Death Comes Knocking (The Thea Kozak Mystery Series, Book 10)

by Kate Flora

  As long as I stayed off the main roads, the journey was quiet. Few tourists were abroad this early, and the people who were out were attentive and business-like. I had a paranoid moment when a small silver Subaru kept appearing in my rearview mirror, but silver Subarus are so common in Maine I decided I was being silly. I found a parking space easily at the airport and had an unusually smooth journey through TSA to the gate.

  Because I am not a trusting soul, I checked in at the desk that I did, indeed, have an aisle seat with extra legroom. The man behind me, one of those impatient business guys, stood so close I could smell the nose-prickling scent of Dial soap.

  I found a seat in the waiting area and pulled out my notes, refreshing myself about the details of Eastern Shore Academy’s problem, and filing the names of the major players in my memory for when I got there. People like to be remembered, and Dr. Kingsley, Leora Simms, director of the summer program, and Luke Bascomb, their IT person, would be my primary contacts today.

  I was shifting to a review of honor codes—I had quite a file of them—when I felt a tapping on my knee. When I looked down, a small girl in a swirly pink dress, with her golden curls in two goofy ponytails, was trying to get my attention. When I looked up, she held out a book. “Will you read to me?”

  The book was “Caps for Sale,” which I remembered from my own childhood. I didn’t think anyone read it anymore. I looked around for an adult to consult for permission, but no one seemed to be attached to the child, at least no one who wasn’t buried in a phone or iPad.

  “Sure,” I said, shifting my briefcase onto the floor. She handed me the book and climbed into the chair beside me.

  We got through the whole book without anyone interrupting us. When we finished, she said, “Read another?”

  I looked at the monitor. We had fifteen minutes before boarding began. “Okay,” I said. She wiggled down, crossed to a colorful pink plaid bag on the floor beside a man deeply immersed in his screen, and got out another book. She brought it to me, wriggled back onto her seat, and said, “Read Corduroy.”

  We finished it just as boarding began. I sent her back to the oblivious man and gathered my things. I like aisle seats, and being tall, I always get extra legroom, which means I can get on earlier and have a shot at space in the overhead bin. Stowing my suitcase is easier because I’m tall, but harder because somehow the basketball gets in the way. I managed, and dropped into my seat feeling like I’d already done a day’s work just driving to the airport and getting on the plane. Maybe eating breakfast would have helped, but I can’t face food early in the morning unless I’ve been up all night.

  I hoped, as one always does, that the middle seat would be empty, a hope that was shattered when a tall, fierce-faced man in a dark suit arrived to claim the seat. It was Mr. Dial Soap. He didn’t look like a middle seat passenger, the flight wasn’t full, and my finely tuned alarm sensors started going off. They rang louder when the doors closed and the plane pushed back with no one in the window seat.

  I got out the papers I’d set aside while reading books to my small friend and immersed myself in honor codes. We were maybe twenty minutes into the flight before he spoke. Just two words that signaled he was ready to talk. He said, “Honor codes?”

  I said, “Work.”

  “What kind of work do you do?”

  Either he was one of those guys who chat to make the time pass, which I doubted, or this was just the lead up to what he really wanted to discuss. I doubted that a trip to the lavatory would discourage him, but I went anyway. Being pregnant has made me far more attuned to the location of the facilities. I took my purse with me, but left my briefcase behind. If he wanted to read more about honor codes, he could go to town.

  Airplane lavatories were getting smaller even as I was getting bigger. I wondered what really large people did. I could barely turn around, and it was a challenge to wash my hands without soaking the front of my dress. Luckily, the dress was black.

  As I slid back into my seat, I could tell that my briefcase had been moved. Nothing in there of any interest to him, unless he could access my laptop, and that required my password. Before I left for the airport, I’d quickly checked my email, and downloaded a draft of the questionnaire Marlene was working on. This flight was the ideal time to review it, so I pulled out the laptop and scrolled to the draft. Sarah’s report of Marlene crying in the bathroom because of some simple suggestions did not make me optimistic. I took a breath and started scanning it. It was bad. I was immediately reminded of another employee we’d had who couldn’t take criticism. The employee from hell who reacted to being fired in particularly negative ways involving arson and knives. I was not eager to have to fire another employee, but what I was seeing on the screen was garbage.

  I clicked on “Review” and started making notes.

  My seatmate said, “I really don’t care about honor codes. But you know that.”

  I stifled an annoyed, “Excuse me?” and didn’t respond. I’ve had enough of guys on airplanes trying to strike up conversations. My motto is: don’t encourage them. I could have said that I hoped everyone cared about honor codes. Instead, I went on making notes, trying not to let this work product upset me. We had given her samples, and I had given her specific advice about the project at hand. You wouldn’t know that from the page I was reviewing. Was it possible she’d sent the wrong draft? I couldn’t ask her that right now. I’d send an email when we landed.

  I closed my eyes a moment and suppressed the wish to be back home, puttering in my garden. I really wasn’t much of a putterer. I was terrified to even consider what I’d do if I ever stopped being a compulsive slave of duty. My MO was to keep moving, keep skittering across the ice before I fell down, not reflecting on how my life was going to change very soon. That was something I could deal with when it happened. Meanwhile, I was annoyed and upset by the possibility that just when we thought we had finally adequately staffed the office, we were going to be back to the drawing board in a hiring climate where good people were hard to find.

  So far, they don’t allow cell phone use on planes, for which I am grateful. Who wants to listen to endless too loud, too boring, or too intimate conversations when you’re trapped in a tin can? But there are always moments like this, when I have three questions I’d like to get answered right away, when I wish the rule could be lifted for ten minutes just for me. Trouble is, everyone feels that way, including the dull, the boring, and especially the loud.

  I sensed my seatmate was about to make another comment, so I got out my noise-canceling headphones and pulled up some Lady Gaga. I was just getting into her first song when my seatmate disconnected them from my laptop and said, “We need to talk.”

  We didn’t need to do anything, and he had just invaded my space. Another trouble with being on planes—there’s nowhere to escape if your seatmate doesn’t observe proper boundaries. I have trouble dealing with situations that make me feel trapped. If this got too bad, I could ring for a flight attendant and asked to be moved. I could see other empty seats. But government bullies are a species apart and I suspected Mr. “We Need To Talk” was some kind of government. That meant if I asked to be reseated, he’d flash some official-looking badge, claim it was government business, and the flight attendant would leave me to his mercy or his lack thereof.

  I have my issues with authority, despite being married to someone who carries a badge and has plenty of command presence. If this fellow had wanted to speak with me, he could have introduced himself politely, shown me his credentials, and asked if we could talk. I still might not have much to tell him, but at least the interaction would have been civil. Unplugging my headphones when I was happily communing with Lady Gaga? She wouldn’t approve, and neither did I.

  He seemed to be waiting for my response. I didn’t have one, so I waited, too. Let him play to me. Give me a reason why we should talk. Cops are good at waiting, and cop’s wives and girlfriends get pretty good at it, too. So do consultants who have to deal
with recalcitrant clients who think if they go silent, they won’t have to cooperate or answer. I assumed my seatmate—a highly inappropriate term for someone invading my personal space in such a peremptory manner—was there in some official capacity, but maybe I was seated next to a demanding civilian and he wanted to talk about growing beans.

  I waited for the big reveal.

  Waiting out someone who’s gone silent is a common technique for getting someone to talk. Most people are uncomfortable with silences and will chatter just to fill the gap. But I wasn’t most people. Evidently, neither was he. We sat in an awkward and uncompanionable silence for quite a while.

  I was about to dig back into work when he finally broke the silence. “Look. I’m sorry, Ms. Kozak. I am doing this all wrong.”

  He had that right.

  I waited for what would come next.

  “I’m afraid I’ve spent too much time speaking, or trying to speak, with unfriendly people. I seem to have lost my social graces. I should have introduced myself.”

  Then he fell silent again, while I waited for him to do just that—introduce himself. If I were a nicer woman, one of those sweet, accommodating ones people sometimes mistake me for, I would have smiled and invited his introduction. But that would also have meant dismissing his rude behavior and giving him the impression that all was well. I didn’t yet know if all was well. I had no information beyond his behavior on which to base any opinion. Yes. I suppose I could be considered stubborn, perhaps too stubborn, but really, all the guy had to do was tell me who he was and what he wanted. How difficult was that?

  Well, not all. There were also those ‘how did he get here’ questions. How did he know who I was? That I’d be on this plane? What manipulations were necessary to get the seat next to me? He had to have some kind of pull to get that information. I sighed. I was just a poor consultant, on the way to do a job. I did not need a lot of mysterious nonsense distracting me.

  Of course, he was distracting me. After last night, the presence of another intrusive and pushy stranger who seemed to think I owed him answers made me very nervous.

  I put a hand on MOC, losing the patience game. A large man leaning into my space was not helping with my stress levels. I said, “Well, are you going to introduce yourself?”

  To my amazement, he blushed. An actual, red-in-the-face blush. Then he rubbed his face and ducked his head like a middle school boy, and said, “Oops.”

  Funny how a single word, a word and a very human action, can change the tone of a conversation. Or an interaction. So much for the big, tough exterior. It looked like I was going to have to help him out.

  I held out my hand. “Hi, I’m Thea Kozak. I’m an educational consultant. And you are?”

  He took the offered hand. His was big and rough, and his handshake suggested he rarely shook hands with women, only with Godzilla and grizzly bears. “Malcolm Kinsman.”

  I said, “Oh,” and shifted in my seat to get a better look at his face. Shifting in an airplane seat in my condition, even in a seat with extra legroom, was a challenge. My legs weren’t where I needed the room.

  Cut so short, it was hard to see if he had Charity’s straight black hair, but he definitely had the same eyes and cheekbones. “You’re Charity’s twin, aren’t you?”

  He exhaled like he’d been holding his breath for a long time. “At least you aren’t going to pretend you’ve never seen her,” he said.

  “I’m not pretending anything,” I said. “You need to tell me what’s going on, Mr. Kinsman.”

  “Malcolm,” he said. “I need your help.”

  I politely refrained from saying he had a pretty weird way of asking, and tried to explain why I couldn’t help him. “Malcolm, I don’t know why you’re following me. You must have gone to lot of trouble to get on this plane and seated next to me, but I really don’t see how I can help. I’ve seen your sister exactly three times, the third time only to give her a pot of flowers. I know nothing about her or about her situation and I have no idea where she is or why a man who claimed he was a private investigator from Boston was looking for her. I can tell, from the trouble you’ve gone to find me, that you’re expecting more. But there is no more. I’m sorry.”

  In minutes, he’d morphed from stiff and aloof to drooping and exhausted. He looked like someone who really did need help. Unfortunately, despite all the trouble he’d gone through, I wasn’t the right person to help him if his goal was to find his sister. Probably that was someone with the Marshals Service. Only their person on the ground, if Jessica Whitlow was genuinely what that ID said she was, was beyond help. I had no idea whether she’d sent Charity on to another hiding place or if Charity had fled when she sensed danger. It might be that Charity escaped while Jessica was being killed. Faced with it now, in a new life where I was trying to avoid death and danger, the memory of last night and two people dead hit me like a blow. So did the possibility that whoever had killed Nathaniel Davenport and Jessica Whitlow might have also taken Charity.

  Eleven

  “You don’t know where she is?”

  He sounded disappointed, and accusatory, as though he was sure that I had more information to share but was refusing to share it.

  I shook my head.

  It was clear that I wasn’t going to get any work done on this flight, so I put my laptop away and stowed my tray table. Then I countered his question with some of my own. “You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to find me and ask about your sister. Why didn’t you just go to the police and ask them for help?”

  He said, “I’m trying to stay under the radar. The same people who are looking for Charity would be just as happy if they found me.”

  It wasn’t a helpful answer. “Who is looking for her? And why?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  I was trying not to let him raise my stress levels. His crap answers sure weren’t helping, so I tried out one of my whacky theories. “Is Charity’s husband in trouble? Is whoever is looking for her doing it to get leverage of some kind?”

  He had kind of a panicked look, glancing around to see if anyone had overheard, so I knew I was close. I also knew from his tight lips that he wasn’t going to answer. Just like many of the cops I’ve dealt with, it was all pumping me for information but always a one-way street.

  I said, “What makes you think I might know where your sister is?”

  He was silent so long I thought he wasn’t going to answer that, either. Then he said, “When we spoke, Charity and I, she said she’d met a new neighbor, you’d gone shopping together, and while she didn’t know you well, she thought you could be trusted. That if she asked you for help, you’d help. She said you had a reputation as an excellent detective and—”

  Oh, dear, not that detective crap again. A few years ago, when I was working on a death at a private school, a news story had called me a detective and stuff online never dies, however inaccurate it is. “I don’t know where she got that idea, but it’s not true. My work is with independent schools and crisis management.” I gestured toward my briefcase. “Honor codes. Cheating scandals.”

  I took a breath. It wouldn’t do me or MOC any good if I lost my temper. “The fact that your sister misunderstood something she read online can’t have been enough for you to pull whatever strings you pulled to find me and get on this flight today. So who are you and why are you really here?”

  He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. I tried to remember whether, in Andre’s informal classes on interviewing and interrogation, he’d said anything about the meaning of that particular gesture. I came up blank. I didn’t know what else to say. I wasn’t sure I should tell him about the packet of information Charity had left, but without it, I would have had no idea who Charity and the woman who’d called herself Jessica Whitlow were. Besides, he was her brother. Maybe if he could help her, I could stop worrying about her.

  Before I spilled what little I knew, I asked him to show me some ID.

  He produced a Texas driver’s license.
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  I told him about finding Charity’s note, and the contents of the small box. About Charity’s evasiveness and unease about the protection she was getting. About seeing her putting a bag in the Volvo. Then, because I wasn’t sure how much he was in the picture, and anyway, it was, or would be, public knowledge, I told him about Nathaniel Davenport, who claimed to be looking for Jessica Whitlow, and about the woman’s body that I’d found in the cottage, which almost certainly was the real Jessica Whitlow. “And that’s all I know. I have no idea how it might be helpful.”

  I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes. This conversation, with him leaning into my space and scrutinizing my every word, was exhausting. I needed to save my energy for the work I was flying down here to do.

  “So the car is gone? The one you saw with Virginia plates? And you found no sign of Charity in the house?”

  “I didn’t find Charity in the house,” I said, without opening my eyes. He was so intently focused on his questions, on his own mission, I doubted he’d even noticed.

  “Did you find anything to indicate where she’s gone?”

  “Mr. Kinsman, I am not a detective. I did not search that cottage for signs or clues.”

  “But did you—”

  I opened my eyes. He clearly wasn’t going to let me rest. Probably hadn’t even noticed my condition, or, being a mission-driven male, didn’t see it as a possible issue. I wondered how he’d feel if someone was doing what he was doing to his very pregnant sister?

  “Please stop questioning me as though you think I’m withholding information from you. I do not have any more information.” Getting angry was starting to upset MOC, and I was supposed to stay calm and stress-free and try not to raise my blood pressure.

  He reached in his pocket and took out a photograph which he handed to me. “Look at this. This is why I’m here.”