The Cavanaugh Code

by Marie Ferrarella

  Gratitude filled Carole’s eyes. “I wish I could believe that, Laredo”

  “Believe it,” Laredo urged as if this was the one truth she could hang on to.

  Rallying, Eileen’s mother straightened, squaring her shoulders. She looked at Taylor as if she’d suddenly become aware of her presence. “I’m sorry. This is all still very new to me.”

  “I understand and I am sorry for your loss,” Taylor told her with genuine feeling. No mother should have to outlive her child. She knew how devastated her own mother would have been if anything were to happen to any one of them.

  Carole nodded. “Thank you.” She took another bracing breath, then asked, “So, how can I help you?”

  Taylor took a small, worn notebook out of her pocket. She’d thought to take it with her after writing down the woman’s address.

  “You can tell me about Eileen,” she urged, watching the woman’s face. Sometimes an expression said more than actual words did. “When the two of you got back together, did she say anything about being afraid of someone? About somebody bothering her or maybe sending her threatening letters?”

  She had already asked the same questions of the victim’s coworkers yesterday and gotten no feedback, but maybe Eileen had felt more at ease around her mother.

  Carole shook her head. “Nothing. She never mentioned anything like that. All she talked about was her work. She was very excited about being made a partner.”

  “But?” Taylor let the word hang between them, picking it up from the tone of Carole’s voice even though it hadn’t been spoken out loud.

  “But she didn’t seem happy,” Carole conceded. “Driven, but not happy. It was as if something was missing out of her life.” At an apparent loss for words, Carole helplessly added, “Like everything she had just wasn’t enough.”

  Funny that the woman had mentioned that. It was the exact same impression she’d come away with, walking around the victim’s apartment last night.

  Working with what Laredo had told her this morning, she tried to piece things together. “Your daughter got pregnant when she was seventeen and gave the baby up for adoption, didn’t she?” Taylor asked Carole, approaching the sensitive subject slowly.

  “Yes.” Caution entered the woman’s features. “What about it?”

  Taylor knew she was grasping at straws, but sometimes that paid off. “Could Eileen possibly have been experiencing some remorse over that? Maybe feeling that she shouldn’t have given the baby up?” As she spoke, ideas popped into her head. “Could your daughter perhaps have been considering trying to find her son after all these years?”

  Carole almost laughed out loud. “Oh, God, no. When he was born, Eileen didn’t even want to look at that poor child. I had second thoughts about giving him up, but she pitched a fit, insisting that if I kept him, she’d run away.” Carole shrugged helplessly. “My first duty was to my daughter, so I let him go. Once she went off to college, I didn’t see her anyway. I should have kept him,” she whispered almost to herself, then roused herself and said with conviction, “No, Detective, I don’t think she tried to get in contact with her son. Eileen never talked about him or the pregnancy. The second she left the hospital, it was behind her.

  “My daughter didn’t like children,” Carole confided. “She never did. Thought that they were nothing but trouble.” The woman’s voice was sad as she continued. “I can show you her old room and pictures of Eileen when she was a little girl, but I really don’t think any of that will help you.”

  Taylor never liked leaving any stone unturned. “You never know, Mrs. Stevens,” she said encouragingly. “Sometimes it’s the smallest thing that winds up solving a case.”

  A glimmer of hope passed over the woman’s lined, concerned face. “I really hope so,” she murmured, more to herself than to either one of the people in the room with her. Slightly unsteady, still dealing with the shock of the last twenty-four hours, Carole rose to her feet. Laredo was quick to take her arm and give her support. She smiled her gratitude. “You’re a lot like your grandfather,” she told him.

  “I take that as the highest compliment, Mrs. Stevens,” he replied.

  Carole’s eyes shifted toward Taylor. “This way,” she urged, pointing down the hall to the back of the house before she walked in that direction.

  Well, that was an hour of her life that she would never get back, Taylor thought after thanking Carole Stevens for her time and saying goodbye. There was no enlightenment to be garnered from her daughter’s old room, other than the fact that in appearance, it was light-years away from the penthouse apartment that had seen the end of her life.

  It was as if the two bedrooms had belonged to two very different people. The bedroom she’d just been in had, for all its disorganization, a kind of warmth to it that was glaringly missing from the one in the trendy, expensive penthouse. In the bedroom she’d just left there had been photographs pinned onto a bulletin board in a haphazard, overlapping fashion. The younger Eileen had had people in her life, friends she shared her time and her feelings with, not to mention the boyfriend who’d gotten her pregnant in the first place.

  From all appearances, the successful Eileen slash murder victim had had only clients and acquaintances in her life. There was no evidence that she even had a personal life.

  Did that mean something more than she was seeing? Was she missing something right there in front of her? In plain sight?

  Taylor heard Carole saying goodbye again. Thinking the woman was calling out to her, she turned around only to realize that Carole wasn’t talking to her, she was saying goodbye to Laredo. He was leaving, too.

  Did he intend to follow her?

  Instantly alert, Taylor waited until Carole closed the door, then went back up the walk to confront the not-so-private investigator.

  “Just what exactly were you doing here?” she asked.

  “Offering Mrs. Stevens some support,” he answered amiably. “I thought we already cleared that up.” And then he flashed that annoying smile of his, the one that seemed to wind itself like a corkscrew right into the center of her being. “You might not know this, but you do have a tendency to come on a little strong. I thought that I could act as a buffer for Carole if you got too carried away. After all, I was the one who told you where you could find her. If you rattled her, it would be my fault.”

  Taylor’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t appreciate being second-guessed.”

  “No guessing was involved,” he countered. “I figured you’d come on like gangbusters. With me around, you didn’t. Simple,” he concluded.

  “This might offend your ego, Laredo, but I don’t temper the way I do things because you’re around. And, now that I’m on the subject, I would really appreciate not having you around from now on.” She pinned him with her eyes. “Agreed?”

  The expression on his face told her that the answer to that was a resounding “No.”

  “Look, Detective McIntyre, it’s a known fact that two heads are usually better than one. Why don’t we just, off the record, join forces until we find out who killed Eileen Stevens? Think of the perks.”

  She refused to ask him what perks, fairly certain that he was going to say something about having him around for extracurricular activity should the desire hit.

  “That way,” he continued as if she’d asked him to elaborate, “you won’t look so strange, talking to yourself. People’ll think you’re talking to me.”

  The man was a walking ego. “You think you’re pretty clever, don’t you?”

  He lifted his shoulders in a casual shrug. “I have my moments, but I’d rather think that I’m more intelligent than clever. How about it? Temporary partners? Off the record?” he pressed, extending his hand.

  She looked down at his hand for a moment, then turned her back on it and him and returned to her car.

  “I’ll get back to you on that,” was the last thing Taylor said before she got into the vehicle and pulled away.

  “Yes, you will, Detect
ive McIntyre,” Laredo said to himself, watching her car make its way out of the development.

  Chapter 5

  S everal hours later, after questioning more of Eileen Stevens’s former clients and the people on the lower rung of her law firm, people who were more likely to pass on gossip, Taylor was no closer to solving the woman’s murder than she had been before. Nobody loved the woman, but everyone respected her and felt she was an excellent lawyer. As far as she could determine there were no grudges, outstanding or otherwise.

  Desperate for any kind of a decent lead, Taylor decided to return to the late lawyer’s building. But this time, she wasn’t going to wander around the tomblike apartment or talk to any of the woman’s overly busy neighbors. Taylor wanted to question the security guard who had been on duty the evening Eileen had been murdered.

  The young man, Nathan Miller, seemed surprised to see her again. She’d already questioned the guard once and he had sworn that Eileen Stevens hadn’t had any visitors. Anyone who didn’t live in The Villas had to sign in and indicate who he or she was there to see. There’d been no name next to the dead lawyer’s name.

  “I’d really like to help you, Detective,” Nathan told her with feeling. “But nobody went up to see her—unless they scaled the outside of the building,” he added with an odd little smile, enjoying his own joke.

  “What about the other residents?”

  His forehead furrowed as if he was trying to make sense of her question. “You mean, did any of them go to see Ms. Stevens? I’d really have no way of knowing that. The residents get together all the time. That’s why this place is so popular. We’ve got the fully stocked gym, the Olympic-sized pool, the—”

  She held her hand up before Nathan could go, verbatim, through the features listed in the slick sales brochure. She’d already taken a copy with her and perused it. The Villas came across more like a spa slash mini-mall than a residence. From what she’d gathered from the neighbors, no one ever saw Eileen Stevens make use of any of the facilities she was paying so dearly for.

  “No, what I want to know is did anyone come in to see any of the other residents that evening?” When the guard looked at her blankly, she elaborated. “A pizza delivery boy, a visitor you might not have recognized, a—”

  Taylor knew that she was probably shadowboxing in the dark, but there had to be something. Someone had to have gotten to her. No way could Eileen Stevens have tied herself up like that.

  Nathan shook his head to her suggestions and then abruptly stopped. “No, no—wait.” His brown eyes widened as he looked at her.

  She tried not to sound eager. “You remember something?”

  “Yeah. There was somebody who came in, but he wasn’t here for Ms. Stevens.” Taking out the logbook housed on a shelf, he flipped back two pages. “Here it is,” he read, then looked up, his hand spread out across the entry and holding down the page. “Mrs. Wallace had flowers delivered to her a little after seven.”

  Yes! “Did you see the delivery boy come back down?” Taylor pressed.

  “No. But I was on my break,” he explained quickly. Nathan looked crestfallen. “He could have left without me seeing him.”

  “You don’t have security cameras?” Even as she asked, she looked toward the front doors.

  “No. The residents consider it an invasion of privacy. I’m supposed to be enough,” he added in a chagrined voice. “It’s my fault, all my fault.”

  She felt sorry for him. He looked so young and inexperienced. Reality was taking a hard bite out of him. “Sometimes things happen that you just can’t anticipate, Nathan,” she told him. “Nothing’s going to change if you beat yourself up over it. Do you know if Mrs. Wallace is in?”

  He nodded his head. “She hasn’t gone out on my shift,” he told her.

  He was qualifying his statements like a man who’d had his faith in himself shaken. “What floor is Mrs. Wallace on?”

  “Second,” he said with no hesitation. “But she’s all the way over on the other end.”

  Taylor merely nodded. That didn’t mean that the killer hadn’t walked up one flight and then gone over to the dead lawyer’s side. It did mean that a lot of planning had gone into Eileen Stevens’s murder.

  And she was still no closer to finding out why. Taylor banked down a wave of frustration as she went up to the other woman’s apartment.

  Dorothy Wallace was a widow in her late sixties who had a young woman’s sparkle in her eyes. Dressed to show off all her best features—a body that was a combined product of religiously faithful workouts and the clever scalpel of a top plastic surgeon—Dorothy was just on her way out to meet “this young stud” for an early dinner “and ‘whatever,’” she added with a broad smile.

  Apologizing, Dorothy explained that she could only give her ten minutes because the “stud” apparently grew impatient when he was kept waiting.

  “Flowers?” Dorothy repeated when the question of the delivery was put to her. Appearing perplexed, she slowly moved her head from side to side. “No, I didn’t receive any flowers.” A grin nothing short of wicked curved her carefully made up lips. “Not that night at any rate. I do get my share, though,” she confided. “Don’t you just love the old-fashioned type? The ones who know how to properly woo a woman?”

  Now there was a word she hadn’t heard lately, Taylor thought. Did anyone actually “woo” these days? She sincerely doubted it. Then she thought of Brian and her mother and decided to revise her conclusion, at least just a little. But outside of them, she was certain that men and women no longer had time for things like slow, languid courtships. Everything, including relationships—and breakups—seemed to occur in a hurry. Sometimes she had the feeling that life was almost over before it could even begin.

  Philosophy aside, she had the answer she came for. Eileen Stevens’s killer had gotten access to the building by posing as a delivery man for someone else.

  After thanking the woman for her time, Taylor went back down to the ground floor. The security guard seemed impatient for her return.

  “Well?” Nathan asked the moment the elevator doors opened.

  Taylor shook her head. “Mrs. Wallace didn’t receive any flowers.”

  “Oh, damn.” He groaned as if he’d been physically punched in the stomach. “You mean that I let in the killer?”

  “Maybe.” She tempered her response only because he looked so terribly distraught. Taylor focused on the positive side. They finally had a lead. “Do you think that you could describe this guy to a sketch artist?”

  “Maybe.” Nathan thought a moment, then his head bobbed up and down. “Yeah, yeah I could,” he decided. “Let me just call my boss and get someone to take my place. I can’t just walk off my post.”

  “Except for breaks,” she reminded him.

  He slanted her a look she couldn’t quite fathom. “Except for breaks,” Nathan mumbled, sounding deeply ashamed.

  Armed with the sketch of the so-called flower delivery man, Taylor returned to Eileen’s firm.

  The senior partner commented that he might have to put her on the payroll if she kept turning up. His one attempt at humor faded as he looked at the sketch and shook his head. He appeared genuinely disappointed when he told her that he’d never seen the man before. Neither had any of the other people at the law firm. No one she questioned even remotely recognized the man.

  Five days into the murder and she felt as if she was banging her head against a wall. Still, for now this was her only lead and she wasn’t about to give up on it.

  She couldn’t get over the feeling that she was missing a piece. Something that was out in plain sight and she just didn’t see it.

  It drove her crazy when, after several more days, her thoughts didn’t gel. But neither did the feeling disappear.

  “Try backing away from it,” her older brother counseled. Zach had swung by her desk to ask if she wanted to grab some lunch. She’d been so preoccupied that she hadn’t even heard him come up. He’d said her name tw
ice before she even looked up. “Maybe it’ll make more sense to you if you take a break.”

  Taylor laughed shortly. “The security guard at Stevens’s building took a break and Eileen Stevens wound up dead.”

  Zach shook his head as he lowered himself into the chair beside her desk. “Now you’re just babbling. As your older brother, I’m telling you to come to lunch with me.”

  But she shook her head. “Sorry, I can’t.” She gestured at the empty desk that was butted up against hers in the cubicle. “Aaron’s still away and I’m doing double duty.”

  Zach looked unimpressed. He knew the kind of workaholic his sister could be.

  “So both of you need to eat. To keep your strength up and all that good stuff.” As Taylor began to shake her head to turn him down again, he added, “Okay, as senior detective, I order you to come with me.”

  “Pulling rank?” she laughed.

  He could remember when doing something like that would set her off. But they’d been kids at the time and squabbling had been a way of life. “If that’s what it takes, you better believe it.”

  Taylor began to waver. Now that she thought of it, she could feel her stomach pinching. Had she had breakfast? She couldn’t remember. She supposed nothing earthshaking would happen if she did stop to get something to eat.

  And then it did.

  “McIntyre,” Lieutenant Harrigan called out, walking out of his glass-enclosed office. When both Zach and Taylor looked his way, he amended, “The pretty one.”

  “That would be me,” Zach told her, rising. “Sorry, kid.”

  “Yeah, right.” Now what? Taylor wondered, rising to her feet. “Yes, Lieutenant?”

  The expression on the older man’s face was stern. “You caught another one.”

  Confused, she looked at him blankly. “Another one what, sir?”

  “Homicide.” The single word hung in the air, lethal and treacherous.

  She felt a little frayed around the edges. The last thing she needed was a new murder to pile onto the one she hadn’t solved yet.