Murder Among Neighbors (The Kate Austen Mystery Series)

by Jonnie Jacobs

  “I didn’t want things to end up like this,” she whispered.

  Neither did I, I wanted to tell her. But I thought that part was pretty obvious. Daria’s face was flushed, her eyes dark and glazed. The expression on her face was unreadable, but there was nothing remotely familiar about it.

  So this is it, I told myself. Poor Andy, he was going to end up having to be a responsible parent by default

  Just then I heard a faint shuffling sound from over to my right. Daria heard it,too, and in the instant that she looked up, I reached for the gun and tried to knock it from her hands. She pulled away, but her reflexes were too slow, and I was able to grab hold of her arm, shoving it sharply back against her chest. There was a loud crack and suddenly Daria went limp, slouching forward so that her head lay on the hard brick surface next to my own.

  That was the last thing I remember until I heard the sirens and felt Michael’s hand brushing the hair from my forehead.

  Chapter 22

  I awoke the next morning with a pounding headache that seemed to reverberate through my whole body. Even my toes throbbed. I didn’t know if it was the glasses of scotch I’d drunk when I’d finally got home, the hours of incurable sobbing that had followed, or simply the whack my skull had suffered when Daria had knocked me to the ground, but the pain was enough to make me swear off all three situations for the foreseeable future.

  The hour was already late, I could tell by the yellow sunlight that splashed against the far wall. Anna had come and snuggled, and then gone off to watch Saturday morning cartoons no doubt. I’d heard her return every so often to stand quietly by the door and peer in. But I remained still, pretending I wasn’t yet awake. What I wanted, really, was to lie there in my bed, shut my eyes and drift back into the warm cocoon of sleep. But the headache made that impossible. Besides, I had an appointment.

  Strong coffee and a couple of aspirin helped, and the long, hot shower helped even more. But by the time the awful pounding had subsided, an assortment of other aches had begun screaming for my attention.

  Michael had warned me last night, when I’d insisted I was just fine. He’d warned me about the sore spots and bruises, the pulled muscles and scrapes, and about the pain deep inside that nothing but time could cure. He knew about these things, I suppose, except maybe the last. After all, Daria wasn’t just some common thug; she was a friend—my best friend.

  I dropped Anna off at Sharon’s a little before eleven and then made my way to the Walnut Hills police department. I’d been there once before, on a nursery-school field trip, so I had no trouble locating it even though it’s on the second floor of a Spanish-style building that looks more like a real-estate office than City Hall. But that’s the way we do things in Walnut Hills.

  The sugar coated voice that greeted me was one I recognized from my phone calls to the station, and I experienced a momentary twinge of jealousy, just as I had on those previous occasions. Only this time there was a little resentment thrown in, too. I was in no mood to exchange pleasantries with a voluptuous blonde, particularly one who shared the bulk of her day with Michael.

  The body did not match the voice, however, and my ruffled feathers settled back into place. The woman was a skinny little thing with dull brown hair, frizzed on the ends, and a large mole on her left cheek. She might have had a great personality, but she certainly wasn’t going to have Walnut Hills’ finest jockeying for peeks down her blouse.

  “Lieutenant Stone,” I said, smiling magnanimously. “He’s expecting me.”

  “Oh, so you're the one!” She gave me a wide, toothy grin which seemed to last for a full minute. It wasn’t clear whether she was referring to my renown as hot-blooded lover or cold-hearted sleuth. Both roles made me uncomfortable. “Down the hall, second door on the right,” she said. I could feel her eyes following me the entire way.

  Michael was on the phone, but he hung up when I poked my head through the door.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “Shaky. Sore. How about you?”

  “Right at this moment,” he said, leaning forward to kiss me, “I feel terrific.”

  I stepped away. “We can’t do that here. Are you crazy?”

  “Crazy about you anyway.” But he walked over and shut door. “Better?”

  “It’s your job,” I quipped, wrapping my arms around his middle. Then we kissed, a long, lovely kiss better suited to a lonely stretch of beach than a busy office.

  “I hated having to leave you last night,” he said finally. “I almost called you when I finished here, but it was after two and I thought you needed the rest.” He touched the raw, red skin on the side of my face. “Were you able to sleep at all?”

  “Surprisingly well. I thought I’d be awake all night, reliving everything. Guess maybe I got it all out of my system before I went to bed.”

  “Maybe. Don’t be surprised if it sneaks up on you again, though. Things like this take time.”

  “I’ll be okay,” I told him, so breezily that the artificial tone hung in the air even when I’d finished speaking. Then I hugged him, turning to rest my head against his chest.

  Michael winced and pulled away.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, quickly pulling away myself.

  “I like it.” A pause and a feeble smile followed. “Except for the blinding shot of pain, that is. But hey, I’m not complaining. If you hadn’t knocked that gun from Daria’s hands when you did, I might not be around to feel anything.”

  “What did the doctor say?”

  Michael shrugged, but there was a gleam in his eye. “The usual—take it easy and make love often.”

  I brought a hand up to sock him in the shoulder and Michael winced again, before I’d even touched him. “No fair,” he said.

  I dropped my arm and smiled at him.

  He smiled back, a slow, sweet smile that sent a prickly sensation across my shoulders and down my back. “You have no idea what you do to me,” he said after a moment.

  “Tell me.”

  “Here?” he mocked. “Are you crazy?”

  “Tell me why you like me then.”

  “You’re kind, funny, clever, brave . . .”

  “Sounds like a Boy Scout.”

  “And you make me feel happy. Incredibly, wonderfully, indescribably happy.”

  “Likewise,” I said, kissing him soundly on the mouth. Then I dropped down in one of the gray vinyl chairs across from his desk and stared hard at the carpet for several moments. “I’m glad you showed up last night when you did.”

  “I don’t know; seems to me you handled things just fine. I couldn’t even get my wrists loose until it was all over.”

  “But if you hadn’t been there . . . well, I’m not sure what I would have done. I’d like to think I would have turned Daria in, but I’m not certain I would have.” I raised my head and looked at him. “That’s pretty disgusting, isn’t it?”

  “Listen, Kate, what’s done is done. There’s no point beating yourself up over it.”

  I bit my lip. No point maybe, but that didn’t make it any easier. “How is she?”

  “Still on the critical list.”

  “It’s funny how you can think you know a person, and be so wrong.”

  Michael pulled a chair close to mine and sat also, hunching so that his bad arm was nestled against his chest. His shirt was fresh, but he hadn’t shaved and the hair by his temples sprang outward with a life of its own.

  “If she lives,” I asked finally, “what will happen then?”

  “I can’t say for sure, it’s out of my hands. But even if she isn’t convicted of Pepper’s murder, there’s still last night.”

  “Will I have to testify?”

  “Probably, if there’s a trial.”

  “And this morning, what do I have to do now?”

  “Just read over the statement you made last night, make any corrections and sign it.”

  The wail of a passing siren from outside sent a shiver down my back. It was a sound I
would never again be able to ignore. “She would have done almost anything for me, you know. And she isn’t a bad person really, somehow she just slipped over the edge.”

  He must have read the uncertainty in my voice, because he picked up my hands and held them with his own. “Daria killed Pepper. It was premeditated, coldblooded murder. Last night she tried to kill me, and she would have killed you given the chance.”

  I shivered, although the office was quite warm. “Is there any coffee around here?”

  “It’s pretty terrible stuff.”

  “I don’t care, just so it’s hot.”

  Michael left, returning in no time with two Styrofoam cups and a package of fig newtons. “The only thing left in the machine,” he explained, dropping the cookies in my lap with an apologetic laugh, “It was a long night around here.”

  I took a sip of coffee, feeling its heat work its way down my throat. It tasted flat and bitter, but the effect was instantly soothing.

  “Kate?”

  I looked up. Michael was watching me, his soft gray eyes unusually serious.

  “Last night,” he said, “when I saw you and Daria struggling with that gun and I couldn’t do a blessed thing to help . . .”

  I squeezed his hand. “It’s okay, it’s over.”

  “But when I heard it go off, I thought . . .” He traced his finger along my bare arm. “I thought I would never have the chance to tell you what I feel for you.”

  “Don’t, Michael. Not now.”

  Just as he started to say something more, the door opened. A youngish cop with short, close-cropped hair poked his head in. “We’re ready for you, Mrs. Austen,” he said. “Sorry it took so long.”

  He led me down the hall to a room with four desks lined in a row and pointed to a gray metal chair just inside the door. Then he seated himself at the desk opposite and handed me a clump of papers.

  “Just read through these and make any changes you want. Feel free to take as long as you’d like.”

  Quickly, I scanned the pages. They were my words; I recognized them. And they seemed to cover all the main points. But I couldn’t tell if they made sense. It was like trying to read Balzac in the original after only one year of high-school French. I handed the papers back to him.

  “Done already?”

  “Everything seems to be in order.”

  “Nothing you want to add?”

  I shook my head and signed at the bottom, where he showed me.

  “Guess you’ll have quite a story to tell your friends,” he said, flashing me a tight smile. “Claim your fifteen minutes of fame while you can.”

  My stomach suddenly felt scrambled, and I turned away. “Am I finished?” I asked.

  “Just a minute while I check.” The young officer scratched something on the back of my statement and then picked up the phone. Before he’d finished punching the number, Michael walked in and the young man dropped the phone back down. “Hey, Lieutenant, you want anything more from Mrs. Austen?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Michael said, sounding remarkably casual, “as a matter of fact, I do. Show her to my office. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  “You free tonight?” he asked a moment later, when we were again alone.

  “I am, and I believe I owe you dinner.” Michael grinned and started playing with the hair at the back of my neck. “There’s something else,” I told him. “I’d like to see Daria.”

  He stopped his playing. “She’s in ICU, under armed guard.”

  “But you can arrange it, can’t you?”

  “Kate, there’s nothing to be gained.”

  “Please?”

  He looked at me for a long, quiet moment, then sighed. “All right. I’ll take you myself.” Grabbing the phone, he punched the buttons hard and then barked into the receiver. It took less than a minute.

  “Thank you,” I said as we walked to car.

  “I still think it’s a lousy idea.”

  The invitation to the previous night’s retirement dinner was on the seat. I tucked it into the pocket under the dash. “You never told me, how did you know it wasn’t Jim who killed Pepper?”

  “He plays poker on Tuesday nights,” Michael said, pulling out of the parking lot and across four lanes of intersecting traffic. A move destined to end the rest of us up in traffic court. “And the game on the night she was killed didn’t break up until the wee hours of the morning.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Jim said so, at the Wine Festival.”

  I was impressed. “My God, what a memory.”

  He basked for a moment in my wide-eyed admiration, then laughed. “I only remembered because I was envious. There I was putting in sixteen-hour days while some rich dentist lolled around all night playing poker.”

  “Jim could have left for an hour and then come back.”

  “Maybe, but he wasn’t driving the loaner that night; he had the BMW.” Michael paused and glanced pointedly in my direction. “Another point of envy. That left Daria as the most likely candidate.”

  “Impressive,” I told him with a pat on the knee. “But what about the bruises? That wasn’t Daria, was it?”

  “No, that was Jim. We questioned him at some length this morning.”

  “Jim hit Pepper?”

  “Apparently she was a real ice queen, started taunting him with stories of other men, and then when he begged her to divorce Robert, she laughed in his face. He struck her and she fell. His story, anyway. I never saw the bruises, maybe he struck her more than once.”

  I couldn’t imagine Jim hitting a woman, but then a lot of things had happened that I could never have imagined.

  “The irony of the whole thing,” Michael continued, “is that Daria didn’t have to kill Pepper. She and Jim were history by that point. And I imagine Daria might have looked pretty good to him after what Pepper had put him through.”

  “I’m not sure Pepper was as heartless as you think,” I told Michael. “It might have been a tough decision for her, choosing Robert over Jim. A number of people, including Robert himself, have mentioned that she seemed agitated and upset during the last few weeks.”

  “Yeah,” he said, looking directly at me. “I imagine having a nice guy madly in love with you can be pretty upsetting.” He smiled, but without humor.

  I turned my head and looked out the window at the green foothills in the distance.

  We drove in silence for several moments, until Michael cleared his throat and said, “The other day you mentioned something about a call from Andy.”

  I nodded.

  “He’s coming home?”

  I nodded again, keeping my eyes fixed on the hills.

  “When?”

  “A week or so. He didn’t know exactly.”

  “And then?”

  I thought of Anna, wide-eyed and hopeful, eagerly marking off the days to Andy’s return. I pictured him swinging her through the air and regaling her with stories of his adventures. My place in this picture wasn’t so clear.

  Shifting my position, I tucked one leg up under me and turned to meet Michael’s eyes. “I have to see what happens, I owe Andy that much.”

  “Owe him. For Christ’s sake!” Michael’s tone was explosive. “The guy walked out on you. I don’t see that you owe him anything.”

  “He didn’t exactly walk out”

  “Close enough.” Michael looked straight ahead, his mouth tight, his jaw rigid.

  Why was I defending Andy? It didn’t make a whole lot of sense, even to me. Maybe I was simply afraid to let go; afraid to relinquish my hold on the last vestiges of the cozy, picture-perfect life I’d thought we had. Or maybe I wanted to be able to tell myself that I’d tried, that I wasn’t the one turning my back on seven years of building togetherness. There was also, I suppose, the possibility that somewhere deep inside, part of me still loved him.

  “I’m just not ready to make any decisions,” I said. “But that doesn’t affect what I feel for you.”

  Michael tur
ned his head, but not his eyes. “So where does that leave us?”

  “How about lunches? I just love your lunches.” I tried for a light, playful tone, but it came out uneven and squeaky instead. Hardly the voice of a seductress.

  “That’s not what I want.”

  Nor I, I wanted to tell him. But I couldn’t, not just yet. So instead I nodded and said, “I know, but I can’t promise anything more at the moment.”

  He smiled weakly, and we drove the rest of the way to the hospital in silence.

  <><><>

  ICU was on the fifth floor, behind double glass doors. There was a cop standing in the hallway just outside, and another by the nurses’ desk at the front of the ward. Michael pulled out his ID, mumbled something I couldn’t understand, and we went in. He repeated the exercise for the guy inside, and then left, saying he’d wait for me in the hallway.

  The room was stuffy, filled with the heavy rankness of hospital routine and stale bodies. I felt the sourness from my stomach rise into my throat Hesitantly, I looked once again at the guard, who nodded but didn’t smile. Then I took a deep breath and headed for the far comer he had indicated.

  Daria was almost lost in the huge bed and the equipment surrounding her. There were tubes in her nose and arms, others snaking under the covers. Machines whirred, lights blinked, screens flashed zigzag patterns like abstract neon billboards. And in their midst lay Daria, her skin white and pasty, her hair tangled and flattened against her head.

  I stood quietly by the bed for a moment, then leaned forward and touched her arm. Her eyes fluttered open and she looked at me impassively, as though she could see right through me.

  “I’m so sorry, Daria,” I whispered under my breath. “I wish things had turned out differently.” I blinked, but she didn’t “And I am your friend, even now.”

  Her eyes closed again, and remained closed. I brushed a wisp of hair from her forehead and stood a moment longer, listening to the blips and pings. Waiting, maybe, for some sign of the Daria I had known. But there was no acknowledgment at all, not a trace. Her body remained motionless, like an abandoned rag doll’s. Finally I turned and left.