by Pandora Pine
“Thought I was going to forget about that, huh?” Ronan bit his lower lip to keep from laughing. Days later he was still turned on as all fuck when he replayed Tennyson calling him Daddy while they were getting it on in the kitchen.
“You’re just so dominant at work. I thought maybe you’d like hearing it,” Ten admitted sheepishly.
“And since you actually had been a bad boy, lying to me about your gift…” Ronan trailed off. He’d wanted to ask Tennyson about why he’d lied about losing his gift and now, with another thirty minutes to go in the car together, it seemed like as good a time as any to ask about it.
“I never meant to keep the truth from you.” Guilt laced Tennyson’s voice. “I kept working up the courage to tell you and every time the moment came to spill my guts, I just lost my nerve.”
Ronan could understand that, to a point. “What did you think my reaction would be?” This was the actual heart of the matter. Did Ten think he was a monster who’d kick him to the curb because, as he’d said during his meltdown, he wasn’t “special” anymore?
“I don’t know, Ronan. I was scared. My gift has always set me apart from other people. I used to tell myself that it made me special. Now that it’s gone, I’m just ordinary.” Ten sighed.
“That couldn’t be further from the truth. Even without your powers, you are extraordinary. You really have no idea what an amazing man you are, Ten. None of the things about you that I fell in love with have anything to do with you being psychic and being able to speak to dead people.”
Ten turned to him with a look of shock on his face. “Do you really mean that?”
“Cross my heart, babe.” It was true. “I mean I’m not gonna lie, there have been a few times when your gift has been a pain in the ass, but it sure as hell wasn’t the reason I fell in love with you. You are caring and sweet, and you’ve been there for me through all of the shit we’ve been through with the Michael Frye and Justin Wilson cases. Ten, no other man would have stood by my side like you did with bullets flying or after they’d been kidnapped.” Ten had valid reasons to walk away from him and their relationship twice now, and he’d stayed.
“I’m sorry I lied by not telling you what happened in Maine, but I’m more sorry that I thought you’d abandon me when I need you the most.” Ten set his hand on top of Ronan’s on the Mustang’s steering wheel.
Ronan linked their fingers together. “You’re forgiven. Now, I know the massage did wonders for your tired body and your attitude, but have you tried using your gift since yesterday?” Ronan was almost hesitant to ask.
Ten shook his head. “I haven’t even tried to use it. Bertha said that I needed a break, so I’m taking one.”
Ronan frowned, but stayed silent. They were almost to Maxine and Hope Owens’ house. The whole point in coming out here today was to interview the women to figure out which one of them killed Harold. Without Tennyson’s gift, that was going to be a lot harder.
“I don’t need to be psychic to see that you’re disappointed that I won’t be able to talk to Harold or use my psychic abilities to figure out which one of the women actually did it.” Ten gave Ronan’s hand a squeeze. “You’ve said a hundred times before that cold cases get solved because of the passage of time. Witnesses sometimes get sick of keeping their secrets. Maybe that’s what will happen with one or both of these women. I may not have my sixth sense, but my other five are working just fine.”
“So we’re doing this the old-fashioned way?” Ronan asked with a grin.
“Just like Starsky and Hutch.” Ten grinned back.
“You’ve sure got the hair to be Starsky!” Ronan laughed.
“Guess that makes you Hutch by default.” Ten pressed a kiss to Ronan’s neck.
“Thank Christ we’re not solving crimes in bell bottoms.”
“I don’t know, you’d look pretty hot in bell bottoms and a fur vest.” Ten laughed.
“I’d look hotter out of them.” Ronan pressed a kiss to the back of their joined hands. Truth be told, so long as Tennyson kept laughing like he was now, he’d wear anything.
11
Tennyson
When Ronan pulled up in front of the modest-looking two-story Cape Cod-style house, it was on the tip of Tennyson’s tongue to ask if Ronan was at the right address. He guessed 1.2 million dollars didn’t buy a whole lot of house on the Cape these days. “Seriously, this it?”
Ronan frowned. “I was thinking the same thing. Looks pretty small for the hefty price tag and it’s not even on the beach. There’s another street full of houses between here and the ocean.”
“I bet you can see the water from the second story balconies.” Ten pointed up. “It’s only a two-minute walk and you’re on the sand, but still. I wouldn’t pay all that money for this view.”
“You ready to do this?” Ronan reached out for Ten’s hand, giving it a squeeze.
Ten was ready. He could do this. He’d spent most of the ride down making a list of questions. Last night, he’d read through one of Ronan’s old police academy handbooks about interrogation procedures. He was as ready as he was going to get without his gift, anyway.
Walking beside Ronan, Ten caught a whiff of the salt air. Living here, steps from the beach in a house bought with insurance money, must be like being on permanent summer vacation. Ten couldn’t help wondering if that kind of guilt ate away at a person over time. Before he could ask Ronan about it, he was ringing the doorbell.
“Coming!” a voice sing-songed from inside the house. An older woman came to the screen door and stopped short when she saw Tennyson and Ronan. “I’m sorry, boys, I already know Jesus. I’m not interested in hearing about becoming a Mormon or a Jehovah or whatever else you’re selling.”
Maxine Owens looked much younger than her seventy-seven years. Her brunette hair was obviously courtesy of a bottle, while her face was virtually wrinkle-free. Ten would hazard a guess that the woman didn’t smoke or drink. She was dressed in a cute aqua capri pant set with matching top. Her only vice seemed to be that she’d possibly bashed her husband’s skull in with a piece of lumber.
Ronan flashed his badge. “We’re not selling anything, Mrs. Owens. I’m Detective Ronan O’Mara from the Cold Case Unit of the Boston Police Department. This is my partner, Tennyson Grimm.”
“Ma’am.” Tennyson nodded his head. “We’re here to speak with you about your husband’s murder.”
Maxine Owens shrugged. “Well, with all the new-fangled DNA technology and television shows about Cold Case Squads, I should have known this day would come.” She rolled her sharp, dark eyes. “Come on in.”
Tennyson was impressed by the great room he stepped into, which was painted in a soothing shade of yellow. Bright Caribbean paintings adorned the walls. It seemed that in addition to moving on up in terms of neighborhoods, the Owens’ women had also done a spot of traveling.
“Is your daughter, Hope, home? We’d like to speak with her as well.” Ronan’s eyes never left Maxine Owens. Ten couldn’t help but wonder if he was on guard for another hidden two-by-four.
“I’ll let her know you’re here. Would either of you like some lemonade?” Maxine was on her way out of the room before either of them could respond.
“This is quite a house,” Ten whispered.
“I was thinking the same thing,” Ronan agreed. “Furniture is expensive and the art on the walls is the kind of thing you’d pick up in a cruise port of call, rather than online or at some art show in a hotel ballroom.”
“This house was built in 1994, but look at the kitchen. Those are quartz countertops and the cabinet doors are glass. There’s no way those are original to the house,” Ten added.
“Look at you.” Ronan grinned. “Guess you were paying attention to more than Nate Berkus’ ass when we were marathoning his show last month.”
Ten rolled his eyes. Oh, he’d been staring at Nate’s ass all right, at his cute husband’s ass too, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t pay attention to the cool design e
lements at the same time. He loved the way Nate and Jeremiah worked together. It reminded him of his and Ronan’s working relationship. Only neither one of them was pulling down six-figure salaries.
“Here we go,” Maxine Owens announced. She was carrying a with a lemonade pitcher and matching glasses. Her daughter, Hope, was trailing behind her, looking none too happy to see them.
Hope was in her mid-fifties and didn’t look to be aging as well as her mother. She was about fifty pounds overweight and looked like she was long overdue to have her grey roots touched up. She was openly scowling at Tennyson and Ronan.
They all settled around the dining room table with Maxine pouring lemonade for everyone. Ronan went to go take a sip from his cup patterned with lemons when Ten kicked him under the table.
“What do you want?” Hope asked. “We answered all the questions Boston’s finest put to us twenty years ago. Why are you dragging this all up again now? My father is dead. Why can’t you let him rest in peace?”
Maxine made the sign of the cross.
It would have been laughable if her husband’s skull hadn’t been caved in too badly for there to have been an open casket at the funeral.
“We’re dragging this all up again, Hope, because no one ever paid the price for killing your father. Doesn’t that make you mad? Like you said, it’s been twenty years and whoever did this has been walking around free. He or she has spent twenty Christmases with their family, added twenty more candles to their birthday cake while you father spent those years cold in his grave.”
Hope shrugged. “My father was an asshole. He was a dick to me and my mother for as long as I can remember. The person that killed my father did both of us a favor.”
Jesus Christ, Ten hoped he didn’t go into cardiac arrest during their time here. This bitch would step over him on her way to the freezer to get another Klondike bar instead of calling 9-1-1 for an ambulance. “Maybe you did yourself a favor, Hope,” Ten suggested casually.
“Me?” Hope rolled her eyes. “Please. We lived in a shitty row house in Dorchester. Where the hell would I have gotten a piece of wood?”
“There was construction going on around the corner,” Ronan said. “They were refurbishing an apartment building. Place like that has a lot of old two-by-fours just hanging around.”
“Jesus Christ!” Hope burst out laughing. “That construction site was surrounded by like a ten-foot-high chain link fence. Do I look like the kind of girl who goes around climbing fences in my spare time? Come on, look at me. I’m not Spiderman.”
Actually, Hope did not look like the kind of girl who climbed chain link to hunt for a murder weapon. She looked more like the kind of girl who spent half of her paycheck in the ice cream aisle of the supermarket, but that was Ten being bitchy. If he had to guess, her murder weapon of choice would have been the largest kitchen knife she could have gotten her hands on.
Ronan turned to Maxine.
“Don’t look at me. I’m not exactly the kind of woman to go scaling fences either. I was a middle school English teacher with a spotless record. Not some dime novel floozy you’d see on an episode of Forensic Files.”
What Tennyson would give to speak to Harold Owens. Boy, what a story that man must have to tell. Hell, maybe he bashed in his own skull just so he wouldn’t have to spend another miserable Christmas with these two. “Just for the record, tell us what happened on that Christmas Day.”
Hope rolled her eyes. Again. “We woke up around 7am. Dad always banged pots and pans in the kitchen until we got out of bed. We opened presents and then had breakfast, some egg and sausage casserole. Then, my brother, Shawn and his wife, Debbie, came down with their daughter, Ophelia. We opened presents with them and had prime rib, baked potatoes, and Yorkshire pudding. Then dessert. It started to snow, so they left early. Mom and I cleaned up. Dad fell asleep in his recliner and we watched that old movie Holiday Inn with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. You know, the one where Bing sings White Christmas.” Hope shrugged. “Then we went to bed. Dad was still asleep in his chair, so we left him there. I watched TV in my room and must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew, my mother was screaming.”
Tennyson couldn’t believe the amount of detail in this account of the story. “Hope, how the hell do you remember all of those details twenty years after the fact? The breakfast? What you had for dinner? Holiday Inn?”
“I guess you don’t have traditions in your family, Tennyson. We have them in ours.” Hope’s voice was full on bitch-mode. “We make that egg casserole every year. Same goes for the prime rib. That movie is my mother’s favorite. She loves the dancing and the music by Irving Berlin. As for the screaming, that’s a sound I’ll never forget as long as I live or until I get the Alzheimer’s that runs in the family.” Hope folded her arms over her stomach and stared Ten down.
“One last question, Maxine. Who do you think killed your husband?”
Maxine shrugged. “You know, detective, you’re the first person who ever asked me that question. Everyone else from the BPD assumed it was either me or Hope who killed Harold.”
“But it wasn’t, was it?” Ronan leaned in closer to hear her answer.
Maxine smiled. It was terrifying and fascinating and full of teeth. “Of course it wasn’t. It was my son, Shawn.”
12
Ronan
Two hours later, Ronan was still stunned over his interview with the Owens women. He’d read the case file a dozen times and Maxine had been right, no one had ever asked her or Hope who they thought had killed Harold.
When he’d asked her why she thought it was her son, her answer had been, “Well who the hell else could it have been?”
Ronan had to admit, the salty old hag had a point. There was no forced entry and aside from Hope and Maxine, Shawn was the only other person who had a key to the Dorchester row house.
To the best of his knowledge, Shawn had only been interviewed as a witness, but never interrogated as a suspect. Ronan hadn’t really read his interview with a fine-toothed comb as the brother was never really the focus of the investigation. He’d get right on that the minute they got back to Boston tomorrow.
Although now that he’d gotten a chance to see the hotel Tennyson had booked for them, he wasn’t in as much of a hurry to get back to Boston and the Owens case file as he would have been.
The hotel was called Sand Dollar Shoal. The building was a sea captain’s house that was turned into a hotel after the Great Depression. The namesake shoal was just offshore and was responsible for countless shipwrecks before the house was built with a lighthouse tower on top of it. The private beach the property sat on was famous for the sand dollars that washed ashore. Tennyson had spent the afternoon collecting them and pieces of perfectly tumbled sea glass from the beach.
After they’d had a long, leisurely shower, they’d come down to have dinner on the deck of the hotel that overlooked the ocean. Each of the tables was set with a lantern, while dozens more crisscrossed overhead.
“Earth to Ronan!” Tennyson was waving a hand in front of his face. “Gregor wants to know how we liked the crab cakes and seafood chowder.”
Ronan snapped back to the present. A huge, bald man dressed in a pristine white chef’s coat with the name “Gregor” stitched onto it was standing at their table grinning at him. He looked big and scary enough to have been a Navy SEAL in a past life.
“Yeah, and I want to know how you liked my whoopie pies! I’m Henry, Gregor’s son. It’s nice to meet you!” The little boy, who looked like he was about seven years old, hopped up into the chair next to Tennyson. “My uncle Presley told me that you’re Carson and Truman’s friends. How are they? Do you talk to dead people too just like Carson? Carson said I have a bright future ahead of me.” Henry smiled brightly at Ten and Ronan as if to prove Carson’s pronouncement.
Tennyson and Ronan burst out laughing. “We are Carson and Truman’s friends. I’m Ronan and this is Tennyson. The food was amazing, Gregor. Please join us.”
Gregor smiled. “I have to get back to the kitchen, but if there’s anything you need, please let my chef-in-training know.” Gregor ruffled a hand through Henry’s hair. “Don’t stay too long okay. It’s date night.”
“Okay, Daddy.” Henry offered Gregor a gap-toothed smile. “So do you talk to dead people too?” Henry looked awestruck, as if he were meeting Spiderman or Thor.
“I’m a detective,” Ronan said. “I catch bad guys when I go to work.”
“I’m the one who talks to ghosts,” Tennyson offered, sounding unsure of himself.
“Me too!” Henry was all smiles now. “Last year, I met Captain Benson. He’s the man who built this house for his lover, Jeremiah, back in the 1800s. He had a message to deliver to us and I was the only one who could hear him.”
“Henry, that’s fascinating. What happened after the captain delivered the message?” Tennyson was the one looking awestruck now.
“He saved the hotel from Hurricane Zeke. Do you remember that storm?” Henry sounded much older than his years.
“I sure do.” There had been a lot of rain in Boston, but nothing like the damage that had happened here on the Cape.
“I gotta go now. There’s whoopie pies that I need to help my Daddy frost and get ready for the midnight snack trays. It was nice meeting another person who can talk to spirits.” Henry held out his hand to shake with Tennyson.
While he was shaking hands with Ronan, Ten pulled a business card out of his wallet. “If you and your family ever come up to Salem, stop by our store. I’m sure Carson and Truman would love to see you again.”
“Okay! Bye guys! Have fun on your date night!” Henry waved and dashed off into the hotel.
“Maybe we should order a midnight snack tray.” Ronan half-whispered. “I know someone who’s gonna work up one hell of an appetite between now and then.”
“Oh yeah?” Tennyson grinned. “Who’s that?”
“This guy.” Ronan pointed to himself. “I plan on spending the rest of the night making you feel so good, Ten.”
