Consider the Crows (21 page)

“I think I'm going to need an attorney.”

“Why do you need an attorney?”

“I think I'm going to be arrested for Lynnelle's murder.”

“Why do you think that?”

She looked past him at the cold gray sky out the window and then down at the mug clutched between both hands. I should have thought more before I came, figured out how much to tell him.

“There are three people you should never lie to,” he said quietly and sipped coffee.

She looked at him.

“Your physician and your attorney.”

She waited and when he didn't go on, she asked, “Who's the third?”

“Either God or the IRS, I forget.”

The laugh bubbled out. “God was a big issue in my life. I don't recall much mention of the IRS.”

“Why do you think you'll be arrested?”

“They think I've been lying to them.”

“Have you?”

She hesitated.

“Whatever you tell me is privileged. I can't be forced to reveal anything to the police.”

“I know that,” she said and added quickly, “I didn't kill her.”

“You have information you haven't told them?”

“It's not— Nothing that will help. Nothing about the murder. If I did, I would— I'd tell them.”

“It'd be more helpful, if you'd tell me the stuff that goes between the pauses.”

She tried a smile that felt sickly even to her. “Aren't you supposed to be on my side?”

“Absolutely.” He gazed at her with sharp intelligence.

Too sharp. All she wanted was an attorney to represent her if it came to that, not a ferret.

“You're trying to protect someone,” he said.

“Myself,” she snapped.

“You're afraid whoever it is might have killed her.”

“No.” The aspirin hadn't helped any and pain throbbed in her temple. “I'm afraid the police will think so.” Especially if they talk with Michael and he tells them he saw me out there.

“Lynnelle thought you were her mother.”

“I'm not. I wasn't. How do you know that?”

“An inference from questions asked by Chief Wren.” He studied her closely. “You know who her mother was. Someone close. Friend? Relative? Sister?”

Oh hell.
Trouble thou wretch, that has within thee undivulged crimes.
“She was fifteen and scared to death.” I was just as scared and trying not to let her know. “We never told anybody.”

“Your parents?”

She shook her head. Good people, her parents, her kind gentle father would never have pointed a stern finger at the raging blizzard and proclaimed, Out! But they would have been devastated. “I was enrolled at the University of Oklahoma for the fall and I told them I had to be there for the summer. I made a big deal about going to a strange place and I wanted her to come with me.”

That awful summer. Unbearably hot. The crummy apartment with weeds growing through cracks in the walls. The crummy job cleaning toilets. The nosy landlady with her sly, knowing looks. “The adoption was arranged through a physician.”

“Why did Lynnelle think you were her mother?”

“I don't know. We told so many lies. Caitlin never used her real name.”

Something flickered in his blue eyes and for an instant, he seemed to look through her.

“She was Karen Hart. Half the time I think she actually believed it. If Lynnelle in her search came across my name—I had to have a job, identification.” She sighed. “If I were searching for someone, I might think Karen Hart was a phony name for Carena Gebhardt.” With both hands, she raised the mug and sipped coffee, fighting down a sense of failure and betrayal.

“Why are you trying to keep all this a secret?”

Because I don't know where Caitlin was that night. I'm afraid she was there, I'm afraid it was her Michael saw. “She's never been very strong. Her worst nightmare, the child would one day show up. She never told anyone. Not her husband and—well, he isn't a very understanding man.”

“You're afraid she killed Lynnelle,” David said gently.

“No. She could never kill anybody. She's sweet and kind and loving, but she has fears and demons and sometimes she gets lost inside herself.”

Again, she caught a thoughtful inward look in his eyes. It made her uneasy. She knew nothing about this man, not even how skilled he was as an attorney. “How long have you lived here?”

If he was surprised by the question, he didn't show it. “Over two years.”

“What made you choose Hampstead?”

He smiled. Charming smile, she thought with all her cynical distrust of attractive men.

“It was more a matter of leaving where I was. This is somewhere between there and the place I should have gone.”

“Stuck a pin in a map?”

“Not quite. I used to have relatives here.”

“Who?”

“An uncle. Howard Creighton.”

She remembered Howard Creighton. There was some scandal about his son—what was the son's name—and he committed suicide.

“I worked for Uncle Howard one summer years ago when I was a kid.”

Years ago? How many years? She'd never met him, she'd remember if she had. Could Caitlin have known him? Caitlin was friends with—Lowell, that was his name—and she could have been around when David was there. Caitlin had refused to say who the father was. She'd dug in her heels with unshakable stubbornness. He can't help, was all she'd say.

*   *   *

Drizzle streaked down the windshield and the wipers only smeared it. So much for confession, Carena thought. I always suspected unburdening your soul wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Oh, come on. David McKinnon could not be Lynnelle's father. God wouldn't display such a bizarre sense of humor. Consciously, she relaxed her shoulders, but it didn't relieve her uneasiness.

At home, she turned on the kitchen light, blinked a bit at the brightness and snapped on the radio to interrupt her thoughts. Tea was what she needed. She ran water in the tea kettle and set it on the stove, then shrugged off her coat and draped it over a chairback. A weather forecaster said rain turning to snow later in the day. Alexa, favoring her right foreleg, limped to the door and pressed her nose against it.

“I suppose you need to go out.” Carena attached the leash and opened the door.

The cold drizzle was not to Alexa's liking and she had to be coaxed from the screened porch, then took care of her needs quickly and lurched back inside on three legs. Carena knelt to examine the sore paw. Lexi turned her head away as though she couldn't bear to look. It was bad, pads split and swollen and pus-filled. Nasty. Why didn't I look at this before?

The tea kettle shrieked, startling her and she rose to turn off the burner. In the phone book, she found veterinarians, slid on her coat and loaded Lexi in the Volvo.

Two people waited ahead of her in Dr. Newcomer's office, an elderly woman with a black cat in a carrier and a man with a quivering cocker spaniel. Carena sat on a beige vinyl couch that squeaked whenever she moved and Alexa plastered herself against Carena's legs.

A gust of cold air blew in when the door opened and Chief Wren, in a grey trenchcoat and carrying a cardboard box, stepped inside. Carena's pulse jumped and she took in a breath of antiseptic air. I'm going to be arrested in a vet's office, hauled away in handcuffs. Close your mouth and try not to look like a scared rabbit.

Susan, hoping this wouldn't take too long, glanced around. People waiting. Damn. Come back another time. She started to leave, then noticed Carena Egersund looking like an animal run to ground. Ah, maybe this wasn't such a waste of time. Combine responsibilities of pet ownership with hotshot police chief on heels of suspect.

Resting the box on the counter, she spoke to the receptionist, then stepped around a trembling cocker spaniel and walked over to Egersund, who watched with worry and apprehension all over her face. If only I knew the right buttons to push, Susan thought. “I understand you consulted with David McKinnon.”

“Spies, Chief Wren?”

Susan smiled. Apparently, the woman wasn't as unstrung as she looked. They were speaking softly, but the other people in the room watched curiously. Egersund seemed to take heart from their presence, as though thinking Susan wouldn't attack savagely in front of witnesses. The woman was wrong about that, but Susan wasn't sure enough for a savage attack.

The vinyl squeaked as Susan sat down. She placed the box on the floor, pulled off her gloves and shoved them in her pocket. “We've located Lynnelle's stepfather. I'll let him know you have the dog.”

“Stepfather,” Egersund repeated.

“You knew she had a stepfather?”

Egersund loosened the fingers clutched in her lap and absently patted the dog.

“Her father died,” Susan said in a low voice, “and her mother remarried when Lynnelle was thirteen.”

“Her mother. Have you talked to her?”

“Her mother died two years ago.”

The elderly lady with the cat carrier was summoned into the inner office. Egersund watched her go. “I'm sorry,” she said so softly Susan had to lean closer to hear her.

She looked like a woman with too much to bear. For a moment, Susan felt compassion, then she pictured Lynnelle dead, blond curls plastered around a gray pinched face, twenty-one years old. Professional detachment slid back into place. “Sorry for what?”

Egersund seemed to pull herself together even more and some of the tightness left her voice. “For a lot of things. For Lynnelle, her mother, her stepfather.”

Susan wasn't sure the stepfather deserved any sympathy.

“I didn't kill her,” Egersund whispered.

Maybe not, but something weighs heavy on your conscience, Susan thought. The lady with the cat left and the man with the cocker dragged it into the office.

Alexa nosed the box on the floor and Susan moved it further under the couch. “What's wrong with her?” Susan nodded at the dog.

“Just a sore foot.”

Right on cue, Alexa raised her paw. Just then the examining room door opened and the cocker flew out, scrabbling for escape, and the receptionist nodded at Egersund who led away a reluctant dog.

Twenty minutes later, Susan placed her cardboard box on the examining table.

“Chief Wren,” Dr. Newcomer said with surprise. He was a large man with a thick chest, heavily muscled arms and huge hands with springy pale gold hair on the backs and square blunt fingers. Dense, dark-gold curls framed a wide face and sleepy-lidded amber eyes slanted away from a Roman nose. He looked like a benevolent lion. “What have you got?”

“A kitten.”

“Involved in some kind of crime?”

“No. Well,” she grinned, “not that I know of, it came from Sophie.” She unfolded the flaps. The kitten, crouched in a corner with her ears flattened, hissed when she reached in. “I brought her in for whatever immunizations she needs.”

He turned to a cabinet for small vials and syringes. “What's her name?”

“She doesn't have a name. I didn't plan on keeping her.”

“Oh, yes?” A deep rumble came from his chest—a laugh, she assumed—and he upended a vial and withdrew liquid into a syringe.

The cat spat and swore and it took both of them to hold her down. Small she might be, but she intended to fight valiantly to the end.

“The Samoyed you just saw,” Susan said. “What's wrong with it?”

“Beautiful animal, sweet-tempered. She managed to drive a mess of wood slivers into her paw. Old rotted wood.”

“How did it happen?”

“I'd say digging at old lumber, something like that.”

“Will she be all right?”

“Should be fine. If I got all the splinters out. Some infection, but antibiotics should take care of that.” He pinned the spitting, squirming kitten with one hand and stuck an otoscope into her ear. “Terrible thing, the young lady getting killed.”

“Did you know her?”

“She was in a few times. Once the dog picked up a tick. She was afraid it was some kind of life-threatening growth. Every ounce of love and longing and need went into that dog. People need someone to love who loves them back. If they don't get it with humans, they turn to pets.”

“Good for the pets.”

“For the owners too. That young lady had a lot of needs. She told me she had a cat once but was forced to give it up because her stepfather was allergic to animals. She was a very—sensitive young lady.”

“In what way?”

“Maybe the word is lonely or lost. I asked her if she was nervous living way out there. She wasn't.” He released the kitten, who leaped into the box, crouched and glared with blazing eyes.

“She said she fit right in.”

Fit right in. At that wretched place. Lynnelle's life must have been pretty empty if moving in there felt like fitting in.

Dr. Newcomer leaned back against the cabinet with his hands flat on the counter top. “I hope you nail whoever killed her.”

“I will.”

He nodded. “Nice healthy little kitten you have there.”

I guess so. She folded the flaps and scooped up the box. The nice healthy little kitten started yelling as soon as they were in the pickup. Susan dumped her at home and set off for the station.

Head down, she slogged through the rain toward the door. A thought sailed by and slid down somewhere under the slush in her mind.

“There you are,” Hazel said when she came in.

“Yes. Why?”

“Oh, nothing urgent. The chancellor called demanding to speak with you. He wants to know why you haven't found Dr. Kalazar. He wants you to call him immediately. The mayor called. He wants you to call him immediately. David McKinnon called. He didn't say what he wanted so I don't know if it's immediate. The newspaper called and wanted to know the latest about Lynnelle's murder. And Mrs. Melshan called and demanded to know why there isn't a crosswalk on the street between the library and the parking lot. She's tired of walking to the corner to cross the street. Susan, are you listening to me?”