Page 46 of Accidental Murder
Captain Wald appeared beside her desk. “You look beat, Hanrahan.”
Megan startled. She hadn’t heard him approach.
“Bring me up to date in the Macintyre case,” he said.
Megan tilted back in her chair. The aging springs creaked. “We’ve been meeting with Kayla Macintyre’s clients and friends. We slowed down after Ventano’s confession. Now that he’s dead”—which wasn’t her fault, she wanted to add—“we’re starting in again, but the list grows and shrinks depending on the hour.”
“Shrinks?”
“I learned that two of Kayla’s clients passed away since she?—”
“They died, as in they were murdered?”
“No, sir. An archaeologist in Arizona that she worked with remotely suffered an allergic reaction. The other was suicide.”
“They can’t be related to her murder then,” he stated matter-of-factly.
True, people died every day—even people in the same family—and the deaths weren’t linked, but Megan didn’t like coincidences.
“Report back,” he said. “Today.”
Megan glanced at the clock on the wall.
The captain’s mouth curved up in what Megan regarded as a snide smirk. “Worried you’re going to miss the ball, Cinderella?”
“No, Sir. I’m always on the ball,” she quipped, hoping her snappy retort would sail right over his egotistical head. When he didn’t crack a smile, she felt compelled to ask, “Are you going to the event, Sir?”
“I’ve got other things planned.” He strode away and paused at Rodrigo’s desk.
Megan watched him, stunned. An ambitious guy like him wouldn’t attend the primo occasion to network? What other pressing business could he have? Excess energy surged throughher. To distract herself, she began to doodle on her legal pad. Oh, how she longed to be set free. Find a new career. Do something worthy of her time.
Wald uttered something to Rodrigo. Both turned their heads to study her.
Ignoring them, she picked up the phone and arranged a one-on-one appointment with Sara Simmons’s husband and a telephone chat with the archaeologist’s son. When she replaced the phone in the cradle, she eyed the doodles on her notepad and gaped. Aimlessly, she’d drawn a Venn diagram-like circle connecting Richard Troy, Sara Simmons, and the archaeologist, and she had penciled the symbol forpibeneath each line. Why? Because all three on the list were involved with science, in one form or another? Because they were three pieces of the same pie?
Get real, Megan. What are the odds?
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
When Kayla arrivedat Jewels of the World Academy without incident, she felt her pulse return to normal. No delivery guys had bolted from behind columns. No men in sedans had chased her. Before exiting the Acura, she retrieved messages from her voicemail.
The first was unsettling. “Miss Macintyre, it’s Taylor Simmons. I’m sorry I didn’t spend more time with you at the memorial.” He sounded hesitant, vulnerable. “Maybe once the police have solved the murder, you and I could join a survivor’s group.”
Kayla recoiled. Therapy? No, never again.
“I’d go if I knew a friend was with me,” Simmons went on. “Sara would have”—he sucked back tears—“approved. Call me.” He disconnected.
What had prompted Sara to commit suicide and leave her daughter motherless? Had she killed herself so her daughter and husband would be spared a heart-wrenching terminal illness? Kayla made a mental note to contact Taylor Simmons in a day or two to probe deeper, and then she pressed on.
The second message was as disconcerting as the first but for a different reason. “Ashley, it’s Dennis Wald. Would you like to have coffee?”
She stabbed the End button. How dare he. Was that the reason he’d stopped by the townhouse? To ask her on a date? Her sister’s body was barely cold.
In the academy’s play yard, sitting at a picnic table with Veronica, Kayla felt her chest muscles ease. She flipped the page ofA Child’s Guide to Flora and Faunaand continued reading from the chapter on flowering plants. “The Lady Diana rose blooms in climates?—”
“I want to plant a garden,” Veronica cut in.
“So you told me.”
