Deadly Devotion (10 page)

“How so?”

“By reminding the public that negative reactions to herbal mixtures are not uncommon. Sometimes they are downright deadly.”

Tom propped his elbows on his desk and rubbed his fingers over his forehead in slow circles. His chat with the coroner had raised more questions than answers, and after hours of poring over police reports from four counties, he still wasn’t convinced Edward was guilty of anything more than trying to swindle the old woman and then covering up the evidence. Except since Daisy had known Edward wasn’t really her nephew, charges of swindling would never stick.

A rush of greetings hailed the chief’s late arrival.

Tom shoved the reports on Edward into a folder and slipped it beneath the robbery file he was supposed to be working on.

Hank detoured off the direct route to his office and zeroed in on Tom. “Afternoon.” Hank glanced at the open file. “Made any headway on those cases?”

Tom leaned back in his chair and pasted on a confident expression. “Some.”

Hank hovered over the desk.

“Was there anything else?” Tom asked in his best impression of wide-eyed and innocent.

Hank’s grunt suggested he wasn’t buying the act. His gaze slid to the open file a second time before he stalked to his office.

So much for having an ally on the force. Around the squad room, clusters of officers downed their afternoon coffees while swapping stories. At least with the collective cold shoulder Tom had gotten from everyone else in the department since his arrival, he didn’t have to worry about anyone other than Hank scrutinizing his actions too closely.

Tom stuffed the Leacock file back into his drawer. He knew the contents by heart anyway. Not a shred of evidence connected Daisy to a grow-op. Edward burning one of her journals made him look guilty, but of what? Murder? Or simply of wanting to keep his con a secret? And how did Darryl Kish’s wife fit into the picture?

If the fear in Kate’s eyes hadn’t gripped Tom’s heart as fiercely as her white-knuckled fingers had gripped her steering wheel, he might’ve written off the apparent tail on her car last night as a coincidence. It hadn’t helped that he’d wanted to tug Kate into his arms and assure her everything would be okay. Not exactly the feelings of an impartial detective.

Although he hadn’t missed how her eyes had continually strayed to his as if she too felt an attraction. Years of police work should’ve inoculated him to the effect of what probably amounted to nothing more than a short-lived case of hero worship.

If not for the fact the case was supposed to be closed, he’d pull himself off the investigation. Gaining a clear perspective of whether or not the marijuana leaf in Daisy’s notebook, Edward’s con game, and Daisy’s death were related was difficult enough without throwing a volatile mix of chemistry into the investigation.

At least his concern that explosives might be headed for a Memorial Day event in less than two weeks had been unfounded.

Tom reached for the phone to check in with his dad. The internal line buzzed. Tom connected and Hank’s voice resonated over the line.

“Get into my office. Now.”

Tom groaned. He didn’t have time to deal with whatever had tied Hank’s boxers in a knot this time. Tom stepped into Hank’s office and closed the door.

Hank stood behind his scarred wooden desk, staring out the window toward the clock tower across the street.

The tower bells pealed their rendition of the Westminster chimes, and then a mournful gong counted off the hour.

“I told you the Leacock case was closed.” Hank’s fist tightened around a slip of paper curled in his hand.

“Yes.”

“Then why are you harassing her lawyer for details about her will?”

Tom pressed his lips together. He should have known the lawyer would snitch.

The veins in Hank’s neck bulged. “Well?”

“Since we last spoke, I’ve learned that Edward is an heir to Daisy’s estate. Kate expressed concern about his trustworthiness, given the time line between his arrival in
town and Daisy’s death. I simply wanted to set her mind at ease.”

“Yesterday Miss Adams thought Leacock stumbled onto a grow-op. Today she thinks Edward killed the woman for her money. What will it be tomorrow? Her boss killed her because she caught him dipping into the coffee fund?”

Hank’s wisecrack hit too close to the niggling concern Tom had so far ignored. “I know it seems like Kate is going off on a hundred different wild goose chases, but we do the same—gather evidence against a few possible suspects until we narrow in on one. And you’ve got to admit Edward’s sudden stake in Daisy’s estate looks suspicious.” Tom didn’t mention what else he’d learned about Edward. Hank didn’t need any more fuel with which to burn Tom for disobeying orders.

“I told that woman to stay out of trouble. The last thing I need is a civilian questioning the competency of my department.”

“Perhaps if you allowed me to sift through the evidence she’s foun—”

“You have been doing that. Without my permission. Against my orders, in fact. You’re on thin ice here, Parker. Just because we’re old friends doesn’t mean I won’t fire you for insubordination.”

“Understood,” Tom said with a healthy dose of boot kissing in his tone. Clearly, Hank felt threatened by more than Kate’s investigation. From the way he was throwing his weight around, he seemed worried Tom would steal his job.

Hank strode across the room and held open the door. “I want you on those other cases. Now get out of here.”

Outside Hank’s office, Carla actually gave Tom a sympathetic look. “Your dad called. Said it was urgent.”

Tom’s thoughts flashed to Kate. If Edward had slipped past Dad’s surveillance . . . Tom rushed to his desk and punched in Dad’s number.

Dad picked up on the first ring.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m not sure Kate’s as safe in that lab of hers as you’d like to believe.”

“Is Edward on his way there?”

“No, Edward’s still over an hour away.”

“How do you know?”

“If I told you, you’d have to arrest me.”

Tom pictured his dad slipping a GPS locator into Edward’s pocket or affixing it to his car. “Okay, never mind. I don’t need to know.”

“I called in a few favors and got the scoop on the lady who tailed Kate last night.”

“And?”

“It seems the Kishes have some cash flow problems. Last year, Darryl lost a research grant for his project to Leacock’s. Another application is coming up for consideration, one that wouldn’t have had a chance if not for her death.”

“You think Darryl killed Daisy to clear the way for his grant?”

“Money is the most common motive for murder. Darryl pulls in a decent salary, but his personal account is overdrawn, and despite the steady stream of customers into A Cup or Two, the store’s credit rating is in the toilet.”

Tom shuffled around the files on his desk, searching for his car keys. How could he have ignored his niggling suspicion of Darryl and let Kate walk right into his lair? “We’ve got to get her out of there.”

“If Kish is our man, yanking Kate will only alert him to our suspicions. Kate thinks Edward killed Daisy. As long as Kish knows that, he has no reason to silence her.”

“But he won’t know that, because we told her not to tell anyone.”

With the curtains drawn, the research lab felt like a tomb. The polished marble floors and stainless steel counters only added to the chilly feel of the place. Kate buttoned her lab coat and turned up the heat. One glimpse of her pasty reflection in the metal vent hood and a sour taste slid down her throat. She looked like a walking zombie.

A little sunshine might make her feel better, but until Tom arrested Edward, the curtains would stay closed and the lab door locked. With any luck, Edward wouldn’t spot her VW parked behind the implement shed. Not that she believed in luck. She closed her eyes and winged a prayer heavenward for the hundredth time today, painfully aware that she was just plain ignoring the elephant in the room.

Oh, who was she kidding? It was a great big woolly mammoth. A mammoth that had been around since the day Dad was ripped from her life. A mammoth she’d just as soon usher straight back into its cage rather than let snort about lancing open scabbed-over wounds.

And that was exactly what she intended to do.

She grabbed a test tube and concentrated on the task at hand. Without the distraction of passersby outside the windows or colleagues sticking their heads in the door, she might actually get the gene she needed isolated by the end of the day. Her grant sponsors wanted results, not excuses. If the whispered rumors that Daisy’s death was the result of an experiment gone wrong reached the higher-ups before Kate could prove otherwise, they wouldn’t hesitate to nix her funding. After all, as Darryl had so tactlessly pointed out, a breakthrough in herbal research wasn’t worth risking the foundation’s spotless reputation.

She plodded through the required protocol with meticulous accuracy, doing her best to confine her thoughts to her work.

Four hours later, her cell phone rang for the sixteenth time. Kate glanced at the incoming number and let out a sigh. “This better be important, Jules.”

“Why are you ignoring my calls?”

“I’m working.”

“That’s never stopped you from answering before. What if I’d had an emergency?”

“You would have left a more detailed message than ‘we need to talk.’”

“Well, we do, starting with why you have a different last name than your parents.”

On the plus side of this oh so not-positive day, Kate’s inability to constrain her thoughts to her work had given her plenty of time to rehearse answers to the questions she knew were coming. “After Dad died, Mom reverted to her maiden name and changed mine too.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I was young. I scarcely remember being a Baxter.” Kate hooked her Bluetooth receiver over her ear so she could set down her phone and continue working.

“You never asked your mom?”

“Sure I did, but I never got a reasonable explanation.” Wasn’t that the truth? Mom gave lots of explanations, but none of them were ever reasonable. A man who did nothing wrong didn’t get carted off in a paddy wagon.

“From the way you brushed off that guy in the café, I got the impression your old name made you uncomfortable, scared even.”

“You’re reading way too much into this. I’m tired. I’m behind on my work. I’m preoccupied with the murder investigation. I just didn’t feel like rehashing stories about my parents, okay?” Kate stared at the beaker in her hand and couldn’t remember what she’d been about to do with it.

“I’m sorry,” Julie said, sounding a little more empathetic than the
National Enquirer
reporter she’d been imitating a minute ago. “I should have realized. You know that if you ever want to talk about . . . anything, I’m here for you.”

“Thanks, Julie.” Not going to happen. Some secrets were better left buried.

“Will you let me in?”

Kate steeled herself against the tug of Julie’s heartfelt offer. “I don’t need to talk, honest.” A knock sounded at the door. “Listen, I’ve got to go. Someone’s at the lab door.” Kate clicked off her phone and waited quietly, hoping whoever was in the hall would give up and leave.

The knock sounded again. Louder. “I know you’re in there and I’m not going anywhere until you talk to me.”

Julie? Kate yanked open the door and Julie held up a tub
of ice cream and two spoons. “Therapy time,” she sing-songed.

Kate left the door standing open and retreated to her workbench. “You do realize that if you keep up this kind of therapy, you won’t fit into your wedding gown.”

“Oh, I just pretend to eat it. It’s all part of my top secret plan to fatten you up so I’ll look that much better on my wedding day.”

“Very funny. I really do have work to do.”

“Why do you have the room so dark? No wonder you’re down.” Julie plopped the tub of ice cream onto the workbench and tugged open the curtains. “That’s better.”

At the sudden brightness, Kate’s head pinged in protest.

Julie dragged a stool over to Kate’s workbench, dug her elbows into the counter, and rested her chin on her hands. “Okay, I’m all ears.”

Kate shuffled the test tubes she’d been in the middle of filling. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Don’t lie to me, Kate Adams. Around about the fourteenth time you let my call go to voice mail, I finally realized what a pitiful friend I’ve been, skipping from cloud to cloud preparing for my wedding, oblivious to how hard Daisy’s death has hit you.”

“I’m fine, really.”

“See, that’s where you’re wrong. You stuff your feelings into a little box and hide them away so the rest of us are fooled into believing you’re okay.”

“I am okay.”

“See, you’ve even got yourself fooled.”

Kate’s breathing turned quick and shallow. The woolly mammoth had sharpened his tusks on the metal bars of his
cage and was preparing to make a break for it. And she was pretty sure she wouldn’t survive the stampede. Not in one piece. “Julie, I really do not want to talk about this.”

“I am not going to let you hide away in your lab, pretending everything is hunky-dory when I know darn well it’s not.”

“I’m pretending no such thing. Daisy was murdered and the police aren’t doing anything about it. I can hardly be accused of keeping how I feel about that to myself.”

“True.” Julie licked a dollop of ice cream off her spoon and then pointed the spoon at Kate. “But have you considered that the investigation is an excuse to avoid facing your hurt over losing Daisy?”

“That’s ridiculous.” Kate snatched up the other spoon and dug into the tub of ice cream.

“Think about it. You lost your dad when you were way too young. In your head, you knew he didn’t choose to die, but in your heart you must have felt abandoned. I know I would have. Now you’ve lost Daisy, and deep down you must feel abandoned all over again.”

“Daisy did
not
abandon me.” Kate gulped down a gob of ice cream, but the icy milk didn’t cool the burn in her throat.

“No, she didn’t abandon you. Even if she committed suicide.”

“That’s not why I’m—”

Julie held up her hands. “Okay, okay. I’m just saying that maybe your compulsion to prove the police wrong is rooted in something deeper than you realize.”

Kate dropped her spoon into the ice cream tub, wondering how they’d jumped from a name change to her supposed abandonment issues. “I’ve got to get back to work.”

“See, this is what I’m talking about. You refuse to face your feelings.”

Kate wished she could curl into a ball and hide until the pain in her chest eased. She knew that if she waited it out, the ache would eventually become bearable. Just like it had when she was a little girl.

Okay, so maybe she did have issues.

“What are you afraid of?”

“Nothing.”

“Hogwash. A look of pure panic crossed your face when that Peter guy mentioned your folks.”

Kate reshuffled the test tubes as she struggled to snuff out the mutiny her emotions were waging in her chest. “Maybe I didn’t want memories conjured up when I’m already frazzled by Daisy’s death. As you so aptly pointed out, I don’t like to wear my emotions on my sleeve.”

“Uh-huh. Now tell me what you’re really afraid of.”

Kate looked her friend in the eye. Instead of accusations, she saw compassion.

The crust around her heart began to crack. For years she’d wished for a friend like Julie, someone who would see the hurt she’d hidden away from the world like the good little girl she was supposed to be, and just understand.

Tears pressed at Kate’s eyes. By the time Daisy had come along, Kate had gotten so good at the hiding that she hadn’t realized how much she’d held back. “I’m afraid of becoming the town’s latest gossip,” she admitted.

“Because of something your folks did?”

“My dad, yes, and please don’t ask me what.”

To Kate’s surprise, this time Julie didn’t press for details. “The people who genuinely care about you won’t love you any less because of something your parents did.”

“That hasn’t been my experience.”

Julie reached across the bench and squeezed Kate’s hand. “I’m sorry, Kate. I truly am.”

Afraid that she’d break down if she said any more, Kate merely nodded.

“I’ll let you get back to work.”

After Julie left, Kate locked the door and went to draw the curtains. Drawn by the warmth of the sun on her face, she lingered. As she stared at the sky, God whispered to her heart.
Tell
me
what you’re really afraid of
.

Kate swiped her sleeve across her eyes and swung her head from side to side, but the urging didn’t relent.

I’m afraid that the stories Mom told me about my dad aren’t true and that maybe what I believe about Daisy isn’t true either. And that knowing the truth will hurt more than I can bear.

The tight band crushing her chest eased its grip, and in its place she felt Jesus wrap his loving arms around her. A Bible verse whispered through her thoughts:
Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

Leaving the curtains open, she returned to her work.

Kate pipetted five hundred microliters of extraction buffer into micro tubes of lyophilized calendula leaves.

A movement at the window startled her into dispensing too many drops from the strawlike tube. She glowered at the curtains rippling under the force of air rising from the heat vents and let out a frustrated groan. If she didn’t get a grip, she’d never finish this experiment.

She grabbed a clean test tube and started again.

The doorknob rattled, but this time she managed not to jump at the disturbance. She carefully finished adding the
drops to the tube and ignored whoever stood outside. Ignored, that was, unless she counted the way her pulse sped up and her hands trembled.

A key scratched the lock.

Edward doesn’t have a key
, she told herself, but she jabbed the test tube into its holder and edged toward the side door anyway.

The hall door burst open and Darryl strode in. “You are here.” He stopped short. “What happened? You look terrible.”

“Why, thanks. So nice of you to notice.” She finger-combed her hair, wishing she’d taken Julie up on her offer of drops for her bloodshot eyes. Not that she could blame their present redness on staring into Daisy’s journals at four in the morning.

Darryl frowned. “Please tell me you aren’t still trying to convince the police Daisy was murdered.”

“Well, she sure didn’t commit suicide. You know as well as I do that even if she’d been dying of some incurable disease, Daisy would never have gone against everything she believed and taken her own life.”

Darryl opened his mouth as if he might rebut, but Kate stopped him.

“Don’t say it. Daisy was too smart to make such a critical mistake. In fact, based on other symptoms the coroner noted in his report, I’m not convinced Daisy died from thiophene at all.”

Darryl stared at her for a full minute, his expression unreadable. “You have to let this go.”

“I won’t. I—” Kate clamped her mouth shut. Keith and Tom had told her to keep a low profile and trust no one, and
here she’d just about spouted her theory to Darryl. But she had to be right about Edward. What other reason could he have had for burning Daisy’s journal?

Not that she had a good explanation for why Hank had ambushed her in the woods, or why he was so adamant that the case not be reopened.

Then there was the missing intern. She’d forgotten to tell Tom about him. When she’d thought Brewster was behind Daisy’s murder, Gordon’s disappearance had seemed connected, but not if Edward was the murderer.

As casually as her jittery nerves allowed, Kate lifted a rack of test tubes to the bench. “Did Daisy happen to mention to you that one of her interns quit?”

“You’re blaming her death on a student now?”

“No.” Kate squared her shoulders and repeated more firmly. “No, I’m responsible for them. Remember? I was just wondering if you were aware one had quit.”

“Sure, Gord . . .” Darryl looked at the ceiling as if the name might be etched in the tiles. “Sorry, I can’t remember his last name.”

“Laslo.”

“That’s it. Bright kid, but he was more interested in his gadgets than botany.”

“Gadgets?”

“He invented stuff. Usually things that minimized how much work he’d have to do. Nothing that ever worked too great. Although he once came up with a moisture meter that wasn’t half bad.”