Chapter 5 #2
Rodney rushed to catch up and asked her, “Are you becoming psychic yourself?” When she stared at him in horror, he laughed and continued. “You know, a lot of people think that, just by being around Simon, you’re likely to end up with some of his talent brushing off on you.”
“I don’t know that anything can brush off. It’s hardly contagious, like the flu or a cold.”
He burst out laughing. Then he stopped and stared at her. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” she muttered. “God, that’s the last thing I need. I can’t believe you would even question me about that.”
“Maybe, but that doesn’t change the fact that it could very well be a thing.”
“Not likely,” she countered, and Rodney genuinely looked intimidated.
“I’ll drive,” he offered.
“Good,” she replied pointedly. “I need to think.”
“You do that. Close your eyes and think on things, … including all things supernatural. Meanwhile I will get us to Kurt’s sister.”
Kate let it be. No point in arguing about that. It took thirty-five minutes to get through traffic to their target neighborhood. As Rodney pulled in front of the small townhouse, Kate studied it and nodded.
He frowned at her and asked, “What was the nod for?”
She blinked and asked, “What now?”
He glared at her.
She got out, not sure that she had nodded. Even if it was a nod, it didn’t mean anything. The last thing she wanted was for them to start eyeing her sideways, but Rodney already was. She glared at him as they walked up to the front door, muttering, “Don’t even go there.”
“No, I don’t have to go there,” he pointed out, “because I suspect you already have.” He rang the doorbell and gave her an impudent grin.
The door opened, revealing a young woman holding a toddler on her hip.
When Kate and Rodney both pulled out their badges, the woman gasped at the two of them, and her face bunched up, as if she were ready to cry.
The toddler, seemingly reacting to her mother’s emotions alone, started to bunch up its face too.
Kate hurriedly asked, “May we come in?”
The mother blinked several times, then stepped back, nodding.
“You’re Esther, aren’t you? I’m Detective Kate Morgan, and this is my colleague.”
Rodney nodded and said, “Just call me Rodney.”
Kate asked, “Is there anything you need to do with the baby before we have a few moments to talk?”
“My husband isn’t here. He’s at work.”
“Right. Okay.” Kate began, “We don’t know whether there’s a connection or not, but we had another case come up that has similarities to your brother’s case. So naturally we have to check it out.”
“Another case?” she repeated. “Similar how? What are you talking about?”
Kate replied, “I can’t give you any details. All I can tell you is that we need to at least look into your brother’s case once more.”
Esther stared at her in what appeared to be complete incomprehension.
Kate tried to redirect her and asked, “Is this a good time to talk?”
Esther shrugged. “There’s never a good time to talk about my dead brother. I mean, how does that even work?”
“Maybe there isn’t a good time, but some days can be easier or harder. Do you have any other siblings, any family around?”
“No. It was just me and my brother.” They followed the mother to a small living room, where she motioned for them to sit.
“And what was he like?”
She smiled. “He was lively,” she replied, taking a seat in the recliner, while Kate and Rodney sat on the couch facing her. “He loved the ladies. He loved his life. And he loved being single. He loved everything.”
“Did he have a girlfriend?”
“He did and he didn’t.” At Kate’s raised eyebrows, Esther explained further, “He made a practice of not getting too involved. He would have a girlfriend up until she got really focused on the whole settling down thing, and he became single very, very quickly. It’s not as if he never told them that, since he made it very clear right from the beginning that he would not settle down, at least not anytime soon. ”
Esther sighed. “Yet the women always seemed to think that they could change him. So they dismissed what he said and entered the relationship.” She bounced the baby, who seemed a bit distressed. Maybe over the topic or maybe over the undercurrents in the room.
Kate smiled at Esther and the baby, then asked, “How old is he?”
“She,” she corrected, “is eleven months.”
Kate studied the baby again, trying to figure out how anybody knew what the sex was before they opened their mouth and got it wrong. In this case, blonde curls, bright blue eyes, and slightly hard features made Kate assume, incorrectly, that it was a boy.
She smiled at the baby, who reacted as if Kate’s mannerism had the opposite effect. So, Kate softened her smile and faced the mother. “Do you know who Kurt’s girlfriend was at the time of his death?”
“He actually was engaged back then but ended the engagement when he found out his fiancée had lied to him,” she replied. “He was pretty torn up about it. So he wanted a break for a while.”
Kate nodded. “I get that. Not everybody is set on settling down.”
Esther asked her, “Are you married?”
“Nope, I’m not,” she replied, “but I’m in a long-term relationship. I just don’t feel the need to get married right now.”
Esther’s gaze lit up. “I thought that was every woman’s purpose in life,” she said half-jokingly.
Kate frowned at her, and even Rodney seemed taken aback.
Esther shrugged and added, “That’s just the way some religions teach it.”
“Maybe,” Kate conceded, “but it’s never been an issue for me. I’m very busy with my work.”
“I work too,” Esther replied, as if Kate had crossed a line.
Kate smiled and asked, “Was Kurt living alone at the time? Was his fiancée living with him? Did he have an apartment close by? What was his life like? Where did he work?”
By the time she got the answers, which she already had in the file, the awkward moment with Esther seemed to be forgotten, as her answers came more readily. Kate was all about getting to know the victim as much as she could before things went south.
When the front door opened, Esther looked up. Kate detected fear in Esther’s gaze for a moment but couldn’t be sure. A man walked into the living room. He frowned as he saw the two strangers in his home, then glanced at Esther. This was presumably the husband.
Esther bounced to her feet and walked over to him, holding up the baby. The baby launched into her father’s arms. He smiled as he held her close, then turned to Kate and asked, “Who are you, and what are you doing here?” His manner was brusque.
She stood up, held out her badge, and stated, “I had a few questions for your wife about her brother’s death.”
His eyebrows shot up, and he turned to Esther, then addressed Kate, “Seriously, after all this time, you’re finally getting around to it? That’s not fair.”
Kate replied, “Obviously the original detectives did what they could on Kurt’s case. However, at this point, I also needed to ask a few more questions. We’re done for now.” She turned to Rodney and asked, “Unless, Rodney, you have anything else?”
He smiled and shook his head. “Nope, we can leave you two in peace now.” With that, he walked toward the front door, Kate following behind.
Esther followed them to the door and saw them out. “Thank you. He really doesn’t like the police,” she whispered in an apologetic manner.
Kate nodded. “Not a problem.”
When they stepped outside, she glanced at Rodney, who was frowning. As he glanced back, they got into their vehicle. Instead of pulling away, Rodney just sat here in the driver’s seat. “Was something off about that?”
“Definitely something was off,” Kate agreed, as she made notes, “but I’m not sure anything was criminally off, just lifestyle off.”
“Maybe,” he muttered.
She shrugged and shared, “It’s hard for me to connect to someone who thinks her only purpose in life is to get married and have babies. I’m not sure that was even necessarily her viewpoint.”
“No, but her husband wasn’t terribly impressed that we were talking to her.”
She pondered that and agreed. “That could be true. It’s really hard to know sometimes. We weren’t really there long enough to get an idea of what his attitude toward all this really was.”
Rodney smiled. “I suspect, if we were to come back, Esther will have been told not to talk to us again, at least not without him present.”
“Yeah. I’m not betting you on that one because I suspect you’re right.” Kate nodded.
“Now where?” he asked, turning to look at her.
“Let’s swing by Kurt’s old apartment. I don’t need to see inside it, but let’s scour a couple blocks nearby for a church, even a fertility clinic. Bonus points if you find both, side by side.”
Rodney laughed and took off to the next address, then circled the apartment building while Kate searched for churches and fertility clinics.
“Nothing. Take the next block or two.” But they found no church even three blocks away from Kurt’s old apartment, much less a fertility clinic.
With a sigh, Kate said, “I want to go to Kurt’s workplace, where he used to work.”
He eyed her in surprise. “Do you think you’ll find anything there?”
“No, I’m absolutely positive I won’t find anything,” she snapped, “but that doesn’t mean I can’t go check it out again because definitely I sense a need to. Yet, for the life of me, I can’t see how or in what way.”
“Only one way to find out,” Rodney said, as he drove off toward the highway.
“It’s about a twenty-minute drive from here, which I guess is a pretty normal commute, isn’t it?”
“Absolutely. Look at us. Often we’re way longer than that. Of course, for some of us,” he noted, with an eye roll, “those who landed on lucky street, they either get driven to work or have a fancy driver who drops them off.”
She glanced at him, realized he was hassling her, and she told him in a mild tone, “Lay off, Rodney.”
He dropped it and shrugged. “I don’t think you could really do the lady of the manor thing anyway.”