MULTIPLE MOTIVES (The Kate Huntington mystery series Book 1) (21 page)

“Same here. We haven’t been able to reach his bodyguard either. How far away are you?”

“Hagerstown. Hour an’ a half.”

Kate knew it was at least a two-hour drive. “Be careful, Mac. We need you
here
, not dead! And there’s a cop out front who makes Trudow look sweet. No pissing matches. Sneak around back to the family room and knock.”

“Be there soon. Don’t
you
take any chances, Kate.”

Kate opted to interpret the ensuing silence as Mac having disconnected, even though she knew he was still on the line, waiting for her promise to be careful. At the moment, that was not a promise she was willing to make. She disconnected.

Two taps on the slider had Kate starting toward it, but Rose, cell phone at her ear, stepped in front of her. “Should be Skip,” Kate whispered.

Rose handed Kate her phone. “Anyone comes on the line, ask them to hold for me.” She pulled her gun and flattened herself against the wall beside the slider. Nudging the drape aside, she looked out. Then she unlocked the door and Skip slipped in, relocking it behind him.

Rose retrieved her cell phone just in time. “I’m Officer Hernandez, working a related case…” She turned and walked away.

Liz hobbled back into the room, crutch on one side, Dan on the other. “Secretary left a wee bit after five,” he said. “Rob was still there workin’.”

“Thanks, Dad. You holding up okay?” she said to Liz, who nodded mutely.

“Let’s sit down and re-group,” Kate said.

Rose glanced their way as they were helping Liz get settled on the sofa. Into her phone, she said, “Secretary saw him last, little after five, in his office.” Then she disconnected and walked over to them.

“I have some information.” Rose’s voice was all professional cop, but she was pale and Kate saw the shadow of fear in her eyes.

She was actually heartened by the fear. If there was still reason to fear, there was still reason to hope.

“When I called dispatch, they already had units at Rob’s firm. Somebody’d knocked a paralegal over the head. When she came to, she called 911. They patched me through to the scene.”

Rose took a deep breath, then plunged on. “Officers searched the building. Found Lou in a stairwell. Out cold but breathing. Paramedics didn’t find any lumps on his head. They think he might’ve been drugged. No sign of Rob. His cell phone was on his desk. Battery’s dead. Found his briefcase in the hall. Suit jacket on the floor of the elevator.”

Kate’s heart pounded. The horrible images were back.

“I gave them Rob’s description,” Rose said. “Told them there was good reason to believe he’d been kidnapped from that location and they should handle the crime scene accordingly.”

“How’d they know it was Lou?” Skip asked.

“Wallet was in his pocket.”

“Did they search outside the building?”

“Doing that now, best they can in the dark.”

Kate tried the deep breath again, with moderate success. “Any detective on the scene yet?”

“No, and Phillips will probably catch it. Related case.”

“Shit!” Kate said. It was a sign of the times that her father didn’t chastise her.

“Should we call Phillips?” Liz asked.

Rose’s eyebrow shot up, eloquently echoing Kate’s thought.
Why the hell would we want to do that?

“Maybe he knows more than the officers on the scene,” Liz said.

“Possible but I doubt it.” Rose glanced at her watch. “He’s probably just now getting there.”

Kate thought she knew the answer to the next question but she wanted Rose’s professional take on it. “Why do you think he was kidnapped?” For Liz’s sake, and her own, she did not add
instead of killed.

“Because he’s not there. This guy hasn’t taken the time to hide his victims before, he’s just hit and run.” She glanced down at Liz’s boot. “Sometimes literally. And he left Lou lying in the stairwell. Young man in another office was also knocked out. Said he’d been Tasered first. From behind. Neither he nor the paralegal saw who hit them.”

Kate put two and two together. “So if this bastard has switched from shotguns to stun guns, he probably wanted to take Rob alive.”

There was a loud knock on the front door. They all jumped up and raced toward the living room. Liz almost tripped over her crutch. Skip swept her up in his arms like she was a feather.

Rose yelled, “Wait!”

The stampeding herd came to a halt. Skip put Liz down on her feet and stepped in between her and the door.

Rose plastered herself against the wall, gun drawn, and twitched aside the curtain over the window in the door. She grimaced. “Don’t have to call Phillips. He’s here.”

“Shit!” Dan said.

Holstering her gun, Rose opened the door. Phillips started into a parody of surprise that Officer Hernandez was still there when she should be off duty.

Both Liz and Kate rushed forward. Liz grabbed the back of a chair for support. “Where’s my husband? Is he okay?”

Phillips looked at Kate. A smirk started to spread across his face.

She made a chopping motion with her hand. “None of your crap! Yes or no question–have you or haven’t you found Mr. Franklin?”

“No.”

“Any leads?”

“Officers are still processing the scene.”

Yeah, and why aren’t you there, asshole?

“I have some questions for you and Mrs. Franklin.”

Kate glanced at Liz. She was on the verge of collapse. Kate wasn’t going to let Phillips push her over the edge. “Well, being the wife of an attorney, Mrs. Franklin feels strongly about having a lawyer present, and she’s very distraught.” She wrapped her arms around Liz. “Play along with me,” she whispered in her ear.

Liz collapsed against her, shaking as if she were crying. Or maybe she was crying. Kate couldn’t tell. She knew her own act was as phony as a three-dollar bill, but she didn’t care whether Phillips believed her. She just wanted to force him to leave Liz alone.

Phillips said, “I thought she was so damn anxious for us to find her husband.”

Kate ignored him. “Dad, could you take Liz upstairs to lie down, please.” Her father took Liz’s arm and helped her toward the stairs.

They’d won that round. Phillips couldn’t question someone once they had asked for an attorney, until that attorney was present. Kate hoped he didn’t try to force the issue by threatening to take Liz to the police station. She’d shoot him and shove his corpse into a closet before she’d let that happen.

But Phillips had a different agenda. “Slick.” The smirk was back. “Get the distraught widow out of the room so she won’t say anything that might incriminate you.”

“She’s not a widow yet, Detective. We’re operating under the assumption that Mr. Franklin’s been kidnapped, not killed.”

“You’re right. I mis-spoke. Don’t have a body. And
I’m
not even convinced he’s been kidnapped. Way I see it, Franklin’s pulled a disappearing act, after knocking out his own bodyguard. You wait a little while, hoping we assume he’s dead, then you disappear, too. Go join him on some tropical island and live happily ever after.”

Kate reined in her anger. “You have a lively imagination, Detective. Unless you have some concrete questions to ask, how about you go find Mr. Franklin and leave us alone.”

“Oh, I have no intentions of looking for Franklin, not for forty-eight hours at least.”

Her mouth fell open. Rose was standing behind Phillips. Her face mirrored Kate’s.

“His bodyguard and two people in his office were knocked unconscious,” Kate yelled, “and you’re not going to investigate it as a kidnapping?”

“Nope, from where I’m standing he’s a missing person. Now when the bodyguard wakes up and fingers his boss, then I’ll have to track Franklin down to arrest him for assault. But until then, hey, a grown man has the right to take off without telling anybody where he’s going. Hell, maybe he’s tired of
you
now as well, and he’s gone off with some other little chippy.”

Kate snapped. She charged at Phillips through a red haze.

Skip grabbed her, pulling her back in a restraining bear hug. Rose stepped between them and Phillips. “No, Kate!”

“Officer, arrest that woman for assaulting a police officer.” Phillips’ voice was seething.

Rose froze, her back to him. “Sir, I’m not sure we can make that charge stick.”

“Cuff her, Officer.”

Kate had stopped squirming, but Skip was still holding onto her.

Rose looked at them, her eyes wide, her jaw clenched. Then she took a deep breath, and the cop mask fell into place. She turned around to Phillips. “Sir, could I speak to you for a moment, privately?”

She herded him over toward the door. The police officer and detective had a hushed but somewhat animated conversation.

Then Phillips came back over and said to Kate, “No problem, ma’am. Of course you’re upset. I’ll be going now and let you all get some rest.”

Skip released Kate, as Rose opened the door for the detective and he left.

Kate stared at Rose. “How’d you do that?”

“Pointed out you’ve got lawyer friends who’d probably sue for false arrest. Also convinced him I could get more info out of you than he could, now that I’ve got your trust. So he assumed that’s why I stood up for you, to strengthen your trust.”

“You’re brilliant!” Kate said.

Rose flashed a quick grin, then her face sobered again. “He was bluffing. He knows he can’t dismiss Rob’s disappearance as a missing person. He was trying to provoke you. Get you to say something incriminating. Probably assumed you went after him ’cause of the
chippy
remark. He’ll think that was jealousy.”

Kate ground her teeth. “Actually what tipped me over the edge was the insinuation that Rob had grown tired of Liz.”

“The man’s a bloody eejit!” her father said, as he helped Liz down the stairs. Somewhere along the way the remaining crutch had gotten lost.

“Actually, he’s not dumb,” Kate said. “But he is a bully who enjoys intimidating people. Probably why he became a cop in the first place, for the power trip.”

Rose nodded. “That’s my take on him.”

Liz gave a slight shake of her head. “I gotta tell you, Kate, you need to take acting lessons from Rose here. You’re terrible.” She sounded almost like her normal self.

“I take it you heard everything.”

“Clear as a bell, from the top of the stairs. I had to stand on the top step to keep your daddy from coming to your rescue. I figured even as big as Skip here is, he could only hold back one O’Donnell at a time.”

As they returned to their seats in the family room, Kate said, “Since I don’t have much confidence in the police at this point, I think we should look for Rob ourselves. Tonight.”

“Starting at the office building, I assume.” Rose said. “Who do you want where, Kate?”

Kate silently thanked her for the implication that she was their new captain. She suspected Rose did it quite purposefully. She was beginning to think Rose did most things quite purposefully.

“I’d like you and Skip to get started right away. Make concentric circles moving away from the building, looking for any sign of where Rob might have been taken.”

“Might still be some people around on the street. We can ask if they’ve seen anything suspicious,” Skip said.

“Yeah, like a big man being forced into a car, or if he was Tasered or drugged like the others, the kidnapper might’ve pretended he was helping a drunk buddy,” Kate said. “Might even be holding him nearby. It’d be hard to move a big man like Rob, unconscious, especially if our culprit is Ch…Shirley.”

Skip looked confused but she didn’t want to take the time to fill him in on the potential suspects.

He’d caught the gender of the name, though. “Taser could point to a woman. Ms. Franklin here could take down a giant with a Taser.”

Rose nodded agreement.

“When Mac gets here,” Kate said. “I’ll send him to join you.”

She wasn’t quite sure how to present the other vague plan that was forming in the back of her head. But first she needed to get her father out of the room. “I just had a terrible thought. Maybe this guy’s thinking he’ll sneak in here while we’re distracted. Skip, Dad, would you please go check out the house thoroughly?”

The men nodded and left the room.

Kate turned back to the other women. “I have this half-baked idea and I need you two to help me flesh it out. I’m thinking the killer may have kidnapped Rob to lure me to him, or her.”

“Same thing occurred to me,” Rose said.

“So I want to switch that around and use myself as bait to get the killer to lead us to Rob.”

“You’re right. It’s a half-baked idea,” Liz said. “You’re not going out there, for a variety of reasons, the first one being the bun in your oven.”

“Please hear me out. I don’t want to lose the baby, but… he or she is still just an idea, the idea that someday it’ll exist and then I’ll love it. But Rob’s real, and we’ve got to get him back safe.” Tears stung her eyes. She had to do this. Even the thought of losing Eddie’s baby wasn’t enough to stop her. She could
not
sit back and wait while others searched for Rob.

“Kate, dear,” Liz said, “I appreciate your bravery, but has it occurred to you that the killer’s
only
reason for keeping Rob alive is to get you? Once he has you, then he’ll kill my husband.”

Kate sat frozen, stunned, as Rose nodded her agreement.

She felt her face crumple. The pressure in her chest threatened to explode.

No! I can’t fall apart. There’s no time for that now.

She tried to take a deep breath. The vise was back. Her voice shook as she said, “No, Liz, I hadn’t thought of that.”

Rose cocked an eyebrow at Liz. “You’re not going out there either. If you do, we’ll have to spend time guarding you instead of searching for Rob. Not to mention the whole leg brace, boot and crutches issue.”

Liz just blinked at her.

“Neither one of you is going,” Rose drove home her point. “Having to protect you would just slow us down.”

“Amen to that, lass!” Kate’s father said as he and Skip re-entered the room.

“Sorry, Mr. O’Donnell. Same argument applies to you. You would be a target too, as bait to get to Kate.”