Blind Trust

by Sandra Orchard

  “Oh, Tom,” she pleaded, sounding utterly miserable. “She’s such a sweet old woman. There’s no way she knowingly duped me into passing counterfeit bills.”

  Too many years in law enforcement had drilled reality into him, but he bit back his you’d-be-surprised-what-sweet-old-women-can-do remark. He hated to discourage Kate’s exceptional faith in people. It had served her well when hunting down her friend’s killer. If only Molly Gilmore’s betrayals hadn’t left it so tattered. “Okay, then we’ll be up front with your neighbor. Tell her what happened and see what she has to say.”

  “Right.” Kate strode across her yard, her flowery skirt flouncing with the let’s-do-it attitude he’d grown to appreciate in her.

  The bright August sunshine glinted off her hair, and reflexively his fingers tingled. He could almost feel the silky caress of her burnished red curls. In those moments when he let her take over his thoughts, he could still breathe in her lavender scent and hear the sweet ring of her laughter.

  She stopped at the sidewalk. “Coming?”

  He grinned at the determination blazing in her eyes. He should’ve tried harder to score that second date instead of biding his time until after Molly’s trial. Just his bad luck she’d wind up in the middle of another one of his cases.

  Verna Nagy’s front door stood open with only a flimsy screen door between a possible intruder and the inside. A black and white cat met them on the porch and twined between their legs, purring loudly. Kate lifted him into her arms. “What are you doing outside, Whiskers?”

  Tom rubbed the little fellow’s neck. “Is this the cat that was cured by Grandma Brewster’s herbal brew a few months back?” The police chief’s German grandmother had been making natural remedies for townsfolk and their pets for as long as he could remember—a woman after Kate’s own heart.

  “He sure is.” Kate nuzzled her cheek against the cat’s fur. “You can’t chalk his recovery up to mind over matter, can you, Mr. Skeptic?”

  He feigned offense. “Hey, I never said the stuff doesn’t work.”

  She dropped the cat to the ground and rang the bell. “You didn’t have to.” She winked.

  At least she didn’t take his skepticism about her cure-all teas personally. He admired her work as a researcher. He really did. It was the spin-off industries that preyed on people’s quick-fix mentalities that caused him concern. In his FBI days, he’d had one partner who’d overindulged on a diet tea that not only stripped him of a few pounds but also landed him in the hospital.

  A sprightly, white-haired woman peered at them through the screen door and pierced Tom with a glare. “I already have a vacuum. The no-good, overpriced one you sold me ten years ago.”

  “Excuse me?” Tom glanced at Kate. She hadn’t told him the woman was senile.

  Her eyes sparkled with laughter. “Verna, it’s me, Kate. Your neighbor. I brought your groceries. And this is my friend, Tom. Detective Parker. He needs to ask you a couple of questions.”

  Verna’s eyes narrowed as she studied his face. “You’re not selling vacuums?”

  “No ma’am.”

  She swung the door wide. “Come in then.”

  The cat leapt through the open door, leading the way inside the tidy little house. The air smelled like an odd combination of lemon oil and the spicy scent of the town’s tea shop. The narrow-planked hardwood gleamed. Sunshine filtered through lace curtains, playing hide-and-seek with the elaborately gowned china dolls adorning the fancy Victorian furniture.

  No sign of counterfeiting equipment, not even a computer. With no garage outside, that left the basement and bedrooms.

  “You have a lovely house, Mrs. Nagy. May I have a tour?” Brazen, he knew, but it saved him the hassle of a search warrant.

  The woman glowed. “Of course, of course.”

  “I’ll just put away your groceries while you show him around.” Kate fired him a warning scowl before slipping into the kitchen.

  Photographs lined the hallway. “These your children?” Tom asked.

  Verna peered at the pictures as if she’d never noticed them before. “My son Brian and grandson Greg. My husband passed two years ago.”

  “I’m sorry. Must be lonely for you. Does your son visit often?”

  “Once a week. He’s a good boy.”

  Tom made a mental note to check into her son’s finances and make sure he was as good as his mother believed.

  The bedroom housed nothing more than a bed and dresser. The spare room had a sewing machine and piles of fabric and half-finished articles. Mrs. Nagy squinted into the room and swayed a little. Then, as if she’d forgotten him, she strolled back to the living room, sank into her recliner, and clicked on the TV with her remote.

  Tom trailed her, wondering how to wrangle his way into the basement without raising any suspicions, because from the looks of Mrs. Nagy, she’d make an easy front for a counterfeiter to exploit.

  Kate came in waving a package of frozen fish. “Did you want this in the downstairs freezer?”

  “Huh?” Mrs. Nagy looked up from the TV. “Oh, hello dear. When did you get here? Staying for tea?”

  Kate paled. “Yes. I’ll make us some.” To Tom, she whispered, “I don’t know what’s wrong. I mean, she’s forgetful sometimes, but never like this.”

  Tom relieved Kate of the package of fish. “I’ll take this to the freezer. You make her a cup of tea and then we’ll chat.”

  Kate nodded, thankfully oblivious to his motive for offering to take care of the fish. He took his time walking across the basement to the freezer, being careful not to move anything so any discovery couldn’t be thrown out of court. The basement was devoid of furniture. Instead, shelves of home canning, coated in a thick layer of dust, lined one long cement wall, while the boxes stacked along the adjacent wall looked like recent additions.

  He tossed the fish into the freezer and circled behind the stairs. A dust-free workout gym dominated the space. Her son’s?

  A large patch of dust was scraped from the floor beyond the workout area, as if something had recently been moved. Not likely by Verna, as frail as she seemed, but not without her knowledge either. With no outside exit on this level, no one could easily sneak into the basement undetected.

  By the time Tom returned to the main floor, Kate was sitting next to Verna in the living room. The steam rising from the teacup in her hand intensified the spicy scent in the air. From the TV, a theatric judge lambasted a defendant for his overly trusting nature. Tom turned down the volume, debating how to interrogate Kate’s neighbor. Showing signs of dementia, she wasn’t likely the kingpin of a counterfeiting operation. But if she repeated his questions to the wrong people, he might lose his trail before he found it. Of course, she could be faking.

  Tom took a seat kitty-corner from Verna. “Nice workout gym in your basement. Your son’s?”

  “Grandson’s.”

  “He live with you?”

  Verna glanced from him to the feuding couple standing in front of the TV judge and shook her head.

  “Her son’s wife walked out on the family,” Kate whispered. “Greg and Brian had to move into an apartment. I think Verna’s storing some of their stuff.”

  “Any idea why his wife left?” Maybe she didn’t want to get caught up in her husband’s illegal activities.

  “She ran off,” Verna hissed. “With some handyman drifter she had working on the house. I warned Brian he was traveling too much. She cleaned out their accounts. Mortgaged the house to the hilt and skipped town.”

  Sounded like Brian needed money to dig himself out of that mess.

  Unless . . . The plaintiff in the TV courtroom echoed Verna’s description. Tom cocked his head to Kate and mouthed, “For real?”

  Kate shrugged.

  Trying another tack, Tom asked the woman, “Do you get out much?”

  “My ladies’ mission sewing circle on Thursday mornings and church on Sundays.”

  A religious woman. More reason to doubt her as a viab
le suspect. Or it could be a front. He’d known plenty of criminals to hide behind a facade of uprightness. “Who takes you?”

  She waved her hand in the direction of Kate’s house. “The neighbor.”

  Kate frowned and shook her head that it wasn’t her. “What about your groceries?” Kate asked. “Who usually picks them up?”

  “I’m sorry, dear. I didn’t mean to put you out.”

  Kate patted the woman’s bony hand. “I don’t mind shopping for you. I was just curious. I want to know you’re being taken care of.”

  “My son hired a housekeeper who comes in. She picks up groceries sometimes.”

  “Do you do your own banking?” Tom asked.

  Verna’s attention drifted back to the TV as a red sports car veered into the driveway. Verna upped the volume on the remote.

  Tom strode to the TV and hit the Off button. He wasn’t buying the doddering routine. It was too convenient. “Mrs. Nagy, I’m Detective Parker. We need to know where you got the money you gave Miss Adams.”

  “Detective?” She turned her attention to Kate. “Are you in trouble?”

  “Who’s in trouble?” the lanky, fair-skinned sports car driver said through the screen, then pushed his way inside.

  Tom recognized him from the photos in the hallway. From the rumpled suit, the man looked as if he’d been on the road for hours. From the look of his car, his wife hadn’t wiped him out entirely. Tom extended a hand. “You must be Verna’s son.”

  “Brian Nagy.” The man clasped Tom’s hand in an iron grip. “And you are?”

  “Detective Tom Parker.”

  Nagy dropped Tom’s hand like a hot potato and knelt at his mom’s side. “What’s going on? What happened?”

  “Your mother came into possession of counterfeit bills, and we are trying to trace their source.”

  “Oh, Mom, I told you we need to get you into a nursing home. Things like this wouldn’t happen.” He glanced up at Tom as if he might convince her. “She doesn’t want to go. I worry about her when I’m on the road. But I never imagined anything like this. Where did it happen? What are you going to do?”

  “Your mother gave Miss Adams several counterfeit bills with which to purchase her groceries. We’re simply trying to ascertain where they came from.”

  Nagy surged to his feet and pointed at Kate. “How do you know she’s not responsible and trying to lay the blame on my mother?”

  Kate gasped.

  Tom patted the air in a calming gesture. “We’re not blaming anyone, just trying to get some answers.”

  Verna’s son gave a stiff nod and knelt next to his mother again. “Mom, do you remember where you got the money?”

  Verna shook her head, but the frightened look in her eyes told Tom she was lying. The question was—why?

  2

  “I think your neighbor is protecting someone.”

  “You can’t be serious.” Kate stopped in the middle of her driveway and turned back to Tom, who’d taken the long way around from her neighbor’s. The curtain at Verna’s side window slipped closed, but a dark shadow remained—someone watching them.

  Kate squirmed. Maybe Tom was right. No. “The woman was just scared of you,” Kate insisted, as much to convince herself as him.

  “Yeah, scared I’d arrest her son or grandson or housekeeper and maybe her as an accessory.”

  “You wouldn’t.” Not an eighty-year-old woman.

  Tom pulled open his car door. “Kate, don’t get in the middle of this. Okay?”

  She flung out her arms. “I am in the middle of this.” Before she let him leave, she had to convince him that Verna was innocent. “If Verna knew the money was counterfeit, she wouldn’t have given it to me. I think she’s just scared her son will follow through on his threat to put her in a home.”

  “I can understand why he feels the need. She seems pretty out of it . . . if she wasn’t faking.”

  Kate closed the distance between them. “Are you really that cynical?”

  “It’s my job.”

  “Then why didn’t you question her son?”

  “I will. First I want to do a background check. Don’t worry. I’ll be keeping a close eye on him. If he’s guilty, he’s bound to try to hide the evidence.”

  Like someone had done for Molly Gilmore. Kate’s fingers curled around the newspaper she’d picked up. She’d ferreted out her friend’s killer but failed to get a conviction. She couldn’t fail Verna too. “Wanna come in for a minute? I can make you coffee.”

  Tom raised an eyebrow.

  Of course, he’d question her motives. She never drank coffee, not to mention she’d resisted all his recent invitations to go out with him. “You said you wanted to keep an eye on Verna’s son.” She motioned to Brian’s car still parked in her neighbor’s driveway.

  He gave her a wry smile. “I’d love some coffee.”

  She led the way to the kitchen and tossed the newspaper onto the table.

  Tom took a seat and scanned the article about the dismissal of Molly Gilmore’s charges. Kate felt a little foolish for thinking that there might have been a connection between the counterfeit money and the Gilmores. As if a rich family like that would go to the trouble to frame her when they could just as easily buy off a judge with real money.

  Kate dug out her grinder and a small coffeemaker from the bottom cupboard, then scooped beans into the grinder and punched the Power button. She willed the noise to drown out thoughts of her friend’s death, but the high-pitched whir was no match for the voice screaming in her head. How could the judge let Molly get away with murder?

  Kate slapped off the button. It wasn’t fair. Daisy deserved justice.

  Blinking back tears, Kate tipped the freshly ground beans into the coffeemaker. She still felt as though she’d turn around and find her friend sitting at the table, nursing a cup of tea. What would Daisy think of Tom sitting here?

  Kate glanced over her shoulder at him and smiled. She’d probably say it was about time she had a man in her life. If only the circumstances were different.

  As he read the newspaper article, she hit the Play button on her answering machine.

  “You have ten new messages,” the computerized voice chirped.

  Ten? She rarely got that many calls in a month.

  “Kate, what happened?” Julie’s hushed voice demanded. She worked at the library and was probably trying not to be overheard. “It’s all over town that the cops picked you up for shoplifting or something.”

  Kate fumbled the mug she’d plucked from the cupboard. “Shoplifting!”

  Tom laughed. “You know how the grapevine goes. Tomorrow you’ll be forgotten in favor of Farmer Harvey’s two-headed calf.”

  “It was born months ago!”

  “You know what I mean.”

  The second message came on. “Kate, I just heard,” Patti said consolingly.

  Kate slumped into a kitchen chair. “Even my new lab assistant has already heard.”

  “If you need bail money or anything,” the message continued. “Just call. Well, I guess, you won’t get this if you’re in jail. I’ll stop by the police station just in case.”

  Groaning, Kate slouched over the table and buried her head under her arms. “Tell me this isn’t happening.”

  Mrs. C from next door, her hairdresser, and even Tom’s dad left messages. She pushed from her chair to shut off the last of them.

  The phone rang. She just stared at it.

  “Aren’t you going to answer that?” Empathy softened Tom’s voice.

  She shook her head. “Sooner or later, they’ll give up calling. Don’t you think?”

  After the fourth ring the answering machine kicked on. At the beep a male voice rasped, “Miss Baxter, are you there?”

  Her heart jerked at the name she’d been compelled to give up soon after her father’s death.

  “I think you’re going to want to talk to me now.”

  The blood drained from her face and limbs, abandoning her
to hazy memories she’d just as soon forget. Swaying, she grabbed the counter.

  Tom snatched up the phone. “Who is this?” A second later he slammed it back down. “Who was that?”

  “Wha—what did he say?”

  “He didn’t. He hung up.” Tom clasped her arms. “Do you know who he was?”

  She shook her head and Tom urged her back to the table.

  “But he’s called before?”

  “Yes, when I was investigating Daisy’s murder.” She swallowed the fear wadded in her throat. “Left a message. Said he’d be in touch.”

  “Then you moved.” Deep grooves slashed Tom’s brow. “Was he why you changed your number?”

  She nodded.

  “You should have told me.” The concern in his voice had an odd tightening effect on her chest.

  “It was before you knew . . . about my dad, I mean.” If only she’d never asked Tom to help her find out what really happened twenty years ago. It’s not like knowing would change anything. Except maybe his opinion of her . . . for the worse. Like father, like daughter. The long-ago taunts of her classmates pulsed in her ears, their faces morphing in her mind’s eye to those of the townsfolk who’d gawked at her when the security guard confiscated her groceries.

  Tom rubbed her arm, banishing the unwelcome memories. “Do you know what this guy’s calling about?”

  “I don’t even know who he is. No one has called me Baxter since Mom reverted to her maiden name and shuffled us halfway across the country to get away from the whispering.”

  “So this guy knows about your past.”

  “He must.”

  “But you have no idea who he is?”

  “No.” Kate surged to her feet and paced the kitchen. “Yes. I don’t know. Maybe.” She poured Tom’s coffee, needing to focus on something ordinary. She spooned in sugar and trembled so badly that half of it spilled on the counter. She drew a deep breath. “A few days before the first call, a businessman mistook me for my mother at A Cup or Two.” She added two more spoonfuls of sugar to Tom’s mug.