A Willing Murder Read online

  “Red, here, does,” Jack said. “She’s eaten so many calories this morning that I’m sure she’s gained ten pounds. I tried to stop her but I couldn’t.”

  “Needed the energy. I was exhausted from throwing you out of my bedroom.”

  Jack gave a chuckle.

  “Great idea,” Sara said. “I’ll drive your new truck.”

  “You can’t reach the pedals,” Jack called over his shoulder as he headed toward his room. “I bet I can get ready to go before you two can.”

  “You win!” Sara and Kate said in unison. They laughed; Jack groaned. As it was, they beat him because he had three work calls.

  Kate was impressed with the beautiful LA Fitness on University. After Sara signed her in as a guest, they went to the machines. Lifting weights was new to Kate but Jack was a patient teacher, and working out together came easily to them. While Jack took his turn, Sara and Kate talked about clothes and made plans for places to go. A couple of times they had to wait for Jack when people he knew came over to ask about his leg.

  After an hour with the weights, they went to the basketball court. Jack pulled hand pads out of his big gym bag, and Sara gave Kate a set of red leather boxing gloves.

  “I can’t possibly do that.” She backed away.

  They didn’t listen to her. Within minutes, Jack had her in gel protectors, then into the sixteen-ounce gloves.

  Because of his cast, he had to back up against the wall to keep from falling as Sara hit the pads he held.

  He spent a few minutes giving Kate basic instructions about twisting and using her body to power a hit, then held up his pads. She was timid, barely tapping, until Jack started softly saying names to her. Evan. Mrs. Ellerbee. Cheryl. Verna. Dan.

  On the last punch, Kate hit so hard that Jack stepped aside, removed his pad and shook his hand. “Got some anger in you, girl.”

  “A bit,” she said. Hitting hard felt good.

  When they got home, they sat in the living room, a pitcher of water before them. They didn’t mention separating.

  Sara took a chair, put a pretty bamboo lap desk across her knees and began to write on small sheets of paper. Jack took a couch and opened his computer. On the sofa across from him, Kate was his mirror image.

  “Which house are you looking at?” he asked.

  “Shhh.” She glanced at Sara.

  “She’s fine as long as no one asks her questions. What house?”

  “Twenty-three Kingfish Drive has just come up. It looks nice.”

  “The electrical needs work, but it’s a great location. Let me have it for six weeks and I can increase the sell price by twenty percent.”

  “Yeah?” She made a note of it. “One eighty-two Redland Street?”

  “That’s a good one. Dad and I waterproofed the basement.” Looking back at his computer, he groaned.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Downloading transactions from the bank, then categorizing them. I can’t read Gil’s writing.” He handed her the receipt.

  “Six two-by-fours. Eight two-by-sixes. Four pounds of wood screws, size seven.”

  For a moment Jack blinked at her, then handed her his laptop and put the plastic box of receipts on the coffee table.

  She gave him her computer. “Write what you know about each house and include the history. People like to know about deaths and ghosts in the house.”

  “Where do I write it?”

  She moved to sit beside him and Sara left her narrow chair to go to the other couch.

  It was hours before they started moving about. Jack went outside to lovingly bathe his new truck; Sara went to her bedroom to turn on the TV while she typed; Kate went to the kitchen.

  It was while she was preparing a meal that Kate began to think about the case. She tried not to. She needed to go over the listings so she could answer all the clients’ questions, but her mind kept wandering. She thought of what Alastair had told her about Dan—that he drank so much that he was rarely sober and loved the glory days of high school when he was a sports star. Alastair said Dan thought of Cheryl as a trophy to be won, that he spoke of what he wanted to do to the young woman.

  As Kate put a stuffed chicken in the oven, she told herself that Dan probably did commit the murders. Just as he’d written.

  But what about the others? she wondered.

  Sara did say that they thought Jack’s truck had driven over rocks. Maybe that was really how the brakes went out. As for Mrs. Ellerbee, maybe she actually had smothered in her sheets, and the timing of her death was just a coincidence. A wild, cosmic concurrence.

  She was chopping zucchini. It was certainly nice of Alastair and his mother to buy all of the houses from Jack. And it might not hurt the resale value to add luxury floors and ceilings. Besides, selling wouldn’t happen until Mrs. Stewart left the earth. If she was still playing tennis, that was far away.

  That thought made her think of Dan’s suicide. What were the repercussions of it? What was going on now that the confession had been found? How was his family?

  When Kate got to the carrots, Jack came in and sat on a stool on the other side of the counter. He took one and crunched it. “Sara won’t eat those. No veg that grows underground.”

  She didn’t respond.

  Jack lowered his voice. “Been thinking?”

  “Not at all.”

  He stared at her.

  Kate glanced at Sara’s closed bedroom doors. “Just a bit. I can come up with an explanation for everything.”

  “Of course you can. There’s a logical explanation for all of it.” He sounded sarcastic.

  “Don’t say it like that. I keep thinking of Dan’s family.”

  “Mom called me. She and some of the ladies from church have been there. His wife is a mess.”

  “Her husband commits suicide and confesses to a double murder. How does she wrap her brain around that?”

  “From what Mom said, Dan Bruebaker was an excellent husband and father.”

  “But—” She broke off when Sara came out of the bedroom.

  “Are you two talking about anything interesting?”

  “Nothing at all,” Jack said.

  Kate would have backed up his lie but her cell phone started singing. She took it to her bedroom and listened to her mother’s heartfelt concern about what her daughter had been through when she found a man hanging. If Kate hadn’t heard what her aunt Sara had said, she would have thought her mother had been told she had three days to live and was trying to create good memories.

  There were no questions about Aunt Sara’s bad temper, no prying into every minute of Kate’s life. There was just loving concern about the ordeal her daughter had been through.

  When Kate hung up and went back to the kitchen, she was in such a dazed state that her eyes seemed to be pinwheels. It was difficult not to throw her arms around Aunt Sara’s neck and thank her.

  As it was, she got behind Sara, looked at Jack and made faces and gestures of jubilance and being thankful. He looked down and didn’t betray his amusement.

  * * *

  Kate awoke to the doorbell ringing like it was a fire alarm. Not again, she thought. What did Krystal want this time? The clock said it was 2:14 a.m. She waited for a moment, hoping someone else would answer Krystal’s call, but the ringing kept on.

  She pulled on a pair of jeans under the big T-shirt she was wearing and ran to the foyer, reaching it at the same time as Sara and Jack.

  “I’m going to kill her,” Jack muttered. “If she—” When he looked out the glass panel beside the door, he halted. “It’s Dan’s mother.” He opened the door. “Mrs. Bruebaker, how—?”

  She pushed past them, went straight to the living room and sat down. Her face was ravaged with tears and grief.

  There was a wet bar around the corner and Jack went to it to pour a