Chapter 5 #4
There was no judgment in the man’s tone, just sadness that it came to this. “It’s so frustrating,” he shared. “I mean, he was a good man, a good person otherwise. But he was really … he just didn’t want to settle down. And all these women fell for him constantly.”
“Seems he was a real charmer type,” Rodney suggested, with a frown.
“It was the darndest thing. I mean, he could get them to do absolutely anything. They just didn’t seem to care.
They would cheat or even walk away from their relationships, happy to sign up for whatever with him, based on whatever method of persuasion he had over them.
He never spent a night alone unless he chose to, and, let me tell you, that bragging doesn’t go over well either. ”
“Did he go around bragging about his conquests?” she asked.
“Not so much to me. I’m happily married and made it clear that I would not want that lifestyle.
Yet somehow he frequently let little hints drop one way or another.
” Barry sighed. “All I can say is he angered enough people that, when I heard he had been found dead and that it was murder—God, this sounds awful but—I can’t say I was surprised. ”
She asked Barry if she could speak to several of the other office staff. He agreed and hung around through each interview. However, Kate found the others to not be quite as open and honest as the manager had been. Still, it was basically the same story at every turn.
When she got around to Lanny, the receptionist who had burst into tears upon seeing her badge, Lanny was sobbing again, yet confirmed that she’d had a relationship with Robert early on but didn’t understand what had gone wrong. However, they had parted peacefully.
“But it still hurt to constantly see him with other women.” She disappeared once again, bawling her eyes out.
With that, Kate decided it was definitely time to leave, and, leaving their cards behind with Barry, asking the manager to let her know whether anybody had any idea who Robert might have been seeing or of any disgruntled husbands they could put names to—or boyfriends for that matter.
Barry nodded, accepted their cards, stated he would keep it in mind.
Back outside in the parking lot, Kate looked over at Rodney. “It’s sad, you know?”
“What is?” he asked, as he got in the car.
“I mean, these three men—John, Kurt, now Robert—can apparently have everything, yet all they want is something short-term. I don’t understand it.”
Surprised at the comment, he faced her and shook his head. “Why is it that you don’t want to get married?”
“Hadn’t considered it,” she replied. “It’s never even been on my radar.”
“And now? Even with Simon in your life?”
“Still not on my radar,” she stated, with a shrug.
“In our case, it would just bring up more issues to deal with. I don’t see the point of changing the status quo.
God, can you imagine? Everybody would say I married him for his money,” she complained, with a shudder taking over.
“Yeah, nope. … That’s not happening, … at least not anytime soon. ”
He chuckled. “Maybe marriage is not necessarily for everyone, but, for a lot of people, it’s where they’re happy.”
She belatedly remembered that Rodney was divorced and supposedly had been a very happily married man. And right now, it was all she could do to squash her curiosity.
He asked her, “Where to?”
She frowned and said, “We need to contact the detective handling this case.”
“You think they’re connected?” he asked, as he pulled up to a stop sign and turned to her.
“How can it not be? Insurance industry, decorations on the body, come on.”
“So, do they have work-related meetings to find each other, as in customer and adjuster? Or is it about adjusters from within the industry who know each other?”
“Maybe,” she muttered, “but that’s …”
“It’s far fetched, isn’t it?”
“All of this is at the moment.” She shook her head. “We’ll call the detective when we get back to the office and see if we can get a copy of his report on Robert’s death.”
“He might be quite pissed off that you were here, already talking to people.”
“Maybe,” she conceded, “but it’s not as if we were there for that reason.”
“Yeah, we didn’t exactly get answers on the other death, did we?”
A horrified expression took over her face. “No, we didn’t, did we? Damn it!” She picked up her phone and contacted Barry Quinn.
When he answered, his voice was tired.
“I’m sorry to interrupt you again, but one of the reasons we stopped in there in the first place was to ask you about another employee.”
“Oh?”
“Kurt Conner.”
He gasped. “Oh yes. He died some time ago. I don’t recall just how long it’s been.”
Kate noted, “That’s two men from the same office.”
“Not the same office,” Barry hurriedly clarified.
“It’s not the same office?”
“No, Kurt worked in a different department, different area,” Barry explained, “not here at all. Thank heavens, that would be too much to deal with right now.”
She pondered that as she asked him a few more questions. “Would you say they had a similar personality?”
“Oh, no, not at all. I mean, Kurt was very playful and really a good guy, engaged even, I think,” he shared.
“However, I didn’t know him quite as well as I knew Robert.
And, of course, I also live close to Robert.
So, that proximity at home and at work had me getting to know Robert better, but Kurt was just an all-around friendly guy. ”
She asked a couple more questions, but nothing else seemed to shake loose. When she ended the call, she looked back over at Rodney and asked, “Is it really all that common for guys to just hook up?”
Rodney nodded. “It is common, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. You just get men at that certain stage of life. It’s not until later in some cases that they want to settle down. In other cases, they want to settle down and have babies right off the bat.”
“But not always.”
“The women don’t always either.”
“Right,” she noted, “particularly if they’ve got a career. Once a woman steps back out of her career, it can be hard to get back in the running again.”
“True,” he agreed, with a nod. “Again, not something everybody has to consider.”
“I’m a career cop,” she confirmed, “so it’s definitely something I have to consider.”
He chuckled. “I don’t think Simon would in any way want you to give up your job.”
“Are you kidding?” She snorted. “I think he would be overjoyed if I quit my job. As far as he’s concerned, I just keep ending up in trouble.”
“After the last woo-woo case,” Rodney stated, as he rubbed his still very sore ribs, “it appears you are the one always saving us, not exactly getting yourself into trouble.”
She smiled as she looked over at him. “There is that, isn’t there?”
“Yeah,” he grumbled, glancing back at her. “As much as I hate to admit it, there’s absolutely that point.”
“As long as you’re not holding it against me.”
“I’m not,” he said, “but I am certainly aware of it. Just because I might want things to look different doesn’t mean they are.”
*
Simon groaned. Kate wouldn’t leave his mind—or this other woman he had seen briefly in his vision.
Yet every time he thought about Kate, the other woman’s features—that he could barely see—superimposed over hers.
It was very frustrating for him. Finally he called Kate.
When she answered, he asked, “Are you having a bad day?”
She snorted. “Let me just say it’s not a great day.”
“Okay. I just can’t seem to let go of thinking about you.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing,” she replied, with a smile in her tone. “I am not sure what you’re expecting from me though.”
“Nothing,” he told her.
She laughed. “When most people say, Nothing, they’re expecting something.”
“Of course they are. Yet most people aren’t us.”
“So, don’t you forget that.”
He could see her frowning, and it just blew him away sometimes. “You don’t need to frown.”
She sighed. “I’m fine, by the way.”
He groaned. “I’m really that obvious, huh?”
“Sometimes. Yeah.” She groaned lightly. “We, uh, we may have two other related cases though.”
Simon froze. He was in the act of going up the stairs in one of his almost-complete rehabs. He stopped, looked down at his phone, and asked, “Seriously?”
“Yeah. I’m as unimpressed as I imagine you would be.”
He laughed. “It’s a hell of a way to start the new year. I think you were looking for a couple easy cases, weren’t you?”
“Right. Easy cases. Does anybody know what that means anymore?” she asked. “We went to an insurance office today because somebody from that office, well, a similar branch within the company, had died about two years ago. No autopsy done though.”
“And that was the second case you caught.”
“Right, at least I thought so. However, as we walked in, the place was in complete shambles because one of the men who worked there had been found dead this morning.”
“Surely not in similar circumstances,” Simon replied in shock.
“Wrong. He had been wrapped up with some Christmas-theme wrapping paper or something. I don’t know.
… We’re heading back to my office. I’m trying to find the detective on the crime scene this morning.
The manager from the office happened to live in the same building as our victim, and so he found out about it first thing this morning.
The rest of the office had just found out when we arrived, so it was quite the mess and not in a good way. ”
“Is there a good way?” he asked.
“No, probably not, but you know what I mean.”
“I do, but I can’t imagine.”
“At first I thought it was some sex-game gone wrong,” she muttered, frowning.
He shook his head. “You frown too much.”
She groaned. “I don’t know how you always know when I’m frowning on the phone, but you can just knock it off.”
“Yeah.” He chuckled. “If I thought your words would help with that, I would stop it. However, your words nor mine ever seem to make any difference. Sorry about that.”
She added cheerfully, “Obviously you’re not sorry, but I’m fine anyway. I don’t know what’s going on, but I will get to the bottom of it. How are you doing?”
“I’m doing pretty well, but either your face or that other woman’s face is constantly in my mind.”
“You got a face?” she interrupted.
“No, I did not get a face.” After a pause, he sighed. “I’m just saying that the whole vision with the praying woman keeps popping back up in my brain. And, no, I have no more information at all. So, forget about that.”
She smiled.
He could almost see it. “Damn it.”
“Now what?” she asked in frustration.
“You just smiled, and I can see it. I can see you right here, … beside me.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment, then sighed. “As much as that is really creepy, it’s also cute.”
“I know,” he agreed, “so I’m not upset about it, yet—”
“Yet,” she repeated, now completing his train of thought, “you’re upset about it.”
“No, it’s just very distracting. If it were just you, it would be fine. But, as I told you, this other woman just superimposes over your features.”
“I’m not sure what that would mean.”
“Let me just say that the features don’t fit.” He waited, knowing that she’d pretty well stopped, stock-still.
“What?”
He sighed. “Think of somebody trying to fit a traditional wife persona on top of you and how it won’t fit, but they keep trying.”
“Good God.”
Then he heard somebody calling out to her in the background.
“That’s Colby. I’ve got to go.” And she ended the call.
He stared down at the phone, nodding. Was somebody trying to fit Kate into a mold?
An old-fashioned mold in his mind that she never would fit into because that’s not who she was.
But, whatever this was—and he had no idea—it was all about being a traditional wife, whatever the hell that meant these days.
Simon couldn’t imagine anybody less interested in that role than Kate.
Traditional wives still existed obviously, but that wasn’t for Kate.
And anybody trying to force her into that role?
She would knock them to the floor in a heartbeat, even at the suggestion that she should be a traditional wife.
He imagined some church minister admonishing her but getting nowhere.
Not that Kate would punch a man of the cloth.
Did the churches still demand that women stay at home, tend to the children, regardless of the hopes and wishes of each individual?
Simon shook his head. He couldn’t see it.
And yet he couldn’t unsee the other woman’s image.
Was it more about their differences? Simon sighed.
He needed more information, which probably meant more visions with this other woman, trying to find out more about her.
Was she a spirit or was she alive and well on planet Earth? Either way maybe Simon could help her.