A Mother's Vow

by Ken Casper

  Not this guy. He was old enough to be her older brother, but too young to be her father. His clothes were stylish but conservative, and he carried an expensive leather attache case. He might have passed for a yuppie. His hazel-green eyes were sharp and intelligent and so riveting they made her uncomfortable. He was good-looking, she realized. Brown hair that probably bleached out if he spent much time in the sun. Chiseled features, especially his mouth. A strong face, yet she sensed gentleness as well.

  “You must be Chief Tanner’s daughter,” he said, in a mellow baritone.

  “Sister Kelsey.” She offered her hand which he took after a slight hesitation. Being perceived as untouchable was something she was only beginning to get used to—and like.

  “I didn’t realize you were going to be here,” he said.

  “Mother likes to surprise people. Shall we join her in the living room?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  * * *

  JEFF HADN’T COUNTED ON a nun being part of the equation. Kelsey Tanner also didn’t resemble any nun he could ever remember seeing. The white-trimmed gray veil failed to hide the fact that she was beautiful. Spotting a photograph of Jordan Tanner on the telephone table in the foyer, Jeff realized his daughter had taken the best features from both her parents. She had her mother’s oval face, her father’s milk-chocolate complexion, big, wide-spaced amber eyes and a remarkably sensuous mouth. Her less-than-chic attire didn’t disguise a slender, yet voluptuous, figure. She also moved with the grace and dignity of someone brought up in luxury.

  Catherine was pouring coffee when they entered the living room. Derek rose and came forward to shake his hand.

  “Chief,” Jeff said, before she had a chance to greet him, “may I speak to you for a minute, in private?”

  She looked up, and with a worried glance at her other guests, put down the coffee carafe. “Of course.”

  She led him into a long, low-ceilinged dining room. A table that could accommodate twenty dominated the space.

  With one hand clutching the black-lacquered sideboard, inlaid with mother-of-pearl dragons and griffins, she turned and faced him. “Is something wrong? Have you found—”

  “I’m wondering what your daughter is doing here? This isn’t a prayer meeting.”

  “She’s the one who alerted me about the missing uranium. I thought—”

  “Good for her,” he said, “but you seem to be missing my point, Chief.”

  “Call me Catherine.”

  She was doing it again, distracting him . . . or trying to. Was it calculated?

  “I asked her here today so she can tell you firsthand what she knows. Ask her whatever you want. She won’t break just because she’s a nun. Maybe if Jordan had lived, she—”

  What was she about to say? That if her husband were alive Kelsey wouldn’t be wearing a veil?

  “She made the connection on her own between the missing yellowcake and Jordan’s death,” Catherine said. “She’s smart. Maybe she won’t have anything to contribute, but I don’t want to take the chance that I’ve missed something. I’m too involved, Jeff. I need your objectivity.”

  She had him cornered. Either he gave in to this request or he marched. And he didn’t want to do that.

  “I probably should have told you beforehand that she would be here. This is important to her, Jeff. She and Jordan were very close, in some ways closer than she and I were.”

  He knew it wasn’t unusual for girls to be attached to their dads. Then, too, this father and daughter also shared a racial identity. Did that make Catherine sometimes feel like an outsider?

  “There’s more going on here, Catherine. What is it?” Her first name had come out without his thinking about it.

  She bit her lips and squeezed out a watery smile. “I’m hoping that by getting Kelsey and Derek together they might start talking to each other, resolve whatever differences they have. Or I can at least get a clue about what went on between them.”

  He grinned. “The chief of police playing matchmaker?”

  Shiny silver sparks sizzled in her blue eyes. He shouldn’t enjoy watching her fight the impulse to lash out at him. Just respect her ability to do so. But she was bringing out a playful—she would probably call it a perverse—side he rarely displayed on the job.

  “Okay—” he touched her elbow to guide her back “—let’s go see what we can find out.”

  She eyed him warily as they returned to the living room where Kelsey and Derek were sitting on opposite ends of the two couches sipping coffee. The atmosphere between them was charged, as if they’d had a disagreement and were furious with each other.

  Jeff glanced at Catherine, who had resumed pouring coffee. Her movements were not quite as fluid as they might have been.

  She held out a steaming cup to him, and in her eyes he saw it, a plea for tolerance. He sat on the same couch as Derek.

  “Where should we begin?” Catherine asked.

  Jeff looked at the young woman across from him. “Since you were there when Summers approached your dad, Sister Kelsey, I’d like to hear from you exactly what happened and what was said.”

  She nodded and repeated what she’d already told her mother.

  “Did he appear nervous, excited, angry?” Jeff asked.

  “Not angry. More like proud he knew a secret.” She paused. “He hesitated, though, when Dad asked him if he had any proof, sort of glanced around to see if anyone was listening.”

  “Were they?”

  She shrugged. “Not that I noticed. He did lower his voice when he said yes, though.”

  “Did your father say specifically how he was going to check his claim, either to him or to you?”

  She brushed back the right side of her veil. “He didn’t talk about his work much, unless it was to get opinions on a subject for his editorials.”

  “He must have placed some credence in Summers’s assertion,” Jeff said, “because Derek was able to recover the editorial your father wrote the afternoon before he died.”

  Both women turned to the rookie. Catherine’s eyes held admiration. Her daughter’s were less certain.

  Jeff picked up the attache he’d left leaning against the side of the couch, removed printouts and gave one each to Catherine and Kelsey.

  “Can you verily that he wrote this?” he asked. “It seems authentic to me, but you’re more familiar with his writing than I am.”

  They took a couple of minutes to read it. Derek’s attention was centered on Kelsey, a fact she seemed all too aware of because she squirmed and regarded him with a frown before returning to the paper in her hand.

  “I don’t remember ever seeing this,” said Kelsey.

  “It was never published. In fact, it had been deleted from his office terminal.”

  “Then how—”

  “Derek told me he was a computer genius. I should have believed him.”

  Kelsey blinked but refused to look at the young man sitting no more than ten feet away.

  “It’s Dad’s,” she finally announced. “His voice, his style and syntax.”

  “Why do you doubt he wrote it?” Catherine asked. “What would be the point of planting this on his computer and then deleting it?”

  “None,” Jeff agreed, “but I had to make sure. This is the only link we have between Summers and your husband. It constitutes evidence of a possible motive for what happened to both of them, assuming Summers’s fall was staged.”

  “You think it was?”

  Jeff nodded. “I did some research on Mr. Summers. He was retired on disability eight years ago, following an on-the-job accident in a freight warehouse. Nothing suspicious in the incident itself, as far as I can tell. He wasn’t watching where he was going and slammed his right knee into a parked forklift. Damaged his knee so badly it left him with a stiff leg. He had to take stairs one at a time.”

  “You’re saying he wouldn’t have been able to climb a ladder to his roof,” Kelsey said.

  “I imagine he could have, but it w
ould have been slow and tedious. The question is why would he? He was having his house reroofed by a reputable company. The work was less than half finished, too early to perform an inspection. Besides, his son was overseeing the work. He would have been the one to check things out.”

  “Isn’t that the point?” Kelsey asked. “He was foolish enough to climb on a roof when he shouldn’t have and fell as a result.”

  “It’s a reasonable premise, one nobody seemed to question at the time.”

  Kelsey placed her cup on the coffee table and rose to her feet. “I have to go or I’ll be late for vespers. Nice meeting you, Mr. Rowan. I’ll call you next week, Mom.”

  Derek sprang to his feet, his eyes following her as she crossed the room.

  “I’ll be right back.” Catherine trailed after her daughter. A muted exchange ensued in the entry way. She returned a moment later, her mouth set, and motioned for Derek to be seated.

  “What do you want me to do next?” he asked Jeff.

  “Get me the complete file on the Summers’s case. I don’t imagine there will be much, but it might contain something that’ll point us in a direction.”

  “I’ll have it for you tomorrow.”

  The young policeman left a minute later, after thanking his hostess and again shaking Jeff’s hand.

  “A real gentleman. Is he always that polite?” Jeff asked.

  Catherine chuckled and started gathering cups and saucers onto the tray. No one had touched the biscotti. “He’s come a long way from the ghetto.”

  Jeff remembered the ease with which the guy had worn gangsta duds the day before. Would the real Derek Pager please stand up.

  “So what happened? Between them, I mean?”

  ‘I wish I knew.” Catherine led him through the dining room and held the swinging door for him to enter the kitchen.

  He deposited the tray on the island. “You must have asked.”

  “Of course I did.” Irritation heated her words. She circled the work center. “Several times. But the only answers I get are platitudes.”

  “She wants to serve God.”

  “Something like that.” Catherine placed the dirty china and silverware in the dishwasher. “She was taught by the School Sisters of Our Lady in elementary school, and now she’s joined them.”

  “Has she always wanted to be a teacher?”

  “Not that I was ever aware of. She majored in biochemistry at Rice, graduated cum laude. That’s not a subject you teach second-graders.”

  “You’re not happy with her decision.”

  Catherine set the dishwasher on rinse-and-hold and hit the button. Over the machine’s low rumble, she said, “I could accept it if I understood it, but I don’t. She was an affiliate of the School Sisters in college. We thought of it as another club on campus, one dedicated to helping them out Then, the day after she graduated, she announced she was becoming a postulate, the first step of professing, of making a lifelong commitment. Now she’s advanced to novice.”

  Beneath the confusion, Jeff sensed another emotion. He leaned against the counter and folded his arms. “You’re angry with her.”

  Catherine replaced the uneaten biscotti in the tin and put it in the overhead cabinet beside him. He found himself staring at the swell of her breast under the upraised arm.

  “I know I shouldn’t be, but I am,” she said. “Not so much with the decision—though I’m not happy about it—but with her shutting me out.”

  “Maybe she thinks you should accept her choice.”

  “Well, I can’t, and that’s what really makes me angry. Angry and disappointed. I’m her mother.”

  She slammed the cabinet door and turned to him. “My husband is dead, and now my only child has chosen a life that renounces marriage and family.” She picked up the tray, wiped its surface with a damp cloth and upended it in a lower cabinet. “I’ll never have grandchildren.”

  He offered what he hoped was a reassuring nod, though he would much rather put his arms around her. Strange how this strong woman drew out his protective instincts.

  “You’re too young to be thinking of grandkids,” he said.

  She snorted. “I’m forty-five, Jeff. I have women friends younger than I am who already have a slew of them.”

  “Do you think you’ll ever remarry?”

  For a moment he thought she was going to tell him it was none of his business.

  “I loved Jordan,” she said. “I can’t imagine living with any other man, much less feeling again what I felt with him.”

  He watched her quick, efficient movements as she wiped down the counter. There was a banked fury in them. Jordan Tanner must have been one hell of a guy, he thought enviously. “Would he want you to spend the next forty years alone?”

  Her tidying up jerked to a halt. She tightened her grip on the washcloth as she hissed out a breath. “It’s not about what he would want anymore, is it?”

  “No,” he said quietly, “it’s about what you’re willing to do to take control of your life.”

  She stopped again, raised her head and studied him, her eyes narrowed with the hostility that comes from being hurt. “Preaching doesn’t become you,” she said, and resumed scrubbing a spot that was already clean.

  He held out his hands, palms down, fingers splayed. “Sorry. I didn’t realize I was.”

  She examined the pristine room, apparently scouting for something to keep her occupied. He had the feeling she did that a lot.

  “Who profited from your husband’s death?”

  She whirled around frowning, though she must have asked herself that same question. Cops who’d worked homicide always did. Inhaling deeply, she leaned against the counter across the room from him.

  “Financially? I did.” She took in her surroundings with the sweep of her hand. “As you can see, we’re not poor. None of this would have been possible on a cop’s salary, not even a police chief’s. Tanner money bought this house and the other luxuries we enjoyed.” Past tense, he noted. “There was, however, a two-million-dollar life insurance policy payable into his estate. One million for me, one million for Kelsey.”

  “So she’s wealthy in her own right.”

  “At twenty-one my daughter began receiving a small private income from an annuity we set up for her when she was a baby.”

  “And the million bucks?”

  “As the executor of Jordan’s estate, I’ve placed it in a special trust which she can’t draw from until she either takes her final vows or leaves the convent.”

  Jeff raised his eyebrows. Grieving hadn’t dulled this mother’s instinct to protect the family assets. “I don’t imagine she was very pleased with that.”

  “She’ll get over it.”

  Catherine’s cold determination caught him by surprise. She was angry, yes. Was she also vindictive? Or was this manipulation her way of protecting her child from herself?

  “When does she take these final vows?”

  “Not for at least five years.” She crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “Surely you’re not suggesting the sisters killed Jordan for Kelsey’s inheritance?”

  He lifted a shoulder, eager to release the tension building between them. “It doesn’t seem very likely, does it? But I don’t have to remind you that filthy lucre is a leading motive for murder.”

  “It wasn’t in this case.”

  “So what was?”

  Her response was a frustrated shake of her head.

  “Aside from money,” he continued, “who benefited from Jordan’s death?”

  “Theoretically his brother Tyrone, but that doesn’t wash, either. He’s taken over the Sentinel only because his father isn’t able to handle the pressure of the job anymore. And Ty hasn’t exactly been a sterling success.”

  “Why?”

  “He calls himself an investor. In fact, he’s a dilettante who bounces from one project to another. Over the years he’s made a profit on a few of them, but more often he loses money. His father has been bailing him out for
years.”

  “An enabler,” Jeff commented. “What kind of deals?”

  “A couple of high-end restaurants that folded within a year.”

  “It’s a tough business.”

  “Especially when you have your eye on the hostess’s T&A instead of the kitchen’s P&L.”

  So her brother-in-law liked to play around. Jeff tucked the information away for future reference.

  “There were some real estate ventures that were also more speculation than research,” she said. “I could go on.”

  He got the picture. “Based on the venomous tone of editorials he’s published against you in the last few months, he doesn’t like you much. Why is that?”

  Brushing back a stray wisp of golden hair, she snorted. “Maybe because I see him for what he is. Handsome, charming, lazy, selfish, deceitful and unrepentant. He has a lovely wife he cheats on and three adorable children he ignores.”

  The intensity of her reply took Jeff momentarily aback. “Why then would his father put him in charge of the newspaper?”

  “I imagine Marcus is hoping he’ll stick with this job.”

  “How old is Tyrone?”

  “Forty-two.”

  “And his father is still waiting for him to settle down?”

  “Hope springs eternal. If you’re thinking Ty had his brother bumped off so he could take over the paper, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

  There were other reasons siblings killed each other. “How did the two of them get along?”

  She cocked her head to one side. “Ty looked up to Jordan but he was also jealous of his success, his prestige in the community. For his part, Jordan did what he could to protect his kid brother. Don’t get me wrong. My husband wasn’t like his father. He didn’t hesitate to tell Ty what he thought about his schemes. But if he could legally and morally help him, he did.”

  “All things considered, it sounds like a healthy relationship, at least on Jordan’s part.”

  “My husband was a loving and caring man,” she said with quiet persistence. “You and I have been cops long enough to know there’s no such thing as an ordinary family. The Tanners are as unique as any. Jordan was the levelheaded one that kept it from being completely dysfunctional.” The note of sadness and loneliness Jeff had come to recognize crept into her voice again.