Blind Trust

by Sandra Orchard

  “Whoa! How’d we switch to counterfeiting?”

  “Don’t you see? What better motive for printing money than covering gambling debts? Only now he doesn’t have to, because he’s got bigger crops to harvest.”

  The corner of Tom’s mouth ticked up at her comparison. He edged back the window sheer and scanned the street. “Nagy’s background check didn’t show a high debt load, beyond what his ex-wife left him with, but if he’s borrowed under the table, he could be grasping at creative ways to meet payments.” Tom let the curtain slip back into place. “If you’re worried about Nagy selling the place without Verna’s consent, maybe before you call the OPGT, you should talk to her. Right now, I’m more concerned about the guy who’s been following you.”

  “What?” Her gaze veered to the window. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m sorry, that’s not how I wanted to tell you.” Tom guided her to the sofa, but his tender expression only made her nerves jumpier than ever.

  “Someone’s following me? When? Where?”

  “At the nursing home.” Tom hesitated as if measuring his words. “The driver of a silver Ford Escort was watching you.”

  Her chest tightened. “The same car we saw Sunday.”

  “Yeah.” Tom expelled the single word with a breath of frustration that only left her more rattled.

  “Who is he? What does he want?”

  Tom reached for her hand, but the warm strength of his fingers wasn’t potent enough to slow her galloping pulse. “I’ve issued a BOLO for his car. Once we locate him, we’ll get answers. All I know at this point is that he’s the same guy who was spying on Peter Ratcher at the hardware store.”

  “So you think he’s connected to GPC?” Kate gulped so loud Tom closed his other hand over hers.

  “Unless you can think of anyone else who would be interested in following both of you.”

  She closed her eyes and tried to recall the man’s image from the video. “He seemed vaguely familiar, but I don’t think I’ve seen him around the research station. Do you think he could be behind the text message too?”

  “I don’t know.” He squeezed her hand consolingly. “I think Julie would’ve said something if she recognized him, but I’ll print off a still from the video clip and ask the rest of the library staff if they recognize him.”

  Suddenly feeling like a cornered animal, Kate sprang to her feet and paced. “Do you think he—?” She choked on the words.

  But the empathy in Tom’s eyes told her he knew what she was thinking. “Until we figure out who this guy is and what he wants, I’d rather you don’t go out alone, or without at least letting me know where you’re heading. You okay with that?”

  Everything in her reared at the thought of letting this guy control what she did.

  Tom must’ve sensed her reluctance. “There’s something else.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “This note was on my car this afternoon.”

  Where Kate’s concerned, trust no one. Her life could depend on it.

  10

  “Stop!” Kate cried out, seeing visions of the tipping oak bureau pinning her to the wall.

  Lucetta dropped her side of the bureau to the floor. “Sorry, I thought you had it.”

  As the would-be death trap teetered back onto solid ground, the note’s trust no one warning screamed through Kate’s mind. She gulped a breath. “It’s no good. We’ll have to pull the drawers. This thing is just too heavy.” Only at this rate, they’d never get to washing the walls and ceiling in preparation for painting. Let alone get to chatting about counterfeiting suspects. “You start piling the drawers on the bed and I’ll go see if I can find a big piece of cardboard that we can shimmy under the bureau so we can push it across the floor.”

  As she retrieved cardboard from her recycle box, she heard a car pull to the curb. She edged around the corner to peek out the kitchen window without being seen. Tom. Perfect.

  When he didn’t get out, she dialed his cell from the kitchen phone. “You just going to sit there?”

  He laughed. “You saw that, huh?”

  “Uh, yeah. You’ve got me downright paranoid.” She moved so he’d see her in the window and offered a finger-fluttering wave. “I look every time I hear a car. I’m going to have an ulcer before the weekend’s out.”

  “I’m sure you have a tea for that,” he teased.

  “Very funny. C’mon, we’re trying to move furniture and in need of serious muscle.”

  “Be right there.”

  Kate unlocked the deadbolt on the front door on her way through the living room with the cardboard. She felt better having Tom here, but she doubted she’d manage to get Lucetta talking about anything remotely connected to the counterfeiting now. Of course, with some creep spying on her and leaving Tom cryptic notes, figuring out who was behind the counterfeiting had dropped from the top of her priority list.

  “Here we go,” she said, reaching the bedroom.

  Lucetta lowered the bureau’s top drawer onto the bed, her face pasty.

  “What’s wrong?”

  With a trembling hand, she held out a framed photograph. “You know this man?” From the look on Lucetta’s face, she knew him.

  Kate’s breath caught in her throat. She’d hidden the photograph of her father after Peter warned that she wouldn’t want GPC figuring out she was the daughter of their most hated former employee.

  Lucetta waved the photo in Kate’s face. “Why you have his picture?”

  Kate reared at the vehemence in her voice. “I knew him a long time ago.”

  “You know where he is now?” Her thumb drilled into the glass at Dad’s throat.

  Kate’s own throat closed at the sight. “He’s dead. He died twenty years ago.”

  Lucetta’s eyes widened, and then she muttered something in a language Kate didn’t recognize.

  “How do you know him?” Lucetta had to be mistaken. She couldn’t possibly have known him. She would’ve been twelve or fourteen at most when Kate’s father died.

  Pure hatred sparked in Lucetta’s eyes. “He killed my mother.”

  As Tom stepped into Kate’s house, a shriek swiped his breath. He charged toward the sound.

  “You call me a liar?” Lucetta stormed from the bedroom. “I no work for you.”

  Tom grabbed her arm. “Whoa. What’s going on?”

  Kate lurched through the door, her face ashen. “Wait, I’m sorry. Please don’t go.”

  Lucetta teetered on the balls of her feet, her eyes narrowed in his direction, then shrugged off his hold.

  “What’s going on?” he repeated, this time redirecting the question to Kate.

  The pained look in her eyes told him this was serious. “She says my . . .” Her voice hitched. “She says Mike Baxter killed her mother.”

  “What?”

  “Si.” Lucetta nodded. “Gringos came to our village looking for her. She . . . How you say?” Lucetta fluttered her hand, her gaze searching the air. “Like old lady Brewster.”

  “An herbalist?” Kate asked.

  “Si. Gringos want to know how she make people well.”

  Kate’s frightened gaze collided with Tom’s. The story fit Peter’s.

  “They settle in our village,” Lucetta continued. “Build us new huts. Give us children sweets.”

  “And this man”—Kate lifted the photograph clutched in her hand—“he was with them?”

  Lucetta shook her head. “He came later.”

  “These men,” Tom interjected. “Were they interested in one plant in particular?”

  “Si. Amendoso.”

  “Amendoso?” Kate repeated.

  Judging by Kate’s frown, she’d never heard of it, which also fit Peter’s story.

  Tom urged the pair to sit, his mind reeling. What had her father gotten himself into?

  Lucetta shuffled to the living room and perched on the edge of a side chair while Kate joined him on the sofa.

  “Is the plant nati
ve to your country?”

  “Si.” Tears shimmered in Lucetta’s eyes. “Mama said plant rare. When Mama picked leaves, she always careful to only pick speckled leaves and not overpick. Then the gringos—”

  “They came to your village and took the plant?” Kate filled in, shooting Tom a quick glance, obviously desperate to understand what happened but sounding afraid at the same time.

  “Yes, when I a girl.”

  Lucetta didn’t look much older than Kate. Her village could be the one Baxter had visited.

  Lucetta sliced her hand toward Kate’s photograph. “Then this man came. He talk to Mama and to other gringos. He only stay a few days and took seedlings Mama give him.”

  “He left?” Hope rose in Kate’s voice. “But you said he killed . . . ?”

  “The fire start after he left. Mama and gringos try to save the plants. But they burn. They all burn.”

  Kate seemed to crumple under the weight of Lucetta’s words.

  “If the fire started after he left, then why would you think he had anything to do with it?” Tom asked.

  “Men in village caught him.”

  “Mr. Baxter?”

  “No, man mister pay to drive him. But he say gringo paid him to set fire too.”

  “Mr. Baxter paid him?” Tom clarified.

  “Si, he say same person paid him to drive paid him to burn plants.”

  Kate’s teeth dug into her bottom lip as she vehemently shook her head. “He lied. Someone must’ve paid him to lie.”

  Lucetta’s eyes narrowed. “How you know? What is mister to you?”

  Tom moved between Kate and Lucetta, before Kate said something she shouldn’t. “Perhaps it’d be best to put off the cleaning for another day.”

  “She not answer my question!”

  Tom pulled out his wallet. “How long have you been here? I’ll pay you for your time.”

  Lucetta’s gaze slid from Kate to his wallet. “Not long.”

  He handed her the twenty he still owed Kate. “Then this is for your travel. Kate will be in touch to set up another time, okay?”

  “If I don’t get other job.” She accepted the payment and headed for the door.

  The sound of him clicking the lock behind Lucetta propelled Kate into action. She dashed toward her desk. “The fire. That must be what Dad saw on the TV in the airport. He must’ve realized his boss paid his driver to go back and burn the plants, believing Dad would deliver the only surviving ones in the world, with all their healing properties.”

  Tom closed the distance between them and gently clasped her arm. “You don’t have to do this, Kate.”

  She jerked from his grasp. “Yes, I do. He was my father.” Her voice cracked. “I need to clear his name.” She clicked on the internet icon on her computer, her hands shaking. “The other night I found an article about a fire that destroyed a remote Colombian village around the same time as Dad’s arrest.” She fixed her gaze on the computer screen, her fingers flying over the keyboard. “Did his arrest report come in?”

  “No, it’ll be Monday now.” He let out a long sigh. “Kate, I don’t like the idea of you having Lucetta here again. Clearly her bitterness runs deep. If she figures out that’s your father in the photo, who knows what she might do.”

  “You think she’d take revenge on me?”

  “It’s not uncommon,” he said gently, not wanting to frighten her, while at the same time needing her to take the threat seriously. She had too many directed her way. By the time the chief cancelled the BOLO on the Escort, they’d stopped more than two dozen cars. Not one of them harbored the man who’d followed her. The man who might still be out there waiting for her.

  Kate didn’t seem to hear his response. She leaned closer to the computer. “This is it. The article I told you about.”

  Tom skimmed the article. “I suppose that could be Lucetta’s village. The timing fits. But it doesn’t say anything about researchers being killed or rare plants being destroyed.”

  “Reporters rushing to report breaking news tend to miss a lot of details,” she said, clearly not about to be swayed.

  “But if the arsonist pointed a finger at a gringo, that’s a big detail to miss.”

  “Maybe GPC bribed the police to squash the story.”

  A chill crawled down Tom’s spine at the prospect of what GPC would do if she reopened it.

  “That has to be what happened,” she said, the confidence in her voice growing. “Because if my dad was really guilty, they’d have no motive to squash the story. It was one more strike against him. The truth was only a threat to them if they paid the guy to torch the lab.”

  “Your dad worked for them. I doubt they’d have wanted the negative publicity either way.”

  Her shoulders sank.

  Tom scanned the article again, knowing how important believing in her father’s innocence was to her, but all they had to go on was Peter’s say-so and a vague article. Of course, the fact he still hadn’t been able to locate Peter since he stopped by the station to view the video clip Monday suggested not only that she was right, but that GPC was still covering their tracks. And that’s what worried him more.

  “My dad did not kill those people,” she said adamantly.

  “I’m sure that’s true. I’m just not sure we can prove it.”

  “We have to try. GPC needs to pay for what they did to Lucetta’s village. To my family.” She shoved her chair away from the computer desk and picked up the photograph of her father. Her fingers lovingly traced his image. “My mother never recovered from losing him. I’m not even sure she ever really believed he was innocent.” She swiped at a tear. “For twenty years, I was forbidden to talk about him, as if he never existed, or worse, as if I should be ashamed of who he was.”

  Tom folded her in his arms, speechless at the depth of pain in her voice, the shame she’d buried so deep he’d had no inkling of how much it affected her. “I’m sorry, Kate.”

  “My dad deserves to be remembered,” she mumbled against his shirt. “He was a good man.”

  Yes, Tom suspected that’s exactly why her father took the secret to his grave—to protect his wife and child. As long as the secret died with him, the rest of his family wasn’t a threat to GPC. Except . . . her mother must’ve known something. He could understand moving to escape the whispering behind their backs. But changing their name was extreme—as if she knew they’d be in danger if they were found.

  Just as Peter had warned.

  Flames licked toward her like hungry lions.

  “No!” Kate’s scream jolted her awake. Drenched in perspiration, she flipped on the light and stalked to the bathroom.

  The nightmare had been just like the one from earlier in the week, only the fire wasn’t in her lab, but in Lucetta’s village.

  He killed my mother.

  Kate cringed at the memory of Lucetta’s words. She leaned over the sink and frowned at her reflection in the mirror. At the red hair and green eyes she’d inherited from her father. Reminders that had always brought sadness to Mom’s eyes. Did Mom know what really happened? Or had Dad pushed her away the same way he had Peter, thinking she’d be safer?

  Then when he died, maybe she’d never been able to get past the hurt that he didn’t fight hard enough to clear his name. Or did she really think he was wrong to keep those plants from GPC? That he was guilty?

  Because if she believed he was innocent, why didn’t Mom fight to clear his name the way Kate had fought to clear Daisy’s?

  Something inside Kate gave way. She snatched a towel and scrubbed the perspiration from her face, wishing she could scrub the question from her mind as easily. Because only one answer made sense: Mom didn’t believe Dad was innocent.

  Kate slumped onto the edge of the cold tub, buried her face in the towel, and sobbed. Lord, why did I have to go and dig up the past when I’d finally put it behind me?

  Why couldn’t knowing he loved me be enough?

  She dragged the towel down her face an
d shoved the unwelcome emotions back inside. Deep inside. Tom hadn’t abandoned her after learning about her dad the way Mom had always warned that people would. But no one wanted to hang around an emotional basket case for long. That was one lesson Mom had taught her well.

  Kate headed to the kitchen to brew a cup of tea.

  Whiskers followed her, mewing pitifully.

  “I know I fed you last night. You can’t be that hungry.” She jostled his still-full food dish. “Look, you didn’t even eat it, silly. No wonder you’re hungry.”

  Whiskers sniffed the bowl, then sat back on his haunches and yowled.

  “What’s wrong? Did Verna soften your food with something? Milk maybe?” Kate poured some milk over the kibble.

  Whiskers didn’t seem impressed.

  “You miss your mistress, don’t you?” She lifted the cat and was alarmed by how much weight he’d lost. “You’re skin and bones.” She ruffled his fur. “You have to eat, baby.” Remembering the plant she’d caught him nibbling, she gave herself a mental throttle. “I’m sorry, Whiskers. I forgot all about fetching Grandma Brewster’s special mixture for you.”

  The sun peeked over the horizon, shining a bright swath across her kitchen floor. She set Whiskers down and pulled the kettle off the stove. “No time like the present, I suppose.” She peered out the window. No sign of a silver Ford Escort staking out her house. Tom wouldn’t object to her scooting next door just for a sec. She quickly dressed, grabbed the key, and hurried out. At the sight of Vic’s truck in Verna’s driveway, she stopped short.

  He never mowed her lawn on Saturdays. Always Tuesdays. She cocked her head and suddenly clued in to what else was off.

  No sound of a lawnmower engine. She scanned the yard but couldn’t see him anywhere. Movement behind the far bedroom window—the open bedroom window—caught her eye. Would Vic rob Verna’s house so brazenly?

  Kate slipped back inside and grabbed her cell phone, then stole across the yard for a closer look. Whiskers scampered out behind her and meowed loudly. “Shh,” she scolded, which only made him meow louder. Eyeing the open window, Kate scooped Whiskers up and muffled his whine with her hand. When the sound settled into a purr, she peeked over the edge of the windowsill.