ILL-TIMED ENTANGLEMENTS (The Kate Huntington mystery series #2) (36 page)

“You’re right. I wouldn’t believe you.” She gave him a mock stern look, then her face sobered. “So how are you doing,
really
? Since none of us are relatives they wouldn’t tell us anything except that you were out of danger and quote ‘resting comfortably.’”

“Really, I’m fine, Kate.” He wanted to reach for her hand, but it was against the damn rule, and he didn’t want to spook her.

“Doc came in awhile ago. He was forced to agree with me that I have an unusually thick skull, something my mother has known for years. No fractures, no bleeding or swelling in the brain. Just a headache. The joy juice is taking care of that.” He tilted his head toward the IV bag hanging from a stand beside his bed.

“Doc raced out the door muttering, ‘More tests! Must run more tests.’ But if those come back okay, I’m gonna make them let me out of here.” He changed the subject. “So, what happened after my lights went out? Morris didn’t get away, did he?”

“Oh, no, Mac and Rose subdued him until the cops got there. She literally sat on him while Mac tied him up.” Skip chuckled a little at that mental image.

“I’m afraid Sandy had to keep your gun for the time being, as evidence,” Kate said. “Morris fired it, but he didn’t hit anyone.”

Skip scowled at the mention of the detective’s name.

Kate reached over and smacked him on his arm, not quite so lightly this time. “Cut that out. You are the only man I’m going to have non-dates with for the foreseeable future.

“Anyway, Morris confessed. Said he’d already told you most of it anyway. Doris was an impulse. He went to see her to ask her out, apparently for the second time because she had refused him the first time. She laughed at him and when she turned away, he lost it and grabbed the poker. Then he decided he needed to shut Frieda up.”

“Yeah, it’s coming back to me some. He said something about Frieda gossiping about Doris flirting with him.”

“He was afraid the gossip would draw the police’s attention to him,” Kate said. “He figured since Betty was already being blamed for Doris, she would take the rap for Frieda as well. When his attempts to get to Betty and stage a suicide failed, he apparently killed Jeff to totally confuse the issue. He also planted a bottle of chloroform in the machine room to implicate Joe.”

“He didn’t tell the cops the main reason he killed Jeff?”

“I don’t think so. Was there another reason?”

“Jeff had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. He’d hinted to Morris to help him commit suicide at some point when the pain and suffering got to be too much. Morris figured he’d put his friend out of his misery sooner instead of later, and throw the police off in the process.”

“Well, that makes that piece fit into the puzzle better.”

“Yeah, but there’s another piece I’m a bit confused about. Morris came across as a real misogynist. Didn’t think much of women at all.” Skip started to scratch his head, then thought better of it when he connected with bandage instead of skin. “And yet he did seem to still be grieving for his wife. And if he was such a woman-hater, why would he be pursuing Doris so persistently? You would think he’d have been content to live out his life as a widower rather than complicate it with another woman.”

“Well, some misogynists truly want nothing to do with women,” Kate said, “except maybe to satisfy their sexual needs. But others have a love-hate relationship with them, or should I say a need-hate relationship. Underneath the bluster, they actually feel very needy and want a woman’s love, but they hate themselves, and the women, because of that neediness.”

Skip nodded, then winced. Nodding was not such a good idea right now either. “Where’d Morris get the chloroform?” he asked, more to keep the conversation going then because he cared about the answer. “Did Detective Sandy tell you anything about that?” he added in a teasing tone.

Kate gave him another mock glare. “Yes, Detective
Lindstrom
told us that Morris admitted to having a little black market endeavor going. He and his wife had been pilfering drugs and supplies from both their workplaces for years.”

“Hmm, that explains how they could afford to retire to The Villages,” Skip said. “So where’s everybody else?”

“Rose and Mac have headed back to Maryland. I think Rose could have flown home under her own steam, she was feeling so high, after taking down two bad guys in one day. She had a close encounter with Joe, too. When Sandy and I found them, he was writhing on the floor and clutching himself, while Rose was calmly cuffing him and reading him his rights.”

Skip winced, then chuckled. “I don’t usually wish that fate on any man but in this case, it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving guy. Must have been quite a blow to his ego as well, that it was petite little Rose who took him down.”

“Don’t call her petite if you know what’s good for you. She hates it,” Kate warned him. “Turns out Joe’s a wanted man in another state. Between that and the rape charges here, he’s not getting out of jail any time soon.”

“Good… Did Rob and Liz leave too?”

“Not yet. They wanted to make sure you were truly okay before they did…

“Skip, I… we thought we were going to lose you.” Kate’s eyes stung. She swallowed hard and, without thinking, reached out and covered his hand, laying on top of the blanket, with her own. “Rob… he realized you were in shock. Got your feet up, covered you with a blanket. He was almost as terrified as I…”

It sounded melodramatic in the re-telling, but at the time they hadn’t known that Skip’s injuries weren’t life-threatening.

As they had sat in the ER waiting room, Liz had piggybacked onto the hospital’s wireless network to do a little research–her way of coping. She had opted
not
to share with Kate what she had learned until after the doctor told them Skip was in stable condition. The blood loss and laying immobilized in a cold room had been enough to send him into shock. If they hadn’t forced their way into Morris’s apartment when they did, if he’d lain there until nightfall, Skip might indeed have been a corpse. The shock could have accomplished what the bumps on his head had not.

Skip turned his hand palm up and wrapped his fingers around hers. “Tell him thanks for me,” he said softly. Then he raised her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers, sending a jolt of energy up her arm that momentarily took her breath away.

“Kate, I…,” he began, but she twisted her fingers loose and pressed them against his lips.

“You can tell him yourself,” she whispered, pretending to misunderstand. Then she pulled her hand away and sat back. “The other reason they’re sticking around is so he can drive you home when the doctors release you. We figure it’s unlikely they’ll want you to drive for a few days. You okay with him driving your Explorer? Liz will follow in their car.”

“Sure. That’s generous of him,” Skip managed to get out. Staring at the smiling balloon above his bed, he made himself ask, “So is this goodbye then, for now at least?”

“Heck no, buddy. You’re not getting rid of me that easily. If they do let you out of here today, I was planning to come over to your place this evening with some soup for your dinner.”

Relief washed through him. He managed a grin. “You tryin’ to kill me?” he teased her. He’d learned when he was her bodyguard not to eat her cooking.

“I’m getting it from Mac’s restaurant, wise guy. His Aunt Sabrina, who also happens to be his chef, makes a mean chicken
orzo
soup. Guaranteed to cure all maladies and heal all wounds.”

“So does this mean we’ve progressed beyond non-dates?” Skip asked hopefully.

Kate looked at his bruised and battered face for a moment. Ignoring the tingling sensations in her body and the ache in her chest, she shook her head. “I wish it weren’t the case, but no, I’m not ready for that yet. Is it okay with you if we just get to know each other better, as friends, for awhile?”

“Yeah, that’s okay.” Skip figured it was better than nothing. “May I ask why you feel it’s still too soon to date?”

“It’s a little hard to explain.” She paused for a moment, looking down at her lap, and then continued without raising her eyes. “I’m afraid I would constantly be comparing you to Eddie. Which would be totally unfair to you… Living in the shadow of another man would no doubt get old after awhile.”

The bigger part, that she definitely couldn’t explain to him, had to do with the conversations in her head with her dead husband. Those internal chats had been her salvation for months, but they were now a stumbling block to dating Skip. As long as she still had that connection to Eddie, it felt wrong to attempt to establish a new romantic relationship–unfair to Skip, confusing and conflicted for her.

“I just need more time to… finish letting go of Eddie.” She was praying he would understand. “Before I can start fresh with someone else.”

“Kate, I can accept that you may not be able to love another man as much as you loved Ed.” He didn’t like it but he could live with it.

She looked up and met his eyes. “Skip, I doubt I would ever love any man exactly the same way that I loved Eddie, but that doesn’t mean I can’t eventually love just as intensely.”

His heart skipped a beat. Smiling gently at her, he asked, “Any idea how soon
eventually
will be?” He knew he was pushing her but he couldn’t help himself.

“I hope soon.” She realized she needed to get out of there before she promised too much. Maybe she better send Mac or Rose over with his soup tonight.

She stood up. “Skip, I truly hope that
soon
it will no longer be
too soon
to be more than friends.” Leaning over, she kissed his bruised cheek, then quickly stepped back before either of them could give in to temptation.

As she turned and headed for the door, he said, “Kate, as I said before, I’m a very patient man.”

She smiled back over her shoulder at him. “I’m counting on that, Skip.”

(If you prefer to fast-forward past my ramblings to a preview of Book 3 in the Kate Huntington series, feel free to skip ahead a few pages for a synopsis of
Family Fallacies.
)

I have made a point of identifying the year when this story takes place as 2006 (it may seem like a trivial difference of just six years, but…) and I have specifically pegged Kate and Skip as members of the generation coming right after the Baby Boomers (Rob and Liz are on the tail end of the Baby Boom generation).

This generation is frequently referred to as Generation X, but I’ve never cared for that name. I’ve always thought of them as the ‘Tweeners.’ They are the generation between the post-World War II Baby Boomers (my generation) and the Boomers’ babies (my son’s generation).

This generation was caught between two very strong cultural influences. Their parents were already well into adulthood when my generation threw out the rule books and triggered a cultural revolution the likes of which this country had not seen since the 1920’s. In one generation, we went from pregnant teenagers being forced into marriage or being thrown out on the street to premarital sex and cohabitation before marriage being the norm. From the advice to my mother’s generation of women that they should freshen their make-up and put on a pretty frock to greet their man at the door at the end of
his
hard day’s work (despite the fact that she had been caring for children, doing laundry and cleaning the house all day) to Gloria Steinem burning her bra on the courthouse steps and demanding the woman’s right to
choose
whether she worked or stayed home with children. And that’s not even getting into the issue of separate drinking fountains and restrooms for ‘coloreds’ to supposed racial equality.

The ‘Tweeners’ generation’s parents were traditional (like those of the Baby Boomers). They tended to follow traditional gender roles and exhibit stricter, authoritarian parenting (such as Kate’s devout Roman Catholic parents). But these children were growing up in a social environment that was very different from what they were experiencing at home. At home, ‘traditional’ values reigned; out in the world, they encountered the assumption that the genders were equal, a freer attitude toward sexuality, and the belief that it was okay to be a working mother.

So Kate and Skip are not the thirty-somethings of today, nor are Rob and Liz like those in their forties today. They are struggling with issues of female independence versus male protectiveness, the acceptability of platonic male-female friendships, whether or not men should cry, or curse, in front of women, and the angst of leaving one’s child to return to work. Come to think of it, I’m not sure that the thirty-somethings of today aren’t still struggling with a lot of these issues, but perhaps more subtly.

I bring all this up because my 32-year-old son pointed out that my characters are not like his friends. No they are not. They are members of the smaller-than-normal generation sandwiched between mine and his, and caught between the old school and the new.

Most of my clients, when I was a therapist, were members of this generation. I know them well and feel for them. For they had a much tougher struggle to find their own identity than my generation did. We identified ourselves as rebels against the establishment. They weren’t real sure what the hell the establishment was, nor was it clear for them whether the establishment was good or bad.

On a lighter note, I have taken some liberties regarding the history of technology. The image-based, face-recognition search engine that Liz uses is still under development by Google in 2012, and certainly was not available in 2006. Also, today we find Betty’s use of floppy disks and unfamiliarity with flash drives amusing, but keep in mind, in 2006, flash drives were a newfangled invention, as were digital fingerprinting devices.

I owe an apology to the current captain of the Lancaster City Bureau of Police’s Criminal Investigations Division. I apologize for portraying your fictional counterpart as someone who would railroad an old lady into a murder conviction just to get the press and brass off his back. I have also taken liberties by blending the duties of your Special Investigations Unit and the Violent Crime Unit together (the former would investigate rapes while the latter would handle murders).