“Mr. Halsey?”
“Yes,” he groaned loudly. “Are you here with my groceries? Where’s Jenny? Did the hospice send you?”
Kitty could sense his disappointment even before she answered. “No, I’m sorry. I’m Kitty Sinclair. I shouldn’t have showed up unannounced.”
He grumbled something to the effect of how right she was about that, as he turned and hobbled down the shallow hallway that opened into a cozy living room.
Kitty took that as an invitation so she gently shut the door and followed him.
Carter eased into a reclining chair then fumbled with a remote control, which drew Kitty’s attention to a TV across from where he sat. A cheery morning show played, but without volume. She realized that was probably the button he was looking for.
“Mr. Halsey, if I could have a few minutes of your time,” she began, making herself at home by sitting on the couch next to him. “I wanted to ask you about a necklace you sold at auction quite a few years ago.”
Carter paused and his eyes lit up, snapping to meet hers.
“Those were the days,” he mused, happy to be reminded.
She breathed a sigh of relief. Now all she needed was a miracle that he’d be able to remember every last detail about that specific auction. She gulped, losing all confidence.
“I wanted to ask you about a particular necklace that you sold at auction.” Quickly, Kitty pulled up an image of the necklace on her cell phone and held it for Carter to study.
At first Carter seemed blown away by the small electronic device as though she was introducing him to futuristic technology, but soon his gaze steadied on the actual photo.
“Do you remember this antique?” She asked after he’d been staring for a good long moment.
“Why yes, I do.”
She returned her phone to her purse and took a deep breath.
“Do you remember who bought it that day?”
Carter leaned back in his recliner and chuckled as though she’d told a good, clean joke.
“Young lady,” he began once his laughter had died down. “I don’t need to remember anything. I kept records of every transaction.”
Like a pug struggling up a flight of stairs, Carter worked his way out of the recliner and hobbled over to a bookshelf on the far side of the TV set and began scrolling his finger horizontally over a long set of leather bound books.
Kitty rose to her feet and drew near, noticing that the spines had gold lettering boasting the month and year. Then she took in the full gamut of the bookshelf. It had to contain at least twenty years of records. She turned and noticed another bookshelf also lined with leather bound books.
Carter must have some form of lifelong OCD. She was surrounded by bookshelves and records, and wondered what didn’t the man detail within these pages?
“Ah! Here we are!” He exclaimed, as he slid a particularly dusty book from the shelf.
As he started for his recliner, Kitty rushed to him, took him by the arm, and helped him back until he was settled carefully in his chair. She sat on the edge of her seat beside him and watched as he gingerly turned page after page.
“Why did you keep these records?” She wondered. “Didn’t the county want them?”
“The county has their own records,” he explained. “But they’re not nearly as detailed.”
When he found the page he was looking for he reviewed its contents silently.
“Appears to be a cash sale,” he noted.
Kitty leaned in even closer. She already knew that, but didn’t want to seem discouraging or ungrateful.
“Is there anything else you can tell me? Did a woman buy the necklace?”
“No, it was a gentleman,” he interrupted. “I remember that much. I remember because he didn’t seem the sort that would buy such an antique.” Carter had a think on that then added. “A woman was with him.”
“Really?” Kitty asked, finally feeling like she was getting somewhere.
Eager to confirm it had been Mary, Kitty extracted her cell from her purse once again and pulled up an old photo of Mary that depicted the young mother holding Sterling in her arms. Sterling had to have been only five in the photo. He was squirming in her arms.
“Was this the woman?” She asked, holding up her cell.
Carter was still reviewing his records, but when he found a good stopping place he glanced up. His eyes narrowed, and then shifted with a glimmer of recognition.
“Yes, I believe so.”
Excited, Kitty pulled up an old photo of Steve Slaughter.
“Was this the man who bought the necklace?” She asked, even though she knew it hadn’t been Steve.
Carter’s mouth twisted then pinched into a frown.
“No,” he stated with what sounded like absolute certainty. “The gentleman looked scholarly.”
Kent Hollister came to mind, the professor who’d dedicated his life to studying serial killers and who had been lurking in the field behind her house when Layla had been discovered.
As Kitty searched her cell’s web browser for an image of Kent Hollister, Carter dove back into his records.
“The gentleman was impatient when it was time to collect the items he’d bid on...”
“Items?”
“That’s correct,” Carter said, his gaze locked on his records. “He bid on the necklace and its matching ring, as well as a wedding dress—all beautiful antiques.”
“As though he thought he’d marry Mary,” she said, thinking out loud.
“He was very affectionate toward the woman, but I could tell he didn’t want to be seen there or with her. He was agitated. He didn’t stay for the items. He only gave cash and left an address where he wanted the items shipped.”
“Can I see?” She asked, though she’d already snatched his book.
Frantic, she searched for the shipping address, but when she found it, it wasn’t Sterling’s childhood home. Whoever had had the items shipped, chose to receive them at his own residence and then he shipped only the necklace to Mary. It reminded Kitty of dangling a carrot in front of a horse to get it moving. Maybe Mary’s lover was, in essence, trying to bribe her to him, one item at a time.
Kitty jotted the strange address down on her note pad then glanced up at Carter who seemed very put off that she’d taken his book.
“Sorry,” she said sheepishly, handing it back to him.
He made a performance out of wiping her germs off.
“Was this the man?” She asked, holding up the picture of Kent Hollister she’d found online.
Carter snatched her phone then studied the photo. He looked at it for a good long while as though he couldn’t decide. It was a recent photo. Twenty years ago Hollister could’ve looked much different and Kitty wanted to mention his cane, but wasn’t sure if he would’ve used it that day or even had it back then. She tried anyway.
“Did he walk with a cane?”
“No,” he said easily. Then Carter handed the phone to her. “That’s not him.”
Kitty sat there stumped. She wracked her brain for anything else she might be able to ask him.
“Did you see the car he drove?”
Carter shook his head.
She looked down at her note pad. With the shipping address and the fact that she had access to the Police Database, it shouldn’t be too hard to find out who’d lived there at that time.
She breathed a sigh of relief. She was close. And she could do nothing more here.
“Mr. Halsey, I’m going to leave you with my contact card. Would you call me if you remember anything else?”
He took the card, obliging.
Then Kitty snapped a quick photo of the page from his book using her cell phone, thanked him, and saw herself to the door.
It was warming up quite a bit outside by the time she’d shut the door behind her. Kitty made her way to her car, but kept her gaze glued to her cell screen where she magnified the photo she’d just taken to be sure the clarity was good enough to enlarge an
d read every word.
Before she could reach for the door handle on her Fiat, she was suddenly grabbed from behind. It happened so fast she could barely process it: two black gloved hands lifting her by her waist, her feet kicking into the air, Kitty trying to scream, but she dropped and a hand was pressing over her mouth. Without warning she was shoved into a van. The next thing she knew, a black hood was over her head and the door slammed shut. Her hands were tied behind her back but she couldn’t understand when that had happened. Suddenly, she was thrown to the back of the van when it accelerated hard and fast down the driveway. The impact against the van doors struck her head at such a jarring angle that Kitty only had a moment of consciousness before her world went entirely black.
Chapter Ten
“I didn’t want it to have to be like this, but you gave me no choice.”
His voice was far away, a dim light she didn’t want to see at the end of the tunnel she was stuck in.
Kitty had no way of knowing how much time had passed since he’d grabbed her outside of Carter’s cottage. Had it been an hour? A day? Had she missed her wedding rehearsal? Her wedding? Was Sterling searching for her at this very moment? Or had anyone even noticed?
Her head was reeling. Her stomach kept tightening up into a nauseous ball in response to the throbbing ache at the back of her head. She remembered being thrown toward the back of the van when it had peeled down the road. Had her assailant also struck her? She couldn’t recall.
Was she still in the van now?
Kitty realized the black hood he’d thrust over her head remained. Her knees felt raw and her hands were definitely bound behind her back, but she didn’t sense she was inside a moving vehicle.
She was moving, however.
She could hear water lap and gurgle through the wall. The very sound of it confused her. She couldn’t think straight to make sense of it.
“Are you listening to me?” he asked. “Are you alive under there?”
She was on a boat, she realized. That’s why the floor was rocking, rising and falling with each slight swell of the harbor. That was where she had to be, right? In a boat on the harbor? Unless he’d driven five hours east to the Atlantic ocean. She prayed that wasn’t the case.
Kitty cursed herself for having run off without telling Sterling where she was going. She shouldn’t have gone anywhere without him, much less sneaking around on her own.
“Hello in there?”
She could barely hear him over the pounding in her ears. The mounting headache worsened when her heart rate spiked the second he stripped the hood off her head. She yelped, but her throat was raw and only a weak groan escaped.
Kitty was terrified to look up and finally see the killer. She kept her eyes pinched shut. If she didn’t see his face, if she didn’t discover his identity, maybe he’d have a change of heart and let her live.
He didn’t let her get away with hiding like this for very long. His gloved hand grabbed her chin, startling her into opening her eyes, but what she saw was a black ski mask and two dark brown eyes staring out.
“I’m sorry about your cousin,” he said in a tone so kind it couldn’t be trusted.
“Why do you want me dead?” she asked in a small voice. It was hard to look at him. His eyes were cold as though he both pitied and despised her.
“Not everything is about you,” he said, not exactly answering the question. “I don’t care about you one way or the other and if you had nothing to do with Sterling, you wouldn’t be here.”
“Why are you trying to hurt Sterling?” She demanded, finding an edge of strength in her tone. “How could you want to hurt a young boy?”
“You’re being dramatic.”
“You killed Mary when Sterling was only eight,” she pressed. “What could an eight-year-old boy possibly have done to you to make you want to do such a thing?”
“It’s complicated.”
“I should say so!” Kitty coughed and coughed. Yelling strained her voice and if she wanted to get the truth out of him, if she wanted to stay alive, she’d have to keep him talking. Sterling would find her somehow. Her only job was to stay alive until then. She softened her voice and tried again. “I just want to understand. You owe me that much if you’re planning on killing me.”
“Like I said,” he leaned in to reiterate. “I didn’t want it to happen like this.”
“Yeah, well, the necklace is in evidence.” She couldn’t help the sarcasm from slipping out so she tried to smooth it over. “You loved Mary, didn’t you?”
As the killer lowered onto a bench across from her, Kitty realized he wasn’t holding a weapon. She also realized that she was in the cabin of some kind of boat and by the looks of it, the vessel was quite large, perhaps a thirty foot yacht, though it wasn’t fancy. Circular windows lined the walls. Water splashed against them, indicating that the yacht was docked, not sailing up the harbor. She took that as a good sign.
“I did love her,” he said regretfully. “And she would’ve left Steve. She would have.” When he repeated the statement it came out angry. “She told me she would leave him.”
“It sounds like she had a condition,” Kitty supplied. “She would leave you under one condition. What was it?”
“Sterling is my son.”
It hit her like a ton of bricks. How could a father want to torment his own flesh and blood like this? The man was clearly demented.
“I know he’s my son.”
Kitty realized he hadn’t disclosed the condition. “If he’s your son it should’ve been easy for Mary to leave Steve for you.”
“You’re right,” he said. “But she wanted proof. That’s when she turned evil. That’s when she decided to ruin my life.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Mary insisted on a paternity test,” he explained. “I was willing. If it meant finally having her, finally being a family with Sterling, I was willing. I gave blood. I waited. That’s when she turned on me.”
Kitty didn’t press him. She knew he was working the facts out as quickly as his broken heart would allow.
“She lied. She said the results came back. Steve was the father, she said. But she was lying. I demanded to see the test results. She refused to show me.”
The killer hung his head for a long moment and Kitty thought she could hear him crying under the ski mask. When he looked up at her he added, “She cut me off. I fought for her. I tried to win her back. I never told Steve about us. Never revealed the affair. That’s how much I loved her. It could’ve been so easy for me to destroy her. She loved me, Kitty.”
She wasn’t sure whom he was trying to convince.
“Then we took up again. Mary couldn’t live without me and that’s the fact of the matter. I brought her to the auction. I bought her everything she wanted. Everything. Steve never had the means to do something like that.”
“If you got back together, why did you kill her? Why did you let Sterling put the same necklace around his wife’s neck? Why did you try to kill me, taking Layla’s life by mistake?”
“Because...” he trailed off as though it was too painful to discuss. “I asked Sterling to find the test. I had him search his whole house.”
As the killer went on, Kitty understood that the killer was such a close family friend that he’d been able to ask Sterling to do this. That meant he’d spent time alone with Sterling. Sterling trusted him. If only Kitty could stay alive long enough to tell him...
“I told him not to read it,” he went on. “I told him not to tell his mom or dad, but to give it to me as soon as he saw me. When that day came, he looked at me with hate in his eyes. He told me he loved his dad, that nothing would change that. He said he didn’t care what the test said. I’d never be his father.”
Kitty stared at him. “Who are you?”
Chapter Eleven
Sterling waited on the pier in front of the William Wallace yacht and greeted each member of the wedding party as they filtered over from the Delamar Hotel.
He wore the suit Kitty had laid out for this very occasion. The air was fresh and breezy, the sun warm. It should’ve been a perfect afternoon.
But Kitty’s note had been bizarre. And she still wasn’t here.
He glanced over his shoulder at the guests who were mingling on the deck. A waiter milled through them, carrying a tray of champagne, which had been Kitty’s idea. She wanted every stage of the rehearsal to be fun, not a labored technical lecture, but an opportunity for both sides of the family to get to know each other better. Why would she be late?
“Why, don’t you look handsome,” said Penny, as she clicked down the wooden dock. When she reached Sterling, she gave him a big hug, as Ernie hung back looking a little green from all the excitement at the Shimmy Shack he’d undergone the night prior. “Is my lovely daughter on the yacht?”
“No,” he said, trying not to cause alarm. “Have you heard from Kitty?”
Penny’s smile drooped and she glanced at Ernie. “We haven’t heard from her all morning,” she said, concerned. “Is something wrong?”
“She’s not picking up,” he stated.
“She’s planning her own wedding,” Ernie stated. “She’s probably running around tending to last minute details.”
Penny didn’t like the sound of that. “She always picks up,” she countered. “And if she can’t, she always calls back. Now I’m really worried.”
Ernie turned pale, as it dawned on him what this could mean. “You don’t think... Did the killer...?”
“I don’t know,” Sterling said unnerved. A switch flipped and Sterling got decisive. “Excuse me.”
Bewildered, Penny and Ernie stared at him, as he stalked up the dock toward the boardwalk, lifting his cell to his ear.
This was bad. Very bad. He nearly dialed Harrison, but he wanted to think this through before he shouted directives at his superior.
Last night Kitty had dove into the Police Database and his understanding had been that she was looking into the county auctions around the time his mother had been killed. If she’d found the precise auctioneer, she’d have definitely tried to find out what he might remember. But was she really so brazen as to go off alone and not even tell Sterling where she was going or what she was up to? The killer had meant to take her life. How could she be so reckless?
A MATCH MADE IN MURDER (The Wedding Planner Mysteries Book 5) Page 8