ILL-TIMED ENTANGLEMENTS (The Kate Huntington mystery series #2) (28 page)

“No, you haven’t mentioned that before. What are the other ‘many things’ you like?”

“Oh, no. I think I’ll save them for another time. Don’t want to give you too many compliments in one day.”

Skip grinned at her from across the sidewalk. “
So much
to look forward to,” he said.

•   •   •

Sitting on Paul Johnson’s sofa, Betty was working on her second cup of tea.

Mac was standing just inside the apartment door, arms crossed and staring into space, pretending that he wasn’t listening to the conversation across the room. Betty had introduced him merely as her bodyguard, then she had scoffed, “My nephew insists he go everywhere with me. That boy is such a worry wart.”

She had told Johnson she was calling to express her sympathy over the loss of his friend and then had commented on the lovely antique china cabinet in his dining area. In no time, she’d had him reminiscing about his life with his late partner, telling her tales of their travels, of the junk shops and second-hand furniture stores they had frequented on the weekends, looking for finds.

“What did you do for a living, Mr. Johnson, before you retired?” Betty asked pleasantly, when there was a lull in the conversation.

“I was an engineer,” was Johnson’s brief and not very helpful answer.

When Betty brought the conversation back around to Jeff Morgan, the man’s comments remained vague.

“I feel so bad that I didn’t take the time to get to know Jeff better,” Betty said, shaking her head sadly. “He was such a nice man. What kinds of activities did he enjoy doing?”

Paul Johnson hesitated. “He loved books.”

“Oh, really,” Betty said brightly. “Who was his favorite author?”

Again the hesitation, and a flash of something else. “Faulkner I guess was his favorite,” he said. “Although his tastes were very eclectic.”

Betty thought it was interesting that this man could go on and on about his late partner, but he seemed to have no desire to reminisce about times spent with the supposedly dear friend he had just lost.

She decided to be more direct. “Do you know if Jeff had any enemies?”

Again there was a flash of some emotion on his face, gone before she could identify it. “I can’t imagine how anyone could dislike the man,” he said blandly and then changed the subject. “I should be offering you my condolences as well. I understand that you and Mrs. McIntosh were good friends. Do the police have any leads in her death?”

“Not that I know of,” Betty said. “I think they’re trying to figure out what motive someone might have for killing these particular people. Do you have any thoughts about that?”

Paul Johnson made a show of thinking about the question. After scratching his bald head and then squeezing the bridge of his thin nose, he said, “I can’t think of anything they had in common, other than living in the same building. Who are the prime suspects? Perhaps I can shed some light on their personalities.”

Betty played dumb. “Oh, I don’t really know. My nephew’s been discussing all that with that nice detective. It’s all so upsetting.” She fanned herself with her napkin.

“Well, I guess I’d better let you get on with your day. Do you mind if I use the little girls’ room before I go?”

“Of course not.” Johnson directed her to the powder room next to his den.

Once Betty was out of the room, he walked over to Mac. “This is obviously very distressing for Mrs. Franklin. Do you know if they’re getting close to finding the murderer?” he asked.

“Don’t know, sir,” Mac mumbled.

Johnson shook his head slightly. “Please tell Mr. Franklin that I’m happy to help with the investigation in any way that I can.”

“I will, sir.”

•   •   •

Kate knocked on Betty’s apartment door. Rob answered. “Where’s Canfield?” he asked as she walked in past him.

She shot a sideways glare at him. “
Skip
went to try Morris again, and then to talk to Alice Carroll.” She was about to say more but caught herself. Better not start such an important conversation with anger. Not when their friendship hung in the balance.

That thought stopped her in mid-stride. Fear of losing Rob shot through her, but an instant later she realized that if he wouldn’t accept Skip in her life, she didn’t know what she would do. She already cared for the man too much to let him go.

Was Rob not as mentally healthy as she had always thought he was? Or had she just run up against a psychological blind spot in him? All this flashed through her mind in a second or two, as she looked up at Rob, willing the stinging in her eyes to
not
turn into tears.

“Did you catch up with Baxter or the Murphys?” she asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

“Haven’t had a chance to try.”

He knew something was wrong. She had the strangest look on her face.
Did Canfield break her heart? I’ll kill him!
Didn’t matter that the guy was all muscle and ten years younger. Rob imagined himself strangling the man with his bare hands.

He didn’t realize he was glaring at her.

Kate took a step back from him. “What happened? To keep you from seeing them?” she asked.

“FBI agents came back,” he said, his voice grim.

Relief washed through her. That’s why he was acting so strangely. “Why do I have the feeling that they…”

“Weren’t as friendly this time? They weren’t.” He gestured toward the chairs in the living room.

“Where are Liz and Betty?’ Kate asked, as she flopped down onto the settee and kicked her shoes off.

“Betty’s lying down. She just got back from seeing Johnson. Liz is in the den.”

Just as well that I didn’t try to have our little talk then,
Kate thought, as she put her feet up. It was not a conversation she wanted interrupted by someone else popping into the room. Stretching out as far as the short couch would allow, she couldn’t help but sigh as some of the tension drained out of her.

“Yeah, it’s been a rough day,” Rob agreed with her nonverbal commentary on the roller coaster ride of the last nine hours. He sat down in the adjacent armchair.

Kate breathed another quiet sigh of relief. He was back to finishing her sentences and reading her mind. Maybe they would be okay after all.

“So why’d the FBI come back?” she asked.

“The Berkeleys have vanished.”

“What?” Kate started to sit up and almost slithered off the slippery fabric. She quickly put a foot on the floor to catch herself and pushed up into a sitting position.

“Yeah, they were gone when the feds went in. Apartment wasn’t cleared out but they had obviously packed up most of their clothes and valuables and had gotten the hell out of there. The feds assumed that Liz or I had alerted them.”

“Holy crap!” Kate said.

“It’s fine now, with the feds,” Rob reassured her. “We finally convinced them that we had nothing to do with their fugitives taking a powder. I pointed out that the Berkeleys probably got nervous because of all the police officers wandering around asking questions. Oh, another interesting tidbit. One of the agents let it slip that Mr. Berkeley is not Mrs. Berkeley’s husband, but rather her father.”

Kate just stared at him.

“Yeah, keeps getting curiouser and curiouser. Seems the whole family was involved in the paramilitary organization. Survivalists, out in the woods, doing drills, et cetera. Leader started ranting about how the government had been corrupted by all the damn liberals. So they planned an Oklahoma City-type attack on the Indiana state legislature.

“But to finance that endeavor, they decided to rob a bank first. Some of them got away with the money but three of the men got caught. Then the group tried to break them out of the jail in the basement of the town hall. They tossed a homemade bomb at the front door to blow it off the hinges. But the bomb did more damage than intended.

“To make a long story short, Mrs. Berkeley… or should I say, Miss Caldwell and her father were the only ones who got away. And apparently rethought the whole idea of treason. They came to Lancaster, developed whole new identities, bought a hardware store with their ill-gotten gains. Fifteen years later they sold the store and retired. They had apparently figured that pretending to be husband and wife would help throw the feds off the trail. The FBI would be looking for a father and daughter team, not a couple.”

“The FBI agents told you all that?” Kate asked, incredulous.

“No, they let slip just enough to give my darling wife a hint of where to research from there. Most of the info came from old newspaper articles. And some of it’s just educated guessing.”

“So Liz did not learn her lesson from all this,” Kate said quietly, with a little bit of a chuckle in her voice.

Rob also dropped his voice so that his wife in the next room wouldn’t hear him discussing her. “Oh, she said she’s turning over a new leaf. Just straightforward searches from now on. No more hacking.”

“And you believe her?”

“Hell no. Next time she thinks it’s a worthy cause, she’ll be at it again.” But Rob smiled as he said it. He knew perfectly well that he had no control over what his wife did. She might be four-ten and weigh less than a hundred pounds, but inside that petite body lived the soul of a stevedore.

“Did Betty get anything useful out of Johnson?”

“Not really, but she agrees with our assessment that he didn’t know Jeff as well as he claims.” Rob pushed himself up out of his chair. “Well, I guess I’d better get on with my assignments.”

Kate offered to go with him. “That’s okay,” he said. “Why don’t you relax a bit.”

The dog-tired part of her won the internal debate against the part that was pushing for her to go with him and look for an opportunity to talk things out.

Kate got up to lock the deadbolt after him, then stretched out on the settee again with a sigh. She’d have to find that opportunity soon, she realized. Because she was thinking that one more day would be her limit of how long she could stand to be away from her child.

Kate closed her eyes to fantasize about bathing Edie and snuggling with her at bedtime.

O
nce again, Skip had not been able to get Morris to come out of his lair, but he had somewhat better luck with Mrs. Carroll.

In the administration building, he found a sales person enthusiastically explaining the virtues of The Villages to a white-haired couple.
Either these folks live under a rock or they’re from out of town
, Skip thought. He hoped for the poor salesman’s sake that the couple did not pick up on the note of desperation in his voice.

When there was a lull, Skip asked if Mrs. Carroll was in. “Third door on the right down that hall.” The man had a touch of panic in his eyes.

The door was slightly ajar. After getting no response to his soft knock, Skip nudged it open a bit further. His curiosity about the salesman’s look was satisfied when the reek of alcohol hit him in the face.

Slipping into the room and closing the door behind him, he assessed the situation. Mrs. Carroll was sitting behind her desk, face down on her crossed arms. Not sure if she was dead or just dead drunk, Skip quickly scanned the room for potential hiding places. Unless an intruder was crammed under the desk, along with Mrs. Carroll’s knees, there was no one else in the room.

The woman raised her head and looked at him through bleary, blood-shot eyes. “Who’re you?” she slurred.

He tried to hide his shock at her appearance. Her dress was rumpled, her eyes red and swollen and her face blotchy. “Skip Canfield, ma’am. May I sit down?”

She waved vaguely at the chair in front of the desk. It took Skip a moment to make out her next words. “Wha’s ya wan’? Yer too yug ta live ’ere.”

“True, but it sure is a swell place to retire. I’m gonna be keepin’ it in mind when the time comes.” Skip let a bit of Texas creep into his voice. For some reason, it often charmed the ladies.

Mrs. Carroll looked at him skeptically, then emitted a very unladylike belch. “Wanna drink?” She pushed back a bit from her desk and almost fell off her chair. “Where’s m’ glass?” She looked around in confusion.

A splash of wetness on the wall to Skip’s left and a puddle of liquid and broken glass on the floor testified to the fate of the missing glass.

“Nev’r min’.” The woman pulled a fifth of Scotch, half empty, out of her lower desk drawer. She took a healthy swig right from the bottle, then held it out toward Skip.

He took it, put his thumb over the top and pretended to take a drink, then lowered it to the floor beside his chair. “It’s a darn shame that y’all been havin’ such a string of bad luck ’round here lately,” he commiserated quickly, to cover the fact that he hadn’t returned the bottle to her.

“S’not my fault. Can’t blame me dis time!” The blotches on her face grew redder with anger.

Skip shook his head in sympathy, figuring he could be bolder than he would normally be. “I heard ’bout your previous troubles, ma’am, at your old job.”

“I din’t do it. Somebody else…” She belched again. “Was puttin’ ’em out a der misery, but police thought was me.”

“Then you landed this here nice job, an’ now that’s goin’ to hell in a han’basket.” Skip shook his head again.

“S’not my fault. I tried ta calm ev’ybody down.”

“It’s a darn shame Doris Blackwell wouldn’t listen to ya. Musta been purty frustratin’.”

“Damn bitch… s’always makin’ trouble. Wish I coulda kicked ’er out, but she’da sued us… sued da Vill’ges.”

“I can certainly understan’, ma’am, why ya hit her,” Skip said, in a gentle voice.

Mrs. Carroll just stared at him. Then she started looking around for her bottle.

“I think ya finished it off, ma’am.” He could not, in good conscience, let her drink any more.

The woman gathered herself together. “Whoev’r hit ‘er, yug man, did th’world a flavor,” she said. Then she lurched forward and passed out cold, sprawled across her desk.

Skip felt for a pulse on her neck. It and her breathing were irregular, and her skin was cold and pale.

He took out his handkerchief–which he carried for reasons other than just drying ladies’ tears–and lifted the telephone receiver, punching in 911 with a knuckle. He requested an ambulance be sent to The Villages’ management office, for a possible case of alcohol poisoning, then hung up when the operator asked for his name.