A Story to Kill (16 page)

Even Shauna was playing matchmaker. Cat slowed her pace as she examined her feelings for Seth. She'd loved him as a kid, but did that emotion carry over as an adult? Or had their paths taken them farther away from each other, not closer? He had always been the complete opposite of Michael. Where her ex had loved talking books and walking through antique stores with her, Seth was more at home at a sporting event or even a hike up Sugar Hill. Feeling the tightness in her calves from the hike yesterday, Cat made a promise to herself to be more active, especially while the weather held.

Just as soon as this retreat was over and she had the house and her time to herself again.

She walked down the tree-lined street, enjoying the morning air, and cleared her mind of all things Seth and retreat business. When she was in California, she'd taken a few months of yoga classes. Even though she never loved the poses, she enjoyed the focus on breathing and clearing your mind during the hour-long session. At the beginning of the class, the teacher would ask each student to dedicate their practice to something or someone. The first week, she focused on not hating Michael. Then as she began to heal from the process, she focused on her own development.

Today she reverted back to that practice and dedicated the walk to being clearheaded and focused. She just hoped the magic would kick in before she reached the police station.

It took two blocks of consciously thinking about nothing before she was able to focus enough on the beautiful surroundings and not on the thoughts racing through her head. As she turned down White Street, away from the college and toward town, she felt her spirits lift. Most of the tenured professors lived in this area of modest homes. But the one on the corner was huge. It was owned by the college and served as the home of the dean of the English department. And a red convertible MGB sat in front of the house in a curved driveway, parked next to a black BMW sedan. The MGB was the same car she'd seen up on Sugar Hill yesterday. As she considered what would happen if she walked up to the front door, knocked, and bluntly asked if he'd been having an affair with Sara, the door opened.

Cat hid behind a large oak growing between the road and the sidewalk. The trunk was just wide enough to hide her from the dean's sight. For a second, she felt silly. But then she heard a woman's laugh. She peeked around the tree and saw Linda Cook being helped into the car by Dean Vargas. She kept watching as he eased out onto White Street. As the car turned away from Cat, Linda caught her eye and winked some sort of silent communication.

Linda hadn't seemed upset that Cat had seen her; in fact, she had acknowledged Cat's presence.

Even her yoga training hadn't kept her thoughts from going back to when Tom, Linda, Dean Vargas, and the missing Gloria were all students at this campus. She had to find out what happened that summer between junior and senior year. That was the clue everyone was missing. And she had a bad feeling that Linda had realized the same thing and that was why the recently widowed Linda was visiting with the dean.

Hoping the woman wouldn't do anything stupid, Cat opened the door to the police station to find the reception area filled with students and officers. As she made her way to the reception desk, the smell of day-old beer and a sweet smell of marijuana filled the crowded room.

The woman at the desk was the same one who she'd met before. “Katie, you're busy today. You have a two-for-one sale on arrests?”

The woman fish-eyed the room. “Frat party hazing gone bad. We've got one freshmen in the hospital and the other puking his guts out in the drunk tank.”

Cat followed her gaze. “Are all of these kids under arrest?”

“Nope, here for questioning. Your uncle hopes to put the fear of God or at least the local cops in a few of them and to find out who bought the beer and the pot for the party. That guy's in big trouble.” Katie shook her head and returned her gaze to Cat. “But you are probably here to see your uncle. I'm afraid he's in the interrogation room with a suspect.”

“Actually, I came by to see if I could walk Sara back to the house. I'd like to talk to her about what happened yesterday.”

“Sara Laine?”

Cat nodded. “Yeah, there was a brush-up between two of our guests, and since Sara was a little drunk and a lot in the wrong, Uncle Pete brought her in to sober up.”

Katie leaned forward and checked who was standing in earshot. Then she whispered, “You didn't hear this from me, but she's being questioned about Tom Cook's murder.”

Chapter 16

Cat left a message for Uncle Pete to call her. According to Katie, some of Tom's belongings had been found in Sara's dorm room, and as she left Cat had to wonder if the missing laptop had been recovered.

She paused at the corner of White and Warm Springs, staring at the dean's house for a few minutes. No way could Sara have killed Tom. Unless . . . Tom was the older man the girl had been dating and not Dean Vargas. Cat had assumed when Sara had compared her marriage to her own situation that Sara had been seeing a professor. But maybe it was just the difference in her and Michael's ages. She
had
hit on Uncle Pete as he dragged her out of the house.

Cat had been surprised when Tom Cook had signed up for her writer's retreat. Maybe he'd been seeing Sara for a while and they'd used the retreat as an excuse to get together. Not liking the idea, but admitting the possibility, Cat left her spot leaning against the large oak in front of the Vargas home before someone called the station and reported her as a stalker.

“I might as well go talk to the librarian, just in case Uncle Pete didn't find the laptop,” she muttered to herself, looking at her watch. It was only eleven and she had time to get one chore off her list and still be back at the keyboard long before she needed to start getting ready for the group dinner. Of course, the guests were dropping out one by one. With that morbid thought, she headed for campus.

When she checked at the front desk, she was told that Miss Applebome was up at the laptop storage area. Cat took the stairs and thought about heading straight to the college history stacks to get rid of the book, but the girl at the desk had warned her that the head librarian only had ten more minutes on her shift. “And she never works late on Saturday,” the girl whispered.

As Cat approached the desk, the librarian looked up from a large ledger where she'd been making notes. “Can I help you, Miss Latimer?”

Cat sat in the chair next to the desk and took out a notebook and a pen from her backpack. She tucked the tote under the chair and opened her pad. “I wanted to ask you a few questions about Monday. Do you remember Tom Cook coming into the study area?”

The woman's gray eyebrows raised and she peered over a pair of silver glasses at Cat without answering. Leaning back, she slipped the glasses off her face, letting them dangle from a silver chain around her neck. “I'm old, Miss Latimer, not senile. Of course I remember Mr. Cook arriving. He's one of our most famous alumni. He's always sending signed copies of his books for the library.”

“I didn't mean to imply,” Cat started, but the woman waved her off.

“Just ask me what you want to know. I'm trying to close the books for the week and I don't want to work overtime. I have a show that comes on at one.” Miss Applebome set her pen down on the desk surface with a sigh.

“Did he have his laptop when he came in?” Cat thought it didn't hurt to double-check Rose's story; besides, the woman was so enamored with the now-deceased author, who knew what she really remembered, except talking to her idol.

“Most writers do.” The librarian eyed Cat thoughtfully. “Don't tell me you write longhand. I wouldn't think you could plot as tightly as you do without using some type of word processing program.”

“You're right, I draft on a computer.” She leaned forward, trying to process the fact the librarian had even read her book. “Tom's laptop is gone, and I'm trying to find out where it was last seen.”

Again the woman paused before speaking. “Isn't that your uncle's job? Or someone on his police force? Why are you asking these questions when the police haven't?”

Cat decided to go with the most obvious answer: a lie. “The insurance company will raise my rates if I get a claim filed stating we lost Tom's computer. I'm already worried about the vandalism Sara caused at the house. I can't take any higher costs.”

Miss Applebome must have found the answer plausible because this time she answered the question. “Yes, he came in with a laptop. A Mac, I believe. I don't own one; lord knows with my salary I can't afford much of a machine. Then after Dean Vargas showed up, Mr. Cook rented a locker before he left with the dean.”

“Wait, he left the library with Dean Vargas?” Cat stopped taking notes and stared at the woman.

Miss Applebome shrugged. “Those two were thick as thieves when they attended classes here. I always wondered what broke their friendship.”

“You were working here when they were in college?” Cat knew the woman had been at the library forever, but she hadn't considered she might have been working when the trio was going to school here.

She looked thoughtful as she responded to Cat's question. “I was hired after graduation the year before. Mostly I restacked and set up books with a checkout cardholder and put them in the card catalog. Library work wasn't computerized back then. I think I touched every book that we brought into the library for over ten years.”

“Did you hear what they were talking about?” Cat had to get the librarian off the trip down memory lane and back on Tom Cook and Dean Vargas.

The faraway look disappeared and the woman picked up her pen and wrote something in the journal.

“Miss Applebome? Did you hear what they were saying?” Cat pressed.

“It would have been hard not to. They were yelling. I didn't interrupt because they were the only people in the area, but the names they called each other. I swear, you wouldn't know they'd ever liked each other.” Miss Applebome twisted the chain above her glasses, causing them to spin. “Especially when Mr. Cook said he was writing the”—she paused, leaned forward then lowered her voice—“damn book, and Dean Vargas could go screw himself if he didn't like it.”

“Did he say what the book was about?” Cat wondered who had been right about the subject of the work, Rose or Linda.

“Nope. I think I must have dropped something because they realized I was over at the desk. Mr. Cook apologized for his language and then gave me his laptop and a five-dollar bill. Then without even signing the contract, he took Dean Vargas's arm and led him toward the stairs. I tried to give him his change back when he came for the laptop later that afternoon, but he told me to put it into the library fund and buy his next book.”

Cat had a lot to think about, but she wanted to ask one more question while she had the woman's attention. “Did anyone mention Gloria?”

“Oh, my, that's a name I haven't heard for years. You are talking about Gloria Jenson, right?” When Cat nodded, the woman continued. “She was such a beautiful girl. Everyone thought she'd be in the movies, sooner or later. When she just left campus, it was a sad thing.”

“But Tom and Dean Vargas didn't mention her when they were fighting?”

Miss Applebome checked her watch. “Not on Monday. I heard them talking years ago, but I'm not sure I can remember what they'd said. All I knew was Larry was heartbroken. Then they all graduated, and I didn't see Tom again until this week.”

Cat watched as the woman returned her glasses to her face and picked up her pen. Apparently the question-and-answer period was over. Unfortunately, it had only built more questions in Cat's mind, not fewer. She stood and put her notebook and pen in the backpack. “I'll be going now. I've got some more research to do.”

“Ex-professors really aren't supposed to borrow books without checking them out, you do realize that.” The woman didn't look up from her journal.

“Excuse me?” Cat's stomach twisted. How had she been found out?

With a quick jerk, the librarian took the backpack away from her. Miss Applebome pulled out the yearbook and started paging through it. “Well, it looks like it's not damaged, so I guess this can be our little secret. But from now on, please do your research in the library when you're working with priceless manuscripts like these. There's a reason we mark these as non-circulating, you know.” She handed the book back to Cat. “Check out page 101, the picture on that page had always bothered me.”

Then she sat back down and started writing in her journal. Cat had been dismissed.

Cat made her way up to the university history section and sat down at a table next to the yearbook rack. She opened it up to the page the librarian had mentioned, and she knew exactly the picture Miss Applebome had meant. The boy was smiling down on the girl, his hand cupped on her face, and it appeared they'd just kissed. His other hand was wrapped around the girl's waist. And in the back of the shot, standing near the bleachers, Cat saw an unsmiling Linda glaring at her boyfriend and Gloria.

* * *

On the way back to the house, Cat thought about that picture and how casual Linda had been when she'd been asked about Gloria. Did old hurts still pain her? Or was that kiss a silly flirtation? Linda had married the man after all. But, Cat amended, they were married
after
Gloria disappeared.

Cat's cell rang and she answered as she walked. “Hello?”

“Hey, kiddo. I hear I missed you at the station today. Did you want something?” Uncle Pete sounded tired.

“I was coming over to help Sara find her way back to the retreat. I wanted to make sure she was done being a WWE Diva before I let her back into the house.” Cat adjusted the almost empty backpack over her shoulder. “Did you charge her?”

“Yep.”

Cat's heart started pounding. Had the girl actually killed Tom Cook? “I can't believe it.”

“You saw the damage. I had to charge her, or the insurance company wouldn't think you were serious. You are going to testify during the trial, right?”

“Wait, you're talking about the vandalism? What about Tom's murder?” Cat waved to Mrs. Rice as she walked by and lowered her voice to at least slow the gossip train. “Are you charging her with murder?”

“I swear I'm going to put Katie on solitary duty where she can't run her mouth. Did she tell you that Sara had been charged?” Cat heard papers shuffled on her uncle's desk. “Hold on a minute.”

She heard a door slam shut and then her uncle was back on the phone. “We found some books and what appears to be notes about his first book in her room. Talking to the library staff, we learned they were part of his personal collection in the alumni room and had been missing for weeks. She figured out some way to get them out without the alarm sounding when she left the building.”

Cat pressed her lips together. She probably could tell Uncle Pete just how Sara got the papers out of the library, but she wanted to know more before she incriminated herself. “So what are you charging her with?”

“Vandalism and destruction of property. And assault, if I can get Linda to testify. That woman seemed hell-bent on giving the kid another chance.”

Cat let loose a breath she'd been holding. “So Sara didn't kill Tom?”

“Let's say she has a good alibi. Apparently, she was having dinner with her mother at the diner from four to six, and then they drove out to their house near Denver so Sara could grab some books she needed. Her mom even has a list of people Sara talked to while they were at the house, to back up her story.”

She sat on the front porch steps. “I'm glad she didn't. I would hate to see her have to deal with something like that the rest of her life.”

“Now we just have to figure out why she's got it in for Linda. Boy, the girl hates her and I'm pretty sure they just met this week.” Her uncle paused. “I dropped Michael's journal off at the house with Shauna a little while ago. I was hoping to see you there.”

“You don't need it for evidence or anything?” Didn't the police typically keep things like that until the investigation was over? Then she got it; the investigation
was
over. “You didn't find anything.”

“Just a few of Michael's fingerprints and a couple of yours. You both were easy to match, since the college fingerprints their employees. The weird thing was there was a big section of the book cover that had been wiped clean.” Uncle Pete cleared his throat. “I don't know who's playing games with you but, sweetheart, I'll find out.”

Cat felt chilled to the bone. “You don't think I'm in danger, do you?”

“Of course not.” Uncle Pete's answer was too quick. “But if you're concerned, make sure you lock up good and tight and keep a close eye on those extra keys when your guests leave.”

“I'll be careful. And besides,” Cat smiled as she kicked a leaf off the deck, “I have you to come save the day.”

“I may be the police chief, but I'm sure not your prince charming,” Uncle Pete teased. “I think someone else is auditioning for that part.”

“He can keep auditioning for all I care.” Cat hoped her voice sounded casual.

“Keep telling yourself that. I'm sure someday you might believe it.” He chuckled. Cat heard a phone ring in the background. “Look, I'm expecting a call from the DA. I need to take this.”

“We'll talk later,” Cat said, but then she realized she was speaking to dead air. Her uncle had already ended his side of the conversation.

“I figured you'd be up writing since your houseguests are all entertaining themselves.” Seth eased down next to her and handed her a large glass filled with iced tea. “You looked thirsty.”

“Thanks, I am.” Cat took a long sip from the drink, letting the chill flow down her throat and cool her body. “I thought you were off researching the house.”

“It's Saturday, remember? I can't get into the county records until Monday. And there's not much in the open section of the university's history section, although I've got Miss Applebome looking for the original plans.”