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In a few strides, he was at the glass display case beside the prospector painting. Fortunately, the case wasn’t locked. Nick reached inside and wrapped his fingers around a pickax from the 1800s.
At the door to his uncle’s office, he used the tool to break the latch before he kicked the door open. The smell of gunpowder hung in the air. There was no one in the room except for his white-haired Uncle Samuel who sprawled on the floor beside his desk. Blood spread in a dark stain on the beige carpet. A .45 caliber gun was in his right hand.
Nick knelt beside the old man and felt for a pulse. “He’s still breathing. Call 911.”
Kelly joined him on the floor. “Let me take care of him. I’m a nurse.”
“You deliver babies.”
“I’m also an RN. Step back, Nick.”
He gently removed the gun from his uncle’s limp hand and stood, looking down as Kelly tried to stop the bleeding from a chest wound.
The door had been locked. The windows were closed.
A set of blueprints lay on the desk. Across them, his uncle had written two words: I’m Sorry.
Chapter Three
Monday, 10:25 a.m.
“It’s not your fault that he died.”
“I know,” Kelly said.
Her friend Serena Bellows motioned for her to come out from behind the kitchen counter and join her in the living room. Picking her way through a minefield of toys and stuffed animals, Kelly made her way across the large room with the cathedral-style ceiling. Over the years, Serena and Nigel’s farmhouse on a twenty-acre spread had grown from a small cabin to a sprawling four-bedroom house.
Serena liked to say that the house had grown organically. The original cabin was long, flat and ranch-style. The living room and attached kitchen fit into an A-frame with solar panels on the roof. A Victorian tower housed Nigel’s home office. There were no predominant colors. Instead, the walls varied from room to room in a veritable rainbow.
“Sit,” Serena said. “Talk to me.”
Coffee mug in hand, Kelly sank onto the sofa. “I already told you what happened last night.”
“But you haven’t told me the whole story, and you need to let it out.” Holding her six-day-old daughter, Serena occupied a large oak rocking chair by the fireplace. She unbuttoned her turquoise muslin blouse and prepared to start breast-feeding. “I can feel your grief.”
Kelly couldn’t deny her sadness. Though she’d never met Nick’s uncle while he was alive, she would forever be connected to Samuel Spencer. For a few moments, she’d held his life in her hands. “I wish I could have done more for him.”
She’d worked hard to keep his heart beating and to stanch the bleeding from the gunshot wound. The paramedics had arrived eighteen minutes after Nick called 911. At that time, Samuel still had a pulse. Nick had gone with the ambulance while she and Marian had stayed behind to talk with the police. Less than an hour later, she’d learned that Samuel never regained consciousness and had died on the operating table. Logically, she knew that Serena was right and Samuel’s death wasn’t her fault, but it always hurt to lose a patient.
“Have you ever wondered,” Serena asked, “why people like you and me choose to be midwives and not surgeons?”
“Because medical school is really expensive?”
“As midwives, we get to help people. Most important, there’s almost always a happy ending.”
Kelly knew exactly what she was talking about. Unlike the nurses who worked in emergency rooms and faced life-and-death situations every day, midwives brought new life into the world. It was a great job. She loved hearing the first cries of a newborn, feeling the grip of a tiny hand around her finger and seeing a perfect cherub face.
Smiling, she watched her friend breast-feed her infant. For the first time this morning, she felt something resembling calm. Serena’s husband had taken the other three kids and Serena’s sister to the grocery store. Though Kelly enjoyed staying with the raucous family with the totally appropriate last name of Bellows, she needed her moments of silence. Leaning back against the yellow-and-green-patterned sofa cushions, she sipped her coffee and said, “This is nice.”
“Being around all these kids and animals drives you crazy, doesn’t it?”
“It’s different.” She had only one younger sister who had stayed in the Chicago area near their parents. “I’ve never been part of a big family.”
“You are now,” Serena said. “You’re one of us, and you’ll never be alone again.”
“Is that a threat?”
“It’s a promise. If you ever need a friend, I’ve got your back.”
“That goes both ways,” Kelly said.
She and Serena had been buddies since freshman year at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Even though they’d lived apart, they were as close as two friends could be. But they weren’t family, not really. Kelly had always wanted children of her own.
Serena adjusted the baby at her breast. “Are you ready to talk about last night?”
She inhaled a deep breath and started talking. “My first reaction was panic. A ringing in my ears. Inability to breathe. Momentary paralysis. It was scary. We had to use a pickax to break the door down.”
“Then the adrenaline kicked in.”
She nodded. When she saw the wounded man, Kelly knew what needed to be done. Her mind was clear, and her hands were steady. She remembered procedures she hadn’t used in years. “It was only after the paramedics took him away that I became aware of what had happened. I had blood all over my clothes. The scarf you gave me was destroyed.”
“The Kelly-green scarf?”
“It’s so corny that you got me a Kelly-green scarf.”
“What happened to it?”
“I used it to stanch the blood flow.” The memory caused her hand to shake, and she set down the coffee mug. “That poor man committed suicide.”
“Are you sure about that? Most suicides don’t shoot themselves in the gut.”
“That was what the police said. They kept asking me if I saw powder burns on his shirt.” She’d torn away his clothing to get to the wound. “I couldn’t tell. There was too much blood.”
“Did the police think it was suicide?”
“There will be an investigation, for sure. But he was in a locked room with the murder weapon in his hand, and he’d left a note that said he was sorry.”
“How did you find out that he’d died?” Serena asked.
“Nick called.”
“Nick Spencer?”
Kelly nodded. “He called me on his cell phone from the hospital. The doctors had gotten his uncle into the operating room when his heart stopped. They couldn’t revive him.”
She didn’t know Nick well, but she’d recognized the pain in his voice. His words were flat and hollow as though he was speaking from the bottom of a deep well.
“What else did he say?” Serena asked.
“The paramedics told him that I did a good job. He thanked me for trying to save his uncle.”
Last night, she’d wanted to comfort him, and she was a little disappointed that he hadn’t called her this morning. Not that she had any right to expect him to contact her; she barely knew the man. Dealing with his uncle’s suicide, Nick probably had his hands full.
“Nick Spencer,” Serena said. “He’s big and tall, am I right? And good-looking?”
“Last night, he was wearing a tux.”
“Yum.” Serena tucked her breast back into her nursing bra. Cradling her infant, she gently rocked. “I think you should call him to offer condolences. Better yet, you should stop by his place and take him a homemade pie.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Well, he just might need a shoulder to cry on. Or a hand to hold. You know, human warmth.”
“Are you suggesting that I take advantage of a tragic situation to make a move on Nick?”
“I’m just saying that you’re both single and there must have been a reason you were alone with him on the ninth floor of the Spencer Building.”
“He showed me the gold.”
“Wow! Nigel is going to be so jealous. He does work for a client in that building, and he’s never seen the gold. Nick must really like you.” Serena was on a roll, talking fast. “This is excellent, really excellent. If you and Nick hit it off, you’ll be motivated to stay in Valiant, and I’ll have a partner. This is so, so, so perfect.”
Kelly chuckled. “So this is about giving me a reason to stay and be your partner. It’s all about you.”
“I’m thinking of you,” she said with a grin. “Honey, you could do a lot worse than Nick Spencer.”
Kelly couldn’t argue that point. Nick was handsome, sexy, funny, capable and rich. “If he’s such a catch, how come some other woman hasn’t snapped him up?”
“He’s only been divorced for a couple of years. From what I hear, he’s a devoted daddy.”
She didn’t know he had children. “How many kids?”
“Two daughters, I think they’re seven and four. Beautiful girls, I’ve seen them in Valiant with Nick but I think they live in Denver with their mom. Both girls have black hair and blue eyes like their father.”
The front doorbell chimed, and Kelly rose from the sofa. “Don’t move. I’ll get it.”
She rushed to the front door. The first ringing of the chimes hadn’t wakened the baby, and she wanted to make sure there wouldn’t be a second bell. She whipped open the door and looked out through the screen.
Standing on the covered porch was a man in a black suit. Though he couldn’t have been more than forty, his close-cropped hair was completely white. With his square jaw and angry eyes, he would have been intimidating if he hadn’t been standing beside a white goat with a black face and black splotches like polka dots decorating her round belly.
The goat, whose name was Fifi, tapped her hooves on the porch, rubbed against his trouser leg and bleated. She liked being around people, especially men.
Stifling a chuckle, Kelly asked, “May I help you?”
“Are you Kelly Evans?”
“Yes.”
“I’d like to ask you a couple of questions about last night.” He reached inside his jacket pocket, took out a gold card case, peeled one off and held it toward her. “Y. E. Trask, private investigator.”
As she opened the screen door to take his card, Kelly decided that she didn’t want to invite him into the house. Grabbing her denim jacket from a peg by the door, she stepped outside. There was something about this man that she didn’t trust, and she wanted to keep him away from Serena’s family.
“There isn’t much to say, Mr. Trask. I already gave my statement to the police.”
“I wanted to hear your story. In your own words.” Fifi butted his thigh, and he lurched forward. The goat bleated. Trask cursed. “Aren’t these animals supposed to be in a pen?”
“Well, yes, but they’re good at escaping. If you pay some attention to her, she might leave you alone.”
“I’ve found the opposite to be true,” he said curtly. “If I pay attention to a female, she tends to stick around, even when she’s not wanted.”
This was a guy she definitely didn’t want to spend time with. “Fifi isn’t like that.”
“Don’t waste my time, Ms. Evans. Are you going to help me or not? The family has concerns.”
If he’d told her right away that he worked for the Spencers, she would have been more cooperative. Looking down the driveway, she spotted the family van approaching the house. In a few moments, Nigel and the kids would be back and they’d be surrounded by chaos. “Come with me. We’ll find somewhere quiet to talk.”
Waving to the van, she directed Trask across the farmyard toward the barn. Two spotted goats trotted side by side as though they had an important mission. One of the llamas strolled past the chicken coops, creating a flurry of angry hens.
Most people would have been amused. Not only was there a varied and interesting menagerie, but the lower two feet of the barn was painted with wild artwork by the kids. It was kind of adorable, but Trask was all business. His primary concern seemed to be to avoid stepping on anything ugly and messing up his wingtip shoes.
By the corral fence, she found a space. “Ask your questions.”
“You were the first person to touch Samuel after entering the room,” he said. “Is that correct?”
“Actually, Nick was the first. He found a pulse, and then I stepped in.”
“Assuming that Samuel committed suicide, can you speculate on how he did it?”
“He must have been standing because his body was beside the desk rather than behind it. He still had the gun in his hand. I’d guess that he turned the weapon toward himself and pulled the trigger.”
“He was still alive when you started treating him. Did he speak?”
“He was mumbling, but he wasn’t conscious.” The police had asked her about this several times, and she knew that a dying declaration would be important. “I’ve been trying to remember if he said anything coherent, but none of it made sense. First he said to close the door. He repeated the word ‘gold’ several times. And he talked about a heart of stone.”
When Fifi came toward them, Trask glared. His expression was so angry that Kelly thought he might pull a gun and shoot the cheerful goat. Fifi turned tail and bounded away.
“Is there anything else, Mr. Trask?”
“Concentrate, Ms. Evans. What did he say about the heart of stone?”
“It didn’t make sense.” She thought for a moment then shook her head. “Sorry. I’m not even sure if those were his words.”
“I don’t like surprises,” he said. “If you’re holding back, we’re going to have a problem.”
Was he threatening her? “Why would I hold anything back?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he focused his angry glare at her. She stared right back at him. Kelly wasn’t a silly goat like Fifi, and she refused to be intimidated.
She snapped, “Are we done?”
