Leann Sweeney - Shoot from the Lip

“Apparently you’ve been checking up on her new friend Clint.”

“I have. He’s married and has a child, and-”

“Like I said last night, she knows all that, Aunt Caroline.”

“Let me finish. His name, as I told you, is Harrison Foster, he does not work for a pharmaceutical company and he was the one who attacked me when I confronted him this morning.”

“That’s unbelievable,” I said. Damn. Foster was her attacker. Kate was a shrink, for crying out loud. Couldn’t she tell this guy was a major creep?

“I learned the hard way that he’s a very violent man. Your sister has gotten herself into serious trouble, Abigail.”

“Why did he attack you?”

“Because he could. You were supposed to be here, remember? But he was early and you were late. When I showed him the report my investigator had given me, he went into a rage. I fought him off as best I could, but he grabbed the report and ran when that old fart Desmond showed up.”

“That old fart might have saved your life, Aunt Caroline. What else did your investigator learn?”

“He’s getting a divorce and has his own apartment. The wife and girl live in the house-somewhere in the Memorial area. All the details are in the report, which he stole from me.”

I took a deep breath, becoming increasingly worried that Kate hadn’t called. Was she with this guy right now? Would he go nuts like he had earlier and hurt my sister? “Before he went off the deep end, did he offer any explanation for why he lied about who he really was?”

“I didn’t ask questions, Abigail. I knew everything there was to know. I simply told him he was a charlatan and that he needed to stay away from Kate. Don’t you see this is about her money? He planned on swindling as much as he could from her and then disappearing.”

“Oh, I understand.” I’d come to the same conclusion. Foster’s game was up, and I could only hope he’d decided to disappear as quickly as he’d entered Kate’s life. “What detective agency did you use, Aunt Caroline? I keep duplicates of anything I generate for a client, and I’m sure they do, too. I’d like to read everything they learned.” There could be more information than I had, more than Aunt Caroline remembered.

She gave me the name and said their card was on the bulletin board over her kitchen desk.

“Good,” I said. “We can have them e-mail that report to your computer and-”

“What computer?” Her expression reminded me of a lying child caught red-handed.

“The one I gave you. The one I set up for you in your family room.”

“The lack of a computer is rather a long story.” She avoided eye contact. “All you need to know is that I do not have one.”

“Great. Let me think about this.” She could have them send everything to my e-mail account, but though I could pick up the message on my BlackBerry, the print on the download would be small. It seemed far easier to print out everything at home and be back here within twenty or thirty minutes. Besides, I’d then have time to make an important phone call without Aunt Caroline asking questions about what I was doing and why.

I told her the plan and had her make the call to the agency and give them my e-mail address; then I left. The man watching the house wasn’t Louie. He was younger and seemed less than thrilled with this boring job. I gave him Foster’s description and took off for home.

I called Jeff as soon as I was on the road and told him about the attack and how I couldn’t get hold of Kate even though I had tried several times. He didn’t like the fact that Kate wasn’t returning my calls any more than I did. He said he’d call in Foster’s description as Aunt Caroline’s assailant. She might not be willing to file charges, but they might be able to pick this guy up on something else.

I said, “I’ll call you back as soon as I get the Foster report-maybe in the next fifteen minutes.” I hung up and glanced at my phone. The current wallpaper on my display was a picture of my sister sitting on my couch holding Diva. “Where are you? Did you somehow find out the truth and are licking your wounds somewhere?”

I closed the phone and concentrated on my driving. The sick feeling in my gut that had begun last night when I found out my sister had been used and lied to was growing larger with each passing minute. But if she did know about Foster, maybe she was at my house hiding out, embarrassed and angry, not wanting to talk to anyone.

She wasn’t at home. With Diva and Webster following on my heels, I’d checked every room before I went to the computer. I accessed my e-mail, and the message from Aunt Caroline’s PI was waiting in my in-box. I saw there was more than a report. JPEG files were attached. Pictures. I saved the attachments to my desktop and printed them out. The report came first, and I was already reading how they had learned Foster’s true identity as the pictures slowly filled the printer tray.

Their investigation had been as easy as shooting cans off a fence, and I wondered how much Aunt Caroline had paid them to follow Foster for a day and then probably run the same computer search I had.

The last picture was still printing, but I picked up the others. One was a grainy shot of Foster entering an apartment, the next a better picture of the entrance to the complex with the name prominent-Garden Grove. Then a photo of a brick home with well-tended landscaping and a Lexus in the driveway. This one was obviously taken with a telephoto lens, and so was the next-Foster leaving the car. Next came a shot of the front door and a woman standing there. Foster was leaving, a teenage girl by his side. The daughter. He’d even lied about her-told Kate he had a son. Her head was turned as she waved good-bye to her mother, and I couldn’t see her face. But the last picture, the ink still wet, had a full shot of Foster’s face as well as his daughter’s.

I blinked… blinked again, and then I almost strangled on my own heart.

That girl could have been Shannon O’Meara’s twin.

My hands were shaking when I called Jeff this time. “I’m e-mailing you a picture of a woman standing in the front entrance to her house. Please show it to Loreen and tell me if she recognizes her. I’ll be waiting.”

“Abby, what’s happened?”

“I’ll explain after she looks at the picture and you call me back, okay?”

“I’ll be online in a sec. Take it easy. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

He hung up, and all I could do was walk in circles, matching the swirl in my brain with my feet. Harrison Foster didn’t scam my sister to get her money. He scammed her to get close to an investigation that threatened to open up his ugly box of secrets. Took advantage of her so he could hang around and put tracking devices on my car, show up anywhere I went as I followed the clues. Hell, I’ll bet he even pumped Kate for information, and did it all with his dimpled, guileless smile.

He probably couldn’t get to Emma’s house fast enough once the TV stations and radio news programs had broadcast their breaking story about city workers finding baby bones under a demolished house. The photo of Emma and me had appeared in the Chronicle the next day, and Harrison Foster was in business. When he searched the Internet and learned I had a sister, he must have felt like he hit the jackpot.

But the only real proof was a photo of a girl who looked like Shannon. What if Loreen didn’t recognize Beth Foster as the pregnant woman she and Christine had cleaned for? What did I have then? Jeff, come on. Call me back.

And then I remembered the notebook. Had White found it, or had Emma tossed it? I grabbed my purse and fumbled through all the useless things I insist on carrying around until I found Don White’s crumpled card, the one he’d given me the night Jerry Joe Billings had been murdered.