Lost Legacy (A Zoe Chambers Mystery Book 2) (28 page)

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Then let me do this for you.” He lowered his face a little more, until his forehead touched hers. “I promise I won’t keep anything from you.”

The air had been sucked out of the hallway. Except for Pete’s warm breath on her face. Her lips. Thoughts swam, unfocused, across her brain. Her father’s body. The closed casket. What lurked under that lid? The truth. But could she trust this truth to anyone else? Even Pete?

“Okay.” Her voice sounded wet and strangled even to her own ears.

He skimmed his thumb across her lips. Pressed a lingering kiss to her cheek. And stepped back, breaking the link between them. Zoe struggled to regain her balance and her composure.

“I’ll tell you everything I find out,” Pete said. “Everything. You have my word.”

She nodded, afraid to speak.

He reached out and touched her face again. This time, she leaned into his touch.

“I’ll take good care of your dad.” Pete’s voice wavered. “You take care of mine.”

“I want to go home.” Harry sounded less like an eight-year-old and more like a stubborn old mule as Zoe guided him out of the elevator at the fourth floor and back toward the ICU.

“I know. I’m sorry. We have to wait for Pete to...get done with what he’s doing.” She touched the spot on her cheek Pete had kissed. The memory of his lips, the heat of his closeness, made her slightly woozy.

“How long is that going to take?” Harry demanded.

She switched from a mental picture of Pete’s eyes to one of a closed casket. “A while I’m afraid.”

Harry glowered. “I want to go home.”

“I’ll make you a deal. We’ll check on Mrs. Kroll. See if I can get in to visit my landlord for a minute. Then you and I will go down to the snack bar and get a milkshake.”

The frown vanished. “A milkshake? Chocolate?”

Zoe held her arms out from her sides. “Is there any other kind?”

“All righty then. Let’s go.”

She took Harry’s arm, and they started toward the waiting room. At the end of the hall, the automatic doors to the ICU swung open, and a trio in scrubs carrying on an animated conversation breezed out. At the same moment, a painfully thin old man shuffled out of the waiting room and headed toward the elevator and Zoe and Harry. The old man lifted his head and his cold gaze seemed to settle on them.

Then he collapsed.

The trio in the scrubs leaped to his side. One of them managed to break the old man’s fall, easing him to the floor. A second one knelt beside him. The third whipped her stethoscope from around her neck.

Zoe kicked into paramedic mode and pulled away from Harry. But he closed his fingers around her arm.

“No.” Harry’s voice was oddly low and deep. Authoritarian. Very much like Pete’s.

Stunned, she turned to look at Harry. His expression was as stern and serious as his voice. “Harry, I’m a paramedic. I might be able to help.”

He didn’t release his grip. “No. Let someone else take care of him.”

The way Harry said
him
sent a chill up Zoe’s spine. She looked back at the group outside the waiting room. They were helping the old man to his feet. He brushed them off as if they were a swarm of gnats. “I’m fine,” she heard him say. “I take these spells.”

“Who is he?” she asked Harry.

“I don’t remember. I just know he’s not nice.”

As they watched, the old man shook off the last of the medical team’s attempts at assistance and continued toward Zoe and Harry with his head lowered. Watching his step. Or avoiding eye contact.

He passed them wide to their right without looking up. But Zoe never took her eyes off him. Something about him seemed familiar. Considering his age and frail condition, she’d probably transported him in the ambulance at some point.

Harry urged her forward. “Let’s go.”

She kept her gaze on the old man behind them as she allowed Harry to draw her toward the waiting room. The elevator doors pinged open, and the old man got on.

And Patsy Greene, loaded with a huge bouquet wrapped in green tissue, stepped off. She spotted Zoe and waved. “There you are,” Patsy called and broke into a jog to catch up.

Zoe had to wrestle Harry to stop.

“Who’s your date?” Patsy asked with a grin.

“Have you met Pete’s dad?”

Patsy gave Harry a big smile and extended a hand. “Can’t say I’ve had the pleasure. I can see where Pete gets his good looks.”

Harry beamed as he took her hand.

“Harry, this is one of my very best friends, Patsy Greene. She boards her horse at my farm and helps me around the barn.”

“Speaking of which,” Patsy said to Zoe. “I quit.”

Zoe choked. “What?”

“You should see the mess those cops are making.”

She’d forgotten about that. The search for the missing gun. “Did they find something?”

“Nope. But they dumped all the manure out of the spreader inside the arena. Look, girlfriend, I don’t mind cleaning stalls and loading that thing one time, but I’ll be darned if I’m doing it a second time. I’m nice, but not that nice.”

Zoe wasn’t sure if she was more annoyed with the idea that she would be the one cleaning up that mess—or amused with the mental picture of Nate and the county guys sifting through all that horse crap.

Harry pointed at the bouquet. “Are those for me?” He grinned. “You shouldn’t have.”

Patsy laughed. “Sorry, Mr. Adams. They’re for Mr. Kroll.” Her smile faded as she glanced at Zoe. “How is he?”

Zoe slipped her arm through Harry’s again and tugged him forward. “Pete spoke with him earlier. I guess he can’t remember what happened on Saturday, so he wasn’t able to tell who shot him.”

Patsy swore under her breath. “That’s too bad. I’ll feel a whole lot better when they catch whoever did it.”

Zoe thought of Tom back in Vance Township. Maybe they already had.

Patsy stepped in front of them and stopped. “Hey. What are you doing up here anyway? I thought your dad’s autopsy was this evening.”

“It is.” Zoe’s mind drifted down to the hospital’s lowest floor and her heart sank equally far. “In fact, it’s going on right now.”

Pete had gratefully taken advantage of the stool Franklin Marshall offered. Perched there next to the door, Pete watched the coroner and Doc Abercrombie work on the body.

Pete had no regrets about sending Zoe away. The remains on the stainless steel table weren’t something she should have to deal with even had they belonged to a total stranger. But odds were this charred corpse had been Zoe’s dad.

Through the years, Pete’d had the misfortune of seeing things. Ugly things. Tragedies and horrors beyond the comprehension of anyone outside of law enforcement or emergency response personnel. He’d seen bodies pulled from burning wrecks.

Nothing compared to this.

Marshall and Abercrombie clearly felt the same way. During most autopsies Pete had observed in this morgue, the two men played music. Head pounding rock. This evening, as soon as they’d opened the body bag, the radio had been turned off.

The door next to Pete swung open and Wayne Baronick slipped in. “How’s it going?”

Pete shrugged. “I don’t know how much they can really do with a twenty-seven-year-old corpse, but they’re working on it. How about you? Find anything at the Kroll farm?”

Baronick’s wide-eyed gaze locked on Gary Chamber’s body. “Not a damned thing. By the way, don’t make me sift through a wagonload of horse shit ever again.”

“I’m not your boss. I didn’t make you do anything.”

“Right.” Baronick blinked and scanned the rest of the room. “Where’s Zoe? I thought for sure she’d be here.”

“I talked her out of it. She’s with Harry.”

The detective shot another glance at the remains. “Good.”

A murmur passed between the two men at the table, and Marshall cleared his throat. “Chief? I believe we have something here.”

Pete gathered his crutches and pushed off the stool. “What is it?”

Doc Abercrombie turned to face him, pinching a pair of forceps.

Pete didn’t need to get any closer to see what they held.

“It’s only preliminary until I finish here, but I feel pretty safe in saying cause of death was not smoke inhalation. Nor was manner of death accidental. We have a gunshot wound. And a homicide.”

Pete wasn’t surprised.

He watched as Doc dropped the slug into a specimen jar and packed the whole thing in a plastic bag. The pathologist scribbled on it and handed the package to Baronick, who also made a notation for the chain of evidence.

The detective held the bagged jar up so both he and Pete could see the contents. “I’ll run this over the ballistics lab. I’ll bet a week’s pay it matches the others.”

Pete blew out a breath. “No bet.”

Twenty-Eight

With Harry and Patsy in tow, Zoe found Mrs. Kroll in the waiting room. The older woman’s eyes widened in delight when she spotted Patsy’s bouquet.

“How lovely.”

Patsy handed them over. “They’re from all the boarders at the farm. We wanted Mr. Kroll to know we’re thinking of him.

The green tissue crinkled as Mrs. Kroll buried her face in the flowers and inhaled. “That’s sweet of you. But he’s not allowed to have anything like this here in the ICU. Maybe once he gets into a regular room.”

Patsy’s shoulders sagged. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“Don’t worry about it, dear. I’ll take them home with me. We’re leaving in a little bit anyway.”

Harry patted Zoe’s arm. “I want to go home, too.”

“Pretty soon,” she told him. “Mrs. Kroll, I was wondering if Mr. Kroll might be up for one more visitor.” When her landlady appeared puzzled, Zoe pointed to herself.

“I’m sorry, Zoe. They just took him down for a CAT scan. He might be gone a while.”

“Oh.” Zoe glanced at Harry. Impatient-to-get-home Harry. He’d wandered over to the alcove by the door to watch a young volunteer pour more water into the coffeemaker. How long could she keep him distracted? How long would the autopsy on her father take? “Maybe I’ll check back later. If not, I’ll stop in tomorrow.”

“That would be fine.” Mrs. Kroll buried her nose in the flowers again. “These smell wonderful. I can’t get over how kind everyone has been. Folks have been dropping off food at the house. Neighbors, farmers, have been coming by here to check on Marv and me. Even some I never would’ve thought would care. Or make the effort. Heavens, of all the people in this valley, the last person I’d expect to be so thoughtful is Wilford. Yet he’s been here every single day.”

The skin on Zoe’s neck prickled as if a toxic wooly caterpillar had just crawled from her collar. “Wilford?”

Mrs. Kroll nodded.

“Wilford
Engle
?”

“Why, yes. He was just here a few minutes ago.”

The man who had fallen. Who had avoided eye contact as he passed them on his way to the elevator. She hadn’t seen him in years, which explained why she hadn’t recognized him, yet he’d seemed familiar. She remembered Pete saying Harry had been with him when they’d gone to talk to James’ brother. Harry’s words,
he’s not nice
, echoed in her mind. 

Zoe spun on her heel toward the coffeemaker. The young volunteer was refilling the bins with packets of sugar.

But Harry was gone.

Pete didn’t expect the autopsy to turn up anything else, so he followed Baronick out of the morgue. In the hall, he dug out his cell phone and called the station. Instead of Nancy, Seth answered.

“Is Tom Jackson still there?”

“Yeah, but not for much longer. His attorney is throwing a fit. Making all kinds of threats.”

“Keep him there. I’m on my way back, and I have a few more questions for our houseguest.”

“You got it, Chief.”

Baronick, still holding the evidence bag containing the slug, looked around. “How’re you getting back? Your driver is MIA.”

Pete grunted and dialed Zoe’s number. “Did you think she and my father were going to stand here in the hall all evening?”

Baronick shrugged. “To be honest, I figured she’d be leaning on the door with her nose pressed to the glass.”

The thought had occurred to Pete, too. But Harry had been pretty rambunctious. More than likely Zoe had to resort to treating him at the snack bar to settle him down.

“Pete?” Zoe’s voice sounded odd on the phone.

“I’m ready to go back to the station. Where are you?”

There was silence for a moment. “Um. I’m up in the ICU waiting room. I—um—don’t know how to tell you this. I can’t find Harry.”

The tightness in Pete’s shoulders from the crutches crept up into his skull. Not again. “How long has he been missing?”

“Just a couple of minutes. He was right here, and then I turned my back, and he was gone.” Her voice tap-danced up the musical scale with each word.

“Don’t panic.” Pete had been guilty of that twice already and been made a fool of both times. “He probably wandered down the hall. Check the restrooms. Check the storage rooms. He hasn’t gone far. I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Pete?”

“Yeah?”

“About the autopsy?” Her voice trailed off.

“We’ll talk when I get there.”

“Okay.” Her voice sounded lost and vulnerable as she clicked off.

Pete closed his eyes for a moment. When he looked up, Baronick was studying him. “Harry’s wandered off again?”

“So it would seem.”

“You need some sort of GPS tracking device you can slip in the old man’s shoe.”

Pete snorted. “That’s not a bad idea. He hasn’t been gone long. Zoe probably will have tracked him down by the time I get there.”

Baronick tucked the evidence bag into his jacket pocket and fell into step beside Pete. “We. By the time
we
get there.”