Authors: Kassandra Lamb
She gave him a small smile. “I think I should talk to her boss though.”
He dropped his head back against the sofa. His eyes drifted closed again. How dangerous would that be? The boss was a female, and Kate knew aikido. But still…
“Take Manny in with you,” he said. “He’s getting bored, just following you around.”
He felt her jerk away. His eyes flew open.
“You have Manny following me?”
Aw, crap!
If he hadn’t been so tired, he wouldn’t have let that slip out.
She shifted further away from him. “Damn it, Skip. I don’t need a bodyguard.”
That’s a matter of opinion.
Pulling his feet in, he pushed himself up straighter on the sofa. “Uh, I didn’t have anything else for him to do. Figured he could be handy, you know, if you needed him for anything.”
She narrowed her eyes at him.
Yeah, he wouldn’t have bought that feeble line either. He took her hands in his. “Look, darlin’, I know you can take care of yourself under normal circumstances. But if you’re right and your client was murdered, well, there’s somebody out there who could become quite desperate if you get too close to the truth.”
She pulled her hands free, then crossed her arms across her chest. “No wonder I’ve been getting the creepy feeling that someone’s watching me. I don’t want him following me around.”
His gut twisted but he knew better than to push too hard. “Okay, not all the time. But will you call him to go with you when you’re investigating?”
She opened her mouth, then closed it again. “Maybe. I mean it depends on what, or who, I’m checking out.” Most of the anger had gone out of her tone.
He considered protesting that Manny should go with her whenever she was talking to someone involved in the case. Any of them could turn out to be the killer.
“Honestly,” she said, “I don’t think the gallery is going to lead to anything. But I’ve got to check out all possibilities, right?”
“Yeah, but you really should take Manny with you. Somebody murdered Josie. That’s the premise we’re working with here, are we not?”
She blew out air. “Okay, I’ll take Manny with me to the gallery. But where do I go after that?” She looked up at him, pain and something else he couldn’t name in her eyes.
His chest tightened. The temptation to say what he was thinking–drop it and get on with your own life–was strong. He resisted it. “Basic rule of thumb in investigating–when you’re stuck, go back to the beginning.”
She shook her head slightly. “I can’t even remember off the top of my head where I started. Wait, it was with Father Sam. Maybe I could learn something more from him.”
Skip relaxed some. The old priest was probably harmless.
Kate settled back against his shoulder. After a moment, she said, “Hey, do you know what’s going on with Billy? Do you think he’s being bullied?”
Skip would have welcomed the change of subject, if it had been any new topic other than that one. He stared off into space for a moment. He hated that he couldn’t protect his son from what he himself had been through as a kid.
He swallowed hard. “Yeah, it’s looking that way.”
She took his hand and squeezed it. “I’ll send the teacher a note tomorrow, ask her to call us.”
He looked back at her. “Give her my cell number. I don’t have any appointments, so she can call me whenever she has a break.”
She held his gaze for a moment, then heaved another sigh. “Sometimes I wish Billy didn’t take after me so much. All that intensity makes him an easy mark for the bullies.”
He smiled. “I wouldn’t have him, or you, any other way.”
She smiled back at him, a mischievous glint in her eyes. “You too tired to have some fun?”
Suddenly wary, he said, “What did you have in mind?”
She pulled her hand loose from his. “A little race.”
He cocked one eyebrow at her.
“To the bedroom.” She dug her fingers into the ticklish spot on his side.
He squirmed away. “Hey, I’m bigger than you.”
She jumped up and bolted for the bedroom. “Yeah, but I’m faster,” she threw back over her shoulder.
He shoved off of the sofa and ran after her. But he let her get to the edge of the bed before he tackled her. They fell onto the bed. Her laughter was the best thing he’d heard in weeks.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
On her way to Liz’s favorite Italian restaurant the next day at noon, Kate realized that she felt lighter than she had in days, maybe weeks. She might be running low on leads in her investigation, but maybe, just maybe, she was coming out the other end of the grief process.
She beat Liz to the restaurant. The hostess showed her to a table close to the door, so she could keep an eye out for her friend.
The waitress brought a basket of bread sticks and Kate ordered two glasses of iced tea.
The tea and Liz arrived at the same time. She flopped down in the chair opposite Kate. “Ugh, feels good to get out of that office for a while.” To the waitress, she said, “I’m having the meatless lasagna with whole grain pasta, and a salad. Do you know what you want, Kate?”
Kate smiled across the table at her health-conscious friend.
She’d love to order the lasagna, but she was experiencing some slowing of her metabolism with age. Since she’d skipped several of her aikido workouts recently, she’d better keep things lo-cal. “I’ll have the soup and salad special.” The waitress nodded and left.
“So how are you?” Liz said in her booming voice, which always seemed so incongruous coming from her petite body.
Kate looked around, but no one seemed to be paying attention to them. It was one of the things she liked about this restaurant. The tables were spaced a decent distance apart, with plants or half-partitions separating them, providing diners a fair amount of privacy. “I’m okay. How about yourself?”
Liz tilted her head and raised her eyebrows. “I’m fine. But I’ve gotten the distinct impression lately from my husband that you’re not. Of course, I’ve learned not to ask, since it almost always has to do with a mutual client so he can’t tell me much.”
Kate leaned forward. “This time I’m his client,” she said in a low voice. “I’m being sued because one of my clients supposedly committed suicide.”
Liz’s eyebrows shot even higher. She put her hand on top of Kate’s on the table and gave it a squeeze. “Oh, sweetheart, that’s gotta be rough.”
Kate blew out a soft sigh. “It has been, but I’m starting to feel a little better. The woman was prone to depression.” She was choosing her words carefully, keeping her comments about Josie vague. “But she wasn’t in a bad place at the time she died. Or at least she didn’t seem to be.”
“So you’ve been feeling guilty and wracking your brain, trying to figure out how you missed the cues.”
Kate let out a small laugh. “You know me too well, Liz.”
The waitress brought their food and they ate in silence for a few minutes. Deciding her soup was too hot, Kate pushed it aside and started on her salad.
“You’ve dealt with guilt before,” Liz said between bites of lasagna.
She certainly had. Eddie had died because of one of her cases, and another client’s miscalculation had put her family and friends at risk and led to the death of one of those friends.
“That was different,” Kate said. “The evil, for lack of a better word, was being perpetrated by someone else, and I just happened to draw that evil to innocent people. I could eventually step back from it and realize I wasn’t responsible for the actions of others. But I’m supposed to try to keep my clients stable enough that they can function in the world, and not become suicidal.”
Liz gave a slight shake of her head. “Key word is
try
. You’re still not responsible for their lives or actions.”
“Yeah, I know that intellectually.” Kate stabbed at her salad with her fork. “There’s more. I’m not convinced the client really did kill herself. I’ve been checking out some things that don’t add up. She mentioned in a phone message something about a ‘breakthrough.’” She made quote marks in the air while she chewed a bite of salad. “We’d had some problems with scheduling. So since she seemed to be in a good place, I put her off for a week. I can’t help wondering if something about that breakthrough led to her death–”
“And maybe if you’d seen her that week, you could have headed her off,” Liz said.
“Yeah, but now that I’m saying it out loud… Again, she’s responsible for her actions.”
“Exactly. But you’re the one who’s always saying that emotions aren’t logical.”
Kate nodded. “I have been feeling better about it lately. Sometimes it just takes some time for emotions to work themselves out.”
“That will be a hundred dollars, please,” Liz said with a grin.
Kate laughed. “I keep telling you that you should have been a shrink instead of an actuary.”
“Nah, I like playing with numbers. They’re very concrete. No emotions involved.”
Kate tried her soup again. Now it was a little on the cool side so she ate it quickly.
Liz had finished her lasagna and was working on her salad. “Hey, maybe I can help you investigate. Do you need a background check on your client or any of your suspects?”
Kate contemplated that as she finished off her own salad. There was the whole confidentiality-doesn’t-die-with-the-client thing, but that paled by comparison to the idea that a murderer would get away with cutting Josie’s life short.
“It wouldn’t hurt,” she finally said.
Liz pushed aside her salad plate. “Let’s go then. My tablet’s in my car.”
~~~~~~~~
Skip’s cell phone vibrated on his desk. He picked it up. “Canfield.”
“Mr. Canfield, this is Mrs. Langdon.” Her voice was crisp. She sounded like she was in her fifties, maybe older. “Sorry I couldn’t call you back sooner. The children are at lunch now, so I have a few minutes.”
“Thanks for getting back to me, Mrs. Langdon. My wife and I have some concerns. Billy has been telling us that some boys are picking on him out on the playground.”
“I haven’t observed anything.”
“Well, he’s mentioned it a few times, and he’s been very volatile lately.”
“We have strict rules against fighting, Mr. Canfield.”
What does that mean?
The comment seemed a bit of a
non sequitur
. Then he got it. “I don’t think anyone has done anything physically to him, at least not yet. They’re taunting him, calling him names.”
Another pause, the thwap, thwap of papers being spewed from a copier or printer in the background. “Well, kids need to learn to handle social interactions, even negative ones.”
Skip’s jaw clenched. Just their luck that they’d get the teacher with the antiquated attitudes about bullying. He tamped down his anger. “He’s a second grader, Mrs. Langdon, and I get the impression these boys are at least two years older.”
“Still, it’s often best to let kids sort these things out for themselves, as long as they’re not resorting to violence.”
Skip’s hand fisted around the phone. He struggled to keep his voice even. “I disagree. I was bullied as a kid myself.”
“And it probably made you stronger.”
“No, it just made me miserable. I’m not willing to see my son go through that.”
A longer stretch of thwapping noises and a phone ringing in the distance. “Well, the kids have free play in a few minutes. I’ll keep an eye on Billy and see if anything inappropriate is going on.”
That almost sounded like she didn’t believe Billy’s reports. Skip started counting to ten. He only made it to six.
“I have to go, Mr. Canfield. The kids will be dismissed from the lunchroom in a minute.”
“Thank you for your time,” he managed to squeeze between gritted teeth.
He disconnected and sat back in his chair. Then he jumped up and pocketed the phone. He was at his office door before he remembered his gun. He couldn’t take it on school grounds.
Pulling the .38 out of its waistband holster, he turned back to his desk and deposited the pistol in a drawer. He locked the desk and jammed his keys in his pocket.
Then he headed to his partner’s office to tell her he was going out for a while.
After he’d succinctly explained his errand, Rose cocked one of her expressive eyebrows at him. “Want company?”
He knew why she was offering. She was afraid he’d blow. He wasn’t real sure that he wouldn’t. His usually easygoing personality seemed to fly out the window whenever there was a threat against his family. “Sure. Come on.”
In the parking lot, Rose opened the passenger door of his SUV and climbed in. “You know there is something to what the teacher said.”
“What do you mean?” Skip started the engine and headed for the lot exit.
“You can’t fight all of Billy’s battles for him.”
“No, but I can fight this one. I know what it’s like to be picked on by bigger kids. You feel so helpless, and scared senseless. ’Cause you don’t know just where they’ll stop. A couple times I thought they were gonna kill me.”
“How is Billy going to feel about you coming to his rescue, in front of the other kids?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it again. It was a good question. Although he had longed for his father to intervene directly with the bullies, he also would have been mortified by such an intervention. But he’d been a good bit older than Billy, in middle school.
“He’s too little to be dealing with this,” he said.
“Oh, I think we should be checking it out, but you might want to hold back some. Assess the situation before barging in.”
An image flashed into his mind of them lurking around the edges of the school playground. “We’re likely to get arrested as pedophiles.”
Rose shook her head. “No, we check in with the school office first, but then we watch from a distance.”
Skip had to insist on talking to the principal before they were allowed to go to the playground to observe Billy’s class. By the time they got there, with visitor badges now pinned to their shirts, the kids were being called inside. Skip spotted Billy at the far end surrounded by three bigger boys.
His fist clenched at his sides.
“Take it easy, partner,” Rose said.
The words were no sooner out of her mouth than Billy shoved one of the boys away from him. The three of them fell back, laughing.