ILL-TIMED ENTANGLEMENTS (The Kate Huntington mystery series #2) (25 page)

“Don’t know. Liz said she couldn’t talk about it on a cell phone. She reassured me they were safe, but she sounded very rattled.”

They picked up their pace. They both knew that Liz did not rattle easily.

A
s Liz opened the apartment door and motioned Rob and Kate inside, Betty was trying to figure out why her nephew’s wife, who was usually a sensible woman, had suddenly turned into a nervous Nellie.

“What’s going on, darling?” Rob wrapped a steadying arm around his petite wife’s shoulders.

“Come look.” Liz led them into the den where her laptop was sitting on Betty’s desk. She pointed to the computer screen. There was a picture of a woman, probably in her late thirties but she looked like she’d had a rough life. Under it were the words, “Wanted for armed robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, and suspected treasonist activities.” In bold letters at the bottom was “Federal Bureau of Investigation” and a toll-free number.

“I have to admit you were right, Hon. I think my computer adventures have come back around to bite me.” Liz’s words were flippant but her voice was shaky.

“I scanned the photos of our mysterious hardware store owners into a new search engine Google just came out with, that lets you search for people by image instead of name. This was in the list of results for Mrs. Berkeley.” Liz pointed to the photo. “It’s possible that she didn’t exist before coming to Lancaster because she’s really Rayanne Caldwell, a member of a paramilitary organization that robbed a bank and set off a bomb in the town hall of Danville, Indiana, twenty-one years ago.”

Kate gasped, as Betty tartly said, “Somehow that doesn’t totally surprise me.”

“We’d better call the FBI,” Liz said. “They may have a cookie on the wanted poster that leads them back to any computer that hits on it.”

Rob had every intention of doing so anyway. He took out his cell phone. After giving his reason for calling, he was asked for his location, then told to sit tight. Agents would arrive within the hour.

“I’m going to go head off the others,” Kate said. “You don’t need a room full of people whose presence you have to explain to the FBI.”

Rob nodded, but Liz hadn’t seemed to hear her. She was still staring anxiously at the computer screen. Kate looked at Rob and tilted her head slightly in Liz’s direction.

Rob took the hint. “I’m not all that worried about the feds. Liz didn’t do anything wrong, in
this case
at least.” He couldn’t resist the temptation to get a small dig in about his wife’s sometimes questionable computer activities.

Then he relented and gathered Liz into his arms. “Honey, you were just checking out people on the computer, those who might be involved in what’s been going on here, and you stumbled on a federal fugitive. Heck, they may give you a medal.”

“I have a question, Elizabeth,” Betty was saying as Kate headed out the door to find the others. “What do cookies have to do with computers?”

•   •   •

Kate stood at the corner between the atrium and the hallway leading to Betty’s apartment. She glanced at her watch while taking out her cell to call Mac. It was just a little before one. The lunch crowd should be thinning out in the cafeteria. She asked Mac to find Rose and meet her there.

Kate spotted the top of Skip’s head above the plants on the second level and headed up the stairs. He was standing outside Morris’s apartment door. Before she could say anything, he whispered, “I’ve been trying Mac’s tactic. Isn’t working this time. He’s been ignoring me for almost an hour.”

Kate whispered back, “There’s been a development. We need to stay away from Betty’s apartment for awhile. Mac and Rose are meeting us in the cafeteria.”

“Where’s Rob?” Skip asked as they started toward the stairs.

“In Betty’s apartment.”

“Why can’t we go there?”

“They’re waiting for the FBI. It’s complicated. I’d rather not have to explain it twice.”

Skip’s eyebrows went up at the mention of the FBI.

As they headed down the stairs and out into the heat, Kate filled him in on the conversation with Detective Lindstrom. She lent him her phone, since it did indeed now have the detective’s number on speed dial.

After he had confirmed Betty’s alibi, Skip said into the phone, “Heard on the radio this morning that you had another incident in your other case last night.”

“Yeah, fifteen-year-old girl.” Lindstrom’s voice was grim.

Skip stifled a curse.

“He got careless this time, though. Left some physical evidence behind, a smear of semen and some hair. Hey, thanks for the tip about Fielding. It might just pay off. Brought him in first thing this morning, before he had a chance to line up a bogus alibi with his buddies.”

“Have your victims ID’d him?” Skip asked.

“Bastard wore a ski mask, so I didn’t have enough to hold him. Yet. The lab’s working on the hair samples. If it looks like it’s Fielding’s, he’s off the streets, and if the DNA matches, then we’ve nailed him good.”

Skip grinned at the thought, as he disconnected and handed the phone back to Kate.

“What’d he say?” she asked.

“About Betty’s alibi, not much. Mostly grunted. But he thinks he might be able to nail Fielding for the rapes. And here’s an interesting tidbit. The rapist wears a ski mask.”

“Ah, like our intruder.”

“Yeah, but ski masks are a pretty common way for perps to hide their identity. May not mean the two crimes are related.”

“Lindstrom’s change in attitude worries me,” Kate said. “He practically admitted to me before that he didn’t believe Betty killed Doris, much less the others. Now he seems to be caving to the pressure from above and is trying to build a case against her.”

Skip nodded grimly. “Worries me too. Unfortunately, cops get cynical after awhile, and they definitely develop an aversion to coincidences.”

In the cafeteria, they found Mac and Rose waiting for them at a table as far away from the few diners as they could get. The only person nearby was a young woman who was clearing away dirty dishes and setting up the tables for dinner.

Keeping her voice low, Kate told the others what Liz had discovered about Mrs. Berkeley and that the FBI was on the way to talk to Liz and Rob. They all digested that startling information for a couple minutes.

“Maybe the Berkleys are our killers then,” Rose said. “Doris and Frieda might have found out their secret.”

“But why kill Jeff?” Kate asked.

Rose shrugged. “Maybe he found out, too. Or maybe Lindstrom’s right and he was killed by someone else.”

“Phew! I’ll never assume the elderly lead bland, boring lives again,” Skip said. Looking around to make sure the cafeteria employee was out of earshot, he added, “In addition to our best-selling author, a bitchy tease and an outspoken gossip, we have a closeted lesbian academician and now a fugitive from the FBI.”

“You forgot your hot-to-trot ex-aerobics teacher,” Mac said, his blue eyes twinkling. “Did Mrs. Forsythe do it in the atrium?” he continued in a credible imitation of a British accent.

They all snickered a little guiltily.

“It is starting to sound like a weird version of the game of Clue, isn’t it?” Kate said. “And I’m starting to lose track of the players. Wish we had Betty’s lists… Or better still maybe we need to make a new chart that shows how these people’s lives intersect with each other.

“I’ll be right back.” She had noticed that the young woman setting up tables was putting a tablecloth on each one, then tearing off a square of paper from a large roll to place on top of the tablecloth, before setting salt and pepper shakers and other condiments in the middle. Kate approached the young woman and came back with a large square of paper.

She laid the paper out on their table, then wrote the three victims’ names across the top.

“Shouldn’t Betty be up there as well?” Skip asked. Kate nodded, adding Betty’s name between Frieda and Jeff. Then she wrote the names of their suspects in a column down the middle of the sheet of paper.

“Have I got them all?”

“You forgot Alice Carroll,” Skip said.

Kate added her name. Then across the bottom, she wrote “access to chloroform” in one corner, “avg. height/build” in the other and “not weak or slow” in the middle.

“Okay, let’s connect the dots.” With input from the others, Kate went down the suspect list and drew lines from any of the victims’ names who had a connection with that suspect.

“Hmm, Daniel Jennings. Who talked to him?” Kate asked.

“I did, early on,” Skip said. “He admitted to asking Doris out. She turned him down.” Kate added the appropriate line.

“Talked to Mrs. Winthrop again this morning,” Rose said. “Probed a bit more about Frieda. She admitted that Frieda used to gossip about her son being gay. Claimed she didn’t care. Also claimed Frieda lent her the pearls. Lindstrom’s confiscated them, by the way. Winthrop still refused to talk about her stories. Said she didn’t know Jeff all that well.”

As Kate drew a line between Jill Winthrop’s and Frieda’s names, she said, “That reminds me. Rob and I ran into a man who claims to have been a friend of Jeff’s.” She filled them in on the conversation with Paul Johnson.

Skip was frowning. “Was this guy the right height and build to be our intruder?”

Kate gave him a startled look. After a moment of thought, she said, “Average height, but he’s fairly thin. Wearing a jacket that wouldn’t be all that obvious, though.”

Rose had caught the drift of Skip’s thoughts. “Inserting himself into the investigation,” she said.

Skip smiled approvingly at his protégé, then his expression sobered. “He could have a motive for doing in Jeff Morgan,” he said. “Hell, he could’ve killed the women for all we know. We need to check him out.”

Kate added Johnson’s name to the suspect list, then drew a solid line to Jeff. It was the only one. Everyone else they had talked to that morning had said they didn’t know him well. All had described him as a quiet but nice man.

Kate drew dotted lines between Jeff and each of the people they had not yet re-interviewed since his death. “Now then,” she muttered under her breath as she looked down at the bottom of the paper. A stray curl flopped into her face.

Skip, without thinking, reached out and tucked it behind her ear. She studiously ignored him as a blush crept up her cheeks.

Mac and Rose exchanged a look. Rose had her right eyebrow cocked at a forty-five degree angle.
So that’s what’s going on,
their eyes said to each other.

Kate was drawing lines from “access to chloroform” to suspects’ names, some solid, some dotted with question marks next to them. Then from “avg. height/build” she drew lines to several names.

“Hmm, Mr. Berkeley’s fairly frail, but you said the wife’s not.” She started connecting “not weak or slow” to various suspects. She recalled the glimpses she had seen of Henry Morris. “Is Morris strong enough to wrestle with another man and pitch him over that railing?”

“Yeah,” Rose said. “He’s not all that old. In his late sixties. Kinda wiry, like Mac.”

Kate added that line. Then she wrote “robbery?” off to the side of the sheet and drew dotted lines between Frieda and Joe Fielding, and Jill Winthrop for good measure.

They all stared at the chart for a full minute. “What do you think, folks?” Kate finally asked.

“I think that the boring Murphys are the only ones connected to everyone and everything, although a couple of the lines are still dotted ones,” Skip said. They all digested that for another moment.

“Okay, next step,” Kate said. She flipped to a fresh page of her notepad and wrote “Suspects” at the top. She started jotting down what they knew, and what questions still needed to be answered, about each suspect. She had completed summaries for Joe Fielding and the Forsythes when her cell phone rang.

It was Rob. “You all can come back now, but steer clear of the Berkeleys or anybody who looks like a fed.”

“What’s going on?” Kate asked.

“Tell you when you get here. I’d rather not say too much on a cell phone.”

“Be there in a few minutes.” Kate put her phone back in her pocket and started folding up her chart. “Let’s go, Gang. Back to the Bat Cave.”

“Dana, dana, dana, dana, Batman,” Skip sang softly, pretending to swish an imaginary cape around himself as he stood up.

Mac and Rose fell back a bit from the other two as they walked back to Betty’s building. “He musta been smokin’ happy tobaccy,” Mac muttered, a chuckle in his voice.

“Naw,” Rose whispered back, flashing one of her gorgeous smiles. “He’s just in
looove.
”

•   •   •

Rob was smiling when he opened the apartment door for them. Everyone trooped in and arranged themselves around the living room. Rose and Mac both dropped to the floor, intentionally leaving the last two chairs, positioned next to each other, for Kate and Skip.

Liz was looking smug. Betty’s eyes were flashing with excitement.

Kate wondered how long ago the FBI had been established. She had a funny feeling that the early years of the agency would be featured in one of Betty’s future novels.

“Feds were very grateful for my lovely wife’s assistance,” Rob was saying. “They are discreetly staking out the Berkeleys’ apartment as we speak, waiting for the appropriate warrants.”

“Well, we’ve been putting our time to good use while you all were dealing with the feds,” Kate told him as she unfolded her chart and held it up for them to see. “Betty, do you have any more of that posterboard, and maybe some tape?”

“I certainly do,” Betty said, and got up to fetch both from the den. Kate moved the magazines and coasters off the coffee table and placed them on the floor underneath it.

When Betty returned, Kate laid the posterboard out on the table, then taped the chart to it. Betty watched her appraisingly. “Young lady,” she said in her best schoolmarm voice, “I believe your project should receive an A minus.”

Kate grinned and faked a Valley girl accent. “Aw, gee, Mrs. Franklin,” she whined. “Like, I thought fer shure you were gonna, like, gimme an
A
on it.” She pretended to snap imaginary chewing gum.