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

by McCourtney, Lorena

  “But I saw a gun in your desk—”

  “You still have that thing?” Rebecca gasped.

  “I don’t keep it loaded,” Uncle Joe said, as if that explanation made everything okay.

  “But you used to take on more dangerous cases?” Cate asked.

  “How do you think he got that limpy leg?” Rebecca snapped. “Not from falling off a ladder cleaning gutters.”

  “If I had a client, and there happened to be a murder involved, maybe an unjust accusation or something such as that, I might do some investigating. Sometimes there were unexpected complications. But now—”

  “Another of those ‘unexpected complications’ was the time our Buick blew up.” Rebecca sounded grumpy at the memory. “And there was the time that strange woman in the leopard catsuit took you hostage.”

  Cate gave Uncle Joe a quizzical lift of eyebrows, but he was not forthcoming with explanations.

  All he said was a firm, “Even if it looks somewhat suspicious, this woman’s death isn’t our case. Leave it to the police.”

  “But if they’re not even going to investigate, because they think it’s an accident—”

  “No. We don’t have a client involved, and private investigators can’t just rush out and stick their noses into something because it looks interesting or suspicious. That’s very important, that whatever we do is for a client. Don’t go sticking your nose into this. Besides, now that you’ve successfully taken care of your first case, I have a couple of other assignments for you. If you’re interested in continuing with the job.”

  “Yes, of course.” What else did she have to do?

  Joe told her about the files to look at in his desk, and what she should do to investigate the cases. Both, he assured her, were routine—no murder, no mayhem, no tree climbing.

  The fact that Uncle Joe now felt confident enough in her abilities to give her the new assignments made Cate feel good. But his “don’t go sticking your nose into it” about Amelia’s death put a definite damper on the trip to Murphy Bay on Saturday. She’d have to call Mitch and tell him it was off.

  But Cate saw frustration in the flick Uncle Joe gave the hospital blanket covering him from the waist down, and she strongly suspected that if he’d found Amelia’s body, and if he weren’t stuck here in the hospital, he’d be sticking his nose into Amelia’s death. She also figured that if he wanted to investigate a situation, he’d manage to find a client.

  Cate had all those suspects walking around in her head.

  Unfortunately, none of them looked like potential clients.

  But did a client necessarily have to be money-paying? Or human?

  Back home, Cate put the question directly to Octavia. “Are you interested in finding out if your former owner was murdered, thus depriving you of security, companionship, and a future supply of gourmet cat food? Because all you’re going to get here is the ordinary stuff. No shrimp and caviar.”

  Octavia might not be able to hear, but she knew when she was being talked to. She looked up at Cate with her big blue eyes. Mrrow.

  “And do you want me as an assistant with Belmont Investigations to investigate who may have done this dastardly deed? Payment to be made in snuggles, cuddles, and any other appropriate forms of feline affection?”

  Mrrow.

  Cate decided not to question whether those were affirmative responses—and not to test the authenticity of the answers by asking something such as, Do you believe scientists will figure a way around the limits of the speed of light in interplanetary travel? Because she had the feeling the answer would be that same complacent mrrow. Which might dilute the authority of the earlier answers.

  “Okay,” she said. “It’s settled then. You’re my client and I’m investigating.”

  The trip to the coast on Saturday was on again. That evening, before bed, she grabbed a book from the collection in Uncle Joe’s office and read up on questioning reluctant witnesses.

  Mitch, in khaki shorts, white T-shirt, and a straw hat that looked as if it had spent most of its existence stuffed in the bottom of an old fishing box, arrived five minutes early. He loaded Cate’s bags of food, bottled water, Thermos of coffee, maps, notebook, sun hat, raincoat, and sunscreen in his SUV without complaint. Cate noted all he’d brought was a windbreaker and a can of peanuts.

  He didn’t question their destination until they were headed across town to the highway to the coast. “Do we know where we’re going, or is it just the coast in general?”

  “Does it matter?”

  He grinned at her. “Not really.”

  “It’s a little place called Murphy Bay, population 514.”

  “Okay, I know where that is. I’ve never stopped, but I’ve been through there. I suppose this could be just a fun trip to watch the surf and seagulls, et cetera, but I’m guessing that’s just wishful thinking?”

  “I need to find a woman named Texie. She has a friend, Lorilyn, who works at a real estate agency there. But I’m sure it will be a fun trip too,” Cate added brightly.

  “So, basically, it’s PI business.” After Cate murmured agreement, he added, “A new case?”

  “Well, um, no.”

  “But you’ve solved the case of the missing Willow.”

  “There have been some additional developments.”

  Mitch questioned her with a curious glance, and she gave him a condensed rundown on Doris’s phone call about Texie and Radford.

  “So this trip to the coast isn’t about Willow. This is about Amelia. And murder.” Mitch tapped the steering wheel, apparently not thrilled with the implications of that. “What does your uncle think about your getting involved in this?”

  “He said stay out of it,” Cate admitted reluctantly.

  “So isn’t that what you should be doing?”

  “This isn’t really involvement,” Cate protested. “It’s just that I might be able to learn something that would be helpful to the police. I did find the body.”

  Although she’d found a textbook on microbiology back in college once, and she hadn’t felt inclined to buy a magnifying glass and start prowling the campus looking for exotic organisms.

  “Have you considered that poking around in murder could be just a tiny bit dangerous? That murderers tend to object, possibly unpleasantly, to finding a PI, even”—he shot her a sideways glance—“an attractive one, on their tail?”

  Cate flashed him her most ingratiating smile. “Maybe that’s why I wanted you along.”

  Flattery did not alter his lack of enthusiasm for her sleuthing efforts. “Are you thinking about becoming a full-fledged private investigator?”

  “Uncle Joe will probably close Belmont Investigations and fully retire now, so I’m still looking for a real job.”

  He nodded as if he approved of that. “What do you usually do?”

  Good question, Cate thought glumly. “I’ve been a Christmas elf, a costumed sign waver, and a stuffer of flyers under windshield wipers since I’ve been in Eugene.”

  “An admirable flexibility,” Mitch said.

  “Okay, I started out to be a teacher. My Aunt Delphie is a wonderful teacher. She still hears from students she had years ago. I saw teaching as a really worthwhile goal in life. Aunt Delphie encouraged me, even helped with my college expenses, and I got a degree in education.”

  “I hear a ‘but’ coming.”

  “But I discovered that, even if teaching may be the most noble profession in the world, and even if I liked the kids, I was not an effective teacher.” She paused. “You might even say I was a lousy teacher.”

  “Maybe it was just the school. You could give it another try somewhere else.”

  “I was sick to my stomach on the way to school every morning. Some people like Aunt Delphie are Teachers. Capital T. I’m not.”

  “A borrowed dream that didn’t work.”

  Cate had never thought of it exactly that way, but, bottom line, Mitch had nailed it. She’d latched on to Aunt Delphie’s dream for her
life, and it sank like her dad’s old boat going down in the river one summer. They’d had life jackets to cope with the boat disaster, but no life jacket was available when her teaching career sank. She’d been disappointed with herself for failing as a teacher, saddened that she’d also disappointed Aunt Delphie.

  “So what have you been doing since teaching”—he paused and then phrased it diplomatically as they passed a slow-moving log truck—“didn’t work out?”

  Cate told him about the companies where her jobs also hadn’t “worked out,” how she’d come to Eugene at Uncle Joe’s and Rebecca’s invitation, and found a job market tighter than the Gap jeans she’d once splurged on and now couldn’t zip up. “So, at the moment, except for this temporary job Uncle Joe gave me, I seem to be basically unemployable.”

  “Beverly tells me God can do great things even with a crummy situation,” Mitch said.

  Not exactly a direct-from-the-Bible quotation, but “crummy situation”? Yeah, that fit. A job history that read like a self-help book on how to fail without really trying. A history of relationships scripted for a bad chick flick.

  When Cate didn’t comment, Mitch asked, “Was there a husband in there somewhere?”

  “No. A fiancé for a while.”

  “Someone you met down in California?”

  “We knew each other in grade school, but his dad transferred to serve as pastor at a church in another small town nearby. So we didn’t go to the same high school or college. Then, down in San Diego, we ran into each other at a church event. My mom and his even became friends back home.”

  “A guy with a pastor for a father. Both of you with Christian beliefs. Parents who were friends. Sounds like a program for happily-ever-after.”

  Cate had certainly believed they were headed for happily-ever-after. “Kyle had slipped away from his Christian beliefs while he was in college. But he’d just lost a job and was feeling kind of lost, and he’d started going to this big church that I already attended. After we got together, we were involved in a lot of church activities together.” They’d also prayed together and talked about how they could serve God with their lives.

  “Very admirable.”

  “Then Kyle got a new, better job than the one he’d lost, a management position with a big satellite TV company. But he had to travel a lot, so he didn’t have much time for church activities after that.”

  “So you had an ugly breakup? And it soured you on men forever?”

  Cate turned to look at him, startled. “Why would you think that?”

  He just shrugged, but she remembered his earlier comment about his impression of her “unavailability.”

  Her breakup with Kyle was dumb, really. An argument over a cappuccino machine started it. Kyle wanted one, the most expensive model on the market. Cate said they should be saving money to buy a house when they were married instead of buying overpriced gadgets. He grudgingly bought a cheaper cappuccino machine. He had some people from the satellite company over one evening. The machine turned out cappuccino that not only tasted as if it were made with a combination of sour milk and battery acid, it also shot a stream of foamy spray into the cleavage of a guest leaning over to look at the machine. Kyle blamed Cate. Cate said he hadn’t followed the instructions. Kyle accused her of sabotaging his career. She accused him of being too interested in that cleavage. Later, words such as “unsupportive,” “know-it-all,” and “unsophisticated” were tossed around.

  “The Cappuccino Conflict?” Mitch suggested after she’d given him a minus-cleavage version of the breakup.

  The Cappuccino Conflict. Yes. “I thought we’d get back together. The whole thing just exploded all out of proportion. But before we got things straightened out, he got a surprise offer for a transfer to the company headquarters in Atlanta, and two weeks later he was gone.”

  “Apparently his career hadn’t been sabotaged.”

  She nodded, but she’d suddenly had enough of putting her past failures with both Kyle and her career under a microscope. And she wasn’t about to go into a study of the guys she’d dated after Kyle. “What about you?”

  “No wife. Not even a fiancée.”

  “Working with computers was what you always wanted to do?” Cate asked.

  “Pretty much. In high school I hacked into some sites I had no business being in, and got into big trouble. My folks were ready to ban computers forever, but one of my teachers was generous enough to think the hacking showed a certain potential and helped me get a college scholarship. Then Lance and I got together and have done pretty well with our own business.”

  “The Computer Solutions Dudes.”

  “We’re in Eugene because that’s where Lance was originally from.”

  “It must be nice to have your life’s work all mapped out.” Cate felt a little wistful. Here she was, almost thirty, still wondering what she was going to be when she grew up.

  “Life’s work?” Mitch sounded startled, as if he hadn’t really thought of it as a lifetime commitment.

  At the junction with Highway 101, without having to look at the map, Mitch turned north. A scent of ocean had teased them for some miles, but here it hit with an invigorating blast of salt-and-sea. Cate sniffed with the delight a visit to the coast always brought her. The scent hinted at exotic, far-off places across the ocean, adventures on the high seas, pirates and buried treasure. A stiff breeze swirled dissipating wisps of fog overhead, with glimpses of blue sky and sunshine. Sunlight lit patches of Scotch broom as if the golden blossoms were a special treasure deserving a spotlight, even though most coast locals considered them troublesome weeds.

  A little after 10:00, Mitch turned the SUV into the parking lot of a café and gift shop. “Here it is.” He pointed to a sign on the far side of the highway. “Murphy Bay.”

  Cate looked down the highway, which was also the main street of town. An assortment of stores and houses, gas station, church, and two motels. A bit shabby, perhaps, but all with a certain weather-beaten charm. A wind sock in the shape of a red dragon danced atop a pole outside an antique store. No bay that she could see. A good-sized hill to the west apparently blocked view of the ocean.

  “Now what?” Mitch asked.

  Deflation unexpectedly whooshed through Cate. Back home, finding Texie in a small town of 514 sounded as simple as picking white-furred Octavia out of a lineup of calico felines. She’d locate cowgirl-garbed Texie and ask her insightful questions that would produce a confession of her guilt or would lead Cate to a guilty Radford. The mystery of Amelia’s death would be solved. Even though Uncle Joe had given her the temporary PI job out of charity, and didn’t want her investigating this, he’d be impressed. But now that she was here, it felt more like the old needle-in-a-haystack quandary. She may have studied Uncle Joe’s books, but what did she really know about investigating anything? The police apparently weren’t suspicious of Amelia’s death, so why should she be?

  Mitch seemed to be waiting for instructions, and she couldn’t think of any. “You think this is all some wild goose chase.”

  Mitch grinned. “I can’t think of anyone I’d rather chase wild geese with than you.”

  Maybe this should simply be a fun trip to the coast. Find the bay, take a hike on the beach, get to know Mitch better. But once more that image of Amelia lying dead at the foot of the stairs jumped out and grabbed her. Surely it wasn’t just an accident that Cate had been the one to find her. It meant something.

  “How about we go have a cup of coffee?” Mitch motioned to the café, where a metal wind chime jingled cheerfully at the main door.

  “I have coffee in the Thermos.”

  “You’re missing the point. Don’t hard-boiled detectives always go to some dark, smoky place and run into some sleazy character with exactly the information they need?”

  “I think the sleazy guy is usually in a sleazy bar, but maybe this will work.”

  Inside, sunshine streamed through an east-facing window, and a fragrance of coffee and pastries
wafted over maroon-padded plastic seats that lined a counter. A middle-aged woman in a pink uniform came over to take their order. The blond bun at the back of her head was watermelon size, but she didn’t look sleazy.

  Cate asked for iced tea and Mitch ordered coffee. Before the woman went away, Cate said, “I’m looking for a friend who’s staying here in town, but I’m not sure where. She’s an older woman, blonde, petite, and she usually wears cowgirl-type clothes?”

  “Honey, we get all types here during tourist season. They come in wearing everything from shorts skimpy enough to make me want to throw a sheet over them, to Tshirts saying ‘Membership Chairman, Alien Astronauts, Inc.’ But a cowgirl? That doesn’t ring any bells.”

  “How about a real estate agent named Lorilyn?”

  “Oh her, yeah. Lantzer’s Real Estate, down by the beauty shop.” She waved a generously sized arm toward the south end of town.

  Cate’s confidence bounced back. Hey, maybe being a private investigator wasn’t so difficult after all.

  They finished their iced tea and coffee, and a minute later found the real estate office, stuck between the beauty shop and a hardware store, where the front window held fishing net and wire cages that Cate recognized as crab pots. A sign that simply said “Closed,” without indication of an opening any time in the near future, hung inside the door.

  The all-too-familiar “Now what?” snagged Cate again.

  “Go next door,” Mitch suggested. “Aren’t beauty shops a universal gathering and distribution point of all female knowledge?”

  Cate slid out of the SUV and pushed open the door of the beauty salon, half expecting she might be grabbed and herded into a chair for corrective hair surgery. The young, dark-haired woman did give that wayward spike of red hair a speculative glance, but she didn’t offer emergency aid.

  “Hi. I’m wondering about the real estate office next door?” Cate asked.

  “Lori had to go down to Reedsport today. She’ll probably be in the office if she gets back in time, or you can catch her at home later.”