Death Takes a Ride (The Cate Kinkaid Files Book #3): A Novel by Lorena McCourtney Read Free Book Online Page B

voice.
    “Yeah. But I don’t blame him for backing off. I mean . . .” Shirley pulled a black curl out from her head and let it go. It boomeranged right back to her scalp.
    Honest, forthright, tell-it-like-it-is Shirley. No oversized ego here. Okay, Shirley’s dye job was a little too crow-black, and her wiry curls looked as if they had popped out of her head with an electric s-p-r-o-i-n-g! Her boots would do fine for military combat. But the warmth and frankness about her were surely more important than hairdo and eyebrows, and Blakely should have seen that. A fish-cleaning ability wasn’t to be downgraded, either. Mitch would likely approve a fish-cleaning talent more than he approved of Cate being a private investigator.
    Blakely didn’t deserve shooting for hurting Shirley’s feelings, Cate granted. But a few heavy car parts thrown at him in the warehouse when he backed out of the breakfast date might have been appropriate.
    Now Shirley leaned forward, elbows on the table. “But I’m thinking, if I could learn enough at these Fit and Fabulous sessions, Kane might feel differently.”
    Make yourself over for a man? That grated on Cate’s nerves, but she made herself keep quiet. For the moment, anyway. She switched to a different subject.
    “Has anyone besides you been at the hospital?”
    “Just Mr. Halliday. He showed up again as I was leaving to come here. I talked to him for a minute, and he said he’d gotten hold of Kane’s son and daughter. He didn’t know if they’re coming. Kane isn’t very close to them.”
    “Did you know about the money before the gunman tried to steal it last night?”
    “No. Mr. Halliday must have given it to Kane before he called me into the office. I was shocked when I saw all those hundred-dollar bills falling out of Kane’s jacket when I was trying to stop the bleeding with it.”
    “So you don’t know what Mr. Blakely wanted the money for?” Cate asked. Shirley shook her head and grabbed a leftover piece of toast on the plate. “Mr. Halliday seemed to think he needed it for something to do with the ex-wife,” Cate added.
    “When Kane and I talked on the phone, it was mostly about old cars or car parts, or sometimes fishing and crabbing, but he mentioned his ex-wife a few times. Candy got the house and most everything else. I don’t know why she’d be entitled to any more money from him.” In spite of what Cate thought was definitely rudeness from Kane Blakely about their date, Shirley sounded protective of him.
    “Is Candy the mother of his children?”
    “No. His first wife was killed in a car accident a long time ago. His son lives in Georgia and his daughter in Florida. Candy wouldn’t go visit them, so Kane hasn’t seen them much since he married her. He feels bad about that.”
    The ex-wife separated Kane from his kids? Not a particularly admirable stepmotherly trait. Not a particularly admirable fatherly trait either, however, letting a new wife do that.
    “Did Mr. Blakely go out to his Corvette to get the inventory sheets before or after you went to the office?”
    “Before, I guess. He didn’t leave while I was there. Actually, I wasn’t even supposed to be there last night. Radine, she’s the office manager, was supposed to stay for the meeting. But her daughter got sick about noon, and she had to leave, so Mr. Halliday asked me to stay in case they needed details about the inventory or something.”
    “How did you happen to get a job there?”
    “After I moved over here from the coast, I got into a special program for disadvantaged older workers at Lane Community College. And then Mr. Halliday was generous enough to hire me, even without experience.”
    So if Shirley didn’t know about the money being there that night, she couldn’t have been in on any conspiracy with the gunman. If she was telling the truth, of course. Cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die probably wasn’t written into the criminal creed of behavior. But it was getting ever