Then Doris’s earlier line grabbed her. “What do you mean about Texie and a ‘disappearing act’?”
“Well, I’m not so suspicious of Texie now,” Doris said. “It’s that Radford guy who really gives me the willies.”
“I’m getting confused,” Cate said. “Texie disappeared, and you were suspicious of her, but now you’re not, and it’s really Radford you’re suspicious of?”
“I tried to call Texie several times, and she was never home. Just disappeared and never returned my calls. But then she did call me earlier today. She said she knew I’d be worried, so she just wanted to let me know she was okay. She sounded really jumpy and hemmed and hawed around about staying with a friend out of town for a while because she wasn’t feeling good. So right away I’m thinking maybe Texie is so jittery because she pushed Amelia down those stairs, and now she’s hiding out from the police.”
“She wouldn’t have called you if she was really hiding out, would she?”
“That’s what I decided too!” Doris sounded relieved to have that thought confirmed. “Anyway, I told her that as far as I knew, there wasn’t any murder. Just a fall. Like you just now told me. But Texie practically jumped through the phone and said, ‘Don’t you believe it!’ ”
“Don’t believe it because … ?”
“I’m getting to that. First off, the guy’s full name is Radford Longstreet. Texie said that when she was dating Radford, her niece was suspicious of him. He’d told Texie he’d been married once, and his wife died of a heart attack years ago. But the niece works for a collection agency, and they do a lot of work chasing down people who skip out on paying bills. So she checked up on him. The niece wouldn’t tell her exactly how she did it, because they’re not supposed to use agency resources for private information, and she’d lose her job if they found out what she’d done. Radford had already dumped Texie for Amelia by then anyway, but the niece told Texie what she’d found out, just in case she had any ideas about wanting him back.”
“And the niece found out … ?”
“Radford has been around here for the past few months, but he used a different name when he was down South. And he’s had not one wife but four. The first marriage did end when the wife had a heart attack. The next wife died under rather peculiar circumstances, some kind of mysterious food poisoning, and he got property she had in Alabama. Wife number three disappeared. He said she’d run off with some rich guy from Mexico. No one seems to know if that’s true, but he divorced her on the basis of desertion. Texie’s niece thinks he murdered her and got away with it. He got the house. Wife number four died a couple years ago—get this—when she fell off the ship when they were on a cruise in the Caribbean. Fell,” Doris emphasized.
Cate’s stomach did a slow churn. She’d heard of guys like this. Going after vulnerable older women with money, marrying them … murdering them. And there’d been those rickety old stairs at Amelia’s house practically inviting a rerun if a shove and fall had worked before.
“I figure he dumped Texie and jumped to Amelia because Amelia had more money, a lot more money, and was a better catch,” Doris said. “Catch spelled v-i-c-t-i-m.”
Cate was about to agree, but she immediately stumbled over a big flaw in this line of thinking. “But even if Radford planned to marry her and add her to his lineup of dead wives, he didn’t have a chance to do it. Radford had no reason to murder her. He doesn’t stand to gain anything from her death.”
“Unless,” Doris pointed out ominously, “she’d already changed her will to give him something. Or everything. Gullible women do that sometimes, you know.”
From what she’d heard so far, Amelia hadn’t struck Cate as “gullible,” but love was blind, etc. Though surely such a provision in the will would wave a red flag for investigators.
“Do you know where Radford lives? Or what he does for a living?”
“Texie said he claimed to live off investments. I think Amelia was the current ‘investment’ he had in mind. I don’t know where he lives.”
“Do you know what name he used before he came here?” Cate asked.
“Texie didn’t say. I don’t know whether she knows or not.”
But that niece who did the detective work at the collection agency knew. “What’s the niece’s name?”
“Jane or Carol or Betty, something ordinary like that. I never met her.”
“How about the name of the collection agency where she works?”
“I don’t know that either.”
Cheryl had called Doris a “nosy busybody,” but she didn’t seem to be a particularly competent one. “Can you call Texie and ask?”
“I tried to call her back, but the cell phone number I have for her isn’t working. I think she got a different cell phone because Radford has that other number, and she’s really scared of him.”
“Why would she be scared of him? He’d broken up with her.”
“That’s the scary part. Amelia was mad at Texie for telling her about Radford’s past. She accused Texie of being jealous and vengeful and making up stuff about Radford because he’d dumped her. But apparently Amelia did say something to Radford, because he went to Texie and warned her if she messed up his relationship with Amelia, she’d be ‘sorry.’ So, when Amelia turned up dead, Texie was afraid she might be next and hotfooted it out of town.”
Probably a good idea, if Radford was as dangerous as he sounded.
“I’m also thinking maybe Amelia had Radford investigated and found something even more incriminating about those wives’ deaths and was going to the police. So he got rid of her.”
“Texie needs to go to the police right away.”
“That’s what I told her. But she’s too scared. She’s afraid if it takes them awhile to investigate him that he’ll nab her before they get him. I think she’s figuring on getting a lot farther away than wherever she is now.”
Which meant Radford might be long gone before Texie told the authorities what she knew.
“Where is Texie now?”
“Well, she was real cagey about that. I think she thought she wasn’t telling me enough that I’d know where she is, but I’m pretty sure I do.” Doris sounded pleased with herself. “She almost said the friend’s name, but she caught herself after only a ‘Lor’ slipped out. But I remember a friend from over on the coast who came to visit Texie once, and her name was Lorilyn. I thought it was such a pretty name, even if the woman herself was boring as cold oatmeal. All she could talk about was herself. How great she was doing in her real estate business and how she’d tried skydiving and was into taking self-defense lessons with some unpronounceable name. Anyway, I wrote the name Lorilyn down so I could suggest it to my cousin’s daughter for her baby. I really like the name, even though I didn’t especially like her. But then Tammy went ahead and named the poor baby—”
“Lorilyn what?” Cate interrupted before Doris could ramble further into baby names. “What’s her last name?”
“Well, I didn’t write that down.”
“And she sold real estate where?”
“Someplace over on the coast. That name that has to do with the funny law.”
Big help there. A Lorilyn Somebody who sold real estate in a coastal town with a name connected with a funny law. Doris really did need lessons in busybodyness. Did the university offer Busybodies 101?
“But you’re not really suspicious of Texie herself now, like you were at first?”
“We-l-l-l,” Doris stretched the word into multiple syllables, then rushed on. “I do remember how Texie gave Amelia a shove one time when Amelia complained about the oysters Texie served at a lunch. Texie’s in pretty good shape, a lot better than the rest of us. She has a weight machine and works out. It was a really hard shove.”
“Which may have had more to do with Radford than oysters?” Cate speculated.
“Yes! Anyway, it occurs to me that the real reason Texie called was to pump me for information, and the rest of it was just a creative pack o
f lies.”
Yeah, there was a lot of that going around.
Cate sat there tapping her fingers on Uncle Joe’s desk. Octavia walked around on the desktop, batting at pens and sniffing at various spots on the glass.
“Any thoughts on all this, oh brilliant one?” Cate inquired.
The cat plopped down on the desktop and looked up at Cate expectantly. Reluctantly, Cate pushed the cat aside to see what was under her. There, in teensy-tiny words befitting what was apparently a teensy-tiny town, was a name. Murphy Bay. A law … Murphy’s Law! If anything could go wrong, it would.
Which, in an irrelevant aside, sometimes seemed the story of Cate’s life.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Cate scoffed. “With the size of your rump, you covered fifty miles of coastline. With all kinds of town names under you. Florence. Reedsport. Your tail was up in Newport.”
Octavia stood and stalked off with cat dignity in top form, as if to say, You did ask me. And now all I’m getting is snarky remarks about my weight.
“Hey, wait, you don’t need to get all uppity,” Cate called after her. But Octavia was apparently through dispensing PI advice for the day.
Cate studied the under-glass map. She could drive over to Murphy Bay and back in a day, but how would she find Texie even if she did that? On second thought, how many real estate offices could there be in a town the size of Murphy Bay, especially offices with an agent named Lorilyn? With her cowgirl flamboyancy, Texie might be fairly noticeable to the population there on her own.
A few minutes on the internet told Cate there was only one real estate office in Murphy Bay. She started to dial the number, then stopped. If she talked to Lorilyn, the woman would tell Texie, who might just pick up and run.
Cate left off that search and went after Radford Longstreet on the internet. Her search turned up nothing. No phone number, no address, no property ownership, nothing. She knew Uncle Joe had special databases that provided more information, but she didn’t know how to access them.
The phone rang once more. Cate didn’t look at the caller ID before she answered, this time with a simple “Hello,” because she was still thinking about Radford.
“Hi, Cate, it’s me again. Mitch.”
“You can’t make it on Sunday?”
“I just got to thinking. Sunday is a long way off. How about I do the gutters Saturday morning, and then we could have lunch? Maybe take a hike along the river in the afternoon?”
“I’d like to, but”—as she suddenly realized—“I have some plans for Saturday.”
“Oh. Well, sure. I should have figured that.”
But he was right. Sunday did seem a long way off. Saturday was a whole day closer, and with sudden inspiration she said, “I’m going over to the coast for the day. Maybe you’d like to come along?”
No hesitation or questions from Mitch. “What time?”
Mitch offered to take his SUV, and they settled on 8:15.
By that time, when Cate looked at the clock, she decided it was late enough to visit Willow’s tree. She went to her bedroom to pick up a heavier jacket, but yet another phone call, this time on her cell, changed her plans. Rebecca. Her car had been running fine when she parked it in the hospital parking lot that morning, but now it wouldn’t start. Could Cate come get her?
And by the time she and Rebecca got a mechanic who was willing to come after hours, and did, it was too late to go find Willow. Okay, tomorrow morning, then, and get there before the construction crew arrived. Cate set her alarm for 5:30.
10
Octavia opened one eye when Cate struggled out of bed the next morning, but she snuggled up to Rowdy rather than following. Cate took a quick shower and grabbed a bagel and coffee for breakfast. Rebecca was still asleep.
Remnants of storm clouds lingered in the before-dawn sky, but they were rapidly moving off to the east. Rainwater still gushed along street curbs, but that feeling of spring was back in the air. She expected all to be quiet at the construction scene at that hour of morning, but a police car angled into the sawhorse barrier, roof lights flashing. A spotlight from another police car targeted a tree down the street. Willow’s tree! Even at this hour, curious people milled around on the sidewalk, and cars slowed on the street, drivers gawking. Cate couldn’t park at the barrier, so she pulled around the corner to a side street and ran back.
From the lineup of sawhorses, she could see several police officers and workmen in hard hats clustered around Willow’s tree. They were looking up at the spotlight beam in the tree.
“What’s going on?” she asked a bystander frantically. “Is someone hurt?”
“They’ve been talking on a bullhorn to someone up in the tree,” an older man in corduroy pants said. “One of those tree-hugger types. She don’t seem to be comin’ down.”
“Good for her,” a woman beyond him said. “If I were younger, I’d be right up there with her. It’s a shame what they’re doing here.”
“Yeah, well, she’s comin’ down, you can bet on that. If they have to cut that tree out from under her.” The man sounded gleeful, as if he’d happily supply the chain saw. “Dern-fool tree huggers.”
Cate dodged around the end of the barrier, but she hadn’t gone more than twenty feet when a hard-hatted worker stopped her with a raised hand. “Sorry. This area is off-limits to the public.”
“But that’s a friend of mine up in the tree!”
“Could you talk her into coming down?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Wait here.”
Cate could hear the bullhorn herself now, an officer announcing that the occupant of the tree was in violation of a judge’s orders and must come down immediately. He didn’t say what would happen if she didn’t comply. They surely wouldn’t cut the tree down with Willow in it … would they?
The officers and several men in yellow hard hats huddled in a conference under the tree. The sky was growing lighter, and someone turned the spotlight off. Maybe they were going to start cutting! Cate dodged around piles of machinery already rumbling in readiness for the day’s work, and almost fell over a chunk of asphalt. Members of the conference under the tree turned to look when she ran up.
“Please, I’d like to talk to her—”
“She’s in violation of judge’s orders,” an officer repeated. “The construction crew needs to get to work here. And she’s throwing shoes at us!” He grabbed a sneaker and held it up.
“Just give me a minute with her, okay? Maybe she’s sick or hurt or something.”
“There’s nothing wrong with her throwing arm.”
Without waiting for an okay, Cate ran to the tree trunk. Looking up, she couldn’t see Willow. What she got was a falling faceful of raindrops collected on budding leaves and branches. She wiped her face with one hand. “Willow, are you up there? Don’t throw any more shoes! Or anything else.”
No answer.
“You have to come down. You can’t save this tree, but there’ll be others you can save.”
No answer.
Cate turned to look at the officer. “Maybe it would help if I went up there. Not to stay,” she added hastily. “I’m not a tree sitter.”
Another conference. A man in a hard hat, apparently a supervisor, waved her upward. “Give it a try.”
Cate spread her arms and embraced the tree trunk with a tentative grasp. She hadn’t climbed a tree since she was in fourth grade, and she hadn’t before noticed how big around this tree was. How had Willow managed to get up there? She tried for a foothold on the rough bark. Okay, that worked. Another foothold. She scooted her arms higher.
She was almost waist high now. So far so good!
Then both feet slipped. She dangled by little more than her fingertips, feet flailing. She struggled to wrap her legs around the tree, irrelevantly aware that she must look like a jeans-clad monkey clinging there. Probably an inordinately big-bottomed monkey. Then she lost a handhold.
And then she was on the ground. In the mi
ddle of a puddle she hadn’t even noticed until she splatted into it.
“Better give her some help, Mike.”
An officer strode up and helped her to her feet. She wiped muddy water off her face and tried to ignore the fact that she was wet from the waist down. He bent a leg, offering her a place to put her foot. She stood on his leg but still couldn’t get enough of a hold on the lowest branch to hoist herself up.
“If I could get up on your shoulders?” Cate suggested.
“Whatever,” he muttered.
She climbed awkwardly to his shoulders, balancing herself with a grip on his hair. He stood up, hands wrapped around her ankles. Would this all be written up in a police report? She finally grasped a bottom limb, and the officer shoved her upward with enough impetus to vault over it.
Barely stopping herself from a tumble right over the limb and another splat in the puddle, she looked upward and spotted a dark blob that she presumed was Willow. She took a deep breath and headed upward.
It was slow progress, finding foot-and handholds. More collected raindrops showered Cate’s head and dribbled down her neck. But finally her head was just below Willow’s feet. She could see now that Willow had tied herself to the tree with a piece of clothesline rope.
“You okay?” Cate asked.
“Do I look okay?” Willow snapped. Her hair hung like strands of unraveled rope, her nose was red, and her jacket soaked. She was also definitely shoe-less.
“How long have you been up here?”
“I climbed up about midnight last night.”
“When it was still raining?”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“I know it’s disappointing, but you should come down now. One way or another, they’re going to take this tree down. Since they got a judge to issue an order about getting you down from here, I’d say they mean business.”
“You think I’m up here now because I want to be?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Last night it was dark, and I just kept climbing. But this morning I looked around, and I’m … way up here.” Willow scrunched closer to the tree trunk and looked back over her shoulder. “Way, way up here.”
Dying to Read (The Cate Kinkaid Files Book #1): A Novel Page 11
