No Harm (The Kate Teague Mysteries Book 1) Page 5

  Kate knew the hulking figure hanging back behind his teammates. “Mr. Christopher?”

  “It’s Columbus.” He corrected, his brow furrowed in a theatrical scowl. “Coach is pretty mad about the grade you gave me.”

  “Is he?” She exchanged a knowing glance with Lydia. They had both played out this scenario before.

  “I can’t play ball unless you change my grade.”

  “You think I should change it?”

  “An F?” His voice rose half an octave. “Man, I came to class every day.”

  “Did you take the exams?”

  “No.” He puffed up his chest for the challenge, the jelly-roll of baby fat around his middle quivering.

  “Did you turn in a term paper?”

  “No, but…”

  “I wish I could help you, but,” she threw up her hands, “the college has rules about these things.”

  He shuffled back and forth, looking hopelessly childish in spite of his size. “I just never thought you’d give me an F.”

  “The baseball coach teaches history.” Lydia smiled wickedly at the boy. “You should have taken the class with him.”

  “That’s what I told him.” The mammoth in front turned and grabbed Columbus by the arm. “Asshole, why didn’t you take the class with the rest of us?”

  Columbus pulled free and looked at Kate. “What do I have to do to get you to change the F?”

  “Take the class again.”

  “Look, lady,” he leaned menacingly near Kate, close enough so she could see the tears brimming in his eyes. “I don’t think you understand.”

  “Cool it, Columbus.” His teammate pulled him back out of the doorway and gave him a shove out the door. “You get her mad and she’ll cook ya.” He turned and winked at Kate. “Let the coach handle her.”

  “Eric,” Lisa pushed at him in disgust, “you’re a total wimp.”

  “Yeah?” He thrust his chin out with fierce belligerence. “Says who?”

  Lydia jumped to her feet. “Out. All of you. You bunch of clods. Don’t you know this woman is in mourning?” She hooked the edge of the door with her foot and slammed it shut behind them.

  Kate burst out laughing. “I’m in what?”

  “Sorry. First thing that came into my head.” Lydia dropped back into her chair. “So, anyway, what happened last night? Looks like you had a few drinks.”

  “Not as many as Reece.”

  “He’s not my problem. We aren’t officially engaged or otherwise encumbered. Yet.” Her long legs spanned the distance between their desks. “Did he tell you? I proposed to him again.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said I can’t afford to get married. Last time he said he couldn’t afford to get married. Do you think that’s progress?”

  “Do you?” The telephone on Kate’s desk buzzed. She shoved the piles of books and papers away so she could reach it. “Hello.”

  “Kate?” The department secretary sounded doubtful. “Call for you. I didn’t expect you to come in today.”

  “I’m here. Patch me through.” She waited for the three clicks on the line as the call was redirected.

  “Professor Teague?” The voice on the line was impossibly high-pitched and Kate groaned a little inwardly, not having the patience at the moment for another special-needs student.

  “Yes.”

  “I want you naked.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I want to press my throbbing member against your bare flesh.”

  She handed the phone to Lydia. “It’s for you.”

  Lydia listened, fascinated, her green eyes round and fiery. “Throbbing member?” she laughed. “This is the history department. What you need is someone in creative writing. ‘Throbbing member’ has already been done. Overdone, really.” She hung up. “Lucky you. Another telephone breather. Except this one talks. Sounded like Mickey Mouse in mid-puberty. Do you think it’s the same guy?”

  “No. Security found that one. He worked in media services. Used to deliver projectors to my classes. He was fired, and I’m sorry.”

  “Why? He was a creep.”

  “Maybe. But he always got the projectors there on time.”

  Lydia shook her head. “I suppose weird calls are one of the perks that come with tenure?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to find out?” Kate teased.

  “I’d kill for the chance.” There was a pregnant pause. “Shit. Open mouth, insert foot.”

  “You do have a way with words.” Kate stood up and began gathering piles of clutter from her desk. “I’m getting out of here. I seem to make everyone edgy. Besides, Esperanza promised me something that will fix my black eye. Want to come see?”

  “No thanks. It’s probably some voodoo ritual, and I’m squeamish. I’ll see you later, maybe. I’m running on the beach with Reece.” Lydia got up and held the door open for her. “You are still planning to run in the volleyball team’s fund raiser, aren’t you?”

  “I guess.” Kate juggled the stack in her arms to squeeze past Lydia. “I’ve never run with a pack before. And I hate wearing shoes.”

  “You’ll do okay.” Lydia caught Kate’s arm, her mood suddenly serious. “I’m sorry about everything that’s happened to you. If there’s anything I can do to help you, you will ask, won’t you?”

  “Sure. Just one thing.”

  “Name it.”

  “Take my calls.”

  FIVE

  “LEECHES?” Kate squinted against the reflected glare on the polished kitchen table.

  “Yes, hija. For your black eye.” Two long black leeches slithered through thick green water in the mason jar Esperanza thrust into Kate’s hands. “I had to go all the way across town to my cousin’s bodega for them.”

  Kate shuddered, setting the jar down on the table. “They’re awful.”

  “Si.” Esperanza thumped the metal lid with her knuckles. “But you put one on your black eye and it will eat the bad blood. My mother taught me this. You’ll see, hija, by tonight, no one can see it anymore.” Gripping the jar, she began to twist off the lid. “Let me help you.”

  Kate took a step back, revolted. “Let me think about it. I’m going for a run. Maybe when I get back.”

  “How can you run, all busted up like that?” Esperanza scolded. “Here, put some more of this goo on your knee. It is bleeding again. I told you not to go to work this morning. But no one listens to me.” Esperanza gave her a hard pat, like playing a drum tattoo on her shoulder. “You should go to bed.”

  “I should get moving, stretch out the kinks.” Her back to the jar on the table, Kate pulled out a chair and sat down to rub more sticky brown salve on her knee. Bending her scabbed knees hurt, reminding her how ridiculous it was to be scraped up like a child who fell on the sidewalk while roller-skating. She leaned toward the nearest counter and examined her reflection on the side of the toaster. Distorted by the curve of the toaster and the imprint of the manufacturer’s logo, it was easier to look at the damage than to see it straight on in a mirror.

  The point of her chin shone like a bright maraschino under Esperanza’s salve. Carefully, she touched the blue swelling under her left eye.

  Esperanza tapped the jar lid with a bit of menace. “When you get back, we fix the eye.”

  “I’ll think about it.” Kate headed for the back door. “Uncle Miles was asleep when I left this morning. Did you check on him?”

  “Si. He’s okay. A little headache, that’s all.”

  “See ya.” Kate went out.

  “Be careful,” Esperanza called after her. “And don’t get in the way of that handsome policeman.”

  Kate stopped. “What handsome policeman?”

  “You know. Big cow eyes.”

  “The lieutenant,” she teased. “Go change your dress, I’ll send him up for tea.”

  “Shoo,” Esperanza laughed.

  Trying to walk as if her knees weren’t stiff and painful, holding her head up when she wanted to cover it with
a paper bag, Kate went down to the edge of the bluff. She found police swarming the stairs and steep bank.

  Barefoot, pants legs rolled up, Lieutenant Tejeda stood in a tangle of ice plant holding one end of a tape measure. The other end of the tape stretched to the stairway where Sergeant Green held it against a nick in the wood railing.

  “Morning, Lieutenant,” she called.

  “Morning,” he waved with his free hand. He turned to a photographer crouched in a patch of dry weeds below him. “This is it, Ernie.”

  There was a quick flash from the camera. “Got it, Lieutenant.”

  “Thanks. You can go back to the barn, then. Unless Green over there wants a portrait for his Christmas cards.” Tejeda dropped the tape and struggled across the bank toward the stairs, then clambered over the railing. Kate noticed his jacket and tie draped over the banister, his shoes neatly aligned under them. While the other police collected their gear and reassembled their wardrobes, Tejeda rolled up his sleeves and undid another shirt button. He wasn’t finished here.

  Kate went down to meet him, stepping over a variety of tape and chalk markings; “A” where she started her fall, “B” where she landed. She shuddered. All that was missing was the chalk outline of a body.

  Tejeda’s grin widened as she came closer. “Nice shiner.”

  “Glad you like it.” She extended her hand. “It’s Robert Tejeda, right?”

  “Roger.” His hand was warm and she let it linger just a moment. He opened his smile, a flash of white teeth in beautiful, honey-colored skin. Blue-black hair generously flecked with stiff silver.

  “Roger.” She avoided the obvious joke.

  “Actually, it’s Rigoberto, but there wasn’t room on the police academy forms for Rigoberto, so it’s Roger.” Something about him caught her off-guard. He seemed so relaxed, but there was a disturbing intensity behind his big brown eyes. “Doc says you’re not seriously hurt?”

  “Not hurt. Just scared, embarrassed. I mean,” she held up her elbows, “is this any way for a grown woman to look?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Find anything down here?”

  “Rocks and sand fleas.” He rubbed one foot against a hairy ankle. “What can you tell me about last night?”

  “I told it all to the police last night. Someone threw rocks at me.” It sounded almost funny to her now, like tattling on other kids. Her hands described a watermelon: “Big ones.”

  He pointed to a little pyramid of rocks in marked plastic bags amid the investigators’ clutter. The largest rock was about the size of a softball. “How big?”

  “Big enough.” She pulled up the sleeve of her knit shirt to show him the big bruise on her shoulder. The bony ridge had an egg-sized knot where she had been hit.

  “You didn’t see anybody?”

  “No. You can’t see over the top of the stairs from the landing. But where I was standing, it was like being a pin in a bowling alley.”

  “You’re lucky you didn’t get hit on the head.” He tapped his temple with the end of his pencil and looked at her clinically, surveying the damage, she thought. “Do you have any idea, suspicion, or wild guess about who might have been up there last night?”

  “Sure. Who killed my mother?”

  “That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?” He squinted toward the horizon, clicking his tongue while he thought. “Where’re you headed now?”

  “A run on the beach.”

  “Okay.” He started off down the stairs. “Let’s go.”

  She stood there, mystified. “Go where?”

  “You said we’re going for a run on the beach.”

  “We?”

  “Not if you don’t start moving. C’mon.”

  “Sure thing,” she muttered more or less to herself, following him down to the beach. “But don’t you want your coat and tie? The detectives I usually run with wear a coat and tie.”

  “Normally I would, too. But I’m going incognito.” Chuckling, he waited for her to catch up. He used the time to take off his white shirt, tying its sleeves around his waist.

  They fell into step together, running at an easy pace on the hard sand at the edge of the breakers. She glanced at him once or twice, quickly, trying to fathom what he was up to. Maybe he just liked to run. He was lean and tan and, although there was a little softness in the middle where Carl’s muscles lay like a row of petrified Parker House rolls, he ran like he knew what he was doing.

  “What do you do,” she asked, keeping her eyes on the beach ahead, “when your crime victims are sky divers?”

  “I fall for them.”

  “That’s terrible,” she groaned. “Now are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

  “It’s my lunchtime and I’m taking a little exercise.” His words came out with soft puffs of air as his feet pounded the sand. “And I’m giving you the third degree. Seems to me there’s a bit of money around here. Thought we might talk a little about it. For instance, you’re your mother’s chief heir, right?”

  “Yes, but other than some jewelry and personal things, she didn’t have much.” Kate’s words fell into rhythm with her running breathing pattern; pauses when she inhaled, bursts when she exhaled. “Mother lived on an annuity that expired with her death. It doesn’t seem likely anyone would kill her for money, because, basically, she didn’t have any.”

  “And you? Who inherits from you?”

  “Most of my money is tied up in trusts that I share with my uncles, Dolph and Miles. The way I understand it, if one of us dies, the other two just get bigger pieces of the pie.”

  Water splashed the folded edge of his rolled-up slacks. It didn’t seem to bother him; he stayed on the water side of Kate, his pace and breath regular. “In the event both your uncles die, who inherits from you?”

  “That gets tricky. I’ve just gone through a divorce and haven’t sorted everything out yet. So far, I’ve created a pension for Esperanza, my housekeeper. And Carl is to get my share of the community property we split. It seems only fair.” She was breathing more heavily, her throat dry from talking. “But for the rest, well, I’d planned to have about half-a-dozen kids I haven’t gotten around to.”

  “What if something happens to you before you get around to the kids?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “You don’t seem very concerned about it.”

  “I’m not.” Kate slowed. “Hey, can we stop a minute? I need to breathe a little.”

  “Sure.” They walked in the surf line, letting the swash break over their calves.

  “Until this murder business,” she said when her chest had stopped heaving, “I never thought much about dying so I haven’t made many ‘provisions.’ I’ve always let Dolph and Miles just take care of things for me.”

  He looked surprised. “Miles handles your business?”

  “He used to. Which reminds me,” she brightened. “The family may have a bastard out there somewhere who would have an easier time establishing a claim on the estate if I were gone.”

  “Interesting,” he said. “Any other ideas?”

  “You might talk to Sy Ratcher. He’s suggested he was involved in some sort of transaction with Mother.”

  Tejeda shook his head. “My work is so much easier when two drunks stab each other over a bottle of Ripple. I think I’ll need a degree in finance before we’re through here. You ready to run yet?”

  “Okay.” She filled her lungs and loped along beside him.

  “Do you have a phone number for your ex? I haven’t been able to reach him.”

  “Call him here. He’ll probably be home for lunch.”

  “Here?” Tejeda missed a step. “You’re divorced but he lives here?”

  “Temporarily. Just while his mother is visiting.”

  He nodded his head, as if the gears inside had shifted, but he didn’t say anything. They ran quietly for a while, the distance between them more a function of his silence than of space. A few times she risked a quick glance
at his face, and found it closed, his mind following an unknown but serious course of its own. He lengthened his stride, automatically it seemed, and she had to push to keep up with him. She did her best, but after a quarter of a mile, she felt spent, her breath catching raggedly in her chest. She dropped back.

  Immediately, he slowed. “Ready to turn back?”

  “If you want to sprint,” she gasped, “go on without me.”

  “Sorry.” His breathing was still easy and regular. He untied his shirt and wiped down his face and torso.

  “You’ll never get that clean again,” she said.

  “For damn sure,” he laughed, “since my wife got custody of the washer.”

  “Oh.” Kate waded farther into the cold salty water. “I’m supposed to run in a ten K next week. I don’t think I’ll make it.”

  “You will, if you keep your own pace.” Holding up his folded pants cuffs, he followed her into the surf.

  She splashed her face. “Wish this stuff were drinkable.”

  “D.A. give him a few days off?” Tejeda asked.

  “Who?” It took her a second to trace his train of reference. “You mean Carl? He resigned from the D.A. He’s working with my Uncle Dolph now.”

  “When?” It was Tejeda’s turn for a double take. “Why?”

  “This week. The why has something to do with football.”

  “Football? He was working on the Hopner case, wasn’t he? Hopner is a baby food company. Was some football friend involved?”

  “I think it’s more abstract than that. Come on.” She turned back toward the house. “He should be home by now. You can ask him.”

  They kept a slower pace going back, stopping only once to walk and cool off.

  Kate saw Carl first, standing on the bluff watching the beach. She could sense his tension from his posture, the angle he held his head. She raised her hand and waved until she caught his eye. He waved back and ran down to meet them. Carl took the beach steps two at a time, barely breaking his stride when he hit the soft sand.

  Kate slowed a little more. She tapped Tejeda’s arm, glancing at his sodden slacks. “He’s going to wonder what you were doing down here.”

  He smiled, giving her something that was more a flex of the cheek than a wink. “We’ll never tell him, will we?”