Guarding Suzannah

by Norah Wilson

  ~*~

  Quigg gave his statement to his Sergeant quickly, concisely and completely. None of which prevented him from eavesdropping as Suzannah gave her own statement to Ray Morgan, who’d arrived on the scene minutes after patrol response. A total pro, she gave her statement with an economy of words, while still covering the ground thoroughly. Seemed like everyone else was listening with more than half an ear, too, judging by the grimacing male reaction when she touched on Rosneau’s act of self-castration. If she’d purposely set out to tighten the sphincters of a room full of men, she couldn’t have done a better job.

  What a freakin’ whack job this guy was. He’d pleaded not guilty, cried a river to Suzannah about his innocence, then held her responsible for keeping him out of jail. He’d blamed her for everything. For not divining his true nature despite his lies. For not losing in court. For his reoffending. For his self-mutilation. And ultimately, for his unhappiness for what his handiwork with a Ginsu knife had wrought.

  Meanwhile, in the background, the crime scene people worked away, snapping pictures and whatever else they had to do. Which would be pretty minimal, he supposed, since the perp was currently achieving room temperature on the kitchen floor.

  When she finished her statement, he tried to talk her into going to her mother’s for the night, but she insisted on staying put. He would have suggested his place, but he wasn’t dumb enough to imagine anything had changed. Four hours ago, she’d said she didn’t need a cop in her life. Now, she really didn’t need him. All the cockroaches had come out of the woodwork. It would be free sailing from here.

  Still, he figured he’d hang around until the other guys left, if only to make sure she realized what a total crock Rosneau had spewed.

  In shorter order than he would have imagined possible, they lifted Rosneau’s corpse onto a gurney and wheeled him out to the ambulance that would transport him to the hospital’s morgue. One of the ambulance attendants came back, gesturing to Bandy’s blanket covered body. “Would you like us to remove the dog?”

  Quigg felt his throat close. Poor sonofabitch. Kicked around half his life, only to wind up bleeding out on Suzannah’s floor. My fault, too. If I’d noticed Mann’s hand... Dammit all to hell. He swallowed with difficulty. “You can do that? Hold him in the morgue?”

  “Don’t see why not.”

  Quigg cleared his throat, grateful for the EMT’s awkward kindness. “Okay, then. Let’s do it. I’ll be around early tomorrow to pick him up.”

  The attendant bent to uncover Bandy, arranging the blanket beside the dog. Quigg knelt to help him transfer the blood-soaked dog onto the makeshift carrier. On the count of three, they hefted Bandy’s substantial, barrel-like body onto the blanket. When Quigg would have folded the fabric over his pet, the EMT stopped him.

  “Shit, look at that.”

  Quigg looked down at his motionless dog. “Look at what?”

  “Fresh welling of blood, when we moved him just now.” Whipping the stethoscope from around his neck, he fitted it to his ears and applied the business end to the dog’s chest. “Holy cow.” He tore the stethoscope off. “This dog’s alive!”

  “Get a vet on the phone!” Quigg shouted.

  Thirty seconds later, Suzannah handed him a cordless phone. “Dr. Orser,” she said.

  “Dr. Orser, this is Detective John Quigley of the Fredericton City Police. We got a civilian dog down, with a point-blank gunshot wound to the chest. We thought he was dead. In fact, he’s been lying here unconscious for almost an hour. Big-time blood loss. Can we bring him in?” He looked up at Suzannah, whose eyes were bright with hope. “Good. In the meantime, I just happen to have an EMT here who’s pulling for this guy. Is there anything he can do to stabilize the mutt before transport?”

  “Let me talk to him,” the EMT said.

  Quigg passed the phone.

  Twenty minutes later, with the dog wrapped in blankets in Quigg’s back seat and Suzannah sitting beside him squeezing an oxygen mask over his muzzle, they rolled into Dr. Orser’s parking lot. The vet met them in the parking lot. With the help of his anesthetist, Dr. Orser transferred the dog onto a gurney. He took the portable oxygen from Suzannah and laid it beside Bandy on the stretcher. From there, they whisked the still unconscious dog away.

  Suzannah sank into a chair in the empty waiting room; it was after hours—they’d opened specially for this emergency. Quigg paced, scowling around at the hospital-quality veterinary operation. “Look, they offer health insurance for your pets.” He gestured to a sign on the wall. “This is going to cost four figures if it costs a dime.”

  “I’ll pay it,” she volunteered. “It’s my fault. I let Rosneau in, and Bandy was just trying to protect me.”

  “It’s not your fault and you will not pay for it. I was just yakking for something to say. He’s my dog and he did just what I’d have done in his place.” He rolled his shoulders to try to ease the incredible tension there. “Except I wouldn’t have got shot.”

  “Come here and sit down.”

  Because he didn’t know what else to do, he obeyed.

  “I’m sorry, Suz.” He raked a hand through his hair. “None of this would have happened if I’d been doing my job. Geoffrey Mann just fell into our trap so neatly. He admitted sending you flowers, his receipts matched up perfectly with your deliveries, he was at the Record Office the day you were attacked. Dammit, he just fit the bill so bloody well, we didn’t even bother to look at his goddamn hand. We were too busy arranging for DNA warrants and anticipating a slam dunk. Our bad.”

  “Mine, too. I’m the one who supposedly marked him. I should have looked for that confirmation. Besides which, I’m supposed to be the guardian against wrongful conviction. I should have looked harder, been less ready to accept the prima facie evidence.” She grimaced, and his heart turned over. “I guess it’s a lot easier when you’re not emotionally involved, huh? A lesson I’ll remember for the future.”

  Quigg shifted in his chair, looked at the clock. How long did dog surgery take? He cleared his throat. “I hope you realize what a crock Remy Rosneau was spouting, don’t you? I mean, nobody could possibly hold you accountable for any of that stuff. He hired you; you represented him with integrity and vigor, in good faith, and you prevailed. End of story. He’s responsible for every damned thing he did, before and after that.”

  She shuddered beside him. Her chair abutted his chair, and he felt the delicate vibration. Damn, he wished she were his to comfort, to hold.

  “He was sick, John.”

  John. No one else called him that, except his mother. After tonight... Dear God, he was going to miss her. He didn’t even have the cloak of anger that had protected him earlier when she’d sent him on his way.

  “Yes, he was sick. And that wasn’t your fault, either.”

  She sighed. “I know. I know all those things, John. But the fact remains he raped his thirteen-year-old niece because I helped him evade conviction.”

  “Yeah, and I failed to make a compelling enough case to convince the superior court of his guilt. If you want to look at it that way, it’s my fault. I’ll have to live with it. And keep trying. And so will you.”

  She blinked rapidly and looked away. “Yeah. You’re right. So much to think about. I helped a guilty man escape punishment, and I helped put an innocent one behind bars, if only for a matter of hours. Only you know what? I don’t want to think about it now.”

  “Then don’t.” Oh, God his heart was so bruised. He sank back in his chair and closed his eyes.

  “Don’t you want to know what I do want to think about?”

  “Sure.” Anything to keep him from examining these love contusions too closely.

  “Us.”

  His eyes sprang open. “Us?” He took refuge in flippancy so his shock wouldn’t show. “Honey, unless I misunderstood you earlier, there is no us. Bad guy collared. Princess no longer requires live-in bodyguard, goes back to glamorous life. Detective goes back to drinking Moosehead Dry ou
t of a can in front of the Expos ball game. End of interlude.”

  “I’m sorry about what I said. I didn’t mean it.”

  He blinked. “Which parts?”

  “Any of it. I didn’t mean a single word.”

  He surged to his feet. “Are you crazy, woman? Or just sadistic? Does it give you pleasure to jerk me around like this?”

  “Jerk you around?” She came to her feet then, too. “What about what you did to me? I was just trying to save some face.”

  “Face! Cripes, I never saw a woman so concerned with face. You should have been born a goddamn man.”

  “Maybe I should have! Then I wouldn’t have jerks like you who think it’s your God-given right to run roughshod over me.”

  “Wait a minute. What are you talking about? What did I ever do to you?”

  He watched her draw a couple of deep breaths, watched her rein in that temper of hers. When she spoke at last, it was her best reasonable voice.

  “I know about your arrest today.”

  Quigg shook his head, as though that might rearrange the words she’d said into an order that actually made sense. “Gilles DeBoeuf? What the hell has he got to do with us?”

  “I know where you got your information, John.”

  She represented Letitia Woods? Before he could pin her down, she held up a hand to stop him.

  “I don’t care, okay?” She dropped her gaze, started twisting the gold tennis bracelet on her right wrist. “I was mad enough before to blow you off, but I’ve had time to put things in perspective. That whole thing with Rosneau really underscored how insignificant a thing it was. The upshot is, I don’t want it to stand in our way. I can get past it.”

  Quigg just goggled at her.

  “Dammit, I just said I don’t want it to spell the end for us. What more do you want me to say?

  “Have I stumbled into the Twilight Zone?”

  “Excuse me?” She lifted her nose in that haughty way she had. “I think you know what I’m talking about.”

  “Suzy, honey, you can get as huffy as you like, but it won’t change the fact that I don’t have the first clue what you’re talking about. You might as well have delivered that speech in Swahili, for all it means to me.”

  “For goodness sake, I know you read the files!” she flared.

  When he just looked at her blankly, he thought she’d go ballistic. “The DeBoeuf files. In my study. I practically caught you red-handed that night, but I let you distract me.”

  He felt his face go slack, knew he must look stunned. “What?”

  “John, I saw you hide what you’d been reading. Then, if I remember correctly, you developed a sudden fascination for my earlobe and we retired to bed.”

  “You gotta be kidding me.”

  “Haven’t you been listening? I. Don’t. Care. If DeBoeuf is involved in organized crime, if he’s importing drugs and laundering money for the big guys, he deserves whatever he gets. Please, just don’t drag Vince into it. He didn’t know anything of DeBoeuf’s master plan. He was just following very narrow, very specific instructions. He wasn’t privy to the big picture.”

  Full realization dawned. Oh, Suzannah, you wonderful, foolish, proud woman. He grinned. He knew it wasn’t wise, but he couldn’t help it. He felt it spreading across his face, slow and inexorable as dawn breaking.

  She gaped. “You’re laughing at me? Laughing?”

  “No, not at all.” He tried to wipe the smile away. “I’m just trying to come to terms with this. I mean, you’ve always been such a stickler for us cops observing proper evidentiary protocol –”

  “You ungrateful –” Her chest heaved, rather nicely, he thought, as she searched for an adequate word. “– pig!”

  “Whoa, careful. I’m sensitive about names like that.”

  “That’s it. Forget it. I’m calling Gilles DeBoeuf in the morning to tell him where you got your information. The Crown Prosecutor, too.”

  He did laugh this time. “You’re gonna have one confused client, then, sugar. ’Cuz it was his executive assistant Letitia Wood who dished the goods on friend Gilles. Seems he was sleeping with the fair Letitia, whilst stringing her along with promises that he’d divorce his wife and marry her. Unfortunately for Mr. DeBoeuf, someone snapped some pics of him and the missus renewing their vows in a posh backyard ceremony to which Letitia had not been invited.”

  She groaned and hid her face in her hands a few seconds, then raked her fingers back through her hair. “Oh, hell.”

  “Precisely.”

  “His EA?”

  “Yep.”

  She chewed her lip for a few seconds. “So, what the devil were you reading that night in my study?”

  His grin faded as he considered his options. He could sluff her question off, claim general police stuff. Confidentiality and all that. They could carry on from there, feeling their way as they went.

  Or they could start fresh. She’d just demonstrated the lengths to which she was capable of going to maintain this relationship. He could do the same.

  “I was studying for my Sergeant’s exam.”

  “Sergeant? Of the detective bureau?”

  “They’ll put me wherever they want me, if and when the time comes, but yeah, I’d like Major Crimes. There’ll be an opening coming up, but I’m not fooling myself it’ll be mine for the asking. Hell, I don’t even know if I’ll pass the damned exam.”

  She laid a hand on his cheek. He couldn’t help it. He turned his face into her palm.

  “You’ll pass,” she said. “But is this what you really want?”

  He shrugged. “It’d keep me behind a desk more. And it would certainly minimize the possibility that I’d ever be a witness in one of your cases. That can’t be a bad thing.”

  She dropped her hand from his face, but only to find his hand. He readily twined his fingers with hers.

  “Are you doing this for me, John Quigley, because you think it’s what I want? Or are you doing it for you?”

  He snorted. Christ, did everyone have to ask that question? At this point, he better just assume it would be on the exam.

  “That wasn’t a very erudite response.”

  Erudite. God, he loved what came out of her mouth. Come to that, he loved her mouth, period.

  “John?”

  “I don’t know how to answer that. Both, I guess. For you, for me. For us.” He looked down at their clasped hands, hers so white and elegant, his so big and clumsy. “You make me want to be more. That’s why I started looking into promotion opportunities. Then I found I kinda liked the idea of having my finger on the pulse of everything. And I think I could bring some decent skills to the job.”

  “Of course, you could.”

  “Thanks.” Suddenly, the talk petered out. Not because there was nothing left to say, but because what was left was hard. He rolled his shoulders. “So, does this mean we can keep seeing each other?”

  He risked a look at her face, but it seemed it was her turn to contemplate their joined hands.

  “I was hoping for something more.”

  His heart jumped. “Me, too. I want you to move in with me, in my giant, rambling two-story mausoleum. I want us to make a home out of it, like it once was.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  She lifted her gaze then and her eyes were bluer than he’d ever seen them.

  She smiled. “Yeah, I said okay. I’d love to live in your Aunt Charlotte’s house and plant perennial beds and herb gardens and strip that gorgeous hardwood floor in the entryway. But I was hoping for still more.”

  He swallowed hard, hoping that would get his heart out of his throat. “More?”

  “Un-huh. More.”

  Dammit, just ask her!

  “Suzannah Phelps, will you marry me?”

  She looked like she might cry, but the corners of her lips kicked upward. That had to be a good sign, didn’t it?

  “I’d very much like to marry you, John Quigley. But you have to give me t
hat something more first.”

  His heart tumbled and rolled in his chest like a stone being churned by a white water cataract. “What more do you need?”

  “I need the words, Detective.”

  His jaw dropped. “Is that all?”

  “All? John, that’s everything.”

  “Of course I love you.” He shook his head in wonder. “How could you not know that? I think it started the first time I sat in the witness box and watched you work. All that passion and purpose on the inside, and all that self-possessed composure on the outside. How could I not fall for you?”

  She blinked rapidly, but not in time to stop a couple of tears from sliding down her cheeks. “Most men in that witness box had a distinctly different reaction.”

  “I’m a lot smarter than most men.”

  She laughed, knuckling away the moisture on her face. “Yes, you are, Detective. I guess that’s why I love you.”

  He kissed her then, with all the tenderness swelling his heart.

  Quigg came to his senses at the sound of someone clearing his throat. Pulling back, he found Dr. Orser standing there looking weary but amused.

  Suzannah gripped his hand tight enough to grind bones.

  “What’s the news, doc?” he said.

  “He’s critical, mainly due to blood loss, but stable. My money’s on him pulling through just fine.”

  “Thank God!” breathed Suzannah.

  “Cosmetically, he’s going to look pretty rough for a while,” the vet warned.

  “Dang,” Quigg said. “Guess I’d better phone that Hollywood agent and cancel his screen test.”

  “Screen test?” Dr. Orser looked skeptical. “Forgive me for saying so, but that dog has to be one of the homeliest mutts I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

  Suzannah looked at her husband-to-be and saw their future stretching out in front of them, bright and full of possibility. And homely dogs. She beamed. “Yes. Yes, he is, isn’t he?”

  Epilogue

  Suzannah gazed at her husband of one year across the linen-draped patio table in the back yard of their York Street home. Between them sat the remains of the elegant meal he’d arranged, courtesy of a gourmet caterer, for their anniversary. From the CD player hidden somewhere, Mark Knopfler’s understated vocals and achingly beautiful guitar caressed the evening air.

  “I can’t believe you planned this all yourself.”

  He grinned. “Thought I’d forget, didn’t you?”

  “Not a chance, Detective Quigley. After all, I started dropping clues last month.”

  “That’s Sergeant Quigley, thank you. Major Crimes, no less.”

  Her jaw dropped. “It came through?”

  “It did.”

  She flew around the table and into his arms. He caught her lightly, easily, pulling her onto his lap and covering her laughing mouth with his. A moment later, the laughter and joy had segued into pure need. She pulled back a few inches.

  “I have a present for you, too.”

  He groaned. “Honey, you don’t have to remind me. I’ve been thinking about nothing else all day.”

  He insinuated a hand into the bodice of her gown to cup a breast, much fuller since their daughter had arrived. She dug her nails into his biceps and let desire heat her blood and curl her toes. This time she could have him. The doctor had given them the proverbial green light. Tonight, after the baby went down. She shivered and pulled back another fraction.

  “Not that present, dummy.”

  “Then what’d you get me? Another hundred-dollar tie?”

  “Not even close.” But speaking of ties, she adjusted the muted charcoal silk number she’d picked out for him last week. “No, I took a new job.”

  She felt him tense under her. “What do you mean? What kind of new job.”

  “Teaching.”

  “Law?”

  She rolled her eyes. “No, basket-weaving. Of course, law, right here at the university.”

  “You’re not giving up your career for our family, are you? ’Cuz we talked about this. I won’t have you sacrifice more than me. You’ve already given up your practice for these past few months –”

  “So competitive, Sergeant.” When he didn’t laugh, she sobered. “No, that’s not what it’s about. My teaching schedule will definitely make motherhood more manageable than my law practice did, but that’s just an incredibly wonderful bonus.”

  He still looked suspicious. “And it’s not about me, or my job? Potential for conflict? Perception that it might hold me back or compromise me to have a wife in the criminal defense trenches?”

  She shook her head. “Nope. If that’s what it was about, I could drop the idea, couldn’t I? You already got the promotion.”

  He watched her with those steady, patient brown eyes. She knew there’d be no more questions. He’d just wait for her to expound on her reasons. He knew her too well.

  “It just feels right for me now. I needed to do what I did for all those years, and I feel like I honored the spirit of the system, always. But it’s time to do something different.”

  “You could cross the floor and work for the Province. You know how badly they’re hurting for Crown Prosecutors.”

  She smiled. “You think we have potential for conflict now? I can just see every decision I made being second-guessed, people always wondering how heavily influenced I was by my husband, the detective bureau sergeant.”

  He shrugged. “It wouldn’t be fatal.”

  “I know. If I wanted it badly enough, we could work it out, I expect. But what I really want to do, Sergeant, is indoctrinate a whole crop of bright young minds. I want to send them out there to safeguard the rights of the disadvantaged and the socially marginalized –”

  “Dear God, an army of them!”

  “– to prosecute accused persons in the right spirit, a spirit of seeking truth. To uphold our laws from the bench as judges. I want to do my part to make it a better system.”

  “Okay. Works for me. Now, get up.”

  “Huh?”

  “Our song’s coming on. Plus, by my calculations, I have about one more minute before this nicely pressed, beautifully tailored suit I put on for this occasion starts looking like I slept in it. So let’s dance.”

  Smiling radiantly, she moved into his arms and they swayed together, their silhouettes merged in the twilight.

  Lifting his head, Bandicoot whined softly. He should go over there and take a chunk out of his master for manhandling his mistress like that. On the other hand, she didn’t seem to mind too much. Besides, he had a new job now. Dropping his head onto his paws, he went back to watching the infant kicking happily in the mosquito-netted bassinet.