Killing Kate: A Novel (Riley Spartz Book 4)

by Julie Kramer

  “Oh, sweetie,” Ed called after me. “No registration, so best you not show off.”

  My heart wasn’t really into being armed and dangerous. Maybe if I went legal and got a conceal and carry permit. But that legit stuff took time. Maybe if I named my gun. But Saint Saturday-Night Special didn’t have quite the flair of Saint Glock. Neither did Saint Six-shooter.

  CHAPTER 62

  Locked out of my house, I bought new socks and underwear, as well as jeans, two crew shirts, and a corduroy blazer to tide me over until I grasped what was ahead. I dropped most of the stuff off at the station because I didn’t want to buy a suitcase.

  Delmonico had left a message at my desk asking where I was staying in case the police needed to reach me. The chief probably wanted him poised to make an easy arrest.

  “I haven’t decided yet.” None of his business, I figured. Telling him I was likely to crash on the couch in the Channel 3 green room made me sound pitiful. He settled for my cell phone number.

  “Anything new on Laura’s murder?” I didn’t expect much of an answer and didn’t get one, other than that the autopsy had confirmed blunt force trauma as the cause of death.

  “Your boyfriend still in town?”

  “No, he needed to fly back to the job.”

  I had noticed the detective being much nicer to me when Garnett was watching, but I didn’t want to call Delmonico on his behavior. Plenty of time for that later—after I became a cop’s wife again. So I asked Delmonico to keep in touch if he heard anything; he made the same request of me. But I suspected neither of us really thought the other would stick to our deal.

  • • •

  I found Ed’s revolver settled on the bottom of my purse as I rooted for change at the pop machine. Carrying the weapon around made me feel nervous and guilty, so I unloaded the gun and filed it in my desk drawer under G.

  I decided not to tell Garnett. He actually favored me owning a firearm, and had even taken me to the shooting range once, but the timing for me and gun ownership was never right. Maybe it could be a marriage present. A wedding-night special.

  Buried in the mess on my floor was Laura’s tote bag. I sorted through my dead roommate’s wallet and papers, telling myself I was investigating, not snooping.

  In a folder was Kate’s will, spelling things out just as her attorney explained. My eyes fell on her signature, and again I noted it was quite different from the inscription in Black Angel Lace.

  We all know a day will come when our last will and testament moves from theoretical to actual and our heirs get all. Our only consolation? We won’t be there to watch.

  The will was drawn up two years ago by her attorney, Peter Marsden. Kate’s signature was witnessed by two other people. Usually law firms use employees because most clients don’t want friends or family to know their final wishes until after they’re dead. I glanced at the names and drew a sharp breath.

  One name meant nothing to me, the other read Karl Dolezal.

  Dolezal. An unusual name, shared by the Black Angel’s Teresa Dolezal Feldevert. An Internet search told me only 142 people in Minnesota shared the same last name. Did he share Black Angel blood?

  I couldn’t shake my wariness over coincidences, and working on her legal matters would put Dolezal in position to know her pen name and her address. So he shot to the top of my suspect list.

  I considered going straight to Delmonico. But the cops had already denigrated my Black Angel theory and this was admittedly more of the same.

  I needed to find out more about this man.

  CHAPTER 63

  Dolezal was right. With her house off limits, Riley Spartz gravitated to Channel 3. He found her vehicle in the hotel parking ramp; if he watched the exit long enough, he’d discover where she had moved.

  By now, he was more amused than aggrieved by the mistaken-identity murder. Apparently he hadn’t been the only one expecting to find the TV reporter at home.

  Watching the late news, he learned that the woman he’d beaten in her bed was the older sister of his previous victim. He wished he would have known of that relationship at the time of her death. It would have made the killing more meaningful. He was now optimistic that the Black Angel would absolve him because of that connection.

  The news story about the blundered beating had included an interesting bit of background about Riley Spartz: her parents.

  ((PACKAGE TRACK))

  RILEY SPARTZ’S MOM AND DAD

  DROVE UP FROM THEIR FARM

  ALONG THE MINNESOTA-IOWA

  BORDER TO ASSURE THEMSELVES

  SHE WAS STILL ALIVE.

  ((SPARTZ DAD))

  TO GET NEWS THAT YOUR

  DAUGHTER HAS BEEN MURDERED,

  WELL, THERE’S NOTHING WORSE

  THAN THAT.

  ((SPARTZ MOM))

  HEARING HER VOICE TELL US IT

  WAS ALL A MISTAKE WASN’T GOOD

  ENOUGH, WE HAD TO TOUCH HER.

  He made notes of their names, then checked computer property tax records of counties along the Minnesota-Iowa state line to determine their homestead location. It charmed him that their land straddled the two states for which he felt such affinity. He might even get a head start on the Spartz family tree.

  While sitting in his car, he pretended to be reading the newspaper, but was really just fixated on the front-page headline about the murder. Rain started to pound against the windshield. That pleased him because he would be less noticeable.

  CHAPTER 64

  I called the law firm and a computer voice told me to punch in the first three letters of the last name of the person I was trying to reach. D-O-L. A click, then a recording: “You have reached the desk of legal assistant Karl Dolezal. Please leave a message and I will return your call.”

  Because it was a weekend, I hadn’t expected to reach him. I was just fishing to know if he still worked at the firm. Landing my answer, I hung up.

  I let loose a jubilant shout as I gazed at the murder map on my wall. Dolezal could have been watching us the day Laura and I came to the law office to review the will’s details. That visit might have put Laura on his radar, dooming her. He might have stalked her to my house, then moved in for the kill when he saw she was alone.

  Because Dolezal worked at an esteemed law firm where the human resources department conducted employee background checks, I didn’t harbor much hope of discovering a damning criminal record.

  I’d settle for an arrest, not a conviction. A misdemeanor instead of a felony. My goal was a mug shot of the guy. Then I could show it to neighbors and ask if he looked familiar.

  “Hey, Xiong, it’s me.” I called our cyber geek at home for computer help. Normally he would have complained, or maybe even not picked up, but seeming glad I hadn’t been murdered, he walked me through the mechanics of his computer data system.

  “At least he has an unusual name,” Xiong said of Karl Dolezal. “The only one in the state.” Xiong often bemoaned having a very common name himself and the problems it could cause because of name-alikes with bad credit.

  Xiong and I called up the details from Dolezal’s driver’s license. License photographs aren’t part of the public record pool, but we were able to skim his date of birth and learn our guy was in his midtwenties. From there we checked criminal records. No arrests, thus no mug shots.

  Dolezal listed his work address on both his vehicle and driver’s license. Nothing illegal about that—I do the same thing, so do many law enforcement officers. We searched for hunting and fishing licenses in his name as even cops put their home address on that because they don’t want to risk those renewals getting lost in the mail.

  Without a mug or a home address, it’s hard learning what a person looks like, particularly if they work in a large office. When trying to eyeball one woman out of hundreds, I’ll sometimes send her a dozen yellow roses on a Friday and watch to see who carries them out the door to take home for the weekend.

  I didn’t think that technique would work
this time.

  Dolezal was growing impatient with his stakeout when he saw a figure rushing toward him from the direction of Channel 3 and recognized Riley Spartz as she ran through the rain to the hotel’s revolving doors.

  Knowing he might not get a second chance if he lost her, he started his engine so he would be ready to follow. But her car didn’t exit. Ten minutes passed. He turned off the engine to think. Was she meeting someone? Eating in the restaurant? As long as her vehicle remained inside, she had to be there, or at least nearby, because the building was not part of the downtown skyway system.

  Then he realized why the TV reporter hadn’t left. She was a hotel guest.

  CHAPTER 65

  Would you like to go for a car ride, Nanna?” She liked being asked, but was weary, and had already settled down in front of the television for the night. She wanted to watch the reality show about dancing.

  “You look cold,” he said. “Let me find you a sweater or maybe a blanket.”

  “You’re such a good boy,” she murmured.

  But that was only a ruse to hunt through her closet.

  He would not need her car tonight, the hotel was within walking distance of his apartment. But there were other items he would require that she would not miss.

  Even though I had promised myself I would live the life of Riley and order room service at the hotel, I couldn’t bring myself to justify the perk when I saw the prices and realized there would be no expensing the bill.

  So I ate a mac-and-cheese supper downstairs at Café Luxx while a jazz trio played. Comfort food and comfort sound. After buying a few snacks at the lobby store, I was ready to head back upstairs in a mood to watch cable television.

  I held the Door Open button for an older woman in a dated sweater since we were both exiting the elevator on the third floor. Balancing a granola bar, mints, and Pearson’s Nut Goodie in one hand, I fumbled with my key card in the other outside my door.

  I’d requested a room near the elevator because I don’t like lonely hallways. The front desk gladly complied because those rooms are usually noisier and less popular. The occupancy rate was low that night anyway.

  I like bragging that I see life two seconds faster than most people, and that gives me an edge. This was one of those times.

  As my lock clicked and door opened, something curious made me turn my head before I landed hard on the floor of my room. I wasn’t sure if I tripped or fainted until I looked up and realized I’d been shoved.

  I heard chanting of “Taunting Teresa is tempting death.” And while I had assumed the angel of death killer to be a man . . . he was actually a she. I shook my head to focus my brain, and still saw the woman who had been in the elevator standing over me, arm raised.

  I had fallen with barely a thud, though it was enough to knock my breath away. Trying to muster a kick, I could hear a knock at the door and a voice calling my name.

  So could my attacker.

  The knock grew insistent so she replied that she didn’t need anything. I couldn’t seem to speak loudly enough to contradict her.

  “Police, Ms. Spartz. Please open the door.”

  The woman complied, peering through a crack, then lurching forward.

  Not until later, after my head cleared and Detective Delmonico arrived, did I find out that the woman had bolted past the plainclothes officer and down a stairwell. Rather than pursue, he called her description to his partner downstairs, then came to check on me. My attacker was not seen leaving the building.

  While standing over Laura’s body, the cops had become concerned that Kate’s sister might not have been the murderer’s target. Perhaps I was. After all, while she died there, I lived there.

  “So we decided to guard you.” Delmonico explained they’d used a global position satellite to track my cell phone, then verified I was registered for the night at the hotel. “We rented the room next door.”

  One officer had watched me as I finished dining, then texted upstairs to her partner that I was on my way. “If a man had gotten on the elevator with you, we would have boarded as well. But we figured you could only see us once before getting suspicious. So we were trying to stay concealed.”

  They were probably right about that assessment. And if I had caught the cops tailing me, well, they would have had some explaining to do.

  Delmonico continued, “The chief warned that anyone who got made by you would be fired.”

  “What if I got killed on your watch?” That seemed more of a fireable offense to me.

  No answer. Knowing the chief, that might merit a day off duty, off the books.

  The first clue there was trouble at the hotel was a shuffling noise coming from inside my room. Then the officer stepped out of his room and noticed candy scattered in the hallway outside my door.

  “That’s when the scrutinize mode started,” the detective said.

  Sure, the cops were making themselves sound smart and tough, but bottom line, they lost the perpetrator.

  “So where did she go?” I wondered if they even knew how my assailant slipped through their fingers.

  Delmonico looked like someone who was hoping not to be asked a certain question. “We found a sweater, dress, and wig in the ground floor stairwell.”

  “So she simply walked out the front door a free man,” I said.

  “Probably,” he agreed.

  “Any surveillance cameras?” I asked.

  “Nonfunctioning in the stairwell.” I must have looked irked because he quickly added that they had video from inside the elevator. “Matches the clothing. But your attacker had his back to the camera and the image is pretty fuzzy.”

  Oh, the cops talked a good talk, all this protection business. But I knew exactly what had happened. “You weren’t guarding me, you were using me for bait.”

  When my fiancé heard about that, he was unhappy.

  “I’ll call you back, Riley.”

  I should have started at the beginning of the story with the old lady in the elevator, instead of the ending with the me-as-bait punch line. Now Garnett wanted to yell at them more than he wanted to console to me. “Do you want to guess what my attacker said to me? ‘Taunting Teresa is tempting death.’ What do you think of that?”

  “We’ll talk later. I promise.”

  I don’t know what exactly he said to them, but he encouraged me to head to the airport and catch the next flight to Washington. “I’m not convinced you’re safe in Minneapolis.”

  “Believe me, Nick, I’m checking out of this hotel, ASAP. I’m going to sleep at the station tonight. The green room couch never sounded so good.”

  “My bed has to outrank any couch.”

  “There’s no flight leaving until morning, unless I want to make two connections and take ten hours to get there.” Besides I hated flying even on direct flights.

  “A woman was killed in your house, Riley, and now you’ve been attacked. Pretty clear you’re someone’s target. I’d feel better if you drove to your parent’s farm and holed up there until I could join you.”

  That was crazy talk. I told him I was overnighting at Channel 3, where we have round-the-clock security. Then I told him I loved him and wished him a pleasant good night.

  When Noreen heard the news of my assault, she invited me to room with her and the animals. “The dogs will be excellent protection.”

  I knew those dogs and knew them to be as much protection as marshmallows. Any intruder who petted them and talked pretty would get a welcome lick.

  Me? I was through with pretty talk. When I got back to the station, I headed straight to my file marked G, grabbed Ed’s gun and bullets and practiced uttering “Freeze, sucker” and other words the FCC doesn’t let us say on the air.

  CHAPTER 66

  I called Malik at home, interrupting him in the middle of a backyard landscaping project involving laying sod on wet dirt. My message that I needed him to come in early the next morning for a hidden camera assignment met with no zeal on his end.

/>   I was scruffy-looking when Malik arrived. My neck was stiff. I hadn’t eaten. And I’d slept poorly because the morning crew kept forgetting I was in the green room.

  “I hate this spy stuff.” My photographer was pouty even though he’d climbed out of a cushy bed to a hot breakfast. “Why can’t I just set up the camera and you wear it?”

  “Because they’ll recognize me, either from TV or being in the office the other day.”

  My plan called for Malik to wear a hidden camera—his choice: glasses, baseball cap, or watch—and deliver a package to the law firm and ask Karl Dolezal to sign for it. “Barring technical difficulties,” I said, “that should get us our picture.”

  “Good luck there,” he said.

  Malik grumbled that Channel 3’s covert devices were not the most current. They were clunky compared to the sleek digital models on the market, but hot hidden camera gear wasn’t a high priority after the station reduced the emphasis on investigative stories.

  “It doesn’t bother me as much as you, Malik. I guess I don’t necessarily want my hidden camera video to look perfect, otherwise viewers won’t believe it’s undercover.”

  Channel 3’s devices had pros and cons. The glasses provided a pinhole lens in the nose of the frame and shots wherever the wearer looked. But the frame resembled something out of a Buddy Holly movie, and didn’t allow the photographer to be inconspicuous.

  The hat also offered good sight lines, but if the brim turned slightly, the shot could miss. And undercover often didn’t get a second chance. Both devices had noticeable cables that ran down the back of the wearer’s neck and allowed the video to record in a fanny pack.

  The watch was harder to aim, but the cables ran under the photographer’s sleeve and were less noticeable.

  Malik put on the hat, adjusted it in the mirror, then flung it on the floor. “Forget this, I’m just using my cell phone.”