by Betty Webb
“Sorry, all out.” I waved my hands in a shooing motion. “Now, thanks for the information, but I’ve got business to attend to.”
“You mean you want me to…?”
“Leave. And maybe make yourself some coffee.”
“Mmph.”
Aggrieved, he clambered out of the deck chair and none-to-steadily stepped onto the dock. After regaining his balance, he tottered toward his High Life.
The second he was out of sight, I made a beeline toward Clear Light, where I found Ruth and Dee Dee enjoying a late lunch on deck.
“Come aboard,” Ruth said, waving a hunk of cheese. “There’s enough here for you, too.” Her smile looked strained. So did Dee Dee’s.
Rather than abuse their hospitality, I turned down the offer of food even though I was starving. “Kenny says you two were in the park the night I was shot. Is that true?”
They exchanged guilty looks.
“More or less,” Dee Dee confessed, her usually cheerful face folded into unhappy winkles.
“Mostly less.” Ruth.
My puzzlement must have been obvious, because Dee Dee continued, “I’d designed a new game and we were trying it out when we heard a noise, but I swear to you we didn’t realize it was a gunshot or we would have…”
“…would have done something about it,” Ruth finished, her soccer-strengthened body taut with tension. “Instead, we kept moving on to the next spot, then the next, working our way inland toward Goat Hill, where the game was supposed to end. We didn’t know something awful had happened until the next morning when a certain someone told us all about it. Talk about feeling like crap! Anyway, a few minutes later the cops came knocking, asking us if we’d seen or heard anything.”
“Did you tell them about hearing the gunshot?”
“Of course we did.” Dee Dee.
“That ‘certain someone’ who told you there’d been a shooting, would it have been Kenny Norgaard?”
Unison nods.
Remembering the malice in his voice, I asked, “Have either of you had a disagreement with Kenny about something?”
Double head-shakes.
“We’ve always been careful not to say anything that would upset him,” Ruth said, her big hands clenched tight. “Because of, well, you know.”
I stared at her. “On second thought, I’ll have some of that cheese. And a pear.”
Ruth loaded up a paper plate for me while Dee Dee fetched another chair. In no time my stomach was pacified into silence by Brie, crusty sourdough, and slices of Bosc.
“Those were lovely flowers you sent,” I told them, after licking remnants of Brie off my fingers. “Pink and lavender carnations, such a comforting color scheme. They smelled lovely, too.”
“Dee Dee picked them out. She has a better color sense than I do. Comes from all that game designing.”
“Oh, don’t be silly,” her partner said. “You’re the one who talked me out of buying that chartreuse and purple rug.”
Ruth smiled. “True. It would have clashed with our red slipcovers.”
After thoroughly discussing sea-going home décor we moved on to the weather. When we had said everything about the weather that could be said, I dropped my empty paper plate into their recyclables bin. “Well, gotta be going,” I announced.
“To the sheriff’s house?” Dee Dee.
“Yep.”
“Definitely safest, considering,” Ruth said. “And again, we’re so sorry about the other night.”
“Don’t worry about it. You couldn’t have known.” Relieved to have allayed my suspicions of the two, I got up to leave. But before stepping off the Clear Light, I remembered Ruth’s odd comment. “Wait a minute. You said something about always being careful around Kenny. May I ask why?”
The long silence that followed had me thinking neither was going to answer, but then Dee Dee blurted out, “Kenny’s last name isn’t Norgaard. It’s Norton. He…”
Ruth held up a restraining hand, silencing her. “On second thought, we’ve said too much already. Just watch yourself around him, okay?”
As if to punctuate her words, they grabbed the remains of their lunch and scurried inside, firmly closing the hatch behind them.
I was halfway down the dock when the hatch popped open and Dee Dee stuck her head out. “One more thing!” she yelled. “That night you were shot? We thought we saw Preston Morrell headed into the park, too.”
The hatch closed again.
I stewed about that conversation all the way to San Sebastian. Upon arriving at Joe’s, I wasted no time in firing up my laptop. It was a relief in a way, because I was able to hold my worries about Colleen in abeyance while I Googled every combination of Kenneth Norton, Kenneth Norten, Kenneth Norrton, and Kenneth Nortten. The various spellings of this simple name being both numerous and creative, I got hits on hundreds of men, including a trapeze artist, the owner of a dry-cleaning chain, several accountants, and multiple handymen. Weeding through all those Kenneth Whatevers took a couple of hours, but I considered the time well-spent after finding a Kenneth Nortten mentioned in an article from the Tampa Herald, dated twenty years back.
LOCAL MAN FOUND NOT GUILTY OF
KILLING PARENTS
GRAYTON BEACH, FLORIDA—In a verdict that stunned many onlookers, the jury acquitted Kenneth Nortten, 33, in a controversial murder trial lasting more than two and a half months.
Nortten, a Grayton Beach resident, took the stand in his own defense. He testified that while he and his parents were sailing on the Logos, the family’s racing catamaran, a sudden storm swamped the boat, washing his parents overboard. According to Nortten, he was the only one of the trio wearing a life jacket. Nortten’s emotional account of the storm and his subsequent efforts to save his parents—Edna Stokes Nortten and Karl Nortten—made several jurors weep.
In a fiery summation, prosecuting attorney William Masden claimed that Nortten knocked his parents out before the storm hit, removed their life jackets, and threw them into the Gulf.
Nortten’s motive, Masden said, was financial. Karl Nortten, a respected naval architect, founded West Winds, a privately held ship-building company. Lowell Price, a family friend, testified that two months before their deaths, the elder Nortten said he was thinking of changing his will so that his nephew, Samuel Barrington, could inherit the family business.
Price testified that Karl Nortten frequently referred to his son as “a wastrel.”
At the time of the deaths, Samuel Barrington had been attending a Miami seminar on double keel design. In his own testimony, Barrington said that under no condition would Karl or Edna Nortten have set sail into the Gulf without wearing life jackets.
“They were safety first people,” Barrington testified. But the jury believed Kenneth Nortten’s tearful testimony and found him innocent on all counts.
While leaving the courthouse, Avis Stokes, a distant cousin of Edna Nortten’s, who had attended the trial every day, commented, “The Scots allow jurors to render a third verdict—Not Proven—and that’s what should have been available to the jury here. To let that spoiled little snot walk away free and clear is a travesty. At least my cousin and her husband had the foresight to rewrite their wills in favor of Sam and to tie up Kenny’s remaining portion in a trust. Now he’ll have make do with a small monthly check instead of the fortune he erroneously thought he’d inherit.”
Neither Karl’s nor Edna Nortten’s bodies were ever recovered. Their catamaran washed ashore near Tampa a week after the incident. It had sustained major damage.
Several photographs illustrated the article, including one of the battered catamaran. Although the man in one of the photographs was twenty years younger and approximately forty pounds lighter, he was definitely the Gunn Landing Harbor resident I knew as Kenny Norgaard.
“What’s wrong, Teddy?” Colleen asked, when I came into the kitchen. She was in her usual place, hovering over the stove.
Although anxiety had made my shoulder ache, I ma
naged a weak smile. “Oh, nothing.”
Nothing, other than the fact I’d just found out that a friend might have murdered his parents, that my trusted almost-stepfather had been in the park the night I was shot, and that my future mother-in-law had been researching how to rid herself of gunshot residue.
“Did you have lunch? If not…”
“I already ate.” Not only that, I ate lunch with two more supposed friends, who upon hearing a gunshot, didn’t do squat about it.
“Dinner won’t be ready for another hour, so why don’t you go lie down for awhile?”
“Good idea.” It’ll give you a chance to slip rat poison into my food.
Ultimately deciding that paranoia was not helpful to the healing process, I trudged into the bedroom, whereupon I promptly fell asleep.
Chapter Twenty-two
I survived the night.
My shoulder, not so much.
When I rolled over to turn off the alarm clock, a wave of pain surged through my left shoulder. The wound had begun to bleed again. Badly. The sheets and one of the pillowcases were soaked.
Bonz, who had been sleeping at my feet, looked at me with a worried expression.
Arf?
Keeping my shoulder as stable as possible, I swung my legs around to the floor and discovered to my relief that they would hold me up. Unfortunately, my attempt to put on clothes made the bleeding intensify, so I threw a housecoat over my Otter Conservancy nightshirt and staggered into the living room with Bonz tagging behind me. Joe had already left for work so I had no choice other than to throw myself on Colleen’s mercy.
“Um, can I get a lift to the doctor’s office? I’d drive myself, but, I, uh…”
They say you see stars when you pass out.
Naw.
You see nada.
I woke up in the ER with Colleen on one side of me and Joe the other.
“Didn’t I tell you to take it easy? Now you’ve gone and pulled out your stitches!” Joe.
“Oh, you poor, poor thing.” Colleen.
“Sorry about the bed linens.” Me.
“Move, the both of you. Can’t you see I’m stitching here?” Cross-looking doctor.
“Uh, could you all..?”
No stars again, just a big black nothing.
When I next awoke, I was tucked into bed at Joe’s, where Colleen had changed the sheets and pillows. The only thing that remained the same was the three-legged terrier snoozing at my feet.
A big man was sitting on a chair in the corner. His eyes were red. If I hadn’t known him as well as I did, I would have sworn he’d been crying.
“Finally awake?” Joe grumped.
“Either that or I’m dreaming about a hot cop.”
“Sheriff, not cop.”
“Same thing.”
“The San Sebastian County electorate beg to differ. How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Two.”
“Now?”
“Six, if I count the thumb.”
“What’s your mother’s name?”
“Caroline Piper Bentley Mallory Huffgraf Petersen Grissom.”
“What day is it?”
“Friday.”
“Try again.”
“Saturday?”
“Again.”
“Sunday?”
“Bingo.”
“What the hell?”
“Teddy, you lost so much blood they had to give you a transfusion. Then they kept you in the hospital for two days. This isn’t the first time you’ve woken up, by the way. You were conscious, more or less, when we brought you home, but this is the first time you’ve made any sense.”
“Your eyes are red.”
“I have a cold.”
“Help me get up.”
“Like hell I will. You’re going to stay right there.”
“But you said I was making sense!”
“Oops, I was wrong.”
The door opened and my mother stormed in. Her eyes were red, too. Those summer colds are so contagious. “She’s awake! My baby’s awake!” She flung herself at me, kissed me all over my face, then leaned away and threw Joe a dirty look. “You said you’d call me the minute she woke up.”
He glanced at his watch. “There were eight seconds left in that minute.”
“Smartass.”
“Is that any way to talk to your sheriff?”
“It is when he’s fam…” She caught herself and resumed her usual haughty manner. “You’re a bad influence on my daughter, that’s what you are.” To me, she said, “How are you feeling, Theodora?”
“Like I’ve just had a transfusion of blood donated by a marathon runner.”
Colleen peeked around the door. “Hey, you’re awake!”
“That seems to be the consensus.” I gave the gunpowder residue expert a big smile, just to stay on her good side.
It must have worked because she smiled back. “I bet you’re hungry.”
I was probably still on pain meds, because at this point I didn’t care if she poisoned me or not. My stomach was growling. “Any scones left? And Joe, I don’t care what you say, I’m getting out of this bed.”
Once in the kitchen, I scarfed down a ham sandwich, a cranberry-apricot scone, and a glass of milk. Feeling almost human again, I returned to the bedroom long enough to change out of Colleen’s loaned green nightgown into jeans and my favorite HONEY BADGER DON’T CARE tee shirt. Joe scowled while I tottered around the house in a wimpy form of exercise while Bridie, Tonio, and Bonz followed me from room to room.
Bridie offered encouragement while the adults sat and watched. “Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot…”
After two complete tours—while passing through the kitchen I’d snuck a look at Colleen’s laptop, which was showing that harmless mountain glade again—I felt winded, so I sat down on the sofa next to the scowling Joe.
“See, everyone? I’m fit as a fiddle.”
“Fiddles are always going out of tune,” Tonio offered. “That’s what our music teacher says.”
“Then I’m healthy as a horse.”
“The school librarian has a horse and it’s always sick.”
“You should let me take you to my place,” Caro said, interrupting the flow of clichés. “You’d be safer there.”
I was tempted, but then reality set in. Leaving with Caro could easily be interpreted as a lack of trust in the Rejas household, and I couldn’t allow that to happen. Not if even it killed me.
“That’s sweet of you to offer, Mother, but I’ll stay here where I’ve got a sheriff on duty twenty-four/seven.”
She humphed. “He’s always at work.”
“His office is ten minutes away.”
“A lot can happen in ten minutes, as you should very well know.” She gestured at my shoulder.
My shoulder was throbbing again. In the movies, the hero is always getting shot, then he gets up and chases down the shooter as if nothing’s happened. It’s sure as hell not like that in real life.
I kissed my mother on the cheek. “I’m fine where I am.”
“Hmph.”
Those twinges as I walked around had taught me something, though. I wouldn’t get better keeping to my usual schedule, so I called Zorah at the zoo and told her I needed to take a couple of weeks off. Since I hadn’t had a vacation in three years—that’s how much I love my job—she didn’t quibble. Neither did Aster Edwina, who during our brief phone call, growled that if I didn’t take care of myself she’d fire me.
Emboldened by the old woman’s concern, I asked the question that had been bugging me for days. “Did you have an affair with Stuart Booth?”
A long silence. Oh, I was in for it now.
“Aster Edwina, did you hear me?”
“Ack! I… I… I heard you all right. Ack! Ack!”
Choking sounds. Dear God, the woman was having a heart attack!
“Are you okay, Aster Edwina? Should I call 9-1-1? Please, I didn’t mean to…”
Ack!
Ack!
No heart attack. Aster Edwina was snort-laughing.
Between guffaws, she told me her sex life was none of my business, then repeated her threat: if I didn’t take care of myself, she would fire me.
“Now get some rest, you silly girl.”
Ack!
Dial tone.
That afternoon I felt good enough to sit in the kitchen and watch Colleen bake. From time to time I was even able to help her, if you count handing someone a measuring spoon “help.” Every Friday evening she supplied cookies for the San Sebastian Library’s Open Mic Night for Teens, a community service that encouraged teens to perform self-written poetry instead of shooting each other. Every now and then I snuck a look at her laptop, but never saw anything more interesting than mountain glades or, at one point, a blank screen.
She had learned to be more careful.
Monday was Joe’s day off, and he had decided to spend it working on the granny cottage. Bundled up against the cool morning air, I sat on the sunroom steps and watched. There was something oddly reassuring about seeing the man I loved create something from nothing, and as the interior walls began to take shape, everything I had been through in the past few days ceased to worry me.
I was here now, and safe.
As long as Joe was around, I would always be safe.
Colleen, though…
After two days of semi-bed rest, I felt strong enough to walk around the block, and by the end of the week, I could make it all the way down to the campus of Betancourt College. Serendipitously, as I approached the drinking fountain in the quad, I ran across Harper Betancourt-Booth as she emerged from the Marine Sciences building with Frasier in tow. He was pulling a cart loaded down with books and papers.
“Cleaning out Booth’s office?” I asked Harper.
“It had to be done. Nice to see you up and around, Teddy. We heard you were in the hospital again. Did you get our flowers?”
We. Our. The ensnarement of Frasier was pretty much a done deal. I glanced at her ring finger. No ring yet. Frasier could still escape.