Keeping Watch: Heart of the Night\Accidental Bodyguard (22 page)

“I don’t—” she began, not really certain what she needed to tell him.

“Call him,” he ordered, interrupting, and then the connection was broken.

She stood a moment with the phone in her hand, the dial tone annoying. Finally she put the receiver back on the cradle and looked down on the number Barrington had given her. He was right. She did need to know exactly what had been said to Lew Garrison. She needed to know for her own information.
Personal.

D
ESPITE THE FACT
that Thorne had given her Dr. Sandifer’s private number, she still had some problems getting through. He refused to speak to her at first. She had thought it only fair to give her name and the paper’s name, and he had refused to take the call. She had then used Barrington’s name and the reminder that she had been given Sandifer’s private number. The masculine voice that finally replaced the smooth politeness of his secretary’s was brusque.

“I told Lew Garrison everything I have to say to you people. If Thorne
did
give you this number—”

“Lew’s dead,” Kate said, breaking into his indignation.

“Dead?” Sandifer repeated, as if it were a word he’d never heard before.

“He was murdered last night. Apparently your conversation was one of the last he had. The police will almost certainly want to talk to you to confirm exactly what was said. Because Lew was working on my story, asking questions I’d suggested, I’d like to know what you told him. Judge Barrington gave me your name and number and said to tell you to talk to me.”

“Why? Why would Thorne want me to talk to you?” he asked. The voice that had been full of anger and then shock was ripe now with suspicion. It was certainly a legitimate question. Kate wasn’t sure she had a legitimate answer.

“For personal reasons,” she admitted finally.

Sandifer said nothing for a moment. He was so quiet she could hear background noises from his end of the line, voices, faint and indistinct.

“Are you trying to tell me…” he began, and then he stopped. Apparently the thought of Thorne Barrington being involved with a reporter was simply beyond his comprehension. “You and Thorne are…” Again, he paused, and despite the situation, at the obvious disbelief in his tone Kate’s mouth moved, almost a smile.

“Involved,” she affirmed. The word had been in her mind and it had simply come out. Why not? It was true, given last night.

“Peg said you’re a reporter.”

“That’s right,” Kate said.

“Look, in spite of what you claim, I can’t tell you anything about Thorne. I don’t talk to the press about my friends.”

“You talked to Lew,” she reminded him.

“That’s exactly what I told Garrison.”

“That you wouldn’t talk about Barrington?”

“That’s right.”

“Nothing else?”

Sandifer didn’t say anything for a moment, and then he sighed, deeply enough to be audible.

“He came up with some crap about Thorne’s migraines being emotional.”

“Psychogenic,” she said.

“As a matter of fact, that’s the exact word he used.”

“We had a mutual source,” Kate acknowledged.

“But the way Lew said it, he made it sound as if it equated with crazy. That’s not what the term means, Ms. August.”

“Are they?” she asked.

“I wasn’t Thorne’s doctor.”

“But?” Kate asked softly, because the qualifier had been in his tone.

“In my opinion, they’re not.”

“In your opinion? Or based on something you know? Something you’ve heard.”

Again there was silence. “I don’t discuss my friends with reporters,” he said finally.

“But that
is
what you told Lew yesterday. Nothing else?”

“Our conversation was very brief. I was ticked off that Lew would even ask, that he thought I’d supply any information about a friend’s medical condition. Even if I
had
any information. I’ve known Lew a long time, and frankly I was surprised he’d call me and ask that. I thought it was out of character. I remember telling him to leave Barrington alone. I called him a couple of less than complimentary epithets, and I hung up. Then I called Thorne and told him what had happened. I was angry at Lew, but I didn’t kill him if that’s what y’all are thinking. If you and the cops are trying to make some kind of case out of me calling Lew a couple of names—”

“No one thinks anything like that,” she reassured him, smiling slightly. “You’re not under suspicion, Dr. Sandifer. That’s not why I’m calling you. It’s not why the police will call. They’ll just want to know if you told Lew anything…” She hesitated, searching for the right word. “Incriminating.”

“Incriminating? About me?”

“No,” Kate said.

“About Thorne?”

“Yes.”

“They think
Thorne
had something to do with Garrison’s death?” The question was derisive. Apparently, Greg Sandifer was just what he’d claimed to be, a friend of Barrington’s.

“I think it’s more a matter of checking out all the possibilities. They know Garrison called you concerning Judge Barrington’s injuries, and they know someone killed him shortly after your conversation. They’ll just be trying to determine if the two are in any way related.”

“I can tell you that they’re not. Not in
any
way,” Dr. Sandifer said. “If that’s all, Ms. August?”

“You can call Judge Barrington. He really did give me your number.”

“You can be assured that I will,” he said succinctly, and then the connection was broken.

Kate put Lew’s phone back in the cradle and stood a moment looking down at it. She hadn’t handled that conversation very professionally, but at least she knew that the friend of Barrington’s Lew had called hadn’t told him anything that might have gotten him killed. Apparently Dr. Sandifer had given her editor no real information at all about Barrington’s injuries. She took a deep breath and realized only then how tense she had been. Now she could relax, knowing that the doubts that had begun to circle in her head like vultures were groundless.

She would have to call Kahler and give him Dr. Sandifer’s name. Barrington would, of course, but she needed to confess to the detective that she had made her own call. Kahler would probably chew her out, but the relief she felt as a result of Sandifer’s comments would make his lecture a lot more bearable.

She took another careful survey of the materials on Lew’s desk, but Kahler had apparently told the truth about that. With the exception of the missing pages from the calendar, nothing else here seemed to relate to Jack. The material she had collected through the months she’d been involved in the story was in the file drawer of her desk—with the exception of the pictures of Barrington that had been taken from her apartment. That was something else she needed to confess to Kahler. Since he now knew something of what she felt about Thorne, that confession would finally be possible. She could pretend that she had just discovered the photographs were missing.

She walked out of Lew’s office and closed the door behind her. She was a little surprised that Kahler hadn’t ordered the office locked, but maybe their search had been thorough enough that he was convinced there was nothing else to be learned from Lew’s papers. Or maybe Kahler, bless his heart, had left it open so that she would have the opportunity to do exactly what she had just done—to take her own look around.

She sat down in her chair and opened the bottom left-hand drawer of her desk. It was immediately apparent that something was wrong. Half the file folders were lying face down in the front of the drawer, the rest propped drunkenly against them.

She hesitated a moment, trying to decide what was going on. Finally, she picked up the fallen folders and pushed them to the back of the drawer, all upright again. She began to thumb through the tabs on top, but she knew what was missing. The thick collection of her materials relating to the Tripper bombings was gone, just like the newspaper pictures she’d taken home. She wouldn’t be able to do what she’d told Kahler she’d do, read through all the material to see if there was anything—

Suddenly she remembered. That was the other thing she and Lew had talked about. She had told Lew that Kahler had found the Mays connection by reading back through the dockets of Barrington’s cases, and then Lew had said something about maybe that’s what they ought to do.
Read back through everything to see if there was anything they’d overlooked.

She had been so smug that day, bragging about knowing every detail included in the material. But maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe Lew had done exactly what he’d suggested they should do—read back through all the files. Maybe he’d taken them into his office, sat down at his desk, the material she’d collected spread out before him, and gone over it all with a fine-toothed comb.

She pushed her chair back and walked to Lew’s office. Instead of putting the files back in her drawer where he’d gotten them, maybe he’d simply stuck them in his own file cabinet, in a hurry because he’d found whatever he’d found. But first, she prayed, he’d marked whatever it was, underlined it, made a notation.
Something
that would let her follow the path—

She stopped, suddenly remembering where that path had led, the darkened study in the silent house, Lew’s lifeless body slumped over his desk and behind him—She jerked her mind away from the image, and she knew she had to remember what Kahler had told her.
Don’t play cop.

She moved to the tall, five-drawer cabinet and pulled out the first drawer. She had no idea about Lew’s filing system and the drawers were unlabeled, so she began to methodically go through the folders. Lew’s careful lettering on the tabs, the printing small and very precise, was so familiar that she had to blink to clear her vision.

She worked her way through the files, even the two drawers that held material clearly not related to any ongoing stories. Her folders on the bombings were not here. And, she had realized sometime during her search, neither was the material the stringers were sending in from the cities where the murders had taken place. Lew had been collecting those for her for the segment dealing with the official hunt for the bomber. Everything they had collected about Jack had disappeared.

She closed the bottom drawer and stood up, aware of how long she’d been searching by the cramping ache in her legs. Either Lew had taken everything with him when he’d left the office last night or someone else had at some point cleaned out the files. If Lew had taken the material, it was probably at his home. Maybe lying on that blood-soaked desk. But of course, whoever had killed Lew would not have left those folders there if he had been aware of them, and he must have been if they had indeed contained whatever information Lew had indicated he’d discovered.

She knew that she couldn’t put off calling Kahler much longer. There were too many things she needed to tell him, things that might help him find Lew’s killer. Or help him find Jack. One and the same? That seemed obvious unless you considered the roles of the confetti prankster and Mays. None of them fitted together, but that wasn’t, thank goodness, her job. She was going to take Kahler’s advice very seriously. She didn’t intend to play cop. She didn’t intend to end up—

She forced her mind away again from what had happened to Lew and left his office, pulling the door closed behind her.

Chapter Eleven

It was after lunch before Kahler returned her call. She had spent the morning rereading the articles she had done on the bombings. Those were, of course, still available. It was all the material that had provided the sources for these very condensed versions that was missing.

“August? I had a message to call you,” Kahler said when she picked up the phone. “Something wrong?”

“I’m just the bearer of bad news now?” she asked, smiling at the concern in his voice.

“I didn’t mean that. I know how hard last night was. Finding Garrison. I was worried about you.”

“I know,” she said. She did know how he felt about her. He hadn’t made much of a secret of his feelings lately, and she appreciated his automatic concern. “I’m grateful, but I didn’t call just to listen to your voice, Kahler, as pleasant as it is.”

Somehow that came out wrong. Personal. She didn’t know why it was so hard to find the bantering tone their conversations had always had. Maybe because too much had happened, because the violence they were dealing with was now very up close and personal. No longer murder at long distance.

“You found something,” Kahler said. His voice was controlled, the tone tight and almost flat.

She hated to have to disappoint him, so she gave him the little bit of information she did have. “The friend of Barrington’s was Dr. Greg Sandifer. He didn’t tell Lew anything, refused even to talk about the judge’s injuries. He called Lew a couple of names and hung up. Then he called to warn Barrington that the paper was asking questions.” There was a small silence, and Kate pictured Kahler jotting down the information. “I have his private number if you want it,” she added.

“You called him,” Kahler said. It was not a question.

“Barrington told me to.”

Silence again, and then he asked, “What did you tell Barrington, Kate?”

“Tell him?” she asked, puzzled by his tone. “
He
called me. He’d heard about Lew. When I mentioned that I’d told you about Lew’s call to his friend, he gave me Sandifer’s number. I didn’t ‘tell’ him anything, Kahler. What’s that supposed to mean?”

“He asked you to pass Sandifer’s number on to the police?”

There was an edge to the question. Sarcasm? Anger? She wasn’t sure what she was hearing, but it was clear Kahler didn’t like the idea that she’d talked to Sandifer. Or maybe…the idea that she had talked to Barrington? Personal? she wondered. If so, maybe it was time that she made it clear exactly how personal her relationship with Thorne Barrington had become.

“I don’t think that’s why he gave me the number,” she said. “I think he knew that…I had some questions of my own about what Sandifer had told Lew. Some personal questions that I needed to have answered. I’m just passing on the information to you because I thought you’d want to talk to Sandifer yourself. In your case, talk to him professionally, of course.”