Shoot from the Lip

by Leann Sweeney

  “Don’t bother. That stupid, deceitful man won’t be back, if he knows what’s good for him.”

  Uh-oh. The only deceitful person on her radar right now was Harrison Foster. Had he attacked Aunt Caroline?

  The nurse, meanwhile, was going over the discharge instructions, but neither of us was listening.

  “Have you called Kate?” Aunt Caroline asked.

  This was worse than I imagined. How could I tell my sister that she was involved with—

  “Have you called Katherine?” Aunt Caroline repeated.

  “I wanted to wait until I had more information on your condition. Now I can tell her that even a blow to the head doesn’t knock you off course.”

  “Very funny, Abigail. They wouldn’t let me use the phone or I would have called her myself. You must tell her to come to my house straightaway and not waste a minute.” She then turned to the nurse, who’d given up on trying to talk to either of us. “Now, young woman, where are my clothes?”

  Once we were in my car, I tried Kate’s office and got the answering service. They were gone for lunch. I left a message for Kate to come over to Aunt Caroline’s if she could, that there had been a little mishap. I repeated the same message on Kate’s voice mail. Meanwhile, I had to somehow convince Aunt Caroline that I should be the one to tell Kate about Foster’s scam—but only after I made sure my aunt was protected.

  “We’re not leaving this parking garage until I make certain you’re not attacked again.” But as soon as I called DeShay and got his voice mail, I remembered he would be in court today. There was White—but he might be following the notebook lead, and besides, I couldn’t see him agreeing to babysit an obstinate old woman. Jeff had more than enough on his hands, and that left only one person with the manpower I needed.

  Aunt Caroline interrupted my thoughts. “Can’t you get that policewoman to sit outside the house?”

  “You haven’t exactly been cooperative, and besides, the police are too busy to park outside your house for your convenience.”

  When she didn’t snap back at me, I glanced at her. She had a thumb on her cheek and two fingers on her forehead.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “After they scanned and X-rayed me, they gave me Tylenol for this headache, but it’s coming back with a fury.”

  I grabbed my purse and a bottled water from the backseat. I found the Advil and handed her two tablets and the water. I also pulled out Kravitz’s card. “One more call and I think we’re in business.”

  “Do you have call waiting if Kate phones?”

  “Yes, Aunt Caroline.” I was sure she’d much rather have the sympathetic niece with her now, instead of me.

  “I need a favor,” I said when Kravitz answered.

  “Which means you have something to offer in return, I take it?”

  “Yes, but this favor has nothing to do with Emma’s case.”

  “You expect me to believe that?” He was mocking, condescending, heck, pick your favorite unpleasant adjective.

  I was tired of arguing with people. “I need one of your guys—Louie might work. My aunt was the victim of a burglary and assault today, and I’d like a deterring presence outside her house.”

  “I like that. Deterring presence. What do you have for me in return?”

  “When I see your man in place, I’ll call you back.” I gave him Aunt Caroline’s address and disconnected.

  As I pulled out of the parking spot, I turned to her. “How’s the headache?”

  “Splitting. If you’ve finished playing detective, could you please get me home? I’m sure your sister will be waiting for us.”

  But we soon learned Kate hadn’t arrived yet. The print unit was just leaving, and Price and Rowe met us in the driveway. They again asked Aunt Caroline for a statement. She again refused. In her oh-so-effective dismissive tone, she said she had a headache and might feel up to reporting this crime later.

  They both shrugged and Price said, “It’s your call.” Then they left.

  Whoever Kravitz was sending hadn’t shown, so I took my gun from my glove compartment, then held Aunt Caroline’s elbow as I led her up the walkway. She didn’t protest. I noticed someone had been nice enough to board and duct-tape the broken window. Maybe Mr. Desmond or Rowe. Certainly not Officer Price, who was probably counting her blessings that Aunt Caroline wasn’t her relative.

  “Please get me an ice pack, Abigail. A ginger ale, too. I have mixers under the wet bar....” She put a hand to her head and closed her eyes. “But, of course, you know that.”

  “Yeah,” I said quietly. “I know where everything is.”

  I helped her into the living room after we both removed our shoes. Why she opted for white carpet was beyond me. The living room was directly across the large marble foyer from the study.

  Once Aunt Caroline was settled on her gold sofa, her feet propped on a matching ottoman, and I’d fetched her the ice and the ginger ale, she said, “Are you sure your phone is on? Kate should have at least called by now.”

  “Relax. You should—” But then my cell did ring. “Not Kate,” I told her, then answered.

  Kravitz said, “My man is outside. Your turn.”

  “Hang on.” I looked at Aunt Caroline, who was holding the ice pack at the back of her neck. “I need a minute.”

  Before I walked into the foyer, I glanced out the front window and saw a car parked across the street. Once I was out of Aunt Caroline’s earshot, I said, “I’m getting closer to the truth. There may be a notebook with valuable information stored with Emma’s household things. The police are looking for it, probably as we speak.”

  “That’s all?”

  “We may learn the name and address of Christine O’Meara’s killer from that notebook. I’d say that’s big news.”

  “You may learn the name? You’re not sure?” he said. “And how did you find out about this notebook?”

  “Can this wait? I just brought my aunt home from the hospital.”

  “What does this assault on your family have to do with the case, Abby?”

  “Absolutely nothing.” I was trying to keep my voice down, but Aunt Caroline must have heard me.

  “Abigail, who are you talking to?” she called.

  “I have to go, Paul. Thanks for the help.” I closed the phone. Back in the living room, I sat on the matching love seat across from my aunt. “Time for your story.” I wasn’t about to admit I’d learned everything about Harrison Foster. That would only make her horrible day worse. The one thing that made her happy was being in possession of disturbing information.

  “I know you will be very perturbed with me, Abigail, but what I did was out of love. Please remember that.”

  “Okay. Go on.”

  “Your sister has made a horrible mistake, and I have the proof to help her understand how foolish she’s been.”

  “Apparently you’ve been checking up on her new friend Clint.”

  “I have. He’s married and has a child, and—”

  “Like I said last night, she knows all that, Aunt Caroline.”

  “Let me finish. His name, as I told you, is Harrison Foster, he does not work for a pharmaceutical company and he was the one who attacked me when I confronted him this morning.”

  “That’s unbelievable,” I said. Damn. Foster was her attacker. Kate was a shrink, for crying out loud. Couldn’t she tell this guy was a major creep?

  “I learned the hard way that he’s a very violent man. Your sister has gotten herself into serious trouble, Abigail.”

  “Why did he attack you?”

  “Because he could. You were supposed to be here, remember? But he was early and you were late. When I showed him the report my investigator had given me, he went into a rage. I fought him off as best I could, but he grabbed the report and ran when that old fart Desmond showed up.”

  “That old fart might have saved your life, Aunt Caroline. What else did your investigator learn?”

  “He’s getting
a divorce and has his own apartment. The wife and girl live in the house—somewhere in the Memorial area. All the details are in the report, which he stole from me.”

  I took a deep breath, becoming increasingly worried that Kate hadn’t called. Was she with this guy right now? Would he go nuts like he had earlier and hurt my sister? “Before he went off the deep end, did he offer any explanation for why he lied about who he really was?”

  “I didn’t ask questions, Abigail. I knew everything there was to know. I simply told him he was a charlatan and that he needed to stay away from Kate. Don’t you see this is about her money? He planned on swindling as much as he could from her and then disappearing.”

  “Oh, I understand.” I’d come to the same conclusion. Foster’s game was up, and I could only hope he’d decided to disappear as quickly as he’d entered Kate’s life. “What detective agency did you use, Aunt Caroline? I keep duplicates of anything I generate for a client, and I’m sure they do, too. I’d like to read everything they learned.” There could be more information than I had, more than Aunt Caroline remembered.

  She gave me the name and said their card was on the bulletin board over her kitchen desk.

  “Good,” I said. “We can have them e-mail that report to your computer and—”

  “What computer?” Her expression reminded me of a lying child caught red-handed.

  “The one I gave you. The one I set up for you in your family room.”

  “The lack of a computer is rather a long story.” She avoided eye contact. “All you need to know is that I do not have one.”

  “Great. Let me think about this.” She could have them send everything to my e-mail account, but though I could pick up the message on my BlackBerry, the print on the download would be small. It seemed far easier to print out everything at home and be back here within twenty or thirty minutes. Besides, I’d then have time to make an important phone call without Aunt Caroline asking questions about what I was doing and why.

  I told her the plan and had her make the call to the agency and give them my e-mail address; then I left. The man watching the house wasn’t Louie. He was younger and seemed less than thrilled with this boring job. I gave him Foster’s description and took off for home.

  I called Jeff as soon as I was on the road and told him about the attack and how I couldn’t get hold of Kate even though I had tried several times. He didn’t like the fact that Kate wasn’t returning my calls any more than I did. He said he’d call in Foster’s description as Aunt Caroline’s assailant. She might not be willing to file charges, but they might be able to pick this guy up on something else.

  I said, “I’ll call you back as soon as I get the Foster report—maybe in the next fifteen minutes.” I hung up and glanced at my phone. The current wallpaper on my display was a picture of my sister sitting on my couch holding Diva. “Where are you? Did you somehow find out the truth and are licking your wounds somewhere?”

  I closed the phone and concentrated on my driving. The sick feeling in my gut that had begun last night when I found out my sister had been used and lied to was growing larger with each passing minute. But if she did know about Foster, maybe she was at my house hiding out, embarrassed and angry, not wanting to talk to anyone.

  She wasn’t at home. With Diva and Webster following on my heels, I’d checked every room before I went to the computer. I accessed my e-mail, and the message from Aunt Caroline’s PI was waiting in my in-box. I saw there was more than a report. JPEG files were attached. Pictures. I saved the attachments to my desktop and printed them out. The report came first, and I was already reading how they had learned Foster’s true identity as the pictures slowly filled the printer tray.

  Their investigation had been as easy as shooting cans off a fence, and I wondered how much Aunt Caroline had paid them to follow Foster for a day and then probably run the same computer search I had.

  The last picture was still printing, but I picked up the others. One was a grainy shot of Foster entering an apartment, the next a better picture of the entrance to the complex with the name prominent—Garden Grove. Then a photo of a brick home with well-tended landscaping and a Lexus in the driveway. This one was obviously taken with a telephoto lens, and so was the next—Foster leaving the car. Next came a shot of the front door and a woman standing there. Foster was leaving, a teenage girl by his side. The daughter. He’d even lied about her—told Kate he had a son. Her head was turned as she waved good-bye to her mother, and I couldn’t see her face. But the last picture, the ink still wet, had a full shot of Foster’s face as well as his daughter’s.

  I blinked ... blinked again, and then I almost strangled on my own heart.

  That girl could have been Shannon O’Meara’s twin.

  26

  My hands were shaking when I called Jeff this time. “I’m e-mailing you a picture of a woman standing in the front entrance to her house. Please show it to Loreen and tell me if she recognizes her. I’ll be waiting.”

  “Abby, what’s happened?”

  “I’ll explain after she looks at the picture and you call me back, okay?”

  “I’ll be online in a sec. Take it easy. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

  He hung up, and all I could do was walk in circles, matching the swirl in my brain with my feet. Harrison Foster didn’t scam my sister to get her money. He scammed her to get close to an investigation that threatened to open up his ugly box of secrets. Took advantage of her so he could hang around and put tracking devices on my car, show up anywhere I went as I followed the clues. Hell, I’ll bet he even pumped Kate for information, and did it all with his dimpled, guileless smile.

  He probably couldn’t get to Emma’s house fast enough once the TV stations and radio news programs had broadcast their breaking story about city workers finding baby bones under a demolished house. The photo of Emma and me had appeared in the Chronicle the next day, and Harrison Foster was in business. When he searched the Internet and learned I had a sister, he must have felt like he hit the jackpot.

  But the only real proof was a photo of a girl who looked like Shannon. What if Loreen didn’t recognize Beth Foster as the pregnant woman she and Christine had cleaned for? What did I have then? Jeff, come on. Call me back.

  And then I remembered the notebook. Had White found it, or had Emma tossed it? I grabbed my purse and fumbled through all the useless things I insist on carrying around until I found Don White’s crumpled card, the one he’d given me the night Jerry Joe Billings had been murdered.

  I called his cell, and he answered right away with a brusque, “White here.”

  “It’s Abby,” I said. “Did Emma let you look in the storage unit for the notebook?”

  “What’s going on, Abby? You sound in a panic.”

  “I am. The notebook?”

  “I’m looking at it, so you can cool your jets. Checking out all these names might take us—”

  “There are names?”

  “Oh, yeah. But like I said—”

  “Can you look for one name in particular?”

  “Sure. But what have you got?”

  “I think a man named Harrison Foster might be who we’re looking for. Can you check and see if he or his wife, Beth Foster, was a client of Christine’s?”

  “Sure, but how’d you find this out, Abby?” he asked.

  I wanted to scream at him to shut up and just do what I asked, but I managed to say calmly, “Please, Don. Look for the name first. It’s important.”

  What seemed a decade later he said, “It’s here. She cleaned for a Mr. and Mrs. Harrison Foster on Wednesdays.”

  There it was. Proof. And I suddenly wanted to throw up.

  “Tell me what’s going on, Abby.”

  “This man almost killed my aunt this morning. He’s been dating my sister to get close to us. You need to find him. Now.” I gave White the addresses from the PI report, and he said he was on it.

  I hung up and the other phone rang. The landline. The c
aller ID read HEWITT BANK AND TRUST, where we have our CompuCan accounts—the computer business that Daddy left us. What the hell did they want? I couldn’t deal with company business right now. But when the answering machine offered the caller a chance to leave a message, I heard a voice I recognized. “This is Jane Edgar from Hewitt Bank and Trust. It is urgent that I speak with Abigail Rose immediately concerning—”

  I snatched up the phone, knowing that Jane Edgar wouldn’t use the word urgent if she didn’t mean it. “This is Abby. What is it, Jane?”

  “This concerns a transfer of funds, Abby. Can you please verify your address?”

  “Transfer of funds? Verify my address?” I said, confused.

  “I must verify—”

  “You know me. You know where I live. What’s this about?”

  “I have to go through standard procedure on this, check your passwords, everything. You’ll understand soon enough. Please, let’s go through the steps so I can document that I followed bank protocol.”

  I gave her what she wanted, even had to bring up my accounts online and look for a specific account number.

  When I was finished with her “standard procedure,” Jane said, “We have a request to transfer five hundred thousand dollars from the joint account you share with your sister, Katherine Rose. It’s to go to a numbered account in the Cayman Islands. As per this account agreement, we must have your authorization to do this for any amount over ten thousand dollars.”

  I couldn’t speak. I felt like I was listening to a radio not tuned in to any station, one just giving off static.

  “Abby? Are you there?”

  “Um ... can I check into this and get back to you? Meanwhile, don’t move any money, okay?”

  “I think that’s wise,” she said solemnly. “Please ask for me when you call back.” She disconnected.

  I slowly replaced the handset in its cradle. I felt like I was drowning, struggling in a current that threatened to suck me under. There was only one reason Kate would need that kind of money.

  Foster. He had her.

  And she’d done the one thing she could to send me a message. Rather than transfer money from any of her private accounts, she chose the business account, knowing the bank would call me.