Cuff Me

by Lauren Layne

  Vincent lifted his head. “I’ve never been good at that stuff.”

  “Nobody is,” his father said gruffly.

  “No, I mean—”

  “I know what you mean,” Tony interrupted. “You think that because you’re quiet and a loner, that because you don’t wear your heart on your sleeve, and that because you sometimes overthink things to death—”

  “I’m next in the naming Vin’s flaws game,” Luc whispered to Anth.

  Tony ignored his youngest son and pressed on. “You think that because you’re hyper-rational and prefer facts to fancy and data to whimsy that you’re not capable of love. That you don’t deserve it.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Vin saw his brothers exchange a glance, but Vincent never looked away from his father, torn between wanting to argue and desperately, desperately wanting to believe what his father was saying.

  “Dude, is that what this is all about?” Anth asked, his voice kinder than Vincent was accustomed to. “You think that just because you don’t show feelings that you don’t have them?”

  “This conversation is ridiculous.” His voice was gruff. He started to push out of the booth, but Luc grabbed his forearm.

  “Stay.”

  Luc had abruptly shifted from Luc, charming younger brother, to Luc, badass cop, and Vincent found himself doing exactly as he was told.

  Vin swallowed, oddly nervous. “I guess I’ve always just figured that something was missing. That some part of me was dead. Or was never alive, or something.”

  “Why the hell would you think that?” his father asked.

  “I don’t know how to connect with people. People don’t… I don’t know how to make people like me.”

  What Vin really meant was that he didn’t know how to make people love him. It was an uncomfortably vulnerable moment, and judging from the way his father and brothers looked away for a moment, as though to give privacy, he suspected they knew what he meant.

  Luc cleared his throat. “So just to be clear… you don’t think you can love Jill, because you don’t think she’ll ever love you?”

  They’d shifted verbs. Like to love. But Vin didn’t bother to correct his brother. Nor did he confirm his brother’s assessment.

  But it was spot-on.

  It was the reason he froze when she’d asked if he could love her. If he could ever do forever with her.

  He wanted that. Of course he wanted it. Had always wanted it just about as long as she’d been a part of his life.

  But he didn’t know how to put it out there. Because he knew that if it was one-sided… if she didn’t love him back, or changed her mind…

  He didn’t think he could bear it.

  “Vin, listen—” Anth said, sitting forward.

  Vincent groaned. “You’re going to go Big Brother on me, aren’t you?”

  Anthony ignored this and shifted attention to Luc. “Luca. When you told Ava how you felt about her. How’d it feel?”

  “I nearly shit my pants,” Luc said cheerfully, shoveling in another bite of chili.

  Anth nodded. “Same with me and Maggie. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, putting myself out there like that. And the best. Easily the best. Dad. What about with you and Mom?”

  Tony blew out a breath and looked away. All three of his sons looked at him, waiting.

  “It was a long time ago,” he said with a wave of his hand.

  “Dad,” Luc said in a coaxing tone. “Do it for our emotionally stunted Vinnie here…”

  His father’s eyes flicked to Vincent’s for a fraction of a second. “I threw up. Before I told her how I felt. And after.”

  “There you go, big guy,” Anth said with a clap on his dad’s shoulder. “You see, Vin, there’s no such thing as easy. You’re not damaged. You’re not broken. You’re just male.”

  Vincent scratched his cheek. They made it sound so easy.

  Also, terrifying. Lots of body functions involved.

  “If you can’t tell her, how about you start by telling us?” Luc said. “Do you love Jill?”

  Vin forced himself to look his brother in the eyes. “Of course.”

  Luc smiled. “See? Easy.”

  Vin glared.

  “Look,” Anth said, “the worst that can happen is she guts your insides. Leaves you a hollow shell of a man, but according to you, you’re already there, so—”

  “Okay,” Vin said, standing before Luc could stop him. “Good talk, guys.”

  “You going after her?” Luc called after him.

  Had his father not been there, Vincent would have shot the finger over his shoulder, but instead he just kept walking.

  “I better see that girl at brunch on Sunday!” Tony bellowed.

  Vin didn’t respond to that either.

  They’d given him plenty to think about. And a part of him knew they were right.

  But the other part of him was itchy. Tense. As though something were wrong, but that he couldn’t place his finger on.

  He rolled his shoulders, tried to shake it off as he walked back toward the precinct, but the feeling got worse.

  Maybe it was all this talk about Jill, and the way that they’d left things. The things he needed to tell her…

  He pulled out his cell phone and slowed to a stop in the middle of the busy sidewalk as he saw that he had two missed calls from her.

  Vin hadn’t heard from her in days, and she’d called him twice in a twenty-minute span.

  The itchy feeling grew worse. The way it did when he knew he was close to the killer, but didn’t know the who.

  He resumed walking and called Jill back.

  It rang a handful of times before voice mail picked up.

  He walked faster and called again.

  Voice mail.

  “Damn it,” he said so sharply that a handful of people glared at him.

  He ignored them. Called Jill again. “Come on, Henley—”

  Nothing. No answer.

  Vincent made it back to the precinct in record time, ignoring the handful of colleagues that spoke to him either in greeting or with a request.

  He went to his desk only long enough to grab his car keys out of the top drawer and then he was off again, all but running toward his car.

  He had no good reason to think something was wrong. She could be in the shower. Or on a walk. Or more likely, screening his calls.

  But he sped all the way to her place.

  Just in case.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  The second Dorothy Birch greeted Jill at the door of her lovely, if modest, apartment, Jill felt like an idiot.

  The woman was wearing white slacks, a pale purple blouse, and old-fashioned pearls. Her shoes were the orthopedic kind Jill’s grandparents had both used to wear.

  Her expression was polite, but also bewildered.

  It was so not the face of a killer.

  “Hello, Detective Henley. How lovely to see you again. Won’t you please come in?”

  “Thanks for agreeing to see me,” Jill said, feeling awkward as she let herself in.

  “I was just making some tea. Would you care for some?”

  “That’d be nice, thanks,” Jill said with a small smile.

  Dorothy made a small gesture toward the living room, and Jill went to sit in the same spot she had last time she’d been here.

  Only this time there was no Vincent.

  She was extra glad she hadn’t called him now. Vin would never have mocked her for being wrong—but it would have been embarrassing all the same.

  “I’m surprised to see you,” Dorothy called from the kitchen. “I was under the impression the police had closed the case.”

  “We’ve had to expand our focus to other things,” Jill called back, fiddling with a fussy flower arrangement on the table. It made her think of the flowers Vin had bought her, and she stopped. “But all of us wish we could get a break.”

  Dorothy emerged from the kitchen, holding the tray with the easy walk
of someone much younger.

  “And have you gotten a break? Is that why you’re here?”

  Jill took a breath. “I… I don’t know. But I was doing some reading today and wanted to get your opinion on something.”

  “Of course,” Dorothy said. “Sugar, if I remember correctly?”

  Jill nodded, smiling in thanks as Dorothy dropped in a sugar cube and handed Jill the delicate teacup.

  Jill used the adorably tiny spoon to dissolve the sugar cube as she considered her next approach.

  “Where’s that handsome partner of yours?” Dorothy asked.

  Jill took a sip of tea and tried to hide her wince, wondering if it would be inappropriate to ask for another sugar cube. One definitely wasn’t enough to cut the bitterness.

  “Working another case,” Jill replied.

  It was a risky move. If she at all thought Dorothy a suspect, she should have told her Vincent was on the way. Hell, that the whole NYPD was on the way.

  But then she’d run the risk of Dorothy feeling threatened. And if she did know something… if she’d done something… Jill needed the other woman relaxed.

  She took another sip of tea, bigger this time, hoping that if she drank this one fast enough, it would be easier to ask for extra sugar in the next round.

  “Ms. Birch—”

  “Dorothy.”

  Jill smiled. “Dorothy. I was going through old articles today—hoping to uncover an old feud we may have missed before, and I came across something curious.”

  “More tea?”

  “Oh—sure,” Jill said, holding out her cup. “And an extra sugar cube wouldn’t go amiss. I’ve got a sweet tooth.”

  Dorothy laughed. “Me too, dear. Me too.”

  Jill noticed the other woman’s hands shaking a bit as they took Jill’s cup, and she looked away, wanting to spare the other woman the indignity that old age sometimes had on the joints.

  “You and Lenora were from Torrence, Ohio?”

  “Yes, that’s right. Just about the tiniest town you can imagine. One butcher, one salon, one market… that sort of place.”

  “It sounds lovely,” Jill said with a smile.

  “It had its charms,” Dorothy said, handing Jill’s cup to her. Her hands were steadier now. “But both Lenora and I found we preferred the big city. So much energy here.”

  Jill nodded and took a sip of tea. Better. Much better. Honestly, why did people pretend that bitter tasted good? Coffee tasted better with sugar. Chocolate tasted better with sugar. Tea definitely tasted better with sugar.

  “Ms. Birch—Dorothy—did you know a Bill Shapiro back in your hometown?”

  Dorothy tilted her head. “I suppose it sounds familiar, but goodness, it’s been a long time. You have to remember, Lenora and I left Ohio for Los Angeles when I was only seventeen.”

  It was exactly the opening Jill needed. A way for her to close out this lead without ruffling feathers if she was wrong.

  “Because you both wanted to get into acting?”

  There was the tiniest of pauses. “Yes. We used to talk about it all the time.”

  Jill nodded. Then nodded again. For some reason her thoughts felt fuzzy. As though they were coming from the very, very back of her head.

  She took another sip of her tea and forced herself to concentrate. “You both auditioned for the role of Cora Mulroney, is that right?”

  Dorothy’s face had gone a bit taut. At least it seemed that way through Jill’s blurry vision.

  Wait… why was her vision blurry?

  “Yes, that’s right,” Dorothy was saying.

  “And you…” Jill’s teacup rattled to the table as she pressed a hand to her now-spinning head. “You… Bill Shapiro wrote an article—”

  Why couldn’t she keep any of this straight?

  “I used to have a golden Lab,” Dorothy said.

  A golden Lab? Like a dog? Why were they talking about a dog? Jill struggled to keep up, but couldn’t. Thinking felt hard. Like after too much tequila.

  “Jensen was his name. The sweetest dog you can imagine. But… he got old. I suppose we all do. They found cancer. Slow-growing, so I didn’t put him down right away, but toward the end he started to hurt a little, and I wasn’t ready to say good-bye.”

  Jill tried to make a noise. Tried to think. She couldn’t. She felt herself slump back against the couch and fixed her eyes on Dorothy, trying to put the pieces together.

  “They gave me some medication for him. Sedatives, to help him sleep. To make him comfortable.”

  Sedatives.

  That’s why she was foggy.

  Dorothy Birch had drugged her with dog medicine. It was so unbelievably inglorious that Jill wanted to rage, except that would take energy she didn’t have.

  “I didn’t mean to do it,” Dorothy was saying as she took another sip of her own tea. “I was just so darn angry, Detective. That was my role. I was supposed to be Cora Mulroney. I was supposed to be the star. But then she convinced me that she should get her break first. Because she was older. And that she’d help me get another role. A bigger, better one.”

  Dorothy’s laugh was brittle. “We all know how that goes, don’t we? I let it go. For years, I let it go. Let her have the spotlight. Told myself I didn’t want it. But then… then I couldn’t.”

  Dorothy’s voice faded to quiet, in a sort of crazy-person way. Or maybe that was Jill’s head, which wouldn’t stop spinning.

  She couldn’t see Dorothy anymore, and Jill had a moment of panic until she realized that she’d closed her eyes. Just for a moment. She was so tired.

  “Why?” Jill wasn’t sure she’d actually managed to speak the word, or if it just rattled around in her brain, but either Dorothy had heard her, or she was still rambling on, because she answered.

  “Lenora promised that we would go to the anniversary showing of A Love Song for Cora together. She was supposed to accept an award—some iconic woman in Hollywood nonsense—and she said she’d call me up on the stage. To give me the recognition I deserved. To acknowledge my sacrifice…”

  Jill heard Dorothy stand. Heard the soft pad of orthopedic shoes come closer, before a hand gently touched her head. “She decided not to go, Detective Henley. Jill. She said it sounded boring, and that she was just going to have her agent accept the award…”

  Stupid, was all Jill could think. What a stupid, petty reason to kill someone.

  “I hope you’ll be okay, Detective. I don’t really know what effect poor Jensen’s sedatives will have on you, but I certainly don’t want you to die. But… either way, honey, I’ll be long gone when you wake up, and I doubt you’ll be finding me. You’d be surprised how easily old people fly under the radar. People don’t see us.”

  Jill tried to make her mouth move. Tried to tell Dorothy Henley that she would find her. That she would make her pay for her crimes. That she would—

  She would—

  And then there was nothing.

  Only darkness.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  By the time Vincent bounded up the front steps to Jill’s apartment, he was completely beyond knocking.

  He’d called her at least a dozen times on the way over, and she hadn’t picked up once. If he barged in and found her mad, and screening his calls, fine. If he barged in and found her naked and in the bubble bath, fine. If he barged in and found her with another man…

  Not fine. Not fine at all.

  But they’d deal with it. He’d win her back.

  He just needed her to be okay.

  He knocked once with his fist even as he shoved his spare key into her lock and pushed the door open. “Jill! Henley, so help me, God—”

  She wasn’t there. He knew the moment that he stepped inside that Jill wasn’t in the apartment.

  Vincent checked anyway. Checked every corner. The tub, the bedroom.

  She wasn’t there.

  “Fuck.”

  He stood in the middle of her apartment, hands plowed into his hair as he tried
to think. Tried to tap into the strange buzzing that was roaring through him, trying to tell him… something.

  Something important.

  Vincent’s instincts were never wrong, and right now they were telling him that Jill was in trouble, and that she needed him, and he didn’t have a fucking clue—

  His eyes locked on the stack of papers on the living room floor.

  Jill always did her case research on her living room floor. Said it was where she thought best.

  Vincent fell on them like a dying man, but forced himself to pause before diving into the content. To remain perfectly still as he assessed.

  A quick scan of the stack in the middle showed the name Lenora Birch several times.

  No surprise there. He’d been doing some research on his own as well.

  But something about the way these were arranged—one big stack in the middle, two individual sheets on either side.

  As though she’d held one in each hand, separate from the pile.

  Slowly, Vincent picked up the papers on the right and left, separate from the main pile. Both were scanned newspaper articles. He read the older one first, silently cursing the terrible quality of the image because it took him twice as long.

  By the time he reached the end, his heart was pounding.

  The second article, the newer one, confirmed his fear.

  His Spidey sense—the one that had refused to kick in during the entire Lenora Birch case—was now going off in large, whooping alarms.

  He was on his feet and racing toward the door even as he raged out loud at an absent Jill. “Goddamn it, Henley, why didn’t you wait for me?”

  Vincent’s car was in motion even as he reached for the radio to call for backup.

  The uniforms would beat him there, but that was fine. As long as someone got to Jill, he didn’t care about anything else.

  Vincent’s breath was ragged as he sped all the way back to Manhattan.

  Please let her be okay. Please let her be okay, and I’ll do anything, everything. I’ll hire a sky writer, and write poetry, and go on bended knee, and I’ll eat Goddamn fondue on Valentine’s Day…

  It was the longest ride of Vincent’s life, and he could have sworn his heart stopped a million times along the way.