Dying to Read (The Cate Kinkaid Files Book #1): A Novel

by McCourtney, Lorena

  Cate, who had been concentrating solely on climbing, now looked around too. Willow was right. They were way, way up here. She could see out over the rooftops, out to flashing police lights and traffic on the street. Clouds still blanketed the mountains to the east, and the river cut a dark ribbon through the city. Up here, the tree trunk was slender and flexible, and it wobbled back and forth like a carnival ride with their every movement. Cate’s insides sloshed with the sway. Had anyone ever become seasick in a tree?

  “I tried to get down earlier, but it’s even harder going down than coming up. My feet and fingers are numb … and I don’t know what to do! I hate heights.”

  “Okay, don’t panic. I’ll come right up beside you.”

  Maybe not a good idea, Cate realized when she balanced on the branch just below the one Willow was sitting on, and it bent ominously under her weight. Here the branches were small and springy, suitable for birds, not budding PIs.

  She had an unpleasant vision of two redheads tumbling to the earth below. Lord, help me figure out what to do here!

  “Are you scared?” Willow asked.

  “Of course I’m scared,” Cate admitted.

  “I suppose you pray when you’re scared?”

  “I pray when I’m scared. I pray when I’m happy. Or confused. Or thankful. God’s always pleased to hear from us. You could pray too.”

  “God wouldn’t want to hear from me. I’ve done … oh … things.”

  “God is in the forgiveness business. You don’t have to get your life all straightened up before you talk to him.”

  “Hey, what’s going on up there?” The big voice booming through a bullhorn made Cate grab another branch to keep her balance. “Judge’s orders are that this tree be vacated immediately!”

  There wasn’t an “Or else” at the end, but Cate figured they had something in mind.

  “Okay, we’re coming down,” she yelled back. She looked down, took a steadying breath, and instructed Willow to untie her rope.

  “I can’t. I’ll fall! I wish Coop were here!”

  “We don’t need Coop. I’ll be right below you. Face the tree. Keep your arms around it and back down, one foot at a time. I’ll guide your foot so you don’t miss the branch. By the way, you have a job waiting when you get down.”

  “A job?”

  “Amelia’s niece wants you to come back and house-sit for her. Amelia really did just fall down those steps. She was dopey from sleeping pills. And none of her jewelry is missing after all. They found it.”

  The news seemed to cheer Willow. She untied the rope, and Cate guided her shoe-less foot to the next branch down. She moved a branch lower herself, then guided Willow’s other foot down another step.

  “Doing great,” Cate encouraged. “Don’t look down.”

  Then a branch bent and cracked beneath Willow’s foot. She plunged downward, breaking Cate’s grip on the trunk. Cate’s arms windmilled, and she grabbed at branches as they scraped through her hands. Willow landed on Cate’s head. Now she couldn’t even see. They floundered among branches and a tangle of thrashing arms and legs.

  A foot landed in the middle of Cate’s midsection. A hand clutched her hair. She tried to yell “let go” but wound up with a mouthful of knee.

  Note to self: avoid any future jobs involving trees and/or heights.

  A larger branch finally stopped their fall. Looking down, Cate saw a cluster of upturned faces, like the petals on some bizarre people-plant.

  “Everything okay up there?” an officer called, this time without the bullhorn.

  Yeah. Lovely. Just out for a morning fall.

  “We’re coming down,” Cate said. Of that she was reasonably certain; she just wasn’t certain it was going to be a dignified descent.

  But now that they were lower, Willow recovered her confidence. “I can make it okay now,” she said, and with Tarzan-like agility she swung down through the remaining branches.

  Cate was short on the Tarzan genes. Willow landed on her feet at the base of the tree. Cate, after a slower descent, made another ignominious splat.

  She instantly scrambled to her feet. Whatever fear Willow had felt near the top of the tree did not translate into fear of police authority, and a fire of defiance now blazed in her eyes. She’d also reclaimed her shoes, and waved them like floppy weapons, yelling something about these people destroying what God had created.

  Cate was gratified to hear Willow give God credit for the trees, but she wasn’t sure this was the time to proclaim it. She grabbed Willow’s arm. “We’re leaving now,” she told the officers. “Thank you for your help.”

  “Hey,” Willow objected. “I’m not—”

  Cate propelled her look-alike forward. “We’re leaving.” Hopefully before Willow performed some brash action that would result in handcuffs for both of them.

  Cate didn’t let go of Willow’s arm until they reached her car. “Sometimes you just have to accept temporary defeat and move on,” she said.

  Willow rotated her shoulders and looked down at her feet in muddy socks. “I’ll have a better plan next time,” she vowed.

  At the house on Lexter, Willow hooked up an electric heater and Cate backed up to it in her wet jeans. The house had a nice cinnamon-y smell, as if Willow had been baking again.

  “I guess I haven’t thanked you yet for climbing up to rescue me. I appreciate it.” Willow spoke with her head under a towel, her voice muffled. “Not something every PI would do, I’m sure.”

  “It wasn’t included in the job description, but I’m glad I could help.”

  Willow wanted to know more about the job offer, but what Cate said instead was, “I don’t think you should take the job.”

  “You don’t?” Willow peered out from under the towel. “Then why’d you tell me about it?”

  “I didn’t think it was something I could rightfully hide from you. And, up in the tree, I figured it might encourage you to come down.”

  Willow didn’t berate Cate for that small ruse. “But now you don’t think I should take the job?”

  “Coop is still looking for you. Still stalking you. I think he’s dangerous. I think you should leave Eugene as soon as possible.” And, given that she couldn’t quite let go of her suspicions about Cheryl, the job offer itself made her uneasy.

  “I suppose I could go down to my grandma’s in Florida.” Willow threw the towel on the sofa and leaned her head over the heater, hair dangling like a red mop. Cate didn’t like the reluctance she heard in Willow’s voice.

  “I was surprised, when we were up in the tree and you said you wished Coop were there. I didn’t think you ever wanted anything to do with him again.”

  “I don’t! It’s just that I was so scared. I hate heights! Coop has a lot of faults, but … he’s big and strong and competent at a lot of things.” Willow’s head disappeared under the towel again. “I mean, if you need protection from a rampaging bear or rescue from white-water rapids, or protection from some jerk trying to pick you up in a bar, Coop’s your man.”

  “He came to see me.”

  Cate felt more than saw or heard the surprise in Willow’s sharp intake of breath. “So he finally admitted he wasn’t my great-uncle, Jeremiah somebody?” Willow asked.

  “He said that, along with a few other things.”

  “Such as?”

  Cate heard wariness in Willow’s words. “He had a somewhat different version of your relationship and breakup than you did. He says he never hit you.”

  Willow gave an unladylike snort. Her head came out from under the towel again. “Of course he’d say that. What guy’s going to come right out and admit he slaps and punches a girlfriend?”

  “He also mentioned a belt buckle. His dad’s, won in bull riding at a rodeo. He says you took it.”

  “Took it? That’s a laugh. Coop loses everything. Watches. Wallets. Keys. He’s also, if no one cleans up for him, perfectly happy to live in a pigsty of dirty clothes, dirty dishes, and greasy motorcycle parts.
He could lose an entire motorcycle, to say nothing of one little belt buckle, in the mess. I’ll bet he also had some story about my making off with his money.”

  “He mentioned that. Ten thousand out of a bank account and a bunch more on credit cards. He figured you bought lottery tickets. I didn’t tell him you’d probably spent it on the Corolla because I didn’t think he should know what you’re driving now.”

  “There was money in the bank account, all right. But ten thousand? That’s another laugh. And the money was mine anyway, a gift from my not-dead grandmother. I did put money into the lottery for a while, and it paid off too. Several times. My lucky numbers. But I needed all this money right away for a car.” She paused. “Anyway, thanks for not telling him about the car. Anything else?”

  “The credit cards?”

  Another snort. “He has a grandiose idea about what I could get on those. Besides, Coop owed big on his credit cards when we first got together. I helped pay them off. When I left, I didn’t take any more on cash advances than I had coming.”

  “He said you left because you were mad about his forgetting your birthday.”

  “Coop should be writing a fairy tale. He’s good enough at making up stories.”

  “That’s kind of what he said about you.”

  Willow gave a what-else-would-you-expect shrug.

  “I didn’t give him any hint where you were, and I told him Belmont Investigations was no longer working for him.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate that.” Willow smoothly shifted gears to another subject. “You told me up in the tree that Amelia’s fall was definitely accidental?”

  “That’s apparently the official decision. I’m relieved. I’d been thinking … well, I had various ideas about people who might have pushed her.”

  Willow stood up and threw back her hair. Even wet, when Cate’s hair tended toward a frizzed poodle effect, Willow’s had a wild-woman attractiveness. She smiled. “Including me. Be honest now.”

  “It entered my mind,” Cate admitted.

  “I suppose I should tell you …”

  “Tell me what?”

  “That morning at Amelia’s was a little different than I told you before.” Willow pulled up a chair and wiggled her bare feet in the warmth of the electric heater. “I didn’t actually … get fired. Though Amelia had threatened it enough times. The night before, she told me her book club was supposed to come for lunch the next day. I thought she’d called the deli, but she hadn’t. They had to make everything, and I decided to wait rather than come back later. I was in my own car, and Amelia was really stingy about paying for gas. So it was at least a couple hours, maybe more, before I got back. I didn’t see Amelia then, but I figured she was upstairs, sleeping late. I put everything in the refrigerator and got out the salad plates Amelia liked to use for serving lunch. She said people didn’t eat as much if you gave them smaller plates.”

  Cate nodded. She remembered seeing that stack of plates in the kitchen. “So you didn’t actually see Amelia at all that morning?”

  “No. Then, after I’d been home awhile, I heard a fly buzzing at the window and pulled the drapes back to swat it. She always kept them closed, you know, because the backyard looks so tacky. And there she was, lying at the foot of those old stairs.” Willow rubbed her temples as if the memory hurt.

  “You should have called 911 or an ambulance!”

  “I know. But I could tell she was dead even before I ran out there. Then I just panicked. A while back I worked for that other older woman, the one I told you about who fell off her balcony. And back when Coop and I were together, we worked for an old guy on a dairy farm down in California, and he fell off his barn roof and got killed. I thought if the police came they’d find out I’d been around when these other deaths occurred, and they might think it was really odd. I mean, it is odd, three deaths, all by falling. And me right there.”

  Yeah. Odd.

  Willow pushed a loose strand of hair out of her eyes. “I didn’t have anything to do with any of them falling and dying, but people get convicted for crimes they didn’t commit, you know? So I just picked up and ran.”

  The revised version of that day sounded like the truth. But then, Willow’s first version about being fired had sounded like the truth too.

  “This is why you looked for Octavia and wanted to take her with you? Because you knew Amelia was dead, and you were afraid no one would take care of her?”

  “Yeah. But you got her, and that’s even better. There’s another thing. I guess it isn’t important now that they know Amelia wasn’t pushed, that she just fell.” Although Willow had only moments before questioned that point, she’d apparently decided to go with it.

  “What’s that?” Cate asked, warily afraid of another corrected “truth.”

  “That guy Amelia was seeing—”

  “The sleazy one?”

  “Yeah. Radford. I saw his car a few blocks away when I was coming back from the deli that morning. I don’t know that he’d been to the house. But I don’t know why else he’d be in that area.”

  Which went along with Doris’s suspicion of Amelia’s boyfriend.

  “Did he see you?”

  “We didn’t make eye contact, but I suppose he might have recognized my car.”

  “Doesn’t that worry you? I mean, if he did push her, and he knows you saw him …”

  “But Amelia wasn’t pushed, she just fell, remember?” As if that settled the matter, Willow stood up. “I’m going to go put some conditioner on my hair, and then I’ll call Cheryl.”

  “What about Coop?”

  Willow waved a hand airily. “I’m not going to call Coop.”

  Which wasn’t what Cate had asked, of course.

  11

  Driving home, Cate found herself both frustrated and annoyed with her look-alike. Willow hadn’t yet been able to reach Cheryl by the time Cate left the house, but Cate had no doubt but what she’d accept the job offer. She wasn’t taking Coop’s stalking seriously enough! Unless Willow knew Coop wasn’t actually stalking her …

  Cate tended to believe Willow’s version of her relationship with Coop more than she believed Coop’s story, but she wasn’t stake-my-life-on-it convinced.

  This was not, she reminded herself, her problem. She’d accomplished what she set out to do. She’d found Willow. Although she was still undecided what to tell Uncle Joe about the various complications with the assignment. Maybe it would be best not to tell him anything.

  After lunch, Cate drove over to the hospital. When she walked into the room, Rebecca was standing by the bed, holding hands with Uncle Joe.

  “Cate Kinkaid, assistant PI, reporting in.”

  Uncle Joe held out his arms from the bed, and they shared an enthusiastic if somewhat awkward hug. “So, how do you like being a PI by now?”

  “Interesting. Very interesting.” She gave him a brief update on her success in finding Willow. “I’ll write up a report for the files. Hey, I hear you’ll be leaving here soon.”

  “A few weeks in a nursing home for physical therapy, and I’ll be good as new. So they tell me. I keep thinking about those gutters and how they still need cleaning.” Then, with no break to warn Cate of a change of subject, he said, “There’s more to the Willow Bishop case than it originally appeared, isn’t there?”

  Cate tried not to reveal how much the question startled her. “What makes you say that?”

  “I haven’t been a private investigator all these years without being able to tell when someone is”—he broke off and studied her critically—“being evasive.”

  Evasive. Yes, he had her. Instantly. How did he do that? It was a talent she certainly didn’t possess, since she still couldn’t tell if it was Willow or Coop playing with the truth. She sighed and tucked that rebel spike of hair behind her ear. She started with the Whodunit ladies at Amelia’s house. No Willow. Finding Amelia’s body at the bottom of the stairs. Meeting niece Cheryl. The missing jewelry. Acquiring Octavia. Locating Willow�
��s former employer. Missing ring. Finding Willow in the tree. Willow’s different story about the identity of “Jeremiah Thompson.” Cooper Langston’s visit. Climbing Willow’s tree. The jewelry not missing now. The niece offering Willow her job back. Cate advising Willow not to take it.

  Uncle Joe blinked. “How long have I been in here anyway? I feel like old Rip Van Winkle, waking up after a twenty years’ sleep.”

  “I hope you don’t mind, but I told ‘Jeremiah Thompson’ the agency is no longer working for him, and we’ll refund his money. And I didn’t tell him where to find Willow, of course.”

  “Good. That closes the case, then.” He brushed his hands together. Except that Cate could tell Uncle Joe was curious too. His tone was just a little too offhand when he said, “Did they ever find out how the woman happened to fall down the stairs?”

  “Amelia’s niece’s husband Scott says the autopsy showed traces of sleeping medication in her blood. She was known to pop a lot of sleeping pills, which often made her really fuzzy-headed in the morning, and sometimes she even sleepwalked. So she must have just wandered out there to the stairs sometime in the night or early morning and fell down them. The police don’t seem to be doing any further investigation.”

  Shrewd PI look. “But you don’t think it was a fuzzy-headed accident?”

  “I certainly don’t know more than the experts! Although …”

  “Although what?”

  “Well, I was just thinking on the way over here. If someone knew about Amelia’s habit of taking sleeping pills, and knew she was kind of dopey in the morning, it would be easy to take advantage of that. Someone could have led her out there and given her a push before she had any idea what was happening.”

  “So you think someone may be getting away with murder.”

  Cate jumped on that with an eagerness that surprised her. “Yes! There are a number of suspects—”

  “Suspects are none of our concern,” Uncle Joe interrupted. He also frowned. Not a normal expression on Uncle Joe’s usually cheerful face. “Murder is not for amateurs. That isn’t what Belmont Investigations does these days anyway. We only do low-key cases. Routine stuff. Nothing dangerous. No murder cases,” he repeated.