The Truth Seeker (22 page)

“The guy who killed her,” Lisa whispered, “he knew we were there.”

“And he knows where you live,” Quinn said simply, putting the situation fully into words. He briskly rubbed her arms. She was terribly cold.

“He called.”

“What?”

“The phone rang. No one was there.”

“After you saw the note?”

Lisa shakily nodded.

He had to have been watching when Lisa stepped out on the deck The investigation could wait. He cradled her head against his chest

and found the note. No wonder she hadn’t picked up the phone again.

Quinn wanted to help Marcus and Kate search but had to trust they wouldn’t miss anything.

“Where exactly was it left?”

“Tucked under the edge of the geranium pot.”

“Did you see anyone? Anything else out of place?”

“No.”

“When were you last out on the deck before this?” He wanted to simply comfort but had to know the details.

“Last night, no—” She frowned, then looked at him, confused. “I also went out this morning, early, after I fed the pets. I trapped a moth that had gotten inside and I went to release it. I don’t know if I would have noticed the note or not, I was thinking about other things.” She took a shaky breath. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to panic like I did. I just

couldn’t think.”

and wrapped his arms carefully around her. “Let it go.” For all the investigations and cases Lisa worked, she didn’t deal with the personal threats that Kate did, and this was one of the worst by what it implied.

He felt her shake. He closed his eyes and just rocked her.

The glass door slid open. Marcus and Kate came inside together.

Quinn looked over, and Marcus silently shook his head.

“It’s on the table,” Quinn said quietly.

They went to see the note. Quinn heard the quiet discussion between them, heard the phone calls they made to Kate’s boss to bring in the police, to their brothers Stephen and Jack.

Kate came to join them. “She’s okay,” he reassured softly, seeing Kate’s intense worry. “Lizzy, are you up to going with Kate? One of your flannel shirts would be a good idea. You’re cold.” And he had to talk to Marcus, now.

Kate understood that silent message. “Come on, sis, let’s get you something warm.”

Lisa leaned back.

Quinn cupped her chin, holding her gaze. “It’s going to be okay.

I’m going to handle it.” There would be no independent Lisa walking into this one on her own and getting into trouble.

“It’s all yours,” she whispered.

She’d change that once she was feeling more steady, but for now it was enough. “Go with Kate,” he said again and helped her stand.

Lisa swayed as she stood and had to lock her knees; Kate reached to steady her. “This is embarrassing.”

“No, it’s not,” Kate replied. “You were much more unsteady than this after that car crash two years ago.”

Lisa tried to smile as she leaned heavily against Kate and took her first steps. “You were the one driving.”

“You were the one that screamed dog.”

“There really was a dog; he ran away.”

“I still think you made it up. You just wanted to see me drive into a ditch.”

The soft debate continued as they walked slowly down the hall.

Quinn watched until they were out of sight before turning to Marcus.

And all the emotion suppressed in the last thirty minutes showed on his face. “I’m going to pulverize him.”

“After me.”

“He stuck around to watch her pick up the note, called her just after she paged you and Kate, not saying anything but delivering the message just the same.” Quinn could feel the fury at that additional twist of terror the man had caused. “What are we going to do?”

“The guy that killed Marla Sherrall was here. Are we confident that’s the meaning of this message?”

“It’s got to be a pretty vicious joke otherwise—someone would have had to have seen us Thursday in Knolls Park, known who Lisa

Quinn looked around, seeing now just how poor the security was

was, and somehow figured out where she lived. It’s not like she’s in the phone book to be looked up.”

“The killer lives in the neighborhood, he saw you two poking around, and he followed you when you left.”

“A fact that gives you a real warm fuzzy feeling inside, doesn’t it?”

Quinn shook his head and hoped that was actually true so they would have a place to start looking. “Conversely, he’s been following us for days. If Lisa’s right and these cases are tied together, then who knows when or what question we asked that caught his attention. It may extend all the way back to the visit we made to Grant Danford’s estate.”

“What about before that? The guy in the Plymouth?”

“Someone after me using Lisa as a convenient way to get my attention?”

Quinn let the idea roll around and gel. “Yes, it’s possible. The hummingbird reference—it’s the first thing someone would notice about that crime scene. And the fact I haven’t seen the tail recently doesn’t mean he hasn’t been there, biding his time. Maybe we haven’t stirred up a killer, we’ve stirred up a guy who wants revenge.” He shook his head. “I don’t know which is worse.”

at Lisa’s home. Dead bolts and locked windows wouldn’t stop someone determined to enter. If he’d come after her rather than just left a note—

“She can’t stay here.”

“I’ll take her over to Kate’s for a few days, and we’ll be able to get her out of town this weekend for Jennifer’s wedding. It will buy us some time before we have to take more drastic measures.”

“Marcus, if we put too much obvious police presence on this case, whoever this is will go underground as fast as he appeared and Lisa will never be safe. We’ve got to find him.”

“Maybe we got lucky and he left a fingerprint. Maybe we’ll be able to trace the phone call. We can quietly canvas the neighborhood, see if anyone noticed a car, someone they didn’t recognize in the neighborhood.”

“The landscaper. Walter Hampton.”

“Do you think—”

It was too obvious and Quinn didn’t think it fit the man’s personality, but he knew better than to make assumptions. “He’s got a crew working at the house down at the corner. He’s been around here to dump dirt and lay sod. He may have seen something suspicious.” The sound of sirens noted the arrival of medical help and police officers.

“We get Lisa taken care of, then you and I are going to find some answers.”

Egan Hampton’s burnedout house was gone; in its place was now only a cleared-out empty lot. Quinn slowed as he drove past, wishing the aftereffects of what had happened could be as easily erased.

“I’m surprised the fire didn’t jump to that stand of oak trees,”

Marcus commented, also studying the site.

“No wind. Walter was fortunate. Had the wind been from the east, the fire would have raced through the nursery.”

The road turned and the now empty lot disappeared. They drove along the east edge of the orchard. The manager at the greenhouse had pointed them this direction to find Walter.

“There.” Marcus saw them first.

Two men were wrestling a fifteen-foot elm tree onto a flatbed trailer using a forklift to help with the massive ball of burlap-covered roots. Both of them were straining to shift the weight toward the center of the flatbed.

From the language Quinn could hear through the open car window, the man with Walter was cursing up a blue streak as the tree refused to move.

Quinn parked behind the Nakomi Nurseries’ pickup truck. “It would be impolite to stand and watch them work,” he noted, even as he prepared to do just that.

“Good. I’d rather be asking the questions before Walter has time to think up the wrong answers,” Marcus replied, a bite to his words.

“Lisa doesn’t think he’s involved.”

“She likes people who are nice to her pets.”

Quinn, who was normally the stand-back bad guy during inter-They walked toward where the men were working.

The tree finally slid to the center of the flatbed with the use of a “Walter.”

The man working with Walter ignored them, pulled tight his

views, found himself mentally reversing roles and wondering how hard Marcus was planning to push. His partner was rolling toward a boil.

“He did help save Lisa’s life,” Quinn noted, more curious to get Marcus’s reaction than to change his mind.

“And he’s done a remarkable job at weaseling himself into her life since then.”

This was an O’Malley family matter, and the skepticism level anyone would have to pass was stratospherically high. For Lisa’s sake, Quinn was glad.

two-by-four fulcrum. Walter reached around the tree for the first securing line. Only when it was in place did he acknowledge their presence with a nod of greeting. “Mr. Diamond.”

gloves, and started threading the first rope through the metal tie-down ring. When the rope coiled the wrong way on him, a snap of his wrist straightened it. Quinn noted the neat coil and the precision of the man’s movements in tying the knots, recognized his skill with the rope.

Walter grabbed the edge of the flatbed and swung himself to the ground. He left the other man to the job and walked over to meet them.

As Walter approached, Quinn double-checked his original assessment.

If there had been nervousness the first time they met, there was merely interest this afternoon. Walter met his gaze straight on. “What can I do for you?”

“We have a couple questions if you have a moment.”

Walter rubbed the dirt from his hands. “Glad to have a reason to take one.”

“I don’t believe you’ve met Lisa’s brother. This is my partner, Marcus O’Malley.”

Walter was a little slow in offering his hand. “Marshal.”

It was the job that made the man nervous. Quinn tucked that observation away for later.

“I saw you finished laying the sod at Lisa’s,” Marcus commented, introducing himself with the question.

“I also planted a tree and a couple bushes and flowers she picked out of the catalogs.” Walter glanced between them. “Sidney didn’t get into that honeysuckle, did he? I knew that was going to be a risk planting it so near the back deck.”

“Sidney will dig it up long before he tries to eat it,” Marcus noted.

“He’s already started with the snapdragons.”

Walter winced. “At least he’s got good taste.”

“When were you last at Lisa’s?” Quinn asked.

“Monday? No, Tuesday afternoon. Chris and I took the new elm tree over.”

“You haven’t been there since?”

Walter shook his head.

“Where were you last night?”

Walter frowned at the question, started to say something but was cut off. “He was bailing me out of jail,” the man kneeling on the flatbed tying down the tree retorted. “Leave the guy alone. He didn’t do whatever you’re probing about.”

Walter’s expression flashed hot with anger. “Chris, shut up.”

Chris—the brother who had testified at Grant’s trial, the gambler willing to ask for a bribe. Quinn pivoted and did some poking of his own. “Where were you since you got out of jail?”

“Arrest me, and we’ll have a staring contest over the answer.”

Walter took off his baseball cap, ran his hand through his hair, then put the cap back on. The move was more to get control of his anger than to adjust his hat. “Ignore him. My brother is in an exceptionally

“As if a chunk of dirt I can’t sell would matter one whit to me either “Assuming you actually get the tree there.”

“Walter, you might be older, but you’re no more the boss than I Quinn seized the moment. “Walter?”

He looked over and scowled. “What?”

“Where was your brother last night after you bailed him out of “And this morning?”

“I am hardly my brother’s keeper. He dumped the tree at A.M. He

bad mood today.” Walter looked over his shoulder. “And it started with dumping a tree on a busy freeway!”

“If you’d used a less fancy knot that would actually tighten, your precious tree would still be in one piece.”

“There was nothing wrong with my knot, the problem was your driving. If you dump this one too, I’m going to take it out of your inheritance.”

way,” Chris retorted, pausing to loop the extra rope around the corner post of the flatbed truck before swinging himself to the ground. Quinn’s eyes narrowed. Most people would have tossed it to the ground. “I’m leaving. If you want me to help plant this tree, you’d best catch up.”

am.” Chris pulled open the driver’s door of the truck pulling the flatbed. “I won’t be waiting around for you if you’re late.” The truck pulled out, the tree rocking against its restraints.

jail?”

He didn’t like the question but took heated pleasure in answering it. “He’s living in the former nursery manager’s house down at the south end of the orchard. You can see it from Egan’s place. I dropped him off there; as far as I know that’s where he stayed.”

finally showed up back here around P.M. Not only did he cost me a landscape job I worked two years to cultivate, he destroyed a good elm tree.”

“And what about you?”

He bit back a retort. “Gentlemen, I spent last night cleaning up stupidity. Chris was driving a nursery truck last night, drunk, when he was arrested. He claims to have misplaced his car, which probably means he wrecked it. I spent this morning visiting my aunt Laura, who wanted to know how come my uncle Egan hadn’t brought her coffee this morning, something he hadn’t done in over a decade even before his death. And then I came back here to the office about noon to find I had a customer with a hole in the ground, no tree, and unexpected guests arriving. Now I really do need to go.”

“Did you see anyone when you were at Lisa’s house on Tuesday?”

“Is this really necessary?”

“Yes.”

He checked his impatience and thought about it. “A kid on a bike—early teens? It was a blue mountain bike with red handlebars.

And there was a mom, two kids, and a poodle. The dog barked so much I heard Lisa’s parrot start to mimic it. That’s all that I recall. The neighborhood is quiet. Anything else?” His tone of voice suggested there had better not be.

“One last question. Have you ever done any work in Knolls Park?”