by Julie Miller
Niall’s grim gaze indicated that was a likely possibility. “We’ll take care of this fast and get you out of here while I work.”
Lifting her chin to a resolute angle, Lucy followed the tug of Niall’s hand.
Keir Watson appeared at the garage opening and lifted the yellow tape when he saw them approach. The hand he shook Niall’s with was gloved in sterile blue plastic, and he winked at Lucy. “Thanks for coming. Back here.” She could see the stoicism in Niall’s posture and expression once he’d released her and knew he was changing from the man she was falling in love with into the city’s night-shift expert on analyzing dead bodies. Keir was as efficiently businesslike as she’d ever seen him, too. He led them between two long rows of pallets piled high with bags and crates labeled Sea Salt, Rosemary and Olive Oil. “I called the ME wagon for a pickup, but I wanted you to see this first before the CSIs cleared the scene and sent the body to autopsy. The custodian who discovered the body thinks our vic might have interrupted a robbery. There’s a safe in the warehouse’s office, and Friday is payday, so it should have money in it. Apparently, these guys deal with a lot of immigrant and low-income labor. They prefer cash instead of maintaining bank accounts.”
“But you don’t think it’s a robbery?” Lucy questioned.
“No, ma’am. The safe hasn’t been opened. I’ve got a call in to the owner to unlock it for us, though, to check the contents.”
“We passed the office out front,” Niall pointed out. “A thief wouldn’t need to enter the warehouse. This is something else.” He lifted his camera and paused to take a few pictures of the footprints and scuff marks at the base of one of the pallets. “Looks like an altercation of some kind happened here.” He pointed back toward the exit and then in the opposite direction into the makeshift walls of food and spices. Lucy didn’t need a medical degree to see the different sizes and designs of shoe imprints in the thin layer of dusty residue on the floor. One track led to the exit while the other followed the path Keir was taking. But how did Niall know the different trails had anything to do with the crime and hadn’t simply been left by the people who worked here? He pointed to the partially flattened burlap bag about chest-high in the pile. There was a small hole in one corner and a scattered mound of ground dry oregano at the base. Niall snapped a picture of the dark red stain in the material surrounding the hole. “Make sure one of the CSIs gets a numbered photo of this, and cut out that piece for analysis.”
“Got it.” Keir jotted the order on his notepad and ushered them on to the scene she was dreading. “I figure whatever started there ended here.”
They turned a corner to meet a forklift jammed into a stack of crates filled with broken and leaking bottles.
“Watch your step,” Keir warned. “The spilled oil makes the floor slick.”
But shaky footing wasn’t what caused Lucy to shudder and recoil into Niall’s chest. A man was pinned upright between the pallet on the raised forklift and the wall of crates. He stood there, frozen forever in time, with blood pooling above his waist where the empty pallet had caught him. But even that ghastly mess wasn’t the most disturbing part of the scene.
Now she understood why Keir had wanted her to come with Niall.
There was a soiled piece of fabric draped over the man’s head and chest—a square of white knit cotton dotted with yellow, red and blue trucks.
The baby blanket someone had stolen off Tommy that night in the laundry room.
Keir must have put two and two together and had been waiting to see her reaction to the way the murder victim had been displayed. “So you do recognize it. I thought it matched the description you gave Niall.”
Niall switched positions with her, putting his tall body between her and the bloody scene. “You didn’t put Lucy through this to identify a stolen baby blanket.”
Keir shook his head. “I’m sorry, Luce. The blanket wasn’t the only part of this mess that was too familiar for us to ignore.” He nodded to the CSI working nearby to remove the blanket and place it in an evidence bag. Keir was talking to his brother now. “This death shows a lot of rage.”
“Or an act of desperation.” Niall moved to keep her from seeing the dead man as the blanket was removed. “Who uses a forklift to kill a man?”
Lucy sensed where this conversation was going. “Someone who couldn’t overpower him on her own?” She was already shaking her head. “Diana didn’t do this.”
“I need her to see him, Niall.” Keir reluctantly asked his brother to step aside.
Standing like an unmoving wall in front of her, Niall explained a few practical details. “Lucy, the victim’s eyes are open. His face is bruised and puffy, partly from what appears to be a fight, and partly from the initial stages of postmortem swelling as fluids disperse through the tissues. He won’t look like the body of a deceased person you’ve seen at a funeral.”
His facts prepared her, softened the jolt of him stepping aside and giving her a view of the victim’s face.
Still, Lucy recoiled, maybe less from the horrible death Niall had described than from the familiar face that had haunted nearly every waking moment these past few days.
Niall stepped between her and the black-haired man in the bloodied leather jacket once more. “Is this the guy who assaulted you at Saint Luke’s Hospital? He fits the description you gave Duff.”
Lucy nodded. “That’s him.”
But the situation could only get impossibly worse. Bless his practical, protective heart, Niall couldn’t shield her from the other detail that had been hidden beneath the baby blanket. She peered around his shoulder to confirm the truth.
“Please tell me I’m not imagining that.” Niall reached for her, but Lucy was already pointing at the dead man’s chest. “What is happening? Why? My poor girl.”
She gasped and pressed her fist to her mouth, resisting the urge to gag as the rock walls swayed around her. Niall caught her by the shoulders and backed her away from the body. He pushed her clear around the corner and leaned her up against an undamaged stack of crates. He hunched his shoulders to bring his height closer to hers, demanding she focus on him and not the scene they’d left behind. “Deep breaths, sweetheart. Deep breaths.”
The endearment he used barely registered. Her mind was too full of the image of that screwdriver with plastic jewels decorating the pink handle plunged into the dead man’s heart. It was the mate to the one Niall suspected had been used to break into her apartment the day Tommy had been abandoned there.
“Lucy.” Niall’s voice was as firm as the grip of his fingers around her chin as he tipped her face up to his. “Don’t faint on me. Are you with me?”
“I have never fainted in my life. I’m not about to start now.” Anger blended with shock and fear, clearing her head. She twisted her fingers into the front of Niall’s jacket and clung to him. “I know what you’re thinking. Diana did not do this.”
“That’s not what I’m thinking right now,” he answered quietly.
Those piercing blue eyes revealed nothing but concern as he released her chin to brush a lock of hair off her cheek. Lucy tightened her grip on his jacket and walked right into his chest, pushing aside the camera that hung between them. “Put your arms around me, Niall. Just for a few seconds, okay? I need...”
His arms were already folding around her, anchoring her shaking body against his. His chin came to rest on the crown of her hair, surrounding her with his body. She snuggled into his heat, inhaled his scent, absorbed his strength.
Several endless moments passed until her world righted itself and she could draw in a normal breath. Niall showed no signs of letting go, and she wasn’t complaining.
But the comforting embrace lasted only a few seconds longer until Keir cleared his throat beside them. “I hate to do this, you two. But the sooner we can get some questions answered, the sooner Lucy can lea
ve. Do you think the beating or the forklift or the screwdriver killed him?”
With a reluctant nod, Lucy pushed away and tilted her eyes to Niall’s. “I won’t freak out again. I promise.”
“I know you won’t. But you stay here. You and Keir can talk and I can work while we figure this out.” Niall needed one more nudge to leave her and disappear around the corner of the crime scene.
Keir’s dark brows were arched in apology. “So you recognize the screwdriver?”
Lucy nodded, hugging her arms around her waist, already feeling the chill creep into her body again. “It matches the one Niall found in my apartment—from the set I gave Diana a few years back when she still lived with me.”
Keir’s blue eyes glanced around the corner, no doubt exchanging a pitying, skeptical look with his older brother. His suspicions were wrong. She’d said as much to Niall. She’d say it to anybody. “Diana did not do this. Maybe someone stole her toolbox. Maybe someone is framing her.”
Keir pulled back the front of his sports jacket and splayed his hands at his waist, assuming a more brotherly stance, looking less like a detective interviewing a witness. “Maybe it was self-defense. It fits the warning he gave you about staying away and making things worse. If he was hurting her, then it makes sense that she’d want to get Tommy out of the picture.”
“No. She couldn’t kill anyone.”
Niall suddenly reappeared, holding what looked like a meat thermometer and a wallet in his blue-gloved hands. “Would you kill to defend that baby out there? Or to protect yourself from someone like Roger Campbell?”
“That’s not the same. I didn’t retaliate against Roger.”
“You testified against him. Maybe Diana didn’t think she’d be able to get away before she had that opportunity.”
Keir flipped through the pages of his notepad. “Campbell’s the guy from Falls City who went to prison after assaulting you?”
Lucy glared a question at Niall, not sure she wanted every sordid detail about her past shared with his family. “He’s the investigator, Lucy. I deal in dead bodies, remember?” But knowledge was power in Niall’s book—understanding was the way to make everything fall into place. “Campbell said he wanted to make amends with Lucy. If he knew this guy had hurt her, could he have done this to square the debt with her?”
“Murdering someone is not squaring a debt,” she argued.
“You don’t think the way a criminal does,” Keir suggested. “I’ll add him to the list of suspects we want to question.” He made the notation in his book, then turned to Niall. “Find any ID on our vic yet?”
Niall opened the wallet in his hand and pulled out the driver’s license to hand him. “Antony Staab.” While Keir jotted down the information from the license, Niall continued his preliminary report. “Liver temp says he’s been dead about eight hours. But the temperature in here would make the body cool faster, so the time of death might be closer to dinnertime.”
“That would explain why no one discovered him until the night custodian reported for duty.” Keir jotted down more notes. “We’ll narrow down the window of opportunity to, say, 5 to 8 p.m. Don’t you think that covering the face indicates a personal connection—not wanting to see a loved one’s face? Possibly remorse?”
“It wasn’t Diana,” Lucy reiterated.
Niall had more gruesome details to report. “In addition to the contusions on his face, his knuckles are pretty scraped up. Looks like there’s an older knife wound in his flank. That probably accounted for the blood trail he left at the hospital. He had it bandaged, but there weren’t any stitches and signs of infection are evident.”
“So this guy was dying, anyway,” Keir suggested.
“Possibly. I want to check out these other injuries before I pronounce the cause of death. See what story they tell,” Niall says. “Mr. Staab here put up a good fight somewhere along the way.”
Lucy had a speculation of her own. “Could he have died of those other injuries? And the screwdriver is an attempt to pin his murder on Diana?”
“Like I said, I’ll know more when I open him up.”
The high-pitched wail of a baby crying echoed off the cavern walls. An instinctive alarm clenched low in Lucy’s belly, and she spun around. When she saw the compact detective carrying Tommy and several bags over his shoulder, she hurried to meet them. “Don’t let him see this.”
Niall was right there beside her. “Get him out of here, Hud.”
Hud Kramer halted inside the garage-door entrance. “I’m stopping right here, ma’am. Sir.”
“Is something wrong?” Lucy asked, reaching for the trembling infant and turning him in to her arms. “There, there, sweetie. Mama’s here...” She went silent at the slip and pressed a kiss to Tommy’s soft wool cap. “Lucy’s here, sweetie. What do you need?”
Tommy’s little toothless mouth opened wide as he squinched up his face and cried against her ear.
“Easy, bud.” Niall moved behind Lucy to catch Tommy’s gaze. “You’re making a lot of racket for someone your size.”
Tommy’s cries stuttered and he turned his head to the sound of Niall’s voice. But then he cranked up again.
Hud held his hands up in surrender. “The kid started hollering. I tried to give him one of those stuffed toys, but that only helped for a few seconds. I didn’t smell anything, but I didn’t open him up to check, either.” He pulled the diaper bag, plus Lucy’s knitting bag and her purse, from his shoulder. “Not sure what the issue is, so I brought everything. I wasn’t sure what you needed. Thought maybe I could be more help back here than walking him around the car over and over.”
Keir had joined the group, too, and was making faces to distract Tommy, but with little success. “I thought you said you had a half dozen nieces and nephews.”
His partner shook his head. “I’m the fun uncle. I play horsey with them and give them drum sets for Christmas. I don’t deal with their personal issues.”
“It’s too cold in here for him to stay.” Niall peeled off a sterile glove and caught one of Tommy’s batting fists between his fingers and guided it to the infant’s mouth. “Hey, munchkin. What’s the sit-rep?”
The instant she heard the sucking noise around his tiny fingers, Lucy diagnosed the problem. “He’s hungry.”
Niall released Tommy. “He’s starting to put on some weight. Maybe he needs to eat more. Or more frequently.”
“Hey, Mom and Pop.” Keir was grinning as he interrupted them. He thumbed over his shoulder. “Crime scene, remember?”
All too vividly. The baby whimpering around his tiny fist must be feeling as helpless and distressed as Lucy was right now. She glanced up at Niall and the other two men, glad to have something to do. “I’ll take him.”
“Don’t go back to the car by yourself,” Niall warned. “The killer could still be close by. And if Campbell’s watching, I don’t want him to see the two of you alone.”
“Even if he’s too young to know what’s going on, Tommy can’t stay here. We’ll be fine.”
“That’s unacceptable.”
“Niall—”
“You can use the office right next door, ma’am.” Hud Kramer extended a hand toward the entrance, offering a quick compromise. “There’s a restroom in there and it’s unlocked. Until the owner comes to open the safe, we’ve eliminated it as part of the crime scene. There are enough cops around here that we’ll be able to keep an eye on you and the kid.”
Lucy nodded her thanks and hurried as far away from the grisly murder scene as she could get.
The bell over the door startled Lucy and set Tommy off on another crying jag. “Poor guy.” Quickly assessing her surroundings, she dropped her bags on top of the gray metal desk in the center of the room and balanced the baby in one arm while she unzipped the diaper bag and pulled out the items she�
��d need to prepare a bottle. She was learning to juggle things with surprising efficiency, although the job would have gone a lot faster if Detective Kramer had thought to bring Tommy’s carrier, too. Since everyone from KCPD seemed to have a job he or she was working on, she didn’t want to ask any of them to run to the car to retrieve it. She rubbed her nose against Tommy’s, distracting him for a brief moment from his hunger pangs before he cranked up again. “You and me—we can deal with anything, right?”
Once she’d warmed the formula a tad under the hot water tap in the adjoining restroom, Lucy snugged Tommy in the crook of her arm and gave him the bottle. The instant his lips closed around the tip, his crying changed to greedy little grunts of contentment. Lucy kissed away the tears on his cheeks and let him have his fill. While Tommy ate, she walked around the office, mindlessly taking in the neatly arranged awards hung on the walls, as well as the vibrant silk flowers on top of a file cabinet and bedazzled pencil holder on the desk that added a woman’s touch to the otherwise austerely masculine room.
Tommy was smiling and full and playing with her hair by the time Lucy’s gaze zeroed in on the familiar handwriting on the calendar beside the pencil holder. She read the lines and notation marking off several weeks in February and March. “Maternity leave.”
Maternity leave? Diana’s penchant for glittery objects? The handwriting? Being warned to stop looking for her by the dead man found at the same business? “This is your mama’s desk.”
But Niall would need concrete evidence to prove that her foster daughter had been in this room—that she had a connection to Staab Imports and one of its namesake employees, Antony Staab.
Eager to find anything that might lead her to Diana and clear the young woman of suspicion, Lucy knelt down to pull the changing pad from Tommy’s diaper bag and spread it on the area rug beneath the desk. Then she pulled the needles out of her knitting bag and squished the yarn and fabric inside to create a safe spot to lay him down. Once he was content to snuggle with his stuffed toy and watch her move above him, Lucy started searching. She opened drawers and sifted through files and office supplies. She wondered about booting up the computer, but decided to save that as a last resort. Instead, she flipped through the names and numbers in an address book that revealed business associates like grocery stores and restaurants, and foreign names she couldn’t pronounce. But there was no record of Diana anywhere.
