Dark Tort

A bad thought entered my brain. Althea Mannheim, who may have known something about Uriah Sutherland, had died outside of the gallery mounting Charlie’s last exhibit. Not long after that, Charlie had asked Meg about finding a private investigator…maybe to check on Uriah’s past in southern Utah? And Charlie had also told Richard that he wanted to change his will. The next day…the very next day, Charlie had fallen to his death.

What if Charlie’s death had not been an accident or suicide, what if he’d been pushed? What if everything that had happened so far was connected to Charlie, to his will, or to the stolen artwork? If so, Dusty had been in the thick of it. I figured she must have had a role in Charlie making changes to his will. She’d said as much in her journal: Especially after what I was asked to do tonight. Dusty was the one whom Charlie trusted…maybe even more than he trusted Richard. It made sense that she would have helped him get rid of a bequest to Uriah or whatever he’d wanted altered in the will. And depending on what those changes were, they might have been what led to Dusty’s death.

I said, “This next part’s important, K.D. What happened to the new will?”

“Well, that’s what I wanted to ask Richard, with Charlie falling down the stairs so soon after Richard had told me Charlie was changing his will.” She snorted. “But he’d sobered up by that time, and didn’t want to talk to me about it.”

“Did you tell the cops?”

“I wanted to,” she said, biting the inside of her cheek, “but Richard said he could be disbarred for telling me about the new will, and then I would have to pay for his defense, plus get nothing from the divorce settlement. Oh, we had an awful fight. But in the end, he told me, ‘There is no new will.’”

“I thought there was.”

“No, Richard told me, ‘There’s no new will if the person making it doesn’t come in to sign it, once we have it all typed up.’”

I felt as if all the air had gone out of my body at once. Could the alterations Charlie wanted to make to his will have been unimportant ones? Or had someone murdered Charlie so that the new will would never be valid? Maybe, if, could be. I kept running into dead ends. I wanted to ask K.D. more questions, but at that moment, her cell phone beeped.

“Gotta go,” she told me, once she’d hung up. “They’ve got a kid coming in to the ER whom they suspect has shaken baby syndrome.” She gave me a rueful glance. “And as if I didn’t have enough problems, somebody sideswiped me on the way over here, and I’m going to have to have my damn car—”

“Whoa, whoa,” I said, suddenly alert again. “Listen, K.D., the police are tracking a guy who may have tried to run down someone who’s helping the Routts. And this Althea Mannheim was killed by a hit-and-run driver, remember. A wannabe killer in a car is not something you even want to be thinking about. In fact, would you vamoose out of town for a while?” I was remembering K.D.’s intense, frightened reaction to Uriah’s name at the birthday party. If Nora’s father was somehow involved with Charlie’s or Dusty’s death, or if he’d had a hand in the theft of Charlie’s paintings, he might now view K.D. as a threat. Then again, someone else could wonder what K.D., as Richard’s wife, knew. My paranoia might be running overtime again. Still, at this point it seemed best to be cautious about the good doctor’s safety.

K.D. put on her camel-hair coat. “Well, I suppose I could use a break from Richard and his moods. Not to mention how he listens in on my calls.”

“Best not even to tell him you’re going.” I thought of how Tom had wanted to take Vic right down to the department. “But I’ll need your cell number, because I know Tom, or somebody from the department, will want to talk to you when your shift is over, before you go anywhere.”

“Okay.” She reached inside her purse, rummaged around for a bit, and pulled out a card. “I’m building a house in Santa Fe, with a guesthouse, too. It’s too big for me, but it’s my reward to myself for putting up with Richard and his antics. The guesthouse is done, and I can get on I-25 and drive straight through after I talk to whoever comes down from the sheriff’s department. That card has my Santa Fe number, which Richard doesn’t know, and my cell, which has caller ID.”

She dug around in her purse again and brought out another card. “Almost forgot. I wrote down the name, address, and number of Althea Mannheim’s cousin in Boulder. That’s what I had to go to the hospital for this afternoon. Grace Mannheim, on Pine. Nice lady. Elderly, like her cousin. I know she wouldn’t mind talking to you.”

“You’re going to get out of town as soon as you talk to the cops?” I asked her, just to be sure.

She opened our front door and peered into the darkness. “Well, I suppose. But it’s already past sundown, and when you have to get out of Dodge—” She stopped again, grinning at the stricken expression I knew was on my face. “All right, all right. Can’t you take a joke?”

CHAPTER 17

Once I’d had a shower, I fairly flopped on our mattress. It had been such a long day, with a party, a wrecked Rover, a lot of cooking, and ending with an enigmatic visit from K. D. Chenault. My old pal K.D., who had been sideswiped, and whom I’d urged to get out of town. I’d had wild fluctuations in energy levels all day, and I finally felt as if I’d reached the nadir.

Tom had been in the shower when K.D. had been called away for the shaken baby. When he came out, he said he was getting Julian settled in a sleeping bag between Gus and Arch, in Arch’s room. From the sound of their talking down the hall, it was going to be a Long Night in Boyville. I was, as ever, thankful for Julian’s presence in our family.

Once Tom had moved into bed next to me, I told him about K.D.’s visit. When I got to the point about the will change, Tom sat up, turned on the light, and reached for his trusty spiral notebook. I said, “I think Dusty referred to the will change in her journal. She said there was something she wasn’t allowed to talk about. Dusty was the person Charlie trusted, so I think it’s entirely possible she helped Richard draw up the new will.”

Tom finished taking notes, then called the department and got patched in to one of the detectives who was working on Dusty’s murder. He related the salient details, then gave the fellow K.D.’s numbers.

When he was back beside me, he reached out and pulled me in close, snuggling my breasts into his warm, still-damp chest until I giggled.

“I’m so glad you don’t have to go down to the department,” I said.

“Good,” he said. “Then I don’t have to explain to you why we have to gather a lot of information while we’re in the process of a murder investigation. A lot. And unlike some caterers, we don’t go barging in trying to gather evidence and arrest people—AGH!”

I’d found just the spot on his abdomen that, if I tickled it with my fingertips, would drive Tom wild.

And it didn’t stop there.

Sunday morning arrived cool and sunny, with one of those deep blue skies you see in Colorado and nowhere else. Most of the snow and ice had melted, and the golden-leaved aspens quaked in a breeze off the mountains. Julian and I whipped around the kitchen, drinking espresso, checking our supplies, and readying all the foodstuffs to take to St. Luke’s. To Tom I had given the unenviable job of rousting Gus and Arch from their warm beds, getting them showered, and making sure they were dressed in clean, not-needing-mending clothes. Luckily, the boys wore the same sizes, so if there was a sock or shirt missing, they could probably do some borrowing to come up with two clean outfits and matched pairs of shoes.

Tom also got the job of stuffing the guys with some breakfast, as the service was long. No promise of after- service brunch, it had been my experience, was enough to get a kid to quit complaining about being starving during church. Tom promised to meet us at the church fifteen minutes before the service. This was a good thing, as I wanted to have plenty of time to visit with Wink Calhoun, if she bothered to show up, as I’d requested.

Once Julian and I had set up in the church kitchen, the Episcopal Church Women arrived and began unfolding the long tables that would hold the food and beverages. While Julian was doing his perfect slicing job on the fruit, I finished the Prosciutto Bites and laid them out on cookie sheets. This particular combination of crunchy, warm croissant, piquant preserves, delectable prosciutto, and dots of cream cheese had been a great favorite at H&J. I wanted to pop one in my mouth, but resisted. I was stronger than an adolescent boy, right?