Harlequin Intrigue May 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Carol Ericson

  * * *

  WITH REGRET, JACK left Gabby in the lobby of her hotel in front of the elevators. Conversation had ranged widely while they ate lunch at a deli a few blocks down the street. As he’d promised, it never touched on her mother, brother or early years here in Leclaire. Jack discovered her viewpoints were liberal and well defended. She did concede that, given his job, he had reason to look at the world with a more jaundiced viewpoint. She made him laugh more often than he had in recent memory, even as his gut stayed tight from guilt.

  He had kissed her lightly before they parted because he couldn’t not. He wanted to join her and her brother for dinner, but had a bad feeling that his hunger to see her this evening, too, didn’t have anything to do with his cold case investigation.

  Walking out to his SUV, he was glad the hotel had had the parking lot plowed. Yeah, snow had fallen last night, and tiny flakes still floated down. Pretty, but a pain in the butt for patrol officers who’d be responsible for endless fender benders, getting pickup trucks pulled out of ditches, and nailing idiots who wouldn’t slow down on icy roads.

  He interviewed the contractor who had reported the theft of the construction equipment, not going so far as to make accusations, but persistent enough the guy was getting rattled by the time Jack thanked him for his time and left. Sure as hell, he’d sold the bulldozer, forklift and all the rest, and now expected to double his profit with an insurance payoff. Some digging had uncovered the fact that the contractor had never gotten out of debt after selling the last houses he’d built. Now he was in real trouble. This little scheme would allow him to pay the bills for another month or so, maybe long enough to finish the current building and sell it. Harmless, he’d think...except the insurance company wouldn’t agree.

  Minor corruption might end the guy’s career.

  Back at the station, Jack made more phone calls and did more computer research about other cases. He had roughly fifteen active cases and a dozen or more he kept at the back of his mind. And now he’d added a cold case. There was plenty to keep him busy, and no excuse for him to resent not being able to concentrate 100 percent on that cold case—or to be letting his mind wander to Gabby Ortiz and the way his heart stumbled when she smiled at him.

  Brooding about her evening plans, he wrestled with himself, finally concluding that she and her brother needed time together without him there as a diversion. He’d call her in the morning.

  Damn, he hadn’t grocery shopped in a week. He wasn’t in the mood to cook anyway. Maybe he’d go through a drive-through...

  Or maybe he should concentrate on doing his job.

  * * *

  GABBY COULDN’T BELIEVE she hadn’t packed any extra elastics for her hair. Since breaking her only one, she’d had to leave her hair out of its normal braid. Fortunately, there was no wind today as she walked the three blocks to the pharmacy the concierge had suggested. She declined his offer to summon an Uber. A walk sounded good.

  The bitter cold made her feel right at home, as did the crunching sound underfoot from either salt that had been spread on the sidewalk or refrozen slush thrown from car tires or left by the plow. A New Englander, she was used to seeing her own breath in white plumes, and just walking briskly was a pleasure. She’d spent too much of her brief stay in Leclaire in her hotel room, a restaurant or one car or another.

  At the pharmacy, she grabbed a package of hair elastics in multicolors and several other toiletries, just in case. She stumbled on a surprisingly sizeable book and magazine section, too, and chose a couple of books. After paying, she stepped back out onto the sidewalk, deiced here by a generous application of salt.

  The green walk signal at the corner flashed. Since walking in the bitter cold was one thing but standing around another, she hustled to make it. One glance told her no cars were waiting on the cross street at the intersection. An approaching SUV had plenty of time to stop. These must be the old-fashioned lights that changed at regular interludes no matter what traffic was doing.

  Her mind started to wander. Even though she had good reason for wariness where Jack was concerned, she wished that they’d set another time to get together—and that his goodbye kiss had been more than a peck.

  She was shocked back to the present by the huge SUV racing toward her at an unsafe speed. No sign the driver was braking for the light. Oh, damn, her walk signal had turned red while she’d been distracted. The driver must see her, surely, but Gabby broke into a jog anyway.

  Her foot caught a bit of ice and she slipped, staggering to keep her feet. The SUV hadn’t slowed at all, and suddenly assumed monstrous proportions. On a burst of adrenaline, Gabby dove forward toward the sanctuary of a parked car. One of her feet scraped against the black metal.

  And then she hit the hard, icy pavement and skidded until her head bumped the curb.

  Winded and shocked, it took her a minute to realize the speeding vehicle had gone through the intersection and continued on straight ahead, the driver apparently oblivious to the pedestrian he—or she—had just about taken out.

  She heard running footsteps. Voices called out, blending together. “Are you all right?”

  “Did you fall?”

  Only one said, “Man, I wish I’d gotten the license plate.”

  Gabby struggled to sit. A couple of the people who’d reached her stepped forward to help her up. She winced when she put weight on her right foot, but she was sure it wasn’t broken. Someone else retrieved her shopping bag, which had gone flying. Fortunately, it was intact.

  The anxious, kind faces around her were the reassurance she needed to smile. “Thanks. To all of you. Um...did any of you see the license plate of that SUV? Or even notice what make or model it was?”

  Most people had been half a block or more away and hadn’t. A few hadn’t noticed a vehicle at all. The two people who’d been closest agreed it was black, but argued about whether it had been a Chevy or a Dodge or...

  She gave up, decided her ankle would support her, and hobbled the two more blocks she had to go.

  Hotel staff rushed to her in alarm, but she assured them she’d taken a tumble but was fine. All she needed was a hot shower. Thanks to her heavy garments and gloves, the only place she’d even skinned a little was her jaw, and she had antibiotic ointment in her travel first aid kit.

  A bellboy insisted on walking her up to her room and refused a tip.

  Gabby sank onto her bed, a lot shakier than she’d let any of the strangers see. She had come within inches of being badly injured or even killed.

  Of course it was an accident. It had to be. Maybe the sun had been in the driver’s eyes, or he’d been distracted by an incoming text. After all, who hadn’t ever been distracted while behind the wheel?

  It was just... She closed her eyes. One of the “incidents” that had preceded Great-Aunt Isabel taking her away had been another near miss. That time, she’d been on her training bike on the sidewalk. Just sitting there. She’d been outside only because Dad had insisted she do something besides watch TV or cling to him.

  It was a sedan that time. She hadn’t been paying attention at all, but Mr. Monroe next door saw it jump the curb. He’d come out for his mail, and snatched her out of the way barely in time. The car flattened her bike, swerved back onto the street and burned rubber as it ran the stop sign on the next corner and kept going.

  The driver was probably a drunk or a reckless teenager who’d gotten the scare of his life, people kept saying. Even the police didn’t take it all that seriously. Dad did. Only a week before, a bullet had hit the fender of his car in the grocery store parking lot, missing her by inches. Drive-by shootings had been a recent problem, the responding officer had told him gravely. But only days later, Dad found a plastic container of cookies on their doorstep with a note that said, “In sympathy.” Neighbors always rang the doorbell, they didn’t leave anonymous gifts. He was suspicious enough to take those c
ookies to the police, who determined they contained rat poison. While the cookies could have harmed Dad or Ric, too, she was the smallest and would have likely been killed.

  Today was different, she promised herself. Even if she’d been hit, she was more likely to have been injured than killed. Unless she’d been flung ahead of the SUV and the driver had just gone right over her and still fled. One of her most powerful flickers of childhood memory was seeing her beloved bike—pink, of course—crushed on the sidewalk. Could a human body look like that?

  No. Ridiculous.

  Gabby blew out a long breath and decided she should call Jack anyway.

  * * *

  SHE TALKED HIM out of racing to her side, but it was a close call. Jack knew he couldn’t actually do anything, and had a suspicion she’d downplay any aftereffects of the near miss. She was seeing her brother tonight, though, and it would be hard to hide any injuries from him.

  Jack had grilled her about every detail of what happened. He couldn’t believe she hadn’t gotten the names and phone numbers of any of the witnesses.

  “But they didn’t see anything!” she kept protesting.

  Except for the two of them who agreed with her that the vehicle had been a full-size SUV, and black. And one, she admitted, had been sure the driver was a man. “Big,” he said, and maybe wearing a baseball cap.

  Jack made some calls to find out whether any nearby stores had security cameras, or whether that intersection had a traffic camera. The answer was no. The city of Leclaire was running behind on updating old traffic lights and adding camera surveillance that would reveal the license plates of vehicles that ran a red light. The first was just a money issue, while the cameras faced significant protest among residents rebelling at the idea of being watched.

  What if Gabby had died today and they couldn’t arrest the hit-and-run driver in part because of the lack of new technology? Jack ground his teeth.

  “Cowan?”

  He spun his desk chair to face Sergeant Rutkowski.

  “There a problem?” the sergeant asked, no doubt registering his expression.

  “Gabrielle Ortiz was damn close to being the victim of a hit-and-run accident this afternoon. She had to dive out of the way of a speeding vehicle.”

  The sergeant’s homely face creased. “By her brother’s house?”

  “No, she was downtown doing some errands. She’d just left the Walgreens and was crossing a street. Unfortunately, there were no witnesses close enough to catch a license plate, and none of them even agreed on the make or model of the vehicle. I can’t find a camera in the vicinity. It’s a dead end.”

  Rutkowski frowned down at him. “You don’t think this was a deliberate attack.”

  Jack took a few deep breaths before he answered. “It’s unlikely. I can’t rule it out, though, because there were several possible attempts on her life right after her mother’s murder. One could have been malicious, although investigators couldn’t figure out a motive. The other incidents could fall into the bad luck category, but all these things happened in a matter of weeks.”

  The echo of the speeding vehicle and a driver who didn’t stop sent up a flare for him now that he couldn’t ignore.

  “Have you read up on the Ortiz murder?” he asked.

  “I did when I first came on board with this unit,” the sergeant said, “but it’s been years.”

  Unsurprised, Jack said, “One of those three near misses was a car jumping the curb by her house. She’d be dead if a neighbor hadn’t been close enough to snatch her out of the way. Car swerved back onto the street and booked it. Investigators didn’t find anything.”

  “I don’t blame you for being uneasy,” Rutkowski said, “but unless a better witness comes forward...” He shrugged.

  Jack’s jaw ached as he watched the sergeant walk away. No, there wasn’t a damn thing he could do, and he didn’t like it.

  He accomplished some more work, but still felt unsettled when he left the station earlier than usual. Maybe he’d go to the gym. Some hard exercise might reduce his tension. Between the weather and Gabby, he hadn’t gotten in a workout in nearly a week.

  He was still waiting for his car to warm up when his phone rang. He groaned. He should be down the list to have to take the next crime referred to the unit...but someone ahead of him could be sick, snowed in, who knew. Only then he got the phone out of his pocket. Ric again? Jack accepted the call and put it on speaker.

  This couldn’t be good news.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Fifteen minutes later, Jack parked at the curb in front of Ric’s house. Walking up the driveway, he scanned the facade. Gabby was right; he might have time traveled. Not one single thing about the exterior of this house had changed from the days when this had been a frequent stop on the carpool circuit.

  A patrol officer walked out the front door and saw him. They met a few steps from the porch.

  “Could just be teenagers,” Officer Engman said, but not sounding as if he believed it. “Strange after the attempted break-in night before last, though.”

  Jack knew Engman, although not well. “Has there been an upsurge of this kind of thing in the neighborhood?”

  “No.” A few years younger than Jack but no rookie, Engman gazed at the house. “This area is one of the safest in town. Mostly homeowners—people know each other.” He shrugged. “We patrol here, but not as often as we do around Hawthorn or west Leclaire.”

  Jack nodded his understanding. “Mr. Ortiz inside?”

  “Yeah. Not happy.”

  Jack grunted. “You’ll write a report?”

  “Yes, and recommend we drive by more often, at least for a few days.”

  “Good. Thanks.”

  Engman left. Ric met Jack at the door.

  “Had to be the same guy,” he growled.

  Jack hadn’t liked the coincidence of the original attempted break-in coupled with rumors spreading about Gabby’s return to Leclaire. That somebody would take the chance to come back to the same house, break a window and let himself in, this time in broad daylight? And, oh yeah, while leaving a trampled path in the snow around the side of the house? Of course it was the same guy, with the same goal.

  “Anything stolen?” he asked.

  “Yeah, smaller electronics. A brand-new iPad, a nice pair of wireless earphones and a portable keyboard. I’m out maybe a couple of thousand dollars.”

  “That could have been the point,” Jack felt he had to say.

  “You kidding me?”

  “No, I don’t believe it any more than you do.” He nodded past Ric. “You going to let me in?”

  “Yeah. Sorry.”

  “Did Gabby tell you what happened this afternoon?”

  “Shit. Yeah. I got to tell you, I don’t like any of this.”

  Jack didn’t either, even if it was hard to imagine somebody had broken in here, searched the house, then happened to get lucky enough to not only spot her, but be in a position to take a run at her when she crossed a side street alone.

  They started a walk-through, which didn’t tell him much except that the kitchen looked exactly like it had in the twenty-five-year-old crime scene photos he’d pored over. Jack was with Gabby on this one; how had her father, and now Ric, been able to stay in this place?

  The door to the garage, which had only one of those useless push-button locks, had been unlocked when Ric got home. To get to it, they passed through the utility room. He hated seeing how close the long-ago killer had been to Gabby’s hiding place when he’d walked out.

  The garage was remarkably tidy, Jack saw, a home to tools, lawn mower and presumably Ric’s car, but not much else. A few tubs sat on shelves, but they were all made of clear plastic, revealing obvious stuff like Christmas decorations.

  “Don’t you have boxes of old family pictures, record albums, stamp collections and, I
don’t know, your parents’ stuff that you don’t know what to do with?” he asked.

  Ric looked surprised. “Uh, yeah. In a small storage unit. Dad started it and... I’ve just kept paying for it.” He sounded chagrined. “I know that’s dumb when there’s so much room here, but... Dad wanted it out of the house.”

  Dad, Jack couldn’t help thinking, had some major issues that included denial.

  Ric’s brow creased. “Maybe Gabby and I could go through it.”

  There was a concept. Not that Jack didn’t suspect he’d find an accumulation of crap at his dad’s current house, when the time came.

  Back in the house, Jack asked, “Was everything that was stolen out in plain sight?”

  “Yeah.” They’d mounted the stairs, and Ric led the way into what was apparently his bedroom. “And everything taken was downstairs. Have a look at this,” he said, pulling open the drawer in the bedside stand.

  Jack looked down at the watch that lay atop some clutter. Stainless steel, but the name on it was Longines, which he had a feeling meant expensive.

  “That’s a two-thousand-dollar watch,” Ric said flatly. “Perfect condition.”

  “So either this guy didn’t bother opening drawers, or he didn’t know the watch was worth anything.” Which argued teenager or a druggie, but Jack didn’t bother saying so. He thought a few pieces of electronics had been grabbed as a cover.

  “Closet doors are open, but nothing’s been touched. Same for the master bath. He did check out both of the spare bedrooms, which are obviously unoccupied.” Ric stood aside to let Jack walk into the first room, where one side of the standard double-closet doors had been pushed open. Ditto in the second, across the hall. In both rooms, the closets were empty, no boxed-up miscellany there.

  Both rooms seemed impersonal; if the downstairs had gone unchanged, that wasn’t the case up here. Neither bedroom shouted “teenage boy,” although the walls in one room were painted pink. Left that way in case Gabby ever came home? At some point, Ric had moved into the master bedroom, which either he or his father had thoroughly updated.