Murder Among Neighbors (The Kate Austen Mystery Series)

by Jonnie Jacobs

  “You all set for starting work Monday?” Daria asked as we pulled up in front of my house.

  “I’m looking forward to it, that is, unless you’ve changed your mind.”

  She laughed. “No way.” And then she reached over and squeezed my hand. “I’m looking forward to it, too.”

  I was halfway to the front steps when Mrs. Stevenson called to me, threading her way through the juniper bushes along the curb.

  “Kate, I saw that car again.”

  I laughed. “Colorful, isn’t it?”

  “No, not that one. The one I told you about the other day.”

  I stared at her blankly.

  “And you were right, it was a Cherokee. Dark blue.”

  Ah, that car! I’d forgotten all about it. “Did you get the license number?”

  A frown crossed her face and she looked annoyed with herself. “I didn’t even think about that, I was too busy watching.”

  “Watching what?”

  “Mr. Livingston.” She waited until she was sure she had my attention. “I was dusting the living-room blinds when I happened to look out at the street There it was, parked right where it always is. I was shaking, I mean after our conversation and all. To see it there again, well, it just gave me the shivers.”

  I nodded.

  “But I checked the name just like you said. I was thinking how clever you were to get from Apache to Cherokee, when I saw Mr. Livingston come out to the end of his driveway to check for the mail. Then he walked straight toward the car. For a moment there, I was in a panic. I thought the car might suddenly gun its engines and run him down. Or maybe an arm would reach through a crack in the window and shoot him.” She punctuated her last sentence with a nervous laugh. “I guess I’ve been watching too much television, but with Mrs. Livingston’s murder and all, my mind’s been working like that lately.”

  Her imagination may have gotten the best of her, but she was clearly enjoying it She looked over at the Livingstons’ house, or what you could see of it from our front porch, and shook her head knowingly.

  “Anyway Mr. Livingston walked over to the driver’s side and leaned against the door like he was talking to someone through the open window. Then, a couple of minutes later, he came around to the passenger side and climbed in. About ten minutes after that, he got out and walked back to the house.”

  “When was all this?”

  “This morning, about ten o’clock.”

  There were lots of explanations, I told myself, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that the bad ones made more sense than the good ones. At best, it was odd.

  “If you see the car again, try to get the license number. And call me right away. Okay?” She nodded, a flicker of disappointment crossing her face. Then I touched her hand. “You did a wonderful job Mrs. Stevenson. You’re very observant.”

  She beamed.

  <><><>

  Heather was lying on the floor, reading to Anna and Kimberly, when I let myself in. Fleetingly, I wondered how much her show of attention was an attempt to atone for past neglect.

  “Mr. Livingston called to say he’d be a little late. Do you want me to stay until he comes?”

  “That’s all right,” I told her, flipping through my billfold and calculating how much I owed her. “I’ll watch Kimberly until he gets back.”

  “Thanks.” She took the money and stuffed it into a pocket. “Was the Wine Festival exciting?”

  “I don’t know whether exciting is the right word, but I had a nice time.”

  “That’s good. I know Mrs. Livingston and Mrs. Wilkens and the other ladies spent a lot of time getting it all organized. Chris says his dad thinks the whole thing is silly, but of course he wouldn’t dare breathe a word of that to Mrs. Wilkens.” Here she giggled self-consciously, covering her mouth with one hand. “Sorry. I forgot she was a friend of yours.”

  Then, grabbing her purse and sweater, she waved to the girls and was gone.

  After changing into a pair of gray sweats, I picked up around the house, which was not as cluttered as I expected. Heather hadn’t actually put anything away, but she’d done a conscientious job of stacking toys, books and dishes. Although I felt too full to eat any dinner myself, I fed the girls and sat at the table with them, sipping a cup of coffee while they ate.

  “Aren’t you going to eat any dinner?” Anna asked.

  “Not tonight. I ate too much chocolate this afternoon.”

  “Did you bring me any?”

  “No, honey, these chocolates weren’t for taking home.” Anna always likes it when I bring her the mints from my occasional lunches or dinners out.

  “I got to taste the fudge,” Kimberly declared solemnly. “Mrs. Wilkens brought some over the other day and told Mommy to let me have some.” Her eyes, which had been wide with the memory of fudge, filled suddenly with tears and her lower lip began to quiver, but instead of crying she took a big bite of a hot dog and chewed solemnly while staring hard at the plate in front of her.

  <><><>

  Robert picked up Kimberly about an hour later, hastily thanking me as though I hadn’t been the one to elbow my way into his baby sitting arrangements. “Claudia left this morning so I’m still a bit frazzled,” he apologized. Then he swooped up Kimberly and carried her home before I had a chance to repeat my offer of assistance.

  When at last I’d done the dishes and tucked Anna into bed, I lay down on the couch to read, but found myself crying instead. Real, wet, salty tears. Maybe it was the murder, finally getting to me. Or the look on Kimberly’s face when she spoke of her mother. Or maybe it was the baby and Andy and the terrible indecision I felt. Or maybe it was Lieutenant Stone. Something about him made me ache in a way I hadn’t for a long, long time. Whatever the cause, I felt shaky and terribly alone.

  Chapter 8

  I knew I should tell Stone about the blue Cherokee, but since I had just yesterday sworn off even thinking about him, it was unsettling to be confronted with an honest-to- goodness reason to contact him. After breakfast, I shuffled around the kitchen, debating what to do. The whole business was probably nothing more than coincidence. Besides, Mrs. Stevenson wasn’t the most reliable witness. There was a good chance her story was as much a product of an overactive imagination as some sinister plot. In any case, it could wait. Nothing was going to happen on a Sunday.

  But then, as I was straightening the family room, I found one of Kimberly’s hair ribbons on the couch where she and Anna had been playing the day before, and a quiet sorrow squeezed my heart so that I could barely breathe. A woman—a mother like myself—was dead. I couldn’t not do my part to see that her killer was found.

  Adopting a deliberately businesslike manner, I called the station and asked for Lieutenant Stone.

  “He’s not in at the moment, may I take a message?” The voice at the other end was female and soft, not at all the sort of voice I’d expected to hear manning calls for a tough, no-nonsense police force. Was she a fellow cop, I wondered, or merely a receptionist? And then I got angry with myself for wondering. What difference did it make anyway?

  I left my name and number, and to prove to myself it was strictly business, explained that the matter was nothing urgent; Lieutenant Stone could return the call at his convenience. Then I hung up the phone carefully and sat for a long time, staring at the phone.

  Anna was in my bedroom absorbing her full dose of Sunday morning cartoons, the house was clean—as clean as it gets—and the refrigerator was stocked with a week’s worth of groceries, all wholesome and nutritious, and the day stretched ahead of me with nothing that demanded my attention. I couldn’t understand why I felt so restless.

  The painting I’d begun the other day in Pepper’s garden still lay in the back room where I’d left it. What the heck, I didn’t get time to myself very often. I found my brushes and paints, cleared a spot on the worktable and settled in.

  Watercolor is a difficult medium for me, and the garden scene was going to be particularly challenging, but th
e effect, if I was successful, would be exactly what I wanted. First I polished up my sketch, and then I began dabbing paint on a practice pad, mixing colors and hues. It was proving especially difficult to find the right shading of light and dark for the pink blossoms, so I worked intensely, thankful for the lack of interruptions.

  I’d always found it difficult to paint when Andy was around. He would come up behind me, silently peer over my shoulder and then, knowing my hands were otherwise engaged, wrap his arms around my middle or slide a hand into my jeans. “I’m just trying to have a little fun,” he’d explain when I protested. “And I’m trying to work,” I’d tell him. But he never understood.

  Even when he was out of the house, I had trouble painting with any real passion, knowing he would come home at the end of the day and glance over my efforts in much the same way he sifted through the mail. “Nice,” he would say with a little pat on my bottom. I never knew whether he was talking about my work or my body. So I’d taken to simply making little sketches I could work in during odd hours of the day and then tuck away out of sight.

  I hadn’t minded really. My family—Andy and Anna— that was what was important.

  Now the issues were different. I had told myself I wouldn’t start brooding about the future until fall. After all, there’s no sense coming up with a plan until you know where you want to go, or at least where you’re starting from. But you can’t close your mind to things like that, and quite unconsciously I found myself running through possible scenarios.

  If Andy came back I would have money to live on, even if we got a divorce. I was pretty sure he would be fair, unlike some husbands who went for the throat even when the divorce had been their idea in the first place.

  But it wasn’t at all clear he would return, even for a divorce. Something had happened to him, a malaise of the soul, which was beyond my comprehension. It was possible he might just decide to keep wandering, living for the moment. He was the sort who would be able to do that quite successfully. He’d find an innkeeper who would give him a room in exchange for light labor, a ship’s captain who would take him on, just for the pleasure of his company. Heck, he might even find a princess who would pack him along for a winter in the Alps. He was that kind of guy.

  There was a third option, of course: Andy might come sweeping home like a man returning from an extended business trip, head for the office and pick up right where he left off. But even then, I couldn’t imagine that things would ever be the same.

  Caught up in my painting and aimless rumination, I didn’t realize how much time had passed until Anna showed up at my feet. “I’m hungry.”

  “Can you wait a minute until I finish this corner of the sky?”

  She peered at the picture and then lay down on floor, head propped in her hands. “Is that supposed to be a lady sitting on the bench?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You can’t even tell where the head is.”

  “You’re not supposed to. It’s just the sense of the woman I want.”

  “I can draw a person with a face,” Anna announced smugly. “I even know how to make curly hair.”

  Just then the doorbell rang and she raced to it, but was beat out by Max, who has the advantage of four legs and a permanent spot by the front window.

  “It’s for you, Mommy. A man.”

  I wiped my hands on a towel and followed her to the door.

  Lieutenant Stone smiled. “I got your message.”

  I’d thought he looked good before, but he looked even better now. Faded Levi’s, a well worn tee shirt stretched at the neck and scruffy brown loafers. His arms were strong and tanned, and the hairs on them glistened golden in the sun.

  My breath caught somewhere deep in my chest. “Lieutenant Stone.”

  “Can we stop with this ‘Lieutenant’ stuff,” he asked, stepping through the door. “Especially since I’m off duty today.”

  “Mikey, then?”

  He glared. “Michael would do quite nicely.”

  “Okay, Michael.” The jeans were snug. So was the shirt, through the shoulders. And the body, well, the body was even better than I’d imagined. My hands still clutched the dish towel, and I was twisting it, weaving it through my fingers. “You didn’t have to come all the way over, you could have called.”

  He looked me straight in the eyes, with just the hint of a smile, and nodded. “You’re right, I could have.” Then he started toward the kitchen and I followed, still coiling the towel around my fingers.

  “Would you like some coffee?” I asked. “Or some lunch? I was just going to make something for Anna.”

  At the sound of her name, Anna, who seemed glued to my side, squeezed my leg tighter.

  “Anna, this is Lieutenant Stone. He’s a policeman.”

  She eyed him suspiciously, and I realized that at that particular moment, he looked more like the kind of person I’d taught her to run from than to. “It’s his day off,” I explained.

  “Do you have a gun?” she asked, her voice almost a whisper.

  Stone surprised me then by lifting his shirt, exposing a small gun tucked into the waist of his jeans. I barely saw the gun, though; I was too taken by the flat, hard abdomen and a brief vision of other endowments.

  Anna, however, was properly mesmerized by the gun. Only a real princess could detect a pea under a thousand feather down mattresses; and only a real policeman would carry a gun.

  “I thought it was your day off,” I muttered. “Do you always take that thing with you?” Guns made me uncomfortable, even in the hands, or waists, of the law.

  “Not always, but I’m here investigating a murder, don’t forget.”

  “You think I’d leave a message for you to call at your convenience if the killer was at my door?”

  Without bothering to answer, Stone took a seat at the table and stretched his long legs out in front of him. Then he reached over and began scratching the top of Max’s head. I wondered if the metal of the gun was warm where it touched his skin.

  “How about lunch?” I asked again. “Anna’s having dinosaur-shaped pasta from a can, cold, but I could probably whip up a bologna sandwich for you, or peanut butter and jelly.”

  Stone leaned back in the chair and looked at me as if I’d suggested sautéed worms. “Coffee’s fine, thanks.”

  “You sure?”

  “Unless you have any more of those muffins.”

  “Sorry. A bag of cheese puffs is the closest I can come.”

  There was that look again. “Just coffee.”

  I put the kettle on the stove and opened Anna’s can of dinosaurs. Sometimes I let her eat right out of the can, but today I poured the contents into a bowl.

  “Why don’t you eat outside,” I suggested, “with Marty and Clary.” Marty and Clary were imaginary friends who bickered and fought with each other, but adored Anna. I wouldn’t let them sit with us for meals, but when Anna ate alone they frequently joined her.

  While I was busy getting Anna settled at the table on the patio, Stone wandered into the den off the kitchen.

  “You paint this?” he asked when I handed him a cup of hot coffee.

  “It’s not finished yet.”

  He whistled softly. “It’s really good.”

  “You sound surprised.”

  “I guess I am.”

  I wasn’t sure if I’d been complimented or insulted.

  “Do you ever sell your stuff?”

  “I’ve just started again, really. I used to paint before Anna was born, but I’ve not done much lately.”

  “It would be nice to be able to earn a living doing something you really loved, wouldn’t it?”

  “You don’t?” I’d always assumed detectives were fanatics of sorts. That the need to right the order of things was in their blood.

  Stone shrugged. “I was a classics major—that makes it kind of hard to earn a living doing what you love.”

  I led the way to the living room where we sat, facing each other across the squa
re, glass coffee table. No socks, I noticed. And the few hairs on the tops of his feet were as golden as the ones on his arms. I could almost see those bare feet running along the wet sand at the ocean’s edge, or padding softly downstairs for morning coffee after a hard, late night.

  “Now, what was it you wanted to see me about?” he asked.

  “I didn’t necessarily want to see you. I told you, you could have called.”

  He grinned. “What did you want to tell me then?”

  Taking a sip of coffee, and then a deep breath, I recounted what Mrs. Stevenson had told me— about the car which sometimes parked behind the oleander and then about seeing Robert talking to the driver.

  “What do you think it means?” Now that I’d reported what I knew, it sounded silly. Nancy Drew, all grown up.

  “Your guess is as good as mine. We could probably concoct a dozen stories based on sinister motives and another dozen with completely innocent explanations.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, it could have been a friend or a salesman or a delivery person from the local pharmacy. Mrs. Stevenson didn’t actually see anyone sitting in the car those other times. Or maybe it’s the local gossip columnist, trying to get the dirt on the Livingstons.”

  “And what about the not so innocuous explanations?”

  Here Stone frowned. “Well, the most scandalous explanation, of course, would be that Robert hired someone to kill his wife. The killer staked out the house— that’s when Mrs. Stevenson saw the car those other times—killed Pepper, and then came back for his payment.”

  “But wouldn’t it be pretty stupid for Robert to meet that person in front of his house, right in the middle of the day like that?”

  “You’re right, it would.”

  “So forget that.”

  “Hey, you asked for some ‘supposes.’ If I had answers I’d be even happier about it than you.”

  He had been leaning back in his chair, and now he slouched down even further, studying his cup. His face was drawn, his eyes flat.