason to
be afraid of them.”

Jones opened her mouth
but her partner cut her off again. “I think we can trust this young man to
translate for us, Stella. Don’t want to give the poor woman a heart attack.”

Jones hid a smile,
keeping her face looking grim and not all that agreeable to the idea. After a
pause, she shrugged.

But there were no
discrepancies between the nanny’s words and the translation. Maria Hernandez
confirmed that
Señor
Skip had been home all day and evening the day
before. She hadn’t really noticed how long he had been outside Friday
afternoon. And yes, her
patrona
had come home around five-thirty and had
been here ever since then.
Señor
Rob had come over last night but he
didn’t eat any of her good food because his wife was waiting with dinner for
him at home.

The two detectives
exchanged a glance and a slight nod, confirming everyone’s suspicions that at
least one of them spoke Spanish.

“I think that does it,”
Bradley said. “Thanks for your cooperation, folks. We may have a few more
questions as the investigation proceeds.”

They were almost to the
door when Bradley turned around, an apologetic look on his face. “Oh just one
more thing we forgot to ask,” he said to Kate and Skip. “When was the last time
either of you saw Mr. Wells?”

Kate answered for both
of them. “Neither one of us has ever met the man. All of my dealings with him
have been through my attorney.”

“I see. Well, thank you
for your time, folks. Have a good afternoon.”

They all waited until
Rob had closed and locked the door before breathing a sigh of relief. Then Skip
asked Rose to stay at the house while he went to his apartment to get one of
his other guns.

~~~~~~~~

S
unday morning Kate was
surprised to find Maria in the kitchen cooking breakfast, wearing one of the
brightly colored, shapeless dresses she normally wore around the house. Kate
looked at the kitchen clock.

“You’re going to be
late for church, Maria. I can make us breakfast.”

“No go today.
Señor
Skip ask me stay. Help with Edie.”

“But it’s your day
off.”

“Iz okay. I tell
Señor
Skip I no mind stay
ing
home.” Maria smiled proudly. She was fairly sure
she had used the right verb ending.

Kate thought about
arguing with her but decided to take that argument elsewhere. She went looking
for Skip. He hadn’t been raised Catholic but she had. She knew Maria would be
in a confessional later this week to be absolved of the sin of skipping church.

She found him sitting
on the living room floor, watching Edie play.

“Skip, you shouldn’t
have asked Maria to stay home today. It’s her day off.”

Misinterpreting the
cause for her annoyance, Skip said, “Don’t worry, I’m gonna pay her overtime.
Time and a half.”

She still didn’t look
happy. He got up off the floor and wrapped his arms around her. Keeping his
voice low, he said, “It occurred to me that it may not be safe for her to be
wandering around in the world by herself. Whoever is sending the notes might
decide to get to you by hurting her. But I didn’t want to scare her so I just
told her we could use some extra help today.”

Kate’s face shifted
from annoyed to anxious. “I hadn’t thought of that.” She shuddered at the
thought of Maria being harmed. “I’ll pay her overtime. You need your income to
keep the agency going.”

“I can afford it,
Kate.” His jaw clenched slightly.

He’s been doing that
a lot lately
, Kate thought. “Okay, Mr. Macho, how ’bout we split it?” she
said out loud, going for the compromise that usually worked with Rob. “We’ll
each pay half.”

Skip grinned down at
her. “Okay, Ms. Independent, you got a deal.” He was leaning down to kiss her,
when he caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye. Letting go of
Kate, he leapt across the room to grab the lamp that Edie was about to pull off
the end table onto her head. “Never a dull moment around here.”

Redirecting the little
girl’s attention back to her toys, Skip sat down on the floor next to her
again. “I hate to go out today, darlin’, but the lady I was doing the job for
yesterday, she’s been leaving voicemail messages on my phone for the last
twenty-four hours. Each one a little shriller than the last. I need to take my
report to her, and collect my money.”

Kate hid a smile. She
had been wondering what excuse she could use to get him out of the house so she
and Rose could finish the bedroom project.

~~~~~~~~

H
aving Maria available
to watch the baby turned out to be quite helpful. Once Skip had gone on his
way, Kate and Rose had quickly rearranged the furniture. Then Kate had put the
finishing touches on the redecorated room.

The bed was now made up
and the curtains had been hung. Eddie’s dresser was up in the guest room, along
with the small tables that had been on either side of the king-sized bed. The
nightstands and chest of drawers from upstairs were now in the master bedroom,
and the antique rocker had been replaced by the upholstered wing chair from the
guest room.

Kate had even switched
the closets around, taking Eddie’s old one as her own. She didn’t want Skip
standing, taking clothes in and out, turning to talk to her, from the same spot
where Eddie had done all those things. She wanted no ghosts in this bedroom.

Kate made Skip close
his eyes and swear not to peek. Then she turned him around three times so he
would be less likely to figure out exactly where they were headed. Leading him
by the hand, she took him into the master bedroom.

“You can open your eyes
now.”

He’d only been in the
room a couple times, and then only briefly, so it took him a moment to realize
it was now completely different. “Wow,” he said, turning slowly around in a
circle. “When did you do all this?”

“Yesterday and this
morning.”

“Really. You got all
this done in a little over a day?”

She nodded, grinning
from ear to ear. “This is what I was shopping for on Friday.”

He frowned. He never
had gotten around to yelling at her for ditching Rose, but now was not the time
to get into that. Especially since she was once again leading him by the hand.
Toward the bed!

They sat down together
on the side of it. Skip looked around the room again. “This looks great,” he
said as he turned toward her and took her hands in his.

“I didn’t like being
upstairs, so far away from Edie,” Kate said. “But I had to... do all this first
before
we
could sleep here. Uh, the closet on the right is empty, if you
want to bring a few things over.”

“Whoa, isn’t that
riling up the horses, darlin’?”

“Skip, can you imagine
us spending a night apart anytime soon?”

“Not really.”

Kate stared into those
hazel eyes for a moment. “I love you, Skip Canfield,” she said in a low, husky
voice. She shook her hands free from his to run them under his shirt and up his
chest.

He sucked in his
breath. “I take it this means we’re gonna christen the new bedroom now.”

“That was my plan.
Maria’s watching the baby.” With one hand still stroking his chest, she wrapped
the other around the back of his neck to pull his head down. When their lips
touched, she parted hers, inviting him in.

He lost himself in the
kiss for a long time. Then eased her back onto the bed, unbuttoning her blouse
as they went. He had the blouse half off and her bra unhooked before he
remembered the damn rubbers. He broke off kissing her to glance at the
nightstand next to the bed. It was from the room upstairs.

His hand stopped
exploring under the loosened bra and reached to open the drawer. Blindly, he
pawed around inside it while his mouth went back to kissing her. He broke the
kiss when he realized the drawer was empty.

“Damn, I forgot to
check that they were in there,” she whispered.

“I might’ve dropped the
box on the floor beside the bed last night.” Returning the condoms to their
proper place had
not
been his top priority at the time.

They lay there frozen
for a few seconds, Skip propped up on one elbow above her, both of them
breathing hard. Then he groaned as he began to push himself up off the bed.

Kate made what was, for
her, a hasty decision. With her infertility problems the odds of her conceiving
anytime soon were slim.

She wrapped an arm
around him and pulled him back down. Grabbing his hand, she placed it once
again on her breast. “Never mind. I hate that barrier between us anyway,” she
whispered. Then she gasped as his thumb grazed her nipple.

He froze for a second,
looking down into her eyes. Then that slow grin of his spread across his face.

  Oh, crap, he thinks
we’re gonna make a baby,
Kate thought. She wasn’t about to break the
current mood, however, to tell him the disappointing news.

He flicked his thumb
again and she sucked in air. Her back, of its own volition, arched under him.
His grin grew bigger.

“Skip, what
are
you waiting for?”

M
onday morning Rose
called Skip for some guidance. “Got that meeting tonight. But I’m not real sure
what to do from here. Kate said something awhile back about handwriting
analysis. Been racking my brain trying to think of a way to get a sample of
Harris’s writing. Got any suggestions?”

“Hmm, it would be
better if it were all caps as well, but people don’t usually write that way.”
Skip thought for a moment. “I might have an idea. You think Mac would be
willing to do a little job for us this afternoon?”

“Probably. What’d you
have in mind?”

Skip told her.

At two-twenty, Mac and
Skip were sitting in the Explorer halfway down the block from Harris’s bar. Mac
was dressed in brown work clothes, fresh off the rack from Walmart. They had
been watching the bar for a little over an hour.

Mac wiggled in his
seat. Damn new clothes were kinda scratchy.

“Here we go,” Skip
said. Mac looked up and saw a delivery truck coming toward them. As it pulled
into the curb across from the bar, Skip jumped out and jogged up the sidewalk.

The big man started
talking to the driver who had just stepped down from the cab.

“Now don’t we just have
the luck of the Irish,” Mac muttered to himself. The driver was wearing a
brown
uniform with a
brown
cap, the beer company’s red logo emblazoned on it.
Skip traded the man a fifty for the cap and a clipboard. The driver climbed
back into the cab of the truck.

Mac got out and loped
up to the truck. “It’s Miller Time,” Skip said with a grin, handing him the
cap.

Mac backed the hand
truck loaded with cases of beer through the door under the “Girls, Girls,
Girls” sign. He had the cap pulled low on his forehead, just in case this bozo
had gotten a good look at him that night.

The Irish luck was
holding. Harris was sitting at the bar going over some paperwork. “Can I get ya
to sign here, sir?” Mac said, handing him the clipboard containing the delivery
slip. Harris took it and absently scribbled his name on the line at the bottom.
He started to hand the clipboard back.

“New rule, sir. We’re
supposed to get ya to print your name as well, under yer signature. All caps,
they said.”

Harris gave him a funny
look.

Mac shrugged. “Some
restaurant dude swore it wasn’t his signature and refused to pay. Now they want
the name real clear, in the person’s own hand.”

Harris nodded and wrote
on the slip, then handed the clipboard back to Mac.

“Where ya want these,
sir?”

“Cooler’s in the back.
Susi’ll show ya,” Harris said, already refocused on his paperwork.

Out on the street, Skip
neatly cut off the bottom of the delivery slip. He then scrawled an
indecipherable signature across the middle of the slip and took the cap and
clipboard up to hand them into the driver inside the cab.

Back in the Explorer,
Mac drove while Skip called Detective Randolph to tell him they had a present
for him. The operatives of Canfield and Hernandez were feeling quite good about
their day’s work.

Until Rose was sitting
in Harris’s living room that evening, listening to the group discuss their
plans to picket a therapist’s office the following week. She just barely
managed to maintain her cop face when she heard the address. It was Kate’s
office building.

On Linden Lane, the
baby was bedded down, the kitchen cleaned up and Skip and Kate were settling
down in the living room. Kate was bracing herself to bring up the issue of
children when the doorbell rang.

It was Rose. She had
decided she should deliver the bad news in person.

~~~~~~~~

W
hen Kate arrived at
the office on Tuesday, Pauline informed her that Tammy had called and asked to
see Kate as soon as possible. After saying a few choice words inside her head,
Kate told Pauline to plug her into the hole in her schedule at three.

When Tammy arrived that
afternoon, she seemed somewhat calmer than she’d been in a long time. Kate was
rather shocked by the answer she got when she asked the client how things had
been going. “Well, my marriage is over,” the woman said, in an almost
matter-of-fact manner. “I was right. He was having an affair. And he had the
gall to lie about it when I confronted him on Thanksgiving. But now I have
proof. I kicked him out of the house and I’ve already met with my lawyer.”

“What proof is that?”
Kate asked, trying to hide her horror that this woman had acted so
precipitously.

“I don’t really want to
talk about that,” Tammy said, her tone crisp. “That’s not why I’m here today. I
came in one more time to tell you face-to-face that I’m not continuing therapy
with you. If you had done your job, my marriage would not be over!”

Kate bit the inside of
her cheek to keep from saying out loud that she was not responsible for the
Wingates’ lousy marriage. This time, it would be easy to go with the
resistance. “I can give you a referral then. There are several competent people
in the Towson area that you could see.”

“No need. I’ve already
found a new therapist. And she’s wonderful! She totally gets what’s going on
with me.”

“I see. Who is that?”

“I don’t think that’s
any of your business actually,” Tammy said haughtily. Kate hoped it wasn’t any
of her colleagues that she particularly liked.

“I just came in today
to tell you, in person, that your reputation as a good therapist is richly
un
deserved!”

If Kate had any
lingering doubts about Tammy’s diagnosis, they were gone now. This was a
typical borderline reaction. You were wonderful until they felt you’d
disappointed them. And then you were the devil and they found someone else to
cast in the angel role.

Kate stood up. She
wasn’t about to sit there and take verbal abuse from this woman for another
forty-five minutes. Calmly she said, “Well, I appreciate you telling me that
you were transferring to another therapist. Otherwise I would have been worried
about you when you didn’t reschedule.”

Kate breathed a quiet
sigh of relief when Tammy also stood. The woman’s parting shot was, “Don’t
bother billing me for this appointment!”

Kate didn’t respond.
She just wanted Tammy out of her office.

As she heard the outer
door slam, Kate was tempted to break out in song. Better not. People in the
waiting area might hear her. She settled for a fist pump in the air and a
whispered, “Hallelujah!”

For the first time in
her career, Kate was actually happy to be filling out insurance forms for the
rest of the hour.

~~~~~~~~

D
etective Randolph
called Skip Tuesday afternoon. The previous week he’d had a long conversation
with Michael O’Donnell. It had ended with Randolph saying, “I hope you can live
with yourself if anything happens to your baby niece.” The guilt trip had
worked. Michael had finally convinced his wife to let Amy be interviewed.

Unfortunately, they had
not gleaned all that much useful information from her. “Young lady said she was
thirsty so she stopped to get a soda,” Randolph told Skip. “Somebody bumped
into her as she was opening her wallet and she dropped it. She bent down to
pick up the stuff that fell out on the floor. Finished paying for her drink and
started strolling in the direction of the main entrance. Last thing she
remembers is window shopping as she drank her soda.”

“So that’s probably how
they drugged her, put something into her drink,” Skip said.

“Most likely. Paramedic
said the symptoms pointed toward roofies. Timing does too. They take about
fifteen minutes to kick in. Brother isn’t due for a bit so the girl’s taking
her time. Just about when she got near the main entrance, the roofies would’ve
hit her and then the perp took her.”

“She see who bumped
into her?” Skip asked.

“Nope. Food court was
packed with people. She said she didn’t think anything of it. Didn’t even turn
around to try to see who it was.”

Randolph also told Skip
that the canvassing of Kate’s neighborhood and tenants in Kate’s office
building had come up empty.

“Got some partial
prints on the notes that are unaccounted for, but the system didn’t come up
with any matches.”

“What about the
analysis of Harris’s handwriting?” Skip asked.

“Results aren’t back
yet. I’ll let you know when they are.”

When Kate got home that
evening, Skip saw no point in telling her about the call from Randolph. She
hadn’t slept well the night before, after the visit from Rose and the news
about the false memory group’s picketing plans. She didn’t need to be upset
again this evening, just before bedtime.

Maria had already
retired for the evening, after giving Edie her bath. Skip was holding the
yawning child tucked into the crook of his arm. Kate gave him a tired smile as
he handed her the baby, who was now rubbing her eyes with her chubby fists.

“Be back in a few
minutes,” she said, taking the little girl into the nursery.

When she came back out,
Kate dropped down next to Skip on the sofa and he put his arm around her shoulders.
Deciding that a happy topic was called for, he pulled her up close beside him
and said, “So how long do you think it’ll take us, at the rate we’re going, to
make Edie a little brother or sister?”

There was no response.
He looked down at her. Her head was down. He couldn’t see her face. Had she
fallen asleep? With a finger under her chin, he turned her face up. Tears were
pooled in her eyes.

“Skip,” she said, her
voice just barely above a whisper, “would you be terribly upset if there
weren’t ever a little brother or sister?”

For a moment, Skip was
at a loss. Then his father’s voice echoed in his head.
When a woman asks you
a question and you’re not sure what
she
wants you to say,
don’t
answer her. Ask for more information.

“What do you mean,
Kate?”

“It took six years for
me to get pregnant with Edie. We don’t have six years. I’ll be forty in
February.” She looked down at her lap, unable to bear the stunned look on his
face.

“The problem could’ve
been Ed’s.”

Kate shook her head.
“He got tested. He was fine. It’s me. I’m not very fertile apparently.”

When he didn’t say
anything, she looked up at him, pain and worry in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Skip. I
should’ve told you this sooner.”

“No, now hush, it’s
okay.” Skip pulled her onto his lap. “This was one of those things that was in
the cart that got before the horse, wasn’t it?”

She nodded mutely.

“Kate, I’ve been
capable of fathering children for two decades. If I’d wanted a family, I
could’ve had one years ago. I never particularly wanted one, until I met you...
and now I have my family. You, me and Edie.”

“You won’t be
disappointed if I can’t... give you a child of your own?”

He smiled down into her
still worried eyes. “Kate, I
have
my family,” he said again. “I adore
Edie, and you, Kate, you’re... ” Words failed him. How could he explain to this
woman what she meant to him?

“At the risk of
sounding like a corny love song, you’re my... life, my heart, my soul. I can’t
imagine living a day without you.” He tenderly kissed away the couple of tears
that had broken loose and wandered down her cheek, then he moved on to her
lips.

When they came up for
air, he said, “You know, I was actually trying for something light and happy to
talk about. That didn’t work out quite like I thought it would.”

She smiled, then
snuggled against his chest. After a moment she said, “I love sitting in your
lap.” Actually, Skip was the first man she’d ever been romantically involved
with whose lap was big enough for her to sit in. She’d always been attracted to
lean, lanky men like Eddie. Men who were attractive enough, but not so
attractive to be conceited.

She was reminded of the
conversation she’d had with Skip on their first non-date months ago, about the
short, scrawny teenager he had been, harassed by bullies at school because of
his nickname, until he’d had a late growth spurt.

She sat up on his lap
and pushed back slightly in his arms to look into his eyes. “Skip, I gotta tell
you something else.”

He looked a little
scared.

She grinned at him. “I
do
not
love you for your body.”

He chuckled. “Okay,
what the hell does that mean?”

“I would love you even
if you were still a scrawny little dude named Skippy.”

He laughed, then kissed
her again. This time when they came up for air, they decided it was time to
retire for the evening.

They walked into the
master bedroom. Or rather Skip walked, Kate floated. She had told him about her
infertility and he didn’t care.

One
cart-before-the-horse issue down, two to go,
she thought. The money seemed
like too much to tackle tonight, but maybe the house. Standing in the middle of
the bedroom, she said, “Where do you want to live, Skip, after we’re married?”

He looked at her in
confusion. “I assumed we would live here. Is that okay?”

“Of course it’s okay
with me. But are you sure it won’t feel strange for you?”

He stepped over to her
and took her hands, holding them against his chest as he thought about that.
Finally, he said, “Since I didn’t know you before Ed died, I’ve always thought
of this as your house. And I can’t really imagine you anywhere else. This place
suits you, Kate. It’s your home.”

She smiled up at him.
“Our home,” she said softly, then added in a more matter-of-fact tone, “And
we’re putting your name on the deed after the wedding, so it’s truly yours
too.”

He thought again for a
moment. “I don’t need my name on the deed to feel like it’s my home.” Then his
voice went from serious to teasing. “I’ve already started feeling that way,
ever since you let me move outta the guest room.”