“Start from the beginning,” Daniels said.
They could hear Jon rattling around in the kitchen, looking for a glass. Katya’s expression changed, and her eyes turned cold.
“You are Martin’s daughter,” she said.
Daniels rocked back on the couch. Melanie looked like their mother, while she took after their father, and people were always commenting on the resemblance.
“That’s right,” Daniels said. “How did you know my father?”
“You could say we were lovers.”
The words sounded evil coming out of her mouth. Daniels felt herself shudder.
“Martin said you might show up one day, and cause trouble,” Katya said.
“Is that so?”
“Yes. He said that you were a real bitch.”
Daniels’s cheeks burned, and she raised her arm to slap Katya’s face. It was exactly the response that Katya had been hoping for. She tossed the cat into Daniels’s chest, startling her. Katya came out of her chair and leaped over the splintered front door lying on the floor, then bolted from the house.
“Jon! She’s escaping!”
The frightened cat had sunk its claws into her blouse. She ran out of the house and into the street with the animal still attached to her, but it was too late. Katya had vanished in the wind.
“God damn snake!” Daniels swore.
Chapter 16
There was no greater frustration than having a suspect slip through your fingers. Back inside, they searched for clues that might tell them where Katya had run off to. Lancaster pretended not to hear the obscenities pouring out of Beth’s mouth.
“The little shit told me that she was my father’s lover,” Beth said.
“She really said that?”
“Uh-huh. Then she told me that my father thought I was a bitch. I couldn’t help myself, and went to slap her. That’s when she threw the cat and ran.”
“So it was a ploy.”
“You think she made it up to rattle me? She’s quite a looker. I could see my father having a relationship with her. Didn’t you find her attractive?”
They were in the kitchen doing their search. He’d pulled the garbage pail out from beneath the sink and was sifting through its contents to see what might turn up. The trash was mostly empty diet soda cans and greasy fast food wrappers.
“There’s a difference between attraction and romance,” he said. “Based upon what you told me about your father, I’d say no, I can’t see him in a relationship with her.”
“Why not?”
Beth had stopped what she was doing and glared at him. There was a real edge in her voice. Katya had bested her, and now he was challenging her.
“Your father was highly educated, and he was practical,” he said, treading carefully. “If he was seriously considering having a relationship with Katya, he’d think, ‘She’d be fun in the sack, but what are we going to talk about afterwards? The important things in my life occurred before she was born.’ It would be a travesty.”
“But my father was lonely. He told me and my sister so.”
“He would have found someone.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I spotted several attractive older women in the church this morning. I have to assume they were widows. Your father would have eventually met the right one, and it would have clicked. It’s how things work.”
“So he wasn’t having a relationship.”
“Not with Katya.”
“Did she say those things to throw me off?”
“That’s my bet.” He paused. “And it worked.”
Tears welled in her eyes, and spilled down her cheeks. Her emotions were being turned inside out, and she was hurting. Only one thing made a grieving person feel better, and he gave her a hug. She stiffened in his arms.
“Oh my God. We’re being watched.”
He spun around. It had been a day filled with unpleasant surprises. His eyes found the surveillance camera perched over the dish cabinet.
“That’s strange,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“The camera isn’t pointed at the back door.”
Surveillance cameras were meant to record intruders. That was their purpose, unless the person who installed them had something else in mind. The camera in the kitchen was pointed at the island in the center of the room, which was rectangular and had a marble top. It was large enough for several people to prepare a meal upon, and not get in each other’s way.
“Why would you videotape someone preparing a meal?” Beth asked.
“Beats me.”
Using a chair, he climbed up on the counter beneath the dish cabinet for a closer look. The camera was made by a company called Lorex, and he memorized the call letters before climbing down. Then he did a search on his cell phone, and discovered that the camera was considered high end, and ran $600. It could record in Ultra HD, the images it captured crystal clear.
“They could be watching us right now,” Beth said.
“Should we wave?”
“This isn’t funny, Jon. We don’t know who these people are.”
“Should I get ‘Wild West’ with them?”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
He drew his gun from behind his belt, and blew the camera off the cabinet. He did it so quickly that Beth was too stunned to react, let alone speak. He blew the smoke off the barrel and returned the weapon to its hiding place.
“You’re crazy,” she said.
“Admit it. You feel better.”
“A little.”
“Let’s see how many more of these we can find,” he said.
There were surveillance cameras in every room in the house.
Eleven total.
Two in the living room, two in the dining room, one in each of the three upstairs bedrooms, a camera in the study, and fish-eye cameras hidden in the ceilings of the two bathrooms. They were perched atop bookcases and dressers, and not easily seen, their lenses aimed at the center of each room. To keep Beth happy, he disabled each one by hand, as opposed to shooting them out.
“She let them watch her in the bathroom?” Beth said incredulously.
“Who?” he said, not understanding.
“Katya. This is her house, remember? She let someone install those cameras, and willingly let them watch her while she was in the bathroom. How would you feel if someone watched you take a shower, or do your business in the morning?”
“It would make my skin crawl.”
“Me too. What kind of woman would allow something like that?”
He had to think about that. He’d seen some pretty grotesque behavior as a cop, the boundaries that people were willing to stretch often boggling the imagination. But he’d never seen or heard about a person doing what Beth had just described.
“Maybe she didn’t have a choice,” he said.
Beth wanted to go to the rental and use her laptop computer to run a check on Katya to see if she had a criminal history. Katya was no innocent, and had probably brushed up against the law before. If so, there would be a rap sheet to show for it.
Together, they repositioned the front door back in its place.
“We didn’t check the basement,” he said.
“You go. I’ll be in the car,” she said.
He’d spied the door to the basement earlier. It was located inside the kitchen pantry, and was padlocked, which he’d found strange. Was Katya keeping something hidden that she didn’t want a nosy visitor to see? There was only one way to find out.
He examined the lock. It was the cheap, hardware store variety. This make of lock was easily opened. A hammer would do the trick, or the end of a screwdriver.
He rifled the kitchen drawers but came up short. But he did find a wrench, which would also work. Standing next to the door, he grasped the lock and applied pressure on one end. With the wrench, he gave a few hard taps on the other end, searching for the sweet spot where the locking mechanism was located.