ILL-TIMED ENTANGLEMENTS (The Kate Huntington mystery series #2) (16 page)

“Hmm, I wonder how easy it is to get one’s hands on chloroform?” Liz said.

“That’s a very good question, my love. Does anyone know?” Everyone shook their heads. Rob nodded at his wife. “That could be your assignment for this morning, Lizzie. This place probably has wireless. Did you bring your laptop?”

Liz nodded. “I was planning on staying here to keep Aunt Betty company anyway.”

“I don’t need a babysitter, Elizabeth,” Betty said indignantly.

“Betty, you actually shouldn’t be alone,” Skip said gently. “There’ve been some assaults in town recently. So far the guy’s only attacked young women at night, but as Kate and I were discussing earlier, any woman who is alone and vulnerable is a potential target.”

Rob sat up straighter. “Maybe it’s not safe for Liz and Aunt Betty to be here by themselves.”

“We should be okay,” Liz said. “We’ll keep the doors locked up tight.”

“I think they’ll be safe, Rob,” Kate reassured him. “Rarely does a rapist go after more than one woman at a time. Many of them are actually not all that brave. They want the deck stacked in their favor, to be sure they’ll be able to overpower the woman.”

Liz pointed her plastic fork toward the lists of names, intentionally changing the subject. Aunt Betty didn’t need to be contemplating being overpowered by a rapist. “Who interviewed the maintenance man?”

Kate and Skip exchanged a look. Kate gave a slight shake of her head, then said, “I talked to him. He’s kind of creepy. Seems to think he’s God’s gift to women. He claimed to not have any interest in Doris. Said she was much too old for him.”

“Do you think he was telling the truth?” Liz asked.

“Not sure, but I think so. His general attitude was that he could do a lot better than someone that much older than himself. I think he’s capable of rape, but he didn’t come across as a murderer. Just an oversexed jack… uh, creep.”

Rob was trying to figure out what the subtle exchange of looks had been about. Was Kate keeping something from him? He was surprised by how much it hurt to think that she might be.

It took him a moment to realize that Skip was talking to him. “Thanks for the food, Rob,” the younger man was saying as he stood up. “Denny’s sure beats the heck out of a room service breakfast. You ready to go, Kate?”

“You’re welcome,” Rob mumbled, then frowned as Kate and Skip walked out the door, headed for Skip’s Explorer.

W
hile Rose changed into the clothes Betty had been wearing when she left the retirement center the day before, Liz checked online for wig stores in the area. Fortunately, there was one in an outlet mall not all that far away.

Unfortunately, there were no gray or white wigs there. After looking through the entire shop, Liz and Rose asked a salesperson. “We have a few, but we don’t usually put them out until closer to Halloween. Not much demand for gray or white the rest of the year.”

He rummaged in the stock room and came out with three wigs. One of them came close to matching Betty’s hairstyle, although it was a little curlier.

“If we wet this some and smooth it down, will it stay that way?” Liz asked.

“Oh, yes. This wig is made from real hair. You can style it the way you would your own. A large hot roller would probably do the trick.”

Rose, who always wore her straight black hair in a tight bun, whispered to Liz, “What’s a hot roller?”

“Never mind. I can fix it,” Liz whispered back. Rose looked at Liz’s carefully arranged strawberry blonde hair and nodded.

Liz gulped at the price tag, but when Rose tried the wig on, she decided it was worth it. If the girl kept her head down and rounded her shoulders a little, from a distance she could definitely pass for Aunt Betty.

Back at the motel, Liz worked on de-curling the wig a bit while Rob, Rose and Mac hammered out the details of their plan. Mac would go first. He would hang out in the atrium and look for an opportunity to slip into Betty’s apartment when no one was around.

Rose in disguise would enter the building with Rob, carrying Rose’s clothes in Betty’s suitcase. They would now be hoping that people
would
notice as they walked to the apartment. A few minutes later, Rob would leave, making a big deal of calling back into the apartment that he would stop up next weekend to check on his aunt. Then he would slip around to the line of trees behind the building and Mac would let him in through the window in the den.

•   •   •

Kate and Skip decided to try the gym first. Sure enough Mrs. Forsythe was there. Once again they waited for her to finish her time on the treadmill, then they stepped forward.

“Well, hello there,” Mrs. Forsythe said, running her eyes up and down Skip’s body.

Oh, yes
, Kate thought. It was definitely better to have buff Skip interviewing this fitness nut rather than Rob, for whom the battle with middle-aged spread was at best a stand-off at this point.

“Hi, Mrs. Forsythe.” Skip managed a grin, although her blatant scrutiny was a bit disconcerting. “Sorry to bother you again, ma’am, but we really need your help with something.”

“No bother, and please call me Ellen.” She was fluttering her eyelashes at him.

Skip tried to pump a little more energy into his grin. “Well, Ellen, I saw you walking in front of Mrs. Franklin’s building yesterday afternoon… And the thing is, someone had just broken into her apartment, and I was chasing the intruder around the corner of the building. I was wondering if you saw anybody running away, or just looking suspicious, as you were walking by?”

Ellen Forsythe didn’t look surprised by the news of the break-in, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. No doubt that information was already making its way through the community’s grapevine, or Lindstrom may have told the Forsythes about it last night.

“Hmm.” Mrs. Forsythe looked up at the ceiling, her eyes darting back and forth a couple times. Kate suspected the woman was only pretending to contemplate Skip’s question, while she made up a lie. But was that because she was the intruder Skip had been chasing? Or was she stalling before answering in order to seem cooperative, just to get in Skip’s good graces?

“I seem to recall that there was someone who looked suspicious. He came around the building rather quickly, and then abruptly slowed his pace,” Mrs. Forsythe said, while rubbing her chin.

Not exactly an Oscar-quality performance,
Kate thought. Out loud, she asked, “Can you describe him for us?”

“Oh, that would be hard to do. All these old men look the same to me. I really only pay attention to the
younger
men.” She smiled at Skip, then added, “The ones closer to
my
age.”

“The man you saw, what was he wearing?” Skip prompted.

“Hmm, let me think. Short-sleeved shirt. Blue, I think. Dark pants, kind of baggy, but then most of the geezers around here seem to be wearing their pants two sizes too big,” she said in a snide voice.

Kate was liking this woman less and less as the interview progressed. Condescending bitch thought she was attractive to Skip, who was three decades her junior, but she felt free to sneer at men who were only a decade or two older than herself.

“Height, build?” Skip asked, a smile still plastered on his face. Kate could tell it was fake but Mrs. Forsythe didn’t seem to notice.

“Hmm, about average height, not heavy, more on the thin side. I didn’t really get that good a look at him. He turned and walked in the opposite direction from me. He had white hair, of course.” She smiled demurely at Skip. She had just described at least half the men in the community.

Kate was trying to keep her expression neutral. “Mrs. Forsythe, if we could go back for a moment to the subject of Mrs. Blackwell and her flirting. You seemed to be amused by it, but do you know of any of the wives who might have taken it more seriously?”

“Well, I guess some of these old biddies might be worried, but
my
husband…” The woman actually ran her hands down her lean hips. “He
knows
what he has, and he wouldn’t dare risk losing it now.” Kate caught a glint of anger in her eyes, and she also noted that the woman had not suggested that
she
call her Ellen.

Skip asked the woman a few more questions. Kate was impressed by how he managed to make even inquiries about where she had been at certain times sound unthreatening.

“Thank you for your time, ma’am, uh, Ellen,” Skip finally said.

Mrs. Forsythe smiled at him. “Come around any time. I’m always happy to talk to a handsome man.”

Skip kept his voice low as they crossed the recreation building’s lobby. “So what’d you think of that performance?”

“I think it’s likely she was lying through her teeth,” Kate said quietly. “But the question is, was she the person you were chasing or is she just making stuff up in order to seem helpful, because…”

“Because she wants me,” Skip finished her sentence, grinning down at her.

His hair flopped down onto his forehead. Without thinking Kate started to reach up to smooth it back. Catching herself with her hand halfway to its target, she pretended to be covering a yawn instead. “Didn’t sleep well last night.”

Skip’s grin just grew wider as he held the door for her.

It was a particularly hot and humid day and the outside air hit them like a wet blanket. Nonetheless, Kate was glad to be out of the aggressively air-conditioned building.

“Did you ask Joe about Frieda yesterday?” Skip asked.

“No, I didn’t get to that before he started backing me into the corner.”

“I think I’ll have another go at him then,” Skip said.

“Do you mind if I pass on this particular interview?” Kate tried to hide the slight shudder that ran through her body. She was not successful.

Despite his size and his profession, Skip was not a violent man by nature, but now he started praying that Joe would give him an excuse to beat the crap out of him. “Not at all,” he said out loud. “He actually might be more truthful about his interactions with the women residents if he’s talking to another man.”

Skip had a plan to get Joe talking, one guy to another, about his sexual exploits. The bastard might even let something slip about preying on the young women around town. The thought, however, of having to act like a sleazy creep in order to gain Joe’s trust was making Skip’s eye twitch.

Kate caught the nervous tic. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. Sun’s too bright.” He squinted to reinforce the fib.

“Well, I actually like the heat, especially after being in that meat locker back there.”

Kate pointed down the road leading to Betty’s building. “I’ll wait for you on the bench where we sat yesterday.”

“Okay,” Skip said, glancing up at the sky. “Should be safe from falling pots there.”

Kate snickered. “Yeah, unless I’ve pissed God off lately.”

As Skip headed off in search of Joe, Kate started walking down the road.
Finally
, she thought,
a little alone time to get my thoughts straight.
This was a particularly peaceful stretch, one side of the road occupied by a large parking lot that served the building adjacent to Betty’s and the other side bordered by a strip of woods. Kate could hear the gurgle of a stream somewhere in the trees.

She dug her cell phone out of her pocket to check on Edie. Shelley answered and told her that everything was under control. Then Maria brought the baby to the phone so she could babble in her mother’s ear. Reassured but homesick, Kate disconnected.

Kate looked up when she heard the rumble of a truck engine. A moving van was turning out of the parking lot of the building next to Betty’s. She started to step up onto the curb just as the truck driver blew his horn.

Startled, Kate caught her toe on the edge of the curb. She stumbled forward for several steps and went down on her knees in the grass beside a large tree.

As the moving van rumbled past, she heard the roar of another engine just feet away. Instinctively, Kate scrambled behind the tree, then shoved herself to her feet and looked around.

A large dark-colored sedan was racing away from her. She just caught a glimpse of the driver’s silhouette, wearing some kind of cap, before the car turned the corner beyond Betty’s building.

Real bright, Kate, walking in the road when there’s a perfectly good sidewalk available.
She leaned over to brush grass and dirt off her knees. At least she was wearing dark slacks today so the stains wouldn’t show.

She noticed a black tire mark on the sidewalk but couldn’t tell if it was old or freshly made by the car that had almost hit her. Not only was it a bad idea to walk in the road around here, with elderly drivers whose eyesight and reflexes might not be what they once were, but apparently one had better keep their wits about them even on the sidewalk.

Looking around for her cell phone, it dawned on her, belatedly, that the driver could have been aiming for her intentionally. Lack of sleep was definitely making her brain fuzzy.

That may have been why the truck driver blew his horn, because he saw the car bearing down on her. But would the killer try to run her down with the truck driver there to witness it? Unlikely.

Kate found her phone in a clump of weeds beside the tree. Miraculously it seemed undamaged. Wiping it off and returning it to her pocket, she decided not to tell Skip about her embarrassing lapse in alertness.

Looking carefully both ways, she crossed the road and walked over to the bench. Sinking down on the end that had at least a modicum of shade from a small dogwood tree, Kate tried to gather her scattered thoughts.

The image of Rob’s frowning face from that morning popped into her mind’s eye. What was going on with him? She had always thought he liked Skip. So why the negative attitude now? She could understand, and appreciate, that Rob didn’t want to see her get hurt. But there was more to it than that.

As she reviewed his comments at breakfast, it suddenly dawned on her.
Rob’s jealous.
She sat back against the bench. “Phew,” she gasped out loud.

Rob is jealous? That can’t be.
They had been platonic friends for years, and she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was completely in love with and devoted to Liz. He was her closest friend, but she couldn’t begin to think about him in terms of romance. It would be like dating her brother.