Angel Sleuth

by Lesley A. Diehl

  “There’s something else.”

  “Hmm?”

  “I said, there’s something else and it’s important.”

  “I heard you. What?”

  “Just wait here.” Kaitlin took the stairs two at a time, entered her room, and returned almost before Mac and Mary Jane noticed she was missing, not that they would have noticed even if she’d set fire to the room.

  “This,” she said. She handed the envelope with Tom’s note in it to Mac. “I kind of forgot about it with tonight’s events.”

  Mac read it over, then fingered the cross.

  “What about it? Give it to Will.”

  “I had intended to do that, but I got busy. And besides, I found out Leda was Jewish. It said so in her obituary.”

  Mac’s eyes met hers. “Ah, now that changes things, doesn’t it? You think Leda tore the cross off the neck of someone at her house that night. You think…”

  “I think someone wearing that cross pushed her down the stairs.”

  The doorbell rang.

  “Hendricks,” said Mac. “You want me to answer it?”

  “Hold it a minute,” said Kaitlin. “There’s something else.”

  “Okay. What?” he asked.

  “I think someone was spying on Brittany and me when we were in the newspaper office searching websites on Leda’s computer. We found several pertaining to wills. I think the laptop was stolen to see what we might have found.”

  Her suspicion that Mary Jane might have been somehow involved in spying on them didn’t make any sense, so she kept that to herself.

  The doorbell rang again.

  “Anything else?” he asked. There was exasperation in his voice. “Any other sleuthing you’d like to reveal?”

  “Not that I can think of.”

  Mac shook his head and muttered something about “amateurs” under his breath. His eyes slid to the half-full bourbon bottle and, for a moment, Kaitlin was terrified he would grab it and walk out her door. Instead his hand reached out for the bottle, but stopped a half-pinky away from it.

  The doorbell rang a third time followed by a loud knock and the announcement of “Police.”

  “What do I tell them? Everything?”

  Kaitlin held her breath and envisioned her jail cell which grew smaller, darker, and colder the more she contemplated her conversation with Officer Hendricks. She even wondered if they’d pin on her that parking ticket Zack got last year and never paid.

  Mac shook his head. “We called him to report stolen items in your house. That’s all.”

  “Police.”

  Hendricks banged on the door with more force and his voice was louder and more insistent.

  The arrival of Officer Hendricks in her living room forced Mac and Mary Jane to put their romancing to one side. Mary Jane stood at Kaitlin’s side like a hen guarding her chick, while Mac positioned himself in front of both of them. Hendricks recognized Mac, and the two of them did a cop bonding handshake.

  “So, whad we got here?” asked Hendricks.

  He shifted his belt higher and cocked a hip as he extracted his notebook from his pocket. The toothpick was already in place.

  “Upstairs,” Kaitlin said to Hendricks, “but quiet so we don’t wake Jeremy.”

  They all tiptoed up the stairs and down the hall, then halted at the door to Kaitlin’s room.

  “I’ll take it from here,” said Hendricks.

  He entered the room, stopping midway across the floor.

  “On the desk,” said Kaitlin.

  She pushed past him and pointed.

  He approached the desk and looked closely at the items. “So?”

  “The stolen letters and laptop. From the newspaper office,” said Mary Jane.

  “I know. I was just lookin’ to be sure.”

  Oh, right, thought Kaitlin, like I believe that.

  “I’ll need to take all these letters and the laptop. The items’re stolen property. Did you touch them?”

  “Well, not today, but I touched them when they were at the newspaper office. So did Brittany.”

  “Uh huh. Any idea who could have done this?”

  “Absolutely none,” she said.

  * * *

  She attributed her usual inability to write the next morning to the questions that whirled around in her head about who stole the letters and computer, and then planted them in her bedroom. Desdemona lay at her feet. Kaitlin assumed, from the smile on her snout, she must be dreaming of corn fields that stretched to the horizon.

  Mac sat in his car out front. Kaitlin could hear him and Mary Jane talking through the living room windows. Occasionally, the sound of the front door slamming alerted her to Mary Jane’s errands to deliver him coffee or lunch or…something else.

  “If you two continue to talk and exchange, uh, visits, everyone will know Mac’s shadowing us.”

  She was cranky, and not only because the cursor on her computer screen was the only thing happening there. She acknowledged to herself only the tiniest stab of jealousy. People continued to fall in love despite the fact that others fell out of love. Like Zack and her.

  Kaitlin watched Dessie snuffle at one of her bedroom slippers.

  “That’s not food.”

  She slammed her laptop closed. “Jeremy, come get your pig. She’s lonely and hungry.”

  She grabbed her backpack. “I’m off to the café,” she said to Mac as she passed his car.

  “Bye, honey,” said Mary Jane. She waved out the front window of her bedroom.

  * * *

  Was that goodbye for her or for Mac who started his car and drove slowly down the road after her?

  She strolled down the tree-lined streets, glancing at the mountains that ringed the Kinderkill River Valley, their wooded tops changing color from black to green with the passing of an occasional cloud. She filled her lungs with clean air and felt better. A walk. That’s all she needed. What could possibly ruin such a perfect late spring afternoon?

  “A large decaf cappuccino,” she said to the coffee barista at the café.

  All eyes in the place turned toward her, and conversations stopped midsentence as she took her order to a table and sat down.

  “There she is now. She’s got some nerve,” she heard someone say.

  Brittany entered and held the door for several customers who seemed to suddenly change their minds about leaving. They cast curious glances at Kaitlin and grabbed chairs around the table they’d just vacated. She waved to Brittany who held up her finger signaling she would be right over.

  “What’s going on in here?” Kaitlin kept her voice low when Brittany joined her. “Everyone’s staring at me.”

  “I guess you haven’t heard the news, I mean, the rumors, have you?”

  She leaned forward in anticipation. “Tell me.”

  “Some people in this town are putting a very interesting spin on the break-in at the newspaper office and the discovery of Leda’s letters and computer at your house. They think you took the stolen goods to keep anyone from finding out what role you played in Leda’s death.”

  Kaitlin looked around the room. Most of the customers dropped their eyes when Kaitlin’s gaze came to rest on them.

  “And there’s the theory you killed Leda to get her job. I guess they believe all the evidence for your crime was in her computer. They also found out you’ve taken over her work at ARC, so, for some of them, that clinches it. They think you were jealous of her position as a writer for the paper, and you wanted to eliminate your competition.”

  The couple at the next table leaned toward Kaitlin. She stared back at them, meeting their gaze of anticipation with a disgusted look.

  “Don’t you have anything better to do than eavesdrop on others’ conversations?”

  A look of horror crossed their faces.

  “She might get violent,” said the man. He grabbed his wife’s arm and led her to the café’s exit.

  Kaitlin turned her attention back to Brittany’s story.

/>   “Wait a minute. This doesn’t make sense. If I took the stuff, why would I call the cops when I found it? Who’s saying all of this anyway?”

  Kaitlin spun around in the chair, daring the other customers to challenge her gaze, and looking for someone to accuse.

  “And how the hell can anyone know about the break-in and the missing letters so soon?”

  “I think Officer Hendricks has a big mouth as well as a big belly,” Brittany said. She blew on her coffee and took a tiny sip. “It’s stupid gossip, that’s all. Ignore it.” She put a lid on her cup. “Gotta run.”

  After Brittany left, Kaitlin remained seated, her cappuccino untouched in front of her. Out the café window she could see Mac, sitting in his car. She blinked and looked around the café. All conversations had stopped. All eyes rested on her.

  “Boo,” she said.

  She chuckled when a few people jumped, while others mouthed the words “crazy” and “madwoman.”

  She tossed a few quarters in the tip jar on the counter as she left. The barista backed away from the counter and stared. No goodbye, have-a-nice-day this time.

  She leaned into Mac’s car. “I thought you might like to hear the rumors going around about me.”

  “Already heard them. Pretty silly.”

  “How could you already hear them? I only just heard them because I was in there,” she pointed back at the café, “giving the gossip mongers a good look at the town’s newest columnist/killer/thief.”

  “People do stop and talk to me, you know.”

  “Who?”

  “Toliver from ARC, for one.”

  “And you heard the rumors from him? I suppose he’ll want someone other than me to do the ombudsman job at ARC.”

  “Don’t think so. He seemed to be looking forward to having you there. Kinda funny.”

  She thought about that for a minute. If the town thought she had a hand in Leda’s death, her credibility was shot. No one would believe her if she uncovered anything at ARC. Is that what Toliver wanted? My, but I’m becoming the suspicious sort.

  “When we get back to the house, could I have the note and the gold cross your friend the EMT found with Leda?” asked Mac.

  “What for?” she asked.

  “I want to show them to someone.”

  “Who?”

  “Good heavens, Kaitlin, you’re acting as if you don’t trust me.”

  She did, didn’t she? He was serving as her, well, just what was he? Her babysitter, her watchdog, her body guard, her guardian angel? And the guardian angel sitting back in her home? She had reservations about her, too. Suddenly, Kaitlin was suspicious of the very people she’d asked to protect her, what did she know about any of them? Did they have the same suspicions about her?

  Chapter 11

  On Tuesday morning, Kaitlin was preparing oatmeal for her and Desdemona when the phone rang. The sound shattered the good feeling she’d been working on by talking with Jeremy about animals, picking his brain about any bird lore pertaining to buzzards. The kid was better than Wikipedia.

  “You’d better get down here,” said Brittany.

  “Not again. More stuff stolen?” asked Kaitlin.

  “No, but Delbert just heard about the thefts this morning when he got back into town.”

  Kaitlin could hear Delbert’s voice in the background. “Tell her right now.”

  Once at the office she growled good morning at Brittany, who returned the surliness by sticking out her tongue.

  “Sorry,” Kaitlin said. She gave Brittany a weak smile. It was not returned.

  Delbert didn’t look up when she entered, but she heard calmness and reason in his voice which did much to restore her good spirits. This might not be so bad after all.

  “Your columns have come in on time, they’re literate, the advice was reasonable. Just what I expected of you as a writer.”

  “Well, thanks very much, Delbert, I…”

  “So why did you have to screw it all up by stealing from me?” A flush crept up his jaw line.

  “I didn’t. Someone else did.”

  “Someone else as in another person, or are you having some out-of-body experiences? What’s going on here?”

  Yet once again, Kaitlin found herself conflicted over trusting information to a person she didn’t know well. She hated her recent suspiciousness, so she told him.

  “I think someone took those letters and the computer because they feared Leda knew something she shouldn’t. And they decided to plant the stolen goods on me to make me look bad. You’ve heard the rumors, haven’t you?”

  Delbert didn’t reply, but gazed out his office window. Kaitlin could almost hear the gears turning, neural connections weighing what all this meant for newspaper circulation.

  “What did she know? You think there’s something funny about her death? So I was right. The circumstances were suspicious. Old Baldo made a mistake.” Delbert’s eyes did a cha-cha in their sockets.

  “Now, Mr. Delbert, I wouldn’t go off half-cocked if I were you. It’s just a hunch on my part. I’m trying to make sense out of this theft and some things about ARC that are kind of funny and…”

  Brittany hovered at the doorway, then stepped forward and spoke in an excited voice.

  “And the fact that Leda made out another will leaving her nephew out of her estate can’t be unrelated. Leda told me about the will, and Kaitlin found evidence on her laptop. So someone must have stolen the laptop and the letters.”

  Oh, boy. Brittany had done it now. Delbert’s face turned bright red. He popped out of his chair and strode around his office, hands behind his back. Then he stopped and threw his arms in the air.

  “This is great, great! Get me that story, Kaitlin. Do the police know about this? Don’t say a word for now. We need to investigate, investigate. We may be in line for a Pulitzer! Let’s keep this under our hats until we get all the facts. That’s your job.”

  “Wait a minute! That is not my job. My job is to write an advice column.”

  Delbert looked at her with as much menace as the balding, short, chubby man, could manage.

  “If you want to keep writing that column, you’ll work on this. Now get going.”

  How dare he threaten to take away the column after he told her how well she was doing? She couldn’t produce her best work with the threat of termination hanging over her head. And she wasn’t certain she wanted to snoop around any theft or murder. Well, she didn’t want to snoop for Delbert. She might be willing to do it for herself, to clear her name, to make things better up at ARC, to find out what Leda knew and what might have gotten her killed, but not just to sell newspapers. She’d think about it for a while, at least until afternoon tea with her dance partner, Paul Lamb. There were some questions she needed to ask him.

  * * *

  Paul and she sat in ARC’s dining room, gazing out the windows overlooking the village. The facility rested on the highest point in the area affording it a breathtaking view of the mountains across the Kinderkill River and of the neighborhoods of Aldensville below. The valley and the mountains beyond were changing into their summer garb, the deep green of June replacing the chartreuse of April and May. Rain from the night before made the foliage shimmer in the late afternoon sunlight, and wisps of fog drifted across the shadowed hills.

  She surveyed the panorama before her with the conviction of an individual who loved her surroundings. She liked being here. If only she could get beyond her writing difficulties. If she could write here, she might want to live here for longer than the summer. Maybe for always.

  They sipped tea from Paul’s porcelain teacups, his wife’s favorites he told her.

  “So, you have some questions about this place?” he asked.

  She placed the cup back on its saucer and turned her gaze away from the view to look at Paul. His bright blue eyes registered both intelligence and curiosity.

  She got right to the point.

  “Leda received a few letters saying there was some funny bus
iness going on here, thefts of possessions from the residents. Have you heard anything about that?”

  “No, but I’m probably not the one to ask about it.”

  “If you’re suggesting I ask Mr. Toliver, I already did. He said it wasn’t true, merely a figment of elderly demented minds, a common fantasy among residents in retirement communities such as this.”

  Paul sipped a bit more of his tea.

  “Well, Toliver and I don’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of things, and I guess this is another one of those areas of disagreement. No, I was going to suggest that if anyone were stealing from the residents, it would likely be from those who are most vulnerable, the ones in skilled nursing or the dementia and Alzheimer’s wings.”

  Paul then suggested something she hadn’t thought of, but found insightful. He recommended a visit with one of the other residents.

  “I don’t know how much you’d get out of her, but I’d try to talk with Lily. She knows more than she lets on, although she sometimes forgets how much she knows. But if you get her in her room when she’s feeling relaxed, she might have something to say.”

  They gathered up their cups and the tea pot, dropped them off at Paul’s apartment, and headed to the Alzheimer’s wing. On their way past the office, Paul stuck his head in to see if Toliver was around. He wasn’t.

  “Good,” said Paul. “We won’t have to worry about his barging in on us. He gives Lily the willies.”

  “Let me just duck in the bathroom here for a moment, and I’ll be right with you.”

  She flushed the toilet and turned to leave the cubicle. Suddenly the lights went out, leaving the small frosted window above her head the only source of illumination. She pushed on the stall door, but it seemed to be stuck. Odd. It opened easily when she came in.

  “Stay where you are,” said a muffled voice from the other side of the door.

  She couldn’t tell whether it was male or female. The person seemed to be speaking through several layers of cloth. She wasn’t particularly claustrophobic, but the steel walls of the small enclosure felt like they were moving in on her.

  She banged on the door. “Who’s there?”

  “You didn’t show up for our meeting on Saturday.”

  Kaitlin looked down at the floor on the other side of the stall. She could make out a pair of sneakers there and dark pant legs, neither a clue to the person’s identity or gender.