Thirty-Five and a Half Conspiracies
Page 64

This was a waste of my time.
“If you’ve got absolutely nothing to report to me, I might as well be goin’.”
He sighed in exasperation and held his hand out at his side. “I’m not the one who suggested you drop by.”
“I have to do something, Carter! I feel like I’m stuck on the tracks, just waiting for a runaway freight train to slam into me. I have to stop this!”
His expression softened. “I know. And for what it’s worth, you’ve already accomplished quite a bit.”
Neely Kate jumped out of her seat and pointed her finger in his face. “That’s not acceptable, Carter Hale! You get off your lazy ass and do something, or I’m gonna cut off all your toes and feed them to the squirrels that live under the park bench across the street.”
He lifted his hands as if in surrender, but a grin tugged at his lips. “Better my toes than another appendage I’m quite fond of.”
“Get busy.” She spun around and stomped out of the office, leaving me to trail behind her like a baby duck.
She didn’t stop until she was on the sidewalk, and I didn’t try to stop her because I’d taken to storming out of places too.
A mischievous grin slid across her face. “Do you want to spy on Kate?”
I blinked and shook my head. “You’re gonna give me whiplash, Neely Kate. I’m still reeling from your mutilation threat.”
She put her hands on her hips. “Well, do you or don’t you?”
It was definitely tempting. “What exactly do you have in mind?”
She pursed her lips and lifted her shoulder into a half-shrug. “I figured we could make it up as we go along.”
“Code for you have no idea what you’re doin’.”
“Hey.” She cocked her head. “Do you have a plan? No? I didn’t think so. Besides, I do have a little bit of a plan. Come on.”
I walked beside her as she headed toward the antique store. “So what are we doin’?”
“I’m thinkin’ this through. She moved into her apartment a couple of weeks ago. But why would she want to live here on the square? There are plenty of places to live in Henryetta. Rumor has it the apartment over the antique store is nasty.”
I shrugged. “Well, there’s no denying she’s the polar opposite of Hilary, who rented the absolute nicest house in town. That place wasn’t even for rent.”
She stopped in front of the antique store and looked up at the windows above the storefront. After shifting her gaze to survey the area around us, she peered back up at the apartment windows. “Hmm. Maybe the location of her apartment has everything to do with what she’s doin’ here in Henryetta. She rarely sees Joe.”
I turned to look at her and lifted my eyebrows.
“What?” she asked, sounding defensive. “Deputy Miller tells me things.”
“Maybe she happens to like living on the town square. Maybe she’s into quaint towns. Or maybe she wants to be close enough to my office to spy on me.”
She released an exaggerated sigh, then waved her hand toward the center of the square. “She’s spyin’ all right, but I don’t think it’s just on you. She’s directly across the street from the courthouse.”
“Why would she be spyin’ on the courthouse?”
Neely Kate pointed to the apartment windows and then trailed her finger through the air and pointed at the old stone building. “Those windows. Whose are they?”
“Mason’s.” A cold sweat broke out on the back of my neck. “The district attorney’s office takes up that block of windows, and Mason’s old office is directly across from her apartment.”
“What if Kate is the person trying to kill Mason?”
My head felt fuzzy, and I lifted my hand to my temple. “That’s plum crazy, Neely Kate.”
“Is it? She’s made no effort to hide the fact that she wants you and Joe back together.”
“Wanting us back together and trying to kill the assistant district attorney are two very different things. Besides, she’s J.R. Simmons’ daughter. She has people she can call to take care of that for her.”
“Exactly. She’s J.R. Simmons’ daughter. Why’s she here all of a sudden? Seems like awfully convenient timing.”
“She told me just yesterday that all of this trouble has been brewing for some time and she came here to watch it go down.”
“Even if she’s not the one tryin’ to kill Mason, maybe she was spying on him to get information for that meeting that ended with him gettin’ fired. Maybe she and Joe aren’t seeing each other in public to throw everyone off the fact that they’re working together. Shoot, for that matter, maybe she’s doin’ the same thing with Hilary.”
I felt like I was about to be sick. “Their hatred for each other seems pretty genuine.”
“You know what they say—conspirators make strange bedfellows.”
I shook my head. “I have never once heard that, but you could be right. They might have agreed to join forces for the greater good.”
“But what exactly is the greater good?” Neely Kate asked, staring up at the windows. “There’s a few big pieces missing from this puzzle.”
“Kate said she’s here as an observer, but she has at least some knowledge about what’s going on. She called me a few hours before my arrest—right after Joe took the journal—and told me to mind my P’s and Q’s. I confronted her about it yesterday, and she pretty much admitted she was trying to warn me about the arrest.”