“Where is my fiancée?” Jason shouted into the night sky.
He had Kate’s full attention, but only for a moment.
Scott was walking briskly through the smoke, and as soon as she saw him, Kate ran then threw her arms around his neck, holding him tight.
When he urged her back, his eyes told her that he was just as stunned as everyone else was.
Bewildered, he said, “The kidnapper blew the cash up?” He scanned the area for Amelia.
Kate did, as well, and found her standing in shadows where the road met the parking lot.
She looked apprehensive, and Kate wanted to rush over and tell her it was okay, but was it?
“I’ve got a pulse!” Officer Garrison shouted. He was kneeling beside Lance, his fingers pressed to his throat. He placed his palm firmly on the mustard king’s chest. “Where the hell is that ambulance?”
It was enough good news for Kate to break from Scott’s arms and jog over to Amelia.
“An ambulance is on the way,” she said, out of breath as she reached her. “He has a pulse.”
“I’m not sure this is about my daughter,” she said in a faraway voice, her gaze locked on her husband’s motionless body. “It was an elaborate ploy to kill Lance.”
Amelia had such conviction that Kate not only believed her, but sensed the woman knew far more than she had let on.
Daisy and her convicts depositing boxes of drugs at the Langleys’ mustard warehouse came to mind.
“Who would want to do that?” she asked, stepping in close and offering Amelia the comfort of her hand on her arm.
Amelia didn’t answer. Instead, her expression hardened into the shape of revenge, and her eyes flattened.
Finally, blaring sirens and flashing red lights billowed in the distance, growing louder and brighter as an ambulance tore up the road and turned into the amusement park.
The medics were fast, jumping from their vehicle and taking command of the situation. Two slapped a gurney on the ground beside Lance, and in the next second they lifted him onto it, ascended its legs, and pushed it to the back of the ambulance where they forced the legs to collapse, hauling it inside. Shouting and critical directive ensued, medical terms Kate had only heard in movies, as the driver slammed the rear doors shut, raced to the driver’s side, and jumped in.
Scott neared Kate just as the ambulance peeled out of the parking lot, its sirens never having quieted.
“I think Amelia knows something,” Kate whispered, leaning her head on his shoulder, as he wrapped an arm around her.
She sensed more than saw Scott glance over at the distraught wife, but he only said, “Whatever you’re thinking, let it go, at least for tonight. It’s going to be a long one for all of us.”
Kate knew when to press Scott and when to ease up, and this time he was more than right.
Switching gears, he added, “Can you take Amelia to the hospital? I’ll meet you there.”
The very suggestion caused a lump to form in her throat. She hadn’t exactly rubbed Amelia the right way on the ride over, asking questions that had revealed Kate suspected her and Lance might have known about the drugs being dumped in their warehouse.
Instead of arguing, she suggested, “Jason will fit, as well.” Having her son sitting between them should be enough to dampen any animosity.
“If he wants,” said Scott. “I would think he’d rather go with Jared. Either way, I’ll be there as soon as I can. We have to get to the bottom of what in the hell just happened, and if forensics is going to work carefully, they’ll do it slowly.”
He gave her one more squeeze then stalked off towards his team. The officers were handling the singed money bag and setting down evidence markers, short yellow triangles that would alert forensics on where and what to investigate.
As Kate made her way to her boys, she prayed Lance would pull through. When she had watched the surveillance monitor, she could’ve sworn she spotted Becky Langley behind a stack of materials, but it was possible her eyes had been playing tricks on her. Lance had been close enough to know if he’d seen the woman lurking behind the pipes. If he died, it would be tragic, and in more ways than one.
Stunned though he was, Jason’s eyes looked sharp and clear as he said, “Scott better find out who was behind this. Why are they wasting time handling shrapnel? Why aren’t they searching the woods? The kidnapper can’t be far.”
Glancing over her shoulder at the police officers, she said, “Honey, I don’t know. But we have to let them do their jobs.”
He snorted a laugh. “You don’t sound like yourself.”
Actually, she did. Whenever Kate bent or broke the rules, she didn’t tend to announce her plans to poke around against the police chief’s warnings.
“We’re going to find Becky,” she offered.
Angrily, he countered, “You don’t know that.”
“Come on,” she said in a gentle tone. “Let’s go to the hospital.”
Jared was in agreement and began guiding Jason through the parking lot and towards the road where they had parked behind the surveillance van.
Hanging back, Kate neared Amelia. “I don’t know what to say.” She didn’t have to invite her to come along to her truck. Amelia started off on her own and Kate brought up the rear.
Rock Ridge Medical was on the south side of town to best serve the entire county. As soon as Kate approached the admissions desk, the nurse behind the counter recognized her by name.
“The police chief’s wife,” she stated in a knowing tone, as she typed into her computer. “Lance Langley is already in surgery.”
“Surgery?”
“Yes,” she said, quickly flicking her eyes to Kate then returning them to her computer monitor as she pulled up the details on the screen. “He had four broken ribs—”
“That required surgery?” she asked, alarmed.
“No. As it turned out, we caught an embolism when we gave him a CAT scan. It would’ve killed him if untreated. In a very strange way, he’s lucky he got in when he did.”
“Really?”
The nurse, whose badge said Haley Powers, smirked at her. “We’ll keep you posted. There’s a waiting room on the second floor if you and your family would like to go up. The ER waiting room can be stressful.”
Kate glanced around. The ER waiting room was virtually empty, except for a woman and her screaming toddler. She thanked Haley, anyway, and turned for Amelia, who was hunched in a nervous ball on one of the chairs.
Jason couldn’t bear to sit. Instead he was pacing, but in a way that didn’t strike Kate as concerned for his future father-in-law.
“Let’s go up to the second floor.”
“Why?” asked Amelia, her eyes widening as though she feared the worst.
“I’m told Lance is in surgery for an unrelated matter.”
“What unrelated matter?”
“An embolism.”
“Just tell me if he’ll live or die,” she snapped.
“The nurse didn’t say.”
Reluctantly, Amelia got to her feet. “I can’t lose my daughter and my husband.”
“You haven’t lost either,” she said in a reassuring tone that only seemed to incite Amelia, though she walked beside Kate towards the elevators.
Once everyone was inside, they rode it up to the second floor and spent the next two hours waiting for any word on Lance’s condition. All the while, Kate expected to see Scott step out of the elevator, but he never did.
It wasn’t until four in the morning when the resident surgeon met them in the waiting area to tell them Lance would pull through just fine, but needed to stay at the hospital for a few days under observation. Amelia burst with happy tears, but Jason didn’t look nearly as relieved.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
Chapter Two
The next day, Kate permitted herself to sleep in. She hit the snooze three times before giving up, turning her alarm off, and falling back into a deep sleep, only vaguely aware that Sc
ott was not beside her.
By the time she woke, feeling well rested, the clock on the nightstand read eleven. She bolted upright. She hadn’t slept in like that since the rare occasions, decades prior, when her twin toddlers had made it through a morning without crying.
Getting out of bed, two things were on her mind—coffee and Lance Langley, and in that order. She hadn’t heard from Amelia or Scott, so she figured that no news was good news, but as she scooped coffee grinds, filling her machine, she cued up Amelia’s number on her cell phone.
The second the dark roast began tricking down, she sent the call through, holding her cell to her ear and hoping she wouldn’t wake Amelia.
When the line opened up, Amelia sounded exhausted. “Kate,” she said. “Any news?”
“Ah, no. Scott didn’t come home last night. If his team found nothing, he would’ve made it back, though, so I’d take this as a good sign.” After a brief pause, waiting for Amelia’s response and receiving none, she asked, “What about Lance?”
“Oh, he’s still resting. He woke up a few times, but these doctors have him on so many drugs, I’m not sure he knows where he is. I’ve been in his room with him. I slept on a chair. It’s been miserable.”
“I’m glad to hear he’s okay.”
“Listen, Kate,” she began, trailing off. Kate could hear her padding slowly across the linoleum of Lance’s hospital room. “I’m really not sure I have any say in the matter, but I question Scott’s competency.” She tried interjecting to assure Amelia that her family was in good hands, but Amelia immediately cut her off. “I don’t know how to get Becky back, but I know Scott isn’t the answer. He’s part of the problem.”
“No one could’ve foreseen this,” she said, though in a reasoning tone.
“I beg to differ.” She sighed. “Like I said, I’m sure I don’t have a say, but I’m telling you this, and you can tell Scott when you see him: Lance and I won’t be cooperating in the future. We can’t put our lives at risk. God forbid Becky had been there. What if she was killed?”
“Let’s not jump to the worst-case scenario—”
“Oh, I’ve jumped there. I built a house and pay taxes in the land of worst-case scenarios. I’m not putting my family at risk again. Just stay away from us. Please.”
Kate heard a click through the receiver.
As she sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, she pulled up the calendar on her cell phone to refresh her memory as to her day’s schedule. Jared’s new office would need a shelving unit installed among other fixtures, and Jessica Wentworth had e-mailed her about helping her organize the business side of her home-based fashion company. She scrolled through the e-mail, noting the bullet points as detailed by Jessica and gleaned the job would require a trip to the Container Store and Grayson’s, since Jessica needed the wobbly legs of one of her work tables fixed.
Considering Jared might not make it into the office today in favor of spending time with Jason, Kate decided to handle that job first and swing by Jessica’s in the late afternoon.
As she finished her coffee, showered, and dressed, she hoped Lance’s hospital stay and the botched ransom wouldn’t derail Jason’s life once again.
Dean Wentworth, as mayor, had virtually no time to manage the construction of the new amusement park, which was barely underway. He had appointed Jason the head of Wentworth Contractors to see the job through. But if Jason didn’t show up for work, his title might not be his for very long.
Noting the time as soon as she hopped into her truck—the clock on the dash read a quarter to noon—Kate devised to make Grayson’s her first stop. It was a fair bet that Larry would be out to lunch, but she knew the hardware store like the back of her hand, and his employees could easily handle carrying the heavier items out to her truck.
She rolled the windows down and backed out, swinging around and starting off down her long, winding driveway. As hot as it was outside, the fresh air felt good. Cutting through the center of town, she noted all the pedestrians on the street strolling and pausing to glance through store windows. Outside of Bean There were a number of café tables, residents seated and enjoying their long, lazy lunch breaks. She could almost smell the dark roast wafting out of the coffee shop as she passed, and she had to fight the urge to stop in for a cup. She was late enough as it was.
To her surprise, Larry was not at lunch but behind the counter, she noticed as soon as she stepped into Grayson’s Hardware. The store sounded quiet, and she sensed he had no customers.
“Kate,” he said as if surprised to see her.
Clearly, he had heard about the shocking night she and her family had survived.
Preemptively, she shrugged, saying, “What else would I do?”
“So you weren’t hurt?”
“No, not at all. The boys and I were in a van down the road. Amelia Langley, as well.”
“Thank God,” he said, releasing a huge tension-filled breath. “We have to stick together.”
She cocked her brow at that, approaching the counter.
“You didn’t read the paper?” he asked, his eyes widening as he tucked the Rock Ridge Gazette under the table.
“I caught up on some sleep,” she said, nervously intrigued at all he was hinting. “We have a reporter problem?”
“In more ways than one. Demblowski ran a doomsday article this morning, plus I heard Over the Moon got booked up overnight. Reporters from out of town.” Larry shook his head. “This town is changing.”
“Let me see the article,” she said.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“You know I can stop by any newsstand if I want.”
Hesitant as he was, he offered her the paper.
“Crime Climbs in Rock Ridge, No One Safe.”
Great, she thought, that’s just what Dean’s amusement park needs.
“No one’s going to want to live here, much less book vacations during the summer months.”
Considering his point, she wasn’t sure that was all that bad. If Kate worried about anything, it was tourists falling in love with her quaint town, moving here, changing things, and Kate waking up one morning to find she didn’t recognize a thing. If reporters were feeding into hysterics that would prevent her nightmares from coming true, it might not be a bad thing. Not that she wanted reporters swarming through her town, either.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Larry went on. “Tensions are rising. People around here are starting to worry about the convicts who have moved to town. And now we have reporters highlighting tragedies. I know I don’t have to connect the dots for you, but the good people of Rock Ridge could very well start pointing their fingers at all those ex-con construction workers over at the amusement park. We could have a real situation on our hands, and these articles only fuel the fire.”
Kate couldn’t tell him he was wrong, as she scanned the article and fantasized about punching the smug Eric Demblowski in the face. She had never liked the guy, and her feelings toward him only became tangled when she had discovered his secret affair with Celia Johnson. Larry was likely right in terms of the residents' knee-jerk reaction to articles like the one she was trying and failing to absorb. But the fact of the matter was that of the two murders that had befallen Rock Ridge in the last month—Cookie Halpert and Clifford Green—neither had been committed by the ex-cons, but the longtime residents of Rock Ridge, namely Officer Gunther and Daisy Meriwether.
Eric Demblowski’s article completely failed to mention the real killers. Instead, it sensationalized the probability that Rock Ridge could expect more murders and anyone could be next.
“Try not to feed into the hysteria,” she advised. “And don’t talk to reporters.”
“You know me,” he said with a chuckle. “I keep to myself.”
Larry did. Ever since he had been falsely accused of murder after his very own father had been arrested for doing such a thing, Larry was careful about what he said and to whom.
“I have a l
ong list today,” she said, setting the newspaper on the counter and pulling her handwritten list out of her overalls. Jotting down a list of materials while maneuvering her truck along Main Street hadn’t been her smoothest operation, and Kate realized she could barely read her own jagged handwriting. “I’ll give a holler if I need anything.”
Kate padded around to the shopping dollies that were kept on the far side of the counter, pulled one from the bunch, and rounded up the building materials aisle where there was a variety of boards, planks, two-by-fours, and dowels, all of which could be useful in fixing Jessica’s work table.
As she collected what she needed for the day, pulling wood from the shelves onto her dolly, Kate sent a brief text message to Jessica proposing she aim to stop in at three in the afternoon and then hopped on the phone. Dean picked up on the first ring.
“You okay?” he asked urgently in a manner not unlike Larry’s.
“Yes, I’m fine. Scott is fine. Amelia and Jason and Jared are fine. Lance is going to be in the hospital a few days, but things are looking good.”
Dean sighed with relief into the receiver, but a distinct tension followed.
“Jason’s really fine?” he asked.
“In terms of life or death, he is,” she offered. “He hasn’t called you, has he?”
“Hasn’t called. Hasn’t shown up at the site. I need a construction manager at the top of this pyramid or else the whole thing is going to collapse.”
“Can you give him a day or two?” She winced as she asked, anticipating that Dean was already at the end of his rope with Jason.
“One day, Kate. Then I have to make a decision.”
“All right. I’ll talk to him.”
“Thank you,” he said, but he sounded disgruntled.
“And I’ll see you in a bit. I’m going to finish Jared’s office today.”
“Ah,” he grumbled. “He’s not going to like moving into the hallway.”
“He’s at work today?”
“Apparently. Look, I know Jason was the one whose fiancée was abducted and Jared isn’t shouldering the bulk of the burden—”
Mrs. Fix It Mysteries, Season 2 (5 Cozy Mystery Books Collection) Page 20
