Boots and Bullets

by B. J Daniels

  “No luck getting the names from the hospital administrator, I take it?” she asked when he hung up.

  He shook his head. “But she did say she got Candace Porter’s job application. Apparently there isn’t much on it. She wants us to stop by.”

  Kate didn’t know what she was feeling. One moment she was depressed, the next hopeful. “We need the names of those babies. There has to be a way.”

  “We’ll get them. Meanwhile, we can check out the application. There might be something there that will help.”

  She figured if there had been, McCall would have told him about it. But still, now she was anxious to get home as she finished her sesame chicken.

  “I just had a thought,” Cyrus said and pulled out his phone. “McCall,” he said. “I was just wondering. Whitehorse only had one doctor thirty years ago, right? Oh, dead, huh?” He looked disappointed. “Was he also the coroner on the Candace Porter murder case?”

  As Cyrus waited he looked across the table at her, a reassuring look on his face. He waited and Kate guessed that McCall was checking.

  “What’s that?” he asked, sitting up a little straighter. “How about that? No, great, yeah, that is real interestin’.” He snapped his phone shut. “Want to guess who the coroner was on the case?”

  Kate shook her head, but she couldn’t help smiling since Cyrus looked so pleased.

  “Roberta Warren, the hospital administrator. She was filling in because the regular coroner had been hospitalized after an accident.”

  “How convenient,” Kate said.

  “My thought exactly.”

  CYRUS PARKED in front of the sheriff’s department. Twilight had settled over the small town. It had taken them longer to drive from Lewistown to Whitehorse than he’d expected because of the snowstorm and all the deer on the highway. Something about the late October day had brought them all out.

  McCall was the only one still in the office. She ushered them in, closing the door behind them. Once seated behind her desk, she said, “You were right. The real Candace Porter has been living in Ireland the past thirty years.”

  “How can we prove that the woman who was murdered was my aunt?” Kate asked.

  “The body will have to be exhumed,” McCall said.

  “She’s buried here in town?” Kate asked.

  “According to what I’ve been able to find out, the local mortician donated his services when no next of kin was found.”

  Cyrus reached over and took Kate’s hand. She looked pale, but strong and determined. He hoped once everything was out, this would bring her some relief.

  “You said they had been unable to find any next of kin,” Cyrus said.

  “Apparently the real Candace Porter couldn’t be found back then, and, as you can see, there is nothing written on her employment application under In case of emergency.”

  He glanced down the single sheet of paper she handed him, taking in the local address before his gaze lit on the line McCall drew his attention to. He looked closer. There had been a number there, but apparently it had been whited out.

  “Wouldn’t a hospital especially require an emergency number from an employee?” he asked. “It appears there was a number here but it was covered up,” he said, handing the paper to Kate, who looked at it before handing it over to the sheriff.

  “I saw that,” McCall said. “I’ll send it to the crime lab to see if they can recover the number, but I’m betting it was Katherine Landon’s mother’s number.”

  “Do we know who hired her?” Cyrus asked.

  “Roberta Warren.”

  He swore under his breath. “If an employee is murdered at the hospital, then wouldn’t the next of kin be notified?”

  The sheriff nodded. “But apparently your grandmother was never called because Roberta didn’t know who Candace really was.”

  “But she did know,” Kate cried, pulling out the letter they’d found from her aunt to her mother. “Her boss knew she wasn’t Candace Porter.”

  McCall took the letter from her. “Okay, your grandmother was never told, but your mother was in town.”

  Cyrus nodded. “We think she heard about the murder.”

  “She would have gone straight to the hospital…” Kate’s voice broke.

  “Where she would have talked to Roberta.”

  “Or the sheriff,” McCall said. “Okay, what aren’t you telling me?”

  Cyrus shot Kate a look before he told McCall about the baby switch he’d seen in the dream. “Roberta knew Candace was Katherine. She was her boss. She had to be involved in the baby switch.”

  “You have no proof Roberta was involved,” McCall pointed out. “So far it’s all conjecture.”

  “That’s why we have to get the names of those babies,” Kate said, sitting forward in her chair. “It’s all tied to those babies and why someone hired my aunt to switch them.”

  McCall lifted a brow. “Hired her?”

  Cyrus had brought the paperwork they’d found at Kate’s grandmother’s cabin. He glanced over at Kate. She nodded and he handed McCall the manila envelope. “Everything we found is in there. It looks like someone paid Katherine Landon, aka Candace Porter, to switch the babies.”

  “Five thousand dollars?” McCall said as she thumbed through the papers. She stopped on the private investigator’s report, her gaze going to Kate. “Your grandmother suspected foul play? But I never saw anything in the file about her contacting the sheriff.”

  “We suspect she didn’t,” Kate said. “She hired a private investigator. When he didn’t come up with anything…”

  “Kate was a baby,” Cyrus added. “Her grandmother had her to raise. She symbolically buried her daughters and turned all of her attention to raising Kate.”

  McCall sat back. “If you’re right, someone paid Candace to switch the babies. Why kill her?”

  “To cover up the crime,” Cyrus said. “Or,” he glanced at Kate again, “as Kate has suggested, maybe her mother talked her sister out of it and at the last minute, Katherine switched the babies back and double-crossed the killer.”

  “You saw all this in your…dream? So now you’re saying you could have seen her switching the babies back,” McCall said and shook her head. “I can’t see Roberta killing anyone in the hospital. The hospital is her little kingdom.”

  Cyrus agreed. “Roberta is involved, though. She had access to the employment application. She would have been the one to make the call about her murdered employee. Roberta knew Katherine wasn’t Candace Porter and yet she didn’t fire her. When she found out about Katherine’s sister, she would have called someone. She couldn’t take the chance that Candace had confided in her sister. Clearly Roberta couldn’t trust Candace, since she wasn’t even who she said she was and she’d possibly double-crossed whoever was behind the baby switch. Someone would have to take care of the sister quickly.”

  “Cyrus, we don’t know for a fact that when Katherine mentioned in the letter that her boss had found out that she meant Roberta or even that she was telling the truth,” McCall pointed out.

  He knew he was doing what he’d told Kate not to—jumping to conclusions. “You’re right.”

  “But there is one thing I do know,” Kate said, voice breaking. “If my mother had gotten the chance, she would have called my grandmother about Katherine’s death. She never got the chance because someone tipped off the killer.”

  ROBERTA HAD TRIED to talk herself out of it all day. She knew she couldn’t chance making the call again from her office. At least not while everyone was around. But she was so shaken by the sheriff’s visit.

  She’d been told not to call again. What was she supposed to do? Just take all this heat alone?

  She grabbed her purse and cell phone and started for the door. Her plan was to go out to her car, pretend to run an errand and make the call so she could be assured that no one would overhear her.

  She was almost to the door when she realized that calls made on her cell would show up on the bill.
Now more than ever, she had to start covering her tracks.

  Closing her office door, she forced herself to go back to her desk. If she called from her office, there could be all kinds of explanations for such a call.

  She knew that phone calls were broken down by department and even by office. That was how she kept track of anyone using a phone for personal calls. Her determination to run a tight ship now had it where her line could be monitored, as well.

  She had little choice. She couldn’t use her cell or her home phone and it would be impossible to find a pay phone in Whitehorse where she knew no one would overhear—or wonder what she was doing.

  She’d been forced to wait all day after turning over a copy of Candace Porter’s employee file to the sheriff. She flushed at the memory of what the sheriff had said to her. She was a suspect in Candace Porter’s murder.

  Correct that. Katherine Landon’s murder.

  And that was only the beginning, Roberta thought. Once the truth came out about that murder, the rest of it would start falling like dominoes.

  She checked the clock. Everyone in administration had gone home for the day. All the lights were out but the ones in her office, the hallway dark in this part of the hospital.

  Roberta had always loved this time of the day, when she would have the place to herself. She often worked late, so no one had questioned her staying tonight.

  She got up and went to her door to look out. She listened for a moment. The only light came from under the double doors that led to the hallway and the nurses’ station.

  She stepped back into her office, closed the door and picked up the phone with trembling fingers. Don’t call me again. I’ll contact you.

  Roberta hesitated, but only for a moment. She shouldn’t have to bear the brunt of this alone. She dialed angrily, thinking she would demand more money to keep her mouth shut. She deserved it.

  “The sheriff knows,” she said without preamble. She hurriedly detailed the sheriff’s questions about Candace Porter and the request for not just the employee application but the names of the babies in the nursery.

  “You’re panicking unnecessarily. They don’t know anything and as long as you keep your cool, they never will. I told you, they don’t have any evidence. If they did, they would already have a subpoena for the babies’ names.”

  Roberta had heard about the break-in at Second Hand Kate’s. Maybe there wasn’t any evidence. “But if you’d heard the way the sheriff talked to me… She demanded Candace Porter’s file. I had to give it to her. I thought this was over. If it comes out about the babies—”

  “Get ahold of yourself. I told you I would take care of everything. You just do your part and relax. This will blow over. Whatever you do, don’t call me again.” The phone was slammed down.

  Roberta replaced her receiver, shaking all over. She didn’t know what upset her the most, the way she’d just been treated or the feeling that her neck alone was on the chopping block. Of course she would be a suspect. She’d been the hospital administrator at the time of the murder. She’d hired Candace Porter.

  Her heart began to pound. Everything would come out.

  She groaned at the memory of what she’d done—and why. Her reputation would be destroyed. She would deny it all, but she knew it would come down to her word against— With a shock, she realized that she was the one who wouldn’t be believed. She was the one who would end up in prison.

  Her hand went to the phone again. Maybe if she told the sheriff everything…

  She pulled back.

  It hadn’t reached that point yet. She was panicking and it wasn’t like her.

  Roberta straightened her skirt, brushed a piece of lint from the sleeve of her jacket and tried to calm down.

  They didn’t know anything. They wouldn’t find anything. The worst that could happen was that the truth might come out about who Candace Porter was.

  Roberta told herself that she would pretend to be as shocked about that news as anyone. She would weather this storm and in a few months she would retire and take her money and move to someplace warm, far from Whitehorse, Montana.

  But, she thought, she was going to need a lot more money for being forced to go through this alone. And she would damn sure call when the time came.

  Chapter Eleven

  “I know it’s a long shot,” Cyrus said as they left the sheriff’s department. “But I thought we should check out the address your aunt put on her employment application.”

  Kate had been thinking the same thing. She felt a little shell-shocked after everything they’d found out. She hugged herself. It had gotten dark while they were inside. The wind had come up and now kicked up dust from the street. There was a chill in the air as she climbed into Cyrus’s pickup and they drove the four blocks across town.

  The apartment house was large and rambling, once an old farmhouse that had sat alone before the town encroached on it. As they walked to the door, piles of dried fallen leaves blew around their feet.

  Inside the front door was a list of names of people who lived there. Most of the slots were empty. Apartment three was marked “manager” and the name Harkin.

  At Cyrus’s knock, an elderly gentleman with a shock of white hair and a small wrinkled face like one of those apple dolls answered.

  “Hello, Mr. Harkin?” Kate asked. “We’d like to talk to you about one of your renters.”

  “Candace Porter.” He laughed at her surprise. “The sheriff called earlier.” He opened the door wider. “Come on in. And call me Harry. Everyone does.”

  “The sheriff already called?” Cyrus asked.

  “Wanted to know if I remember renting to the woman. I said, ‘What do you think, that I’m losing my mind?’ Ha, I’m as sharp as a tack.” He smiled and ushered them in, winking at both her and Cyrus.

  Once inside, the old man eyed Kate, then Cyrus. “Newlyweds? I’ve got a nice two-bedroom on the second floor.”

  “We’re not looking for an apartment,” Cyrus said. “Kate owns Second Hand Kate’s downtown and lives over the shop. I’m just here visiting from Colorado.”

  That about sized it up, Kate thought. Once this was over Cyrus would be going back to his life in Colorado. She knew she’d needed that reminder, but it still depressed her. She was going to miss him terribly. She’d come to depend on Cyrus and that, she realized, was a mistake.

  Was there a woman waiting for him back in Denver? If that was true, wouldn’t the woman have come to Montana with him? Kate would have. She wouldn’t have let him come up here alone, not when he’d just come out of a coma.

  “So you remember Candace Porter living here thirty years ago?” Cyrus asked.

  “Sure do. She was a looker,” Harkin said and grinned over at Kate. “Kinda looked like you, now that I think about it.”

  “I’m Candace’s niece.”

  “Oh.” He sobered. “Sorry. What would you like to know?”

  “Anything you can tell us,” Kate said.

  “I’ll tell you what I told the sheriff. Candace lived here for four months.”

  “You can remember that after thirty years?” Cyrus asked, sounding skeptical.

  “I’m good, but I’m not that good,” Harkin said with a laugh. “I looked up her file. I keep files on all my renters. But I remember Candace. She was a loner. She just went to work, worked nights, and never made any noise. I felt kind of sorry for her. If I’d been younger…” He let the thought die off. “I was shocked when she was murdered.”

  “Did the sheriff question you about the murder at the time?” Cyrus asked.

  “Sure did. I told him what I told you. He looked through her apartment. She didn’t have much and that was that. Never did catch the bastard. Excuse my language,” he said to Kate. “I just made some coffee. Sit down.” He disappeared into the kitchen before they could decline his offer.

  Kate shrugged and they looked around for a place to sit.

  The apartment was filled from top to bottom. No flat surface wasn’t
covered. Under the scent of fresh-perked coffee was dust, mildew and old age.

  Cyrus made a place for them to sit on the old chesterfield couch as Harkin returned with a small tray and three cups filled with coffee. He shoved a stack of newspapers to the floor and set down the tray on a corner of the coffee table.

  “Don’t get many visitors. Live alone since the wife died,” he said.

  Cyrus handed Kate a cup of coffee, then took one for himself. Kate took a tentative sip. The coffee was strong and bitter.

  “I’m surprised you keep records that long,” Cyrus said.

  “Got records from longer back than that,” Harkin said with a laugh and pointed to a small alcove. It was filled with filing cabinets, an assortment of papers piled high on top of each.

  He put down his coffee to go into the alcove and open one of the filing cabinets. Amazingly he, came out with a folder. “Candace Porter.” He smiled and tapped the discolored folder with his finger before handing it to Cyrus.

  He opened it so Kate could see. The application for the apartment was sketchy at best, most of the lines left empty. Her aunt had paid one hundred and forty dollars a month with a fifty-dollar cleaning deposit. She’d apparently stayed just over four months.

  “What did you do with her belongings?” Kate asked, even though she was sure that he’d tossed them out or the sheriff had taken them.

  The old man pointed at the file folder. “Says right in there at the bottom of the application that if anyone leaves anything it will be held for thirty days, then discarded or sold at my discretion.”

  “So whatever she left is gone.” Kate couldn’t hide her disappointment. Thirty years was a long time and she’d guess this place had been through a lot of renters and their leftover stuff in that time.

  “Actually, there wasn’t enough to worry about. I just boxed it up and forgot about it. When the sheriff called, I told her I was sure I’d gotten rid of the box. But then I got to thinking….” He got up and went to a box sitting just inside the door, which Kate hadn’t noticed until now. “I got it out of my shed out back.”