Deadly Devotion

by Sandra Orchard

  “You should leave this to the police. I don’t want you being next. And I’m not just saying that because I’d have to find a new maid of honor.” Julie made a quirky face, but the tremor of her chin suggested she was far more concerned than her teasing indicated.

  “Don’t worry about me. Parker’s making sure I stay out of trouble.”

  The seamstress returned with Julie’s wedding gown draped over her arm. “Tom Parker?”

  “You know him?” Kate asked, not surprised that the woman would jump into the conversation. Conversation jumping was one of Port Aster’s most popular pastimes. One that, if handled right, might prove informative.

  The seamstress’s professional smile turned dreamy. “I had a major crush on him in high school. I saw him at the Wildflower restaurant last night, but I couldn’t place the face until you mentioned his name just now. Was that you he was with?”

  Julie’s jaw dropped, but only for the second it took for her voice to rise to Mount Everest altitudes. “You went to dinner with him and you didn’t tell me?”

  Kate tugged at the collar of her cotton tee. Wow, was it hot in this room or what? She edged to the farthest corner, half afraid that any second daggers might shoot from Julie’s eyes and ricochet off the mirrors. “It’s no big deal. It’s not like it was a date or anything.”

  Although more than once Tom had intimated that it was, and despite her issues with his line of work, she’d enjoyed spending time with him, and okay, maybe she wanted to see him again. But first they needed to prove Edward killed Daisy. “Besides, you weren’t home until late last night, so I didn’t have a chance to tell you.”

  Julie planted her hands on her hips and looked at Kate as if she were a rabbit that had eaten her wedding bouquet. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve been together more than two hours. Plenty of time to tell me all about your date.”

  “This is your day. The evening was no big deal.”

  The seamstress helped Julie into the gown, apparently missing Kate’s can-we-drop-this tone because the woman chattered on for a good five minutes about how good-looking Tom had been in high school.

  Suddenly, her face flushed. She stopped fastening the buttons on the back of Julie’s dress and glanced at Kate. “Oh my, if you’re worried about me, don’t be. My husband and I were at the restaurant to celebrate our tenth anniversary.”

  “Congratulations,” Kate said, ignoring the woman’s inconsequential assurance that she wasn’t a rival for Tom’s affections. Kate straightened Julie’s train, which prompted the seamstress to finish fastening the row of buttons.

  Thirty-seven buttons later, the woman stepped back and surveyed the fit.

  The dress, with its sweetheart neckline, basque waist, and A-line cut, was exactly the style Kate might choose for herself. One day. “It’s perfect. I wouldn’t change a thing.”

  Julie grinned at Kate’s reflection. “A dress like this could be in your future sooner than you think.”

  Concealing the zing prompted by the comment, Kate rolled her eyes. “Tom and I shared one dinner. That’s all.”

  “Tom, now, is it?” Julie teased.

  Kate’s pulse skittered the same way it had when Tom appeared on Darryl and Beth’s doorstep, looking all worried. Hypnotized by the protective glimmer in his eyes, she’d slipped into the role of girlfriend with scarcely a moment’s hesitation. Having someone worried about her had felt surprisingly wonderful. But she couldn’t let wistful thinking undermine her good sense. Tom seemed like the kind of guy who would be equally worried about any man, woman, or child. Or a cat caught in a tree, for that matter. She shouldn’t read more into their time together than there was—no matter how tempting.

  Kate looked at Julie in the mirror. “I’d rather not talk about this right now.” She slanted her head toward the seamstress. “Okay?”

  The seamstress took the hint and made quick work of pinning the places on the dress that needed altering.

  As Kate watched, her thoughts drifted back to her conversation with Tom. Although she’d known him only a short time, she could tell by the way he’d intently studied her face in the restaurant that he hadn’t believed she was telling him everything. Beth had made her promise not to tell anyone she was pregnant. Two previous miscarriages had shattered her confidence that she’d be able to carry the baby to term, and Kate hadn’t felt right about betraying her promise to satisfy Tom’s curiosity.

  Since he’d warned Kate not to talk about the case with anyone, she couldn’t very well tell him about the other possible poisons she and Beth had discussed. Poisons whose effects better matched the symptoms recorded in the autopsy report. Poisons anyone could’ve slipped into Daisy’s food or beverages. Poisons that were virtually undetectable.

  At least not until she had some proof.

  The seamstress left the room, and Julie waited only a millisecond before launching back into her quest for information. “How did you and Tom happen to meet up for dinner? I thought you said the local police couldn’t be trusted.”

  “Uh, we were both following the same lead and sort of ran into each other. I’m telling you, the date meant nothing. We were simply comparing notes.”

  “But you admit it was a date.” Julie smirked.

  Kate threw up her hands. “You win. It was a date. Tom’s madly in love with me and can’t bear the thought that I’m putting my life in danger by hunting down a killer.”

  Julie yanked up her jeans. “For crying out loud, Kate, if you don’t want to talk about him, just say so.”

  “Wha-a-a-t?” Kate splayed her hand on her chest and feigned a hurt expression. “You don’t believe he could be madly in love with me?”

  “No, I believe that part.”

  Julie’s matter-of-fact statement gave Kate’s heart a jolt.

  “It’s the putting your life in danger part that better not be true.”

  Kate’s momentary happy bubble burst with an ear-thudding pop. In a couple of weeks, Julie would be on her honeymoon and no one would be at home, waiting for Kate, ready to call in the cavalry if she was late. Or missing. Or dead.

  Maybe she was crazy to try to solve Daisy’s murder on her own. Certifiable, even.

  Daisy’s favorite maxim whispered through Kate’s mind. We’re never alone.

  But if that was true, where was God when Daisy drank that tea?

  Kate shoved away the thought. Just this morning she’d found a passage in the Bible that said, “The righteous are taken away to be spared from evil.”

  If God took Daisy to spare her from something worse, the least Kate could do was ensure Daisy’s reputation wasn’t sullied by unfounded allegations.

  “You worry me,” Julie said. “Two days ago, you were certain Brewster was connected to Daisy’s death. You insisted the local police couldn’t be trusted. What if you were right? Tom and Hank go way back. What if Hank asked Tom to cozy up to you to figure out what you know?”

  “I thought you liked Tom. You were the one who called him to my rescue the other night.”

  “I do like him. He seems nice. I just think you need to be careful.”

  “You’re making a bur oak out of a bonsai,” Kate quipped, trying to lighten the mood.

  Julie scrunched her eyebrows in incomprehension.

  “Big tree out of a little tree. Big deal out of nothing.”

  “Oooh, I get it.” Julie laughed. “Let’s hope so.” She looped her arm through Kate’s and towed her toward the door. “I know you miss Daisy, and I understand how important finding out what really happened is to you. I just worry.”

  “I know you do. I promise I’ll be careful.” How dangerous could searching the lab computer be?

  On a Saturday afternoon, the building would be deserted.

  Kate swung the shop door wide and headed down the street. “Come on, no more dillydallying. We have a cake to pick out.”

  An hour later they stepped out of the bakery, and a sudden chill that had nothing to do with the change in temperatur
e slid through Kate’s veins. Gripped by an uneasy sense they were being watched, she scanned the windows above the shop, thinking Edward might be spying down on them from Molly’s apartment. The blinds were closed.

  Kate squinted toward the Kish apartment up the street, but it was too far away to tell if anyone stood at the windows.

  Julie nudged Kate’s arm and jutted her chin toward the hardware store. “Do you know that man over there?”

  A group of gray-haired men were congregated around the barrels set up in front of the store for games of checkers.

  “See him?” Julie pointed, cupping her hand over her pointer finger to disguise the action. “The man in the blue shirt. He’s staring at you.”

  Their eyes met and Keith tipped his ball cap.

  The chill melted from her veins. “That’s Tom’s dad.” Tom must have asked him to keep an eye on her, be her bodyguard. The thought warmed her more than she liked to admit. After all, Tom was a police officer—one of the very people she’d spent most of her life distrusting. Although unlike the men who arrested her father, Tom was willing to admit he’d made a mistake by closing Daisy’s case. A mistake he seemed determined to remedy.

  Of course, he wouldn’t be too happy when his dad reported that she’d returned to the lab after hours. But she couldn’t just sit around twiddling her thumbs while Edward got away with murder.

  11

  Tom accepted a delicate teacup teetering on an equally dainty saucer, and sunk into Nora Hopkins’s poufy floral sofa. His hostess had refused to answer a single question about the robberies she’d reported—robberies from the research station—until she’d served tea. Her cozy living room with its comfortable chairs, collection of lighthouse replicas, and bright bay windows was as different from Kate’s cluttered apartment as the plump, white-haired woman was from Kate.

  He groaned. There he went again, letting his thoughts stray where they didn’t belong. It was bad enough that Dad thought he had a thing for her.

  Tom cringed at the memory.

  At breakfast this morning, without warning, his dad had said, “Have you told Kate how you feel about her?”

  Of course, Tom did what any red-blooded male would do. Deny. Deny. Deny.

  But apparently he hadn’t tamed the goofy grin that had been smiling back at him from the bathroom mirror a few minutes earlier because his dad just said, “Uh-huh,” and launched into a story about the day he’d met Mom after clocking her going fifty-five in a fifty zone.

  Halfway through the story—a story Tom had heard a hundred times—Tom finally blurted the truth. “Okay, I like her.” A lot. But if he didn’t stop thinking about her and start making some progress on the other cases Hank had dumped on him, he’d be out of a job.

  Following up on suspects in the Leacock case would have to wait until the end of his shift. Figuring out what to do about his feelings for Kate would have to wait a whole lot longer.

  Regardless of how much he’d enjoyed sharing dinner with her, Kate had withheld information, of that he was certain, and after the number Zoe pulled on his FBI partner, Tom was in no hurry to play Russian roulette with his heart.

  He returned his attention to Nora Hopkins, the research station’s janitor.

  The woman had long since settled into her chair and now looked at him with a peculiar expression, as if she knew his mind had been a million miles away—or more precisely, six blocks.

  He downed his tea in one long gulp and unburdened himself of the cup and saucer. “So, when did you first notice the items missing?” he asked, extracting his notebook and pen.

  Nora set her teacup onto the end table and her hands flew into action as she talked. “Miss Leacock was the first to notice. Since I clean all the labs, she’d thought I put the missing items away in a cupboard.”

  “What items exactly?”

  “That’s what’s so strange. They were little things like spools of wire, beakers, half empty jars of chemicals. Pilfering, really.”

  “What kind of chemicals?”

  “Fertilizers, mostly.” She twisted her fingers together and pressed her hands into her lap. “When other researchers started noticing things missing from their labs and storage closets too, enough to prompt them to ask me if I knew anything about them, I wondered if they thought I took the stuff.” A blush crept up her neck and into her cheeks. “That’s why I filed the report. Maybe it was silly to bother the police with such a small matter.”

  “Not at all.” Boy, Hank must have scraped the bottom of the barrel to pull out this complaint. “Can you tell me when the thefts began?”

  “Oh my. A month and a half ago now. At least that’s when people started noticing. Things went missing for a few weeks and then the thefts stopped around the time Miss Leacock died.”

  The coincidental timing piqued Tom’s interest.

  He reviewed the list of stolen items. Wires. Chemicals. The kinds of things that could be used to build bombs.

  His grip on his pen tightened. In his experience, coincidences were few and far between, which meant his terrorist theory might not have been the dead end he’d been led to believe. If Leacock snooped where she didn’t belong, she might have paid for her curiosity with her life.

  Mrs. Hopkins’s eyes shimmered with unshed tears. “When the police didn’t follow up on my complaint . . . well, I understood how busy you were. It’s not as though anything of much value was stolen.”

  “Who has access to the labs?”

  “The researchers, their supervisors, and security personnel all have keys. During the day, student interns are often in and out too. And that new PR fellow was in a lot, visiting his aunt.”

  “Edward Smythe?”

  “Could be. I don’t know his name. I remember him because he always left a trail of dirt in the hall I’d have to mop up.” Nora wrinkled her nose. “If not for the fancy suit, you’d think he spent his days tromping around the orchards.”

  Or woods.

  Tom punched his pen against his notepad. He needed to go back to the shed and verify Hank’s claim that it was used for building firecrackers . . . not bombs. Tom’s gaze strayed to the window and the bright blue sky. He could just imagine what Dad would say about this theory.

  Tom’s phone beeped and Dad’s name flashed on the display.

  Tom closed his notebook. “Excuse me, I need to take this.”

  “Son.” The urgency in Dad’s voice yanked Tom to his feet. “You need to get to the research station, pronto.”

  “What’s wrong? Wait. Hold on a minute.” Tom pressed a business card into Mrs. Hopkins’s hand and moved toward the door. “Thank you for your time. If you notice anything else peculiar, please don’t hesitate to call.”

  Her eyes widened. “Really?”

  “Yes, we can never be too careful.”

  Hurrying to his car, Tom strained to rein in his overactive imagination. “The research station is supposed to be closed on Saturdays.”

  “It is. Locked tight. But Kate’s in there. Somewhere. And Edward just let himself in.”

  “What?” Tom cranked the ignition and gunned his car onto the street. “She promised she’d be careful.”

  The woman obviously didn’t know the meaning of the word.

  Empty. Kate shoved her palms against the edge of the lab desk, and her chair skated backward. Who would’ve deleted Daisy’s internet browsing history?

  Edward grinned at Kate from the gilt-framed photo on Daisy’s desk.

  Of course. After he found something incriminating in Daisy’s journal, he’d probably worried there’d be more of the same on her computer. Kate dug through the desk drawer. When her fingers touched the cool metal of a portable hard drive, she let out a whoop. Every Friday without fail, Daisy had backed up the entire computer, including all the temporary internet files.

  I bet you didn’t know about this when you sabotaged Daisy’s computer, did you, Mr. Smythe?

  Kate’s fingers tingled with anticipation as she plugged the USB into the c
omputer port. If Edward had gone to so much trouble to conceal the internet surfing Daisy had been doing, it had to reveal something incriminating.

  Kate clicked on one file after another. Pages and pages held profiles of the various herbs they were researching. Applications for research grants. A news report on some guy who’d swindled an old lady out of half of her fortune.

  What?

  Kate hit the back arrow and stared at the article until her head pounded from forgetting to breathe. The description of how the guy gained the victim’s trust held eerie similarities to how Edward ingratiated himself into their lives. Had Daisy suspected Edward of running a con?

  No, she would have said something, and she wouldn’t have named him in her will.

  In the list of websites Daisy had visited in the past couple of months, Kate spotted an adoption registry site. Bingo.

  She clicked on the site, but the page had expired. She worked through the layers of information to try to find data on Edward’s adoption, but without specifics on his birth mother and date of birth, she couldn’t get the system to spit out the answers she wanted.

  Kate pulled up Daisy’s email and searched the inbox for correspondence from the adoption registry. A message from the Werland Detective Agency caught her attention.

  As requested, we are writing to confirm that your nephew Leonard Leacock was adopted by the Smythe family of Pinehurst, Ontario, and given the name Edward. The adoptive family . . .

  Something clunked out in the hall.

  Kate jumped. The noise had sounded like the security door being pushed shut. She froze and strained to listen for the slightest noise. Nothing.

  No, wait. Were those footsteps?

  The rhythmic squeak of shoes grew louder.

  Heart racing, she shut down the lab computer, pocketed the backup hard drive, stuffed her notes into her purse, and scanned the room for something she could use to defend herself.