No Harm (The Kate Teague Mysteries Book 1)

by Wendy Hornsby

  “Who’s under the sink?” Carl asked.

  “Never mind,” Kate said. “Let’s go.”

  Kate walked out into the dull sunshine beside Carl. Whenever they stopped or turned a corner or stepped over a curb, he would hold her arm or touch her hand. He was being very solicitous and she went along with him, testing a little for the substance that bound Dolph and Mina together.

  “Do you feel like eating something?” Carl asked, unlocking the door of his ancient sports car.

  “It’s too hot to think about food.” Kate folded herself into the low-slung car. “It’s those damned brush fires. Everything tastes like ash.”

  “I have to stop by City Hall to pick up some documents. Come with me. Maybe you’ll be hungry by the time I finish.”

  “Can’t you send a clerk in your place?”

  “Next time,” he said over the roar of the rebuilt engine. “It impresses hell out of some of those mid-level bureaucrats to have a personal visit. When they think we’re good buddies, I can send a clerk.”

  “I thought you left the politics of law behind when you left the D.A.”

  “Politics is what makes law interesting.”

  “Ah,” she sighed, the mood broken by the turn of the conversation. “Should we stop and get your mother before we eat?”

  “She has plans for dinner.”

  “Oh?”

  He looked uncomfortable. “She has a date.”

  “You’re kidding. Who?”

  “I don’t know.” He pulled into the public lot behind the Civic Center. “Trust my old ma. She can always turn up something.” He slid out of the car. “I’ll only be a minute.”

  “It’s too hot to wait here. I’ll walk up with you.”

  He hesitated just an instant too long, his eyes fixed on the blue smudge under her eye. “I’ll only be ten minutes.”

  “That’s too long in this heat. I’ll wait in the library.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  They parted at the main entrance of Santa Angelica’s pink stucco, W.P.A.-era City Hall. Kate waved, then walked across the quad to the new pyramid-shaped main branch of the city library.

  The main floor was nearly deserted. Kate descended the central stairway and walked slowly into the history section, waiting for the air-conditioning to cool her. She pulled a familiar old volume off a high shelf and took it to a table. She thumbed through the book, enjoying the earthy smell that was equal parts dust and decaying paper. A movement at her side made her look up.

  Lieutenant Tejeda leaned against the table.

  “I wondered where you’d got to,” she said, not surprised to see him. She had sensed him nearby all afternoon. “Did you follow me here?”

  “Of course,” he smiled. “You’re under protective surveillance, remember? Actually, I saw you leaving the hospital so I headed back to the station. You pulled in right in front of me. I thought you might be coming to see me.”

  “In the library?”

  “The police station is next door, right?” His smile was crooked, teasing. “I told you, I followed you.”

  “And?” She closed the book and folded her hands on top of it.

  “How’s your uncle?”

  “Comatose.”

  “How are you holding up?”

  “Okay.”

  “You look okay,” he said, settling one hip on the edge of the table. His face became serious. “I got back some reports I ordered. We need to talk about some things. I know this is rotten timing, but I can’t wait around anymore.”

  “We can’t talk here,” she looked across the silent library.

  Tejeda led the way outside, up out of the Civic Center into the neighboring park. The air was stifling after the cool library. Tejeda led her into a shady recess in a little Japanese garden.

  “It’s nice here,” Kate said. “I didn’t know there was such a place.”

  “Hardly anyone comes here. It’s a good place to talk.”

  “What do you want to talk about?”

  “I don’t know if this has any connection with what has been going on,” he said, “but I have to run it by you.” He pulled out his notebook and opened it.

  “On October third, nineteen seventy-two, Katherine Byrd, you,” he looked up at Kate accusingly, “and Esperanza Ruiz y Garcia were charged with illegal transportation of a corpse across international boundaries.”

  “So?”

  “The corpse was the remains of one Nugent Kennerly.” He looked up at her again, watching for her reaction. “The charges were dropped but you were deprived of your passport for a period of five years. A hand slap. You going to tell me about it?”

  “It doesn’t concern you. It’s been more than a dozen years.”

  “Your husband mentioned Kennerly only this morning. Let me decide if it’s important.”

  “Leave it alone. Please.”

  “Hey, look. I can go downtown and get the details. But the press follows pretty close behind me. Do you want to risk that?”

  “You’re threatening me.”

  “Damn right. I don’t want to drag up something that will embarrass you. So you can tell me about it yourself or I can dig it up from other sources.”

  She sat down hard on the dry grass. It scratched her bare legs. Might as well tell him the whole sordid story, she decided. Everything was a matter of record anyway.

  “Nugie was Mina’s niece.” She looked up at him, squinting against the sun behind him. “You know Reece?”

  Tejeda nodded.

  “Nugie was his sister. They’re related to us through Mina. Sort of shirttail relatives.” She couldn’t see his expression very well against the glare. “Nugie and I were sharing an apartment up in Westwood. She was doing student teaching and I was in graduate school at UCLA. She got pregnant and it was a real disaster. She didn’t want to go through with the pregnancy. Abortion wasn’t legal here yet, so she asked me to go to Mexico with her.”

  “And Esperanza went along?”

  “More like we went with her. She knew about a clinic in Ensenada that did clean abortions. So we went. Esperanza was our guide and translator.” Kate pulled out a tuft of dry grass and toyed with it, something to do with her hands.

  “Nugie had the abortion,” she continued. “We wanted her to stay in the clinic overnight, but she was frightened and ashamed. She wanted to go home. The doctor said she was fine. He gave her a sedative and we made her a bed in the back seat of the car and she went to sleep.

  “When we got to the border at Tijuana, we stopped and Esperanza checked her. She raised the blanket,” Kate stopped and tried to collect enough saliva in her dry mouth to swallow. “Blood,” she said. “The seat was covered.

  “We woke her up. She was so cold.” It hurt so much to talk about it, to remember beautiful Nugie dying as Kate tried in vain to hurry, as ragged children clung at the car windows, trying to sell chewing gum and bright paper flowers. She looked down at the dry grass in her hand. “We told Nugie we were going to take her to a hospital in Tijuana and she got hysterical. We were already at the border so we decided it was just as fast to cross and find a place than to look for something there. We went to a hospital in National City. It took less than ten minutes. But,” she swallowed, “she was dead when we got there.”

  “What did you do?” He sat down next to her on the grass, leaving a little space between them, but not much.

  She was surprised how easy it was to tell him. As before, he listened with intensity, with acceptance. She had never been able to tell anyone about Nugie, relying on Esperanza and her uncle to deal with the authorities. It had been the worst situation she was ever involved in and she had put it away, or tried to. Talking about it now she realized how close to the surface the whole painful memory was. Lieutenant Tejeda was looking at her, the brown eyes soft. She remembered how he had looked at his daughter and she wanted to lean her head against his shoulder and be comforted.

  A group of little old men all dressed in white walked past on t
heir way to the lawn bowls green. They looked at Kate and Tejeda with rude interest. It embarrassed Kate, making her feel as if she had been caught kissing in the park by her grandfather’s cronies.

  She stood up, brushing off the grass. “Carl has probably finished his business. I’d better go find him. He doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

  Tejeda stood up and they walked back toward the library. “I asked you what you did when your friend died.”

  “The police were there right away,” she said after taking a deep breath. “It wasn’t the first Mexican abortion they had seen go sour. They were debating what charges to book us on. So I called my uncle and he flew down. He was there within the hour. He was great.”

  “Your Uncle Dolph came down and bailed you out?”

  “No.” She was surprised by his assumption. “It was always Uncle Miles who bailed me out.”

  “Always bailed you out?”

  “Figuratively. You know, overdrawn at the bank, needed his secretary to type a late term paper.”

  “Jailed in an antiwar demonstration.”

  She caught her breath. “Either you’re a good guesser or you’ve done some heavy-duty checking. Miles had that record expunged.”

  “I have my sources.” He looked down at her, holding her eyes with his own. “You chalked that one up to the follies of youth, I suppose.”

  “Protesting Vietnam was no folly,” she bristled. She couldn’t understand why his remark made her so angry, unless it was because he had already stripped away a few layers of her defenses. Something about him made her feel exposed, naked of protective coloration. She met his steady gaze.

  “Don’t tell me about it.”

  Through the flash of anger she caught a glimpse of the passion of the inner man. He took a deep breath and looked down, chagrined, a rush of color on his cheeks. “Forget it. So. You were going to tell me what happened when your uncle got to National City.”

  His hands were in his pockets. She slipped one hand in behind his, her fingertips on the exposed wrist at the end of his cuff, where his pulse beat faintly. “Tough guy,” she said, bending her head so she could see his face. “Just the facts, ma’am.”

  Keeping his chin down he looked up at her through his lashes. A shy smile rounded the corners of his mouth. “You going to tell me the story, or what?”

  “Not much more to tell,” she said, squeezing his wrist gently before taking her hand away. “The police down there wanted to book us for negligent homicide or involuntary manslaughter or being party to an illegal action, the abortion. They were being really hard-nosed. Uncle Miles persuaded them to charge us only with transporting Nugie’s body, though I know she wasn’t dead when we crossed the border.

  “The judge was very understanding about us not wanting to get entangled in the Mexican legal system and wanting to bring Nugie’s body back to her family.”

  “So he took your passport as a hand slap. What happened to Esperanza?”

  “She was in my mother’s employ. He assumed we had just dragged her along as the faithful retainer. He dismissed her charges.”

  “Carl was the father?”

  “How did you know?” She wasn’t surprised at anything he knew anymore.

  “That’s the message I got from him this morning. This was before you were married?”

  “Of course,” she said. “I introduced Carl to Nugie. We got together later more or less because of what happened in Mexico.” As Kate walked she crumbled little bits of brown grass between her fingers and let them drop onto the pavement, leaving a trail behind her, as if she might want to retrace her steps later.

  “Carl had offered to marry Nugie,” she said. She brushed her hands together. “The abortion was her idea. Nugie didn’t want to force him into something. She didn’t tell anyone in the family that she was pregnant with his baby.”

  “And you don’t want them to know.”

  “What’s the point? Anyway, none of this has any bearing on Mother’s death.”

  “We’ll see.” He put a stick of gum in his mouth. “Damn,” he said, spitting the wad back into its wrapper and tossing it into a trash can. “I need a cigarette. Theresa made me quit.”

  “Kate!” Carl’s voice close beside her made her jump. “I was wondering what happened to you.” He acknowledged the detective. “Lieutenant Tejeda.”

  Kate wondered how long Carl had been watching them. She noticed that, all of a sudden, the space between her and Tejeda widened. She looked up at Carl. “Are you ready to go?”

  “If Lieutenant Tejeda’s finished with you.”

  Tejeda nodded. “I was grilling her about her criminal past, her record as a campus radical.”

  Carl looked between them. “Did she tell you that’s how we met? Her uncle hired me to defend her after a Vietnam Day rally.” He edited the part about Nugie.

  “Interesting,” Tejeda said. He walked on the other side of Kate, like three old friends out for a stroll. “Anything more about Mr. Byrd’s condition? Have they decided what happened?”

  “I called in just a minute ago. Looks like a grand mal seizure.” Carl leaned slightly in front of Kate to answer, physically taking charge. “Maybe drug related. We won’t know until the tests come back.”

  Kate’s hands balled into involuntary fists. “They’re not thinking suicide are they?”

  “No. Maybe he just miscalculated his Dilantin. Or forgot to take it.”

  “He’s epileptic?” Tejeda asked.

  “Yes,” Kate said. “Since his last series of shock treatments he’s had a few seizures. Usually when he’s under stress. He’s never had one like this before, though.”

  “Rough going,” Tejeda said. “Are you heading back to the hospital?”

  “No.” Kate said firmly. “I was promised dinner. If it’s all right with you, Lieutenant, we’ll go.”

  “Sure,” Tejeda said easily. “I’ll be in touch.” He waved then turned and walked with his easy stride toward the turquoise-faced police building.

  Carl’s old car shimmered with heat. “Do you really want dinner?” he asked, opening the car door for her.

  “No. Let’s just go home.” She groaned as she eased herself down on the scorching seat. “Why don’t you sell this heap and buy something more civilized? Lord knows you can afford better.”

  Carl nosed into evening traffic. “This car is part of my image.”

  “Oh, bull, Carl. This car is fifteen years old and hardly a classic. Wouldn’t your image be better fortified if you had something decent?”

  “If I bought what I can afford,” Carl said, smiling broadly, “anyone could peg my income and position. If I bought something better than I can afford, I might be accused of buying what you can afford. As it is, everyone knows I can afford something better than I have, but what that might be they can only speculate.”

  “You amaze me. Aren’t you straightforward about anything?”

  He just smiled. “So what did the lieutenant want this time?”

  “He was asking about Nugie.”

  Carl made a quick, wild swerve to the right, straightening just before he hit the curb. “Oh?”

  “Don’t worry about it.” She turned away and watched boats sailing coolly toward the downtown marina and wondered how they found enough breeze to move. For once, the heavy stand of eucalyptus offered no relief as they drove in through the gates.

  With some screeching of worn disc-brakes, Carl stopped in the courtyard. Grim, white lines framed his mouth. “There’s nothing like smog to make a beautiful sunset, is there?”

  “Gorgeous,” Kate said, watching the luminous red horizon. Almost as reflex, she glanced toward the window where Miles always kept watch over the courtyard.

  “Carl. Look!” she gasped. As she watched, the heavy drapes drew to one side. Then swayed back into place.

  EIGHT

  “I KNOW SOMEONE was in here when we drove up.” Kate said firmly. “Whoever it was has probably left by now.”

  “We’ll
check it out anyway.” Carl unlocked Miles’s door with a key from Kate’s ring. “I’m glad you didn’t want to go in by yourself.”

  “After last night I’m afraid to go to the John by myself.”

  Carl slowly pushed open the heavy oak door, peering around the edge of the door as he felt the wall for the light switch. “Wait here.” He motioned her back with a wave of his hand. “I’ll take a look around.”

  “I saw that movie,” Kate said, brushing past him. “The heroine got axed while she waited. I’m coming with you.” Propelled more by curiosity than fear, she crossed the foyer and preceded Carl into the musty living room where Miles spent most of his time. The room was as she had seen it last: formally furnished with old but good pieces waxed and polished to a rich glow. Like a museum set-piece, it was lacking in personality, without framed portraits or mementoes or little treasures to give clues about the man who lived there. Except for the crossed cricket bats over the mantel.

  Carl went over to the window where Miles usually stood to look out on the courtyard. The edge of the drapes had a faint greasy grayness where Miles held them. “Is this where you saw something?”

  “Yes.”

  “If someone was in here, I hope he’s had the sense to vacate by now. We better take a look around anyway. Aha!” He reached up and unhooked one of the cricket bats, weighing it in his hands like a club. “This’s what we need. Just in case. You coming with me, Sherlock?”

  “Right. Shall we check the doors first?”

  “Lead the way. I don’t know my way around in here.”

  “Just stay close,” she said.

  “Would I let you down?”

  “No comment. Back door’s this way.” She led him through the still, tomb-cold dining room. As they opened the swing door into the kitchen, they could feel a warm breeze coming from the butler’s pantry. The back door stood halfway open. “I hope this means he left.”

  Carl raised the bat to his shoulder and peered cautiously around the door. “Paramedics probably left it open when they took Miles.”

  “No,” Kate said. “Lieutenant Tejeda and I locked up before we went to the hospital. Let’s call the police.”