eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781504952170 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 12/11/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 304 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Afraid of the Water
A Kay Lytle Mystery - Book 3
By G. G. Rodriguez
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2015 Virginia RodriguezAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5049-5218-7
CHAPTER 1
THE FUTURE PLANS
Kay became ill during the New Year's celebration with a life-threatening case of the flu. She believed she contracted the sickness while on the airplane returning home from Baltimore on Christmas Eve. There was a woman sitting behind her who kept coughing and spitting up dark green mucus into a vomit bag throughout the entire flight. The woman kept asking the stewardess to bring her another bag so she could fill it with puke and mucus. Kay asked the stewardess if she and Officer Cox could move to another seat but all the seats were occupied. So she listened to the sick woman coughing, spitting, and complaining during the entire flight home.
On Christmas morning, she had an irritating tickle in the back of her throat causing her to cough every ten minutes. Later, that night she developed an abnormally high fever, a runny nose, and a mucus secreting cough. By the time New Year's Eve arrived, she was totally bed ridden with chills from the fever and her nose was red from blowing and rubbing it with tissues. Carolyn notified Doctor Peterson, who was treating Kay for the infection, and he made a house call on New Year's Day to deliver some medicines, Ampicillin – 500 mg for the lung infection and Ciprofloxacin – 500mg for her kidneys.
He commented, "These drugs could cure a horse with the flu."
He ordered her to stay in the bed for a week, take the medicines twice a day, and drink plenty of fluids. She needed to stay hydrated to keep from getting a yeast infection from the antibiotics. He also told her that as long as she was on the medicines, she was not allowed to drive because the drugs could cause dizziness. He ordered her to spit out any phlegm each time she coughed it up and not to swallow any of the disgusting stuff. He asked Carolyn and Officer Cox to contact him if the phlegm changed from a light green color to a dark green color and discharged a nauseating odor. He was concerned that she might be developing pneumonia which meant she would have to be hospitalized.
Kay stayed in her room, ate all her meals, took her medicines, and missed all the New Year's celebration with her family, friends, and employees, with the exception of watching it on television.
Each day, while Carolyn changed the sheets and brought her meals, Kay would employ the bathroom, until she had finished cleaning the room and she had left. She did not want anyone in the house to catch her disease. Carolyn would spray the bed, the bed linens, and room with disinfectant to kill any unwelcome viruses, bacteria, or flu germs that might be germinating in the area. While she worked, she would talk to Kay who was standing close to the bathroom door so she could hear every word. Today, Carolyn gossiped about the great New Year's Eve party.
She elaborated, "Mr. Hughes had rented a live band to play all night and a catered meal was served. The food was fabulous. Officers Cox and Rodriguez worked the entire night while my brother danced with Debbie and her children. I think Dennis is falling in love with Debbie. Every time he looks at her or mentions her name, he smiles. He is constantly asking me where she is and what she is doing. I finally had to tell him to go and ask her for himself if he wanted to know. I am not a news reporter."
Kay inquired, "Did he kiss her at mid-night?"
"Yes, he kissed her, your mother, Mr. Hughes, Debbie's children, and me," laughed Carolyn. "Dennis would have kissed the entire band, but Officer Cox took his intoxicated body out of the room and made him go to bed."
Kay asked, "Who did you kiss at mid-night?"
"Well," she replied, smiling from ear to ear. "I hate to kiss and tell, but I kissed Officer Cox. It was wonderful. Even though it was a quick kiss, I think we connected. He is a great kisser. If Dennis wouldn't have been so drunk, I think he would have kissed me twice. Brothers have a way of interrupting those special romantic moments. Everyone laughed as OC took Dennis away. He said, 'I will arrest you if you do not come along peacefully'. The party lasted until about 1:15 a.m. and then everyone went home. Mr. Hughes hired a cleaning service to clean the after party mess. There was confetti, empty champagne glasses, dirty dishes, and noise makers everywhere, including the front and back yards. It would have taken your mother and me days to clean up that mess."
Kay sighed, "I get the picture. It was a wonderful party and I am glad everyone had a great time. Thank you for bringing me something to eat that night. The food was delicious."
"I am very surprised that your ex-husband, I mean to say Leonard, did not make an unwelcome appearance to spoil the party. Do you think there is a possibility that he is dead?" she asked as she finished tucking the sheet under the mattress. "OC checked everyone, the band, the caterers, and the cleaning people before they were allowed to enter the house. Even Lieutenant Gorman was there, out of uniform, and he helped OC guard the house. Not to change the subject, but Lieutenant Gorman is very handsome out of his uniform. I mean normal clothes not naked."
"I know what you mean. Getting back to Leonard, there is no way he would make an appearance here," Kay coughed. "I do not think he even knows where we are living at this time. He is out there, waiting for just the right moment to spring on us. He might have disappeared for a while; however, he is a man with a mission to kill me and my mother, and he will try again when we least expect it, unless I find him first."
Kay's relentless coughing caused her to puke up some thick repulsive green slime into the toilet.
"Keep spitting that stuff up, Kay," her nurse ordered. "The sooner it is out of you, the better you will feel. What color is it?"
"I hate this stuff," she complained. "It is a light greenish color."
"I know you do, dear," Carolyn consoled. "We all hate being sick, but we get it sooner or later. The more phlegm you cough up and spit out of your system, the better you will feel."
As Kay continued to cough up more of the sickening light green mucus, Carolyn finished the room and left her medicines by a glass of cold water on the nightstand.
"I am finished. If you need me for anything, I will be downstairs," she said as she was closing the door. "Later I will bring the mail to you. I saw a few 'get well' cards among some stacks of letters your mother was going through. You have a lot of very nice friends. They told me to tell you that you were missed at Church services on Sunday morning. They have you on the prayer list. The bell choir played two hymns last Sunday, but it is not the same without you preforming in it. You need to get well so you can get back into Church. I will bring you some juice when I return with the mail."
As Carolyn left, she removed all the soiled bed linens from the room and took them to the laundry room. She added disinfectant to the laundry to kill as many germs as possible to keep the disease from spreading.
Kay took a bath and brushed her teeth before she climbed into her clean, disinfectant scented bed. She took her medicines and tried to go to sleep, but that nagging cough kept hounding her. She was going to read one of the many magazines Carolyn had brought her but decided to read Susan's diary. Susan was the homicidal murdering master mind behind her family's rags to riches life of luxury story. Kay did not care to read it during the holidays and had forgotten about it when she got sick. She thought it might shine some more light on where Leonard was keeping himself busy.
She read: "It started out as a normal family day by the pool side. Lance was watching the boys swim while I mixed up some potato salad to serve with the bar-b-que. I heard Lance yelling at Leonard concerning a coin collection that was missing. I called the police and they ruled Lance's death an accident. The report stated, 'that Lance had slipped on the wet decking and fell on the broken lawn chair next to the pool, then fell into the pool.' I have never seen water in a swimming pool turn purple before. I guess the blood mixing with the chlorine caused that color change. Lance's blood was everywhere. I thought Leonard was going to die. I beat on his chest for over a minute trying to get all the water out of him until he finally started coughing and breathing again. Lance must have held him under the water for two minutes. No one saw me hit Lance with the lawn chair to make him release Leonard from under the water. The Police asked Lance's sons what had happened but neither said a word. I have good boys. Tomorrow, I will make funeral arrangements for Lance and notify all of his relatives. I was looking over his insurance policy and I discovered that he had bequeathed everything to me. I will contact the insurance company after the funeral. After all, I do not want to seem too eager to inherit his money – my money now. If he knew I had stolen those stupid coins, he might have tried to drown me. I hope Leonard will be able to swim again after this horrifying event and he won't be paranoid or afraid of the water. Sometimes events like this make children afraid of the water, causing them to have phobias. Leonard is a strong boy; I think he will forget this day ever happened once he matures. Isn't it funny how a great day at the pool can change into a deadly nightmare over a set of stupid old coins?"
Kay lowered the diary. She remembered Mr. Blackstone's prized collection of civil war coins that Sarah Kinder (the woman who tried to claim she was his daughter) was stealing from his home. She wondered if these coins could possibly be the same stupid coins Miss Susan had stolen from Lance. Mr. Blackstone had many other beautiful and valuable antiques she could have stolen; but instead, she chose the coin collection.
"Leonard sent Sarah to the house to pose as Mr. Blackstone's daughter. He probably told her to look for them and then steal the coins while she was there. There has to be a connection," she thought. "Mr. Blackstone used to tell me how he got the deal of his lifetime when he purchased those coins. I bet these are Lance's coins and Leonard wants them back. If I am right about these coins, I can use them as bait to draw him out of hiding into the open so we can catch him."
Kay was feeling much better already knowing she had a scheme that would possibly put that serial murderer behind bars forever.
For two weeks (which seemed like two years to Kay) she coughed, sneezed, ran a fever, and took her medicines until finally she showed signs of recovering. Doctor Peterson said the medicines were doing their job and he wanted her to continue taking them until the cough was completely gone. She had not seen anyone, including her mother, since the flu had invaded her body. She was developing cabin fever being confined to her bedroom. She had received some flowers from Lieutenant Gorman while she was sick; however, in the two weeks confined to her room he had never mentioned Leonard's name. She continued to read Susan's diary until she finished construing every page about Leonard's dysfunctional, homicidal family who loved to kill rich young women in order to support their life of luxury. The entire diary was filled with morbid descriptions of their twenty or more homicides.
Kay thought, "Next time I see a person's picture on a milk carton, I will wonder if they were one of their victims. If I had not escaped from under my swimming pool grave, my name would be on one of the pages in Susan's diary and printed on a milk carton. If I had only listened to my father and Mr. Blackstone, I might be married to Allen Green. If, If, If – what a big little word - an Oxymoron."
She remembered she had also received some flowers from Allen who attached a note informing her that the construction on her mother's home was completed. He wanted to walk her through the house to show her all the repairs and improvements he had made and to get her approval before she sent him his final payment. Since she was not coughing with every breath, she decided to give Mr. Green a telephone call and make a date with him to inspect her mother's home. She might even take him to lunch or something.
"Or something," she thought, "listen to me. I sound like Carolyn."
Since the holidays were over and the flu was behind her, Kay wanted to fulfill some of the New Year's resolutions she had made while confined to her room. One of her resolutions was to visit her inherited companies to make some executive decisions that would save her money. Due to an article she had read in a New York business journal stating "the Blackstone companies in Houston, Texas, that were so popular and successful in the early years, were now losing a large amount of money. With no profits to sustain this industry it could be the demise and fall of his empire". This meant she would have to fly to Texas for an unlimited number of days to investigate the reasons why her companies were failing. She needed to know all the facts before she decided to either sell the companies or make some major changes in company policies or employees. She wanted to meet the person who wrote the article and find out where he received his information about her companies. Another resolution she had made was to move her friend and employee, Debbie and her children, into Mr. Blackstone's home. While she was sick she hired a mover to transfer Mr. Blackstone's antiques into a temperature controlled storage facility so she could replace his belongings with furniture that would be child friendly and comfortable. During the holiday, she asked Officer Cox to build a swing set in the back yard which would be surrounded by Mr. Blackstone's beautiful garden. It would make it a paradise for the children to play in. She had an alarm system installed by the front and back doors to insure Debbie's safety. She did not want to give Leonard the satisfaction of killing another one of her friends. She had not told Debbie about her moving plans because she was going to make certain that Debbie wanted to stay and work for her. Even though her mother and Mr. Hughes had not said anything negative about Debbie and her children living with them, she felt like they needed some privacy.
Her final resolution is to catch Leonard. She is tired of looking over her shoulder everywhere she goes.
Officer Cox made a point to check on Kay each morning when he arrived for work and then in the afternoon before he left to return home. He had purchased another townhouse on the other side of town. After work he would attend a computer class at the local junior college for three hours. He was interested in the technology to improve portable telephones and home computers. He thought if a telephone could be made smaller and portable for everyone, it might save lives on the road. He believed computers were the way to the future, holding assessable information for police officers, doctors, and scientist. He had been invited to several of the students study lab sessions. There was a young man with an idea to make a small computer chip that was the size of a triple 'A' battery which could hold enough information to replace an entire set of encyclopedias. If he could accomplish this, then those huge processing machines that take up an entire office building floor would become obsolete and the space could be used by the employees. He explained his concepts to his curious and interested apprentices, "Since a small amount of information could be stored on microfilm and transported to America during the war, why couldn't a lot of information be stored in a device as small as a battery. Using the '1' and '0' codes, the information could be compressed and saved into a small device."
The young genius elucidated, "If we could take this embryonic technology from the past and enhance and modify my device, I believe we will alter the entire computer processing system making it affordable and convenient for anyone in any type of business environment to save employee information, financial data, or customer's addresses and telephone numbers. It could be used in a home to store personal banking, family documents, or receipts. The uses of this device are endless."
Officer Cox was very impressed with the student's ideas and believed he was on to something fresh and innovative that needed to be polished. Each night, in the young man's garage, he and the other computer geeks would brainstorm ideas to improve on an already expensive but worthwhile innovated invention. He donated thousands of dollars from his saving account to help finance this man's ideas because he felt like this was a good investment. He was thinking of his future because he realized that he could not be a policeman or body guard forever due to age and health conditions. After all, getting shot was not one of his favorite things. He wanted an alternative occupation for the future to fall back on if he was seriously injured or unemployed. He hungered to be a success so Kay would be proud of him. His every thought was about her and keeping her safe; but once Leonard was apprehended or killed, she was not going to need his services anymore and he would have to go back to the police force; however, if this computer project was a success, he would be a pencil pusher for a large computer company. The main thing for him was to get as much knowledge about computers as possible to have something to fall back on. He studied every night past mid-night trying to learn the "1" and "0" combination coded system used to represent words and numbers, key pushed on cards then fed into a large computer. He used spread sheets to map his solutions in his programing class. The boys in the class called him the "old man" but the girls flirted with him and he was flattered. He declined any and all of the female student invitations to go out for drinks or to party on Saturday. He was mostly interested in his computer project and protecting Kay. No one in the class knew he was a policeman or a private body guard. He was not planning on telling them either. He was very careful when leaving the college and aware of his surroundings when he would go home. He made sure no one was following him home, to college, or to Mr. Hughes' home. As he walked through the college, he watched the older male students that fit Leonard's description because he might get lucky and catch him. He remembered Leonard liked to select young rich college girls for his victims. He did not think Leonard would come back to this college but he had a history of violent unannounced appearances which caused OC to stay on guard at all times in every place he went. His main objective was not to get shot again. He made a point to take a different route home every night, checking his rear view mirror often as he drove. He did not want him to find out where he or Kay was living.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Afraid of the Water by G. G. Rodriguez. Copyright © 2015 Virginia Rodriguez. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
DEDICATION, vii,ACKNOWLEDGMENT, ix,
CHAPTER I THE FUTURE PLANS, 1,
CHAPTER II THE INTERVIEW, 24,
CHAPTER III THE MOVIE, 38,
CHAPTER IV THE GREEN FAMILY SECRET, 55,
CHAPTER V THE TRIP TO TEXAS, 70,
CHAPTER VI WELCOME TO HOUSTON, 79,
CHAPTER VII THE NEW EMPLOYEE, 97,
CHAPTER VIII CLEANING HOUSE, 114,
CHAPTER IX INVESTMENTS, 138,
CHAPTER X THE WRONG FAMILY, 156,
CHAPTER XI CHANGING DIRECTIONS, 175,
CHAPTER XII THE ESCAPE, 212,
CHAPTER XIII SWITZERLAND, 226,
CHAPTER XIV HOODWINKED, 242,
CHAPTER XV A GHOSTLY APPEARANCE, 262,
CHAPTER XVI A RECORD OF LOVE, 282,