An Intimate Murder (The Catherine O'Brien Series) (20 page)

“What? Why?”

“Because Chad went directly from the crime scene to your home. If he wanted to hide the murder weapon, he probably ditched it in your house. We’ll need to search your place. Just to be sure no evidence is hidden on your premises.”

I didn’t know what Jack Myers wanted to keep from us, but his suspicious behavior had tattled on him. There was no way he wanted us anywhere near his house for a visit let alone toting a search warrant.

“Just a minute.” The thud of the phone, as he dropped it onto the table, sent shockwaves through my ear as loud as a rock drum solo. Through the reverberation, I heard him yell for his wife.

A still groggy Linda picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“Mrs. Myers,” I said. “It’s Detective O’Brien.”

“Yes.” Her voice went instantly awake. “Have you made an arrest?”

“Sorry. No,” I said. “I need more information from you. We’ve brought your Cousin Katie in for questioning.”

“You did?” Her voice was a combination of surprise and excitement. “That’s great.”

“Who was Katie’s doctor when she was hospitalized?”

“Oh, that. Her name was Doctor Meredith.”

I jotted the name in my notebook.

“She worked at the clinic off of Lexington Avenue,” Linda said. The exhaustion returned like a boomerang. “Was that all you needed?”

“Yes.”

I reiterated my promise to call if we had any new information for her and hung up.

Doctor Xavier knew of Doctor Meredith by reputation only. From what he said, Meredith’s reputation was as solid as a rubber diving board.

“That explains why, Miss Dolan was allowed to leave the hospital without meds,” Xavier said. “I’ll transfer Katie Dolan’s medical records to my office. I doubt there will be anything useful in them if Doctor Meredith’s reputation holds true. I’m convinced that Miss Dolan suffers from APD.”

From the satisfied look on Katie Dolan’s face on the videotape, she wasn’t suffering from her disorder at all. She believed, with great joy, that we believed she was as slow as a turtle in the road.

Too bad, she hadn’t thought about the video cameras. In truth we might never have reviewed them since her act was so convincing. She could have RainMan-ed her way back home and we wouldn’t have been any wiser. If she had only known about Jane.

By the time Jane finished her story for the paper, and we negotiated through the changes, it was well past dinner and the sun had disappeared from the sky.

I pulled up outside our old Victorian. The lights in the front room were off and the flickering in the window told me that Gavin was on the couch watching television. I glanced at my watch. Ten-eighteen. He was probably asleep by now.

He’d earned his rest if he had smoothed the newspaper incident over with the Moms. After sorting and soothing such tumult, Gavin qualified for sainthood in at least six different religions.

Gavin lay stretched across the sofa with KC curled next to his chest but to my great surprise, his eyes were open, alert and focused on me.

“You’re awake?”

“How could I sleep before getting the low down on the article?”

He propped himself up on one arm and waited. KC raised his head as if to say, “Yeah spill it lady.”

“I told you, I lost my temper.”

I braced myself on the doorjamb and slipped off my boots one at a time. Some days removing my shoes felt better than arresting a serial murderer after hunting him for months. I kicked the shoes out of my way and moved to sit next to Gavin’s feet. As I approached, he jerked his feet away.

“I wasn’t going to tickle you. I just want to sit down.”

“Yeah, right.” He pushed to a full upright position. KC leapt down and disappeared into the kitchen “I’ve been burned by that one before.”

I leaned over to kiss him, but stopped with my lips hovering less than a whisker hair away from his cheek.

“By the way,
Miz Liz
says ‘hi’.”

I gave him a swift tickle in the side. He jumped and squirmed as if someone had dropped ice down the front of his Levis. He grunted and shoved me away.

“You didn’t see that one coming did you?” I grinned.

He rubbed his side. “No, but it hurt more than tickled.”

“I’m sorry, sweetie. I didn’t mean to hurt you.” I slid down the couch toward him and rubbed his side gently. He put a forgiving arm around me and pulled me to him, and I stretched against the length of him.

“So, you saw Miz Liz today?”

I nodded. “And her little blonde friend who thinks you’re, ‘such a flirt’.”

My voice pitched up in the classic, bubble-headed bimbo speak. I tipped my head from side to side so my ears touched my shoulders each time.

“Oh, please she’s just a little girl,” he said.

“With huge tits.”

“Catherine Margaret O’Brien, you know I don’t look at other women’s tits.” He tweaked the edge of my right boob. “Not when I have the best tits in the forty-eight contiguous states.”

“That’s what I like about you.” I snuggled closer under his arm. “You’re the best liar in the contiguous forty-eight.”

He tweaked my boob again.

“Why didn’t you tell me you knew Jonathan Luther?” I picked at the fraying edge of the navy polar fleece blanket we left on the couch to wrap up in on cold winter days. In Minnesota the cold days came unexpectedly even in mid-July, so the blanket was a year round fixture.

Gavin Shrugged. “I didn’t know who the victim was until I read it in the newspaper this morning. If you remember you didn’t give me much time to ask you about your case last night.”

I slid my hands around his hips and gripped his butt cheeks. “Oh, yeah. I remember. So why didn’t you tell me after you read the paper.”

“Well, according the paper you were two pimples on a bugs ass away from being moved off the Luther case.” He trapped my hand before I could poke him in the ribs again. “At that moment it didn’t seem important.”

“What do you know about Jonathan Luther?”

He leaned away and looked down at me with his clear green eyes. “Am I being interrogated, Detective O’Brien?”

“Yes. Don’t make me torture you for the answers.”

I gave his cheeks another squeeze.

“Did you know him, Gavin? What kind a man was he?”

“I didn’t really know him that well. I’d met him a few times, while I was doing business with Liz but I really didn’t know much about him. He always seemed like a happy man.”

“What do you mean?”

“Shit, I don’t know.” He reached over to the coffee table and snagged a bottle of Summit Extra Pale Ale with one swallow left. He drank the remainder then put the bottle back on the table. “He looked happy.”

“Overly happy?” I asked. “Like it was an act?”

Gavin ran a finger across my forehead, following the line of my hair. Shivers ran up my spine.

“No,” he said. “Just happy, like the kind of guy who would never end up on the front page of the paper, unless he was rescuing kids from a burning building, kind of happy.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Unfortunately that’s what everyone is saying about him.”

“And that disappoints you?”

“It sure doesn’t help my investigation.”

“I know what will help.”

He slid his arms under me and pushed me up to a sitting position. I groaned my displeasure. I was just getting comfortable and could have stayed curled up on the couch all night.

“You go upstairs and get your jammies on.” He shoved me off the couch. “I’ll make sure everything is locked up down here, and all the lights are off.”

“And then what?” I asked.

“And then, after I’m finished down here, I’ll come upstairs and give you a foot massage you will never forget.”

I bolted for the stairs.

“Hurry up,” I called over my shoulder. “And don’t forget the light over the stove in the kitchen.”

I vaulted the stairs two at a time, had my clothes changed, got ready for bed, and snuggled under the blankets before Gavin could change his mind about my foot massage. Moments after Gavin began to rub my feet, I don’t remember much of anything, but before I fell asleep, I remembered the most pressing question I’d had all day. I sat up.

“Gavin?”

“What?”

He stopped rubbing my feet and his eyes went wide as if he were afraid he’d pressed to hard on a particularly tender spot on my foot.

“What picture of me do you have on your desk?”

The next morning Jane Katts was waiting for me in the lobby of the P.D. Shoulders slumped forward over a notebook and she was scribbling furiously. I wondered what she had heard that had set her scribbling again.

Her eagerness from the day before hadn’t dissipated, but her shoes had become more sensible, as well as her clothing. The uniform she’d donned this morning looked suspiciously like the one I gravitated to every morning, jeans, t-shirt, suit coat, and boots. She stood when she saw me.

“Good morning, Jane,” I said with more than a little suspicion. “What are you doing out here?”

“Morning, Catherine. I’m waiting for you.”

She turned back to the row of chairs behind her and picked up a bag of donuts from the bakery down the street.

“I brought breakfast.”

“Donuts. How cliché.”

I fixed a hard stare on her and waited to see if she was making a joke at my expense. She smirked and rattled the bag toward me.

“They’re cherry filled,” she said.

I snatched the bag from her hand.

“I’d slap your mother across the face for a fresh, cherry filled,” I said and wondered who had clued her in. “Why didn’t you call for Louise?”

“I was early.”

“So, Louise should be here.”

I dug into the bag and pulled out a donut.

“Louise is always here,” I murmured through my mouth full of donut.

I trotted off down the hall toward our office area and Jane followed. She attempted to steal one of the donuts by executing an ill-advised reach around. I knocked her arm away and quickened my pace.

“I paid for them,” she mewled.

“You gave them to me.” I blocked her advance like a goalie blocking a shot on net.

“I brought the donuts for all of us.”

Louise exited the ladies-room as we passed by. She grabbed the donut bag from my hand, then hip checked me into the wall.

“Then you shouldn’t have given the bag to Catherine. She’ll descend on a jelly donut like a locust descending on a field of wheat.”

“Thank you, Louise, for that relevant observation.” I tried for the bag but she pulled it away, and held it over my head, just out of reach.

With her height, and my lack there of, it wasn’t too difficult for her. The bag trick frustrated the hell out of me, and gave me flashbacks to my all-girl Catholic school days. Mary Kowalski used to do the same thing with my school tam; that was until I caught Mary stuffing her bra in the bathroom one morning. Mary Kowalski and I came to an understanding after that day.

“May I say, Louise that you’re looking particularly bloated and puffy, this fine morning?”

She held up a perfectly manicured, pink lacquered, middle finger. Her usual mature response to my verbal jabs.

“I can see you’re in prime form today,” I said and made another attempt for the bag of bakery goodies. Once again, Louise held the bag just out of reach and I wondered if Louise had been stuffing all these years.

Louise retrieved her own donut and clenched it in her teeth, then handed one to Jane.

“What’s on the agenda today,” Jane said through a mouth full of donut.

“Digs has some test results for Mrs. Luther,” Louise said. “He texted me this morning. After that we need to speak to Chad.”

The firefly light in Jane Katts blazed like a beacon. Since the first day we’d met, she’d wanted to speak to Chad Luther. Now she would be within a few feet of him.

“Rein it in, Jane,” I said. “You’re not going to have free access to him. Remember that you’re here as an observer to learn our procedure, not to harass the victims.”

“We’re not past this yet?” Jane’s voice tipped up at the end. “You get final approval over what I print anyway. Do we have to keep pretending?”

Louise tossed the donut bag on my desk. I dove for the bag and tore into another.

“Jane,” Louise said. “I appreciate you finally admitting to your sneaky ploy, and we might have an agreement, but that doesn’t mean we want to ride roughshod over Chad. He needs to trust us, to remain as calm as possible so he can answer questions.”

Louise turned to me as if seeking support for what she was saying. My mouth was crammed with donut so the best I could manage was a pathetic nod.

“The last thing we need is for you to freak him out by bombarding him with questions and innuendo.”

“Innuendo?”

I had chewed away enough of the fluffy donut to mumble. “Yeah, like your theory that he killed his parents.”