An Embarrassment of Itches Read online

  “Please tell Sheriff Donegan I’m here to see him.” Two could play the formality game. “As summoned.”

  “Dr. Reese.” Joe’s voice behind me, cool and clipped, not sounding friendly at all, made me whip around. “If you’ll come with me.”

  Fuming the entire way, I followed him into his office. He beckoned for me to shut the door behind me and take a seat. I did so, only to gape when he switched on a recorder on his desk and began reading me my rights.

  “Joe, what is this all about?” My anger evaporated with the sudden blast of alarm.

  “Dr. Reese. Do you understand these rights as I have given them to you?”

  It was like looking into the eyes of a stranger. Joe stood with his arms folded across his chest. An impenetrable wall had lowered over his features, and the man I thought I knew was nowhere to be seen. His blank expression, so different from his usual smirks and laid back friendliness, made me swallow hard before replying.

  “I understand my rights. What I don’t understand is why they were read to me.”

  A flicker of something indefinable reached his eyes, but he quickly snuffed it out.

  “Am I to understand that Amanda Kelly made you the beneficiary of her estate?”

  “Is that why you’re mad at me? Because you had to find out from the community grapevine? Heck, I’m still processing that information myself. I only found out last night.” I narrowed my eyes as an additional thought occurred to me. “I certainly didn’t tell anyone yet. Not even my mother. So how it is that it’s common knowledge already?” I snapped my fingers. “I get it. Brad has probably been complaining to anyone who’d listen.”

  “Mr. Taylor has certainly been... vocal... about the terms of the will.”

  I relaxed into my seat. “Well, there you are. I had nothing to do with Amanda’s decision. And I certainly would have told you about it the next time I saw you. So why insist I come down to the station?”

  He hesitated for a fraction of a second before speaking in a steely kind of voice. “Because the coroner has completed his examination. He’s ruled that Ms. Kelly died of blunt force trauma to the head in a manner that could not be accidental or self-inflicted.”

  “You mean—she was murdered?”

  That odd look was in his eyes again, as though he were pleading with me to understand or recognize something. In a flash, it disappeared, and the Sheriff was back again. “Yes.”

  “I knew it.” It was odd to feel triumphant over something like this, but I knew there was something wrong with the scene as I’d found it. If Amanda had taken off her shoes with the intention of swimming, then why leave on her clothes? And if she’d accidentally fallen in, why take off her shoes and watch? Someone had read too many mysteries and had made a clumsy attempt at making her death seem like a suicide.

  Joe glanced at the recorder and seemed to repress a sigh. “Ginny.”

  His correct use of my name pinged my attention like an intruder triggering a trip wire. My mouth opened and closed helplessly as words failed me.

  Joe, however, had no such problem. Speaking carefully, as though for the recorder, he said, “This has officially become a homicide investigation. And you are the number one person of interest.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The questioning seemed to take forever.

  Joe allowed me to reschedule my morning appointment and sent a deputy out to feed the feral cats over my objections. We went over the same material again and again. I recognized Joe’s technique from my own when taking a history on patients from clients. Sometimes asking the same question in different ways elicited information the client had forgotten about, like when Jesse Simpkins forgot his grandson had fed LuLu bacon over the weekend and that might be why she was vomiting three days later.

  “Did you have the code for Ms. Kelly’s alarm system?”

  “Well, yes. As I mentioned before, I took care of Amanda’s animals when she went out of town. If she left Ming behind, which wasn’t often, I went up to the house to feed him as well.”

  Joe could have been a Grand Inquisitor for all the friendliness he conveyed during my questioning. “How is it you didn’t disengage the system when you called 911?”

  I blinked at that one. “I... I don’t know. I mean, I didn’t think about it. To my knowledge Amanda didn’t arm the system when she was home, so it never occurred to me I might trigger the alarm when I went in. I’m afraid I wasn’t thinking very clearly at the time.”

  He seemed to let that slide, although he made a note on the yellow legal pad in front of him.

  “Do you have a key to her house?” Cool and clipped, Joe’s question was like a dash of ice water to the face.

  “Er, yes.”

  Clear hazel eyes, the color of a hawk’s, seemed to search my face before he spoke again. “You didn’t disclose that information yesterday.”

  “It totally slipped my mind. Finding a friend dead in her swimming pool will do that to you.”

  He held out his hand. “I need the key.”

  He watched in stony silence as I pulled my key chain out of my jeans pocket and flipped through half a dozen keys before I found the one I wanted. I worked it off the ring, but instead of placing it in his waiting hand, I slapped it on his desk and pushed it toward him.

  He left it there to tap his legal pad with his pen a few times before he met my eyes again.

  “Are you sure you never went into Ms. Kelly's bedroom?” Joe was still in interrogator mode, but seemed to be trying to tell me something with his eyebrows. Unfortunately, I wasn't well versed in eyebrows.

  “I can't think of any reason why I would go into Amanda's bedroom.” I frowned as I considered his question. Snapping my fingers, I added, “Oh, wait. There was that time I had to help her get Ming out from under the bed.”

  “Perhaps it would be easier if you told me which parts of her house you've never been in.”

  I shrugged helplessly. “I'm not sure I can remember. Amanda has been a client for years. We were also friends. I helped out with her rescue horses, and she invited me to swim in her pool. She let me board my horse on her property, and I took care of her cat. I was in and out of her house a lot.”

  Joe's shoulders relaxed infinitesimally at this declaration, and I decided I was on the right track with my non-specificity. Honestly, the only place I could think of I'd probably never entered at Amanda's place was the master bathroom, but something told me not to share that little tidbit. Generalities seemed safer than absolutes.

  “Let's talk about this friendship.” He made it sound as though he’d put finger quotes around the word “friendship.” He toyed with the pen again, tapping it on his notepad as he spoke. “Is that normal? That you make friends with your clients?”

  After what felt like hours of this same line of questioning, my irritation levels rose once more. “Define normal. I work ten to twelve hours on any given day. Where am I supposed to make friends outside of work? I liked Amanda, and we had common interests. How is becoming friends a crime?”

  “It isn't unless there’s a suspicious death and a large fortune involved.”

  “One I never expected,” I snapped.

  “That remains to be seen.”

  “I can prove it.” I reached for my bag but faltered when I realized I didn’t have Amanda’s letter with me.

  “Yes?”

  There went those eyebrows again, but instead of advising me to be cautious, they seemed to taunt me now.

  “After the reading of the will, Amanda's lawyer gave me a letter that she'd written. In it, she explained why she'd chosen me to inherit her estate.” I indicated my bag. “I thought I had it in my purse, but I left it at home.”

  The tapping pen went still. “What did the letter say?”

  I hesitated, conscious of the heat that entered my cheeks. “She thought I was some kind of damn hero for coming home and taking care of my dad. Giving up Manhattan for Green Acres, that sort of thing. She said I deserved something for that, and she
didn't want anybody in her family to inherit. I guess I'd talked about my hopes of building a clinic one day often enough that she liked the idea of being a part of that if something happened to her.” I leaned forward to tap his notepad with one finger. “She also said she didn’t think it was a coincidence that Samantha Taylor and Amanda Kelly were both dead now.”

  “I need to see that letter.”

  “Of course.” I eased back in my seat. “Something else you should know. I got an email from those developers—Riverside—this morning. I’m guessing they found out from Brad that I was the legal heir now. They certainly wasted no time contacting me.”

  “Oh, really?” Joe cast aside his pen and leaned back in his seat to cross his arms over his chest. “What did they have to say?”

  I leaned forward to rest my elbows on the desk and steeple my fingers. “They wanted me to know they had an agreement with Amanda to sell her property to them and wanted to be sure that I would honor that arrangement.”

  He frowned at that. “You sound as though you don’t believe them.”

  “I don’t think I do. Why would Amanda leave me a property she intended to sell?”

  “Well, I’m pretty sure she didn’t intend to die, either. The proceeds of the sale would be part of her estate regardless, so I’m not sure that argument holds water.” He picked up his pen again to play with it. “Did she ever talk about the subdivision with you?”

  I shook my head. “Only in general terms. She seemed to feel the subdivision was going to be built either way and wondered how that would affect her in the long run.”

  “So, she might have been planning to sell, and you didn’t know it.”

  “Maybe.” Darn it, Joe was making me doubt Amanda’s intentions. “I think it more likely something changed in the last few days.”

  “Ms. Kelly’s property is of a significant size that I doubt she’d have noticed much of a change. More traffic on the road, maybe. Did Riverside ever contact you about your land? It backs up to Ms. Kelly’s estate, doesn’t it?”

  I sat up straight again. “I wish. I’d have sold it in a heartbeat. I’m never going to be able to build a clinic there, which is why I bought the property in the first place. And it’s a decent size, even though it is long and narrow. But there’s no view, and I guess that’s what Riverside is looking for.”

  “Are you thinking of selling Ms. Kelly’s land to them?”

  “I’ve barely had time to think of it as mine to sell. And Brad intends to fight for it, that’s for sure. But here’s the interesting part.” I pulled up my email on my phone and turned the screen so Joe could see it. “When I told them I wasn’t sure about selling, they came back with a counteroffer within thirty minutes.”

  Joe’s eyebrows reached for his hairline as he read the email. He gave out a low whistle. “They’re offering double the original price?”

  I took the phone back to stare at the screen. “Yeah. Seems a little anxious, don’t you think?”

  “Where were you the night before last?”

  The question arrived out of nowhere so fast it nearly gave me whiplash, and it took me a second of frowning concentration to figure out what he was driving at.

  “The night before last?” I repeated.

  “Say, between six p.m. and three a.m., more or less.”

  “Is that when Amanda was killed?” It must have been, otherwise he wouldn’t have asked. I wished I could take back the question as soon as the words left my mouth.

  “The heated pool made it difficult to narrow down the time of death.” Joe relayed that piece of information almost reluctantly and gave another glance at the recorder. “Your whereabouts?”

  “You don’t seriously think I had anything to do with her death, do you?”

  A pained expression creased his brow. “I’m just doing my job.”

  We stared at each other a long moment before I said, “I finished up with the day’s calls around six o’clock. I’m not sure of the exact time, but I had dinner at Sue’s sometime around then. I probably still have the receipt.” I made to root around in my purse for it, but Joe held up his hand, indicating that corroboration could wait. “Er, I got home a little after seven, maybe seven-fifteen.”

  “And then?”

  “I’m thinking. The days all blur together after a while, you know.” I snapped my fingers when I remembered. “Oh, right. I took a call from a non-client about a dog who’d swallowed a prescription medication, and I talked him through inducing vomiting at home. That took about twenty minutes or so. I didn’t stay on the line the entire time, but called him back to make sure the dog threw up.”

  Joe made a faint grimace as he jotted notes on the legal pad. “After that?”

  “At ten minutes to ten, I got a call from Dorothy Russell.”

  “You seem pretty certain of the time.”

  That made me snort. “I am because I was annoyed at how late it was. Normally, I try to be in bed by eleven p.m., so I looked at my watch when the phone rang.” I’m sure my smile was rueful as I continued. “Dorothy’s mother-in-law is visiting and her little Chihuahua, who hates everyone but her owner, ran into the bathroom and managed to get into the wall through a small gap under the sink.”

  Joe’s pen abruptly stopped moving. “Say what?”

  This time, I grinned outright. “You heard me. The Russells called in a panic. Her mother-in-law was sobbing in the background, and the kids were shrieking. Dorothy’s husband was out—it seems he loathes the little dog—and she was freaking out about how to get the dog out of the wall before he got home. Dorothy put her daughter Kaitlyn on the phone with me. I guess she figured I’d be less likely to turn down an eight-year-old pleading for me to come help before her daddy got home.”

  Back in high school, Joe had been a huge fan of horror movies, something I could barely stand. But because I’d been crazy in love with him, I’d sat through his desire to watch what he called the “classics” of sci-fi horror, like John Carpenter’s The Thing, when I would have rather watched Practical Magic or Ever After.

  “Kaitlyn sounded all sad and pathetic. Remember that kid in the Alien franchise? The one who said the monsters came after dark?”

  “Newt.”

  Of course he’d know the character’s name.

  “That’s it. Well, that’s what Kaitlyn sounded like. Please come and get Nan-nan’s Pumpkin out of the wall before Daddy gets home.” I imitated a small child pleading for my help in a small, soft voice.

  “Barney has a reputation for having a short fuse. I can see the dilemma.”

  “Right? What else could I do but agree to help?”

  Russell was known to be a hard man. There wasn’t any evidence he was abusive, but I could understand Dorothy wanting to defuse a potentially volatile situation.

  “What did you do when you got there?” Joe’s smile invited inviting me to tell my story, as if among friends. For a minute, it appeared we were friends again. “The dog extraction must have taken a while.”

  “Not really. Dorothy led me to the bathroom. Can you believe it? The dog had found a space this big and squeezed through it.” I held up my thumb and forefinger to show a distance of about two inches. “Pumpkin popped her nose out like a rat but dove back in when we entered the room. Dorothy began to wail her husband would kill her if they had to tear down the wall, and Mrs. Russell cried poor Pumpkin would starve to death like the guy in The Cask of Amontillado. You know how I said Kaitlyn was like Newt? Well, you’d have thought there was an alien in the wall when I shone a light in there.”

  All I’d been able to see was teeth and a gleaming eyeball. You’d have thought a demon was inside the wall from the sound of growling that emanated from such a tiny body. “I didn’t want to be there when Barney got home, so I took the towel off the rack, wrapped it around my arm, and shoved it into the hole. When Pumpkin bit me, I dragged her out, latched onto my arm like a little shark.”

  Joe laughed at that. “You need your own TV show.”

/>   “Yup,” I agreed. “Ginny Reese, Chihuahua Hunter.”

  Too soon, the humor faded from his eyes. “So, how long do you think you were there?”

  I shrugged. “I was home and in bed by quarter to twelve.”

  “Anyone able to vouch for that?”

  The one time I could have wished for a late-night call from my mother, but no such luck. I shook my head.

  Joe smoothly shifted gears. “Let’s talk about this incident with your car last night. What happened?”

  He sat in frowning silence as I recounted the events after I left Amanda’s property. Then he made me go over the individual elements again and again. I finished with my assessment that the damage, while superficial, would probably cost a pretty penny to repair.

  “And you didn’t report it to your insurance company when you got home?” Somehow, his tone reminded me of my father in one of his stern disapproval modes, which made me defensive.

  No point in telling him how much time I wasted looking for the sketch of Remy. “I was wiped out when I got home. It was dark, it was late, and I was still reeling from the reading of the will. I wanted a glass of wine and to read Amanda’s letter, in that order.”

  The curve of his lips softened a bit at that. “Understandable, but how about this morning when you checked out the car? Why didn’t you report this to the police?”

  By police, he meant him. I sighed, barely refraining from rolling my eyes.

  “Based on what? I didn’t get a license plate. His headlights were in my eyes most of the time. I can’t even give you a decent description of the car. And I hadn’t decided on whether I’d file a claim yet.” Besides, in the grand scheme of things, the dented fender was small potatoes. “Look, Amanda was using a pseudonym, and she was married to a guy named Derek Ellis, right?”

  Joe’s lips pursed in exasperation. “You know I’m the sheriff, right? This isn’t my first murder investigation.”

  “Yeah, well, at the reading of the will last night, I met Amanda’s agent, Laney Driver.”

  “We’ve spoken with Ms. Driver.” Tight lips now, at least metaphorically. Not giving any details of the case away.