The Case of the Questionable Quadruplet Page 13

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Crap,” Rafe said. “Damn eavesdropper.”

  Heather appeared on the verge of snapping back at him, until a gentle hand on her arm—Sandy’s—drew her into reluctant retreat. She didn’t go far. Just far enough to join Doreen, Fred and Danielle, to whom she spoke with angry animation accompanied by pointing in our direction.

  “Now the whole world has me in its sights,” Rafe snarled.

  “Let’s talk to Detective Sparks,” Tory said. “He can provide protection while you review the file.”

  A few dozen yards away, the object of her recommendation was fending off the teasing remarks of Soraya Montenegro. I knew Keith well enough to read his discomfort, and hoped Tory did, too.

  “No way.” Rafe checked his watch. “I’ll have to put pedal to the metal to keep my appointment, and this client’s a stickler. Besides which, who’ll protect me from that damn cop? All he wants is a reason to lock me up.”

  “Don’t underestimate him.” That couldn’t have been easy for Tory to say.

  “Most likely, I simply forgot the file name and it’s privileged information about a client,” Rafe retorted. “Hell, I’ll be safe enough. My alarm’s set and I won’t let anyone in until my sister brings dinner.”

  I’d almost forgotten Rafe was one of Morris’s clients. “Be careful.” What a useless comment. Couldn’t stop myself.

  Tory’s lips thinned. She believed in following procedure, and that meant sharing this situation with Keith. “Seriously, sir, I advise you to confide in Detective Sparks.”

  “No, thanks.” The thin man scowled. “This may not be evidence at all. And for now, it’s safe on the cloud.”

  Was information safe on the cloud? I’d received notices from two major chain stores in the past year that my data had been hacked. Still, there was no indication that Malerie’s killer was a cyber sleuth.

  “I’m not comfortable...” Tory began.

  “I appreciate your concern,” Rafe said. “Eric, if I find anything, I’ll send you a copy of the file.”

  I remembered his remark about my being in danger. I’m not a coward—nor a fool either. “Send copies far and wide.”

  “Good idea.”

  Rafe double-timed toward his car. Tory hurried off to question attendees before they scattered.

  I wished there were a post-funeral gathering. Not only for the emotional release, but also to hear what the family thought of Rafe’s discovery. Whether Heather was spinning it in self-serving fashion. Or if Fred considered this a ploy on Rafe’s part.

  It was hard to fathom why Rafe would invent a mystery file to cover his tracks. Still, I’m astonished by the scams and quasi-legal maneuverings that Tory and Keith gripe about. I wish I knew how to be devious in order to understand people who are.

  Since we’d arrived in Tory’s car and her inquiries could be lengthy, I considered who I might cadge a ride from. Keith was obviously busy. Also, alone with my friend, it would be hard not to betray Rafe’s confidence. Perhaps I should do that, for Rafe’s safety as well as for the sake of the investigation.

  As I was weighing options, a man halted beside me. Short like his father, with curly brown hair like his sister, Barry Golden had just been elected my chauffeur. That’s my brother-in-law’s knack: he tends to be the right guy in the right place at the right time, usually without intending to.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked. Not the friendliest greeting, especially when I was about to request a favor, but his presence puzzled me.

  “My entire family is caught up in this case. I was curious.” He cocked his head at me. “Also, I have an assignment from Dad. Hear me out.”

  “Any chance we can discuss this while you drive me home?”

  “Tory abandoned you?”

  A survey of the scene revealed her speaking intently with Ilsa Ivy. “Either she’s conducting an interview or planning to adopt a pet.”

  “No pets. She had a hamster once. Didn’t realize they only live two or three years.” As he spoke, Barry strolled along the grass beside me. “She never recovered from the trauma of finding its furry little body.”

  “Which fails to explain why she chose a career that might require shooting someone,” I observed.

  “That’s different. She loved Betty,” Barry said.

  “The hamster’s name was Betty?”

  “It was brown.”

  The reference piqued my appetite. Too bad Morris wouldn’t be arriving with the promised leftovers until six. I hoped he’d fixed Brown Betty for dessert, since the apple dish was popular with his customers.

  We reached an ancient van that bore traces of psychedelic paint from its former hippie owner. Inside, a slip cover in a noxious shade of green hid what I guessed were tears in the seat cushions.

  Never mind the common belief that doctors are rich. Barely past his residency in urology, Barry staggered beneath massive student loans.

  “What’s Morris’s assignment?” I asked as he navigated out of the cemetery.

  We turned south on Industrial Way. “Starts with thanks.”

  “Ends with giving.” What else had I expected?”

  “Dad’s concerned about you sinking into a depression.” Barry delivered that piece of non-news with the enthusiasm of a weatherman predicting drizzle.

  “I’m not depressed, just grumpy.”

  “Well, if we can’t celebrate Thanksgiving at your house, we’ll either have to squeeze into Dad’s tiny tasting room or my apartment, which isn’t much bigger.” When I didn’t respond, Barry added, “My roommate’s dropping hints that his entire family may show up.”

  “Could be fun.”

  “Not from the way he describes them.” He grunted. “By the way, does this street go through? I can’t remember.”

  “No.”

  “Oops.” Barry swung onto a road that carried us past the City Hall complex, including the two-story stucco police department. Guilt descended. Keith really ought to hear that Dee Marie’s notes might be floating around in cyberspace. Maybe I should call him.

  But what good would it do now? Rafe had been dead set—pick another term, Eric—determined to meet with his appointed client. Besides, the file might contain only privileged information irrelevant to the case.

  Barry took a wandering route through side streets. Just when I began to think we’d have to retrace our path, we emerged onto Safe Harbor Boulevard. “Any chance of changing your mind about Thanksgiving?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, duty done.” Cheerfully, my brother-in-law switched subjects. “How’s my sister surviving the break-up?”

  “With bad grace,” I conceded.

  “And Keith?”

  “No grace at all.”

  At the house, Barry declined my invitation to come inside and headed off, having dispatched his duty with tact and humor. As I said, my favorite of Lydia’s relatives.

  Yet fond as I was of Morris and his offspring, they didn’t feel like my family. Not the way Lydia had been.

  After Barry departed, I sprawled on the couch in the downstairs den to catch up on medical journals. Instead, fragments from the funeral drifted through my mind: mourners in dark clothing, that reporter flirting with Keith, the jarring sight of skulls and orange-and-black wreaths.

  Three years ago, Halloween had fallen during a sad autumn, as my father’s weak heart defied the efforts of medical science. He had spent most evenings watching videos of my childhood and my mother, by then nearly twenty years gone. His face had become more deeply lined with every passing day.

  Then Lydia, infused with a merry spirit that sprang unexpectedly from her restless depths, whipped into action. With the cooperation of more friends than I’d known she possessed, she created a narrative for our house. Here a comic book artist had lived and died, the story went, returning from beyond the grave on Halloween to bring his creations to life.

  She constructed a path through the great room and this den, punctuated by manikin
s emerging from comic-book blowups. By the holiday eve, I scarcely recognized the familiar contours, thanks to mirrors, fake spiderwebs and a rented fog machine. Aided by eerie lights and noises, a handful of people in superhero getups conspired to thrill friends, neighbors and their children.

  Costumed as Spiderman and flanked by grimacing pumpkins, I greeted our guests on the porch with flashlights and instructions. Dad and Morris presided over a kitchen redolent of apple cider and cinnamon, and well supplied with pastries and candies. Tory supervised a dining room from which the table had been removed, where survivors of the haunted trail could dance to “The Monster Mash” and similar selections.

  Wearing a dreamy pastel gown and wielding a fairy-princess scepter, Lydia had flitted through the rooms, replacing burned-out green bulbs, comforting a startled preschooler and retrieving a lost toddler. What a wonderful mother she would be, I thought on that night when all futures seemed possible.

  To me, she’d been the star of the event, with the rest of us in supporting roles. That had felt natural, because I visualized our life together as a movie with her name above the title and everyone else, including me, in the credits that scroll at the end.

  After the last friend had departed and the food been tucked away, Lydia and I had made love with a freedom that bordered on delirium. I could have sworn we hovered above the bed, laughing so loud that Dad must have heard us from the opposite end of the house.

  For weeks afterward, his melancholy lifted and his strength returned. We celebrated a joyful Thanksgiving.

  In December, he died. Lydia and I scattered Dad’s ashes at sea, as he’d requested. Now I wished I had a grave to visit. For each of them.

  The doorbell broke into my melancholy thoughts. Downstairs, I admitted an ill-tempered homicide detective.

  My watch indicated that six o’clock had passed. “If you’re looking for dinner, Morris is late,” I informed him.

  Keith shambled into the great room. “Isn’t Tory back yet? I thought she left ahead of me.”

  “Neither Golden has arrived.”

  “Just as well.”

  “Why?” Knowing his bottomless appetite, I’d assumed he was eager for dinner.

  Plopping onto the sofa, Keith draped his long legs over the arm. “You’re good at keeping confidences, right?”

  “I try.”

  “I’d like to know how Tory reacted to that reporter cozying up to me. And don’t tell her I asked.” His semi-reclining position altered his appearance, adding a touch of loose flesh along the jaw and creases around the eyes. I realized—sucker punch—that he was nearing middle age. Which meant we were nearing middle age.

  Stay on topic, Eric. “You mean, was she jealous?”

  “Yes.”

  “She plays her cards close,” I said carefully.

  “You aren’t normally this evasive.” Keith’s eyes hardened. “Is something going on between you two?”

  Excuse me? “Not even close. She accused me of having a giant ego. I think she’s mad because I treat her like a kid sister.”

  “Yes, you do, and it annoys the hell out of her. She had a raging crush on you in high school.”

  “You’re making that up.”

  “That’s among the reasons I never went after her,” Keith said.

  “Plus you were dating Catherine.” Keith’s girlfriend, she of the long brown hair, breezy manner and taste for designer fashions, had dropped him after graduation to pursue a business degree and a man who earned more than a cop’s salary. “Who broke your heart right after the prom.”

  “She bruised my pride more than my heart.” My friend was in an unusually introspective mood. For him as well as me, the funeral must have churned up the past. “She announced I wasn’t good enough for her. It threw me.”

  “You?” Insecurity and Keith move in different circles.

  “Yeah, for five minutes,” he remarked. “I hear she’s been divorced twice.”

  “Ever consider calling her?”

  “Not even slightly,” he said. “I need a woman who gets me. Who has the same taste in action movies, doesn’t waste time on touchy-feely crap, who’s physical, even the way she makes love.”

  “TMI,” I said. Too much information.

  “It’s that soul mate business,” Keith summarized.

  I caught his drift. “As in, Tory.”

  “Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “I expected her to be with me all the way, to understand if I occasionally blow off steam.”

  “You mean, like cheating on her?”

  “It’s human nature. Except for you, maybe.”

  The adjectives I’d applied to him in English class hadn’t included clueless, but they should have. “So it would be fine if she cheated, too?”

  “The hell it would!”

  “I thought you and Tory had the same world view.”

  “Women are different.” He didn’t sound convinced.

  “Partners have to be able to count on each other,” I said. “To establish a circle of trust that excludes everyone else.”

  “You mean I violated her trust,” he said.

  “You stabbed her in the back.”

  “Damn. How do I fix this?” Keith peered at me as if asking for the formula to a tough algebra problem.

  “When people get married, it’s their job to be their partner’s best friend.” That was what I’d believed, and for five years, it had worked.

  “I get that,” he said impatiently.

  “That means supporting each other.” I stuck to the steady tone I’d heard our staff psychologist use in addressing skeptical groups. “Listening. Encouraging. Sharing the pain when they fail without belittling their disappointment.”

  “Being there for them.” Keith flung his head back against the arm of the sofa. “How many times have I heard that about relationships?”

  “Not enough for it to sink in, apparently.” I sneaked a glance at my phone in case I’d missed a text or an email. By now, Rafe should be home eating dinner and reading the mystery file. No message.

  “I can always count on you to lay it on the line.”

  “Well?”

  He swung his legs around and sat up. Despite the evening shadows invading the great room, I saw a light go on in my friend’s eyes. “You really believe it will do the trick?”

  “It isn’t a trick,” I said.

  “I hate that touchy-feely crap, but not as much as I hate losing her,” Keith said.

  “Good.” With every flick of the digital readout, my uneasiness mounted. “There’s something I should tell you. It’s about Rafe.”

  “Regarding whatever you were discussing today?”

  “Yes.” Footsteps approaching from the hall cut me off.

  Tory halted, her gaze sweeping across her ex-boyfriend on the couch and me near the tall mullioned windows. “Where’s Dad?” she asked me.

  “I wish I knew.” Morris should have returned by now from delivering meals with Billie.

  “Where’ve you been?” Keith queried.

  “Interviewing people.” She flicked a speck from her dark-blue suit jacket.

  “Have a seat.” He patted the couch beside him. “You can fill me in while we wait for your father.”

  Discarding her oversize purse, Tory sank into an armchair instead. “It occurred to me that if Mrs. Abernathy gabbed about her investments to other volunteers, Mrs. Ivy might have overheard.”

  A flicker of the eyelids marked Keith’s reaction. I interpreted it to mean he wished he’d thought of that. “Good work, Tory. Did she?”

  My sister-in-law slipped off her pumps. “A couple of months ago, Mrs. Abernathy urged her to put money into a medical diagnostics firm. She tossed around adjectives like dynamic and innovative.”

  Just as Rafe had mentioned. But he hadn’t learned where the tip came from. “Did Malerie cite a source?”

  “No.”

  “Did Mrs. Ivy invest?” Keith’s fingers flexed as if to move pieces around on a bulletin boar
d, except that these days police use a computer program instead of a physical display.

  “No. She claims she can smell a scam a mile away.”

  Malerie had lost several hundred thousand dollars within the past few months. Since this investment dated from after Dee Marie’s murder, it couldn’t be connected to Rafe’s mystery file. Unless, that is, the tip had come from the same person who’d been ruining the Abernathy finances all along.

  I was mulling the implications when I heard the front door open. A second later, Tory called out, “Dad! What happened?”

  A sorry version of my father-in-law, clothes wrinkled and face shiny with sweat, stood staring at Keith. “Oh, lord, it’s you.” He drew in a deep, shuddery breath and extended his hands, wrists together. “You might as well arrest me now.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Arrest you?” Keith echoed. “What have you done?”

  Morris began shaking. Tory hurried to grab his arm. “Sit down, Dad.”

  “I can’t bear it.”

  “Bear what?”

  “I can’t believe it!” he cried as she led him to an armchair. “I’ve killed a client.”

  Keith catapulted to his feet. “Who? How?”

  “Rafe Tibbets.” Taking in our dismayed reactions, Morris hurried on. “Not literally. I mean, my cooking. He’s allergic to peanuts. I can’t figure it out—we’re very careful. When Billie delivered the meal, he was fine. A few minutes later, after she came out to the van, we heard a crash. When we ran in, he’d collapsed on the floor.”

  This was a truly alarming development, since anaphylactic shock can be fatal if swelling blocks the airway. “What about his EpiPen?” I asked.

  Morris’s hands carved the air. “He must have been overcome too fast to use it. Billie injected him.”

  Grimly, Keith lifted his phone. “He’s dead?”

  “Unconscious. He hit his head when he fell.”

  “Where is he?”

  “The paramedics took him to Heights View,” my father-in-law rasped. Unlike Safe Harbor, that hospital has an emergency room. “Billie’s with him.”