Cavanaugh Vanguard

by Marie Ferrarella

  Or at least she hoped that was what Jackson was doing, Brianna thought. She’d certainly told him to call his brother enough times yesterday. Maybe he had, and that had led to some sort of an emergency or crisis that he had to take care of.

  Francisco seemed really amused as he regarded her. “My, getting kind of defensive on his behalf, aren’t you, Bri?” he asked.

  “I’m not being defensive,” she informed Francisco crisply. “I just don’t want you to get the wrong idea about Muldare, so I’m filling you in.” It was time to redirect Del Campo’s attention back to the case, otherwise he was liable to go on about Muldare indefinitely. “In the meantime, you want to take some of the people on this list and see if they have anything enlightening about the hotel to offer?”

  Taking the new list Brianna had printed up just before he’d come in, Francisco looked over the names and the current information beneath each one. Scanning it, he nodded.

  “I’ve always been partial to the beginning of the alphabet,” Del Campo said with a touch of sarcasm, “so I’ll take this bunch and pay them a visit.”

  “Why don’t you take Johansson with you?” she suggested. When she saw the quizzical look entering Del Campo’s eyes, she told him, “Two pairs of ears are better than one.”

  The other detective snorted. “Not if one of those pairs of ears belongs to Johansson. That guy doesn’t stop talking from the second he gets in the car.”

  “Look at the bright side. Maybe you’ll pick up some interesting gossip,” she told the detective, referring to his attempt to pick her brain when he’d come in.

  Francisco looked far from placated. “His stuff doesn’t interest me.” And then he looked past Brianna’s shoulder toward the squad room doorway. “Well, looks like Prince Charming decided to show up.”

  Brianna didn’t have to turn around to know who the detective was referring to. “Careful, Francisco,” she cautioned. “Green is not a good color for you.”

  Del Campo surprised her by agreeing. “Yeah, you’re right,” he mumbled. Looking at the list he’d just taken from Brianna, he frowned as he got off her desk. “I’d better go tell Johansson the good news that he’s working with us on this case.”

  “Let me know what you find out,” she called after Francisco. And then she turned around just in time to see Jackson sitting down at the desk she’d found for him.

  Jackson didn’t really want to look her way, but it seemed inevitable. And when he did, their eyes met. Being the new kid on the block, he felt obligated to say, “Sorry, I know I’m late.”

  “Got a good reason?” Brianna asked.

  “Yeah.”

  The single word was guarded as Jackson braced himself for an onslaught of words and probing questions.

  Brianna shrugged. “Okay.”

  “You’re not going to ask me what the good reason is?” he asked, looking at her uncertainly.

  “Not if you don’t want to tell me,” Brianna answered brightly.

  Well, he certainly hadn’t seen this coming—or not coming, as the case might be. Her reaction just wasn’t computing.

  “Are you the same person I worked with yesterday?” Jackson asked, tongue in cheek. “The one who kept trying to get me to open up about my business?”

  Her curiosity was in high gear, but she had to admit she was enjoying Jackson’s confusion.

  “You’ll find that there are many sides to me,” she said with a laugh. “Right now, the side that’s being paid to be a homicide detective is front and center. Del Campo got the hotel’s former assistant manager to come up with a list of guests who stayed at the hotel over its last year. I spent last night and this morning trying to locate them. Del Campo and Johansson took the first half of the list to interview. We’ll take the second.”

  “Johansson?” Jackson questioned.

  “Detective Billy Johansson,” she clarified. “Six-year veteran. Two in robbery, four in homicide. Any other questions?”

  Jackson had come into the squad room ready to roll. After spending a disheartening forty-five minutes this morning visiting his father and telling the man his name and who he was over and over again, he was ready for anything that would help him take his mind off that soul-crushing scenario. He hadn’t been close to his father in any manner of speaking since his teens—when he’d mostly brought an inebriated Ethan home from bars—but seeing the man this way was still taking a toll on him.

  In response to her question, Jackson said, “Nope, no other questions. Didn’t even want to know that much. Let’s get started.”

  Getting her shoulder bag, Brianna led the way out of the squad room. “You want to drive?”

  That was two days in a row that she’d given him the option. He had to admit that he was surprised she did. But maybe she didn’t like to drive, Jackson guessed.

  Still, he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. The truth was he didn’t trust anyone behind the wheel except for himself.

  “Sure.”

  “Okay, then we’ll take your car again,” she said as they went down the elevator, taking his silence as agreement.

  * * *

  Brianna waited until they were in the car and on their way to the first address she had pointed out before she turned to Jackson and finally asked, “So, did you go see your brother this morning?”

  Jackson almost laughed. “Well, that didn’t take long.”

  “Did you?” Brianna asked again.

  Jackson was beginning to learn that his temporary partner wasn’t about to give up until she got what she was after.

  “No,” he bit off.

  “Oh.” Maybe admitting that he had actually listened to her advice interfered with some sort of code of ethics, so she tried again. “I thought that since you were late getting in for a second day in a row—”

  “I had an emergency to deal with,” he answered in a clipped voice. He didn’t bother looking her way. “Couldn’t be helped.”

  “Two emergencies in two days,” Brianna marveled. “You must lead an exciting life.”

  “Not hardly,” Jackson answered in a monotone. And then, very deliberately, he told her, “My excitement takes place in the field.” He blew out a breath. He couldn’t have her examining his life under a microscope every time he said something. “Look, if you find my work lacking, you can request to have them send you someone else from major crimes.”

  She didn’t want someone else; she wanted him. He was a good cop—besides, she’d already made up her mind that he was going to be her project.

  “And ruin what could be the start of a beautiful friendship?” she asked, miming shock, as she put one hand over what she pretended to be her pounding heart. “I don’t think so.”

  Jackson shook his head. He really didn’t know what to make of her. “Did you have to pass a psych exam to join the force?” he asked.

  “Yes.” The exam was standard procedure in the department’s attempt to weed out applicants who were ultimately unstable.

  “Maybe someone should review that exam and find a way to make it more stringent,” Jackson told her. He knew he was goading her and he was prepared for an explosion.

  But he was going to be disappointed again.

  “You missed your calling, Muldare,” Brianna told him matter-of-factly. “You’re rather good at creating diversions.”

  Stopped at a red light, Jackson looked at her. “Obviously not good enough.”

  Brianna grinned, pleased with the bantering exchange. “Don’t feel bad. I grew up with three brothers. I can see through almost anything.”

  She wasn’t going to give him any peace until he tossed her some sort of bone regarding why he was late this morning. “I went to see my father, okay? Are you happy?”

  “Not as happy as your father,” she told him with a knowing smile.

  Jackson thought of the empty e
xpression in his father’s eyes when the latter had looked up at him. “Don’t count on that,” he said flatly.

  “Did you two argue?” she asked sympathetically, guessing that was the reason why Muldare was so stricken beneath his stoic expression.

  “I wish.” The words had escaped Jackson’s lips without his even realizing that he had said anything. But since he had said that, Jackson completed the rest of his thought for her benefit. “To argue, he would have had to have been lucid.”

  For a second, Jackson had lost her. And then suddenly, all the pieces came tumbling together and she realized what he was saying. Muldare had to be talking about his father having dementia.

  She didn’t have any firsthand experience with the soul-crushing disease, but she knew a number of people who did.

  “I am so very sorry,” Brianna whispered, placing a light hand on his shoulder.

  He shrugged her off, keeping his eyes straight on the road. He didn’t want her pity.

  “Don’t be sorry,” he told her icily. “Just stop asking questions.”

  He was hurting and he didn’t even know it, or if he did, he wasn’t acknowledging it. But how did she reach him if she couldn’t get him to talk to her, Brianna wondered, frustrated. It would come to her. Somewhere along the line, as they worked on this terrible case together, it would come to her.

  “That won’t be so easy to do if we’re trying to interview Mrs. Caulfield or the other people on this list,” she told him in an amused tone.

  “Damn it, you could infuriate a saint,” Jackson bit off.

  “And by saint, are you referring to yourself?” she asked innocently.

  For some reason, he didn’t know why—maybe it was her tone of voice—her question made him laugh. Heartily and for more than just a second. He laughed so hard that it released some of the tension that had been knocking around in his chest.

  Taking a deep breath, Jackson pushed aside everything that had eaten away at him this morning and centered himself.

  “Okay, let’s just focus on this case for now,” he told her.

  “I was just about to suggest that, Muldare,” Brianna responded.

  Sure she was, he thought. But for now, peace had broken out between them, and he would take it. He needed that peace in order to concentrate on the case.

  They were paying him to be a detective, and right now almost every penny of that money was spoken for. He needed to get his brother clean and his father looked after. Whatever little money was left over, he’d use to take care of himself, but not until his father and his brother were squared away.

  There were times when he wondered how he’d got into this kind of position, with all this weight on his shoulders. And there were other times when he just shrugged, accepted his burden and made the best of it. After all, what choice did he have? There was no one else to take care of either his brother or his father and he couldn’t turn his back on them, even though there were times—selfish times—when he’d been tempted to.

  “You know,” Brianna said after a prolonged silence, “you can talk. Or would you rather I asked you another question?”

  That did it. His mental funk broke apart and slipped into the background as Jackson started asking her questions about the case and brainstorming with her.

  Chapter 10

  Roberta Caulfield was a lively seventy-nine-year-old widow with sparkling hazel eyes and short-cropped hair the color of blushing strawberries. Living in the Shadowy Oaks apartments, euphemistically referred to as apartment homes, the petite woman was eager for company and ready to talk about anything the two young people at her door wanted to discuss.

  A friendly, trusting woman, the retired third-grade teacher hardly glanced at Jackson and Brianna’s credentials when she opened the door a moment after they rang the bell.

  Instead, she invited them into her living room, where she immediately attempted to ply them with lemonade and cookies.

  “I just made them. They’re fresh out of the oven,” she told them proudly. “Please,” she said, placing a platter of the chocolate chip cookies on the coffee table. “You’ll be saving me from myself. I can’t resist them.”

  Brianna looked at Jackson. She could almost see the words forming in his head. He was going to ask the woman why she bothered baking the cookies if she didn’t want to wind up eating them.

  For the sake of not antagonizing the woman, she headed him off quickly. “We’d love some,” she assured the woman. “They look delicious, Mrs. Caulfield.”

  “Oh, call me Roberta, please,” Mrs. Caulfield insisted, dealing out napkins to both of them. “Johnny, my late husband, called me Bertie, but I always hated that name,” she confided. “Still, you can’t criticize your husband and tell him what to do, now can you?” The woman chuckled.

  Brianna saw a smile curving her partner’s mouth. “Some women might,” Jackson told the widow, slanting a look in Brianna’s direction.

  “Mrs. Caulfield—Roberta,” Brianna quickly corrected herself, “we’d like to ask you a few questions about the Old Aurora Hotel, if you don’t mind.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind at all,” Mrs. Caulfield answered. She planted herself on the love seat that faced the sofa they were on. “It was such a lovely establishment,” she said with a note of wistful longing in her voice. Reaching for one of her cookies, the woman shook her head as she took a bite. “Such a tragedy.”

  Listening, Brianna decided to just allow the woman to elaborate on what she meant. Watching Mrs. Caulfield’s kindly face, she asked, “Tragedy?”

  “Well, yes,” the other woman said with feeling. “If it were up to me, I certainly wouldn’t have torn down that lovely building. Oh, the memories that were made in that place,” she said nostalgically.

  “According to the hotel records,” Jackson cut in impatiently, “you stayed there on three different occasions before the hotel was closed down.”

  The woman nodded with enthusiasm. “Yes, that is correct.”

  Jackson asked the widow what he felt was a logical question. “Why would you stay at the hotel when you were living in Aurora?”

  Rather than take offense, to Brianna’s relief, Mrs. Caulfield seemed to take the question in stride.

  “Well, working my way backward,” the woman began, “the first time I stayed at the hotel, it was because my husband surprised me with reservations. He called it a getaway weekend,” Mrs. Caulfield recalled, a dreamy smile playing on her lips. “We were celebrating our thirty-fifth anniversary.

  “The second time was because Katie, our youngest, was getting married there and she and her fiancé were putting all the out-of-town guests up at the hotel. We stayed there, too. It was a beautiful wedding. I have an album if you’d like to see for yourselves,” she volunteered.

  “Maybe later,” Brianna told the woman. “About the last time...?”

  “And the last time...” Mrs. Caulfield’s voice trailed off for a moment as she looked at them sadly, tears glistening in her eyes. “The last time was because I’d just lost my Johnny and I wanted to go where we’d had some of our happiest times.” Glancing at the plate, she raised her eyes to look at Jackson. “You’re not eating, Detective,” Mrs. Caulfield pointed out.

  “I had one,” Jackson replied, trying to sound friendly.

  “Oh, one’s not enough, dear,” the grandmotherly woman chided. “You don’t get the full effect of the cookie’s flavor until you’ve had at least two or three more.” She pushed the platter closer to him, her meaning clear.

  “I’m afraid his limit’s one. Detective Muldare can’t have too much sugar,” Brianna told the woman, coming to her partner’s rescue with a solemn expression. “His doctor said sugar isn’t good for him.”

  Mrs. Caulfield was clearly disappointed, but she didn’t want to argue. Instead, she nodded. “Can’t go against doctor’s orders, I suppose,” she sighed.r />
  Brianna immediately took advantage of the momentary lull and quickly redirected the woman’s attention to the reason they were here.

  “Tell me, Roberta, during your stays at the hotel, did you ever observe anything odd or unusual going on? Or maybe something that struck you as odd later, when you looked back on it?” she coaxed.

  “Odd?” the older woman repeated, as if she was having trouble comprehending the word. “What do you mean by odd?”

  At this rate, they were going to be here all day, Jackson thought. “The workers doing demolition found bodies in the hotel walls,” he said bluntly.

  Mrs. Caulfield’s mouth dropped open. She turned pale as she sucked in air and then covered her mouth to suppress a squeal of alarm.

  Brianna shot her partner a really irritated look.

  “Well, tiptoeing through the tulips wasn’t getting you anywhere,” he pointed out.

  Brianna looked back at the woman on the love seat. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid that my partner’s a little rough around the edges—”

  But the former schoolteacher waved away Brianna’s words of apology, indicating that they were unnecessary. “Don’t apologize, dear. My Johnny was just the same way.” She smiled at Jackson. “To tell the truth, you rather remind me of him. He always liked to get to the heart of the matter,” she told them with a bittersweet smile. “No beating around the bush for him.”

  “Well, since the ice has been broken,” Brianna said, “did you notice anything unusual during your stays at the hotel?”

  “Unusual?” the woman repeated thoughtfully. “The staff was all very nice and the dears were eager to please. Even the last time, when I was there by myself.”

  She paused again, this time for so long Brianna thought that perhaps she’d drifted off.

  Just as Brianna was going to try to get the woman to continue talking, Mrs. Caulfield suddenly told them, “You know, that last time, I thought I heard noises in the walls. You know, some kind of scuffling, the kind of noise made by a really large rodent. I called down to the front desk, but the young man who answered assured me that everything was fine and it was just my imagination.”