Cavanaugh Encounter

by Marie Ferrarella

  Maeve took a deep breath, as if she was preparing herself to jump off the high board and dive straight into the pool. “Yes.”

  “Problem solved,” he told her. “Now you need to tell him that,” Luke urged. “And do it quick, before his ego gets really bruised with all this waiting.”

  “His ego isn’t bruised,” Maeve scoffed, waving away the very suggestion.

  But Luke had a very different viewpoint of the situation. “Trust me, Mom. He’s a guy. All guys’ egos get bruised—and it doesn’t matter how old they are,” he underscored.

  Maeve looked a little concerned. “Maybe you’re right,” she conceded. “I’ll call him as soon as I get home,” she said, making the decision right on the spot. Smiling, she reached up and patted Luke’s cheek. “This is why I came to you instead of one of the others. You cut through all the layers and got to the heart of the matter, even better than your twin sister,” she remarked, referring to Brianna.

  He slipped his arm around Maeve’s small, slender shoulders then gently guided his mother toward the front door. Now that she had what she came for—his input—Luke knew she was anxious to get home and put her plan into motion.

  “I just said what you wanted to hear, Mom,” he told her.

  Maeve laughed softly. “There’s that, too. See? Like I said, you cut through all the layers. No flattery, no unnecessary rhetoric.”

  Reaching around his mother, Luke opened the door for her. “Mom?”

  About to walk out, she looked up at him. “Yes, Lukkas?”

  He grinned at her. “Just don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  Maeve laughed in response. “That leaves me a great deal of territory to cover.”

  “And tell Chief Carlyle,” Luke added as he walked her back to her car, “that if he does anything at all to hurt you, I will end him.”

  Maeve opened the driver’s-side door. “I’m sure that’ll have him shaking in his boots, dear,” she replied. Getting in, she buckled her seatbelt and then gazed up at her son. “What’s wrong, Lukkas?”

  Rousing himself, he smiled at her. “I was just thinking about that old adage.”

  “What old adage, dear?”

  “They grow up so fast,” he told her, struggling to keep a straight face.

  His mother’s hazel eyes crinkled at the corners as they met his. “Yes,” she told him with a touch of seriousness. “I know.”

  Luke stepped back from the sports car as she started it up. “Be sure to let me know how it goes, Mom,” he requested.

  “I might have to censor some things,” she told him. “But you’ll be the first one I call.”

  Then, with a deep laugh that was so familiar to him, his mother drove away.

  Luke stood in his driveway for a while, watching as the red sports car made it down the block and turned left, disappearing from view.

  Who would have ever thought that his mother would be out there, dating? he mused. This was an entirely new side of her, and it was definitely going to take some getting used to, even though he was happy for her.

  He just hoped she wouldn’t wind up getting hurt.

  Damn, he thought as he went back into the house, something new to worry about.

  * * *

  “You’re in early,” he commented to Frankie the next morning shortly before eight as he walked into the squad room. “But then,” he reflected, “I suppose that doesn’t really surprise me. I half expected you to sneak out of your apartment last night and come back to the squad room after I drove away.”

  “How did you know I didn’t?” Frankie challenged, wondering if he’d actually parked on the outskirts of her complex for a while, out of view.

  “You’re wearing different clothes,” he answered, nodding at her outfit. The two-piece suit she’d had on yesterday had given way to jeans and a short jacket over an emerald-green pullover.

  “I could have had a change of clothing in my car,” Frankie pointed out.

  “I guess you could have,” he acknowledged. Luke put the container of coffee he’d brought in for her on her desk, then sat down at his own desk. Leaning forward, he took the lid off his coffee. “You like to keep me guessing, don’t you, DeMarco?”

  She gave him an innocent look. “Complacency slows your reflexes.”

  He pretended to look impressed. “You just come up with that?” he asked.

  “Seems like the appropriate response,” she answered, then asked, “What do I owe you for the coffee?”

  “Well, for starters, how does your undying loyalty sound?” he quipped.

  Frankie slid the unopened container over toward his desk. “Too high a price.”

  He put up his hand, keeping the coffee from coming any closer. “Then how about truthful answers?”

  Frankie inclined her head and drew the container back over to her side. “That I can do, seeing as how you ferreted out my one secret.”

  “That’s not ferreting,” he told her with a self-satisfied smile. “That’s just plain old good detective work.”

  “No, that’s having a cousin in the computer lab,” Frankie corrected.

  “That’s all part of the good detective work,” he responded. Changing the subject, Luke nodded at the back of her monitor. “So, did you find out anything new about our victims?”

  “Not new,” Frankie qualified. “But I’m compiling a list of all of their friends and coworkers that we can question. I thought that might lead us to some sort of an overlap, which just might ultimately bring us to the killer.”

  He looked at her, pleased. “See how much you can accomplish when you get a good night’s sleep?” Luke asked her.

  “Aren’t you afraid that you’ll wind up pulling a muscle, patting yourself on the back like that?” she asked.

  “Nope,” he answered, grinning. “My mother thought it was a good idea for all of us to take yoga classes when we were kids. Turns out that I’m still pretty flexible,” he said, his eyes meeting hers as he grinned.

  Frankie felt herself growing warmer.

  Why did she feel as if he was putting her on some kind of notice?

  Maybe you didn’t get as much sleep as you thought you did.

  With effort, she shifted the conversation to what he’d just said about his mother. “Your mother sounds like a very progressive woman.”

  A fond look came into his eyes. It wasn’t lost on Frankie.

  “Oh, that she is,” he told her. “She raised the five of us all by herself—or as by yourself as you can be if you’re a Cavanaugh,” he added. “Mom drove an ambulance for years, then branched out and wound up buying the company, adding a couple more ambulances to the number along the way.” He thought of last night’s unexpected visit. “And, apparently, she’s still up for new challenges.”

  Frankie raised her eyes from the monitor. Something in the other detective’s voice made her think he wanted to speak but was holding back.

  She didn’t exactly know O’Bannon all that well, but he didn’t strike her as the type who ordinarily withheld information.

  “What sort of new challenges?” she asked.

  Luke took a breath, as if to fortify himself before answering. At the last second, he stopped before he told her. It was as if the words couldn’t make it all the way out.

  “What sort of challenges?” she repeated, telling herself that if he didn’t answer her this time, she was letting the matter drop.

  And, in actuality, it was probably better that way, since she really didn’t think that sharing things with this man was a good idea. As far as she was concerned, his knowing about Kris was sharing more than enough.

  “My mother’s thinking about dating again,” Luke told her without any preamble.

  “And you disapprove?” she heard herself asking. Why was she asking him
that? She didn’t care how he felt about this.

  Right?

  The awful thing was that she really didn’t know how she felt about O’Bannon sharing something so personal as his mother’s unorthodox behavior—or, at least, unorthodox in his eyes.

  “No, I’m happy for her,” he told her. “I really am,” he added after a moment.

  “Then what’s the problem? Because there’s obviously a problem from that expression on your face.”

  “It just—feels odd,” he finally said. That was the best word for it, he thought. Odd.

  Frankie laughed, more at the perplexed expression on his face than what he’d just said. “She probably felt the same way when you started dating.”

  “You expect your kids to date,” Luke answered. “You don’t expect your parents to suddenly do that after a thirty-year dry spell.”

  “It hasn’t been that long between dates for you, has it, O’Bannon?” White Hawk asked, walking in on the tail end of his partner’s conversation. He draped his jacket over the back of his chair, still looking at Luke. “Because if you want, I can have Linda fix you up with someone—”

  “I was just talking about my mother. She’s suddenly decided that she’s going out on a date,” Luke clarified.

  Just then, his cellphone rang.

  As did White Hawk’s.

  They exchanged looks. That only meant one thing. Another victim had turned up.

  Chapter 11

  Frankie braced herself just before she walked into the apartment where Vanessa Jackson’s lifeless body had been found. As ready as she would ever be, she followed O’Bannon in through the open door. White Hawk remained outside, canvassing the neighbors to see if anyone had heard or seen anything that might be useful in the investigation.

  The scene inside the apartment was similar to the one she’d seen when she found her cousin. An attractive, dark-haired young woman was lying on the floor, dead. There was a syringe on the floor not far from her body. A rubber cord was still tied to her left arm, as if the last thing she had done was to administer the fatal overdose to herself.

  Mechanically slipping on a pair of rubber gloves, Frankie crouched down beside the body. She touched the victim’s neck. Vanessa Jackson’s body had already grown cold.

  “Best guess,” Sean Cavanaugh told them as he came up to his nephew and the detective working with him, “she was killed sometime last night.”

  “You sound very sure that she was killed,” Luke commented. “No chance that this case was just an overdose?”

  “No,” Sean replied, shaking his head. “This one tried to fight back.” He raised one of the dead woman’s hands so that he could prove his point. “She just had a manicure,” he told them. “Look at the nail polish. It’s fresh—and expensive-looking. Yet all her nails are broken. It looks to me as if she tried to fight off her killer.”

  Had they finally caught a break? “That means that the killer’s skin should be under her nails, right?” Luke asked.

  Again, Sean shook his head. “In a perfect world, yes,” he agreed. “But the killer has obviously watched his share of crime procedurals. The area under all her nails was thoroughly scrubbed with some sort of brush. Maybe the victim’s toothbrush. I noticed that there wasn’t one in the bathroom,” he told them.

  “All her nails?” Frankie repeated, feeling a wave of disappointment. “Are you sure?”

  “Well, there still might be some hope left. The ME has to perform the autopsy,” he told her. “There’s an outside chance that there might be something the killer missed and left behind.”

  “Who called the police?” Luke asked.

  “The victim’s mother,” his uncle answered. “That very broken-looking woman sitting in the corner over there. She told the police that she called her daughter this morning to find out how her date had gone last night. When she received no answer, she said she had a bad feeling and came over. Her daughter didn’t answer the door. That’s when Mrs. Jackson had the building manager unlock the door.”

  “Wait, back up,” Luke said. “A date? Does the mother know who her daughter was dating?”

  Sean shook his head. “I didn’t have the heart to interrogate her. She’s been crying the entire time I’ve been here. She only stopped just now. I thought I’d leave the questions up to you,” he told Luke. “I knew you’d want to talk to her, and this way, the poor woman only has to go through the process once.”

  Luke nodded. And then, rather than go question Mrs. Jackson, he surprised Frankie by turning toward her. “You want to take the lead on this, DeMarco?”

  Frankie stared at him, confused. “Me?”

  He nodded. “I figure you’d have a lighter touch. You know, woman to woman,” he said pointedly, deliberately leaving out the part that she could relate to the woman because she had suffered her own loss recently.

  But she knew what he meant.

  Still, Frankie hesitated for a moment. She wasn’t really a people person. “Are you sure about this?”

  “I’m sure,” he told her. “I’ll just hang back and let you do the talking.”

  She knew that O’Bannon thought she was in a better position to relate to the woman, but all things considered, she was going to have a hard time handling the woman’s grief.

  However, she couldn’t say that to O’Bannon because she wasn’t about to appear as if she was shirking an assignment he was giving her.

  Steeling herself, Frankie made her way over to the victim’s mother.

  Mrs. Ada Jackson gave the appearance of someone who had had her insides hollowed out with the edge of a jagged spoon. She didn’t look up at first when Frankie said her name. It took her three attempts to get the woman’s attention.

  Finally, Mrs. Jackson lifted her head and looked at her, confused and at a complete loss.

  “I’m sorry,” the victim’s mother said in a shaky voice. “I didn’t hear you. Were you talking to me?”

  Frankie smiled at her kindly.

  Her expression wasn’t lost on Luke. He noted that Frankie’s face had softened.

  “Yes,” Frankie replied. “I’m very sorry to have to bother you at a time like this, Mrs. Jackson, but I wanted to ask you some questions while the events were all still fresh in your mind.”

  “Still fresh in my mind?” the woman repeated, her throat raspy from the crying she’d done. “It will always be fresh in my mind.” Mrs. Jackson shivered. “The image of my daughter, lying there, dead, will haunt me for the rest of my life.” Fresh tears rose to fill her eyes. “I should have done something,” she sobbed. “I should have told her not to go. But she was so eager, so hopeful. She just wanted her life to be normal again.”

  “Normal? Why hadn’t her life been normal prior to this?” she asked the woman gently, watching Mrs. Jackson very carefully as the woman responded.

  Mrs. Jackson took in a long breath, as if that would somehow help her get the words out. “Vanessa had had her nose to the grindstone for years now, trying to make a name for herself. She was a set designer—a really good set designer,” the woman emphasized with pride. “But it’s such a competitive business and she felt that she had to make up for the precious time she’d lost.”

  “How, Mrs. Jackson?” Frankie pressed. “How did she lose precious time?”

  The woman looked away, as if she couldn’t bear the shame of what she was about to say. “Vanessa took on too much. She started to feel that she was falling behind so she turned to amphetamines to keep going. She became addicted to them before she knew it. When I finally realized what was happening, I made her go to rehab. She resisted at first, but she knew I was right and she finally agreed to go.”

  Mrs. Jackson’s voice broke as she said, “She kicked it. Vanessa kicked her addiction,” the woman repeated. “It was the hardest thing she ever did and I
was so proud of her.” She raised her eyes up to look at the woman she was talking to. “Why did this happen to Vanessa?” Mrs. Jackson demanded tearfully. “She was doing so well.”

  “You said that you should have stopped her,” Frankie prodded gently. “Stopped her from doing what?”

  Mrs. Jackson drew in a shaky breath before she answered. “I should have stopped her from going out on that date.”

  Frankie exchanged looks with Luke. Another attractive young woman found dead right after she’d gone out on a date. “Would you happen to know who your daughter was seeing?”

  But Ada shook her head. “It was someone she met online. She’d never met him before. This was going to be her first date. She was so excited,” the woman sobbed. “Why didn’t I try to stop her?” she lamented again.

  Going on instinct, Frankie took the woman’s hand in hers. Mrs. Jackson’s fingers were icy.

  “Because you wanted her to be happy,” Frankie told her. “And you were being a good mother. Do you know the name of the online site?”

  The victim’s mother pressed her lips together, struggling to keep from sobbing again. “The Perfect Date. It was called The Perfect Date,” she told Frankie. “One of the people she worked with told her about it. She said she met her fiancé through that site.” Mrs. Jackson raised her tear-stained face. “Why did he have to kill her?” she asked. “Why did that animal have to kill my baby?”

  Frankie felt as if the woman was shredding her heart. “I don’t know, Mrs. Jackson. But I promise you, we’re going to find out who did this and we will make him pay for killing your daughter.”

  Ada Jackson nodded numbly.

  Frankie beckoned the policeman who had been first to respond to the woman’s frantic 911 call. She turned Mrs. Jackson over to the patrolman. “Please see that Mrs. Jackson gets home all right,” she requested.

  Feeling somewhat drained, Frankie stepped away from the woman.

  Luke came over to her. “You did good, DeMarco,” he told her, finally speaking up.

  “I didn’t get the guy’s name,” Frankie complained.

  “But you got the name of the dating site,” Luke reminded her. “That’s something to go on.”