An Intimate Murder (The Catherine O'Brien Series) (15 page)

“Not urgent anymore,” she said. “It would have been, and should have been, urgent two days ago.”

Tears streamed from her puffed eyes. Linda didn’t try to hide or wipe the large salty drops away. She just stared with glassy, void, eyes at nothing on the wall behind me.

“My sister confided in me and I didn’t take her seriously.” Her hoarse voice was close to inaudible. “I told her that she was being silly and that everything would be fine, if she just forgot about it.”

Jane Katts moved to the edge of her seat. Her hand twitched toward her purse where her mini-tape recorder and notebook were hiding. I gave her a sharp glare that told her not to even try. Jane clasped her hands together on her lap and grimaced at me.

“Forget about what?” Louise asked.

“Our cousin, who’s not well mentally, had threatened Linda.”

“Why did she threaten her?” I said.

Linda plucked two tissues from a box on the end table and blew her nose. “Susan promised my uncle that, when he died, she would keep our cousin Katie’s inheritance in trust for her. He was afraid that Katie would spend it all, or lose it, or give it away to some man.”

“How old is your cousin?” Louise asked.

“Thirty-five.”

My brows lifted in surprise. I had expected her to say late teens or early twenties but not mid-thirties.

“At what age was your cousin supposed to come into the full inheritance?” I said.

“Katie is to have an allowance, adjusted annually for inflation, for the rest of her life. She’ll never inherit the full amount. If, when Katie dies, she has any children of her own, they would split what was left, after a large chunk went to charities designated in the trust.”

I could see why a thirty-five year old woman would be upset about her father giving her an allowance even after his death. Money was always enough motive for murder.

“My Uncle was right not to trust Katie. Her allowance for this year should have been more than enough to live comfortably, even for someone used to having a lot of money. She received a lump-sum payment for the year in January. It’s October and she’s broke.”

Linda plucked two more tissues from the box. She dabbed at her eyes, which seemed to stream tears non-stop now.

“According to the trust she doesn’t get her next lump sum until next January.”

“No exceptions?” Jane piped in. She flinched as if Louise and I might pounce on her for asking a question.

“No,” Linda said. “Katie thought there was a loophole though. She kept calling Susan. Katie would say things like Susan was trying to cheat her out of her money. Katie called Susan last week and told her that if she didn’t give her more money, she would hurt Susan.”

Linda’s voice broke with grief and a shiver ran over her shoulders.

“Susan said she thought Katie was serious.” Linda took a deep shuddering breath. “I told her that Katie was just mad. I told her Katie would calm down. I told her to ignore the threats. Now Susan and Jonathan are dead.”

“Mrs. Myers,” Jane said. “You can’t believe any of this is your fault.”

Jane had made the mistake only a rookie, or a reporter, could make. She had dismissed the power of survivor guilt.

“It is my fault! I told her to ignore the threats and now she’s dead.”

“But you didn’t kill her.” Jane Katts was digging herself a deep hole, and if she didn’t stop digging soon she’d find herself at the planet’s core.

Louise jumped in to rescue Jane as she had done many times for me in the past.

“Mrs. Myers.” She laid her hand on Linda’s shoulder. “We’ll need information on your cousin. Could you get her address and her phone number for us?”

The question of what diamonds could mean to her cousin would have to wait for another time. If we asked Linda about diamonds now Jane Katts would know we were hiding something from her. She already suspected, but there was no need to spell out our deception for her.

Linda Myers blinked at Louise for several seconds before nodding. “Yes, of course. I’ll get the address.”

She left the room.

I pressed my fingertips to my temples and rubbed in a circular motion.

“What on earth were you thinking, Katts?” The question came out as more of an accusation than an inquiry.

Her eyes went wide. “What are you talking about? I’m trying to help her. She’s blaming herself for something that she had no control over.”

I leaned forward and braced my elbows on my knees. “Yeah, and your job, as an observer, is not to play amateur grief counselor. Telling a survivor that their guilt is wrong, when they’re not ready to hear it, is the worst thing you can do.”

Jane shrank back in her seat, as if she hoped the chair could swallow her whole.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” Her lip pouted again. “I was trying to help.”

There was a lot Jane Katts didn’t know. Suddenly, I realized that having her with us on this investigation might be the best thing in the world. She had received her first lesson in the aftermath of people unraveling, that the media helped create, but didn’t care to stick around to see – unless of course the aftermath meant better ratings or sold more newspapers.

In our line of work, Louise and I had to deal with the worst of human nature on a day-to-day basis. If we didn’t turn off our feelings for the victims, we’d go insane.

However, Jane Katts, as a member of the average human race, doesn't get the luxury of a callus over her compassion. The rest of this investigation she would learn the true price victims paid, and not the scrubbed up, sanitized Cliff Notes version available daily at five, six, and ten. Usually sandwiched between the weather and a feature about a lost dog that traveled forty-miles to find his way home unharmed.

Linda Myers returned carrying a blue leather address book.

“I can’t find a piece of paper.” She lifted a stack of magazines from the end table and peeked under them. “You don’t happen to have any paper?”

Louise took out her phone and took a picture of the address while Linda looked on.

“Mrs. Myers, I really hope that, after we visit your cousin, we’ll be able to come back to you with some good news.” Louise patted her hand.

“Me too.” Linda covered Louise’s hand with hers. “It’s really hard for me to accept that someone I grew up with could have done something so terrible.”

No more needed saying. We stood and told her we would be in contact as soon as we had any information on the investigation.

She thanked us but her expression of despair never changed, as if Linda Myers had lost all dare to hope. Someday she might smile again but, in the near future, hope might be a sparse commodity.

On our way out the door, Mr. Myers approached us. This time he didn’t look away, or fidget like a man left holding the duffle after a bank heist.

“I’ll walk you ladies to your car.” He held open the door.

Outside he made sure the door closed tightly.

“Detectives, I have some information regarding the murders of my brother-and-sister-in-law.” He checked over his shoulder as if his wife may have opened the door without him hearing. “I think my nephew might have had something to do with the murders.”

“Really?” Jane sounded too gleeful for an observer and I gave her a rib-poke to remind her of her place. She frowned and rubbed the spot on her side.

“Chad?” Louise asked. “Why?”

“I don’t know.” Jack produced a cigarette from a crumpled pack in the front pocket of his jeans. He fished a lighter from his other pocket and lit the cigarette. “It’s just a feeling I get. The kid’s just so different.”

He took a long drag from the cigarette and released the smoke through his nose.

“A year or so ago Chad started to wear what I call trash clothes. Everything was baggy and dark. Half the shit looks like he dug it out of a dumpster.”

He jerked his thumb toward the front door.

“My wife thinks Chad’s an angel. She says it’s just a phase that all kids go through but I’m not so sure.”

“Did the change in Chad coincide with anything significant?” I asked. “Like his first day of college or anything like that?”

“Yeah, it was right after the murder of his, Grandmother.”

An audible gasp escaped our impartial observer. Jane looked as if she were about to bolt for the nearest phone to call in the breaking news flash. I gave another rib jab, which she shrugged away from without a second glance at me. Jane was wrapped up in the Luther family story, and how to spin the tale for the morning news.

Stopping her from telling this story would be like trying to reign in a tornado.

“After she was killed, Chad went from a clean cut kid to a kid who looked homeless, or like some fucking junkie. Chad is frightening now.” He tapped his chest with his cigarette-entwined fingers. “At least to me he is. I’m not sure if his Mother felt that way, probably not. She probably thought of him as the same saint my wife thinks he is, but I know Jonathan’s feelings.”

Jane Katts bounced on the balls of her feet again, on the verge of doing the pee-pee-dance of excitement.

“What were his feelings, Mr. Myers?” Louise ignored the maniacal gleam in Jane’s eyes.

“He was worried.” He flicked the cigarette ash into the bushes next to the door, where a collection of butts had been disposed of behind an overgrown juniper bush. “Jonathan said that Chad was like one of those kids you hear about on the news. The ones who just decide to go on a killing spree.”

Linda Myers peaked through the living room curtains. No doubt wondering why we hadn’t pulled away yet. I flicked my eyes her direction several times, to alert Jack. He glanced over his shoulder and waved at her. She didn’t wave back.

“I should go inside,” he said. “Anyway, I just had to let you know my feelings. What you do with the information is up to you.”

He stubbed out the cigarette under his shoe, and then went inside without saying another word. Through the front window, Mrs. Myers gestured wildly in our direction. Jack put his arm around her shoulder and drew her out of our sight.

“When were you going to share that little tidbit of background information with me?” Jane took her notebook from her purse and scratched out a few words.

“I was thinking never,” I said.

Her response was momentarily, and blissfully, blocked out as I closed the door. My happiness died a quick death when Jane popped her head in the back door.

“The public has the right to know.” A protest older than Methuselah.

She crawled into the car and hugged herself up against the back of my seat. I could feel her breath creating dew on the side of my face.

“You can’t sensor this information,” she brayed into my left ear. “The public has the right to know.”

I turned my head to the left until I could see her from the corner of my eye.

“Why?”

She blinked, and then moved back from me as if I had flicked her between the eyes.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, why?”

Jane’s eyes were blank as if she genuinely didn’t understand the question.

“Why does the public need to know anything about a murder that took place so many years ago? The only people who were affected by that murder already know what happened.”

Jane turned toward the window and smirked. “The murders could be connected or hadn’t you thought of that?”

Still she thought she had all the answers to any question the world could present. She was too young to sense that there were questions in the ether waiting to spring on her, that she hadn’t even dreamt of yet.

Louise started the engine of the car. I crossed my seatbelt over my chest and locked it in place. From the back seat, I could hear the click of Jane’s seatbelt. At least she had learned something in the past few hours.

“Yes, I had thought of the possibility, and I have the phone number of the sheriff who investigated the murder.”

That got her attention. Her head snapped forward again.

“Have you called him? What did he say? Is there a connection to this murder?”

She rapid fired the questions at me, leaning forward again as far as she could until the seat belt stopped her progress.

“Where are we headed?” Louise asked. “To interview the cousin?”

“The medical examiner’s office,” I said. “He’s cutting Susan Luther this afternoon and I think we need to be there for this one.”

Louise squinted at me over the top of her sunglasses, which were unnecessary in the overcast gloom of the day, but Louise wore them anyway. One of her more eccentric affectations.

“Why?” she asked.

I glanced at Jane Katts’ eager little face. “Because the public has the right to know.”

Digs stood outside autopsy room eight, suited from head to toe in scrubs as if he would be the one cutting this afternoon. He did a double take when he spotted us, as if his imagination had willed us there and not for the first time. His mouse-dark eyes gleamed at us in disbelief.

“Hey, Digs.” I passed my hand through the air once in greeting. “Did we miss it?”