Free ILL-TIMED ENTANGLEMENTS (The Kate Huntington mystery series #2) by Kassandra Lamb Page A

intentionally.
    Lindstrom turned to Kate. “Mrs. Huntington, I would suggest that you go home. It isn’t safe for you to continue poking around in this.”
    Kate didn’t respond. She wasn’t quite sure how she felt about the situation at this point. She was certainly rattled, and as a single mother, she didn’t want to risk leaving Edie an orphan.
    But part of her was starting to get really pissed off. Bad enough that this killer was trying to frame a little old lady, now he was trying to frighten her away from investigating and clearing Betty’s name. Kate was adverse to the idea of running back to Maryland like a scared puppy. And she had Skip to protect her. They would just have to be more vigilant.
    She nodded at the detective to let him know she had heard him. If he chose to take that as acquiescence, well, she couldn’t help it if he misunderstood her.
    When she and Skip were finally allowed to go their way, it was after six. They went down the short hall off of the atrium to Betty’s apartment. When she answered the door, Betty exclaimed, “Thank God, Kate. I was beginning to worry.”
    The fragrance of crab soup simmering on the stove had Kate’s mouth watering, but first she introduced Skip and they filled Betty in on the pot incident.
    The elderly woman covered her mouth with her hand and turned pale. “You can’t keep asking questions then. I’ll not have you getting hurt on my account.”
    Skip had observed both the minimal response to Lindstrom earlier and the set of Kate’s jaw now. He said to Betty, “Give it up. She isn’t going to stop. She’s one of the most stubborn women I know.”
    Kate glared at him. “I like to think of it as determination.”
    “Hey, I didn’t mean that as an insult.” Skip raised his hands in mock surrender. “Personally, I
like
stubborn women.”
    Only partially mollified, Kate said, “Well, I
don’t
like the idea of letting some… bozo chase me away.” The word she was thinking of was much stronger than bozo, but she didn’t want to offend Betty.
    Skip was shaking his head at her, and grinning at the same time.
    “I want to go knock on some doors on the upper level, before folks start settling down for the night,” he said, his face sobering. “See if anybody saw anything. Can you save some of that wonderful-smelling soup for me, Mrs. Franklin?”
    “Of course, young man,” Betty said, having already forgotten his name.
    Over Maryland crab soup and homemade biscuits, Kate filled Betty in on their interviews that day, handing over the notes she had taken. “We caught up with two of the married couples today. Mr. Murphy didn’t even realize Doris had been coming on to him. And his wife seemed amused by the whole thing.”
    Mrs. Murphy had chuckled at her husband’s startled expression and had told them, “I don’t worry about him straying. Marilyn Monroe could be batting her eyelashes at him and he’d think she had something in her eye.”
    “The other couple, the Petersons. He looked kind of embarrassed and then tried to downplay the flirting,” Kate continued her report. “The wife did seem a bit pi… uh, annoyed about it all. But I think maybe the undercurrents between them were about past transgressions. I didn’t get the impression that he’d actually responded positively to Doris’s attention.”
    Kate hesitated. “We also overheard Frieda and another woman talking earlier today. They seemed to be talking about Doris and your book, and something about the poker.” She wasn’t sure how important this was but she figured they should note everything. You never knew what pieces of information, seemingly innocuous by themselves, might connect with each other.
    “I love Frieda dearly,” Betty said, shaking her head. “But that woman is an incurable gossip.”
    “Did you talk to Rob or Liz today?” Kate said, as she scraped the last few strands of crabmeat from the bottom of her bowl.
    “Yes, Robert called around five. I think he was