Within Range (HQR Intrigue)

by Janice Kay Johnson - His Best Friend's Baby

  Panic pushed her to her feet. She grabbed the chair back for support. Voice shaking, she said, “I don’t appreciate you scaring me this way. Maybe Andrea has been stealing from renters in every house she has keys to. She could have a partner that...that she betrayed somehow. Or a lover. What if they met in other people’s homes during the day? Do you know anything about this woman?” She put everything she had into this scathing speech. “Or did you decide right away that I must be some kind of...I don’t know, ex-CIA agent on the run, or a femme fatale with cast-off lovers hunting for me?”

  Standing stiffly, she defied the detective’s continued contemplation.

  Seemingly unmoved by her defiance, he said, “I really hadn’t gotten that far in my thinking. And of course my first assumption is that Ms. Sloan was the intended victim, not you. My hope was to get you thinking, in case there’s something you’re not telling me.”

  She pretended that wasn’t a question. “This has been an upsetting day. I’d like you to go now.”

  His eyebrows flickered, but he bent his head in acknowledgment and rose to his feet as casually as if he’d made the decision himself. As he strolled to the door, he said, “I assumed you were already asking yourself these same questions, Ms. Boyd. You’re smart enough to have been scared. It wasn’t my intention to make it worse.”

  Helen didn’t hold back a snort.

  Almost to the door, Renner turned, expression inquiring.

  “Of course you meant to scare me! Congratulations, you did a great job.” At least that wasn’t a lie.

  “You’re wrong,” he said quietly. “Lock the door behind me.” He wasn’t all the way out into the hall when he added in a much harder voice, “I’ll expect you not to leave the area. Do you understand?”

  “Yes!” She felt herself vibrating with tension. No chance he wouldn’t be able to see that.

  “As long as you’re not her killer, I’m on your side, you know.” He nodded and closed the door behind him.

  Helen leaped forward and, with shaking hands, turned the dead bolt and hooked on the probably useless chain. Then she stood still and strained to hear any sound from the hall, with no idea whether he still stood there or was walking away.

  In listening to that silence, she had a horrifying thought. If Richard had killed Andrea, where was he now? Had he been somewhere he could watch when she arrived home and the police responded? If he had, he’d know where she was—and he’d have seen Jacob. And that was assuming the private investigator who’d trailed her in Southern California hadn’t seen Jacob.

  A dry sob escaped her. Who was she kidding? To know she had a child, Richard had only had to step inside her house. The high chair at the table alone would tell him.

  Most of her desperation to escape him had been to ensure he never knew she was pregnant. There was no possibility that he was capable of being any kind of parent. He was the kind of man who lashed out without warning, both verbally and physically. He could smile, wish their dinner guests good-night, close the door and knock her to the floor because she’d done or said something earlier that had displeased him. Even with his housekeeper and a nanny as a buffer, an active boy would try his nonexistent patience. He’d search for her qualities in Jacob and determine to eradicate them, along with Jacob’s every memory of her.

  This kind of terror was like being shaken by a vicious earthquake. Even though she’d been sure he had found them once before, she’d let herself get complacent since she moved to Lookout. She liked her job, and Jacob was a happy boy. Their little house had felt safe.

  They would never be safe. She couldn’t forget again. He wouldn’t give up; she knew that. Monsters didn’t. The best she could do was stay a step ahead. Which meant leaving, as soon as she could figure out how.

  Oh, dear God. What if Richard, too, was staying at the Lookout Inn.

  With a muffled cry, she darted across the room to test the lock on the slider that led out onto a balcony.

  * * *

  SETH LAY AWAKE for long stretches that night. Every time he dozed off, he’d find himself starting awake, adrenaline firing through his body like an electrical shock.

  Gritting his teeth and punching his pillow into a new shape, he had to convince himself repeatedly that there wasn’t anything else he could have done before morning.

  Except, maybe, sleep in the hall outside Helen Boyd’s room at the inn to make sure she didn’t disappear—and that a killer didn’t get to her and that cute kid of hers.

  He groaned and rested his forearm over his eyes. Damn it, the woman was right; his initial focus should be on the actual victim’s life, her character, her husband, friends and acquaintances. And it was—he’d talked to her husband for the first time this evening, but he’d go back as many times as he had to. Tomorrow, he’d talk to her boss and coworkers, get the names of friends. Find out if there was even a whisper suggesting she had a lover or might be up to something illicit.

  But he’d always paid attention to his gut, and while Helen was trying hard to play the outraged innocent, she wasn’t a good liar. And she was lying; he had no doubt about that. All he had to do was look at the turmoil in her eyes that should be transparent instead of clouded with a darkness he didn’t think was entirely caused by her discovery today of a dead body in her house.

  He couldn’t see her as a killer, but he had to be damn sure he was thinking like a cop, not a man drawn to a woman. He couldn’t afford to let himself have even a momentary thought about her as an attractive woman.

  Damn. Seth sat up in bed and swung his feet to the floor. He remained there for a minute, head hanging. If he fell asleep with that picture in his head, he risked having an erotic dream involving a woman he would almost certainly interview again in a murder investigation. A woman who’d looked like she hated him by the time she insisted he leave her hotel room.

  Not happening.

  Even though he wasn’t hungry, he scrambled eggs and ate breakfast to fill the last dark hour before dawn. Then he showered and drove to Hood River to attend the autopsy.

  The medical examiner didn’t come up with any surprises. Andrea Sloan was in good health generally. She had been killed by a blow to the head. The ME thought the weapon used was a short length of pipe, considerably fatter than the tire iron in the trunk of Ms. Boyd’s car. The victim had also taken a blow to her side that had broken ribs, probably postmortem. A kick, the ME suggested.

  Seth would walk through the house again today now that he had a warrant, but felt sure he wouldn’t find the weapon. The garage was his best possibility, but he’d looked in the window and guessed Ms. Boyd, at least, went in there only to retrieve the lawn mower and return it when she was finished cutting the grass.

  He was at the real estate office when it opened, where he started with the victim’s coworkers, all horrified by the news of Andrea’s death. He was assured that she was likable, charming, energetic, with the best sales record in the office. He also learned that she didn’t work on the property management side of the business.

  The owner of the office, a woman in her fifties, explained that Andrea had sold a couple of properties for a man named Dean Ziegler, as well as a house to him, and as a favor had agreed to manage his rentals. At Seth’s request, Tina Daley dug in the records, reporting that Ziegler owned an apartment house with ten units and three rental homes.

  The only key to any of those units missing was the one Seth had collected as evidence.

  Andrea’s assistant, a young woman in her twenties named Brooke Perry, insisted she’d have known if Andrea had received a phone call about a problem at one of the rental homes.

  “The only reason I can imagine she’d have been there was if the renter had asked to see her.” Her forehead creased. “Or if Mr. Ziegler wanted to meet her, or insisted she inspect the house, I suppose. But I really think she’d have said if he’d called.” She hesitated. “I was surprised
when she left at five thirty. That was early for her.”

  “Did she say anything about where she was going?”

  Brooke bit her lip. “She said something like, ‘I don’t have any appointments, and anything else can wait for tomorrow.’”

  A tomorrow that would never come for her.

  Seth asked for Ziegler’s number and address. The man was evidently retired as a vice president with a local bank. Seth called, found he was home and drove to a spectacular Tuscan-style mansion on a bluff above the river. Turning, he saw Mount Hood seemingly hovering almost near enough to touch, too. Hell of a view all around.

  Ziegler turned out to be a slim, silver-haired man who was well-preserved for the seventy-three years old the DMV records said he was.

  “I’m shocked,” he repeated several times. “Why would anyone want to hurt Andrea? She’s good at her job because people like her.”

  Once they were seated in an enormous living room with gleaming wood floors and a wall of windows looking out at the river, he spread his hands and said, “Tell me how I can help you.”

  Seth couldn’t decide how genuine that was, but explained that, at this point, he was trying to get to know the victim, in a manner of speaking. “Hobbies, friends, any problems in her life, of course.”

  “Problems? I really don’t think she had any. Well, maybe two.” Ziegler smiled wryly. “Both teenagers.”

  “The stepkids.”

  “Defiant fifteen-year-old boy, sulky thirteen-year-old girl.” He shrugged. “My sense is that she actually had an okay relationship with them. She’d laugh telling me about them. They’re just at difficult ages.”

  Fifteen-year-old boys had been known to kill before...but to follow a stepmother to a house where she wasn’t supposed to be, then take her down with a single, powerful blow? Seth didn’t believe it.

  “I’ve met her husband a few times,” Ziegler continued. “Nice guy. Did you know he’s in banking, too? Manages a branch here in town.”

  Seth did know that. It had crossed his mind that a real estate agent and a banker could be up to something questionable together, but again...why was Andrea at the rental? In fact, trespassing in it?

  “Andrea did have a certain reserve,” Ziegler commented. “I sometimes thought she had to work at being as outgoing as she appeared to her clients.” He frowned. “I do believe her warmth was genuine, and she and Russ had a connection those of us who’ve been divorced three times can only envy.”

  Seth left a card and asked the guy to call if he thought of anything that might be helpful in uncovering the reason she’d been targeted.

  If she was, he thought again, as he drove down the winding, paved lane from the house.

  Next on Seth’s agenda was to stop at the craft brewery where Andrea Sloan’s husband, Russell, had supposedly met two friends right after the bank closed at five o’clock. According to him, he’d left his car in the bank parking lot and walked to the brewery. Andrea had let him know not to expect her before six thirty or seven.

  When Seth asked if she had said why she’d be late, he’d answered dully, “She didn’t work conventional hours. Weekends, evenings...” He shrugged. “When somebody looking to buy is free, she made herself available. We didn’t eat dinner most nights until seven thirty or eight.”

  There wasn’t any chance Ziegler had intended to sell Helen’s rental, was there? Seth asked himself belatedly. That nobody had told her yet?

  Sitting outside the brewery, situated in a handsome old brick building in the oldest part of town, Seth called the man and asked.

  “No, as long as I can keep a tenant in it, a little house like that makes more money for me than I’d get from selling it.”

  “She hadn’t recommended you sell?”

  “She never said a word about it, and I didn’t, either.”

  Seth went into the brewery and asked to speak to the manager. A man with a billiard-ball bare and shiny head came out. Prematurely balding, Seth guessed, since the guy didn’t appear much older than he was.

  “Sure, I know Russ Sloan,” he said readily. “He’s one of a group of other professionals and downtown merchants who gather here often. He was in yesterday afternoon, in fact.”

  At Seth’s request, he reran security footage that showed Sloanwalking in with a second man at 5:11, both laughing, and leaving just before 6:30. Unless he’d hired a killer, that let him off the hook. Especially since finding a hit man wasn’t as easy as many people thought.

  Seth thanked him and went back out to his car.

  It would take a big slice of his day, but he wanted to talk to Ms. Boyd’s boss in person. He could grab some lunch on the way.

  Chapter Three

  Two days had passed since Andrea was murdered, and Helen sat on the edge of the bed watching Jacob fitting pieces into one of his simple puzzles. He’d been really good, considering his routine had been turned on end. She was the one on the verge of a breakdown. All her mind did was spin with thoughts and fears interspersed with pictures, starting with that single high-heeled shoe lying on her kitchen floor and ending up with Detective Renner’s narrowed eyes as he asked questions that told her he thought she might have killed Andrea.

  Mixed in were fleeting memories of the moment she realized she was pregnant. The surge of love when her newborn son was placed in her arms.

  To top it all off, both mornings when she’d gotten dressed, she was reminded that Detective Renner had handled all these clothes, including her underwear. Did he notice the practicality of everything she wore? Helen hated that thought.

  Having the phone ring was a welcome novelty.

  But who else? It was Detective Renner, letting her know she could return to her rental house. “I’ve taken the tape down,” he said tersely.

  She wanted to ask about the blood but didn’t. She could clean it up. She could. Living there with the constant awareness a woman had been killed in the kitchen, a woman who had likely died in her place...that was something else altogether.

  The weight of guilt clashed with the ever-burning determination to keep Jacob away from Richard. If he’d found her there instead of Andrea...he’d have Jacob right now. Her family might not even know for ages, and unless he was convicted of murder, they’d lose if they took her ex-husband to court to contest custody. Her whole reason for being was to keep her son safe, give him a chance to grow up knowing he was loved.

  “Thank you for letting me know,” she said politely.

  “I’d suggest having the locks changed and consider installing a security system.”

  No matter what she did, she wouldn’t feel safe in that house, but the reality was that she couldn’t afford to keep staying at a hotel. Conserving her money was especially important now.

  “Your landlord might agree to bear the cost,” the detective continued. “Especially since it was his employee killed in your place.”

  That gave her a tiny lift of hope. He was right. But no matter what, she’d pay to have the locks changed. Now, today, even if that cost extra.

  A security system would be reassuring if she intended to stay any length of time...but she didn’t. Of course, she couldn’t tell the detective she planned to disappear as soon as she could.

  “Yes, all right,” she said, realizing Renner was probably waiting for a response. “Do you know any more?”

  “I haven’t made an arrest, if that’s what you’re asking.” He spoke curtly, betraying frustration. “Which means I’d like to sit down with you again, Ms. Boyd.”

  Her throat constricted. Could she hold him off long enough to make preparations for starting over again?

  Did she have a choice?

  “I suppose you’ll find me there. If I pack up and check out right away, I won’t have to pay for another night here.”

  “Then I’ll meet you at the house.”

  Just to make h
er day better.

  Setting down the phone, she bent to kiss Jacob. “We’re going home, kiddo. You finish putting your puzzle together while I pack.”

  He lifted his head. “Hot dog?”

  “You’re hungry?”

  He nodded vigorously. Hot dogs were his current favorite food, although mac and cheese was right up there, too. While staying here, they’d eaten makeshift breakfasts in the room, gone out to lunch each day and used room service for dinner. Darkness felt too dangerous; they were safer staying behind locked doors.

  Fortunately, she was pretty sure there were hot dogs in the freezer at home. “We’ll have lunch. Maybe a hot dog.”

  It didn’t take her ten minutes to throw everything into the suitcase. Jacob was fascinated by the lobby attendant who insisted on taking both the suitcase and potty seat out to her car.

  In the past year, he’d gone through a stage of being painfully shy with everyone for no discernible reason, just recently becoming more curious and ready to grin at complete strangers. Maybe earlier she’d infected him with her tension, and as she felt safer his confidence returned. Kids undoubtedly reacted to their parents’ subtlest cues.

  She locked the car even before she started it, as she always did. As she drove out of the lot, she craned her neck trying to see if anyone was paying attention to them. Disconcerted, she saw that Jacob, too, was turning to look around.

  With this being a working day, there wasn’t much activity. From what she’d been told, tourist season didn’t really boom for another week or two, once schools let out. You wouldn’t know that looking at the windsurfing business next door, though. She knew vaguely that they rented small boats as well as windsurfing equipment. Like much of the rest of June, today was sunny but still chilly, and she could see multicolored sails swelling with the wind out on the choppy water. If someone over there was keeping an eye out for her, she’d never be able to pick him out.

  She was quite sure nobody followed her home—but then, Richard or anyone he hired wouldn’t have to follow her to know where she was going. Leaving their stuff in the car, she carried Jacob inside, setting him down on the sofa with his blue bunny.