Just in Time: Portals of Time (14 page)

“Greed, negligence.”

Luke got a glimpse of the scene. Would he ever want the perfect family they were longing for? Thoughts of kissing Dorian in the kitchen, then outside the night of her date intruded. Jesus, where did that association come from? Afraid he knew the answer, he said, “Maybe you two can have children if you change the future.”

Alisha’s head snapped around just as the light switched to green. “What do you mean?”

“You have to stay in our time, right?”

She nodded.

“You could get married, have kids and settle down like those people. It’d be sort of like a perk for the sacrifice you made.”

“No, not us.” Celeste’s voice was sad. “We won’t be able to conceive. No matter what happens in our next task, our bodies will always be genetically inferior.”

“Celeste, stop! He doesn’t need to know the details. Hellor, who knew you and Dorian would turn into mouth blabbers.”

Luke didn’t react to the misuse. He wished he knew what their next task was. Maybe he’d try to wheedle the information out of Dorian the next time he kissed her. Truthfully, he worried about these three, now that he knew they were babes in the woods here. Damn it, though, he’d gotten overly concerned about them. Especially Dorian.

“There’s number thirty-four.” Alisha pointed to a small house with yellow siding, surrounded by the proverbial white picket fence. A woman sat on the front porch swing.

Luke pulled the car over to the curb. “Let me do the talking.”

“Agreed,” they said in unison.

When they exited the vehicle, he noticed they wore the kind of slim, black suits that Dorian sported when she was pretending to be a bodyguard. He hadn’t really looked at how they were dressed, but it was the right attire for their cover. Dorian must have advised them.

They traversed the sidewalk, opened the fence gate, which creaked, and climbed a few steps to the porch. The woman stood. She was petite and pretty, with steel-blond hair and wide, blue eyes. Which seemed troubled. “May I help you?”

Luke flashed his star. “I’m Lieutenant Luke Cromwell from the NYPD, and these are FBI agents, Hart and Law. We need to ask you a few questions, ma’am.”

The woman paled and grasped the railing. She asked simply, “He already did it? He killed Dr. Cromwell?”

CELESTE MADE SURE
she sat next to Kara Krueger after the woman invited them into her house. Kara had practically tumbled onto a big couch that seemed to swallow her up, even after Luke had said, “No, Dr. Cromwell isn’t dead. Yet.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not usually so weak.” Kara’s shaky voice belied the comment. “I’ve had to be strong.”

Touching Kara’s hand, Celeste felt her fear. And fatigue. She siphoned off some of it. “Can you tell us what all this is about, Kara?”

“I don’t want to get him in trouble.” She glanced at the photos on the end table of two little, blond girls, who shared their mother’s coloring. “He’s the father of my children.”

Luke sat forward, his hands clasped. “Mrs. Krueger, we need to know whatever
you
know about the emails Jess Cromwell’s gotten.” When Kara simply stared at him, he added, “He’s my brother, ma’am.”

Water leaked from her eyes. “I didn’t make the connection. Oh, dear.” She covered her face with her hands.

Celeste was forced backward a bit, the emotion in Kara so strong it reached out to her without contact.

Alisha asked, “Mrs. Krueger, are you afraid of your husband?”

“We can protect you physically,” Luke added stiffly. “If you’re concerned he’ll come after you.”

“Craig hasn’t been home in seven months.”

“Will you tell us why?” Luke asked.

“H-he moved out and in with another woman.” Her eyes narrowed. “It’s good for me to remember he cheated on me. And took all our money.”

Cocking her head, Alisha asked, “Surely your government protects you from poverty. There are laws against such things, right?”

“Craig hid money in secret accounts. Bought a boat and a host of other things to grab some of our net worth. Those men at work he was hanging around with? It was because of them that he started acting so horribly. He used to be such a nice man.” She wiped her eyes. “How could he do this to his children?”

Luke’s face flushed with anger. “There are ways to make him pay child support.”

“He does pay the required amount. But it’s put into a trust that dictates how we spend it. Very little goes to rent, which is why the girls and I had to move to a smaller home in a different neighborhood. I’m an elementary school teacher and couldn’t afford the one we used to live in. Though I don’t need more. I never did.”

“When did Craig stop being such a nice man, Kara?” Alisha asked.

Kara’s hands fisted in her skirt. “When he got involved in corporate research.”

The three of them exchanged glances. Luke asked, “For what company?”

“Petron. In college, he got an assistantship to help with a professor’s research. He loved it. He decided to become a researcher himself, but none of his projects ever panned out. When this job came along at Petron, he jumped at the chance.”

“What kind of work does he do now?”

“It’s confidential. From what he let slip, I don’t think he focused on one project. I think he kept the company apprised of research done around the globe on forms of alternate energy. They paid him a lot of money.” She shook her head. “That would have been okay if he hadn’t kept company with the hotshots. He was bullied as a kid, so the in-crowd paying attention to him changed him.”

“How is your husband connected to my brother, Mrs. Krueger?”

Kara swallowed hard and her eyes misted again. Her light complexion became mottled, making her freckles stand out. “One night, I was on the computer and his email mistakenly came to me. It was a fluke as we had separate accounts, though the same server. There were a few messages between him and other executives at the company where he works. She got a faraway look in her eyes. “It’s also how I found out he was cheating on me. When I confronted him, he closed down both email accounts and moved out. But he must have snuck in here when I was at work and taken the computer.”

“So, you have no proof?” Luke’s voice was hoarse. He’d been hoping for more, Celeste knew.

“No. He took the computer that had the emails on it.”

“What exactly did they say?” Alisha asked.

“There were three of them. The first said Dr. Cromwell was getting close to perfecting a technique to extract natural gas from the ground safely. How what he was doing was not good for oil companies.” She scowled. “Another, from his boss, said this was the kind of thing they expected him to stay on top of. He should be causing a stir about the safety of fracking Dr. Cromwell was researching.”

“What was the third?”

“One that threatened Craig’s job.”

Luke’s lips thinned. “But none of those things directly show he wanted to do Jess harm.”

“Not
those
things.”

Again, Celeste touched Kara’s arm and felt a stirring of anger. “Why did you start emailing Jess a month ago?”

“I saw the article on Dr. Cromwell in
Science Today
magazine and thought about the emails. Next to the photo shoot was an article by a Petron executive, highlighting the drawbacks of the research.” She hesitated. “It made me remember boxes in the basement of our old house that Craig left behind. They’re filled with papers, but when I moved them here, I saw they were work related. I got a bad feeling from the emails, so I went down where I stored them and found folders full of information on Dr. Cromwell.”

Luke stilled. “Can we see the folders your husband collected?”

“Ex-husband. Though I heard he isn’t with the woman he left me for.” She stood. “Come with me. I don’t know if you’ll view these as threatening, but I know Craig. He was obsessed, and his focus on Dr. Cromwell was unhealthy.”

Celeste squeezed her hand. “I’m so sorry you were hurt.”

“Thank you. But if I’m right, stopping Dr. Cromwell from being killed will ease my mind.”

The basement was dim and Celeste started to cough from the precipitation down here. On one of the shelves, boxes were neatly stacked and labeled. Two were marked
Craig, the asshole
.

Kara gave a shy smile. “Sorry, I was so angry when he left, I couldn’t resist. I’m better now.”

Luke chuckled, but Celeste didn’t understand.

Taking one of the boxes down, Luke set it on a table. Inside were neatly filed folders. The labels read,
Armstrong, wind; Lakefield, solar; Lincoln, clean coal.
One very thick file read
Cromwell, natural gas
.

He opened it. “Wow. There have to be a hundred articles in here.” He began leafing through them. “I don’t know if this constitutes…” He stopped speaking when he reached a specific photo of Jess in his office, smiling broadly.

On the photo, Krueger had drawn a bright red target.

“See what I mean?” Kara stated.

“Yes.” Celeste had been reading up on archery because one of the Lansing younglings took lessons in it.

“What are you going to do?” Kara asked, sounding defeated.

“Take this to the authorities.” Which Celeste knew was not true. “If we need you to come in to give a deposition to the police, will you?”

“Oh, I don’t know. He’s my children’s father. And as I said, I’m not as mad as I was when I labeled the boxes. Can’t you just work with what you have?”

When they went back upstairs, they took their leave, but Celeste stayed on the porch when Luke and Alisha went down the steps. Again, she touched Kara Krueger’s arm. Now anxiety swirled inside the poor woman, so Celeste opened up fully and drew more of it off. She managed to say in a normal voice, “Kara, we’ll stop this. You have my assurance.”

“You know, I believe you.”

“Try not to worry about it.”

“Maybe I can stop now that someone with authority knows.” Kara’s face showed a puzzled expression. “For some reason, I feel better than before you came here.”

“I’m glad.”

“But Agent Hart, seriously, I don’t think I can actually testify against him. The kids and all.”

When the three of them were settled in the car, Alisha spoke up. “Can we do anything with this information, Luke? It’s really not proof.”

Luke said, grimly, “No. If it wasn’t for what your computeller reveals, I wouldn’t feel so strongly about Jess being in danger. But we know my brother is going to die; we know Krueger is a kook and might be planning a murder. We just have to find the proof.”

DAVID HAD JUST
stepped through the church’s front door to get some air when he saw a lone runner, jogging down the street. He recognized her when she got closer and waited. “Fancy meeting you here, Alisha.”

“Reverend Ryan, hello. I was running out of inside to clear my mind and decided to come see your structure.”

His brows knit. Though she was flushed and a thin film of sweat formed on her face, he was surprised. “You ran all the way from the Cromwell house?”

“It’s only five point two-five of your miles. I’m energized from it.” She scowled, the lines marring a totally wrinkle-less face. “We had an interesting visit yesterday.”

“How about if I walk with you while you cool down and you can tell me what happened? It’s a beautiful day. After that you can see the church.”

Her expression was serious, as it always was. So he said, “You must feel so bad being here after what we did to the future.”

They started walking. “I try not to think about that.”

“I
try to reaffirm to my congregation the abundance we have and the importance of conserving our resources.”

“We haven’t talked about this, but I found the Earth Day celebration you had interesting when Celi told me about it. I understand she became agitated.”

“Why?”

“Because you—as a society—knew what could happen to the environment and didn’t succeed in preventing the ruination of the air.”

A sense of guilt invaded him and he stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “I guess I always knew we might go down the wrong path.”

She perused him with an odd expression on her face. “You’re dressed differently from other times I’ve seen you.”

“I wear casual clothes when I’m not preaching or visiting the hospital.” She kept staring, and something drove him to tease her. “Do you like what you see?”

Her mouth gaped. The sun beat down on her, highlighting her amber eyes. “Are you flirting with me? No, you can’t be. Men of religion don’t flirt. Or join. Or espouse.”

Laughing heartily, he had to settle down before he could answer. “I guess I am flirting. Men of religion
do
flirt,
do
join, and do get married.”

“I saw different information on the chips. Though I must confess, the chips were vague about the religion of the time.”

“Some religions don’t allow their clergy to mate. That must be what your chips revealed.”

“Ah.” She glanced down, then up again. “So, do you have a mate?”

“No.”

“How old are you?”

“Forty-one.”

“I don’t understand. How do…?”

Her words trailed off when her cell phone rang. “I have to get this…Alisha here.” A pause while she listened. “All right, I’ll come back.”

“Problems?” David asked when he she clicked off.

“Yes. I must go to the Cromwells immediately. Could you transport me?”

“Of course. Maybe I can help.”

DORIAN WAS WAITING
for Alisha on the front porch, surprised but pleased to see Reverend David Ryan with her. Maybe he could be of use in dissolving the contention that had sprung up among all of them like a sand blast.

“What’s happening?” Alisha asked when she entered the foyer.

Her friend seemed flustered, but Dorian had to dismiss it for now. “Luke and Celeste have come up with a suggestion on how to get proof of Krueger’s involvement in a plot against Jess.” Dorian tried to keep her face neutral though she was very unhappy.

Alisha shook her head. “Your expression tells me that their plan isn’t acceptable to you.”

“It isn’t. Let’s go to the family room and you’ll hear why.”