“Okay, truce,” Morgan said, shifting his phone to his other hand. He didn’t want the sound of his voice to carry and alert Krys until he knew what, if anything, he was going to hear. Now was not the time to upset her in any way. “I’m calling to find out if there’s been any headway made in finding out who was responsible for the Claire Williams shooting.”
He heard Fredericks chuckle and knew the man did have something to tell him. “Well, as a matter of fact, I’ve got some good news and some bad news about that.” His partner paused, possibly for dramatic effect, and then said, “Oddly enough, it’s the same news.”
“Since when did ‘gibberish’ become a second language for you, Fredericks?”
“Look, you want to hear this or not?” his partner asked. “Because I can just as easily hang up right now and leave you and that hot little journalist friend of yours hanging.”
Morgan rolled his eyes. He had forgotten how touchy his partner could be at times. It was the result of feeling as if he was on the outside, looking in when it came to the Cavanaughs. “Sorry, what’s this dual news of yours?”
Fredericks paused in order to give the moment its due, then declared, “We found the person who killed that woman in the park.”
Morgan came to attention. Just like that? This seemed too easy. “You’re sure it’s the killer?”
“No, I’m making this up because I want to leave the precinct early. Yes, I’m sure,” he snapped, stressing the point.
“Why didn’t you call me as soon as you found this out?”
“I just did,” Fredericks informed him. “I just literally found this out and finished verifying the information.”
Morgan assumed that this was the good news. “So, what’s the bad news?” he asked.
“The bad news is that it turns out this execution, so to speak, has nothing to do with the attempts on the journalist’s life,” Fredericks told him.
Rather than ask Fredericks a bunch of questions that would either make his partner irritable or wind up sending Fredericks off track, he let his partner explain, at his own pace, how he had come to that conclusion.
“Go on,” Morgan urged.
“Age-old story,” Fredericks told him. Then, after a pregnant pause, he said, “Her boyfriend killed her. That is, her ex-boyfriend,” Fredericks clarified. “According to the story, they were having some problems and she was looking to leave him three months ago. According to a restraining order she filed, he was controlling and had become abusive. Anyway, she got her chance to get away from him when she became part of that miracle drug test group. She used that to have some time away from him and then, when the testing was over, she found the courage she needed to tell him that she’d decided to move on.”
This was all new information, Morgan thought. Krys had given him no indication that she’d even known the murder victim had a boyfriend. “I’m assuming that he didn’t take it very well.”
“You can say that again,” his partner told him with a mirthless laugh. “It turns out that this was a classic case of ‘if I can’t have her, nobody can.’ Thompson gave her one last chance to come back to him, said that all would be forgiven if she did. When she refused, he decided to just bide his time and when the opportunity presented itself, he killed her.”
Morgan thought there was just one flaw in the narrative. “CSI said it was the work of a sniper.”
“It was,” Fredericks agreed.
“But I thought you just said—”
Fredericks talked right over him. “With a renewed purpose in his life, Thompson put in an inordinate amount of time at the rifle range learning how to become a marksman. According to the guy who runs the place,” Fredericks told him, “he became pretty damn good. In typical stalker fashion, he knew her routine, so it was no big deal for him to lie in wait and pick her off that morning.”
Morgan thought of the surveillance videos he had reviewed. “You have proof of this?”
“Proof?” Fredericks echoed. “When we confronted Thompson about his actions, he bragged about it. Said he’d been waiting for someone to put the pieces together.” Morgan’s partner paused, then said, “So, while we now have our killer in custody, we still don’t have a viable suspect for whoever is trying to kill your journalist.”
“She’s not my journalist,” Morgan corrected him. There was no point in getting ahead of himself until he knew how Krys felt about what had happened between them. “And her name is Krys,” he told Fredericks.
The man went along with the correction. “Yeah, her.” Fredericks sighed. “The fact of the matter is that I don’t know if I should put this in the ‘win’ column or if I should apologize because this solution now puts you back at square one.”
That made two of them. “Well, thanks for the update,” he told Fredericks. “Let me know if you find out anything else.” With that, he hung up.
He really didn’t look forward to telling Krys that it now looked as if Jacobs might be innocent, at least of hiring someone to eliminate Claire. It also might mean that the CEO wasn’t guilty of paying someone to attempt to do the same thing to her.
So who the hell was out there, trying to kill her?
For the moment, he was extremely grateful for his uncle’s party. At least that would get her mind off all of this for the space of a day.
“You look as if you’ve got something on your mind,” Krys said the minute she walked out of her bedroom and looked at his face. “Let me guess,” she declared. “The party’s been called off.”
He shook his head. “No.”
Glancing down at her outfit, Krys said, “You don’t like the dress.”
She was wearing a soft, light gray-blue dress that clung to her body like an old friend—the way he wanted to. “No, I love the dress,” he told her, his eyes taking in every square inch of her. “Although I have to admit that I’d also like the chance to peel it off you—slowly.”
“You would, huh?” And then she completely threw him by asking, “Does your thinking that way make us a thing, a couple?”
He congratulated himself on his quick recovery. “It makes us anything you want us to be,” he told her.
She sighed. “That is a typical vague male response, you realize that, don’t you?”
“Well, in my defense,” he told her, “it’s only vague because I don’t want to spook you or have you running for the hills.”
Her eyes gave nothing away. “And if I want to?”
He didn’t know if she was baiting him, or if she was giving him her honest reaction. “That is your right,” he told her, although it cost him. “And we’ll talk about it,” he had to add, “but only after we go to Uncle Andrew’s get-together and after we find that killer who is out there, roaming the streets of Aurora, waiting to get another crack at you.”
That was rather a long to-do list, she thought. Once it was out of the way, that just left the two of them with nothing more to deal with than each other.
“I must say, you do come up with a compelling argument.” Krys paused for a moment, raising her eyes to his. She changed the subject by going back to her initial one. “So you don’t want me to change?”
“Not so much as a hair,” he told her, amusement curving his mouth.
She scrutinized Morgan, trying to unravel what he was telling her. “Are we still talking about the dress?”
His smile seemed to wiggle into every available crevice in her body. “I’ll leave that up to you to decide,” he told her. “Meanwhile,” he glanced at his watch, “we’d better get going.”
“I thought you said that we didn’t have to be there at any specific time,” she reminded Morgan.
“We don’t,” he agreed. “However, the later we get there, the harder it is to find someplace to park—unless you don’t mind taking a tour of Uncle Andrew’s development—from the other end of it—and it is a very long de
velopment.”
Krys nodded. “Okay, you’ve talked me into it,” she told him. Glancing down at herself one final time, she said, “I guess I’m ready.”
He gestured for her to walk ahead of him.
Krys did, then turned around to lock her front door. Getting into his car, she said, “By the way, who were you talking to?”
The question came out of the blue and caught him off guard for a moment. He had already made up his mind to put off telling her about the person who killed Claire until they got back from the party. “When?”
“Just now, before I came out of my room,” she told him.
“I didn’t think you heard me. You must have ears like a bat,” Morgan commented.
Krys laughed. “One of the requirements of being a freelance journalist is to be able to hear people talking to one another practically a mile away.”
Morgan nodded. “Apparently.” Okay, here went nothing. “Well, I was going to wait until today was over to tell you because I wasn’t sure how you were going to take this.”
That definitely aroused her curiosity, not to mention that it sent a chill down her spine. “Okay, now you have to tell me,” she said, repeating and stressing the word “now.” She looked at him expectantly, waiting.
“Claire Williams wasn’t killed by someone that Lawrence Jacobs hired to do her in,” Morgan told her.
“How do you know that?”
“Simple,” he said. “Because it turns out she was killed by her jealous, possessive ex-boyfriend.”
Stunned, she stared at Morgan. She hadn’t even known that there was a jealous ex-boyfriend in the picture. Claire hadn’t said anything to lead her to believe that, but now that she thought about it, it would explain the very faint purple bruise on the woman’s neck. Claire had almost succeeded in covering it up with makeup.
Still, Krys pressed, “Are you sure?” She was having trouble wrapping her head around the scenario. Claire had seemed so calm, so self-possessed. “Who told you there was a jealous boyfriend?”
“My partner, Fredericks, of all people, and yes, he’s sure,” he told her before she could ask. “Turns out the guy, Jason Thompson, didn’t even try to hide it. According to Fredericks, he confessed. He even boasted about the fact.” Morgan slanted a glance in Krys’s direction as he turned down another street. “You do know what this means, don’t you?”
Krys’s shoulders all but slumped. She knew damn well what this meant. It blew up her theory as well as her hard work. “That Jacobs didn’t have her killed. And, extrapolating on that, in all probability he might not be the one trying to have me killed.” She sighed, then looked at Morgan. “But someone certainly is,” she insisted, adding, “I didn’t just imagine those attempts.”
“You don’t have to convince me,” Morgan told her, even though initially he had had to be convinced. “I was there to witness the second attempt on your life and before that, I saw what someone did to your car window.”
She rolled the events over in her mind. “You know, suddenly I don’t feel very festive.” She shifted in her seat, looking at Morgan. “I won’t be any good at your family’s gathering. Why don’t you just drop me off somewhere and I’ll get a ride home?”
Was she kidding? “Right, like that’s going to happen,” Morgan scoffed. “And you’re wrong about not fitting in at the family gathering. This is exactly the right time for you to be there. Trust me, my family is perfect when it comes to getting your mind off this whole thing. In addition to that, you will be totally surrounded by your very own blue wall,” he pointed out. “More than half the people at Uncle Andrew’s gathering are on the Aurora police force—and absolutely none of the people attending would allow anything to happen to you, I guarantee it,” he told her. “You would be safer there than you would probably be any other place in the entire universe.”
Krys shook her head, surrendering. Her wide, grateful smile was a sight to see. “I bet you were on the debate team when you were in high school.”
Morgan shook his head. “No.” When she seemed surprised by his answer, he said, “College.”
She laughed. “You also have a very perverse sense of humor.”
“Guilty as charged,” he acknowledged. “So,” he looked at her for a moment, “did I manage to talk you into attending?”
“If I said no, you’d probably handcuff me to the inside of your car and take me over there anyway.”
Morgan merely smiled, but didn’t say anything one way or another.
She dropped the subject. Instead, she had another question she wanted answered. “So, did Fredericks give you any more details? Tell me everything.”
He told her what he knew. “The ex-boyfriend took lessons on the rifle range. From what I gathered, he wanted to be letter-perfect because he didn’t want to miss his ‘target’ and take a chance on her running away. I guess that when he gave her one last chance to get back with him and she turned him down, she wound up signing her own death warrant.”
Krys sighed as she shook her head. “Dating certainly has gotten much more complicated in this supposedly ‘enlightened’ age,” she murmured under her breath.
Morgan laughed. “Yes, it was so much simpler when fathers got to hold out for horses, trading their eligible daughters for fine specimens of horse flesh.”
Krys looked at him. “What’s so funny?”
“My dad could have gotten rich on my sisters,” Morgan answered her.
“I’m sure that they would love to hear that,” she told him. She gave him an innocent smile. “You’ll be sure to point them out to me when we get there, won’t you?”
Morgan momentarily glanced in her direction. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing.”
She became the soul of innocence as she said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You’re trying to get me to skip my uncle’s party and take you back to your house.” The smile on his lips was deliberately pasted on. “I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you,” he told her. “Besides,” he announced as he pulled into the development and made a right turn, “We’re here.”
She leaned forward, looking all around the well-manicured area.
“This is nice,” Krys commented as Morgan wove his way through the well-cared-for streets lined with majestic trees that were bowing their heads toward one another, forming impressive arches.
“This development is one of the oldest ones in Aurora,” he told her. There was no mistaking the pride in his voice. He thought a moment. “It was built almost fifty-three years ago.”
“You’re kidding,” she said in surprise. “Everything looks so new and clean.”
The development she lived in was only seven years old. At that age, she expected the area to look as new as it did, but hearing how old this one was really surprised her.
“The people in Aurora as a whole know how to take care of things.” He was proud of the fact that there wasn’t a single part of Aurora that could be singled out as needing a lot of work or upkeep. “There’s a lot of pride in the community around here.”
“Apparently,” Krys acknowledged. She continued taking the scenery in. “I can see why my sister wanted to live here.”
“You live here, too,” Morgan reminded her.
“Only because she settled here,” she confessed. They didn’t see each other much because of her own work, but just knowing that Nik was close by was enough for her peace of mind. “Besides, we are each other’s only family.”
Not anymore, Morgan thought.
“We’re here,” he announced out loud. He had managed to find a space that was near the front.
“We certainly are,” Krys murmured, seeing all the cars that lined both sides of the street and seemed to bleed even further into the development.
The number of cars overwhelmed her.
Chapter 20
> Krys was standing just half a step behind him at former chief of police Andrew Cavanaugh’s front door. Morgan heard her take in a deep breath just as he rang the doorbell.
Glancing at her over his shoulder, Morgan saw that she had drawn back her shoulders as well, making him think of a soldier who was getting ready to encounter the opposing side.
Leaning his head in toward her, Morgan whispered into Krys’s ear, “Remember, they don’t bite,” just as the front door opened.
With everything in the kitchen either cooking, grilling or having already been prepared, the meal Andrew intended to serve to his family was completely under control. The chief had taken the opportunity to step away from his oversized kitchen, a kitchen that had already been remodeled and expanded three times since he had retired and begun to indulge in his latest passion.
The very surprised look on the family patriarch’s face when he opened the front door dissipated almost immediately.
“You’re right,” Andrew declared, sparing a quick glance toward his nephew. “She really does look like her sister.” Giving Krys a quick embrace, the family patriarch told the young woman, “Welcome to my home, Krystyna.”
Krys smiled. There was something about Andrew Cavanaugh that had made her feel instantly at ease.
“Everyone calls me Krys,” she told him, then added with whimsical humor, “Sometimes they call me Nik.”
Andrew laughed. “I bet that gets old,” he sympathized.
“It does,” she agreed, “but only sometimes.”
“Well please, come in, come in,” Andrew invited, stepping back and clearing the threshold for the latest arrivals. “Half the family’s already here,” he told Morgan, then turned toward Krys. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard from your sister yet.”
“Actually, I did get a postcard from Hawaii the day before yesterday,” Krys told the chief. “It said, quote, ‘Don’t wish you were here.’” There was a wide grin on her face.
Delighted, Andrew laughed. “I would have been surprised if she had left out the word ‘don’t.’”
Cavanaugh In Plain Sight (Cavanaugh Justice Book 42) Page 18
