Death Takes a Ride (The Cate Kinkaid Files Book #3): A Novel

by Lorena McCourtney

  If the name fits, wear it. “Did you tell Lily?”

  “No way. She’d have gone into orbit. But then, I had second thoughts. I mean, I’ve done some, you know, not too legal stuff, but I’ve never killed anyone. And I didn’t want to.”

  “So you, what? Got Mace Jackson to do it with a deal that you’d split the money?”

  “No! I was just telling Mace about it. He always thought I was kind of a dumb punk, and here I was, being asked to be a hit man.”

  “You wanted to look like a big shot to him.”

  “I guess.” Andy shifted uncomfortably on the floor, but he didn’t lose sight of the gun in her hands. “But then I said I wasn’t going to do it, and he started bugging me for details. Finally he offered me two hundred bucks for the information.” Andy looked down. “So I took it.”

  “You sold Blakely’s life for two hundred dollars.”

  Andy apparently chose to ignore that ugly fact. “But Halliday hadn’t let me in on the full plan. After his hired gun kills his partner, he kills the killer. Wraps it all up in a neat little package. Killer is dead and no one knows anything and Halliday’s a hero for offing the bad guy.”

  The facts of what had happened that night lined up with Andy’s scenario.

  “Except Halliday was all shook up after he shot the guy and it wasn’t me,” Andy said. “Because now he knows there’s someone running around who knows the whole story. The truth. And that someone is me.”

  Cate reluctantly rearranged the facts she had. She felt squeamish about accusing a dead man of lying, when he couldn’t defend himself, but if she viewed those facts from a different perspective …

  Blakely gambled. Heavily. It was a good guess he’d asked Halliday for the loan to pay off either a gambling debt or a loan shark debt he’d taken out to pay off a gambling debt. Earlier, there was an audit of the Salem records. Had Halliday had it done because he suspected his partner of embezzling company funds to finance his gambling? And found embezzling was the reason the Salem H&B was so unprofitable?

  Halliday could have made that into a criminal case and probably sent Blakely to jail. Which wouldn’t bring back the embezzled money and would be very bad publicity for H&B.

  So Halliday had figured out a different solution. Get rid of Blakely. His death would take care of everything neatly. No more financial pitfalls with a partner who was gambling and embezzling. With the bonus of getting back at the man he thought had helped his ex-wife escape him, and the huge bonus of a half-million-dollar insurance payoff for the company.

  Plus the neat twist that no one would ever know because he’d dispose of the killer. In self-defense. No loose ends.

  A win-win situation.

  Halliday had even arranged for a witness to his self-defense tactic. His first choice had been loyal Radine, but Shirley had made an acceptable last-minute substitute.

  No wonder Halliday had yanked that ski mask off the killer’s face! He was expecting Andy, but he could tell the dead man’s big, muscular build was all wrong for the wiry little guy he’d hired to do this. So then he had to find and get rid of that guy who knew the original plan. But Andy and Lily had moved, and Halliday couldn’t find them.

  Enter helpful Assistant Private Investigator Cate Kinkaid.

  “So, see, I just kind of got caught up in … all this. I’m no killer,” Andy added righteously.

  “Just a blackmailer.”

  “Not a killer,” he repeated stubbornly.

  “I’d also guess, even if you weren’t in on the actual killing that night, there may be some legal technicalities about selling a robbery-murder scheme to a buddy.”

  “A good lawyer can figure out stuff like that.”

  “You also didn’t think things through very well,” Cate pointed out. “Thinking Halliday would meet you here and just meekly hand over a bundle of money. He’d already hired one man killed and killed another himself.”

  “A stupid guy with a bullet in his butt, that’s me,” Andy agreed morosely.

  I couldn’t have said it better myself.

  This left a few loose ends. That fire at the hospital. Coincidence, or Halliday’s attempt to get to Blakely, since he wasn’t dead yet? Halliday’s story about someone trying to run him down in the parking lot. Another lie, or creative inspiration for trying to do the same thing to Andy?

  A riff of guitar music made them both jump.

  Andy started to say something, and Cate yelled, “Be quiet!”

  She pinpointed the location this time. It was coming from under the next shelf over. She let go of the shelf she was leaning against and moved the gun in a slow arc to keep it aimed at Andy as she unsteadily inched her way across the aisle.

  She knelt beside the bottom shelf and ran her hand in an arc under it. Except something moved. She yelped and yanked her hand back. Mouse? Lizard? Snake? Spider?

  But she needed that phone.

  She felt in her pocket, found a tissue, and wrapped it around her hand. It didn’t feel like much protection. There was probably a reason armored vests weren’t made out of tissue paper. The phone was still tinkling.

  She lay down on the floor and swept her hand farther under the shelf. The phone skittered out. She floundered after it and finally snatched it up. Still working! She took a moment to look at the caller identification.

  “Mitch!”

  “Cate? You sound funny.”

  She squirmed around until she was sitting instead of sprawled flat on the floor.

  “Is something wrong? Are you okay? Where are you?” The questions shot out like word bullets as Mitch’s sixth sense apparently kicked into gear. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m, uh, waiting for the police.”

  “Are you okay?”

  Cate took a moment to inspect her extremities. Her adrenaline was running so hot she realized she might not have felt it even if she’d been shot. But she didn’t see any blood or holes anywhere.

  “I-I think so.”

  “I’m almost afraid to ask, but why are you waiting for the police?”

  “There’s a man with a horn in his head lying on the floor a few feet away. I think he’s dead. There’s another guy with a gunshot wound in his … bottom. He’s alive.”

  “Cate, I’m still in Portland so I can’t get there fast enough to help, but I’ll call—”

  “You don’t need to rush in and rescue me! The police are on their way. The man with the horn in his head isn’t going to do anything, and I’m holding a gun on the other one.”

  “The gun Uncle Joe gave you?”

  “No, a different one.” She decided adding the information that she didn’t know how to shoot it and it had no bullets anyway was information he didn’t need. More importantly, it was information that Andy, who appeared to be listening intently, didn’t need.

  “About this horn in the dead man’s head—”

  “It’s not a real horn. A hood ornament kind of horn. Made of heavy metal. I’m at H&B.”

  “I see.” Small hesitation before he said, “If you don’t mind my saying so, this sounds like a really … bizarre situation, even for you.”

  Kinkaid Investigations. We specialize in bizarre situations.

  She pulled the phone away from her ear as she heard something. A wail of sirens, then red and blue lights flickering beyond the warehouse door.

  “I have to go now—”

  “Wait!”

  “The police are here. I’ll talk to you later.”

  She looked back at Andy just in time to see that he’d struggled to his feet. Coming after her or making a last-minute break to escape?

  There weren’t a lot of uses for a bulletless gun. Cate used the only one she could think of. She threw it at him.

  33

  The gun slammed into Andy’s head and clattered to the concrete floor. Andy slumped to the floor too. The police burst through the door, guns drawn.

  Since she was the only one of the three people present who was in talking condition, it
seemed up to Cate to say something. She waved her cell phone to get their attention, then realized that was a mistake when two guns did a synchronized swim to target her. She dropped the phone in her lap and held up her hands to show they were empty.

  “I called 911.”

  “Don’t move!”

  She hadn’t had in mind standing to do a song-and-dance routine anyway. In fact, she felt loose all over, as if her muscles had lost connection with her bones. And brain. She stayed on the floor, not even mindful of cold seeping from concrete to her skin.

  One officer checked the body with the silver horn in the forehead. The other checked Andy.

  “This one’s dead,” the officer beside Halliday said. “How about that one?”

  Andy groaned and groggily lifted his head.

  “He’s alive. But he isn’t going to feel real comfortable sitting down for a while. Maybe he hit his head when he fell.”

  “I threw that gun at him.” Cate pointed to the weapon that had bounced off Andy’s head. “It isn’t loaded. But there’s another gun under the body.”

  Both officers peered at the gun under Halliday but didn’t move it. “Can you identify these people?” one asked.

  Cate did that. She also produced a business card, one of the old Belmont Investigations cards, to identify herself. The card earned her a quick glance of interest. The Belmont Investigations name was familiar to much of the local law enforcement. Regretfully she realized Kinkaid Investigations wouldn’t have that same familiarity and respect. At least not for a while. Maybe not for a long while.

  “We have questions for you. Don’t leave.”

  Another action she hadn’t been planning anyway.

  EMTs rushed in. Apparently Andy’s wound was bad enough that after a brief examination, they whisked him out to the ambulance.

  Photographs. Bagging of the gun she’d thrown. More officers arriving. Double-take looks at the man with a horn in his head.

  Questions. Cate told an officer everything she knew, which took awhile. She didn’t accuse Andy of anything, but neither did she try to downplay his part in all this. Or her own, remembering that she, too, had crashed into the box of hood ornaments that had fallen and killed Halliday. She didn’t have a phone number for Lily, but she gave them the address where they could contact her about Andy.

  Eventually, some two hours later, they let her go with instructions to come into the station for a formal statement the following day.

  Thank you, Lord. She, too, could have been leaving here in an ambulance. Or medical examiner’s wagon.

  She was halfway home before she remembered that some new disaster undoubtedly awaited her at the house.

  She opened the garage door with the remote, parked inside, and tentatively opened the back door. Silence. For the first time, the ominous thought occurred to her that there could be more than house destruction. There could be bodily injury. Or worse.

  She tiptoed in. The silence seemed to call for it.

  The first thing she saw was that the clean clothes that had been folded in a basket on the dryer now decorated the laundry room. Tank tops. Faded panties. A camisole. A couple of old bras. Strange decorations, but a titillating display for a Victoria’s Secret ad they were not. She really needed an upgrade in the lingerie department.

  She peered in the bathroom as she went by. Towels littered the floor. Torn shower curtain draped over the stool. Tufts of hair in the sink and tub. Both cat and dog hair.

  The art of teepee-ing had apparently not gone out of style in the animal world. Her apprehension increased as she followed a trail of ragged toilet tissue down the hallway and into the living room. There, sofa pillows straggled across the floor, one with rips in the cover that sprouted foam-like jungle growths. Torn magazines from the coffee table scattered on the carpet. Then she spotted the combatants.

  They were on the window seat. Clancy sprawled in the center of the seat, paws hanging over the edge. Octavia curled up between his legs.

  Dead?

  Clancy lifted his head and flapped his skinny tail. Octavia gave Cate a complacent stare.

  Cate put a hand on each of them. Clancy turned his head to lick her hand. Octavia purred.

  No one dead. No one injured.

  “What happened here?”

  Cate could see into the kitchen now. The paper towel holder lay on the floor, and at least a mile of paper towels blanketed the kitchen.

  Innocent silence from the occupants of the window seat.

  “Okay, I’m not going to ask any questions,” Cate said. As if it would do any good if she did ask. What had happened here and why it resolved the way it did would undoubtedly forever remain a mystery. “Anyone want a snack?”

  Everyone wanted a snack. Jerky strips for Clancy. Tuna Treats for Octavia. Cate had an Oreo.

  Five minutes later, the doorbell rang. She opened the door, and Mitch wrapped his arms around her. Seeing him was so unexpected, and so was the feeling of relief that flooded her.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” she whispered. For the first time since she’d stepped into H&B, she felt safe.

  Finally he asked, “Are you okay?”

  It was a question he seemed to have to ask often in her line of work. He was probably thinking the same thing.

  “I thought you had to stay for a meeting tomorrow morning.”

  “Lance can handle it. I wanted to be here with you.” He didn’t let go of her, but he took a half step back to look her over. He didn’t ask for details, just repeated the question. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.” Although a vision of a man with a horn in his forehead would be with her for a long time to come.

  He eyed the tangled toilet tissue, paper towels, and scattered pillows. “What happened here?”

  “Octavia and Clancy made up. They seem to be good friends now.”

  He wrapped his arms tighter around her. “Maybe we should do more than that.”

  Almost four weeks now, since the storm both outside and inside the walls of H&B that night. Cate was in her office working on a report about a surveillance she’d just completed for an insurance company. Mitch would be here in a few minutes. He said he’d bring something to put on the barbecue for dinner. Cate had hot dog buns from the freezer thawing on the counter.

  Mitch had two more weeks helping with the transition as the new company took over Computer Dudes. He still hadn’t indicated what would happen when that time was up. Lance and Robyn had already loaded up a U-Haul van and left for Dallas.

  Cate had told Mitch all about the shootout at H&B, who had killed whom and why. “But I didn’t exactly solve everything with brilliant detective work,” she’d added gloomily.

  “But your sense of responsibility put you where you were needed, or the outcome would have been much different.”

  Yeah, one more dead body. Could Halliday have worked the self-defense thing again with a dead Andy?

  “I figure that sense of responsibility is as important as brilliance,” he said.

  It was a generous assessment, and she appreciated it. But he’d never expanded on that statement he’d made the night it all happened, about being more than the friends Octavia and Clancy had become.

  Andy, unable to come up with bail money, was in jail with various charges against him. It turned out that he’d had a packet of meth in his pocket when they got him to the hospital. Lily had moved out to live in the travel trailer parked on her brother’s place, but she went to see Andy occasionally. She had nothing good to say about Andy, but she’d tried to take some of his favorite garlic-heavy spaghetti to him in jail. So far unsuccessfully, but she was persistent.

  Senate hopeful Mark Gillerman’s engagement to campaign worker Candice Blakely wasn’t national news, but it had made the inside pages of newspapers around the state.

  Cate had never heard, with both partners dead, what would become of the $500,000 insurance money. Halliday’s lawyer was handling the estate. He’d hired Jerry to run H&B temporarily. After t
he legal complications with both partners being dead were straightened out, Jerry would purchase the company. Shirley had finally admitted to Cate—and to herself, Cate guessed—that she and Jerry were really and truly dating. She was going to church with him too.

  Cate had been taking weekly shooting lessons. She wasn’t any deadeye, but she wasn’t missing the entire target anymore. She couldn’t imagine herself ever actually shooting anyone. She never wanted to shoot anyone. It still bothered her just aiming at the target of a human-shaped silhouette. But if shooting meant saving someone’s life sometime …

  She’d traded Uncle Joe’s big Glock .40 in on a smaller Smith & Wesson Airweight .38 that fit her hand better. It would also fit in her purse. She was scheduled for another class that would enable her to get a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

  Octavia and Clancy’s truce was apparently permanent. Unlike humans, who had to ratify every agreement with “whereas” and “wherefore” phrases composed by a lawyer, written on crinkly legal paper and properly notarized, Clancy and Octavia had it all settled with tail wags and purrs. They shared the window seat or playroom whenever Clancy visited now.

  Mitch had a box for Clancy built to fit on the Purple Rocket. Riding in his own purple box, with goggles on, Clancy was one very cool dog.

  The doorbell rang and Cate yelled, “C’mon in,” as she left her office and headed for the front door. Mitch and Clancy trooped in, Mitch’s arms filled with grocery bags. Clancy sported a new purple-plaid kerchief tied on his collar. Mitch headed for the door to the patio.

  Cate followed. “What’s all this?” she asked when he dumped everything on the outdoor patio table. She peered in the sacks.

  Rib-eye steaks. French bread. Garlic-butter spread. Macaroni salad. Packaged plate of carrot sticks, celery, broccoli bites, and olives. Sparkling apple juice. Two chocolate-drizzled cannoli.