The Walleld Flower (29 page)

She finished his thought. “Or is still here? But why?”

Davenport actually looked concerned. “Mrs. Bonner, you may have a bigger problem on your hands than just petty theft.”

“He walked through Artisans Alley with me—twice—poking around dark corners and everything.” It felt surreal to be surrounded by bare walls in what used to feel like home. Katie leaned back against the couch and put her feet on the bare coffee table, then repositioned the phone at her ear. With her other hand, she scratched her cat Mason’s large, flat head. He purred contentedly at her side on the couch. Despite her efforts, she was still encircled by boxes. It wouldn’t be hard to leave this place. Too bad she had nowhere to go.

“Gee, that doesn’t sound much like the cop you’ve come to despise,” Andy said.

“I don’t hate the man—he just annoys me,” she clarified. “He was almost nice. It was kind of spooky.”

A cacophony of voices and the ringing of a telephone filtered over the airwaves.

“Oops—gotta go, babe. The shop phone’s ringing off the hook.”

“Don’t forget you penciled me in for lunch tomorrow,” Katie said.

“See you then.”

“Love you,” she said, but Andy had already clicked off his cell phone. Katie frowned and replaced her phone on its receiver. “Well, the other day he told me he loved me,” she told the cat. Mason stretched and rolled onto his back, exposing his furry white tummy. Not to be outdone, Della, the little tabby cat who sat on the back of the couch, swished her tail so that it thumped against Katie’s neck. “Don’t worry. I love you guys, too.”

The phone rang and Katie snatched it up, expecting Andy once again to declare his undying love.

“Katie? It’s Mark Bastian.”

Oh, well.

“You called?” he asked.

“Yes. I’m so sorry about Rick. More than sorry,” she admitted. “Shocked and terribly upset.”

“Yeah, it isn’t every day you see your employer’s head blown apart,” Bastian grated.

Hadn’t Jeremy’s death tempered Bastian’s bitterness even a little?

“Did he still have family in the area?”

“His parents. Rick was divorced—three times. Thank God he never had kids. His folks are planning the funeral. It’ll look like the Academy Awards when all the actors he worked with over the years come to town for the service.”

“Will you be there?”

“I’ve been Rick’s Mr. Logistics since college. It’ll be just another Rick Jeremy production. Hey, it’s my job.” For all his cynicism, Bastian’s voice broke on the last words.

Katie traced her fingers along Mason’s belly, wishing she had some words of comfort to give the man on the phone. She gave him a few moments to pull himself together.

“Did Rick have any enemies?” she asked.

“No. Like I said, we haven’t been friends for years, but he always took care of me. He felt a sense of obligation to all his friends—and former friends.”

“Did that include Heather?”

“Honest, Katie, she
did
dump him. Like everybody else, Rick figured she’d bugged off for New York and her modeling career. It was a pretty nasty breakup. When she said she didn’t want or need him, he believed her.”

Mason nipped at Katie’s wandering fingers, warning her to leave his tummy alone. “I know about the fire in Barbie’s apartment. And so do the police,” Katie said.

“I figured you for a sharp lady.”

“You sent me the
Star Whores
tape, didn’t you?”

He laughed. “I wondered why you didn’t ask me about it last night.”

“Because beta machines aren’t all that common anymore.
I only got to see it this morning. You look so much more handsome without the cheesy wig.”

“It wasn’t one of my more sterling moments,” he admitted.

“Why did Heather agree to do it?”

“Agree?” He sounded incredulous. “It was her idea.”

Oh, dear. Was that what Barbie meant when she’d said Heather was no Miss Goody Two-shoes?

“If you think Heather was some innocent young girl corrupted by a couple of film students, you’ve definitely got the wrong impression,” Bastian said. “
She
convinced Rick that he could finance the rest of his college education by making porn films. And damned if she wasn’t right.”

“How many films did the four of you make?”

“Only two. But that was enough. We distributed them to mom-and-pop video shops and some adult bookstores in Western New York. You saw the quality of that tape. We didn’t have the equipment to make professional copies. As it was, we borrowed the machines at the university, doing the work in the middle of the night. About ten years ago, Rick became obsessed that someone would link them to him. He had me try to locate and destroy them all. The one I sent you is probably the only one in existence. Make no mistake, it was a real risk for me to send it to you.”

Risk for whom? “Where’s it been all these years?”

“In a box, buried in my father’s basement in Pittsford.”

“Had you always planned to someday make it public, to humiliate Jeremy?”

“No. But when I heard on the news that they’d found Heather’s remains in that old house, I felt I had to do what I could to uncover the truth.”

“No matter who it hurt?”

Bastian didn’t answer.

“What is the truth, Mark? Did you or Jeremy kill Heather?”

“I can’t speak for Rick, but I swear I didn’t do it. And we
were all in trouble when Barbie’s apartment caught fire. We thought the owner was going to sue us. Either that or have us arrested.”

“Did he threaten you?”

“Oh, yeah. He made us not only pay for the repairs—but do them, too. He said he’d go to my father, and I wasn’t about to let that happen.”

“But you said the owner didn’t let you finish the job,” Katie insisted.

“That’s right. When Heather called Jeremy to end their relationship, she also told him we didn’t have to finish the repairs, that she had taken care of it.”

“How had she taken care of it?”

“She didn’t say, just that she didn’t need Rick anymore and good-bye forever.”

“Did you or Barbie actually speak to Heather before she disappeared?” Katie asked.

“No. It was Rick who told me what she said.”

“Did Heather make any money off those films?”

“No. She was out of the picture by the time we started seeing any cash. Rick wasn’t happy about the whole deal, especially as he was behind the camera filming me with his girlfriend. It bothered him—a lot. He never felt good about the money and shared the profits with Barbie and me equally. And I guess he figured it was insurance that we’d keep quiet in the future.”

“Did it?”

No answer.

“Did Jeremy keep you in a job because he was afraid you’d one day try to blackmail him?”

More silence.

“Mark?”

“I did throw it in his face once. I was drunk. I guess I was jealous of his success—
and
the beautiful women who threw themselves at him. It was petty and stupid and I wish to God I’d never done it.”

“And that’s what ruined your friendship?”

“No. Our friendship was never the same after he saw me doing it with Heather,” Bastian said bitterly.

“But he didn’t abandon you. He made sure you had a job all these years.”

“Sometimes I think it might’ve been better if he had just told me to go to hell and fired me.”

It was Katie’s turn to be silent.

“Katie, please don’t give the cops that tape. Rick’s dead. It would be the ultimate betrayal if that film became public now.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t have it anymore. I was about to turn it over to the detective in charge of Heather’s murder investigation, but it’s gone missing.”

Bastian sounded panicked. “Someone stole it?”

“Yes. And I don’t have a clue who could’ve done it.”

The lights were already on at Angelo’s Pizzeria when Katie drove past at seven fifty-eight the next morning. Poor Andy, closing after midnight and back again to make cinnamon buns for her breakfast. Katie felt a little guilty, but only a little if it meant he’d have to hire an assistant manager and they could ultimately spend more time together. His ad for the job was supposed to be in the morning newspaper. She’d check while she drank her first cup of coffee.

Several vendor cars and vans were parked in the back lot, their owners getting out to unload their vehicles when they saw she had pulled in. Among them was Polly with her little granddaughter, Hannah.

Katie gathered her purse and the bulky Sunday newspaper, locked her car, and hurried to open the door to let the vendors in. Next on the agenda was coffee. She probably wasn’t the only one who needed a cup. Back at the apartment, her coffeepot was already packed, and Katie hadn’t felt like searching for it. Today she’d have to make a point to call all the apartment complexes in and around Rochester.
She
had
to find a place to live—or if nothing else, a sublet.

Once inside and settled, Katie measured coffee and dumped it into the filter basket, set it in the coffeemaker, and hit the start button. Too restless to wait for it to brew, she went back to her office. Her cluttered desk did not welcome her. The answering machine blinked hopefully: just one message.

“Hi, Katie, it’s Fred Cunningham. I’ve got a hot prospect for the Webster mansion. They want to see the house ASAP so I’ll be by to pick up the key before lunch. See you then.”

Katie’s shoulders sagged. No doubt Fred would be showing the property to Burt Donahue. Sooner or later it would penetrate her thick skull that she was never destined to own that money pit, but Katie wasn’t yet ready to give up all hope.

She turned her attention to a stack of envelopes on the right side of her blotter. Saturday had been so hectic she hadn’t even had time to glance at the mail.

She retrieved the letter opener from her desk drawer and opened all the envelopes. Bills, bills, bills. Two solicitations to advertise in local ad rags and…

She removed the folded piece of white paper from a nondescript envelope and scanned the brief message.

MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS

A skull and crossbones leered up at her from under the words.

Katie exhaled a shaky breath. Detective Davenport wasn’t going to like this. Seth was sure to say, “I told you so,” only maybe not with those exact words. And Rose would be frantic with worry…

The coffeemaker had finished its chugging. Katie grabbed her mug, noting that her hand shook as she poured. The note had rattled her more than she wanted to admit.

Katie toyed with a sugar packet. Only two people could’ve written that note. Rick Jeremy or Burt Donahue.

Jeremy’s story was that Heather had dumped him. She’d disappeared without telling another soul she’d broken up with him. According to Bastian, it was Jeremy who’d said Heather told them to stop work on the apartment. Was Jeremy angry enough at his budding acting protégée to wall her up alive because she’d spurned him?

Was Donahue a credible suspect? His apartment had been damaged, but insurance would’ve paid for the repairs if Jeremy and Bastian hadn’t been bullied into making them. Donahue had no apparent reason to kill Heather or Barbie. And yet… Katie remembered the man’s NRA belt buckle. Was he a member or was it just something he’d picked up at the auction house to keep his pants from falling down?

Then there was Kevin Hartsfield. Something about him bothered Katie. He seemed to have known Barbie was dead before the news hit the papers or other media. He lived outside of town and apparently had no friends or local support system. Nonetheless, could he have been plugged into the local gossip pipeline anyway? And something about the way he spoke about his former students didn’t seem right. Had he known something about Heather and Barbie he hadn’t told her?

The sound of pounding footsteps caught Katie’s attention. Polly hurried through the vendors’ lounge and out the back door without even a word of greeting. Preoccupied, Katie turned away and doctored her coffee before heading back for her office. She happened to glance out the window to see Polly jump in her car and pull out of the parking lot.

Polly alone?

Where was Hannah?

Katie set her cup down with a
thunk
on her desk and started for the back stairs at a brisk walk. If Polly had left that little girl all on her own in her own booth…