Death Takes a Ride (The Cate Kinkaid Files Book #3): A Novel (17 page)

19

Candy bypassed a formal living room and turned into a more lived-in looking family room. The seating arrangement of suede sofa, love seat, and upholstered chairs centered on an oversized flat-screen TV, but a lineup of well-tended plants flourished under a big picture window. A chandelier in wagon-wheel shape hung over a pool table behind the seating arrangement. A bar filled half the rear wall, and a piano and drums stood next to the bar.

Candy dropped into the suede sofa. Cate was apparently free to sit wherever she liked. She chose the suede love seat, vaguely wondering how many cattle had given up their hides for all the suede in this room. Candy frowned at the coffee table, another wagon wheel topped with glass, and didn’t speak.

Cate finally made a conversational thrust. She wiggled her fingers toward the piano and drums. “You play?”

“No. I decided once that I wanted to learn piano, so Kane bought that for me, but I never got around to taking lessons. A long time ago, back in high school, Kane played drums in the school band, but he never had a set of his own. So he bought those. You know, middle-aged man fulfilling youthful
fantasies.” She interrupted this rather dour account of the couple’s musical history to repeat, “He lied to me!”

Cate let her lame attempt at small talk fizzle and waited for Candy to fill the empty space. After a few moments, she did.

“Kane told me he had this big insurance policy, a half-million-dollar policy, through H&B.”

“I believe we had an earlier discussion about insurance.”

“I didn’t marry him
because
of the insurance
.
” Candy glanced up as if checking to see if Cate believed that. “I mean, you don’t marry someone for something that probably isn’t going to happen until way off in the future.”

No, you marry
him for his current assets and income.
Cate added an addendum to that.
Unless you have in mind a
fatal catastrophe hurrying the event from future into the present
.
But all she said aloud was her frequently used, noncommittal “um.”

Actually, although she hadn’t discarded suspicions entirely, she was more or less beyond thinking Candy had anything to do with Kane’s shooting.

“But he’s a lot older and I could expect, statistically, you know, to outlive him. A woman has to think about these things and look out for herself.”

“But there isn’t any insurance?”

“Oh, there’s insurance, all right. I just don’t get any of it.”

“Kane isn’t dead anyway,” Cate pointed out. Hey, hadn’t they also had this not-dead conversation before? Had Candy shrugged then? She did now, as if the non-death were an irrelevant road bump. “He changed his beneficiary so the insurance goes to his children?”

“Not them either. It is, and always has been, a business thing with the partnership. It was set up when Kane and Matt started H&B. Both partners are insured, and if something
happens to either of them, the insurance payoff goes into the business. I guess it’s a common type of arrangement. It’s intended to make sure the business doesn’t collapse if something happens to one of the partners.” She sounded momentarily reasonable, even understanding about that setup, but then she hit her mantra of outrage again. “Kane lied to me!”

“It’s possible Kane didn’t know or understand the, oh, fine points about the insurance,” Cate suggested.

Candy scowled but finally nodded. “Kane has never been much good with financial details. He’d rather spend money than keep track of it. Although I still wouldn’t put it past him to lie to me.”

“How did you find out about this aspect of the insurance?”

“Radine called. Sweet Radine. You could hear the glee in her voice when she told me I wasn’t entitled to anything and why. Sometimes I think she has the hots for Matt.”

“Matt asked her to call you?”

“I suppose. He’d rather talk to an IRS agent or a two-headed alien than have a conversation with me.”

Was it possible Halliday also hadn’t earlier realized the consequences of how the insurance was set up? Cate doubted that. If she were a betting woman, she’d bet Halliday knew every word, clause, comma, and semicolon in the insurance policy.

Bottom line was that if Kane Blakely died, Halliday lost a friend and partner but he—because he
was
H&B if Kane died—gained a half million dollars.

Did the police know that? Probably. As Matt had said, they didn’t work at warp speed, but Cate’s experience was that they usually covered all the bases.

Another bottom line, however—what difference did it make? A few seconds more and the gunman would have
finished Halliday off, and, if Kane lived, he’d be the survivor in line for the insurance bucks. He still could be, if the person sending that threatening note to Matt managed to make good on the threat.

Candy stood up. “I need a drink. You want something?”

“No thanks.”

She followed Candy to the bar anyway and watched her clunk cubes from an ice maker into a stubby glass. Without any diluting additions, Candy covered the ice with an amber liquid from a shelf under a mirror on the back wall. She stood behind the bar, elbows on the counter, glass cupped in both hands, frown turning her mouth into a downward curve.

The bar was done in a rugged, Western saloon style. Suede-covered stools, scarred counter, two “bullet holes” in the mirror. A colorful poster showed a barroom girl with upswept hair and revealing bodice swooped into a dip by a lanky cowboy. After a moment, Cate realized the poster was actually an enlargement of a photo from one of those fun photography places, and those were Candy’s and Kane’s faces. They looked happy. Which was not how Candy looked now.

“Don’t you have a cat?” Cate asked. “I remember you mentioning a Persian.”

“She’s probably asleep on my bed upstairs. When she realizes we have company, she’ll come around to check you out.” She took a sip of her drink. “So, about this letter Matt received. Was it sent from here in Salem? Is that why you’re investigating here?”

“The envelope had a Eugene postmark, but, according to the police, the man who shot Kane was from here in Salem. The threatening letter sounds as if Mace Jackson was the hired hit man or part of a conspiracy that intended to kill Kane but didn’t get the job done.”

“Yet.”

“Yet,” Cate agreed.

“And now they’re after Matt.” Candy took a sip of her drink. “Look, I’d like to help. I really would. I’m not such a bad person that I want to see Matt murdered. But, as I already told you, I never saw Mace Jackson before and I don’t know anything about him. Or anyone else who’d try to kill Kane or Matt.”

“Some other information turned up today, possibly related. Kane may have been into some very high-stakes gambling. If he lost big, gambling creditors may have payback rules they enforce with guns.”

Candy clunked the glass down hard on the counter as if she were about to argue. But then a light went on in her eyes. “That’s what he was doing all those weekends he was gone, isn’t it? Gambling in some casino over on the coast!”

“Could be.” Cate suspected Candy was relieved to hear this and know it wasn’t another woman who’d captured Kane’s time and interest.

Candy tapped glossy fingernails on the counter. “I know he’s been hurting for money.”

“My understanding is that H&B here in Salem hasn’t been profitable lately. That’s why they were closing it. So he may have been short of money for that reason, in addition to gambling losses.”

“Maybe a shortage of profits at H&B was
why
he was gambling. Because he needed money. As I told you, he did great with gambling on our honeymoon.”

“Gambling isn’t exactly a sure-thing investment. You can lose everything you have in casino gambling, I suppose. But the casinos are well regulated and controlled. I don’t think they’re going to let you gamble with an IOU. You have to have the money up front.”

“You’re saying Kane borrowed money from some loan shark? Or he was gambling somewhere outside the casinos and going in debt to do it? Something illegal? A bookie or someone like that?”

“I don’t know much about illegal gambling or how you do it,” Cate admitted. Bookies were well outside her experience. All she had was a mental picture, no doubt from some old movie, of a heavyset guy wearing suspenders, smoking a cigar, and talking out the side of his mouth. Candy’s suggestion about a loan shark was something new. She hadn’t considered that before. Loan sharks were also noted for a nasty attitude about nonpayers.

“But why kill him?” Candy demanded. “He was getting the money to pay them off.”

Candy might be unhappy that Kane had sneaked around to gamble, but now she also sounded resentful that his gambling or loan creditors hadn’t been more patient. Cate expected Candy to demand to know where she’d acquired information about Kane’s gambling, but she was apparently so instantly convinced of his involvement that she didn’t need details.

“Can you remember anything, maybe suspicious phone calls he made or received, anything that could have been contacts with a loan shark or some illegal gambling setup?”

“I don’t remember anything from before we separated. And I wouldn’t know about phone calls to the apartment where he lives now.” Candy gave Cate a sideways glance. “But I have a key.”

“To the apartment?”

“Kane took Clancy with him almost everywhere, but once he flew down to a big antique car auction, Phoenix or somewhere, and he gave me a key so I could go in and feed Clancy. Actually, when I got there, poor Clancy was so lonely
I brought him here. Kane never asked for the key back, so I still have it.”

“So you’re saying . . . ?”

Candy’s eyes flashed a blue glitter of excitement. “We could go over and see if we can find something helpful about this gambling stuff!”

“Belmont Investigations doesn’t do anything illegal, even if it might aid an investigation.”

Candy rolled her eyes. “Don’t be such a wimp. There wouldn’t be anything illegal about this anyway. It isn’t as if we’d be breaking in. Kane
gave
me a key
.
I’ve used it a couple of times.”

Cate was curious about why Candy had used the key and what she’d been doing in her ex-husband’s apartment.

As if Candy recognized a pending question, she added flatly, “And no, I’m not telling you why I was there. C’mon. We’ll take the Lexus.”

When Cate still sat there undecided, Candy dumped the remainder of her drink down the sink. “I’m going upstairs to change clothes. You think about it. If you want to find out who’s threatening Matt, this is the place to start looking.”

But going into someone’s apartment . . . Cate was still mulling the idea after Candy went upstairs and the cell phone in her purse gave its guitar riff. She looked at the screen. Mitch? No, an unfamiliar number.

“Hello.”

“Cate, hi. This is Seth Erickson. You talked to me earlier, out in the shop at H&B?”

“You thought of something more about Mr. Blakely or H&B?”

“I tried. I really, really tried. But to be honest, I’m as blank as that blue screen of death on a computer.”

“So you’re calling me because . . . ?”

“I’m thinking, if you’re staying in Salem overnight, you have to eat dinner, right? So I’m also thinking we could have dinner together. Maybe a movie afterwards, to relax you from a hard day of private investigating.”

Seth Erickson was asking her for a
date
? She considered the invitation briefly. No, she didn’t consider actually accepting it. She and Mitch had their differences about her being a PI, but they had something strong going between them. Neither of them dated anyone else.

“That’s really thoughtful of you, Seth. I appreciate the invitation. But no, I don’t think so. I’m . . . involved.”

“Oh. I should have guessed that, shouldn’t I? Beautiful private investigators no doubt have their pick of law officers, detectives, FBI men, etc.”

“You don’t object to a woman being a private investigator?”

“Object?” Seth sounded surprised. “Why would I?”

“Sometimes dangerous situations are involved. Dangerous people. On my first case, two different people tried to kill me on the same day.”