Murder Follows Money (22 page)

Kim was silent. I said, moving forward a tiny inch, “Kim, please come down. This is no resolution to anything. It hurts too many people who love you. Come down and we’ll figure out a way to solve the problem, whatever it is."

“Don’t you know? Haven’t you guessed?” Her voice rose hysterically. “I thought for sure you would guess, Liz.”

Scarlatti spoke from behind me. “Kim, you come down this instant.” She sounded calm, but just the tiniest bit angry.

Kim scrambled to her feet, towering over me. The railing was hip-high on her; no problem for her to swing her leg over and take the final plunge. “Don’t you come closer! Don’t anyone come closer!” Her voice rose in alarm. From the room behind me came a series of agitated murmurs.

“No one will come closer, Kim.” I wanted so badly to just reach out and pluck her down, but she would struggle, and that might be all it took to push her over the edge. She was young and strong, taller than I was.

She seemed to teeter as she stood, outlined against the night sky. “I don’t want to die,” she sobbed. “But I have to. I have to.”

“Why?” Scarlatti’s voice came from over my shoulder. “You didn’t kill anyone, did you?”

Kim was staring down at the street as if mesmerized. She swayed, leaning over the railing.

“Kim,” I babbled, trying to wrest her attention from that dangerous plunge. “Kim, please tell me about it. I will still be your friend. I’ve done a bad thing or two in my life, and yet people are still willing to be my friend. I’ve been wanting to pass that on. I’ll pass it on to you.”

She had turned to look at me, and beyond me, into the room. I didn’t dare turn to see who was behind me, besides Scarlatti. I had the irrational fear that if I took my eyes off her for a moment, she would lose her grip and go over.

“Okay,” she said after a moment. “But you have to leave.” She spoke to the spectators. “Only Liz. I’ll only talk to Liz.”

“Kim,” Scarlatti began. “I’ll just listen. I won’t say anything. But I want to be here too.”

“No!” Kim’s voice regained that edge of hysteria. “You leave!”

“Okay, okay.” Scarlatti sounded farther away. “All you people, back off. She wants room.”

“She’s not armed, is she?” That was Drake. He sounded calm, but I could hear the worry in his voice.

“I’m assuming not.”

Light from the room poured onto the balcony again. I pictured Hannah and her lawyer, Drake and Bruno, Don and the San Francisco detectives, all standing back from the window, watching as if it were a poorly lit play. I hoped they’d figured out a way to help me that didn’t involve just holding a net open on the street to try and catch Kim.

“They’re gone, aren’t they?” I inched a little closer to her. “We can talk now.”

She caught her breath and turned away to look down into the street again.

“Kim, why don’t you sit down again? That will be more comfortable. I’m worried about you, and you make me feel very short when you are so far above me.

She thought about that for a minute, then she nodded. “Okay. I don’t want you to feel short, Liz. I mean, you are short, so it would be rude to make you feel shorter.”

“I appreciate that.”

Still clutching the railing, she let herself down until she once more crouched on the parapet. “Is that better?”

“Well, best of all would be for you to sit at this table with me.” I gestured to the small iron table and bistro chairs that graced the balcony. “Or come inside. It’s cold out here.”

“I can’t.” She shook her head wildly, and her hair flew out. “You don’t know, Liz. I have to be punished. Maybe even die.”

“Tell me what’s so bad, Kim. Nothing can be that bad.”

“You don’t know,” she said again. “Can they hear me in there?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Good.” She hugged herself. It was probably forty-five degrees out there, but at least there was no wind.

“Okay, Liz, I’ll tell you what I did. And you’ll agree. I know you will. I did something very bad.”

“I’m listening.” I moved a little closer. She didn’t notice.

“I gave . . .” Her voice was hesitant. “I gave Naomi the wrong glass.”

“This morning?”

Kim nodded. “It’s all mixed up, and at first I didn’t realize what I’d done. I was so busy with making sure we had everything we needed for the day, it just didn’t sink in.”

I thought of all those white boxes of cinnamon roll-ups, destined to be uneaten by Hannah’s fans.

“So you think there was something in the glass, something Naomi put in it?”

“When she knocked over her drink, that made me wonder. I mean, I could tell she knocked it over on purpose, and I thought it was just to be devilish.”

She stopped, and I nodded encouragement. “She could be very devilish.”

“You know she went and got a fresh glass of water while we were cleaning up. When she set down the new drink on the coffee table, I realized she’d switched them so Hannah would get her glass.”

She stopped. I waited a moment. “Did you think she was trying to play a trick on Hannah?”

She leaned closer to me. “That’s exactly what I thought! That’s what anyone would think, right? I figured she had put something in the glass to give Hannah the runs or make her feel awful. I never dreamed she wanted to kill Hannah. I didn’t believe that about my uncle, you see. We all knew he had a heart attack. No one ever had the least suspicion, and when Hannah said it, I just put it down to them being angry, like Naomi saying Hannah killed her husband with bad mushrooms.”

“So you assumed Naomi wanted Hannah to get humiliatingly sick or something.”

“Right.” Kim’s voice was shaking. “So I just—pushed her glass closer to her.”

“And Naomi didn’t notice? You’d think she’d keep a sharp eye on the poison."

Kim shook her head. “She was ranting at Hannah. I was even . . .“ She shuddered. I could sense the movement from where I stood. I longed to put my arm around her. “I was even giggling inside to think that it would be Naomi with the runs, not Hannah. After all, we needed Hannah to be able to do her job, but Naomi was just being trouble.”

She caught her breath. “Oh, God, how can I talk about her like that? My own aunt. And I killed her!”

“You didn’t kill her.” I did move that time, and put a hand on Kim’s arm. She didn’t flinch. “She killed herself with her own wickedness. If she hadn’t put poison in that glass, nothing would have happened.”

“But why didn’t I just take it and pour it out? Why didn’t I stop it?”

Kim put back her head and wailed. “It’s on my hands. Her death is on my hands!”

I grabbed her arm, but she surged upward, nearly dislocating my shoulder. “Kim, you can’t take this on yourself. Truly, it belongs on Naomi’s plate and no other. The harm she would have done to another, she did to herself.”

Kim didn’t hear me. She stood, her legs braced against the railing, her head lifted to the sky. “It was my fault. None of this would have happened if not for me!”

I grabbed her legs and held on. “Kim, please. Don’t do this. Your family will be so upset.”

“My family.” Kim let a hysterical giggle go. “My mom would be horrified to know what I did. It will all come out. She’ll be so humiliated by my behavior. I can’t face them. I can’t tell them what I’ve done.”

Her leg muscles tensed. I knew she would jump. I held on for all I was worth.

“I’m not going to let you go, Kim. You’ll have to take me with you. Is that what you want?”

“Let go. I don’t want to hurt you too, Liz.” She twisted, and I felt her overbalance. She screamed. My heart nearly stopped.

I pulled back as hard as I could, trying to counteract the force of her impetus. At that moment, I felt that she wanted to claw her way back, but her center of gravity was too far out. I tightened my grip on her legs, fighting her own panic and uncertainty. Every move she made counteracted what I was trying to do. I shouted for help, wondering why none of the people in the room behind us was coming to my aid.

“Kim.” It was Don’s voice. He might have been lanky, but he was strong. He reached over my head, grabbed her around the waist, and lifted her down.

She clung to him, sobbing.

“I can’t afford to lose any more of my new relatives," he said to her, cradling her in his arms.

“But it was my fault. I killed her, Don. I killed your mother. You never got to know her because of me.” Kim cried uncontrollably, her breath coming in hiccuping sobs.

Don smoothed the hair off her face. “I heard what you said. My birth mother was a deeply unhappy woman. It’s enough that she committed suicide. You shouldn’t make it worse by doing that too.”

He carried her inside, and I followed. My teeth were chattering like castanets; I shivered uncontrollably. It would be good to get out of the cold, foggy night, and into the warmth.

Chapter 21

My arms began to ache before I’d finished the restorative cup of tea Drake insisted I drink. I had exerted myself beyond my normal strength to try and pull Kim away from the railing, and I would feel it for a few days.

Kim was having a cup of tea too. I only knew that because Hannah herself had carried it to Kim’s bedroom, where Scarlatti and Daly were taking her statement. We had finished with the group stuff; I suppose it had served its purpose, though it was hard to say what. If they had concentrated on Kim, taken her off by herself, would she not have broken down and admitted her part in the death of her aunt without feeling obliged to toss herself from the top floor of the hotel? I thought she would. But this way had gotten results too, at the expense of some very anxious moments.

“When will you stop putting yourself out there like that, woman?” Drake poured more sugar in my tea.

“It’s undrinkable already,” I protested.

“You need the sugar for shock.” His fierce expression might not be interpreted by others as loving concern, but I chose to interpret it that way.

Bruno nodded. “Paolo is right. You worry your friends when you take such risks. Drink your tea.”

We were back in our places on the couch. Hannah was in the kitchen, redeeming her reputation as domestic goddess by heating up the soup. Its savory aroma made me remember that I’d had nothing to eat since the cheese and crackers Bridget had served. Well, a few of her cookies as well. But that had been hours ago. It was nearly nine, and we still weren’t finished.

“What’s next?” Don sat across from us, his face creased with worry. “Will they arrest Kim?”

“They could,” Drake said reluctantly, “because she withheld information in a murder investigation. But I doubt they will.”

“And Richard Kendall is in there,” I added. “He’ll keep them at bay.”

We had all been surprised when Hannah had offered the services of her attorney to Kim. But it was only fair. Hannah must have been feeling the breeze from the wings of the angel of death. If not for Kim, Hannah would be dead instead of Naomi.

That knowledge seemed to have shaken her. But she dealt with it by bustling around the kitchen, a response I understood, because Bridget reacted the same way to stress.

Don still looked worried. “It’s not like she meant to hurt anyone,” he argued, though there was no use arguing with us—we were already converted.

“They’ll take that into account. If they decide to declare it accidental death, or death by misadventure, there’ll be no repercussions for Kim. Otherwise, she might have to be arraigned on a charge of involuntary manslaughter, but a good lawyer could probably get that dismissed or commuted.”

Don plowed his fingers through his hair. “Poor Kim. She’s so overcome by it. Doesn’t seem fair that such a harmless thing should have such long-range consequences.”

“She’ll be okay. She’ll get over it,” Drake said. “She’s young. Once she gets back home with her folks, it’ll fade. After all, Naomi more than likely did cause her brother’s death, and the whole family will probably have a harder time forgiving that than forgiving what Kim did.”

“What about you?” I probably shouldn’t have said anything, but I was curious about Don’s reaction to his newfound family. “Will you go back to Massachusetts and meet them?”

“I don’t know.” He looked uneasy. “Given what Naomi did, it’s no great recommendation to be her son, is it?”

“If Kim is any example of that family, I think you can count on a warm welcome.” I smiled at him over the cup of too-sweet tea. “She’s really something special.”

“Yeah. Maybe Naomi was the anomaly, not the norm.” He brightened a little. Then his smile faded. “Do you think they’ll investigate Kim’s uncle’s death now? I don’t really want my birth mother branded a murderer, even if she deserved it.”

“Probably not.” Drake looked at Bruno.

“I would not think so, though of course it is not my jurisdiction,” Bruno said thoughtfully. “It is all hearsay, isn’t it? Naomi is dead, and the body of her supposed victim has been cremated. There is no proof. Why go to the trouble and expense of investigating that?”

“I’m wondering what poison she used.” I set the tea down, hoping to distract Drake from my failure to drink it.

Bruno shrugged. “Without tissue samples and stomach contents, it is difficult to say. But tell me, do you know if she had cats or dogs, or any kind of pet?”

“Sheesh, I don’t know.”

Don spoke up. “She did have cats. She called from the airport to talk to them on her answering machine.”

“Oh, right. She did that here too." I looked at Bruno curiously. “Why? Should we let someone know to take care of them?”

“I would bet that Kim will soon be caring for her aunt’s cats,” Bruno said. “But I ask because it is possible to use certain flea repellents as a poison, if you know how to do it.”

“And she did have a degree in chemistry, let’s remember.”

Don leaned forward. “So you think she used flea repellent?”

“Only certain kinds work.” Bruno smiled. “And I will not tell you what kinds, in case you become homicidal, Don. But given the way in which her death occurred, it seems likely to me.”

“Bruno’s the toxicologist,” Drake said. “He just took a couple of courses, didn’t you, my man?”

“I have studied a little.” Bruno waved away Drake’s words. “It is not possible to be a toxicologist without much more study than I have done, Paolo.”