Cavanaugh Hero (4 page)

“You want in that badly?” Declan asked, scrutinizing her closely. There were things she wasn’t telling him, but he was rather certain they would surface, by and by.

She raised her chin like a soldier about to charge into the unknown and, just possibly, not return again. “Yes.”

“Okay,” he agreed. “I’ll talk to my lieutenant, see if he can get you temporarily assigned to Major Crimes. You just might be in luck. My partner handed in his papers today and he’s leaving the department for the private sector.”

Charley nodded, but she hardly heard a word of what the other detective was saying to her. The phrase “you just might be in luck” was echoing over and over again in her head.

She was never going to be in luck again.

Her brother, her best friend, her
entire family
lay on the sofa, dead.

There was no such thing as luck anymore, she thought darkly.

She didn’t realize Cavanaugh was talking to her, didn’t even hear him, let alone have any of his words register until she felt someone touch her arm. Blinking she looked up, once again abandoning the haze she hadn’t even realized she’d slipped back into.

“Are you all right?” Declan was asking.

She roused herself, doing her best to look alert and generally unfazed. She had her suspicions she couldn’t quite carry off the impression that she’d come around. “Why shouldn’t I be?”

Declan began to enumerate the reasons that occurred to him. “Well, for one thing, you look like you’re a million miles away.”

Charley shrugged. She had that one covered. “That’s not exactly a pretty sight to emboss on my brain,” she replied flippantly, indicating the dead body on the sofa.

There was more going on here than that and Declan knew it. Moreover, he was fairly certain that she knew he knew it. But now wasn’t the time to get into it. He had to give her a little time to collect herself—while he did a little digging on the side into her background.

Keeping her close would turn out to be a good thing, Declan decided. Other than the fact that—strictly speaking as a man—she was even more of a knockout now than she had been back in the academy, she was obviously mixed up in this somehow. Whether merely innocently because she was acquainted with the victim or if there was more to it than that, he’d yet to decide, but she figured into all this somehow and he intended to use that to his advantage.

He was fairly confident he could sell this to the lieutenant. The man trusted his judgment and more important than that, he wanted to stay on the good side of the chief of detectives, Brian Cavanaugh, and Brian took a personal interest in all his detectives, especially those bearing the same surname as his.

All that remained for him to figure out, once the dust settled and he—or they—found the killer, was what he intended to get in exchange for letting her come on board and work with him.

This was going to be very interesting, he decided as he heard the sound of what he presumed was the crime-scene investigative unit’s vehicle approaching.

Chapter 3

S
ean Cavanaugh was the first crime-scene investigator in through the doorway.

Nodding at his son and the unfamiliar woman with him—was it him, or did it seem like there was
always
a woman with Declan?—the head of the day investigative unit looked grimly down at the body on the sofa. The dead man appeared to be in his late twenties, early thirties. Strong, well built and undoubtedly with a good future in front of him until a bullet ended all that.

What a waste, Sean thought, setting down the case he always carefully checked and restocked after every crime-scene investigation. It was time to get to work and find answers.

“So the victim’s one of our own,” Sean said sadly, addressing the remark to both of the occupants within the room.

Charley answered first. “Yes, sir, he was. Sergeant Matthew Holt,” she told the head of CSI.

Oh, Matt, Matt, what have you gone and let happen to you? Why’d you let your guard down like that? You always told me to be careful. Why weren’t you?

Charley felt her throat closing, suddenly clogged with tears. She fought them back.

Sean nodded, taking in the information. “And you are?” he asked.

“Detective Charlotte Randolph, sir.” Charley focused strictly on answering the questions put to her. Her voice sounded almost robotlike. “I was the one who called it in.”

Sean unlocked his case and lifted the lid. “Well, Charlotte—”

“Charley,” she corrected him, forcing a faint smile to her lips. “People call me Charley.”

Matt had called her Charley when she was a little girl and the name had stuck, she thought now. Damn it, she couldn’t tear up, she couldn’t, Charley ordered herself, digging her nails into her palms.

Think of something else. Think of anything else.

Sean looked at the woman, quietly studying her. This wasn’t just a casual acquaintance of the victim. His death was affecting her.

“Well, Charley,” Sean amended. “How did you happen to be here?” he asked gently.

“I already asked her that,” Declan interjected.

“Yes, but I didn’t,” his father pointed out calmly. Both his voice and his expression were sympathetic as he continued to regard the young woman.

Behind him, two more members of his investigative team came in, both well entrenched in what their particular duties were at a scene like this. They got to work quickly and quietly, moving as smoothly as the timing belt on a well-oiled engine.

Charley took a breath before reciting her answer. “I heard he hadn’t shown up for work for a couple of days and that he hadn’t even bothered calling in. I knew that wasn’t like him, but I also knew that he was going through a rough patch—”

“What kind of a rough patch?” Sean asked.

“He’d just broken up with a woman he was certain was ‘the one.’” Someone should have strangled Melissa a long time ago, she thought angrily. Before the witch ever came into Matt’s life.

Guided by her tone, Sean made the only logical assumption. “But she wasn’t ‘the one,’ was she?”

“Not unless we were talking about barracudas, sir,” Charley replied, deliberately staring straight ahead, past the CSI chief’s head.

“No need to call me sir,” Sean said. That sort of thing created a formal atmosphere and right now, he was striving for the exact opposite. Nodding his head to indicate Declan, he added, “He never does.”

“I do, too. You just don’t listen,” Declan told his father.

“All too well, Declan,” Sean said, glancing at his son knowingly. “All too well. All right, if you two want to stand over there and wait until I finish processing the crime scene, it shouldn’t be all that long.” He glanced at the opened bottles of vodka and Kahlua on the coffee table. “A little early in the day to be getting into that right now. Was that his drink of choice?” he asked. “A black Russian?”

It hadn’t been, initially. All Matt ever drank—if he drank at all—was a beer, maybe on rare occasions, two. He hadn’t been very big on anything that allowed him to lose the tight rein he had over his control.

“It was a habit he picked up from Melissa,” Charley told him.

Declan scanned the room as if that could somehow answer his questions by the very nature of the vibrations that had been left behind. “Then maybe she was here, too,” he suggested.

“Only one glass,” Charley pointed out. “It was the first thing I checked for.” Once she could bring herself to leave Matt where he lay, she added silently. “Besides, there’s no lipstick on the glass.”

“Big on makeup, was she?” Declan asked, curious. This detective seemed to know a lot about the woman in question. Why?

“It helped to cover up her physical flaws,” she explained.

He laughed at the way she worded her answer. “Not a big fan of the woman in question, I take it.”

Charley saw no reason to deny or cover up how she felt about the woman who had deliberately broken her brother’s heart. What did it matter? Matt was gone and his feelings were the only ones that had ever mattered to her anyway. If she’d held her tongue before about Melissa, it was only to spare him.

In hindsight, maybe if she had said something, he wouldn’t have gotten to this point. Maybe he might have even been alive now because he would have been at work, not home and unprotected.

“I wouldn’t lift a finger to save her if she was drowning in a puddle of rainwater,” Charley told the detective.

“Talk about cold,” Declan couldn’t help commenting.

Actually, it was the exact opposite. Whenever she thought of the strawberry-blonde with the flat brown eyes who had led her brother around as if he were some sort of trained monkey on a leash, her blood pressure went up by at least ten points. Possibly even more.

“She cut out his heart and stomped on it. I have no reason to get all warm and toasty whenever I think of her—which is as infrequently as possible,” she informed Declan, her tone indicating that she didn’t want to discuss the woman anymore.

“Duly noted,” Sean said. For a minute, she’d forgotten the other man was still in the room.

The head of CSI took out the camera he’d paid for with his own money, preferring to use something he was comfortable with rather than the one the department had issued to him.

“Will you two be working the case together?” he asked mildly.

Declan said, “Don’t know yet” at the same time that Charley said, “Yes.”

Sean smiled. “A slight difference of opinion, I see. Apparently the situation is all tangled up, which is nothing new.” He lowered the camera for a moment to look at her. “I’ll keep Declan here posted and he can let you know what progress has been made, if any.”

She didn’t want to be on the receiving end of anything secondhand. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to stop by the lab whenever you’re done processing the evidence.”

Sean glanced up for a moment, assessing the woman in front of him. Seeing the expression in her eyes. There was that pain again, he noted. Definite pain. This wasn’t just a fellow brother in blue she’d looked in on. This was someone important to her.

For now, he let it go at that. He had a crime scene to process. “Give me your card, Charley.” She was quick to oblige him, digging out one of the cards the department had issued to her.

Matt had his own made up for her at the same time. The cards were identical—except for the drawing of a teddy bear on the front. The image represented Barney the Bear, another toy he’d given her. One, he told her, that was supposed to keep her company and protect her whenever she felt afraid.

Barney was propped up on her bed where, even now, he spent his days and nights, a vivid connection to her childhood.

And now he would also serve as a reminder of the brother she’d lost today, she couldn’t help thinking.

Steady,
Charley warned herself.

Sean tucked the card into his pocket and went on taking photographs of the crime scene.

“Your friend have any enemies?” Declan asked as they walked out of the house.

She hated leaving Matt there, lifeless on the sofa, no longer regarded as a person, just a statistic. But she knew she had to. There was nothing she could do for him now—except find his killer.

“None,” she answered the detective.

“How about this ex-girlfriend?” he prodded. “Melissa?”

Charley shook her head. As much as she hated the woman, she knew Melissa wasn’t responsible for Matt’s murder. “Melissa didn’t do this.”

Declan looked at her with more than mild interest. “What makes you so sure?”

“To begin with, she’s not bright enough to know how to work a stapler,” Charley said sarcastically, referring to the note that had been stapled to Matt’s chest. “And the note said this was only the beginning. That means whoever did it was holding Matt accountable for something and he—or she—was obviously holding other people accountable, as well.”

“Accountable for what?” Declan asked.

Charley shook her head in complete frustration. “I don’t know.”

For now, he took her at her word. “Fair enough. But there’s also another explanation, you know.”

She looked at him, waiting. She certainly couldn’t think of any. “Which is?”

“Maybe whoever did it wanted to make it sound as if there were going to be other fatalities to throw us off. Maybe Holt was the killer’s only intended victim.”

The theory had merit, she supposed. “It’s a possibility,” Charley allowed, even though she didn’t want to. This gave them far too many possibilities, far too many avenues to investigate.

Well, at least he got her to admit that, Declan thought. Maybe this meant she wasn’t as terminally stubborn as she used to be. “This Melissa, you know her last name?”

“Merryweather,” Charley told him, then repeated, “She didn’t do it.”

Declan nodded, barely paying attention to her. He was busy forming plans in his head.

“So you said. Humor me.” And then he realized that she could still be of some more use. “You wouldn’t by any chance know where we could find her, would you?”

Charley’s expression was totally unreadable. “Other than under the first rock you come to, no.”

“That’s okay, I can look her up once I get back to the office.”

He didn’t ask her if she wanted a ride, because she had her own vehicle as far as he knew and besides, he was really hoping she’d given up the idea of working this with him. As gorgeous as the woman was, he had a feeling that working with her might be a challenge he’d save for another day.

Pulling out of the driveway, he left the other detective standing there, watching him take off.

* * *

Declan didn’t think about her again until he was pulling up in the police department’s rear parking lot. The woman he’d left behind him was now standing by the rear entrance into the building.

Stunned, he slammed the driver’s door behind him as he jumped out of his vehicle. He cut the distance to her in long, quick strides, hardly remembering making them.

“How the hell did you get here ahead of me?” he asked.

That was probably the easiest question she was going to field this week. She gave him a quick, pasted-on smile. “I drive faster than you do. You drive like a senior citizen,” she pointed out. “Let’s go up to talk to your lieutenant,” she said, reminding him of his promise.

“Might as well,” he said, resigned as he punched the number 3 on the keypad on the silver wall. “And I drive carefully,” he corrected, taking offense at her assessment.

“Whatever you say,” she replied.

When they got to the office, Lieutenant Jacobs was nowhere to be found.

“Personal emergency,” one of the other detectives in the department told them when Declan came out of the man’s office. “His wife lost control of her car—it wound up as window dressing in a boutique showroom. The lieutenant looked fit to be tied once he knew for certain his wife hadn’t killed herself. My guess is that he won’t be back today. You need help with something?” the man asked, giving Charley a scrutinizing once-over.

“No,” Declan answered. Turning toward the woman with him, he said, “Looks like I’m on my own here.”

“
We’re
on our own.” She deliberately emphasized the first word.

“Hey, Cavanaugh, wanna introduce me?” the detective he’d just been talking to asked, rising to his feet as he was taught in a bygone wonderfully polite era.

“No,” Declan replied succinctly as he walked away, headed to his desk. “Okay, let me see if I can find this Melissa Merryweather,” he said more to himself than to Charley.

He just didn’t give up, did he?
she thought. Well, it was his time he was wasting. But she intended to try to follow up any shred of a lead the CSI people came up with.

“You’re barking up the wrong tree,” she told him mildly.

He was getting tired of hearing her say that. “Well, unless and until another tree comes leaping out at me, this is all I’ve—we’ve—” he corrected himself before she could “—got. Unless you’re keeping something from me,” he tagged on.

She was, but it had nothing to do with Matt’s murder and everything to do with her being able to investigate it, so she kept the information to herself as she shook her head. “Not a thing.”

In his opinion, Charley sounded entirely too innocent when she said that and he always held displays of innocence to that degree suspect. But he had nothing to go on other than a gut instinct, one he wasn’t able to pin down or flesh out yet. Until such time, he intended to keep this detective close to him and the best way to do that was to allow her to think he was all for their joining forces.

Getting comfortable at his desk, he gestured to the somewhat scarred desk facing his.

“Spenser was moving out his stuff when I left here this morning. Looks like he’s finished so you can park yourself there for the time being if you like.”

She pulled the chair out and sank down into it. It was going to need some adjustment. This Spenser was a big man, she concluded. “Spenser your partner?”

“Ex-partner.” Declan didn’t look up, his fingers gliding along the keyboard as he continued to search for Melissa Merryweather’s address. “He decided he could make more money in the private sector.”