Serena Mckee's Back In Town

by Marie Ferrarella

  There was just the slightest hint of a potbelly forming just beneath where his fingers rested. “So, how’s that report of yours coming?”

  Cameron managed not to wince. “It’s coming,” he answered evasively. Taking a step backward, he reached behind him for the doorknob. “I’ve got to join Martinez on stakeout before he has a fit. He hates sitting and talking to himself.”

  Olson laughed shortly and waved Cameron out of the office. He had his monthly meeting with the mayor to prepare for, and he wasn’t looking forward to it. Heaven only knew why the citizens of Bedford had voted her into office.

  But then, they were probably the same citizens who would eat up any and all details to the McKee tragedy. It was his tragedy as well, the chief thought grimly. He’d lost a great deal that night. A best friend, a goddaughter—a great deal.

  “Reed, if you see Serena, tell her hello.”

  Cameron froze. Was that just a coincidence, or did Olson suspect? He maintained a bland expression, or hoped he did. He wasn’t about to insult the man’s intelligence by pretending he didn’t know what he was talking about. “How did you know she was back?”

  “I’ve got my sources.” A half smile played across his lips. “I’m the police chief, remember?”

  He should have known. “Why don’t you tell her yourself, sir?”

  “I don’t know if she’d want to see me. I was part of that last horrible night. I don’t want to dredge up any bad memories for Serena.”

  Cameron nodded. He had a feeling that Serena would welcome seeing Olson. “I’ll tell her you asked after her.”

  Maybe he’d take a swing by the house, at that, just to see if everything was all right. Olson roused himself. Cameron was already out the door. “I want that report on my desk ASAP, got it?” he called after Cameron.

  “Got it,” Cameron tossed over his shoulder. Swinging by his desk, he stuffed the report’s blank sheets into his jacket pocket, where it occupied space with the scrunched up tie he reserved for the days when he had to go to court to testify.

  He hoped Martinez had remembered to bring his toy with him. For once it would be put to better use than that infernal game of hearts his partner always played on it.

  Chapter 5

  Funny how things worked out sometimes, Cameron thought. In front of him, two uniformed officers were cuffing the last of the men they’d caught attempting to steal hardware from Sentinel Computer’s warehouse. The men, both slim and looking more like programmers than members of a burglary ring, allowed themselves to be led away quietly. The younger of the two looked to be almost in tears.

  Cameron had felt that the stakeout was just the department’s way of telling the community it was on the job. Window dressing, because they didn’t have any other clues. After a week, it had looked as if the anonymous tip they’d been given was bogus.

  But it had finally paid off. Paid off because Olson insisted that the stakeout be maintained around the clock, instead of just at night, when all the other break-ins had taken place.

  The thieves’ M.O.—though an M.O. was something that by its very description rarely deviated from a fixed path—had changed in this case. The members of the ring had gotten nonchalant and confident. And, this time, sloppy.

  Unlike the other break-ins, this one had been undertaken in broad daylight, in the late afternoon, just before quitting time. Obviously, they’d been banking on the employees’ eagerness to get home. The thieves had used a delivery truck for cover.

  Cameron had been the first to see the warehouse foreman come running out, yelling that he hadn’t authorized or signed for any pickups to be made. The brown-clad thieves had quickly gotten into their vehicle and sped away, only to see Cameron and his partner giving chase in their sideview mirror.

  Worried about civilians driving into harm’s way, Cameron had called for immediate backup. Squad cars had come pouring out of the precinct and from nearby locations. Within five minutes, the truck had been surrounded by a third of Bedford’s 135 uniformed officers. The stakeout was finally over.

  Days of waiting for a five-minute rush, Cameron thought, smiling to himself. Damn, but it felt good to make a difference.

  Whistling, he walked back to the car that had been his home away from home for the last week. The beige sedan was not a pretty sight. Now maybe Martinez would find the time to get the car washed, he mused.

  Martinez carefully moved his laptop to the back seat as Cameron got in on the passenger side. It had slid off his lap during the chase, almost causing them to crash before Cameron managed to get it out of the way of the pedals.

  “Chief’s going to be real happy with this one,” Martinez commented, grinning from ear to ear. “Me, I’m going to be happy getting back to looking at a full-size screen at night.”

  Cameron knew he was talking about his desktop computer. Martinez had gotten it fully equipped with all the bells and whistles that went with the latest up-to-date model. He bragged about it as if it were his child. Cameron just didn’t get the fascination. A machine was a machine.

  “Doesn’t your wife have anything to say about you spending so much time Net surfing?”

  Martinez raised his voice above the blare of their car’s siren. It was rush hour, quitting time for most, and the roads were clogged. Traffic parted to let them by.

  “Naw, first time we’ve gotten along in years.” He chuckled. “We don’t argue anymore. It’s like being newlyweds all over again.”

  He suddenly flashed another wide grin at his partner as they approached the precinct. “Hey, you know what this means, don’t you?”

  Cameron closed his eyes and sighed. It was going to be nice to sit in his own chair at night, instead of Martinez’s car. “Yeah, freedom.”

  “No, more paperwork.” He never missed an opportunity to needle Cameron about his limitations. The games Martinez played enabled his fingers to seem as if they were flying across the keyboard. Reports were no problem for him. For Cameron, it was another story.

  He hadn’t even gotten a chance to really get started working on the other report on Martinez’s laptop before the break-in went down. “I guess I’ll be at the station all night now, filing my report.”

  Martinez could only shake his head in exaggerated pity. “Why don’t you invest in a desktop computer for your home, Reed? It’d make life a hell of a lot simpler for you.”

  It was a familiar argument. “I’ll think about it,” Cameron said as they reached headquarters. He got out of the car. Martinez didn’t. Cameron looked at him expectantly. “Hey, aren’t you coming in?”

  “Not tonight.” He winked broadly at Cameron. “I’ve got some catching up to do, remember?”

  Right now, Cameron envied Martinez, and every other man who had a loving wife and kids to come home to. “The chiefs going to want a preliminary report from you, too.” The reminder was only halfhearted.

  “No problem. I’m hooked up to the mainframe.” Martinez was already backing up out of the spot. “It’ll be on his desk by the time he gets his morning cup of sludge.” He turned up his radio. A pseudo-country-and-western song began to fill the air. “Don’t know what you’re missing, man, not having one of those beauties in your house.”

  Cameron just waved his hand at the other man as he walked up the steps to the station. If there would ever be a “beauty” in his house, it wouldn’t be a computer. His nephew was a hell of a lot more proficient than he was on the computer. Hell, his ten-month-old niece probably was.

  But at his age, a man started getting set in his ways, at least about some things.

  Just listen to me, Cameron thought in disgust. He was beginning to sound just like his old man. He was only going to be thirty-one years old next time around, not sixty-one.

  Cameron suddenly recalled his mother mentioning that his father had taken up scuba diving, the last time they talked. Even his father was starting to sound younger than he was. He was going to have to do something about that.

  Standing before the pr
ecinct’s double doors, Cameron scrubbed his hand over his face and debated going in. This was the part of being a cop he really hated. But one of them had to make at least a verbal report to the chief and Martinez had gone home to his modem and his Mrs.—hopefully not in that order.

  Cameron pushed the double doors apart and walked in, feeling a little surly.

  His mood improved marginally when he discovered that Olson had left for the day. Something about a meeting with the mayor and then dinner with one of the members of the city council.

  Might be the pretty one with the long legs, Cameron mused. That way, Olson wouldn’t have to bend too far down to kiss her good-night. Or good-morning, if that was the way things turned out. Never married, Olson was the precinct’s eternal happy bachelor.

  Cameron planted himself in front of one of the few electronic typewriters left in the office and made a halfhearted attempt at putting something down on paper.

  He aborted it a third of the way down and ripped the page out of the machine. He tossed the wadded ball into the wastepaper basket. It was an easy shot.

  Hell, his shift was over and he was on his own time now. With Olson gone, anyway, he didn’t have to struggle with this now if he didn’t want to. He’d tackle the report in the morning, he decided, getting out of his chair.

  “Inspiration not hitting you tonight?” The question came from Vinny Scarpetti and was backed up with an amused grin. It was a reckless question, considering he was sitting in the direct line of fire.

  “Stuff it,” Cameron muttered, then walked past him on his way out.

  Shutting off his computer, Scarpetti got to his feet quickly. “Hey, I hear you just got a great collar,” he called after Cameron. “How about you and me going out and celebrating?”

  Scarpetti would celebrate the successful recovery of a hangnail. Cameron shook his head and kept on walking. “Maybe some other time.”

  The other detective shrugged. This made it a solid month of turndowns for Reed. He shook his head. “Man, you are getting old.”

  Like a torch set to a short fuse, the words brought about an immediate result. Cameron turned around on his heel. “On second thought, let’s go.” Crossing to him, he clamped an arm around the other man’s shoulders. “You’re buying.”

  “Me and my big mouth,” Scarpetti moaned cheerfully. “I knew I should have quit while I was ahead.”

  Cameron didn’t go out with Scarpetti because he wanted to celebrate closing the book on the break-ins. And he wasn’t hanging out at a chipped table for four at Reilly’s until almost closing time, nursing a beer, because Scarpetti had called him an old man.

  He was here, he thought, sipping the bitter, dark brew, so that he wouldn’t be tempted to be there. At McKee Hill, looking up at Serena’s house like some lovesick puppy.

  Great excuse for drinking, he mused, listening to one of the old-timers tell a story he’d heard a hundred times before, but always with a different twist. Still better than nursing another broken heart, he decided.

  When Reilly’s finally closed its doors for the night, Cameron forced himself to drive home the regular way, instead of taking the long way. Something told him that the tree-lined route wouldn’t be all that peaceful for him tonight.

  And the temptation to stop, to see her in moonlight, would be all too great to resist if he were that close to her.

  Cameron didn’t go to Serena’s in the heart of night, but morning was another story. Maybe because morning didn’t remind him of the time he’d made love to her. Or maybe because the shadows of the past had a hard time creeping over him in the light of day, and he felt more able to face things.

  Whatever the reason, he left his house earlier than was his custom and drove toward McKee Hill.

  At the last minute, when he was less than half a mile away, he almost turned around again. What he had to say to Serena could be accomplished in a thirty-second conversation over the phone. He didn’t have to see her face-to-face.

  The hell he didn’t.

  Cameron gunned his engine. His vehicle ate up the road, reaching the tall black gates in a little under a minute.

  She was there, in the distance, on her knees in the garden. Cameron saw her before he even fully stopped the car.

  Why was she on the ground? Had she found something? Was something wrong? Cameron almost forgot to put the parking brake on as he quickly jumped out. The gates weren’t locked. He pushed them open, his heart hammering in double time. Rather than get into the car again, Cameron just began to run, his mind forming all sorts of scenarios.

  Was she sick? Hurt? Had someone broken in and harmed her?

  It wasn’t until he was only a few feet away from Serena that he saw the piles of pulled weeds on either side of her.

  She was weeding.

  Damn it, he’d almost had a heart attack and she was pulling weeds in the garden. He would have laughed at himself if there was any air left in his lungs to spare.

  Judging from the size of the piles, she’d been at this for some time. He’d never known her to be interested in gardening.

  Crossing the short distance that was left, Cameron stripped off his jacket. He suddenly felt overheated.

  “What are you doing?”

  She’d felt the vibrations of the car as it approached the gates, and recognized his sedan. By the time he reached her, she’d managed to convince herself that the small flutter she fleetingly experienced was nothing more than the aftershock of fatigue, brought on by a restless night.

  “Rechanneling energy.” Serena looked up, shading her eyes. Cameron was standing before her with the sun directly behind him. Rays of light seemed to be emanating from all along the outline of his body, as if he were some god who had decided to descend and walk the earth for the day.

  The thought made her smile a little. The Cameron of long ago would have liked that description. Too bad he hadn’t lived up to it.

  Serena was wearing gloves now, Cameron noted, instead of challenging the weeds bare-handed, as she had yesterday. The gloves looked new. That meant that she’d been out and about. Which would explain why certain people knew she was back.

  Cameron nodded toward the patch she had cleared. “Looks like you had a lot of energy to rechannel.”

  Serena rocked back on her heels, looking at the results of her handiwork for the first time. “I guess I’ve got more anger stored up than I thought.”

  Grabbing hold of the stem of another weed, she braced and pulled hard. She shrugged Cameron away when he tried to help. The weed came out on the third attempt.

  “Anger I don’t know what to do with.” Serena fairly panted the words out.

  Gently he stooped down and took the weed from her, tossing it onto the pile. “Maybe that’s the way your father felt about your mother—until he couldn’t hold it in any longer.”

  The same fire he’d seen yesterday instantly ignited in her eyes.

  “He wasn’t like that,” she insisted. “My mother hurt him, humiliated him, but he wasn’t the kind of man who could kill someone.”

  He’d heard that sort of thing before. Instinctively he reached out to comfort her. “Everyone has a breaking point, Serena. People do strange things when they feel like their back is to the wall, like they have no other choice.”

  Serena pulled back from him. “He had a choice. He could leave her. He did leave her.” Her parents had separated six months before that horrible night.

  Cameron stood up. It was hard, being so close to her and not touching her. Even if he said it meant nothing to him. “Apparently he couldn’t stay away. He was found at the house,” he reminded her.

  Serena didn’t care where her father had been found, or how. That didn’t prove anything, at least not to her.

  “There’s a piece missing, Cameron, something I’m not seeing, something I’m not remembering.” Tossing the hand spade aside, she rose to her feet. There was frustrated anguish in her eyes when she looked at him. “I can’t explain it any better than that.” And su
ddenly she was pleading with him to understand. “I knew these people, lived with these people. If they’d found that my mother had killed my father and then turned the gun on herself, I would have been able to accept that. I would have believed that.” Her mother had been given to the dramatic, to the hysterical. Her father had been the total antithesis of that, the soul of gentility and patience.

  “But not my father. He wouldn’t hurt anyone or anything. And he hated guns. He never even touched the gun she kept in her nightstand for protection.” Serena shook her head, remembering. “She even ridiculed him once about not being man enough to hold it.”

  That only served to substantiate his theory that Jon McKee had been pushed over the edge. Cameron tried, as gently as possible, to make her see the truth. “Maybe he decided to show her that he was.”

  What was the use? She hadn’t come back here to convince Cameron; she’d returned to find evidence. If he couldn’t help her, she wanted him to leave. “Did you come here this morning to tell me that you’ve changed your mind about helping me?”

  Her eyes were distant again. He felt as if someone were playing Ping-Pong and he were the ball. He was damn tired of feeling this way.

  “No, I didn’t change my mind about helping you.” He bit the words off. “I told you that I’d look in on you, and that’s what I’m doing. Looking in.”

  She acknowledged his explanation with a slight nod. Serena didn’t want to argue. Arguing brought emotions too close to the surface, emotions she couldn’t control quite as well as she’d thought. “Did you find the report?”

  “Not yet. But I know where it is.”

  So then what was the holdup? she thought impatiently. Was he just trying to put her off until she tired of this, as if he thought it were some sort of a game she was playing to while away the time? Didn’t he understand how important this was?

  “Can you get to it?” she pressed.

  “It might take some time. The file’s somewhere in storage over at the old civic center. The chief told me to help myself to it.” He looked at her pointedly. “I didn’t come out and tell him it was for you. But he knows you’re back.” Cameron studied her expression as he continued. “Olson asked after you. He said if you wanted to talk to him—about anything—you’d know where to find him.”