Deadly Devotion

by Sandra Orchard

  Kate focused the binoculars on the Saturn’s license plate as Keith recited it from memory. Shifting her focus to the rear window, she spotted the university decal Keith had referred to. A student’s house? Or a professor’s, maybe?

  “Thanks, I owe you one,” Keith said into his phone, then snapped it closed. “Care to hazard a guess at who that car belongs to?”

  “Haven’t got a clue.”

  “Gordon Laslo.”

  Kate gasped. “Darryl lied to me. He claimed he didn’t know anything about Gord. What do you think they’re doing in there?”

  Keith withdrew a video camera from behind his seat and slowly panned the house. “Don’t assume Gord’s in there just because his car is in the driveway.”

  “Where else would he—” Kate choked on the question. Gulped. Gulped again. “Do you think Darryl killed Gord too?”

  “No.” Keith leaned over and showed her the viewing screen on his camera. The image was gray and black, with bright white splotches here and there, like around Darryl’s tires and the hood of his car. “This is an infrared camera. Shows heat. Look at the bay window.”

  A pair of ghostly figures stood within the dark gray frame. “Two people are in that room.”

  “Yes, so the odds are that the second person is Gordon.”

  “They can’t be up to any good or Darryl wouldn’t have pretended not to know where Gord was.”

  “We’re likely looking at a meth lab here. Could explain some of the materials missing from the research station, but I suggest we let the police figure that out. We can call in an anonymous tip, and Darryl need never know who fingered him.”

  “No, we can’t. If we’re wrong and Darryl is caught up in a police raid, Beth could lose her baby from the stress.”

  “She’s pregnant? You never told me that.”

  “I promised I wouldn’t breathe a word until she passed her first trimester.”

  “We can’t wait till she has the baby to arrest this guy.” Keith abruptly dropped the camera into his lap. “Let me handle this.”

  “What are you talk—?”

  A tap sounded on Kate’s window and she jerked sideways.

  Keith hit a switch and the window slipped open. Rain spit at Kate’s face as their visitor, a woman in a bright yellow rain slicker, leaned down. Deep wrinkles carved permanent smile lines into her cheeks and at the edges of her eyes. Kate estimated she was in her eighties.

  “Are you with the police?” the woman asked.

  “Why would you ask that?”

  “I saw you spying on the house up there.”

  “Do you know anything about the occupants?” Keith asked.

  “A young lad rents it. Quiet. Hardly ever see him. The other fellow drops by most mornings and evenings. Never stays more than a couple of hours.”

  “Anyone else ever visit?”

  Kate leaned back, slack-jawed at how deftly Keith drew information from the woman. If this were a meth lab as Keith supposed, someone had to sell the goods, and if Gord rarely went out, that left Darryl or whoever else came to the house.

  “Last week an older gentleman in a rental car was there. Didn’t stay long.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  “Smartly dressed in a dark gray suit and purple shirt. I remember because I happened to be walking the circle when he climbed out and I thought he looked so dashing in that purple shirt and silver tie.”

  Keith let her drone on and on for another three minutes until Kate shot him a get-rid-of-her-now glare.

  Keith smiled at the woman. Not a polite, plastic smile either. A genuine, I-enjoyed-listening-to-your-story smile.

  Kate intensified her glare in case he’d misunderstood her the first time.

  “I’m partial to purple myself, but being on the portly side, I’m afraid it makes me look like Barney,” Keith interjected when the woman took a second to breathe.

  “Oh.” The woman looked him up and down, apparently familiar with the giant purple dinosaur from a popular children’s show. “Do you really think so?”

  Kate squirmed and couldn’t hold her tongue a second longer. “Um, we don’t want to keep you. This damp weather isn’t fit to be out in.”

  “Aren’t you a dear?”

  “Ma’am,” Keith said, “please don’t tell anyone we chatted.”

  She touched her thumb to her forefinger and twisted them in front of her lips. “You can count on me, Officer.” The woman scurried toward a house two doors down from Darryl’s mystery place.

  “If I were a betting woman, I’d wager a month’s salary that she’ll spill the story to her husband before her rain slicker hits the coat hook.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “Why’d you let her think we were the police?”

  “Cover stories were never my strength. I can’t bring myself to lie when the truth works just as well.”

  The side door of the house opened and Darryl appeared. He turned up his collar against the rain but made no move to dash to his car.

  Kate grabbed her jacket. “Stay here. I have an idea.” Before Keith could stop her, she jumped out of the car and sprinted for the carport.

  Keith coasted beside her in the car, leaned over the passenger seat, and pitched his voice through the open window. “Get in.”

  She kept walking. “I’m just going to talk to him.”

  “Over my dead body.”

  The fierceness in his voice punched the breath clean out of her lungs, and in the time she took to recover, Darryl made it to his car.

  His gaze collided with hers. “Kate?” The shock on his face morphed into anger. “What are you doing here?”

  “I need to talk to you.” She reached into her jacket pocket, clawed her keys between her fingers, and prayed that she wasn’t about to make the biggest mistake of her life. She shot Keith an apologetic shrug, then jogged up the driveway and ducked under the carport, keeping Gordon’s Saturn between her and Darryl. “I know everything. And see the man in that car?” She pointed to Keith, who had a phone pressed to his ear. “He’s got the police on the phone as we speak.” She hoped the last part wasn’t true and wouldn’t be necessary.

  Darryl’s face paled.

  “I know this is Laslo’s car. I know he’s been hiding out here. I know the two of you pilfered supplies from the research station for your”—she motioned toward the house—“little science experiments.”

  With each statement Darryl looked more peaked.

  But knowing she was right didn’t feel good in the least. “Daisy found out, didn’t she? Threatened to expose your side business. Threatened to expose you.” Kate’s heart hammered her ribs. “And you killed her, didn’t you?”

  Darryl’s face turned from white to red in a flash. “I never touched Daisy. You’re crazy.”

  “Who do you think the police will believe when they see what’s going on here? You? Or me?”

  “There’s nothing illegal going on here.”

  “If it’s not illegal, why did you tell Beth that you’re working late at the research station when you’re skulking around here?”

  “Because I don’t want her to worry. The fertility treatments wiped us out financially. A company invited me to do some extra research for them. The money sounded good. I took the job. End of story.”

  “I don’t believe you. You kept this a secret from more people than Beth. Gord broke off contact with all of his friends.”

  Like a panther stalking its prey, Darryl edged around the car, his eyes blazing.

  Kate drew back her elbow, her keys poised to do damage. “Think about what you’re doing here, Darryl. If you hurt me, the police won’t even need a warrant to swarm in and search this place.”

  Keith nosed his car into the driveway, wearing a scowl that would strip paint off a bus.

  Darryl threw Keith a wary glance, raised his hands, and backed up a step. “You’ve got it all wrong. I hired Gordon to help me with the research, and since he wasn’t at liberty to discus
s the work with his friends, he opted to lie low for a while.”

  Lie low. She really didn’t like the sound of that. “Have you forgotten the nondisclosure agreement you signed when you joined the research station?”

  “I’m not selling secrets. This research has nothing to do with my day job.”

  “You stole our supplies and you expect me to believe you’re not selling our secrets?”

  He heaved a sigh. “That was a mistake. I’ve since returned the items I borrowed. You have to believe me. If the police make more out of this than there is, the stress will upset Beth and jeopardize the baby.”

  The strain in Darryl’s voice chipped at her certainty. She searched his eyes for the truth but didn’t trust her judgment. “I need more than your word. Let me and my bodyguard see inside the house.”

  Relief softened the tension creasing Darryl’s face. “Okay.”

  Kate waved Keith over. A moment later her cell phone rang.

  “What’s going on?” Keith barked.

  “Darryl has agreed to let us see the house.”

  “Can you spell ambush?” Keith’s windshield wipers flicked across the windshield. His accompanying glare said if Darryl didn’t kill her, Keith might.

  “Darryl knows you have the police on standby. Tell them if we don’t contact them in five minutes, the SWAT team should be deployed,” she said loud enough for Darryl to hear.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing.” Keith hung up but didn’t immediately join them, and she wondered if he was calling Tom to make good on her bluff.

  Darryl shifted from foot to foot, glancing from Kate to Keith and back again.

  She almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

  Keith stalked up the driveway, keeping a wary eye on the front windows. “I want the drapes opened and your guy on the inside in plain sight, hands in the air.”

  Darryl reached for the knob on the door behind him.

  “Not so fast,” Keith bellowed. “We don’t go in until you call your partner and tell him to get those drapes open.”

  “My phone’s in the car.”

  Keith turned to Kate. “Give him yours.”

  Kate slid her phone across the trunk of Gord’s car.

  When Keith made a show of consulting his watch, beads of sweat popped out on Darryl’s upper lip.

  The living room drapes opened, followed by the blinds in the next two rooms.

  “Check the back,” Keith said to Kate.

  She moved to the end of the carport and looked around the corner. “Everything’s open.”

  Again Darryl reached for the doorknob.

  “Not yet. Wait here.” Keith pressed his back to the wall and moved cautiously along the front of the house until he reached the first window. He peered over the lip and quickly scanned the room.

  He moved to the next window the same way, and Kate’s legs turned to Jell-O. She’d never forgive herself if he got shot.

  Keith circled the house, checking each window. He even knelt in the wet grass and shone a flashlight into the basement windows. “Okay, we’ll go through the front,” he said when he’d finished. His tone left no room for negotiation.

  Gord stood in the middle of a furnished living room with his hands in the air. The chocolate brown sofa had seen better days and the rug was threadbare, but the forty-two-inch high-definition TV in the corner was state-of-the-art.

  “What are you doing here?” Kate asked Gord.

  “Research.”

  “What kind?”

  “I already told you,” Darryl cut in, “we can’t discuss the nature of our research.”

  “Is Darryl paying you?” Kate asked, letting the earlier question pass unanswered.

  “The company is. Plus room and board.”

  “You expect us to believe that a legitimate company set up a lab in a house?”

  “I don’t care what you believe. I get paid to do what I’m told.”

  Kate glanced at Keith to see if he bought the story.

  He just shrugged.

  They found a sophisticated lab in the back bedroom and a mushroom-growing operation in the basement.

  When they returned to the living room, Keith said, “Looks to me like you’re farming a new breed of hallucinogenic designer drugs.”

  “Is that what you think too, Kate?” Darryl said with a note of apology in his voice.

  “They’re working on a cure for depression,” she said without emotion. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to tell her.

  Keith scratched his ear. “How do you figure?”

  “A company out of Switzerland did some promising preliminary research involving mushrooms, but a few days before they were scheduled to release their findings, the research facility exploded. The researchers and all their documentation were lost in the fire.”

  “You mean to tell me this lab is a bomb waiting to explode?”

  “No, a gas leak caused that explosion. Some say the lab was sabotaged. Could be Darryl’s client didn’t want a recurrence. Everything looks legit.” Even if Darryl smelled as rotten as the manure feeding his mushrooms. “Nothing here contravenes the terms of his contract at the research station,” she said in his defense, but that didn’t stop his betrayal from swallowing her from the inside out. “Let’s go.”

  “I’m not convinced he didn’t murder Daisy to ensure his secret stayed secret.”

  “I am. Daisy never would have betrayed his secret.”

  21

  Kate shuffled into the library and slumped onto the foam floor cushion at the edge of the preschool story time group. Enraptured children sat on bright blue and red and yellow spongy mats, listening to Julie read The Paper Bag Princess.

  Julie gave Kate a curious look, and Kate sank lower on her cushion. She should have gone straight to work after Keith dropped her at home, but Darryl would be there soon and the thought of facing him again made her want to heave.

  Julie showed the children a picture of the finely dressed prince scrunching his nose at the sooty princess who wore a paper bag because she’d just rescued him from a dragon. Then, in her best princess imitation, Julie pointed out that he might look like a prince, but he was a bum.

  “Isn’t that the truth?” Kate mumbled.

  A couple of mothers shushed her, and Kate feigned a sudden fascination with the waffle pattern on the spongy mats. For more than a week she’d dug up dirt on all her suspects, people she never would have suspected capable of murder, only to end up back where she’d started—proving nothing but that people aren’t what they seem. A lesson Tom had happily dispensed from day one.

  Julie asked the children for ideas of how else the princess might have overcome the dragon that had stolen her prince, and a lively discussion ensued. When the suggestions deteriorated into downright silly, Julie ended the class and gave the children free rein of the picture book section.

  She pulled up a foam cushion and joined Kate on the floor. “I take it your surveillance didn’t pan out the way you’d hoped.”

  “Oh, Julie, I don’t know what to do. Not a single trick I’ve tried on my ‘dragon’ has worked.”

  “Do you want me to ask the children for ideas?”

  “Thanks, I’ll pass.”

  “Maybe you’re fighting the wrong dragon.”

  Kate picked at the foam. “Tell me about it. Three times over. First I was sure it was Brewster, only to find the ‘key’ piece of evidence to convince me it was Edward instead.”

  “You were right about him being rotten. He conned Daisy.”

  “True. But then I made the mistake of trusting Tom, only to have him turn on me.”

  “That was pretty bad.” Julie pried Kate’s fingers away from the foam. “What about Darryl?”

  Kate buried her hands under her legs. “Darryl is moonlighting for some unknown company. And get this—he’s developing a product that will compete with mine.”

  “How can he do that?”

  “It’s all legal. As far as I can tell, everything I saw was unr
elated, technically, to the work he does at the station.”

  “Just because it’s legal doesn’t make it ethical.”

  Her leg began to bob. “Tell me about it. I was so crushed I got out of there faster than ants in a rainstorm.”

  “You’re positive Darryl didn’t kill Daisy?”

  “As positive as I can be. I should be happy. The last thing I wanted to do was upset Beth, but . . .”

  “It’s a mixed blessing.”

  “Yeah. I hate mixtures.” Kate shimmied higher and planted her feet to stop her runaway leg. “I forgot to tell you that I found Gord. He’s working with Darryl.”

  “That’s great news.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Look how many people you’ve crossed off your suspect list—Gord and Darryl and Edward, whom, by the way, I still don’t trust.”

  “So I’m back to where I started—suspecting the chief of police and his father without a speck of proof.”

  “Something will turn up. God has a way of bringing us to the end of ourselves so we’ll finally be ready to see what’s been there all along. Kind of like how the paper bag princess discovered the prince wasn’t who she’d wanted to marry after all.”

  “Huh?”

  “You were talking about the story, so I thought I’d extend the metaphor, and . . . Oh, never mind. My break is in a few minutes. Do you want to go for a cup of tea?”

  The preschoolers, trailed by their mothers, poured out the doors ahead of Kate and Julie and raced to the adjoining park. The sun had burned off the early morning fog, and the colors of the grass and trees looked richer for their morning misting.

  “Hey.” Julie pointed to Cal’s garage across the street. “Did you see that? Al Brewster just went in carrying a couple of brown paper bags.”

  “So? Maybe he’s eating while his truck gets fixed.”

  “His pickup is parked outside the hardware store.” Julie motioned to a twenty-year-old Ford that had orange Bondo patches covering two-thirds of its body.

  “He could be visiting his brother.”

  Al exited via the big bay door carrying only one bag.