Guilt Trip

by Donna Huston Murray

  “Sleep tight,” he said.

  “You, too,” I replied, but the Roitman’s security man wouldn’t be resting anytime soon.

  Up at the main house, the revolving lights of at least two police cruisers were bathing the evergreens with a garish wash of red, white, and blue.

  Chapter 24

  The bungalow’s soft furniture had been slipcovered with blue and white ticking, the light knotty pine floor softened with slip-proof blue shag rugs. Driftwood and sea shells here and there made for a beachy, family-friendly décor; but after the shot somebody fired toward the Roitman’s home and my subsequent tramping around in the dark, all I cared about was a hot shower and a pillow.

  I slept like a hibernating bear.

  When I finally woke up, I dressed in the warmest clothing Karen’s suitcase offered—cut-off white slacks and a thin cotton sweater—and headed for the kitchen.

  “Good morning,” I greeted Lana, the cook, who briefly looked up from rolling out pie dough.

  She wiggled her hand over a couple of covered dishes sitting on a hot plate. “Ham, eggz, rolls over there. Hep yourselv.” Warm food, if not a warm welcome. I poured coffee and loaded a plate.

  “Thank you,” I said softly since the rest of the household still seemed to be comatose.

  Pushing into the pantry backwards through a swinging door, I learned that I was wrong. Female voices bleeding through the door to the dining room sounded shrill.

  I carefully set my coffee mug and plate on the lower pantry cabinet and held still. The last thing I wanted to do was walk in on an argument.

  “I bet you anything it was that Sykes guy whose daughter died. The man who lost the lawsuit.”

  “Calm down,” Marsha told her daughter. “You’re overreacting.”

  “Overreacting?” Chantal repeated a decibel louder. “If somebody shot at you, you’d be ready for a straight-jacket.”

  “Darling, you’re too worked up over this. The police seem to think it was a prank or an accident. They’re going to look around more this morning, but...”

  “Never mind. You’re not listening to me anyway.”

  A heavy sigh and a fraught moment. “Would you like me to get you one of my tranquillizers?”

  “What! No, Mother. I’d rather not, not until…You really don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  “That I’m pregnant?”

  Marsha emitted something between a roar and a moan. Then when her lungs were sufficiently re-inflated, she stammered, “No, I…I…”

  “Seriously, Mom, if Lori figured it out…you really didn’t have a clue?”

  “I’m going to be a grandmother. I’m going to be a grandmother!” Next came a loud slap on the table and a heartfelt, “Dammit, Chantal! Why didn’t you warn me?”

  “Warn you? About something wonderful happening for Toby and me? Not everything is about you, Mother.”

  Not the best moment to burst in with a plate of ham and eggs. I gingerly lifted my breakfast off the cabinet and prayed that the door back into the kitchen wouldn’t squeak or flap back and forth after I backed through.

  Lana glanced up from her pie filling just as unfriendly as before. “Do you mind if I…?” I jerked my head toward the rectangular table where we all sat last night.

  Distant footsteps thudded up the center-hall stairs as the first swinging door hit the pantry cabinet with a whack. Then a red-faced Marsha barged through the kitchen past Lana and me with fire in her eyes. Outside, she plowed through the patio furniture and disappeared around the corner of the house before I had time to blink.

  Getting a ride out of here this morning wasn’t looking too good. Before any of the Roitmans might spare me a thought, they had their tempers to deal with, and also the police.

  With Lana busily denying my existence I figured I might as well polish off my cold breakfast. Then I grabbed an apple for a snack and headed back downhill to my temporary lodging.

  I’d finished the Lee Child book, and the only paperbacks in the pool house were three thick bodice-rippers and two Agatha Christies that appeared to have spent time in a bathtub. Not a fan of either, I watched a cooking contest on the flat-screen over the credenza, a first for me. The food the contestants prepared looked tempting, but it was the personality conflicts I enjoyed, exaggerated though they were. Anything to spice up the show.

  Someone tapped on the door. Maybe the police?

  Nope. Abby.

  “Hi,” I told the Roitman’s eleven-year-old.

  I’m a little tall for a woman, certainly not basketball-star material, but it would take a major pre-pubescent growth spurt for this kid to ever look me in the eye. I widened the gap in the doorway so she could step inside.

  “No school today?” I guessed. My experience with fifth-graders dated back to when I was one.

  Abby assessed the living area the way dogs and cops do, checking for exits. “I missed the bus. We never bother Daddy when he’s working, and Mother said she couldn’t take me because the police might come back.” She bit her lip and reflected. “She hates to have strangers touch her things.”

  She plopped herself on the blue-ticking sofa. “Did you know that bullets travel one thousand three hundred and sixty-three miles an hour?”

  I knew that the velocity of a bullet was usually described in feet per second and varied with the type of ammo and even the brand, but I humored the kid and said, “Really?”

  “Yep, but gravity would make it hit the ground before it got that far.”

  “Unless it hit something else first.”

  The lift of Abby’s left eyebrow told me she’d made a mental adjustment in my favor.

  To fill the ensuing silence, I said, “So, uh, Abby, if you’re staying home, I guess you can probably wear whatever you want now.” She had on the same sort of school clothes as last night, tipping me off that the no-school decision had been last minute.

  “It doesn’t matter what I wear,” she replied with a philosophical sniff.

  “I hear you.” I sat on the arm of an opposing armchair. “I’m not much into clothes myself.”

  Abby shot me a look. “I like clothes. I meant that nobody around here cares what I do.”

  “Oh, I’m sure that’s not true.”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  Fingers grasping the front edge of the seat cushion, she rhythmically kicked the sofa with her heels. It would become very annoying very fast. Arms folded, she asked, “How did you find out my sister’s having a baby?”

  I admitted that I’d guessed. “How did you find out?”

  Abby shrugged. “I hear things.” I bet she did. “Somebody shot at her last night. She’s really freaked out.”

  I circled around to sit across from the girl. “I notice you aren’t.” Titillated, maybe. Freaked, no.

  Abby waved her head. “My shrink said that, too. Not today, after Uncle Toby.”

  “And why would that be, I wonder.”

  Another two-shoulder shrug. “I read a lot of murder mysteries. After a while they don’t seem real anymore.”

  “Last night was real, Abby. Chantal should have been scared.”

  “Nah. That doesn’t make any sense. Daddy’s the one people hate.”

  There was much I could say about that, but not to an eleven-year-old. “I don’t know, Abby,” I waffled. “Why do you think that?”

  “Because he got mugged already. Somebody knocked him down, and he broke his wrist. He gets death threats, too. A driver and a bodyguard take him to work.”

  And everywhere else, I should imagine.

  More double kicks to the sofa. “Chantal says the people who hate my father might kidnap one of us to get back at him.”

  “You don’t seem very worried about that either.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Because…?”

  “Because Chantal is a married grown-up and doesn’t usually live here.”

  “That doesn’t mean both of you shouldn’t be extra careful.”


  “I told you. Nobody around here cares about me.”

  “That just can’t be true,” I disagreed.

  “You don’t read mysteries, do you?” she accused. “Most of the time the police screw up the drop-off and the kid they’re trying to find gets killed. Or else they’re already dead. Anyhow, it doesn’t matter, because my father ignores me. It’s like he forgot I’m his daughter.”

  Ah, the drama of the pre-teen. It was all coming back. “Your mother worries about you, though. If you were kidnapped…”

  “Oh, she’d fuss alright, then she’d figure out how to make it all about her.”

  Wow. This was one cynical kid, and I can’t tell you how much that depressed me. Compelled to reassure her, I launched into a pep talk that basically said I knew plenty about parents, and I was positive hers would do anything in their power to get her back home safe.

  “Cops would, too,” I added, just to be clear.

  Abby rolled her eyes as if to say, “Oh, grow up.”

  Chapter 25

  As my conversation with Abby wound down, I took off my still-damp sneakers and put them on a radiator under the side window.

  “Feet sweat a gallon of water a week, you know,” the Roitman’s youngest informed me.

  “Is that so?” I wasn’t about to admit that I’d been tromping around in wet grass last night looking for something on the shooter.

  “Yup,” she said. “And twelve inches is a foot because a long time ago that’s how big some king’s foot was.”

  “Wow. Think how much smaller this room would be if you’d been king.”

  The kid opened her mouth, glanced to the side, and sighed. Trying to hide a smile, she popped off the sofa and marched herself over to the door.

  “You should probably put your shoes back on,” she recommended over her shoulder. “My dad wants to see you in his office.”

  “Okay. Where’s his office?”

  “If you find it by yourself, you’ll feel smarter.”

  I suspected she’d been told that many times.

  Personnel would probably be spread thin in a rural area on a Tuesday morning, but the absence of state police scouring the Roitman property with metal detectors still surprised me. So what if the odds for finding the bullet were daunting, I thought it was at least worth a try. Of course if the family chose not to pursue the incident for some inexplicable reason—privacy? Secrecy? Although, which Roitman would have pulled the plug, and why? Something around here just wasn’t normal.

  Such were my thoughts as I arrived back at the kitchen. The fragrance of freshly baked apple pie greeted me.

  Rocking back and forth in the alcove by the back door, Lana remained focused on the knitting in her lap. The yarn was a thin pastel yellow, and she seemed to be working a cable up the middle of a miniature sleeve.

  Early during the four years I lived in Corinne Wilder’s attic apartment, my former cancer counselor and almost step-mother knitted colorful wool hats to warm my bald head. Just before her own relapse she gifted me an intricate fisherman’s sweater, which I still wear whenever I miss her affectionate hugs.

  Consequently, the click of Lana’s needles gave me such a lump in my throat that I almost didn’t ask how to find her boss.

  “Upstair. Turn right,” was the grudging answer.

  The humongous flower arrangement at the bottom of the stairs perfumed the hall. Dust motes danced in the nearly noon sunlight angling through the narrow panes on either side of the front door, and the treads of the hundred-year-old stairs creaked beneath their carpeting as I climbed up to Frank Roitman’s lair.

  The door to the last room at the back of the broad hallway stood open.

  Roitman rose when he saw me.

  As I approached, I took in the thick drapes, the smell of old books and furniture polish. A hooded brass desk lamp illuminated the blotter area of a broad mahogany desk, and a slim computer sat open where a typewriter once rested. The setting couldn’t possibly be where a modern business mogul worked very often. I suspected he had stayed home to deal with the police.

  “Ah, Ms. Beck, we finally meet,” he said, and my face instantly flamed.

  “Please, have a seat.” He motioned me onto a red leather visitor’s chair opposite his own imposing black one.

  “How did you…?”

  “Find out?” he finished for me. “You remember George from the yacht? George is retired FBI. He ran your prints from your last beverage onboard. And Lyle Dickens—you met him last night—he’s just retired police but still quite good. He researched the rest.”

  “So you know…”

  “That you’re related to the Stoddards by marriage. Yes. This would be a good time to explain why you lied about that.”

  Frank had remained standing even as my weakened knees lowered me onto the red chair. Now he placed his palms on the blotter the better to glare down from above.

  In the pursuit of justice I lied once again. “Fantasy,” I said. “Mike and I’ve been flirting ever since we met at my brother’s wedding, and when Karen expressed misgivings about going on your trip, I jumped at the chance to take her place.” I tilted my head and blinked as if the admission embarrassed me. “On the way to the airport, we were kidding around again, and I guess we got a little carried away. Mike came up with my fake name…” I threw up my hands. “I apologize for deceiving you. It seemed harmless enough at the time.”

  “Umph,” Roitman said as if he hadn’t listened. “You left the Landis, Pennsylvania, police force after only five years.” Arms behind his back, he had strolled a pace or two toward the window, but suddenly he lunged around the end of the desk and stopped just short of my knees. “What do you have to say about that?”

  Tell him my fiancé broke our engagement when he learned about my cancer? Tell him the emotional toll was almost greater than the physical one? Tell him that if it hadn’t been for Corinne taking me in…? I don’t think so.

  I turned coy on him instead. “Didn’t your sources tell you that?”

  Frank’s chin lifted. “No, but you will.”

  Judging by the smirk he adopted, Frank had interpreted my silence as proof of a sordid secret—the old It-takes-one-to-know-one theory in action. During my time with him and his family, I’d come to suspect that he wasn’t entirely pure himself. It would be easy enough to find out.

  “Why do you think I left?”

  He returned to his chair as he weighed his words.

  “A woman like you? I think you saw how the other side lives and decided you deserved a couple of luxuries, too.”

  I laughed out loud, but at my own expense. If Frank had had that opinion of me from Day One, the Lobster Thermador I allowed him to order for me must have cemented the notion.

  Right now that was exactly what I needed him to think. And fortunately, it was also what he wanted to think. If need be, I would be open to a bribe.

  “Okay,” I pretended to concede. “You’ve got me. What do you want?”

  He breathed in and out as if with satisfaction. Then he laced his fingers in front of him on the desk.

  “I have enemies, Ms. Beck. Mortal enemies, it seems.”

  “Plural?”

  “So it seems. Are you going to ask questions, or are you going to listen?”

  I waved for him to go ahead.

  “You heard us toasting the company attorney at dinner.”

  I nodded.

  “A grieving father blamed the anti-lock brake system made by one of my companies for failing to stop his daughter’s car in a rainstorm.”

  “Should he have won?”

  My blunt interruption shocked him. “No,” he blustered. “Anti-lock brakes allow you to steer during a skid, but in the heat of the moment a surprising number of people steer themselves into trouble. Also,” he raised his pointer finger, “little known fact—anti-lock brakes are better at saving the people in the car you hit than they are at saving you.”

  My eyebrows rose and fell. “Still worthwhile,” I observed.


  “Yes, thank you. They are.”

  “You said enemies, plural.” Did one of them happen to be your CFO? “Do you expect other lawsuits like that?”

  Frank Roitman’s neck reddened. “One never knows, but I think not.”

  “And yet…?”

  “The reason we returned home early is,” he seemed very loathe to say more. “Let’s just call it another business emergency.”

  His thoughts drifted off until I asked, “What does any of this have to do with me?”

  He enjoyed another breath. “Chantal seems to think she was being shot at last night. She’s so worked up that my wife fears she might lose the baby. Marsha was quite upset that you knew about that first, by the way.”

  “Sorry. What do you want from me?” I asked again.

  “My enemies are cowards and quacks—amateurs. Where I’m from? Believe me. I know.” He took a moment to reflect on his distant, apparently less-privileged past before resuming. “What are the odds last night’s shooter even knew Chantal was there? Eh? He probably still doesn’t know. So what was the point? To rattle me? Cause me to spend more money on protection? No.” He jerked his head back and forth. “No. If somebody really wanted me dead, I would be dead.”

  I agreed with him to a point, but he lost credibility at “cowards and quacks.” Amateurs committed murder all the time. Still, it wasn’t my place to argue with the man.

  “I’d like you to pose as Chantal’s personal bodyguard,” he said, finally getting to his point. “At least until she realizes it isn’t necessary.”

  A fake job? Interesting. “You want me to get your daughter and your wife off your back.”

  “If you must put it that way, yes.”

  “And for this you’ll pay me?”

  He mentioned a weekly amount. It wasn’t very much.

  I suggested a figure that would make a decent dent in the down-payment for an apartment.

  Frank tilted his head much the same as I did when I was being coy. “You have somewhere else to be?”

  “Nowhere nearly as nice as this.”

  He smiled, so I inquired, “Are any of Chantal’s other friends licensed to carry a gun?”