ILL-TIMED ENTANGLEMENTS (The Kate Huntington mystery series #2) (35 page)

The director started apologizing and backing out the door, tugging at Kate’s arm. But Kate was staring at the man’s hands. Something about those hands. Something she had seen.

She dug in her heels and talked over Mrs. Carroll. “We were just concerned because we heard crashing noises. We thought you might be hurt.”

He pointed at the table and broken lamp on the floor. “I knocked the damn table over.”

Mac and Rose had spread out on either side of Kate. Rose’s gun had disappeared. They were both scanning the room, looking for anything that was off. After a long pause, they shook their heads slightly in Kate’s direction. But something was still nagging at her.

“Well, we’re very sorry to have bothered you, Mr. Morris,” she said, stalling for time. The man waved the back of his hand at her in a get-out-of-here gesture.

And it hit her. She saw again, in her mind’s eye, the back of that hand grabbing a box to drag it into his apartment, before slamming the door in Skip’s face. On the side of the box was a picture of a tall brown bottle, Coors on its label.

She looked down at the tipped over table and shattered lamp, at
opposite
ends of the sofa. Suddenly the innocently cluttered room transformed into what it was–the scene of a struggle.

The odd expression on Kate’s face alerted Mac and Rose that she had picked up on something. A quick glance between them established that Mac would watch the old man while Rose scanned the room again.

Mac eased over so that he was slightly behind Morris. Rose glanced around and noticed the tip of a man’s sneaker poking out from behind the sofa.

Kate was saying, “Hmm, that lamp sure rolled a ways before it broke.”

Rose sidled sideways and tapped the shoe with her toe. It was solid, didn’t move.
Not
an empty shoe accidentally kicked under the furniture. Mac had noticed Rose’s attention was on the floor at the end of the sofa. He looked at the other end and saw the top of a head, brown hair turned rusty red with blood.

Unfortunately, Morris had also followed Rose’s line of vision. He pulled a gun from behind the cushion on the chair next to him.

Kate gasped when she recognized the pearl handle. Her throat closed when she saw it was smeared with blood.

Morris turned slightly toward his left to wave Mac in closer to the others. But Mac was no longer there. “Nobody move!” Morris growled as he turned further to his left, looking for the scrawny little guy.

In the next instant, the scrawny little guy was on the man’s back, bringing the side of his hand down sharply on Morris’s forearm. The man’s howl of pain was lost in the explosion of gunfire.

The doorframe beside the director’s shaking knees shattered. She screamed, as the gun clattered to the floor. Rose had her foot on it in a nanosecond, her own gun once again in her hand.

Morris and Mac had gone over in a flurry of arms and legs and were now rolling around on the floor as the old man struggled to free himself. Adrenaline gave him about twenty seconds of fight, but the younger and considerably stronger Mac soon subdued him by rolling him over on his stomach and pinning down his arms.

“Check Skip,” Rose said to Kate, gesturing with her head toward the back of the sofa without taking her eyes or her aim off of Morris, who was now howling about invasion of privacy and lawsuits. As if his loud objections could make them forget that he had been holding a gun on them less than a minute ago.

Kate scrambled into the tight space behind the sofa and knelt down next to Skip’s head. She frantically felt his thick neck with her fingertips. She couldn’t find a pulse. Tears welled in her eyes. She tried to get to his wrists to check there but couldn’t get past the tape wrapped around them.

Pushing again and again against the muscles in his neck, she prayed, but felt not even a tremor. She tried to get the words, “he’s dead” past the lump in her throat. All that came out was a croak.

She put her wet cheek against his as her arms attempted to gather his broad shoulders up onto her lap. Giving up that futile effort, she collapsed across his chest.
Not again! Not again!
shrieked in her head as she started to sob.

She froze. Was that a whisper of breath on her neck? Skip’s chest rose under her as he sucked in air and mumbled her name. Then he passed out again.

•   •   •

Rob and Liz had been in Aunt Betty’s apartment trying to determine if they should stay a few more hours to provide some emotional support to the elderly woman. But Betty had her own ideas about that. Now that the killer was in custody, all she wanted was to get her life back to normal. She had just opened her mouth to convey this to her nephew and his wife when they’d heard a gunshot and screaming.

Rob was out the door, racing in the direction from which the sounds had come, across the atrium and up the fire stairs. On the second level, Mrs. Carroll was standing outside an open door three quarters of the way down the walkway. She was wringing her hands and emitting little yelps and squeaks.

Rob ran to the doorway and unceremoniously shoved the director out of the way. Inside the apartment, he quickly scanned the room. Rose and Mac had subdued an old man who was laying face down on the floor. Mac was wrapping tape around the man’s wrists while Rose, sitting on his back, was reciting the Miranda warning for the second time that day.

Despite the din the old man was making, protesting his treatment, Rob heard sobbing coming from behind the sofa. In one long stride he was standing at Skip’s feet.

When Kate turned her face, streaming with tears, toward Rob, something shifted inside of him. All that mattered was that she cared for this man, and losing him would tear her apart, again.

Rob yanked out his cell phone and punched in 911. Guilt, irrational but powerful, ripped through him. He had hired the man. Brought him into this danger. He reached out to Kate across the length of the big man’s body. She grabbed his hand and they both hung on.

With her other hand, she was brushing Skip’s hair away from a nasty gash above his right temple. Drying blood was streaked down the side of his face and Rob realized the carpet under his head was saturated. Skip’s eyelids fluttered. His lips had a bluish tinge, and despite the chill in the over air-conditioned room, there was sweat on his forehead.

“Ambulance. Villages Retirement Center, G Building, second level,” Rob barked into his phone. “Man is seriously injured. Head injury. Lot of blood loss. I think he’s in shock.

“Hurry!” he added unnecessarily as Liz elbowed past Mrs. Carroll. Rob tossed his phone down on the sofa. The operator was squawking, demanding his name. Why the hell did his name matter? But he grabbed the phone up and yelled, “Rob Franklin. Get an ambulance here. Now! And Detective Lindstrom.”

He dropped the phone again, gave Kate’s hand a hard squeeze, then let go. He handed her the fresh handkerchief he had put in his pocket that morning. “Try to stop the bleeding, but don’t press too hard.”

As Kate held the cloth gently against the oozing wound, Rob knelt at Skip’s feet and started tugging at the tape on his ankles.

“Knife!” Rob demanded, looking in Rose and Mac’s direction. The old man was still yammering about his rights and how dare they… “Shut up!” Rob roared at him as Mac tossed him a penknife. Morris shut up.

Rob opened the knife and cut the tape on Skip’s ankles, then leaned over to free the man’s wrists. The backs of Skip’s hands were cold and clammy.

Shock
, Rob thought.
What are you supposed to do for shock?
Reaching back three and a half decades to his Boy Scout days, he remembered something about propping up feet. He reached around the end of the sofa.

Liz had already figured out his objective and had yanked one of the seat cushions loose from the sagging sofa. But she hung onto it when he started to take it from her. “Wait! We shouldn’t move him if he’s been shot.”

Kate shook her head. “Don’t think… shot…” was all she could manage to push past the lump of fear in her throat.

“Gun went off when Mac jumped Morris,” Rose said. “Shot went wild.” Her voice was calm, but in her head she was praying over and over,
¡Dios mio! Let him be okay!

Rob lifted Skip’s lower legs and Liz slid the cushion under them.

“Blanket!” Rob barked. Mac sprinted into the bedroom and was back in less than three seconds with a flowery bedspread. He tossed it to Rob who spread it over the unconscious man.

Kate’s eyes were watching Rob’s movements, while one hand held the red-stained handkerchief against Skip’s temple and the other stroked the perspiration off his clammy forehead.

“Talk to him, Kate,” Rob urged.

Kate looked down at the battered face at her knees. “Skip, don’t leave me,” she begged in a choked voice, “Please, don’t leave me!”

Skip’s chest heaved, and the hand that was now laying by his side jerked. Kate grabbed the hand and held it tight. Rob wasn’t sure but he thought maybe the man’s breathing had become more even. And his lips were pale but no longer blue.

Liz knelt beside Rob at Skip’s feet and they leaned against each other.

Two paramedics rushed in the door and headed toward Morris laying on the floor. “Behind the sofa,” Rose barked, still perched on the squirming man’s back.

Rob scrambled to his feet, one arm around his wife to bring her up with him. “Come on, Kate, we need to get out of the way.”

Mac hauled Kate to her feet and backed her away from Skip as the second paramedic moved around the sofa to that end of their patient. In a matter of seconds, they had an IV needle in the man’s arm.

Mac maneuvered Kate over to Rob, who wrapped his arms around her. She sobbed against his chest. Rob didn’t realize that tears were also streaming down his own face. Now that he could do nothing but watch and pray, the adrenaline was draining out of his body. His knees began to wobble. Petite Liz wrapped her arms, as best she could, around both husband and friend, to steady them all.

After several minutes that felt like an hour, they heard one of the paramedics say, “He’s stabilized. Let’s transport.”

As the others let out pent-up gasps of air, Kate cried harder, from relief.

K
ate was standing outside a door that was open just a few inches. She wasn’t sure if she should knock or nudge it open a little further to peek in. If the occupant of the room was sleeping she didn’t want to disturb him. She wondered again if the smiley face balloon she had bought on an impulse in the gift shop was too silly.

A rustling noise from within helped her with the first quandary. She gently knocked and a man’s voice croaked, “Come in.”

Didn’t sound like Skip. Did she have the wrong room? She nudged the door open and saw the big man, his upper body elevated in the bed, wearing a hospital gown that was too big even for his large frame. A sheet and light weight blanket were tucked around his waist. His head sported a big white bandage on one side. A sizeable knot on the other provided some degree of symmetry to his battered face.

His eyes lit up when he saw her. In a raspy, somewhat garbled voice, he said, “Hi Kate. Come on in.”

Fear closed her throat. Was his head injury worse than the close-mouthed doctor had implied? As she rushed to the side of his bed, he pointed to a plastic water cup on the tray beside her.

She held it up for him while he took a long sip from the straw.

He wasn’t the least bit weak, but his right eye, half swollen shut, was not focusing well. That was throwing his coordination off a bit. He didn’t want to embarrass himself in front of her by spilling water everywhere. Besides it felt real nice to have her hovering near him.

“That’s better,” he said in a more normal voice. “They’re giving me some kind of medicine that dries my mouth out.”

His eyes went to the ceiling above the foot of the bed and his battered face lit up again. Kate followed his line of vision. In her rush to his bedside, she had let go of the balloon and it now bobbed against the ceiling.

She moved to the foot of the bed and jumped up to snag its ribbon, then tied it to the end of the side railing where he could see it readily. “You like balloons, huh?”

“Yeah, but mostly I like the idea that you got it for me.” He grinned at her.

Then his face abruptly sobered. “Hey, they didn’t call my mother, did they?”

“No, they started to, but Rob stepped in and said he was your attorney and could authorize medical care. They didn’t argue, although I’m sure they would’ve if you’d needed surgery. Rob’s got an elderly mother of his own in Iowa.”

“Tell him I appreciate his quick thinking. Mom worries enough about me. She doesn’t need to know every time I get a little bump on the head.”

“I don’t know that I’d call those
little
bumps.”

Skip shrugged and the too big hospital gown slid off his shoulder, exposing a darkening bruise. Skip shoved the gown back into place, looking embarrassed. “Nurse said these only come in three sizes, child, adult and jumbo. Damn thing keeps coming untied.” He started to reach behind his neck, wincing in pain.

“Here, let me get it,” Kate said, reaching over to tie the strings for him.

“Thanks, I think I landed funny on my shoul…” He sucked in his breath as her fingers brushed against the nape of his neck, a feather soft touch that sent a shiver down his spine.

Kate gave the bow one last tug, then gently patted his shoulder. “That should hold now.”

Before she could take her hand away, Skip covered it with his own and dragged it around to his chest. “Be still my heart!” He pretended to swoon.

An electric sensation shot up her arm. She snatched her hand back, then tried to cover the hastiness of her gesture by smacking him lightly on his forearm.

“You can’t be feeling all that bad then, Mr. Funny Man,” she said as she used her foot to snag the leg of a visitor’s chair and drag it a little closer to the bed. She sat down and folded her hands primly in her lap. “And what happened to the four-foot rule?”

He mustered a grin, but those few seconds of contact truly had his heart racing. “Don’t suppose you’d believe me if I said, ‘what rule?’ You know, head injuries can cause memory problems.”