FATAL FORTY-EIGHT: A Kate Huntington Mystery (The Kate Huntington Mysteries Book 7) (30 page)

She leaned forward slightly. A shuffling noise from the bedroom. Slowly she let out her breath and tightened her grip on both the shower rod and the knife.

“Where are you, my dear?” The voice was innocent-sounding, almost quavering. “Ah, you must be indisposed.”

No, I’m very disposed. Disposed to bust in your damn smiling face.

She could see him in her mind, outside the bathroom door, with that fake benevolent smirk and the evil glint in his eye.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

It felt like a half hour but was probably less than a minute before Skip stepped back from the door. “We’re in.”

“You never saw that,” Tim whispered to the uniformed cop as they moved single file into a dark kitchen.

The law enforcement officers and private detectives spread out, their weapons extended in front of them. Skip’s penlight arced across a fifties-vintage stove and refrigerator.

They moved quickly but carefully through the rooms, softly calling out, “Clear.”

Kate followed on Manny’s heels as they progressed through the lower level of the house.

The lit window she had assumed was the kitchen turned out to be in a downstairs bedroom. The window was off center, practically tucked into the corner of the long, narrow room.

“This is it!” Kate raced along the wall of the room, grabbing a lamp, a book on the bedside table, a vase of dried flowers on a bookcase. Nothing happened.

Where the hell is the opener?

Skip and the FBI agents were also frantically yanking on objects. Manny looked on, his eyebrows arched high on his forehead, no doubt trying to figure out what the hell they were doing.

Kate made herself step back and take a deep breath. She narrowed her eyes and scanned the wall. Slightly off center was a wall switch.

That’s a totally random place for a switch.

She ran over and flipped it up. Nothing happened.

The switch plate was a fancy one that stuck out from the wall a bit. It was cream-colored with Victorian curlicues around the edges–out of sync with the simple decor of the room.

~~~~~~~~

Sally raised her right foot and placed it against the bathroom door, unintentionally nudging it slightly.

“Are you okay, my dear?” His voice was closer.

She swallowed hard, then cleared her throat. “No,” she called out. “I fell by the tub, and I can’t get my feet back under me.”

The door shoved hard against her foot. She shoved back but was too late. He was in the room.

He was looking at the floor, his arm down, gun in his hand.

No time to think. She launched herself at him, knife extended.

~~~~~~~~

Kate grabbed the switch plate and twisted. It moved slightly, then resisted. She grabbed it with both hands and forced it around.

Whir, click.

A section of the wall began to move.

“Guys! Here’s the–” Her words were drowned out by the roar of a gun.

Julie Wallace was next to her, an arm out blocking her way. The FBI agents and Manny rushed past her.

Then Skip grabbed her arm. She shook him off and bolted through the opening in the wall.

She stared for a second at the room that was almost a duplicate of the one in that apartment. Then her eyes rose to the white sheet hanging on the wall–the template, with its rusty red stains and burn marks.

She shuddered.

“Don’t move! FBI.” Tim’s voice drew her attention across the room. His tone was sharp but Kate realized his gun was pointed toward the floor.

And there, standing in the bathroom doorway, was Sally, legs spread, wearing only a cream-colored slip splattered with blood. She was breathing hard.

At her feet was a pile of clothing. The pile moaned.

Sally shifted her weight onto one foot and kicked out. “I’m gonna kill you, you bastard!”

The bloody knife in Sally’s hand registered at the same instant that Julie Wallace yelled, repeating her partner’s words. “Don’t move! FBI.”

Sally ignored her and leaned down. She came up holding a snub-nosed revolver. Pointing it at the heap at her feet, she screamed, “You killed my Charles!”

Julie raised her gun toward Sally.

“No!” Kate raced forward. “Charles is alive!”

A blur in her peripheral vision. Manny dived for SA Wallace. Her gun discharged.

Sally stared at Kate, her eyes wide. “Charles?” She dropped the pistol and fell to her knees.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Kate wasn’t sure how she got from standing in the bedroom to kneeling beside Sally’s slumped form in the bathroom doorway, on the other side of the heap that was Claude Delaney.

She grabbed the older woman by her shoulders. Sally lifted her head and threw her arms around Kate, almost knocking her over backward.

“Are you okay?” Kate gasped out.

Sally didn’t answer, just sobbed in her arms.

Kate tried to disentangle herself. “Sally, are you hurt?”

“Julie’s shot went wild.” Skip’s voice from above. Kate looked up. He was standing over them. “Her shot went wild,” he repeated. “Thanks to Manny.”

Kate started shaking uncontrollably. Strong, slender hands helped her and Sally to their feet.

Skip wrapped his arms around both of them. Somehow, he managed to lift them over Delaney’s body. He guided them toward the bed.

Kate felt Sally trembling against her. “Not the bed,” Kate said.

Skip stopped, nodded, and encircled them with his arms again.

Kate looked around. Julie Wallace sat on the floor, back against the wall, arms on her knees, head down. Tim stood nearby, her gun as well as his own in his hands.

One of the uniforms was cuffing Delaney, who moaned softly. Then the officer stood up, keyed the radio on his shoulder and spoke into it. “Ambulance is on the way, sir,” he said to Tim.

Manny was standing off to the side, still looking confused.

“Give that man a raise.” Kate tried to laugh, but it came out sounding like an hysterical burble.

“Nah.” A grin flashed white across Manny’s face. “You give me a raise every time I save one of your hides, and pretty soon I’ll own the agency.”

Sally’s sobs had subsided. She turned in the circle of Skip’s arms to look at Kate. “Charles?”

Kate’s eyes stung. She stared at the ravaged face of her former boss. Her chest ached. But she couldn’t lie.

“He’s in bad shape, but he’s breathing.”

~~~~~~~~

She ran. Dark figures jumped out of the shadows around her. She dodged away from them and kept running. Her breathing came in ragged gasps. A sharp pain in her side slowed her.

Then a figure popped up in front of her.

Delaney! His thin mouth was smiling. His eyes were evil slits.

She jolted away from him.

And almost fell off the hard vinyl couch outside the conference room.

“You okay, darlin’?”

Kate looked up into her husband’s worried face. “No, but I will be once I’ve had a decent night’s sleep.” She sat up on the couch and rolled her head around in a circle. Her stiff neck made little cracking noises.

Skip sat down next to her. He draped an arm across her shoulders.

She leaned into his warmth and sighed. Her muscles began to relax.

“Sally’s been sedated,” Skip said, “and is, quote, ‘resting comfortably.’”

Sally had been transported to Greater Baltimore Medical Center from the crime scene. Kate had wanted to go with her but Judith Anderson had insisted that she come back to the police station.

“How’s Charles?” Kate asked.

Skip heaved a sigh. “Still critical.”

She realized that Charles had played a role in finding Sally, even if it was inadvertent. He’d drawn their attention to the Lutherville-Timonium area. Kate made a mental note to tell him that,
if
he survived. It would help restore his sense of control over life.

She paused for a moment to contemplate how unrealistic and yet essential that sense of control was. There were a lot of things people didn’t have control over in life, but they needed the illusion of control in order to keep on going.

Kate tried to recall which clients she was supposed to see the next day. Her mind blanked. She hoped none of them were in crisis because she really needed to be at Sally’s bedside when she woke up.

“Why did Judith want me to come back here?”

Skip sighed again. “She needs us to tell her what happened in that room while our memories are fresh.”

Kate nodded. As tired as she was, she understood. Human memory was fickle. By morning they might have forgotten, or conveniently but unconsciously rewritten, what had happened.

“Julie was going to shoot her, wasn’t she? She was going to shoot the victim.”

Skip shook his head. “I don’t know. The gun might have discharged accidentally, when Manny jumped her. But she shouldn’t have been pointing it at Sally…” His voice trailed off.

“What will happen to her?”

“Well, her days with the FBI are probably done. Other than that, I’m not sure.” He looked away. “It’s a mistake any rookie might make. She saw a person holding a gun and threatening another person.”

“What should she have done?”

Skip let out a sound that was half snort, half sigh. “She should have let Cornelius, her senior partner, handle it.”

“And he would have talked Sally down, gotten the gun away from her.”

“Yeah.” His tone was forlorn.

Kate’s chest ached. “Were you ever in a spot like that, as a rookie?” she asked in a soft voice.

He blew out air. “Not really. But I keep thinking about this one time. We’d cornered this junkie in an abandoned warehouse. He’d mugged an elderly couple, pistol-whipped the old man. Probably didn’t even realize that he’d killed the guy. I was so furious, I just wanted to shoot the asshole and be done with it.”

She let the silence sit for several moments. “What happened?”

“My senior partner quietly said that we’d take him alive if we could, and we did. He was fifteen. His gun didn’t have any bullets in it.”

Kate reached up and touched Skip’s chin, turning his face toward her. She stared up into his eyes for a moment. “I love you.”

Gold flecks sparked in hazel irises. A slow grin spread across his face. He lowered his lips to hers.

A soft clearing of a throat.

They pulled back and looked up. Judith Anderson was standing several feet away.

“I need to take your statements now.”

Skip tilted his head in a nod. “Can we do it together?”

The lieutenant looked at them for a long moment. “You can be in the room together. Only one talks at a time.” She gestured for them to follow her.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Brown fingers fluttered over silver-gray fabric. The suit was silk, tapered at the waist to flatter Sally’s slender figure.

“You look lovely,” Kate reassured her.

“Thank you,” Sally said absently. She fingered the pearls at her throat. “I had planned to wear my peach suit. It was my favorite.”

Kate tried to keep her expression neutral as she cringed inside, recalling the crumpled pile of fabric on the floor of the room that had been Sally’s prison.

For the two longest days of either of our lives.

Belatedly, the significance of what Sally had said sank in. She had known that Charles was going to propose. She had thought through what she would wear. Kate started to smile.

“I may never wear peach again. Or cream.”

Kate’s smile faded. Her chest ached as she watched Sally’s face in the mirror. The brown eyes staring back at her were shiny.

Kate felt tears pooling in her own eyes. “We’ve got to stop this or we’ll wreck our make-up.”

Sally shook her head slightly. The tight cap of silver curls didn’t stir, but her headpiece shifted.

Kate reached up to adjust the band of white rosebuds and baby’s breath, then handed over the matching bouquet.

Sally plucked at the silver ribbons streaming from it. “My auntie thinks I’m nuts, to marry him so soon. She wanted me to wait, to see…”

To see if Charles recovers all his marbles
, Kate finished silently.

“It’s been five months,” she said out loud.

Sally breathed out a long, soft sigh. “Yes, and he may never completely be the man he once was, nor I the woman I once was. But try explaining that to an eighty-year-old auntie.”

Kate gave her a half smile. “It’s your life.”

Sally turned toward her. “I realized in that room that I didn’t want to live without him. I think my heart had already vowed for better or worse. This…” She waved the bouquet to encompass the bedroom, but Kate knew she meant the whole wedding.

She felt honored by the confidences from this woman, the most private person she had ever known. “This is just telling the world,” she said softly.

Sally nodded, then flashed a quick smile. “Well come on, matron of honor, let’s get this show on the road.”

Kate grinned at her. “You bet.” She led the way out of the master bedroom and through the living room, headed for the mud room on the back of the house. Earlier in the week, Maria had made the kids help her clean up the room so no accidental dirt or cobwebs would mar the bride’s clothes.

Eight-year-old Edie stood in the open doorway to the backyard, bouncing from one Mary Jane-clad foot to the other. Her dress was a smaller replica of her mother’s light blue sundress. The color matched her eyes, which were sparkling with excitement. A white knit jacket, with mother-of-pearl buttons, covered Edie’s shoulders.

She balanced a basket of white rose petals on one hip. “It’s about time!”

Kate and Sally shot glances at each other and stifled smiles.

“Watch your tone, young lady,” Kate said in a fake stern voice.

“Sorry, Mommy, but I’ve been waiting
forever
.” An eye roll accompanied the last word.

Sally’s face broke into an all-out grin. “Lead on, Edie.”

Kate silently forgave her daughter for her attitude, since it had brought that beautiful smile to the bride’s face.

Skip, in his best Western-style suit and a bolo tie, stood outside the back door, an arm already crooked, ready to escort the bride across the lawn. Kate pecked him on the cheek as she stepped past him.