Death Angel (42 page)

“From Garvey?”

“It was in her wastebasket the day she
quit working for him. His name keeps coming up, and I need to rule him in or
out.”

“Okay. I’ll check on it. Talk to you
later.”

Carl stopped at his house only long
enough to change out of his uniform. Blue jeans, light blue knit shirt, and
sneakers would look less out of place around Beaverton Lake. He slipped his gun
into an ankle holster, pulling his pants leg down to cover it, and strapped his
hunting knife to his belt. In twenty minutes he was back outside, heading
northwest out of Pickard.
 

Perhaps it was stupid, but he was going
to Beaverton Lake in order to bring Kate back to Pickard. He felt a sense of
urgency to keep her in sight. He couldn’t shake the conviction that Kate was in
danger.
 

He tried not to analyze his motives. It
was unlike him to become personally involved with anyone he came across in his
job. From the beginning, he’d been drawn to Kate. First, out of sympathy for
the tragedy of her daughter’s death, then later by the woman herself. He didn’t
have a clue what form their future relationship would take. All he knew was
that for now he wanted to protect her and eventually have some part in her
life.
 

His cell phone rang.

“It’s Bea, Chief.”

“What have you got?”

“I talked to Joseph Garvey. He’s in
Chicago with his wife. He said to tell you he went to see Kate Warner because
he thinks she’s been following him. Does that make any sense to you?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Carl said,
pressing the phone to his ear. “Remember I went to see him when I discovered
Kate was doing research at the library about him. I asked if anything unusual
was going on. He said he thought a woman had been observing him in court. He
was nervous because he’d just fired a secretary for snooping in his office. I
told him to change his schedule and see if she continued to follow him.”

“You knew it was Kate Warner?” Bea
asked.

“No. It was a hunch. I checked with
Garvey’s office manager. The woman he fired was Katherine Daniels. Daniels is
Kate Warner’s maiden name. I checked the temp agency and it was Kate. She’d
been assigned for a week and quit halfway through. Some sort of disagreement
with Garvey. I couldn’t get any details. At any rate when Garvey didn’t call me
again, I assumed he’d been mistaken.”

“Apparently he ran into her again at
some dinner and decided either he was hallucinating or she was the woman he’d
fired and the woman in court. He said he stopped by her house just to see if it
was the same woman.” Bea snorted. “Between you and me I think he was interested
in her in a social sort of way.”

“Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” Carl
checked his watch. Another twenty minutes and he’d be at the lake.
 

“By the way. I asked Garvey if he’d ever
heard of ButterSkots. Bingo. He said his wife gave him a tin of candy for his
office. Neither of them have been to Scotland. He assumed she got it as a gift.
Said he’d ask her about it.”

“Good. Keep on everyone’s tail until I
get back.”

After he rang off, he turned the various
bits and pieces over in his mind. If Kate’d found the ButterSkots in Garvey’s
office, could she possibly have jumped to the conclusion that he was involved
in Jenny’s death? If so that would account for her library research, for
watching him in court, and for her questions about the PF license plate
printout.

With so little evidence, it would take a
major leap of faith to believe Garvey was guilty of murder. Assuming she’d
managed that, what next? And why did she suddenly go up to Wisconsin with Mike?

Where did Mike Kennedy fit in? Carl
could understand that grief might have given Kate a warped sense of reality.
But Mike?

Marian said that Mike was worried about
Kate. Would she have confided her suspicions about Garvey to Mike? Mike knew
Garvey and would see her theory as ludicrous. Is that why he had gotten her out
of town? Hoping to talk some sense into her?
 

Questions, questions, and more
questions. What bothered Carl most was, when she came to the police station,
why hadn’t she mentioned Garvey?

Kate opened her eyes, wincing at the
bright light. She was feverish, her body hot and sweat-soaked. It was with
relief that she realized she was bundled up in her sleeping bag in an airless
room.

A loud snore jerked her upright. Mike
was sound asleep, sprawled on his back on top of his sleeping bag. By the
alcohol smell in the room, she guessed he’d been pretty drunk when he came to
bed. She slipped out of her sleeping bag, tiptoed across the room, and opened
the window.
 

Muddy clothes and towels were
everywhere. Moving quietly she made a bundle of all the wet things. She
gathered clean clothes and her toiletry bag then picked up the sodden mass,
grabbed her shoes, and tiptoed out of the room. Reaching back, she closed the
bedroom door.

Dumping the pile of wet clothes beside
the front door, she lit the stove and set a pan of water for tea. Her watch was
on the table. Ten. No wonder she felt so rested. She didn’t know what time Mike
had come to bed, but she’d gotten about ten hours of sleep.
 

Outside the sun was shining in a
cloudless sky. The storm had passed through and, although it was hot, the
humidity was lower than the day before. High eighties, she guessed. She washed
up and changed into clean shorts and a cotton T-shirt. Her sneakers were
streaked with mud, but dry.

Suddenly her stomach growled, an audible
rumble in the silent cabin. After making tea, she dug out some cream cheese
from the cooler and spread it on a bagel. Wanting to be outside, she took a
chair and set it in the shade of the trees beside the cabin. She returned for
her breakfast and the magazines she’d brought from home. It was well past noon
when the heat of the day urged her to check on Mike.

When she didn’t hear a hint of movement
behind the closed bedroom door, she debated waking him but decided against it.
For lack of anything better to do, she carried the pile of wet clothes outside.
She located a rope in the cabin and after walking around the area, found two
well spaced trees and strung a clothesline between them.
 

Mike’s jeans were still muddy. She
pulled out the leather belt and then turned to the pockets. Along with a
handful of mud, she found a ring of keys, knife, pocket change, and his watch.
She wrapped the grimy objects in a washcloth and set them aside.
 

She scrubbed everything in the lagoon,
then hung it on the clothesline. The rope drooped with the weight of the wet
things, but it held. By the time she finished, she was sweating in the heat of
the afternoon sun. Back in the cabin there was still no sign of Mike.

How can he sleep this long? It was
almost three.
 

She filled a plastic basin with water
and set it on the table. Dunking Mike’s belt buckle, she dried it off with a
hand towel and put the belt on the seat of one of the chairs.
 

The watch was next. She rinsed off the
expansion band and used a wet finger to clean off the face. The time was
accurate, so maybe the watch was waterproof. She rinsed the coins and the ring
of keys and set them in the center of the table.

The mud-caked knife was last. She dipped
it in the water, just as she heard the first stirrings from the bedroom. Her
fingers slid over the clean surfaces of the pocketknife. She pulled it out of
the water and set it in the towel to wipe it off. Her eyes touched the sleek
lines of the small Buck knife.
 

She recognized it immediately. It was
Richard’s knife.

Twenty-seven

 
W
hat was Mike doing
with Richard’s knife?

The bedroom door opened. Mike stood in
the doorway, mouth stretched in a yawn, shoulder propped against the frame.
Kate could do nothing but stare at him. Her fingers closed convulsively around
the knife and she dropped her arm to her side.

“God, do I feel awful,” Mike said. When
she didn’t respond, he squinted to see her more clearly in the sunfilled room.
“What’s up?”

She couldn’t speak. Her throat was
frozen. All she could do was shake her head from side to side.

He raised his head as if he scented
danger then pushed away from the door and walked purposefully toward her. His
eyes darted around the room. He glanced at the things on the table, then the
bowl of dirty water. She flinched away from him and he noticed her clenched
fist. His hand shot out to grasp her wrist. He raised her arm, turning her hand
over and squeezing her wrist until her fingers opened to reveal the knife.

“I should have thrown it away.”

The tone of his voice was so
conversational that at first the words didn’t penetrate. When they did, the
shock must have registered on her face. He thrust her arm away and the knife
went sailing across the room to clatter against the far wall.

“Oh, God, no!” Kate shook her head from
side to side. “Oh, God!”

Mike turned away from her, walked over
to the stove and tested the water with a tip of his finger. Satisfied, he
poured some in a mug and added coffee. He stirred it, his face expressionless.

“You couldn’t leave it alone, could you,
Kate? You had to dig and dig even after Leidecker was willing to close the
case.”

Her legs trembled and she clutched the
back of one of the chairs to keep from passing out. It took every ounce of
strength to keep from sinking into the darkness that swirled around her.

Silence filled the room except for the
sound of Mike’s spoon clinking against the side of the ceramic coffee mug. Kate
pulled herself upright, her movements awkward as if she’d aged. Mike was
staring at her, eyes sad in an otherwise expressionless face. She had to unlock
her jaw before she could speak.

“Did you kill Richard, too?”

He didn’t even blink at her question.
“Yes.”

“Why?”

A flicker of anger crossed his face. The
muscles in his cheek popped with tension. “Damn it, Kate, I had to! Leidecker
was relentless. He’d never leave it alone. Once he became suspicious of
Richard, I knew it was the only way I’d be safe. It wasn’t easy. Richard was my
friend.”

“You killed my daughter,” she screamed.

Mike looked so offended that her fury
increased and she picked up the flashlight on the table and threw it at him.
Instinctively he raised his arms to cover his face. The flashlight hit his
wrist and splashed hot coffee over his shirt. He threw the mug, smashing it
against the wall and in three strides was across the room.

She curled her fingers to claw his face.
She narrowly missed his eyes as he pulled his head back, snarling as he tried
to capture her flailing arms. When he caught her wrists, she kicked his legs
and pulled his hands toward her mouth so she could bite him. He released one of
her arms and slapped her across the face.

It wasn’t the pain of the slap that
stopped her but the violence of the act. She had never been treated roughly
before, and the trauma to her system was paralyzing. She flinched away from his
upraised hand as he prepared to hit her again.

“That’s better,” he said. He dropped his
arm, aware that all the fight had left her. “Sit down.”

He jerked a chair out and shoved it
toward her. She collapsed onto the seat, shaken by the realization that she was
totally in his power. If she fought him, she suspected he would beat her to
death. She shuddered, staring at the stranger who stood over her.

Victorious, he swaggered across the
room, kicking the remains of the mug underneath the shelf along the wall.
Seeing the leather gun case beside the cooler, he chuckled. He brought the case
over to the table, opened it and stared in fascination at the gun. He picked it
up, turning it from side to side as he hefted it, getting used to the weight.

Kate couldn’t believe the change in
Mike. His bloodshot eyes peered out of a pale, unshaven face. He was wearing
bathing trunks and the shirt he’d slept in. His body smelled, a combination of
sweat, alcohol, and dirt. College friend. Compassionate doctor. Friend of the
family. Not a vestige of those remained. All gone, leaving behind a vicious
killer.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he
snapped. “It was all an accident. It never should have happened.”

She covered her ears. “You monster.”

Although she’d spoken under her breath,
he heard her. Fury suffused his face. Gun still in his hand, he charged around
the table. With his free hand, he grabbed the front of her shirt and dragged
her out of the chair until only the toes of her shoes touched the floor. He
laughed when she stiffened. He continued to speak, but now his voice was
taunting.

“That’s my girl. If you’re good, I won’t
hurt you. But if you’re a bad girl, I’ll have to punish you.”

His face was so close to hers that Kate
saw the instant change of expression. One moment his eyes were wide with
mockery and the next they’d narrowed in heightened perception. She couldn’t
hold back a groan at the flash of desire that crossed his face.