FAMILY FALLACIES (The Kate Huntington mystery series #3) (6 page)

Maria thought for a
moment, then shook her head and said something back. Rose asked another
question. Maria shrugged. “
Es posible
.”

“She can’t honestly
remember how tall the lady was. Just had the impression that she was tall. I
asked if it could have been a man. She said maybe.” Rose walked over to the
table, picked up the note by its edge and slid it into a plastic bag she
produced from her pocket. Then she studied the note through the bag.

“We’ve been getting
notes at work, too. But my boss doesn’t want to involve the police. She doubts
they would do much since the notes are not blatantly threatening.”

“She’s probably right,”
Rose said.

“But this can’t go on.
Not when whoever is doing this is invading my home and making veiled threats
against my child! Rose, I want to hire you and Skip to find out who it is.”

“Can’t do it, Kate.
You’re a friend.”

Kate’s face fell.

“I meant we wouldn’t
take your money,” Rose quickly added. “We’d do it for free. And before you
start feeling guilty, remember I need the hours of experience to get licensed.
I can probably get a buddy of mine at the police lab to check the note for
prints. But don’t get your hopes up. Paper doesn’t show prints well.”

“Should we get the
handwriting analyzed?” Kate asked.

Rose’s eyebrow shot up
to almost a forty-five degree angle. She had the most eloquent eyebrows of
anyone Kate had ever known.

“Can’t say I’ve ever
been impressed with handwriting analysis,” Rose said, “unless it’s to determine
if two samples were written by the same person. Which we’re already pretty much
assuming here.”

Rose turned to Maria
and said something in Spanish. “I told her not to let anybody into the house
from now on except me, Mac, Skip and the Franklins.” Kate nodded approval as
Rose said something else to Maria.

Maria broke into a big
grin, not quite as beautiful as one of Rose’s, but close. She threw her arms
around her cousin.
“Gracias, muchas gracias, Elena Rosa.”

  “What did you
tell her?” Kate asked, pretending not to notice Rose’s discomfort. Her friend
was not big on displays of affection.

“That I’m going to try
to find out who the lady with the note was,” Rose said, as she attempted to
wiggle loose from her cousin’s grasp.

Maria just squeezed her
tighter. “
Te quiero, prima mia. ¡Muchas gracias!”

  Rose’s
Latino heritage finally overrode her reserved personality. “
Te quiero
también, Maria,”
she said, grateful that Kate couldn’t understand that
she’d just told her cousin she loved her too.

The phone rang. Kate
grabbed it quickly so it wouldn’t wake the baby.

“You okay?” Skip said
in a sharp voice before she could even say hello.

“Yes, no. I mean we’re
safe. But...”

“I’m on my way.”

“Thank you,
sweetheart!”

When Kate opened her
front door, Skip was about to gather her into his arms when he stopped himself.
She might have called him sweetheart, but the four-foot rule was still in
effect until she said otherwise.

“You okay?” he asked.
She nodded mutely.

“I’m sorry I didn’t
have my phone on. I was in a meeting with a potential client.” He vowed to
himself to never turn it off again. Even during surveillance work, he’d put it
on vibrate.

“What happened?” he
asked as they moved into the living room. He nodded a greeting to Rose and
Maria who were coming out of the kitchen. Kate gestured toward the sofa. As he
sat down, she sank to the floor in front of him.

Skip’s chest ached at
the look of fear on her face. Kate reached out her hand and he enclosed it in
both of his.

Rose cleared her
throat. She was standing at parade rest a few feet away, Maria hovering behind
her. “Sit down, Rose. You too, Maria,” Kate said, shifting a little to the side
so she could see them as they sat in the two armchairs.

“There’s been another
note,” she told Skip. “Only this one was delivered here. I found it in the
baby’s playpen.” Kate’s throat closed up on her.

Rose took over and gave
a succinct report on what had happened.

Skip asked Maria
several questions in Spanish and then nodded. Looking down into Kate´s worried
eyes, he said, “We’re not going to let anything happen to Edie.”

He turned to Rose. “You
got some time to work on this?”

“Every minute I’m not
on duty,” Rose said emphatically.

“Good. I’m going to
stay here during the day when Kate’s at work. If this gal, or guy, tries to
deliver another note here, hopefully I’ll catch ’em in the act. I think maybe a
security system is in order as well.”

Kate nodded. “But what
about your work, Skip?” she said. “You can’t get a new business off the ground
if you’re babysitting Edie and Maria all the time. I’m going to take a leave of
absence.”

“No, you can’t do that,
Kate, for two reasons,” Skip said. “The first being that you love what you do
and your clients depend on you. And secondly, if you give into these vague
demands and stop working now, we’ll probably never find out who’s doing this so
we can stop them once and for all.”

“It’d help if the
asshole would be more specific,” Rose growled.

“But the question
remains, Skip, how will you do your work if you’re here all day? I’m going to
have to insist on paying you two for your services.”

“Not necessary.” He
held up his hand as she started to protest again. “A lot of investigating is
done on the computer these days. All I need is an internet connection. Any
field work needed, I can do when you’re not working.”

Kate’s face brightened.
“You can use my study,” she said, gesturing toward the area that had once been
a formal dining room. It had gone through several transformations and was now
set up with desk, computer and bookshelves, so Kate could work on paperwork
while keeping an eye on the baby playing in the adjoining living room.

“That way, you’ll
always be near Edie. She’s in here or in the nursery most of the time.” Kate
tilted her head toward the room that had once been Eddie’s study and was now
the nursery.

“Okay. Any new thoughts
on who might be sending these notes?” Skip asked.

“Well, at first Sally
and I assumed it was related to one of my cases, but now Sally’s convinced
they’re coming from the false memory crowd. I’m inclined to agree with her.”
Kate filled them in on the false memory movement while Rose took notes.

“I’ll start checking
them out tomorrow.”

“Thank you so much,
Rose. But please go carefully with these people. Try not to mention my name or
the center’s. If it’s not one of them sending the notes, I don’t want to draw
their attention to us.”

Rose nodded. “I’ll find
out if there’s a local group first. There are ways for me to check them out
without bringing you all into it.”

“If you don’t mind,
Kate, I’d feel better if I slept here on the sofa tonight,” Skip said. If she
said no, he would watch the house from his truck all night.

But Kate agreed. “Thank
you. I think that’s the only way I’ll be able to get any sleep.”

F
irst thing Wednesday
morning, Kate called several companies that specialized in home security. With
the offer of a big bonus, one company promised to be there by mid-afternoon to
install a security system. For good measure, Kate decided to have wrought-iron
filigree bars put on the first floor windows. Then she cleared a space in her
study for Skip to set up his laptop when he was on bodyguard duty.

When Rob called to tell
her something had come up and he couldn’t meet for lunch, Kate quickly filled
him in on the newest note and where it had been found.

“My God, Kate, is the
baby okay?”

“Yes, Maria took Edie
with her when she left the room, but it’s totally freaking me out that someone
came into my house and...” Kate took a deep breath to steady herself. “But
things are under control now. Canfield and Hernandez, Private Investigations,
are on the job. Rose is investigating who might be sending the notes, and
Skip’s going to stay here with Maria and the baby whenever I have to be away
from home.”

After a brief pause,
Rob said, “Well, that’s a relief to know they’re going to look into this. Did
you call the police?”

“No. What could they
do? There’s no direct threat, only an implied one, and Maria willingly let the
woman into the house.” There was a slight tremor in her voice.

“Are you okay?”

“No, not really. I mean
I’m better than I was last night, but... I feel kind of helpless. How do I
fight this, Rob, when I don’t even know who’s doing it? Or even what they’re
talking about!”

Rob felt his own surge
of frustration that he had no answer for her. He knew how she hated standing on
the sidelines, while others dealt with something that was important to her.
And, as she had pointed out to him in the past, helplessness was the hardest of
all human emotions to deal with.

“Give Skip and Rose
some time, sweetheart. They’ll figure it out,” was all he could think of to
say. “I’ll call you later to touch base.”

Rob had been walking to
his car while talking to Kate on his cell phone. Now he sat in the driver’s
seat without turning the key, trying to sort out what the hell was making his
stomach queasy and his chest hurt. Last time he’d ignored those feelings, his
knee-jerk reaction to them had almost done permanent damage to his friendship
with Kate.

Something had
threatened her child and she had turned to Skip first, not him. On a logical
level, that made sense since Skip could actually do something about the threat,
while all he could do was provide moral support.

But Rob knew that
wasn’t why Kate had called on Skip instead of him. The main reason was that
Skip was now her... her what? They weren’t lovers yet. Saturday night, they
hadn’t touched each other the whole evening, even though the sexual energy between
them was almost visible to the naked eye. Nonetheless, Skip was becoming her...
partner?

Okay, the queasy
feeling was worry for her. Rob didn’t totally trust Skip Canfield, even though
the man had never really done anything to merit that distrust. It was his
looks, Rob finally decided. Kate was an attractive woman, but Canfield was
movie-star handsome. Rob couldn’t help wondering if the man had some ulterior
motive.

And the ache in his
chest, he admitted to himself, was because he wasn’t first in Kate’s life
anymore. Which was really pretty selfish of him, to expect to be first in two
women’s lives. But, as Kate had also pointed out to him on several occasions,
feelings aren’t always logical.

He was truly happy for
her, that she had found love again. That is if this guy turned out to be on the
up and up.

Rob shook his head and
started his car. He needed to get to his meeting with his client.

The bottom line was
he’d better get used to being a close second in Kate’s life again, because he
was fairly sure Skip Canfield, for better or worse, was going to end up a
permanent fixture.

~~~~~~~~

A
udrey was Kate’s last
client before lunch on Thursday. By that point, Kate was already dragging. She
hadn’t slept well Tuesday night, despite the fact that Skip was sleeping right
outside her bedroom door, or perhaps
because
he was sleeping right
outside her door. Then Wednesday night, she hadn’t slept well because he was
no
longer
sleeping outside her bedroom door. Even with the security system and
bars on the windows, she was nervous being in the house with just the baby and
Maria, whose bedroom was all the way up on the third floor.

But once Audrey’s
session began, Kate quickly forgot her own fatigue.

As the young woman
settled into the client chair, she was obviously avoiding eye contact. In
response to Kate’s routine inquiry about how she had been since last they’d
met, Audrey said, “I blew it.”

“Blew what?” Kate
asked.

“Actually, I blew
up
.”
Audrey finally made eye contact. “At my parents. I did what you said not to do
yet. I confronted them.”

“What happened?” Kate’s
voice was gentle.

“I know you said to
wait, you know, until we had more information and then I could make a rational
decision about how I wanted to deal with them. But my mother...” Audrey shook
her head in disgust. “She insisted I bring Alicia over in her Halloween costume
before I took her trick or treating. When we got there, she had this big dinner
ready. I told her we’d already eaten and we needed to get going, in order to
trick or treat before Alicia’s bedtime. She started in with the guilt-tripping
and then my father started telling me what an ingrate I was, and I just lost
it.

“I started yelling,
‘You wanna know what I have to be grateful for, Dad? Well I’m back in therapy,
thanks to you. I’m spending hundreds of dollars of my husband’s hard-earned pay
every month, thanks to you, either you or that creepy brother of yours!’

“Somewhere during my
tirade, my mother took Alicia into the kitchen, so when my father kept
insisting that I tell him what the hell I was talking about, I did. I told him
about the memories, which of course he denied. Said I had a lively imagination,
or maybe I’d been watching too many soap operas when I should be cleaning the
house.”

Audrey paused for
breath. Tears were trickling down her cheeks. She gave them an irritated swipe
with the heel of her hand.

After a moment, Kate
gently prompted, “Then what happened?”

“I yelled, ‘Of course,
Dad, because I’m
stupid and lazy
as well as an ingrate,’ and I went in
the kitchen and got Alicia. I told her to say goodbye to her grandmom. Mother
must have realized I meant forever, because she chased us all the way to the
car, yelling at me to come back and be reasonable.”

Kate allowed a bit of a
pause to make sure Audrey had finished her story. Then she said softly, “How
are you feeling about them at this point?” She was concerned about the effect
the whole scene may have had on Alicia but decided to come back to that.

Audrey thought for a
moment. Finally she said, “I think something shifted inside after all that.
It’s like the last few threads that were tying me to them had broken. I
actually forgot about it for awhile, when we were trick or treating, and when I
was telling Ted what happened later, I was crying a little but then I realized
I felt lighter inside, like some burden had been lifted.”

“A sense of freedom?”

“Yeah, exactly! But I
feel bad for not following your advice, Kate.”

Kate ignored the
apology for the moment. “Do you really want to never see them again? That’s not
just something you felt in the heat of the moment?”

“Nope, I’m done. I have
absolutely no desire, no need to ever be around them again.”

“What about your sister
and brother? What if they take sides?” These were the questions Kate would have
preferred to have asked
before
Audrey had confronted her parents.

Her client thought
again for a moment. “You know, if they side with the old man and Mother, then
the hell with them too.”

“That makes you an
orphan, with no family.”

“Sorry, all I can drum
up at that thought is relief.” Audrey was actually starting to smile. “Some
families you’re better off without. Besides, I do have a family. Ted and Alicia
are my family, and I get along good with his folks and sibs.”

“Then no harm, no
foul,” Kate said. “You jumped the gun a bit, but it sounds like it’s ended up
being a therapeutic experience overall. I’m a bit concerned about how Alicia
might be taking this, however.”

They spent the next few
minutes discussing the best way to handle the little girl’s reaction and the
inevitable questions she would ask about why she wasn’t seeing her grandparents
anymore.

Then Audrey raised
another issue. “I suspect you’re not going to like this idea, Kate, but I’m
thinking about suing them.”

“In court?” Kate didn’t
even try to hide her surprise and dismay.

The young woman nodded.

“You’re right, I don’t
like the idea much. You might have been ready for the confrontation you just
had but I don’t think you’re anywhere near ready to deal with the stress of a
lawsuit, not to mention the fact that we don’t even know who your abuser is.”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure
it’s my father. Otherwise, why would he protest so much?”

Kate shook her head.
“No, he’d be just as likely to deny that his brother did that. He’s not going
to admit that stuff like that happens in
his
family. And, the way he is,
he would be likely to say it wasn’t true just because you said it was.”

Audrey paused. “True.
He’d probably claim the sky was purple if I commented that it was blue... But I
want to check it out, about suing, anyway. It doesn’t have to be about sexual
abuse
per se.
I want to get them to pay for my therapy, past and future.
It just isn’t right that our money, that should be going toward our lives, our
child’s future... We haven’t been able to save hardly anything for Alicia’s
college yet. Instead of going toward that, our money’s paying for the damage
they
did! I figure that since they broke it, they should pay to fix it.”

“I’ll tell you what,
Audrey. If you’re willing to pay for a consultation, I’ll set you up with a
friend of mine who’s an attorney. He can tell you what your options are and the
likelihood of success. But I am going to ask you to promise me something.”

“What’s that?”

“That you will not take
any action on this until I say you’re ready. I doubt you can even imagine how
hard it’s going to be, to tell your story in open court, in front of a
skeptical judge, and then be cross-examined by their attorney who will do
everything he or she can to tear you apart and make you look unstable.”

Audrey was quiet for a
moment. “Okay, I can live with that promise,” she finally agreed. “But I think
I do want to talk to the lawyer, maybe have a game plan in the back of my
mind.”

Kate gave her Rob’s
card and had Audrey sign a waiver of confidentiality allowing her to discuss
the case with him.

After the young woman
left her office, Kate called Rob. She got his voicemail. “Hi. I just referred a
case to you. Her name’s Audrey Spaulding. Call me and I’ll fill you in.”

~~~~~~~~

A
t noon on Friday, Kate
was headed for Mac’s Place for her re-scheduled lunch with Rob. She was more
than a little ready to celebrate the end of an intense week. She had a couple
of clients still to see that afternoon, but they were relatively easy cases.

When Kate arrived, Rob
was already ensconced in their favorite booth. After ordering their lunches,
Rob asked how Skip and Rose were doing with the investigation into the strange
woman who had come to Kate’s house.

“Not much happening
there yet. They talked to the neighbors. Nobody saw anything Tuesday. Rose is
discreetly checking out the local false memory group... So how are things at
your salt mine?”

“Pretty darn good,” Rob
said, looking smug. “Had an emergency custody hearing this morning for a case
Sally referred. Pushed the husband and the jackass actually blew up at me in
court. That was all it took for the judge to give the wife sole custody and
supervised visitation for the father.”

“Congratulations!”

“Thanks... Oh, I met
with the young woman you referred.”

“Already?” Kate was
surprised, especially since she hadn’t heard back from him the day before.

“Yeah, I had a client
cancel a meeting yesterday afternoon and your gal seemed anxious to see me so I
squeezed her in.” Rob had learned not to use names, or at least not last names,
when discussing mutual cases with Kate in public.
He
could acknowledge
that someone was his client, but the rules of confidentiality governing Kate’s
profession were much stricter. She couldn’t even admit that someone was seeing
her for counseling.

“I gotta tell you I
have some reservations, Kate.”

“What do you mean?” she
asked, slightly annoyed that he hadn’t returned her call before meeting with
Audrey.

“Well, first off, she
hasn’t got a snowball’s chance in hell of making the case for sexual abuse when
she doesn’t even know for sure who her abuser was.”

Kate nodded. “That’s
what I told her. But she wanted to talk to you anyway about the possibility of
suing for emotional and physical abuse.”

Rob shook his head. “I
told her I’d look into it. See what the precedents are in the case law for
that, but frankly it sounds a little flaky to me to think you can sue your
parents because they yelled a lot and didn’t totally meet your needs.”

Kate tried to rein in
her temper. Rob tended to be a bit brusque right after court, until his natural
personality reasserted itself over his more aggressive court mode. But despite
her best efforts, there was still an edge to her voice. “If you’d returned my
call, I would’ve had the opportunity to tell you about this client, before you
jumped to conclusions.”