Sloane Monroe 06-Hush Now Baby

by Bradshaw, Cheryl

  I never did.

  “I’ll leave you two to talk,” I said.

  Thinking the problem was solved, I turned. “I’ll be in the truck.”

  Cade walked past me, motioned for me to follow.

  “Where you goin’?” the chief asked.

  “What’s it look like?” Cade said. “I’m leavin’.”

  “Aww, hell, Cade. Not this again.”

  “Look.” Cade glanced back. “Sloane’s not hurtin’ nothin’. It doesn’t have to be this way. If you’re gonna be ignorant, I’m leavin’. Your call.”

  “I’m not here to interfere,” I added. “I’m just visiting for the weekend. Besides, I haven’t worked a case in months.”

  The chief raised a brow. “Since when?”

  His sudden interest surprised me. “I … needed a break.”

  “A break, or somethin’ else?”

  “Meaning?”

  “Heard an agent died on your last job,” the chief said. “Someone you knew. Heard the feds came down hard on the little PI operation you’re runnin’. You throw it in, close up shop?”

  “Enough,” Cade said. “Cut her some slack.”

  “Why? She was there when the agent was murdered, wasn’t she?”

  The chief squinted, his eyes examining mine. He had an exceptional poker face, a skill I’d always lacked. I couldn’t tell whether he pitied me or despised me. Maybe it was a combination of both. His mouth opened to dispense even more disparaging comments, but then in an odd moment of silence, he hesitated, which was peculiar for a man who never held back. Whatever he planned on saying, he chose not to say it. Instead, he pointed to a chair positioned outside his office. “Have a seat while I talk to Cade a minute.”

  The comment stretched the limits of his civility. I accepted it, sitting without another word. Cade followed the chief into his office. The door closed. It didn’t matter. There were no curtains or blinds on the chief’s window, and his voice carried like a foghorn. He explained Cade’s cousin’s wife, Serena, had been discovered around seven that morning. Her husband, Jack, had arrived home from work, stopping at the nursery to check on his son before heading to bed.

  Jack had entered the baby’s room, stunned to find Serena’s body sprawled out on the floor, inches away from the crib. Pooled blood stained the rug, forming a ring around Serena’s head. Mortified, Jack had initially assumed it was some kind of freak accident. He surmised his wife had slipped on the hardwood floor surrounding the rug. This theory made sense to him, at first. The bottle was several feet away on its side, milk still seeping from the pinhole at the top. He stared at the bottle, then his dead wife, and confusion set in. If her head had hit the floor, why was there so much blood?

  Legs trembling, Jack had hunched over, looped his hands around the back of his wife’s neck. He pulled up. Once her cold, stiff head left the ground, he watched red liquid ooze from a ring-shaped hole in the back of her skull.

  Unsure what to do next, Jack had eased his wife back on the ground, his thoughts turning to his infant son. He grappled for the slats on Finn’s crib with both hands, easing his weakened knees off the ground into a kneeling position. Battling a siege of tears and legs too rickety to allow him to stand, he stuck his hand in between the wooden bars and reached inside, tugging the baby’s blanket toward him. It pulled freely, much easier than he’d anticipated. Once it had passed all the way through the bars and was wadded up between his hands, he knew why. Gazing inside the crib, his worst fear came to light—there was no baby.

  Frantic, Jack searched the house, hoping, praying his wife had taken Finn into another room, having only returned to the nursery for a moment to get something she’d forgotten, the baby’s bottle, a diaper maybe. There were a realm of possibilities he permitted himself to believe before he accepted the worst. After a hasty, yet thorough search, he had no choice—he came to terms with one gut-wrenching truth: someone had killed his wife, taken their baby.

  …

  Cade absorbed the chief’s summary of the day’s events and rattled off several questions: Had the time of death been determined? What had the coroner observed so far? Was there any evidence of foul play? Had the weapon used to kill Serena been recovered? The chief’s answers did nothing to soothe him. Not only had no weapon been found, no unidentified prints had been lifted. The point of entry had been established. Even so, they had no leads and no motive—nothing to justify what had been done or why.

  The chief attempted to pacify Cade by stating it was still early. Anything could happen.

  Cade shook his head, unsatisfied with the chief’s simple answers. He requested the scene be processed a second time. He was sure they’d missed something. The chief snapped back with a succinct and final, “No. I will not.”

  The words “bull” and “shit” were uttered by Cade, followed by a threat I didn’t interpret. He said, “If I have to pull rank, Harold, I will.”

  The chief fired back. “You’re not pullin’ anything. I’m acting chief on this until the last day of this month. Until we reach the final day, the final hour, the very last second of my command, what I say goes. Understood?”

  The door to the chief’s office thrust open. Cade glanced in my direction. “We’re leaving.”

  I stood.

  “Cade, get back here,” the chief demanded. “Sloane, sit back down.”

  I’d regarded him with courtesy earlier because he was the chief in this town, and as such, no matter what words he spewed my way, he deserved a certain level of respect. When he chose not to reciprocate the same respect to me, the inclination I had to keep the peace between us expired.

  “I won’t sit down,” I responded. “I’m not some lap dog you can order around.”

  The chief launched a finger at Cade. “You’re not workin’ this case. You hear me?! You’re makin’ it personal. I can’t have a detective on this who can’t keep his head on straight. This is a high-priority case. I won’t risk it.”

  “What are you sayin’?”

  “You’re out.”

  Cade kept walking. “Do what you gotta do, Harold. I’ll do the same.”

  Calling Chief Rollins by his first name was a dig on Cade’s part, despite the fact he’d known him since he was a child.

  Once we were seated inside Cade’s truck again, I spoke up. “What happened in there?”

  “I think they’re missin’ somethin’. They have to be. They’re about finished searchin’ Jack’s house, and it isn’t even noon yet. I told him to keep the team there, have them go over the place one more time. He took it to mean I’m too emotionally involved to be on the case because Jack’s family.”

  “Your cousin’s wife is dead. Their baby missing. Of course you’re involved. I grasp why he thinks it would be best for you to take a step back, I just don’t agree. If you ask me, he’s losing his greatest asset by expecting you to sit on the sidelines. Emotional attachment is what bonds me to a case. It’s how I work a case. How I figure things out. Take every emotion you’re feeling right now and use it to your advantage. Let it fuel you to find Serena’s killer, rescue her baby.”

  For a pep talk, it wasn’t bad.

  “You heard what Harold said. I’m off the case. I’m out.”

  “He’s upset,” I said. “Let him calm down, recognize how much he needs you.”

  “I know him better than most. There’s one thing he doesn’t do—regurgitate his words once he’s said ’em.”

  “Is his permission really necessary?”

  He paused, thought about what I just said. “Are you suggestin’ I go rogue?”

  “I’m suggesting you poke around, conduct your own investigation. Quietly. Away from the chief’s radar.”

  “Ten seconds.”

  Ten seconds?

  “What?”

  “I need ten seconds.”

  Cade placed both hands on the steering wheel, kneading the hardened leather up and down like he was revving an engine. He stared straight ahead, breathed in and out a f
ew times, put a sufficient amount of thought into our conversation. Then he looked at me and grinned. It wasn’t the kind of flirtatious, teasing look I’d grown used to, but under the circumstances, even a hint of a smile was better than nothing.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I’m not backin’ off. I don’t care what he says. He has his team—I have something even better.”

  “A lead?”

  He shook his head, cast a finger my direction. “You.”

  CHAPTER 5

  “Cade, I—”

  “Haven’t taken anything on in a while,” he said. “I know.”

  He turned in his seat, faced me, grazed my leg with his hand. “Even if I hadn’t been kicked off the case, there’s no one I’d rather have by my side on this than you. We work great together. You know we do.”

  “I can’t just—”

  “Yes, you can.”

  I was beginning to think finishing a simple sentence was out of the question. His request compelled me to explain why taking on a case, any case, wasn’t something I was sure I was up to yet. “These last several months, I’ve had the chance to envision my life, my past, my present, everything leading up to this moment, the woman I am today.”

  “And?”

  “I became a PI because of an innate desire I have to solve things. I wanted to make a difference, wanted to help people.”

  “You have.”

  “The cases I take on are like riddles I contend with until they’re solved. They monopolize my life, become my addiction. They’re tempting, enticing, a weakness. My weakness.”

  He dipped his head, half-closed his eyes. “What are you tryin’ to say?”

  “I’m thinking about getting out of the business.”

  Saying the words aloud made me feel like a traitor, like I’d branded the center of my forehead with a “Q” for “quitter,” abandoning those that would seek me out in the future, request my help.

  “Huh.”

  I didn’t know what response I expected, but “huh” wasn’t it. Cade revved the steering wheel again for another ten seconds. “There will always be losses along the way. Lives lost, lives saved, lives destroyed, lives rebuilt. With great losses come great wins. Don’t let your failures define you, or they’ll haunt you until you’re consumed with grief from events you never had the ability to control in the first place.”

  Too late.

  I mulled over his words, recognizing it was the loss of control that drove me inside in the first place. Funny thing, control—the power to manage a circumstance, an environment. OCD at its finest. Not as funny when the management is lost.

  “Sloane, listen to me. I need you. When Shawn Hurtwick took my daughter, you convinced him to let her go. No one could have done what you—”

  My turn to interrupt.

  “I’ll do it. I’ll help you.”

  Whether it was the right decision or the wrong one, I wasn’t sure. I was only certain of one thing—ever since we’d met, he’d been there for me, by my side, helping me whenever I asked. I couldn’t refuse him. Not now. Not when he needed me.

  “You will?”

  “If you’re going to do this on your own—”

  “Not on my own,” he corrected. “Together.”

  “All right, together … we need to keep this quiet for now. I don’t want to get you in any trouble.”

  “Since when has anything you’ve done not led to trouble?” he teased. “Won’t matter much longer, anyway.”

  “Why not? Are you going to tell me your news?”

  “You heard me—in there?”

  I nodded. “What did you mean in the chief’s office? You mentioned you could pull rank. What happens at the end of the month?”

  “I know I asked you here to celebrate sellin’ your house. In truth, I was hopin’ we’d celebrate somethin’ else too. I’m takin’ over Harold’s job.”

  “Chief Rollins is retiring?”

  “Yep. Got the call from the town administrator a few days ago sayin’ the job’s mine if I want it. I planned on surprisin’ you with the news tonight. Then I got the call this mornin’, heard what happened, and … I guess I don’t feel much like celebratin’ anymore.”

  I didn’t blame him. “I have an idea.”

  “Shoot.”

  “We find Finn, give your cousin and his family some peace of mind, and when you feel up to it, I’ll throw the party.”

  He stuck his hand out, formalizing the arrangement. “Darlin’, you’ve got yourself a deal.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Loss is a powerful thing, an axe slowly chipping away at a person’s soul. After each death, each devastation, another fragment breaks off, slips through the cracks, gone forever. There’s no repairing the damage, no going back, no returning to life as it was before. Death doesn’t work that way.

  Death doesn’t give—it takes. One day you’re kissing your loved one goodbye, the next day they’re gone forever, ripped from your arms, often without warning. The survivors, those who rise above the unexpected loss, spend the rest of their lives in repair mode, searching for the chipped pieces they’ve lost, thinking if they find them, they can somehow be reattached.

  They can’t.

  They never will.

  Not in this lifetime.

  And maybe not even in the next.

  Even when the anguish fades away, the memories linger, the smallest reminder becoming a trigger to a time long past.

  I witnessed loss in people’s faces every day. The prolonged glance out the car window on a long drive, the intense longing of someone staring at a bent, faded picture, the touch of a precious relic, passed down, left behind.

  Jack Westwood was experiencing this very kind of grief right now, except for him, it was just beginning. He slouched back on a brown leather sofa, his face in a dizzy fog, eyes staring out his living room window at a tree in his front yard. At least, he appeared to be staring. I doubted he was focused on any one thing. His eyes, puffy and damp, made him appear allergic to every kind of pollen known to man. Given his relation to Cade, I expected he’d look like a rough and tough cowboy, a vigorous man full of pride. He didn’t. He didn’t look like anyone really, except a tortured man mourning the abrupt loss of his wife.

  When I’d arrived at Jack’s house with Cade, we were polite, respectful, ringing the doorbell twice before turning the knob and letting ourselves inside. Jack hadn’t looked up when we entered the room, hadn’t seemed the least bit interested in who was there or why. In his hands, he clutched a cardboard box so tight I could see white protruding from his knuckles.

  “I’m sorry, Jack,” Cade said.

  Jack remained silent, stared outside into the abyss, unmoved by Cade’s expressed compassion. We waited, tuned in to the ticking of an oval-shaped clock resting on the fireplace mantle. One minute passed, then two. After the third came and went, Cade started fidgeting. “We need to talk, when you’re ready. If this isn’t a good time, we’ll come back later.”

  A good time.

  Good times no longer existed for Jack.

  Jack separated the lid from the box, let it fall to the side. He reached inside, ran a mass of blue fabric between his fingers, started rambling. “This coat came for Rena today.”

  Rena. Must have been his nickname for his wife.

  “I ordered it for her birthday,” Jack continued. “We were shopping a couple weeks ago. She saw it. Said she liked it, but they didn’t have it in her size. I ordered it for her as a surprise. She would have been forty next week. I was going to throw her a party. And now I … she won’t ever … I don’t know how I can … I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now, Cade.”

  “I’ll find whoever did this, Jack,” Cade said. “I promise.”

  For as tough as Cade was, his words were choppy, difficult to get out.

  “Why? Why would someone take her from me? Why take our baby?”

  “I don’t have the answers you need right now,” Cade replied. “I swear to you, you will have them.�
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  Salty tears dripped like a leaky faucet, trailing down Jack’s face, and I found myself brushing one of my own to the side. Sympathizing with a deceased person’s spouse was part of the job, but not a part I relished. I suppose I could have been more diplomatic, unaffected. Professional. My heart allowed for many things. Pretending I was inhuman wasn’t one of them.

  The coat slithered through Jack’s hands, puddled around his feet. His fingers hung in the air, pressed together like he hadn’t noticed the coat had plummeted from his grasp. It concerned me. I looked around, lifted an empty glass off of an old desk, took a whiff.

  Whiskey.

  I canvassed the room for the bottle and found one tipped over on the floor behind the sofa. The lid wasn’t screwed on all the way, but the carpet was dry. The bottle was half empty. I picked it up, showed it to Cade.

  “Jack,” Cade asked, “how much whiskey have you had today?”

  “Don’t know. Two … three?”

  “Two or three what?”

  “Glasses.”

  “Straight?”

  Jack shrugged.

  Cade shifted his gaze to me. “He doesn’t drink. Never has.”

  I swirled the liquid around inside the bottle. “Today he does.”

  A red truck pulled up, parked. It was vintage. Restored. A Chevy maybe or a Dodge with a rounded hood. Seconds later the front door opened and closed.

  “Jack, you around?”

  The voice was a woman’s.

  “In here,” Cade replied.

  “Cade, is that you?”

  A long-haired brunette walked into the room, her curls bouncing up and down with each forward movement. She was dressed in a tight-fitting, plaid flannel shirt, corduroy pants, and leather, square-toed boots with red bull heads stitched on the sides. She walked over to the couch and plopped down, kissing Jack on the cheek, running a hand through his short, blond hair. She gestured toward me. “Who’s this?”

  “Sloane,” Cade answered.

  She bobbed her head up and down like we were already acquainted. “Park City Sloane?”

  I looked at Cade. He dodged the question. Unfortunately for him, the girl kept on talking. “Cade talks about you all of the—”