In Harm's Way

by E J Kindred

  “Our live-in chef isn’t here,” Elise said quietly. “Her rooms are above the garage. Maybe she’s there. We have one other housekeeper, but she’s not scheduled to come in until later. We have no guests at the moment, though we’re expecting—” She stopped speaking for a long moment and took a deep breath. “We’re expecting Carlton’s family to arrive tomorrow.” She gazed down at her hands and let tears flow down her face.

  Jarrett sent one of the uniformed officers to check Mo’s rooms. “When the call came in, the chief asked me to come out. I don’t believe I’ve met any of you before now, but I only moved here from Portland a few months ago. I was a homicide detective there for several years, so I have experience in these cases.”

  He scanned each of our faces, as if searching for answers. I had the feeling he seldom missed a detail. Fine for the Wentworth family, but I wasn’t so sure it would bode well for me over time.

  He waited until Elise looked up at him and spoke quietly to her. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  She didn’t speak, and he turned to Orlando and me in turn. “And the same to you. I heard Doctor Wentworth was a good man.” He spoke to Elise again. “First we need to search the house. Do we have your permission?”

  When she agreed, he had her sign a form that he’d brought along, and asked Orlando and me to give our contact information to the officer who stood near the door.

  Jarrett said to Orlando, “Sir, we’ll be in touch with you over the next few days. Please go home after you’ve talked with Officer Harrison here.”

  Orlando shuffled toward Harrison looking every bit as stunned as I felt.

  Jarrett turned to me. “You found him?”

  “Yes.” My voice was barely a whisper.

  “Please come with me.”

  I followed him into the doc’s office. The house already felt wrong with the knowledge that Doctor Wentworth was dead, and being in his office made it worse.

  Jarrett sat behind the doc’s desk and gestured for me to take a seat opposite him. He asked my name and jotted it down, along with my phone number and address. I recounted for him how I’d found the doctor’s body, including the disarray in the kitchen and the open door. I’d just finished when there was a knock and the door opened.

  “Hey, boss?” Officer Harrison leaned into the room. “Sorry for the interruption, but I thought you’d want to know that we’ve finished an initial search of the house. We didn’t find the chef. Her car’s gone, too.”

  “Thanks, Jimmy. Make sure the kitchen, the porch, and the yard are cordoned off and that Mrs. Wentworth and the house staff understands those areas are off limits until we get all of the evidence collected and the crime scene documented.”

  The officer gave a half salute and left the office, closing the door again.

  Startled, I turned to the detective. “Mo’s car is gone?”

  Jarrett gave me a keen look. “Mo?”

  “The chef . Her name is Maureen Shaughnessy, but she prefers to be called Mo. She’s been the chef here for the past four or five years. Something must have happened to her, Detective. She wouldn’t leave a mess like that in the kitchen.”

  “You know her pretty well?”

  “We’ve been friends for a few months. She’s conscientious to a fault about the cleanliness of the kitchen. But I had to turn a stove burner off this morning. The pot had boiled dry. She’d never leave a pot like that.”

  He sat back in the chair and looked at me, obviously thinking through what I said.

  “Did she have any disputes with Doctor Wentworth? Could they have been having an affair?”

  “No. No disputes. There’s no way they were having an affair.”

  “No? Why not?”

  “Mo’s a lesbian.”

  “She told you this?”

  “She didn’t have to.” I paused for a moment. “She and I dated a few times when I first moved to Charbonneau.” I watched to see how he’d respond, but all he did was jot down another note.

  “No disputes with him? No resentments you know of?”

  “No. They always seemed more like brother and sister than employer and employee. He protected her from the worst of Elise’s tantrums, and she made him special desserts and favorite dishes Elise wouldn’t let him eat.”

  “And how was your relationship with him? Any problems I should know about?”

  For a long moment, I was at a loss for words. Only two days ago, I’d sat across a conference room table from a police detective who considered me a suspect in a murder and who had the power to arrest me if she saw fit. How was it possible that I might be having the same experience again?

  “No, none at all,” I said. “We got along fine. I didn’t see him very frequently since I’m mostly here while he was working. Elise manages the house staff But he always treated me well, sometimes better than I would have expected.”

  “Such as?”

  “Little things. Making sure I had time off for Thanksgiving, for instance. Interceding once in a while with Elise. He looks out—I mean, looked out for us, the house staff . He was almost fatherly to me.” My voice broke and I shut up, willing myself not to burst into tears.

  Jarrett glanced at the door, making sure it was closed. He peered at me closely, as if trying to decide what to say next. His next words surprised me, and didn’t, at the same time.

  “Tell me about Elise.”

  I was right about Jarrett. He’d been in the house only a short time, and he’d apparently already decided he needed to know more about the doctor’s widow.

  He leaned forward in his chair and in a near-whisper said, “Is it true that people call her Number Four?”

  I couldn’t help it. A short yelp of laughter escaped me before I was able to clap a hand over my mouth. “How did you hear about that?” I glanced at the door, remembering her tendency to appear without warning. “Yes, it’s true. She’s the doc’s fourth wife. He liked to trade in for younger models every few years.”

  Amusement showed on his face for a moment, but then he grew serious again. “I’m getting the feeling she can be difficult.”

  “True. My friends think I’m crazy, but I think she’s insecure. She married a man who had three divorces behind him and who was thirty years older. This is a small town, Detective, and word has gone around that he was planning to leave her for someone else. I don’t know how true it was, but nobody would have been surprised by it. She must have heard the rumors.”

  “And she took it out, this insecurity, if that’s what it is, on the house staff?”

  “And sometimes the doc’s family members, when she could get away with it,” I said, remembering Eric.

  “What about her friends?”

  “I’m not sure she has any. I’ve never seen her have anyone over, but she does go into Portland fairly often, so maybe she meets friends there. I don’t know.”

  I scrubbed my face with my hands and ran my fingers through my hair. Less than an hour had passed since I’d seen Doctor Wentworth’s clouded eyes, but it felt like weeks. My exhaustion felt bone deep.

  Jarrett put his pen down and reached across the desk to shake my hand.

  “Thank you for your help, Miss Velasquez. Why don’t you go home and get some rest. We’ll be in touch if we have more questions. And please call me if you hear from the chef or if you think of anything else.”

  He slid his business card to me, and I left.

  Chapter Four

  The news of the doctor’s death spread quickly across Charbonneau. Despite his history of what people called “serial monogamy,” Doctor Wentworth was respected as a physician and well liked as a man. Almost everyone in town had some connection to him or his family, which had been among Charbonneau’s early settlers.

  The story led on Portland’s local evening news. The perky twenty-something news anchor reported in breathless tones about the murder of a local physician, but everything she said was long on drama and short on details. Sharon told me later that she saw one of the news
vans parked near the diner.

  When Grandma Natalie saw the news, she called me to demand I leave Charbonneau immediately. I tried to tell her there was nothing to worry about, but she proved yet again that she was the genetic source of my own stubbornness. So I packed a bag, put Shadow into his cat carrier against his better wishes, and drove to Portland. I’d never have admitted it, especially not to Grandma Natalie, but being coddled and watched over was exactly what I needed. Even Joe and Patrick were also solicitous, though Patrick did corner me in the kitchen apart from the others long enough to make a feeble joke.

  He said, “Just what you need, another murder to deal with.”

  In return, I smacked him with a spatula, but he pulled me to him in a bear hug and whispered, “I wish you hadn’t seen his body.”

  I wrapped my arms around Patrick and buried my face against his chest. Seeing the doc’s cloudy eyes brought back haunting memories. I’d tried hard to forget the sight of my own father’s eyes, but I doubted that I ever would.

  I’d arrived at the bike shop to find smoke pouring from shattered windows. I’d called 9-1-1 in a panic, and then my family, who stood with me while the firefighters poured water on the smoldering remains of the building. We watched from the parking lot, Joe with his arm around my shoulders and Grandma Natalie holding my hand, while the firefighters wielded the heavy hoses, extinguishing flames and saturating spots that kept smoking. An ambulance crew waited nearby, since I was sure that my dad was inside. They had a gurney standing ready. When the last hose was shut off, I tore away from Joe and into the shop, ignoring his protests and the shouts of the firefighters.

  Since then, I’d wished a million times I hadn’t been so impulsive, but I’d do it again in the same circumstances.

  Dad was lying face down on the floor in front of the beat-up old recliner he kept at the back of the shop in between shelves of bike parts and tools. The wall to his right was caved in and he was covered in debris. His face and clothes were blackened with soot. He wasn’t burned, but he wasn’t moving, either. With one glance, I knew he’d never move again. His eyes were partially open, the dark brown irises already starting to dull.

  I collapsed onto the floor and had to be carried out. I spent the next several days at Grandma Natalie’s home, not talking, not sleeping, refusing to eat. Only when she, along with Joe and Patrick, threatened to have me hospitalized did I start to come around, and then only with great effort. In the seven months since the fire, I’d gotten most of the way back to my normal self, but there’d always be a scar where my daddy lived in my heart.

  And now I’d seen the doc’s eyes, and what few defenses I’d built against the deaths of people I cared about were gone. Here I was again, living through another terrible loss. Though I wasn’t anywhere near as close to the doc as I was to my father, the old terrors and nightmares and sadness all came back.

  The first two nights at Grandma Natalie’s, I dreamed of Dad and of the fire. More than once during those nights, I got up to wander the house, try to read, watch a little television. More than once, Grandma Natalie rose from bed to comfort me. She switched on her Christmas tree lights, at least the ones that Shadow hadn’t turned into cat toys, and made me lie on the sofa and use her lap for a pillow. She put a blanket over me, stroked my hair, and we talked and admired the twinkling lights until the sky lightened. I felt as if I were a child again, insecure about my absent mother, fearful that something would happen to my dad, too. As I grew up, I occasionally wondered why I never worried that misfortune would befall Grandma Natalie. She was my rock.

  I also wondered if that’s why I had always been reluctant to ask her about my mother. All I knew was that Natalie’s only child, my mother, had been absent from my life since I was young, too young to remember her as anything except a blonde blur. The times I asked, my grandmother stiffened, her jaw set and her lips a pale line, and all she’d say was “she’s been gone for a long time, Annie dear. There’s nothing to tell.” After a couple of attempts in my teens, I stopped asking.

  Sharon called to check on me and also to give updates, which were mostly that she had nothing to report. Others had called to offer me condolences and assistance. Lupe told me the party was cancelled, of course. Carl the Third and his family had arrived, and Lupe was more than happy to stay away from the drama their family posed.

  Elise had maintained the cleaning schedule on the whiteboard. When I called Lupe to apologize for leaving her with all the work, she reassured me that she understood why I had to be away for a few days.

  “Do you believe it,” she said in a near whisper, “that cold bitch cares more about the house being ready for guests than the doc’s death.”

  “I wish you didn’t have to deal with her yourself . I’ll be home in a day or two.”

  The next time my phone rang, the caller ID screen read simply “Jarrett.” Damn cops. He was making me regret breaking my old habit of leaving my cell phone in the car.

  “Hello, Detective.”

  “Ms. Velasquez, do you have time to talk? I tried to see you at your apartment a couple of times, but I keep missing you.”

  “Sorry about that. I’m in Portland with my family. What can I do for you?”

  “Have you heard from Ms. Shaughnessy?”

  The heaviness of worry I’d felt in my chest since I saw the mess in the kitchen solidified into a mass of lead.

  “No, I haven’t. And it sounds as if you haven’t either. You think she might have had something to do with the doc’s death, don’t you? There’s no way it can be true.”

  He was silent for a moment. “When are you coming back to town?”

  “Tomorrow, maybe, or the day after. Why?”

  “Give me a call when you’re home. I have more questions, and it’s best if we meet in person.”

  I didn’t have to ask who it was best for.

  A day after Christmas, Shadow let me know it was time to go home by standing on my head and pulling my hair when I tried to sleep. His message was reinforced at breakfast when Grandma Natalie asked me why I had claw marks on my forehead.

  “Goofy cat plays all night long. I think it’s time to pack him up and take him home. I’ve imposed on you long enough.” I poured a cup of coffee and sprinkled cinnamon sugar on my buttered toast.

  “Nonsense,” she said. “I wish you’d come back and live here with me. You’re too far away in that little Podunk town.”

  I’d wondered how long it would take for her to bring that up. We’d had the same conversation more times than I could remember in the six months since I decided a change of scenery would do me good.

  “You’re stubborn, aren’t you?” I winked at her over my coffee cup.

  “Yes, I am,” she said with pride. “You’re my favorite granddaughter, and I want you here with me.”

  “I’m your only granddaughter.”

  “Details, details.” She waved my words away with a laugh before growing serious again. “Look, hon, don’t tell me that finding the doctor’s body didn’t throw you for a loop. You’ve been having nightmares about your father again. I might be getting older, and I might be stubborn, but I’m not blind or stupid. It’s not good for you to be alone and so far away.” She spoke over my protests. “Now, you’re all grown up and you’re as bullheaded as I am, so you’ll decide for yourself, but I want you to know my opinion.”

  “As if I didn’t already, Gram.” I got up and kissed her on the cheek. “But it’s time for me to go home. Nightmares or not, I found him, so the police want to talk with me. I can’t avoid it. I promise I’ll think about moving back, but I have to deal with this first.” I headed out of the kitchen to pack and find Shadow.

  “At least call Patrick before you go.” She was silent for a moment and spoke with reluctance. “I’m worried what might happen if the Charbonneau police discover your connection with Nicky.”

  “Me, too.” I paused for a moment at the door. “I mean, what are the odds a suspect in one murder would find the body of
another murder victim?” I gazed out the kitchen window at the gray December sky, my thoughts roiling, before meeting her eyes again. “I expect they’ll figure it out. The detective in charge of the doc’s case used to be a Portland homicide detective. Hell, for all I know, he’s friends with the Portland detective who was recently assigned to Nicky’s case.” I sighed heavily. “I must have really pissed someone off in a past life to have karma like this.”

  A few minutes after nine the next morning, I made my reluctant way through the doors of the Charbonneau Police Department to the front desk. The receptionist was a woman about the same age as Grandma Natalie. She was on the phone, but raised her eyebrows in an obvious inquiry.

  I gave her my name and said, “I have an appointment to see Dean Jarrett.”

  Still cradling the phone receiver between her shoulder and chin, she whispered, “I’ll let him know you’re here.” She went back to her call.

  I wandered around the reception area, too nervous to sit on one of the plastic chairs lining the wall. Photos of past Charbonneau police chiefs and of the building decorated the drab walls. The department had evidently been in one place for a long time.

  “Miss Velasquez?”

  I turned to find a young officer, whose name escaped me, waiting next to the reception desk. We shook hands.

  “I’m Jimmy Harrison. Dean—er—Detective Jarrett asked me to come out and see you. He has someone in his office right now. Uh, Shirley?” He addressed the receptionist who was just hanging up the phone. “Is there anywhere else we can talk?”

  “The chief’s office is busy, too.” She thought for a moment. Sounding doubtful, she said, “What about the library?”

  Harrison frowned. “I don’t think he’d like that.”