Loe raamatut: «Cavanaugh On Call»

Chapter 1

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Detective Bryce Cavanaugh watched in disbelief as his partner, Detective Peter Phelps, a tall, thin man whose suit jackets hung loosely off his body, packed the last of his personal items into a cardboard box. “You’re actually leaving?” Bryce questioned.

“And they said you’d never amount to anything as a detective,” Phelps said dryly, tossing a half-empty bag of stale chocolate-covered wafers from last Halloween into the box. “Yeah,” the older man said more seriously. “You figured it out. I’m leaving.”

“Was it something I said?” Bryce’s voice cracked, trying to cover up the fact that if this was on the level, it left him far from happy and somewhat surprised. He wasn’t averse to change, but he didn’t exactly welcome a major shake-up, either.

“Hell, it’s everything you said,” Phelps answered tongue in cheek as he opened one drawer after another, checking for anything he might have left behind. “But if you’re asking why I’m leaving the police department, you don’t have anything to do with it.”

Bryce took a seat on the edge of his partner’s desk, crossing his arms before him. “Then educate me, Phelps. Why are you suddenly spring-cleaning your desk two months late?”

The frown on Phelps’s long, gaunt face went clear to the bone. “Alice’s mom is sick,” he said, referring to his wife’s only living parent.

Bryce knew enough to look immediately sympathetic. “Hey, I’m sorry to hear that.” Still perched on the desk, he leaned in to get into his partner’s face. “But I still don’t see the connection.”

Phelps put down a copy of the 1983 Dodger Annual yearbook for his favorite baseball team, pressed his thin lips together and sighed. The sigh sounded as if it came straight from his toes. “The kind of sick where she needs her family around her, doing stuff for her.”

Bryce still didn’t see the problem. “So? Bring her out here. You’ve got those extra bedrooms since your kids went off to college—” He didn’t get a chance to finish.

Phelps eyed him as if he’d lost his mind. “Look, I feel bad for her, but there’s no way that harpy’s moving in with us. Not unless you wanna see my face on a mug shot posted in Homicide with the words ‘Rogue Cop’ over it.”

Bryce was trying very hard to understand what the other man was saying. “So what’s the plan? You and Alice’re moving in with her?”

Phelps shivered. “Different scenario, same results. Alice and I are renting a place up there.”

“There” being Fresno, Bryce recalled.

“She’s going to play Florence What’s-Her-Name and I guess I’m gonna see if I can finally write that crime thriller I’m always talking about.” The contented, wistful expression on his face faded and Phelps got back to the present. “Officially, for now I’m taking an extended leave of absence. Don’t look so glum. I’ll be back,” Phelps promised. “After all, you never forget your first,” he added with a wicked grin, followed by a heartfelt sigh.

Bryce shot the man a look that said he wasn’t amused. “Seriously, just how long is this ‘extended’ leave going to be?”

Bony shoulders rose and fell beneath the loose-fitting jacket. “A few months. Six on the outside. Doctors say that the old girl’s on her way out. Could be anytime now,” he said a little wistfully. And then reality set in. “’Course, she’s got the constitution of a rock. She just might hang around for another ten, twenty years just to stick it to me.” Phelps laughed dryly as he put the last of his things into the cardboard box.

He paused. “Not everybody’s as lucky as you are, partner. Your family gets along and they all have each other’s backs no matter what.” He picked up the box then put it back down again and, only half kidding, said, “Any chance I could get adopted? I wouldn’t take up much space.”

Bryce laughed and shook his head. “Yeah, I’ll be sure to ask.” And then he sobered as he scanned the squad room. “It won’t seem the same without you.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’ll forget about me the second I walk out the door.” Phelps saw that his partner was looking at something or someone over his shoulder. Turning, he saw a slender blonde crossing the threshold, a miniature version of his cardboard box in her hands. “Sooner, maybe,” he commented. “Well, off I go.” He put his hand into Bryce’s, shaking it. “It’s been good. Maybe with luck, I’ll see you soon.”

And then Phelps looked around. “Anyone know where I can pick up some hemlock, cheap?” he asked, raising his voice so that it carried to the rest of the inhabitants of the squad room.

A cacophony of voices answered him as he made his way, nodding through the maze of desks and detectives, toward the exit.

He passed the blonde who was walking in. Assuming that she was there to take his place, Phelps nodded in her direction and, in a low voice, said, “The desk’s in the rear of the room. So’s your partner.” And then he smiled broadly. “Good luck with that.”

* * *

Scottie’s arm tightened around the small box she was carrying. It was only half filled, but she hadn’t been able to find a smaller box when she’d cleaned out her space in Homicide.

The transfer had come through so quickly, Scottie thought, it had almost taken her breath away. She’d been prepared to make several requests and to write long petitions before she got the okay to make the transfer from Homicide to Robbery. She’d been certain she would have to plead her case and be movingly convincing before the approval was given. After all, she’d been fairly certain she had done a more than decent job in Homicide.

She’d certainly managed to clear all her cases. But then, on the other hand, Aurora was not exactly a snake pit of crime. It habitually made the FBI’s top ten list of safest US cities for its size and she liked to think she was part of the reason for that. She worked hard, kept to herself and never challenged authority. As far as she knew, that was the winning formula for a valuable employee.

She’d thought that her commanding officer would have put up more of a fuss about losing her. But to her surprise, after she’d put in her request, stating only that she felt rather burned out working Homicide—it was the only thing that occurred to her to use as her reason for requesting the transfer—it had been granted the next morning. The captain hadn’t even tried to talk her out of it.

Her partner, Joe Mathias, had appeared a little surprised as well as dismayed when he’d learned she was transferring, but not enough to try to get her to change her mind or to attempt to block the transfer.

They had worked well together, but only in the way that two cogs located on the same machine worked well. They had never socialized after hours—her choice—and they didn’t even know any personal details about one another—also her choice. Mathias had tried—he had pictures of his wife and kids on his desk and on occasion would tell her about something he and his family had done over the weekend—but Scottie had zealously kept her private life just that.

Private.

Part of the reason for her secrecy was that she didn’t want anyone to find out about Ethan. He was not only her half brother, at one point she had also been his legal guardian. Her gut instincts had her hiding their connection—just in case.

And now “just in case” had happened—maybe.

For now, it proved to her that she’d been right about deciding to keep her private life under wraps. If her hunch was right, and Ethan was involved in what was now going on, there’d be no way that she would be allowed to work on the break-ins that had suddenly begun to plague the good citizens living in some of the more upscale neighborhoods of Aurora.

If anyone knew about Ethan and the nefarious life he had supposedly left behind, she would be barred from doing any sort of investigation that could clear his name—if Ethan was part of this. It was a phrase she kept hanging on to. She still had no actual proof that he was involved.

But then there was her gut, which compelled her to move forward. Always forward for him—just in case.

* * *

Newly seated, Bryce rose again to get a better look at the woman taking long, measured steps as she crossed the squad room. Just the faintest of hip movement marked every step she took.

He had trouble drawing his eyes away.

His first thought was that she was a hell of what his grandfather would have referred to as “a looker.” His second was that she was one of the city’s residents coming in to file a complaint involving goods stolen during the execution of some sort of a robbery.

But then he took a second look at the box in her hands, a far smaller one than Phelps had used to carry out his possessions, but still a box. That caused Bryce to reassess his initial take.

As he watched the leggy blonde walk in his direction, Bryce was vaguely aware that he wasn’t the only one assessing the woman. Small wonder. The statuesque blonde had a no-nonsense gait that captured a man’s attention from the very first moment she entered his line of sight. Slender, she was wearing a straight, light gray skirt that stopped a few inches above her knee, making her look as if she was all leg.

And what legs! he caught himself thinking. They were the kind of legs that walked right into a man’s dreams and had him fantasizing all sorts of things he had no business fantasizing about—especially if it turned out that there was some sort of a working relationship that had to happen.

Snapping out of his momentary reverie, Bryce crossed over to the newcomer as he summoned his most inviting smile.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

The low voice he heard in response sounded as if it had been wrapped in honey and dipped in warm whiskey before being poured over a glass of ice.

“With what?”

The woman’s response caught him off guard. Bryce heard himself say the first two things that came into his head. “With the box you’re holding. With finding whoever you’re looking for. Anything,” he concluded, leaving the offer open-ended.

“The box isn’t heavy,” she replied, tightening her hold on the box with its meager contents—just a few basic manuals she’d found useful during the execution of her job. “And I’m not looking for a ‘who,’ I’m looking for a desk.”

The grin was instantaneous, widening his mouth to reveal two rows of snowstorm-white teeth. “Fortunately the one next to mine just happens to be empty,” Bryce told her, pivoting on the ball of his foot and doing a 180 so that he was once again facing the direction he had come from.

“Fortunately,” Scottie echoed, her emotionless tone giving no indication she thought it was anything of the kind.

Since he had pointed to the newly vacated desk, Scottie walked toward it. Bryce was right behind her. He took the opportunity to drink in every nuance of her body from that vantage point before hurrying to catch up so that he could at least be at her side when she set her things down.

Which he was.

“I guess you’re taking Detective Phelps’s place,” Bryce said as she put the small box on the desk.

Ordinarily, Bryce didn’t have to search for an icebreaker or an opening line. In his experience, women, even those who were as easy on the eyes as this one was, didn’t need much encouragement when it came to making conversation. They were usually all too eager to do three-quarters of the talking, if not more.

But this one was different. She didn’t seem inclined to talk, which in itself was unusual. Unlike a couple of his brothers, Bryce had never fancied himself to be the strong, silent type. Besides, he’d found that the more someone talked, the more they wound up revealing about themselves. He had never been one who cared for surprises.

He liked knowing things right from the start, liked having things all laid out in front of him, nice and visible.

The blonde at Phelps’s desk obviously didn’t subscribe to that philosophy. At least, it didn’t seem that way.

“Apparently,” the leggy blonde said as she almost bonelessly slid into Phelps’s chair.

Having gotten involved in observing what was nothing short of poetry in motion, Bryce blinked then narrowed his eyes slightly as he looked at the newcomer.

“Excuse me?”

Scottie recreated the last two bits of dialogue. “You said it looked like I was taking Phelps’s place. I said ‘apparently.’ There,” she announced in a tone that was nothing short of dismissive. “I think that we’re all caught up.”

Bryce pulled over his own chair, positioning it so that it was inches away from facing hers, and then straddled it. He crossed his arms over the top of the creased black padding as he looked at her. His sharp green eyes all but bored right into her, giving the impression that he could glimpse everything clear down to the bone, every thought, every fear, everything.

“All caught up?” Bryce echoed with just the slightest bit of mockery in his voice. “No, I don’t think so. Not by a long shot.” And then his easygoing manner returned as he asked, “Don’t you want to know my name?”

Soft, expressive blue eyes rose to look into his. “Bryce Cavanaugh,” she replied.

Bryce’s amused grin widened. So she’d done her homework. But why? Was this woman his new partner? And how did everyone but him know that he was getting a new partner?

“Okay, so you know my name,” Bryce conceded. “Don’t you want to know anything else?”

The same slightly disinterested tone she’d used before now accompanied the single word that emerged next from her lips.

“No.”

Undaunted, Bryce informed her, “Well, I want to know some things.” When his seatmate raised her eyes to his again, giving him the impression that she was waiting for his question, he asked it. “Just who the hell are you?”

“Detective Alexandra Scott.” She stopped short of telling him that most people wound up calling her Scottie. He’d find his way to that soon enough—and if he didn’t, that was okay, too. Her priority had always been solving cases, not nicknames.

“Where did you come from?” Bryce questioned, his eyes once again washing over her. Who was this woman and had she been around all this time without him seeing her? He really needed to get out more. “It’s too early for Christmas, so I know it wasn’t a sled with eight tiny reindeer that brought you here. Besides,” he continued as if he was really being serious, “I don’t think I was that good a boy this year to merit someone like you under my Christmas tree.”

Scottie blew out a breath. If she didn’t give him an answer and set him straight, this one looked as if he could go on talking nonsense like this indefinitely. There’d been a number of Cavanaughs in Homicide Division, as well, so she was well acquainted with the way they behaved.

She supposed this was what came of having a huge family to fall back on. People like that could afford to wisecrack and act as if they didn’t have a care in the world.

It was different for her. All there was in her world were cares. Big cares. She’d never had anyone to fall back on. Her father had died before she was eight and her mother, it had soon became apparent, hadn’t been able to keep it together for more than a few days at a time. She wound up mothering her mother as well as Ethan, who was a product of one of her mother’s one-night stands.

Things had never gone smoothly, but they had gone well enough for a while. But then, in a bid for “uniqueness,” Ethan had begun to act out, hanging around with this one small group until he’d gotten in trouble and gotten caught.

It was easy to see that the path he was on had only one final destination. Temporarily putting her own life on hold, she’d sued to become her brother’s guardian, citing that her alcoholic, pill-popping mother was unfit. Shortly after she had, her mother had overdosed and died. That had been over seven years ago.

Scottie had refused to let herself cry. She’d just pushed on, holding down two part-time jobs, going to school online and trying to make a home for herself and Ethan. For a while, things were going all right. Ethan behaved and she wound up joining the Aurora police force.

And then Ethan had fallen back on his old ways. She’d tracked him down, dragged him back and, over the course of one very long weekend during which she’d locked herself up with Ethan, she’d managed to eventually get through to him.

He’d been out of trouble, holding down a job for close to five years.

Until now. She needed to find him before it was too late.

“I just transferred from the Homicide Division,” she heard herself telling the inquisitive detective. She knew she needed to answer just enough of his questions to not arouse any undue suspicions as to her real motives for the transfer.

“By choice?” he asked.

Why was he asking her that? Did he think she had an ulterior motive for getting into his department? “Yes.”

Bryce’s expression was completely unreadable. “Whose?”

She looked at him quizzically for a moment before saying, “Mine.”

Bryce nodded. “I can’t say I blame you. It can get to you, looking at dead bodies all the time. Even one can be too many for some people.”

“Thank you for your understanding,” Scottie said crisply, hoping that was the end of it.

It wasn’t.

Bryce made no effort to vacate his chair or move it back where it belonged. “The seat’s still warm.”

Scottie blinked, totally lost. “What?”

“From my last partner. He just now literally got up and walked out the door a couple minutes ago.” Bryce nodded toward the doorway. “I think you even might have passed each other. Anyway,” Bryce said, shifting to another topic, “I’m surprised they found a substitute so soon.”

“I’m not a substitute, I’m a transfer,” Scottie corrected. When she’d put in for the transfer, no one had said anything about a position being vacated. But given the current string of break-ins, she’d just assumed that the department would be open to getting extra help.

Bryce misread her defensive tone. “I didn’t mean to make that sound belittling.”

Whether she liked it or not, if she was going to get along with this man, she had to get a grip. Learn the ropes. So she forced herself to flash a half-apologetic smile in his general direction.

“Sorry, it’s been a rough morning,” she told him vaguely.

Bryce was nothing if not a sympathetic ear. His sisters had taught him well. “Care to share?” he asked.

She’d grown up bottling up every single emotion she’d ever experienced. She’d done her best over the years to be Ethan’s pillar. But no one had ever been hers. There was no way she was about to start now.

“No.”

For some reason he hadn’t expected her to say anything else. Bryce suppressed a laugh. Instead he said, “Scottie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” paraphrasing the closing line in one of his favorite old movies, Casablanca.

“If you say so,” Scottie replied dismissively. All she wanted to do was to settle in and get down to work.