Cavanaugh Vanguard

by Marie Ferrarella

  Mrs. Caulfield leaned forward, lowering her voice like a conspirator sharing secret plans. “But the next morning, when I was checking out of the hotel,” she told them, drawing out each word, “I saw an exterminator’s truck pulling up.”

  “And this happened during your third stay?” Brianna asked. Sometimes, she’d found, events seemed to link up in a witness’s mind, yielding information that the witness didn’t even know they possessed.

  “Yes!” Mrs. Caulfield declared excitedly. And then, suddenly, her face clouded over. “Oh, goodness, you don’t think—” The woman’s hazel eyes widened in complete horror.

  There was no way the woman had heard people in the walls, Jackson thought. But she looked so appalled, he felt sorry for her.

  “Most likely what you heard were rats in the walls,” he told Mrs. Caulfield. “They can make a lot of noise and sound like they’re everywhere.”

  Mrs. Caulfield nodded, allowing Jackson to calm her.

  “Rats,” she echoed. “Yes, you’re right. That’s probably it,” she agreed, her eyes darting back and forth between Jackson and his partner. “That young man at the desk probably didn’t want to admit that was the problem. Bad publicity and all that.”

  “So there’s nothing else that you can recall that seemed out of the ordinary?” Brianna asked.

  Mrs. Caulfield shook her head. “No, nothing. I even called all the guests who had attended Katie’s wedding and asked them if they had a good time. Funny thing, I never got an answer from Tina.”

  “Tina?” Brianna repeated, wondering if this was just another rambling sidebar the woman was going to launch into.

  The strawberry-blond head bobbed up and down. “Tina Rutherford. She was my husband’s young cousin. Flirty little thing,” Mrs. Caulfield confided nonjudgmentally, then chuckled. “It looked like she and one of the other guests were really connecting. I even tried calling her a second time a couple of days later to find out how that turned out, but she never returned my call,” Mrs. Caulfield concluded with a resigned sigh.

  “Didn’t that concern you or your husband?” Jackson asked.

  “Oh, no,” Mrs. Caulfield assured him. “Tina was given to taking off on a whim. We just thought that Tina was just being Tina, that’s all.”

  “Did you ever hear from her after that?” Brianna asked her.

  Mrs. Caulfield thought for a moment. “Come to think of it, no. But then, we weren’t close or anything,” she explained quickly.

  “Did she come to your husband’s funeral?” Brianna pressed.

  “We couldn’t reach her to tell her. Her phone had been disconnected by then,” Mrs. Caulfield answered.

  Brianna exchanged looks with Jackson. She could see that he appeared to be thinking the same thing: that they had, just possibly, stumbled across the name of one of the victims unearthed by the wrecking ball.

  “Roberta,” Jackson said in a conversational tone, “we have a few more questions for you.”

  “Of course, of course,” she said quickly, adding, “Anything I can do to help, just name it.” Her eyes shifted between them. It was obvious that she could barely contain herself. “This is so exciting—awful,” she was quick to add, “but exciting.”

  Beaming, the older woman pushed the platter of chocolate chip cookies closer to the handsome young detective.

  * * *

  “I think she was actually batting her eyes at me,” Jackson said as he and Brianna left the woman’s homey little apartment almost forty-five minutes later.

  Brianna pretended to consider his observation. “Could have been the sunlight making her squint,” she deadpanned.

  She expected Jackson to respond curtly, but instead, as they reached his vehicle, he said, “By the way, thanks for the save.”

  Brianna got in on the passenger side. “Come again?”

  “Telling her that I couldn’t have too much sugar,” he reminded her. “Quick thinking.”

  She looked at him, stunned. Muldare was actually complimenting her. She was close to speechless for a moment.

  “Those had to be the worst cookies I’ve ever had,” he said, starting up his car. As he pulled out, he asked, “How did you eat two of those things?”

  Brianna shrugged. “I felt sorry for her, and I have a cast-iron stomach.” She paused, thinking about the information they’d managed to glean. “So what do you think? Was Tina Rutherford one of the hotel killer’s victims?”

  “The hotel killer?” he repeated. “You’ve labeled him?”

  “For now, until something better comes along. So what do you think about Cousin Tina?”

  “She could have been a victim,” he allowed. “Or maybe she never called back because she just didn’t want to risk having to eat any of Mrs. Caulfield’s cookies.”

  Brianna humored him for a second. “A definite possibility.” And then she grew serious. “But I’m still going to have Valri in the computer lab see if she can track down this woman from the information that Mrs. Caulfield gave us.”

  “Meanwhile—” he indicated the list of names that sat on his dashboard “—we’ve still got all these people to talk to.”

  Brianna slanted a wicked look in his direction. “Good thing we don’t have to do it on an empty stomach,” she said.

  Jackson groaned. He could swear that his gut was grumbling in protest over the cookie he’d been forced to ingest. “Don’t remind me,” he said.

  * * *

  The rest of the morning and afternoon were one huge blur as she and Jackson systematically went down the list, interviewing as many of the former hotel guests who currently resided in Aurora as they could.

  A number of other guests lived in the outlying cities. Brianna decided that they would get to those people after they’d had the opportunity to talk to the ones who lived in the immediate area.

  The guests who now lived out of state would get phone-call interviews. Brianna didn’t feel that phone calls were as effective as face-to-face interviews, but for now the phone calls would have to do—unless the phone call caused a red flag to go up.

  This, she told Jackson, was the plan for now. He went along with it.

  Over the course of that day and the following one, Brianna periodically kept in touch with Del Campo. She wanted to see how he and Johansson were doing and if they’d had any breakthroughs with their interviews.

  “Only that I’m seriously beginning to think I need a career change,” Del Campo told her the second time she called him.

  “That’s nothing new,” she told him. By her count, Del Campo had a career crisis at least once a month. “How many names are left on your list?”

  “Five. Why?” he asked.

  His voice sounded like he was really beat to her. A tired detective missed things.

  “Look, why don’t you and Johansson call it a day and go home?” she told him. “You can get to the last five tomorrow.”

  “What if that turns out to lead nowhere, too?” Del Campo asked wearily.

  “Then we’ll get together tomorrow to figure out our next move,” she told him matter-of-factly.

  It wouldn’t be the first time they’d have to regroup and go back to square one, she thought. Only crimes on TV were solved in the scope of sixty minutes minus commercials.

  “Hey,” she heard Del Campo say, brightening already, “you don’t have to twist my arm. Tomorrow,” he told her just before ending the call.

  “I take it he didn’t get anywhere, either,” Jackson surmised as Brianna put her cell phone away.

  They were on their way back to the precinct. Brianna sighed, leaning back in the passenger seat. She was doing her best not to let frustration get the better of her, but it was a struggle.

  “Someone had to have seen or heard something,” she said, exasperated.

  “Trouble is,” Jackson speculated, “they proba
bly don’t know that they saw it or heard it.” That happened far more often than either one of them was happy about. “Why don’t you give it a rest tonight, like you told Del Campo to do?” he suggested suddenly. When she turned toward him with a quizzical look, he said, “You look beat.”

  That was not what she wanted to hear. She liked to think of herself as invincible.

  “Is that the line you use to have women falling at your feet?” she asked sarcastically.

  “No, that’s the line I use to get my partner to act sensibly and get some rest,” he said without emotion. “I don’t want to take a chance on you being so punchy that you don’t have my back.”

  “That’ll never happen,” she assured him. She didn’t like what he was implying.

  Jackson didn’t back off. “I wouldn’t be too sure if I were you.”

  “You’re not me,” she informed him tartly just as they pulled into the rear parking lot. “And if you recall, I told Del Campo and Johansson to call it a night. That means that you can, too.”

  “I wasn’t talking about me,” he said as they got out of the car.

  “Okay,” she snapped. “I’ll go to bed.”

  Several police detectives were walking to their cars, and they stopped to look in her direction.

  “Alone,” she specified to negate what they appeared to be thinking.

  “Hey, if you’d like some company,” Hardy, a tall blond detective who worked vice, called out, a broad grin on his face, “I’m right here.”

  “She’s not looking for company,” Jackson informed the other detective sharply.

  “Message received.” Hardy gave them a mock salute and disappeared into his vehicle.

  Chapter 11

  Still standing on the other side of his vehicle, Jackson waited for Brianna to snap at him for feeling as if he had to come to her defense.

  Things were a lot easier when acts of chivalry were commonplace and just accepted without being dissected and examined six ways from sundown. These days when he followed his instincts, he was just as likely to wind up insulting someone as he was to do the right thing.

  He was still working on squelching those instincts and keeping to himself, but they got away from him at times. Like now. He couldn’t explain exactly why, but something about Brianna raised his protective instincts to the surface.

  So Jackson had to admit he was rather surprised when Brianna looked at him after Hardy drove off and, instead of telling him she was perfectly able to defend herself, she said, “Thanks.”

  Recovering, Jackson shrugged in response. “He was being a jerk.”

  “You’ll get no argument from me.” Feeling that it would be best to retreat now before it got any more involved, Brianna said, “Well, I’ll see you in the morning.” She began to walk toward her own car parked a row away.

  She’d only taken a single step when she heard Jackson’s phone start buzzing. Pausing, she looked over her shoulder in his direction. He was frowning as he stared down at the screen.

  “Is that your brother?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  That he answered at all surprised Brianna. It also made her feel as if maybe, just maybe, she was making a little headway when it came to burrowing beneath the man’s inner shell.

  The next minute, he obviously pressed the decline tab, since the phone stopped vibrating.

  He couldn’t keep doing this indefinitely, Brianna thought. There was a good person under all that. He was just having trouble digging himself out.

  “Well, when you do finally decide to go see your brother, if you need any support, I can come with you,” she offered.

  About to get back into his car, Jackson stopped. Working on the police force, he was still a loner. He wasn’t accustomed to anyone caring enough about him to attempt to help. “Why would you want to do that?”

  There was no long, involved response. As far as Brianna was concerned, the answer was simple. “It’s all part of having your back—and you having mine,” she told Jackson.

  “Okay,” he finally said. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Brianna nodded, getting into her car.

  Inch by inch, she thought. She was making progress inch by inch.

  * * *

  Inch by inch, Brianna thought again several days later, but this time she wasn’t thinking about her progress in getting Jackson to open up. Instead, she was thinking about the case. Between the four of them, she, Jackson, Del Campo and Johansson had spoken to almost all the guests they could find, except for two, either in person or over the phone. All those man-hours spent and she felt that they were no closer to finding out who was responsible for killing and entombing all the bodies that had been discovered—eighteen so far—than they had been when they’d first started.

  The last two former guests on the list had lived in the hotel on a permanent basis. Neither of them was in the area anymore.

  At eighty-three, Irene Jessop resided in a retirement home in San Francisco, which was north of Aurora, while the eighty-nine-year-old Barry McNamara lived with his son and grandson in Napa Valley, where the younger McNamaras operated a vineyard.

  “Why don’t you take one and we’ll take the other?” Del Campo suggested as they gathered around a conference table in the squad room, discussing their next move.

  Brianna had been thinking the exact same thing. “Fine with me,” she agreed. She turned toward Jackson and asked, “Do you have any preferences as to which of the former permanent guests we interview?”

  Jackson appeared to be entirely indifferent. Shrugging, he said, “Up to you.”

  Del Campo, however, wasn’t indifferent. Raising his hand in a mock effort to get Brianna’s attention, he told her, “I’ve always wanted to tour a vineyard.”

  She had no trouble believing that. Del Campo prided himself on being an expert on different wines.

  “You won’t be taking a vacation day going up there,” she reminded the other man. “This’ll be in the line of duty.”

  “Absolutely,” Francisco agreed, then grinned as he added, “but it can feel like a vacation day.”

  She saw no reason to say no to Del Campo’s choice. But in the interests of fairness, she turned toward Jackson again. “Muldare?”

  “You’re the boss,” he told her.

  She wasn’t buying that. She was the boss until she did or said something that Muldare disagreed with. The man was not as easygoing as he was trying to portray. But she’d take what she could get. And saying yes would make Del Campo happy. Happy detectives worked far better and more productively than unhappy ones.

  “Fine,” she said decisively. “You and Bill go up to Napa and see McNamara,” she told Del Campo, who immediately got to his feet. “Muldare and I’ll talk to the Jessop woman. Maybe one of them has something we can finally work with,” she said. So far, the only so-called “lead” they’d got, the name of the possibly missing wedding guest, Tina Rutherford, hadn’t led to anything.

  Del Campo and Johansson left the squad room immediately. It was obvious that Del Campo didn’t want to take a chance on her changing her mind. Brianna and Jackson were about to leave as well when her cell phone rang.

  Heading toward the elevator, Brianna held up one hand and answered her cell with the other. “O’Bannon.”

  “Detective, I’d like to see you and Detective Muldare in my office.”

  She didn’t have to ask who was calling. Like most of the detectives at the precinct, she could recognize the chief of detectives’ voice anywhere. And, just like any other detective at the precinct, she wondered if she’d done anything wrong to prompt this summons.

  “Yes, sir. We’ll be right there.”

  Terminating the call after a beat just in case the chief had something more to add, she put her phone back into her pocket.

  “Command performance?” Jackso
n guessed.

  She nodded, assuming that Jackson had overheard. “Chief of Ds wants to see us.”

  The elevator car arrived, and Jackson gestured for her to enter in front of him.

  “Age before beauty,” he quipped.

  “Wrong on both counts,” she said, getting into the elevator. She pressed for the floor where the chief of detectives had his office.

  “You know,” Brianna said, breaking what felt like an endless silence in the elevator as they rode up to the chief of Ds’ floor, “most detectives would be speculating as to why the chief of Ds wanted to see them. You, on the other hand, haven’t said a word.”

  “No point in speculating,” Jackson answered. He didn’t believe in torturing himself with various scenarios. “We’ll know why soon enough.”

  “You are a really strange man,” she told Jackson as they reached the seventh floor. “Don’t you have any curiosity?”

  “I do,” he admitted mildly. “But I keep it to myself.”

  Brianna shook her head as she got off. “Really strange,” she repeated under her breath.

  “He’s waiting for you,” Lieutenant Laura Rayns told them as they walked into the chief’s outer office. “Go right in.”

  Brianna entered the chief of detectives’ very masculine office just ahead of Jackson.

  Brian Cavanaugh rose to his feet to greet them.

  “Sit, please.” When they did and he was behind his desk again, Brian asked, “How’s the case coming along?”

  Offering excuses had never been the way she operated. She didn’t start now. “I’d love to say that we’re closing in on the killer, sir, but the truth is, we’re not making all that much headway.”

  Kind, thoughtful green eyes met hers. “No leads?” Brian asked.

  “We’re following up on a few more things,” Brianna answered, hating how very vague that had to sound.

  Because the chief of detectives turned to look at him, Jackson joined in. “The medical examiner is still trying to identify the bodies.”

  “I hear the count is up to eighteen as of this morning,” Brian said.