SUICIDAL SUSPICIONS: A Kate Huntington Mystery (The Kate Huntington Mystery Series Book 8) (11 page)

Kate’s hesitation was brief. The agency had the resources to check that out far easier than she could. She nodded. “Probably someone comes in to clean at least, and they may be getting some home nursing support. You keep saying things are slow. Is the agency in trouble?”

“No,” he said. “We get these lulls now and then. But that’s why I’m volunteering Manny and not myself. It’s my job to go out and drum up new business so I’ll be pretty busy next week.”

She nodded again, then remembered the other big development that day–the one she’d been trying to ignore. She took a deep breath. “Josie’s parents are suing me for malpractice.”

Skip’s mouth fell open. He cursed under his breath.

“Yeah., that was pretty much my reaction.” Kate’s stomach clenched. “I’ve only been sued once before. That false memory case when you and I were dating.”

“What’s Rob’s take on it?”

“Not good. They really want my records on their daughter, which I’m not about to give them.” She swallowed hard. She now had a keen understanding of the saying,
between a rock and a hard place.

She shook her head to clear it and changed the subject. “Where are the kids?”

“Maria’s overseeing baths. Guess I should go check on them and do story time.”

Kate gave him a small smile. “You know, Edie can read quite well herself now.”

Skip frowned. “I’m not givin’ up story time until she’s twenty.”

“You gonna drive to her college dorm room every night?” she said with a slight snicker.

His mouth quirked up on one end. “Maybe.” He pushed up from his chair and headed for the stairs.

Kate rinsed her dirty plate and put it in the dishwasher. Then she trudged to the bedroom. Shedding her office clothes, she found herself reaching for her bathrobe instead of the shirt and jeans thrown over the antique chair next to the bed. She shuffled back out to the living room, struggling to find the energy to go upstairs for tuck-in.

Skip passed her on the stairs. He raised his eyebrows at the sight of her robe but made no comment.

After kissing the kids goodnight, Kate headed back downstairs. She was tempted to beg off from her evening chat with Skip and go straight to bed, but there was something she wanted to broach with him, something that had been lurking in the back of her mind all afternoon. She was finding it hard to believe she was even considering the idea.

She settled on the sofa next to Skip. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her up against his side.

“Sweetheart,” she said, “maybe this isn’t the best timing if things are slow at the agency, but I’m thinking about cutting my practice back to part-time.” Or perhaps closing it completely, but she could barely acknowledge that thought much less say it out loud.

He leaned slightly away and looked at her, his eyebrows in the air. “Why?”

“I could spend more time with the kids.”

He studied her for a moment, his eyes slightly narrowed. “That’s not the real reason.”

She looked away from his gaze, which wasn’t helping the jumble of emotions roiling in her stomach. “I’ve just been wondering why I’m stressing myself so much with a full-time practice. I could take a small draw on the brokerage account–the interest only, so the capital’s still there for the kids. We wouldn’t see any reduction in income.” She glanced back at him.

His face had softened. “Darlin’,” he said in a gentle voice, “it sounds to me like you’re having a bit of a mid-life crisis.”

~~~~~~~~

Kate was still stewing over Skip’s comment on Saturday morning. She’d tried to hide the fact that she’d been somewhat offended by it. Therapists didn’t have mid-life crises. They were supposed to be more together than that.

Sitting at the kitchen table, she took a sip from her second cup of coffee and admitted to herself that he might be right.

The house was quiet, except for the sounds of children’s laughter coming from the backyard. It was a typical late March day–the sun warm but coupled with a brisk, chilly breeze. Skip had bundled the kids up and taken them and the dog out back to romp around in the fresh air.

The phone on the kitchen counter rang. She got up and grabbed it from its charger. “Hello.”

“Hey, you coming over to help me paint?” her friend Rose said in her ear.

“Crap! It totally slipped my mind. I’m sorry. I’ll throw some clothes on and be over in half an hour.”

“Okay. I’ll get things set up.”

Kate quickly changed her clothes, then stuck her head out the back door.

Skip paused in his game of tag when he saw her. Billy collided with his leg.

“You’re It, Daddy.”

“You okay with watching the kids today?” Kate called over to him. “I forgot I was supposed to help your partner paint her living room.”

“Not a problem. See ya later, darlin’.”

“Bye, kids.”

“Bye, Mommy,” Edie yelled.

Billy tugged on Skip’s pants leg. “Come on, Daddy, you’re It.”

“Say goodbye to your mother.”

Billy waved. “Bye, Mommy.”

“Now run for your life.” Skip roared and made a monster face.

Shrieking, the children took off across the yard, Toby bounding after them.

~~~~~~~~

Rose Hernandez was not the most likely confidant for Kate, even though they were good friends. But she was the most handy one at the moment.

Kneeling next to the living room wall, Kate dipped her brush into the paint bucket and carefully edged along the top of the white baseboard.

Rose’s short, sturdy body was perched near the top of a ladder beside the adjacent wall. She stood on her tiptoes and stretched to paint the edge of the wall just below the high ceiling. “You think we’re gonna need a second coat?”

“Hm, don’t know about the rolled areas but this part that I’m doing with the brush isn’t covering all that well.” They were putting light blue paint over a forest green color that had made the room way too small and dark. “Hey, maybe we should switch places, and I should do the top parts.”

Rose scowled down at her, the intended effect diminished somewhat by the flecks of blue paint on her face and the kerchief covering her bun of black hair. She turned back to the wall and stretched again to edge another section. “Not so sure I would’ve gone for this home-ownership thing if I’d realized it was so much work.”

“Getting the house the way you want it is a lot of work at first.” Kate dipped her brush in the bucket again. “After that it’s not so bad.”

A loud crash and extensive gruff cursing came from the vicinity of the garage.

“What’s Mac doing in there?” Kate asked.

“Putting up shelves so we can get the rest of our boxes out of storage.”

Kate snickered. “Sounds like the shelves are putting up a fight.” She smiled as she ran another line of blue along the wall above the baseboard. It was Mac’s favorite color. He’d been her friend since childhood, and he’d met Rose through her. The younger woman had been one of the police officers assigned to protect Kate when Eddie’s murderer had tried to kill her as well.

“Hey Rose, do you ever wonder if you’ll be a private detective forever?”

The younger woman tilted her head to one side without turning around. “Well, I’ll probably want to retire eventually, but it’s hard to imagine right now.”

“Do you ever question if it’s the right career for you?”

Rose shot her a quick glance, one eyebrow at a forty-five degree angle. Then she went back to painting. “Nope. I preferred being a cop, in theory. But the reality involved too much bureaucratic BS and boring paperwork. Going private was definitely the right thing to do.”

They worked in silence for a couple of minutes, Kate struggling again with the jumble of emotions she’d experienced the night before. “Can you imagine yourself burning out on it though,” she finally said, “maybe twenty or so years down the road?”

“Maybe.” Rose climbed down to move the ladder over to the last section of wall. “In twenty years I’ll be about the age that Dolph is now.”

Kate sat back on her heels. That was a mind-blowing thought. Then she did the math. Rose was right. In twenty years, she’d be pushing sixty. She hadn’t found her niche as a private detective until her thirties, so perhaps she would dodge the whole mid-life crisis thing.

Kate, on the other hand, had been a therapist her entire working life. Maybe she really was having some kind of crisis.

“Where’s all this coming from?” Rose said over her shoulder.

“Uh, I may be burning out a little.”

“This related to the case Skip’s got Manny working on?”

Kate turned her head and narrowed her eyes at Rose’s back. “What’d he tell you?”

“Not much. Just that he needed Manny to check on some things related to one of your cases.” Rose glanced over her shoulder. “So what’s going on with you?”

Now that she’d gotten them onto the topic, Kate wished she hadn’t. Normally Rose hated discussing feelings, but of course, today she would have to be persistent.

Kate shrugged, even though Rose had her back to her again. “I guess I’m just questioning why I’m working so hard, when I don’t need the money.”

“So what would you do instead? Let Maria go and keep house?” Rose’s tone was just shy of incredulous.

“No, I would never let Maria go, not unless she wanted to leave,” Kate quickly reassured Rose, who was Maria’s cousin. “She’s part of the family.”

“Not sure she’d appreciate having you underfoot all day.”

Kate finished edging up to the doorframe while trying to imagine the scenario of herself as a lady of leisure. She shook her head slightly and propped her brush on the side of the bucket. Struggling to her feet, she grabbed for the frame to keep from losing her balance. Her knees cracked.

“Hey, watch the doorframe.”  Rose pulled a rag out of her pocket and tossed it to her. “I don’t want to have to paint the trim.”

Kate rubbed the blue fingerprints off the white frame. “I could spend more time with the kids.”

Rose was half turned on the ladder, looking at her. “But they’re in school a good part of the day.”

“I could do other things. Maybe teach at the university part-time.”

“Yeah, you could.”

Kate frowned. “You’re not helping all that much.”

Rose’s eyebrow was in the air again. “What do you want me to say? If you’re burned out, then find something else to do. But you might want to wait a bit. Make sure this isn’t just a reaction to this case that’s causing you problems.”

Kate shook her head, then gave her friend a half smile. Rose might not be long on sympathy, but her advice was probably on target.

Rose climbed down the ladder. “Come on. Let’s grab some lunch while the first coat dries.”

~~~~~~~~

Kate had been unable to reach Judith Anderson over the weekend. She called her from the car on her way to work Monday.

When Judith answered, Kate filled her in on the visit to the pharmacy, and Dr. Kraft’s claim that he hadn’t written the prescription. “I got an emergency call while I was at his house, and I raced out of there without the copy of the prescription. Should I go back to get it?”

“No,” Judith said. “I’ll send a uniform to do an official interview. Be good to have the doc’s statement on record, in case it does start to look like a homicide.”

Kate gritted her teeth. It was already looking like a homicide, in her opinion. “What about gathering forensic evidence at Josie’s apartment?”

A pause, then Judith blew out air. “I can’t really spare any techs right now. And the apartment’s probably already been cleaned.”

“Do you mind if I go over and take a look?” Kate said.

Silence for a beat, other than the rumble of voices in the background. “In other words, can you take my name in vain in order to get in?”

“Well, yeah. That would be helpful.”

“You can tell the building manager that the police have no objections to you entering the premises, but don’t make it sound like he’s got to let you in.”

Kate considered calling her on the assumption that the building manager would be male, but thought better of it. “Okay, I think I’ll stop by there after work.”

“Kate, don’t you think you’re grasping at straws some here?”

The echo of Skip’s words from a week ago irritated her, but she managed not to snap at Judith. “Maybe, but I’ve got to know what really happened.”

“Okay. Just be careful.”

Kate made a face at her dashboard. She was getting really tired of hearing those words.

.

At lunchtime, Kate checked her messages.

“Hey it’s me.” Rob’s voice. “Just heard from Kathy O’Connor.”

Kate’s stomach twisted.

“The Hartins are getting more blatant about demanding the records. I told Kathy that wasn’t an option for you ethically. Call me when you can so we can talk strategy.”

Kate groaned. She dropped into her desk chair and put her hands over her face.

What a mess!

There was no strategy to deal with this. The insurance company would want to settle out of court, but the Hartins weren’t going to accept a settlement that didn’t include the records. When she refused to turn them over, the insurance company might then say that she was being uncooperative, which was grounds for them to refuse to pay the claim.

So she would end up going to court and fighting with these grieving parents in front of a judge, very possibly on her own dime.

She lifted her head.

Unless I can find them some answers before then.

CHAPTER NINE

Kate met the condo complex’s manager at Josie’s place at five-fifteen. She had called earlier and used the same ploy as she had with the pharmacist, implying she was associated with the police investigation but stopping short of impersonating an officer of the law.

“These aren’t rentals.” The manager, who had indeed turned out to be a man, unlocked the door. “Ms. Hartin owned the condo.”

That made sense. Josie had a trust fund, set up by her grandparents. She’d worked at the gallery because she’d enjoyed it and because the owner was a friend of hers.

They stepped through the condo door. A strange medley assailed Kate’s nostrils–ammonia mixed with a flowery fragrance often found in cleaning products, and underneath it, the cloying odor of decaying meat and an echo of urine and feces. She swallowed hard, struggling to control her gag reflex.