Chapter Ten

I resisted the instinct to turn. I didn’t want the person following to know we’d spotted them. “What did you see?”

“I think that silver car has been behind us since we left Sunshine Haven. I wouldn’t have noticed, except you said the car that almost hit you was silver or gray.”

I leaned toward the side mirror. We were on a moderately busy street, two lanes in each direction.

“It’s two cars back, behind the Ferrari,” Dad said.

I assumed the Ferrari was the sporty-looking red car. I couldn’t see much of the car behind that, but it was silver, and a car rather than a truck, van, or SUV. An exact match for the one that had almost hit me!

Maybe I needed to learn a bit more about cars.

Dad turned the corner. This brought us into a more residential neighborhood with less traffic. A stern voice with a German accent came from the GPS, demanding that we make a U-turn.

The red car kept going, but the silver one turned after us. It also slowed to a crawl. Unfortunately, Arizona doesn’t require a front license plate, and sun glared on the window, hiding anyone inside.

“Can you tell what kind of car it is?” I asked.

“Toyota Corolla or maybe a Chevy Prizm, I’d guess. Hard to tell at this distance.” Dad slowed more, but the other car turned at a side street. “Maybe it’s a coincidence.”

“Or they realized we spotted them. Try to get behind them.”

Dad pulled into a driveway and turned around, but by the time we reached the side street, the silver car had vanished. We drove a couple of blocks, with the GPS voice complaining the whole way. We passed a silvery car in a driveway and one on the street, but both were empty. The driver could be hiding, but more likely, someone trying to avoid us would simply have turned back toward the busy main road and disappeared in traffic. This would be a lot easier if our suspect drove an orange VW Beetle or a purple Humvee.

I sighed. “Another dead end.”

“No, this street goes through,” Dad said.

I narrowed my eyes at him.

He laughed. “Now what?”

“I don’t know what we can do about someone following us, except try to catch them next time. From now on, we can have the Washingtons leave after us and check for anyone following. Should have thought of that sooner.”

“How could you guess this would happen?”

“Yeah, I suppose.” I pressed the heel of my hand against my forehead. I had to keep track of too much. I’d covered more complicated stories—okay, as complicated anyway—a hundred times before. But just as my body kept reminding me I wasn’t at full physical strength, I had to remember my mind wasn’t back to normal either. “We might as well stick to our plan.”

“Helga will be pleased,” Dad said.

“Who?”

“That’s what I call the voice on the GPS. She sounds like a stern German nurse.”

Even knowing it was an automatic recording, I had to admit “Helga” seemed mollified when we got back on the street she wanted.

We drove for about half an hour. I recognized things here and there, but so much had changed since I’d left the area. Towns that had once felt separate were now linked by endless strip malls and planned communities of identical homes.

While Dad drove, I checked what the internet could tell us about our targets. Kellie Armstrong, daughter of the much-beloved Penelope Valentine, apparently lived with her husband and was the office manager for his CPA firm. They had two children in college and an older daughter who was a stay-at-home mother of two young children.

The Armstrongs lived in one of those bland, planned communities that had popped up everywhere. Large houses on small lots, carefully controlled shades of tan and beige, with periscoped yards. Only a few things differentiated the houses: the types of cacti or bushes in the yards, and whether they had Christmas decorations up already. Apparently, a few people thought you didn’t need to wait until after Thanksgiving.

Without the GPS, we might have gone in circles and run up against dead ends for a lot longer before finding the Armstrong house. Dad parked in the street and we peered at the house.

“Nice place, I guess,” he said.

The people who owned it must have money, but if they had personality, it wasn’t showing.

The only signs of life in view were a couple of men working in a yard across the street two houses down, and the cactus wrens flitting in and out of the saguaro next door. All the houses had two- or three-car garages, so the streets and driveways were nearly empty. A white truck across the street probably belonged to the gardeners, and a boxy, pale blue car sat by the curb a few houses down. Why couldn’t that have been the one trying to follow us?

I glanced at Dad as we got out of the car. I wanted him to feel included, but bringing my father on an interview felt weird.

“I’ll stretch my legs.” He wandered toward the men gardening.

Was he psychic? Because I appreciated his actions, but no one needed a mind-reading father.

I went up the walk and rang the doorbell. The air was dry and still, quiet except for the chirping of a bird and a background hum from some kind of insect. After thirty seconds, I rang the bell again. I cocked my head to listen for sounds from inside as a curtain in the front window twitched. Something was in there, though it could be a pet. More likely a cat than a dog, given the lack of barking.

Finally, the door cracked open and out peered a woman, fine-boned, blonde, and pretty. “Yes?”

I recognized her from her social media profiles. Given that she had children in their twenties, she had to be near my age, but she looked no older than thirty-five.

“Kellie Armstrong? I’m Kate Tessler. I’m working on a story about Sunshine Haven. I understand your mother lived there until recently.”

“That’s right. But she’s . . . no longer . . .”

“I know she passed away. I’m sorry for your loss.” I brushed hair and a drop of sweat off my forehead. “May I come in and ask you a few questions?”

She glanced back into the room. “I guess. Wait a minute.” Kellie closed the door on me. Was she a neat freak who couldn’t let a stranger in without tidying up first, or was she hiding something?

A soft thud came from somewhere not far away. It might have been another door closing at the back of the house or at a neighbor’s house. Half a minute later, Kellie returned and waved me in. The front room looked like a professional had decorated it for inclusion in a magazine. Kellie didn’t fit the room. She wore yoga pants and a wrinkled T-shirt with the tag sticking up in back. Her short blond hair was tousled—randomly, not artistically—and her mascara had smudged. Maybe I’d interrupted a nap. She waved me to a seat and as I passed close by her, I caught a whiff of men’s cologne, sweat, and sex. She might have been napping but not alone. Yet the rest of the house was silent.

“What’s this about?” she asked.

I’d prepared a story that I hoped would be plausible and not cause suspicion about the nursing home or me. “Two years ago, Sunshine Haven faced lawsuits over the treatment of patients. Since then, they claim they’ve made a lot of improvements and things are much better. I’m following up on the original story by talking to some of the families of patients.”

She nodded.

I waited, but she didn’t launch into complaints or a confession. I pulled out a notebook and pen.

“I’m sorry to bother you at a difficult time, but I thought the people who could best address my questions were those who’d recently lost someone who’d been living at Sunshine Haven. Were you satisfied with the treatment your mother was getting? Did you have any concerns or suspicions about her death?”

“I thought they did a fine job,” Kellie said. “Mom was only there for a year, sixteen months, so I don’t know anything about the earlier problems. We heard about them, but everything was fine by the time Mom moved in. We wouldn’t have sent her there otherwise. I visited almost every day, and I never saw any problems.”

“You thought the place was adequately staffed? Did you get to know any of the people who work there?”

Her gaze avoided mine. “I thought the staff was very nice.” She spoke more quickly. “Not that I really know any of them, but everyone seemed competent.”

She was hiding something, or perhaps felt guilty about something, but what? A little defensiveness was understandable. No one would want a reporter to think they’d put a parent in an unsafe or unpleasant home. But her anxiety had seemed to increase when I asked about the staff. “Was anyone working there especially helpful?”

She stared at me as if trying to read my thoughts. Fair enough. I was doing the same to her.

“I thought the physical therapists next door were really good. Mom had to have a knee replacement last year and they helped her with rehabilitation.”

She glanced at my notebook so I dutifully jotted down good therapy.

“Of course, if we’d known she had less than a year to live, maybe we wouldn’t have bothered with the surgery.” She sighed. “But you never can know, right?”

I nodded. “I guess you do the best you can with the information you have. I’m dealing with aging parents myself, which is why stories like this are important to me.”

She gave a slight smile, and for a moment, we connected in shared experience.

But that wasn’t helping my investigation. “Who worked with your mother at the physical therapy clinic?”

Kellie twitched. “Oh . . . I don’t remember his name.”

A man anyway, which narrowed it down. I had a feeling she did know the name, but why would she lie about that? Had he been “napping” with her?

The only person from the PT clinic we had on our suspicious list so far was Berta, who was spending too much money. But I’d seen one man at work during my visit, and there could be more. At first glance, a physical therapist didn’t seem like the best candidate to murder a patient, but maybe it wouldn’t be that hard to offer someone a “vitamin” or nutritional drink spiked with poison. As long as the poison took a few hours to work, the death wouldn’t be connected to the therapist. I tried another tack. “Places like Sunshine Haven can be quite expensive. That puts a burden on family members.”

Kellie relaxed back against the sofa cushions. “Fortunately, that wasn’t a problem for us. Mom got a good life insurance payout when my father died. We’re lucky he died first.” She scrunched up her face. “That sounds terrible. I don’t mean we’re lucky he died, but things would’ve been different if he’d been the one in nursing care. As it was, Mom was able to take care of him at home, and his life insurance helped her. That, plus their house sale, covered her.”

“It used up any inheritance, though.”

She gestured around the room. “As you can see, I’m managing.” She scowled at a vase on the coffee table as if she’d like to smash it. “Everything a girl could want, right?” She shook herself and looked up. “We didn’t expect any inheritance. They had a nice, middle-class life, but they weren’t rich, and with money split between several children and grandchildren, we wouldn’t get much. I know it’s harder for poor people, though.”

She said the last sentence in the offhand way of someone who never had to worry about money, and only knew that other people did as an abstract concept. But she seemed sincere enough about the inheritance, and she spoke of her mother with affection.

“Seeing someone you love fade away must be so hard.” I thought of my mother and let the sympathy and worry show on my face. “Did you ever get to the point where you wished it was all over?”

Tears glistened in her eyes. “Never. She was my mother. Even with her health problems, she still took joy in seeing her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I had to nag my kids to visit. You know how young people are, so busy. But Mom loved it, especially when my daughter brought her baby in. I’m sorry for the little ones who will never get to know her.”

I’d interviewed plenty of people who had lost a parent, spouse, child, or comrade in arms, often too young and through violence. Grief expressed itself differently, but underneath, it had the same flavor. Kellie’s grief was real. I doubted she’d had anything to do with her mother’s death, but what about another family member?

“I guess you have a large family. Is everyone local, so they could visit your mother often?”

“No, I’m the only one in Arizona. Most of my siblings tried to visit once or twice a year. It would’ve been nice if we’d known Mom was . . . was at the end, so they could’ve been there, but it happened too fast.”

“None of them were in the state when your mother died?”

“No.” She gave me a puzzled look. “They came for the funeral, of course.”

I offered her one last chance to complain about anyone at Sunshine Haven. “Well, it sounds like you were satisfied with the care your mother got. No one could have done anything differently to prevent her death, right?”

She sat up straighter and glared. “If you’re looking for scandal, you’re not going to find it. My mother was a wonderful person, and I have no complaints about Sunshine Haven or anyone there.”

Whoops. I’d gone too far. I tried to soften my voice and stance, less tough reporter and more sympathetic friend. “I’m glad. I hate to think of seniors being mistreated. I’m sorry to bring up all these memories.”

She looked away. “They’re always there. It’s good to talk about them. I’m sorry I can’t help with your article, though.”

“I’m not sorry to hear people are treating patients well. You can take comfort in knowing you did the best you could for your mother.”

She bowed her head and her bangs fell, screening her eyes. “We thought we’d have a few more years.” She sighed and looked up at me. “I’m trying to tell myself that in the long run, sudden is better. She didn’t suffer much at the end.”

“Thank you for talking to me.” I stood. “If I think of any more questions, may I call you?”

“Sure.” She scribbled her number on a scrap of paper.

Her handwriting was girlish with large, loopy letters. I’d be willing to bet that as a teenager, she’d dotted the i in her name with a heart. Overall, I liked Kellie Armstrong. Yet, I suspected she was hiding something.

We shook hands at the door and I headed for the car. Dad waved from across the street, where he was chatting with the gardeners, and joined me. As we pulled away, I described my visit.

“She acted odd at times, but I don’t think it has anything to do with murder.”

Dad grinned. “I might be able to explain that. Right after you went in, a man came around the side of the house. He got in that light blue car and drove away.”

“The car parked a couple of houses down? Interesting. I thought I heard a door close before she let me in. So someone might have snuck out the back, and he’d parked down the street instead of in her driveway.”

“What’s more, those fellows across the street are here every Saturday morning. They say a man leaves the house early. How early depends on how hot it is, earlier in summer than in winter, but they often see him either leave or come home. My guess would be he’s golfing. And while he’s gone, the guy with the blue car comes for a couple hours. It’s been going on for three or four months.”

“Aha. So maybe Kellie is hiding an affair.” That would explain her disheveled state, her smell, the delay in answering the door, and the peculiarities of her behavior during our interview. She’d been both anxious and helpful, both sincere and guilty. She had something to hide, but it didn’t relate to her mother.

Or did it? Cheating on one’s spouse was a far cry from murder, but the two occasionally went together. More often, it was the spouse who was killed, though. I couldn’t see any reason Kellie’s affair would lead her to kill her mother, but I might be missing something. A husband who had uncovered the affair and was getting a bizarre revenge by taking away her mother? A lover who mistakenly thought he was doing her a favor? Could his car have been the one that tried to run me down? I hadn’t noticed any blue tint to that vehicle, but the pale blue might have looked silver with the sun glaring off it. I thought the “attack car” had been a regular car, though, not one of those boxy things.

“I’d like to find out who the man was,” I said.

“I got the license plate. Can you look up the name somehow?”

“I’ll put it on my to-do list. Thanks, Dad. What would I do without you?”

“I suppose you’d manage somehow. Eventually.”

I smiled. “I’m glad I don’t have to find out.”

“How about lunch before we tackle the next suspect? I know a place near here.”

“Sounds good. I need to think about my approach anyway. I have to get more answers, faster, if we’re going to solve this thing quickly. But how?”

“Pretend to be something other than a reporter?”

“That wouldn’t be ethical.” I frowned. “Not if I’m acting as a reporter. Maybe it’s okay if I’m acting as a PI? I don’t know the rules there, but I’m not a licensed PI so I’d better play it safe. I’m skirting the edges of ethics enough as it is.”

“The ends do not justify the means. I’m glad you feel that way.” Half a block later, he said, “Still. Your mother is there.”

“I know.” I resisted the urge to whine that I was doing the best I could. That was little comfort if you failed. I sighed. “Maybe Lisa Delacruz holds the key. We might get lucky this afternoon.”

Luck could make a difference. I’d never broken a major story without a stroke or two of luck.

Unfortunately, “luck” tended to appear only after days of hard work.