Vic stood in the center of the room, holding a long pole to the ceiling. A long pole with a paint roller attached.
She felt a rush of shame that she’d so easily assumed the worst about him.
Dropping Whiskers onto the lawn, she let herself in the back door. “Vic, it’s just me. Kate from next door,” she called as she walked to the room he was painting. “I just have to pick up Verna’s cat medicine.” She glanced around the room. “Looking good.”
“Work cheap too.” He dipped his roller in the tray of white paint. “Lucetta said you might need some painting done?”
“Oh.” She tried not to squirm. She hated to turn him down after already refusing his offer to take care of her lawn, but if Tom didn’t like the idea of Lucetta in the house, he probably wouldn’t be too keen on Vic being there either.
“Never mind,” Vic said, the ice in his words chilling the room.
“No, I’d be very interested in using your services. It’s just . . . I’ve decided to put off the painting for a while.”
“Sure.” He didn’t sound like he believed her.
“Um, where’d you see Lucetta?”
“She was cleaning the walls when I stopped by to quote the job.”
Relief washed over Kate. Silly, really. What did she think? That Vic had bumped into Lucetta outside, spying on Kate’s house?
The woman was not going to launch some sort of nefarious attack simply because Kate had a twenty-year-old photograph of her mother’s supposed murderer. Probably no one intended to attack her at all. Spook her out of complaining about GPC, maybe, or out of trying to solve the counterfeiting.
She scrunched her nose at the smell of Vic’s paint. Brian seemed awfully eager to sell this place. A whole new tension knotted her stomach. She’d been uneasy about calling that government office Tom had mentioned without proof, especially since Brian could justify needing to sell at least one property to pay for his mother’s care. Poor Verna. Kate sighed. All this, because she’d gotten caught with those phony bills. If only she could prove where they came from, maybe this whole nightmare would end.
Kate returned to Verna’s kitchen to fetch Whiskers’s medicine, but the jar wasn’t where Verna said it should be. Kate searched the other cupboards but still couldn’t find it. She surveyed the counters one last time. Someone had spilled a bottle of something. She tapped a damp finger to the small green leaves and looked at them more closely. Basil. Lucetta or Brian must’ve knocked the bottle from the cupboard. Kate grabbed the dishcloth and wiped up the mess then headed back to her house. She’d have to drive out to Grandma Brewster’s to pick up more of the remedy.
Back home, she rang up Tom to let him know her plans. The call went straight to voice mail, so she left a message and then made herself breakfast.
After an hour lapsed without him calling back to veto her plan, she discreetly peeked from every window in the house to ensure the guy in the silver Escort wasn’t lurking about, then headed to Grandma Brewster’s.
Once she hit the winding back roads, Kate rolled down the windows, absorbing the sights and sounds of the lush mixed forest.
When she reached Grandma Brewster’s road, one of the few in the region still unpaved, she rolled the windows back up to guard against the rising dust. Towering beech trees blotted the sun, casting the road in deep shadows. A few minutes later, Kate pulled into the driveway—if you could call the sparsely grassed swath that led to the house a driveway.
Grandma Brewster’s quiet hum emanated from behind the house. Kate pushed through the small iron gate and entered a garden-lover’s dream world. Sunlight danced over herbs of every description and color, from dense low-lying mounds of oregano to gangly wisps of dill. And the aromas! Kate closed her eyes and inhaled. Mint, basil, sage, coriander . . .
Grandma Brewster’s deep-throated laugh jerked her from her reverie. “Inspiring?”
Kate smiled, feeling an instant kinship to this dear woman. “Yes.”
For the next half hour, Grandma Brewster walked Kate through the garden, expounding on her eclectic collection of herbs and their various uses. Although the woman, with her heavy dark skirt and hairnet-plastered gray hair, had to be pushing ninety, she was more spry than many half her age, bending easily to tug a weed here and there.
“I visited Verna a couple of days ago,” Kate said once they’d come full circle and Grandma Brewster had fetched the tincture for Whiskers. “She mentioned that her old farm adjoins your property. Is that it there?” Kate pointed to an orange survey marker that looked as if it had been added recently.
“Ja,” Grandma Brewster said in her thick German accent, even as she shook her head.
“What’s wrong?”
She motioned to the survey marker with a gnarled hand. “They’ll destroy the plants.”
Kate noticed the path leading from Grandma Brewster’s garden down the meadowy hill into a stand of trees that must flank the stream Verna had mentioned. No doubt Grandma Brewster collected a few plants from along the water that wouldn’t thrive in her garden. “Verna had planned to donate the land for a park. But her son doesn’t like the idea.”
Grandma Brewster simply nodded. At her age, there was probably little that fazed her anymore.
“I think I’ll wander down and take a look before I leave. Do you mind if I leave my car parked in your drive?”
“Nein,” Grandma Brewster said and disappeared inside.
Kate tucked the tincture into her pocket and headed down the hill. As the path dipped into the trees, the air didn’t cool as she expected. Instead it grew thick and muggy like the air in a tropical rainforest. Intent on reaching the stream she could hear babbling below, she picked her way along the steep incline littered with damp, decaying vegetation.
Thorny raspberry bushes clawed at her pants, while overhead the songbirds went eerily silent. Perspiration trickled down her back, triggering an uneasy shiver.
The bushes rustled behind her. She pivoted on her heel, expecting to spot a squirrel or rabbit.
Only shadowy bushes and thick, straight tree trunks filled the hill. She continued downward, but the feeling of being watched prickled her skin.
Alert to every change in sound, she circled her fingers around the cell phone in her pocket.
No one followed you.
Were you even watching your rearview mirror?
Terrific. Not only was she talking to herself, she was disagreeing with herself!
Tom and Grandma Brewster were the only people who knew where she was, and she was pretty sure she could trust Grandma Brewster.
Spotting the stream, she silenced the voices and scrambled down the rest of the hill. The variety of plants growing along the banks was incredible. She pulled out her cell phone and snapped a few pictures. She recognized all of the plants, or at least their plant families, until she came to a serrated, broad-leafed plant with peculiar spines poking from its main stalk. The small cone-like flowers bore characteristics of the Asteraceae family, but the leaves were a bizarre cross between a fleshy cacti and gargantuan dandelion leaves. Unsure if it was poisonous, she didn’t dare pluck a leaf to show Grandma Brewster. So she took pictures from every angle, anticipation building with each at the rarity of her discovery.
A twig snapped behind her.
She spun around, losing hold of her cell phone in her haste.
As she scrambled to recover it, a gunshot cracked the air.
11
What was she thinking driving alone to Grandma Brewster’s? Tom shoved his lawnmower back into the garage and returned her call. “Where are you now?”
“I . . . Grandma . . . Tom?” Her phone cut out.
Tom grabbed his keys. “Dad, I’ve got to go. I think Kate might be in trouble.” He gunned the gas and soon reached the town limits. The back roads twined through the hilly terrain like a snake. No wonder her phone had cut out.
At the top of the next hill, he checked his phone’s reception and tapped Kate’s number again. Two seconds la
ter, it rolled to voice mail. Cutting it off, he kicked the gas.
Veering left at a Y in the road, Tom stomped on his brake. What was Pedro doing out here?
Tom coasted to a stop behind the beat-up truck the kid always seemed to be borrowing from his employer.
As Tom circled the truck, he cocked his ear toward the trees. There was no evidence Kate had been inside or that the truck had collided with her yellow Bug. A faint trail led from the truck into the woods. Tom checked the urge to follow it. His first priority was finding Kate.
As he turned back to his car, sunlight flashed through the trees on the other side of the road. Shifting sideways for a better look, he spotted a shiny silver surface. The hood of a car?
Two shots sounded from the valley behind him, followed by a blood-chilling shriek.
Drawing his gun, Tom raced toward the sound along the faint trail leading from the truck. Branches slapped his arms as he plowed through the bushes.
The hedgerow opened onto a wide rolling meadow with a stand of trees beyond.
“Kate, where are you?” he shouted, his heart hammering in his chest.
An angry male voice exploded into expletives.
Tom raced across the meadow toward the sound. The instant he plunged into the woods, a suffocating heat closed in on him. Something or someone crashed through the thick underbrush to his right. He veered right, only to catch movement through the trees to his left.
“Kate,” he shouted again, backing against a tree for cover.
“I’m here.” She bobbed into view at the brink of a steep incline.
At the sight of her unharmed, his breath swooshed from his chest. “What happened?”
“Pedro and Verna’s grandson tried to scare me into leaving. Said I was trespassing.”
“Tried to scare you. How?” He choked at the image of Kate on the business end of a gun.
“Oh, you know, waving around their guns, acting tough.” She sloughed off the confrontation as if it were all in a day’s walk through the woods, but the wobble in her voice told a different story. “Of course, they clammed up when I told them Verna said I could be here, and then they tried to shoot a rabbit, and I yelled at them. They ran off when they heard you.”
Tom reached for her hand and tugged her the rest of the way up the bank. “What are you doing out here? You said you were going to Grandma Brewster’s, not traipsing all over the countryside.”
“This is Verna’s land. Weren’t you listening? Brian’s already had it surveyed. He must’ve been plotting to sell it for a while.”
“Okay, but we have more pressing concerns right now.”
Maneuvering her behind him, Tom scanned their surroundings. “Did the boys run off in opposite directions?”
“No, together.”
Not what he hoped to hear.
“Did you hear what I said?” Kate yanked on his shirt to get him to look at her. The fire in her eyes betrayed both fear and determination. “Verna’s son had the land surveyed weeks ago. No wonder he got so angry when I said Verna wanted to make it a park.”
Tom pried her hand from his shirt, only half listening as he tugged her in the direction he’d last seen movement.
“He probably sent the boys to scare me off before I could find a rare plant or animal that could force his hand,” she went on.
“Shhh,” Tom whispered as they stepped out of the woods into the meadow. Spotting her plaid-shirted stalker disappearing over the ridge near the road, he quickly turned and clasped her arms. “Head up to Grandma Brewster’s and wait there until I return. Go.” He released her and raced the other direction after the guy.
By the time Tom crested the ridge, the guy was barreling away in his car. But through the spiraling dust, Tom caught the license plate number.
A quick search on the number yielded a name: Michael Beck, a resident of Niagara Falls. Tom jotted the address into his notebook, then put a call in to the station requesting another BOLO.
Kate huffed up behind him.
“I told you to wait at Grandma Brewster’s,” Tom growled, his insides still twisting over how close the guy had gotten to her.
“What’s going on? That wasn’t Pedro and Greg you were chasing.”
“No.” He let out a pent-up breath. “It was the guy in the silver Escort.”
“Here?” A hint of panic pitched her voice higher as her gaze darted left, then right, and she took a step closer to him.
“I spotted his car”—Tom pointed to the tracks across the road—“over there just before the gunshot.”
“Did you get the plate number?”
“Yes. Hold on a sec.”
He punched his dad’s number into his cell phone.
“Kate okay?” Dad asked the second the call connected.
“Yeah, I need a favor.”
Kate’s arms curled around her middle, and Tom’s heart crammed up into his ribs at the thought of what could’ve happened if he’d gotten here any later. “I need you to find everything you can on a Michael Beck.” Tom rattled off the guy’s address and plate number.
“What’s this for?”
“He owns the car I saw following Kate.”
“I’ll get right on it.” The urgency in his dad’s voice tightened the knot in Tom’s gut, but if anyone could figure out what this guy was up to, Dad could. Forty years on the police force had taught him more than a few shortcuts and given him plenty of favors to call in.
Tom opened the passenger door for Kate. “Get in. I’ll drive you to your car.”
“You still have no idea why he’s following me?”
“No.” His response came out more gruff than he intended. But how was he supposed to track this guy down and keep her safe at the same time? “Until I do, I want you to stay at my dad’s place.”
Her foot slipped off the car’s running board. She pivoted to face him. “I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because you live there, too. People will talk.”
“Your safety is more important.” He needed to find Peter Ratcher. Find out what he knew about Michael Beck. “The department doesn’t have the resources for a twenty-four hour security detail. Hank wouldn’t approve one anyway. Not without a direct threat.”
“Exactly. For all we know that guy could be a PI working for Molly’s lawyers. Do you really want him to catch the lead detective ‘bunking up with Molly’s victim’?”
“Get in,” Tom ground out through gritted teeth, then slammed the door shut behind her.
Kate swallowed the lump that had risen to her throat on the drive back to town. Okay, so maybe she’d been a tad extreme in protesting Tom’s offer. She turned onto her street with Tom’s car on her tail.
Clearly, he was worried. But the fact the guy in the woods drove a silver Escort could’ve been a coincidence. How could Tom have gotten a good enough look at him to know he was the same guy that had been watching her at the nursing home? Maybe he was just a prospective buyer. If some stranger had chased her, she would’ve run too.
She shook her head. She’d seen one too many silver Escorts around lately for her comfort. But apparently the idea of taking refuge with Tom scared her more.
She parked in her driveway and grabbed the tincture she’d picked up for Whiskers.
Mrs. C waved from her rose bed. The woman was like a mailman—neither hail, nor sleet, nor scorching heat kept her from tending her pristine garden. At least with Mrs. C on neighborhood watch, Kate needn’t worry about anyone sneaking around undetected.
Then again, Patti and Jarrett had done just that last weekend.
Tom pulled in behind her car and beelined to the small picket fence separating her yard from Mrs. C’s. “Could you let us know if you see any strangers watching Kate’s place?”
Mrs. C tipped up her wide-brimmed hat and gave him a sympathetic smile. “I’m afraid we’ll be getting a lot of those now that Verna’s son has put her house up for sale. Why, I’ve already seen a couple of cars sitting out i
n front of the place.”
Kate pressed a hand to her increasingly queasy stomach. Anyone could sit outside the Nagys’ house under the pretense of being an interested buyer, while really spying on her.
“Did you happen to see a silver Ford Escort?” Tom voiced her fear.
Mrs. C squinted up at the sky as if searching her memory. “Not that I recall. Why?”
“He’s someone who I thought might be interested . . . in the place.”
“Well, I’ll be sure to let you know if I see him.” Her head tilted and a mischievous glint lit her eyes. She waggled her finger between them. “You two dating?”
Kate’s jaw dropped. Mrs. C’s question came out of nowhere. And more surprising than that, Tom didn’t seem the least bit ruffled by it. Kate’s cheeks flamed as his palm came to rest at the small of her back. “She’s not ready to call it that yet,” he said in a stage whisper and winked.
Mrs. C laid a finger aside her nose and gave a crisp nod.
As soon as she’d gone, Kate turned on Tom. “I’m not ready to call it that yet?”
His grin swirled through her chest, doing strange things there.
She crossed her arms in a vain attempt to suppress the effect. “You only encourage her, you know.”
His hand grazed up her back and swept the hair from her shoulders. “You’re cute when you’re mad.”
She rolled her eyes to smother the fireworks his touch had set off in her chest. “Weren’t you going to try to find that car, Detective?”
“Are you staying home?”
Staying home? Alone? After some guy had maybe followed her into the woods? Not to mention that she was haunted by new questions about her father’s death. No thank you. “I promised Julie I’d meet her for lunch. Then . . .”—there had to be something else—“oh, I thought I’d drop in on Verna.” As much as Kate didn’t want to be the one to tell the dear woman, Verna needed to know what her son was doing with her land. There has to be some way we can stop him.
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