Becoming a Cavanaugh

by Marie Ferrarella

  “Yeah, I got one.” Reaching into his pocket, he took out a card and handed it to the receptionist. Despite the gruesome scene in the other room, Carole smiled up at him. For a moment, she seemed to forget about the circumstances that had brought them together.

  “Thank you,” she murmured.

  “Guess I’m due for a hearing test,” Kyle commented as they walked out of the office several minutes later.

  “Excuse me?” Jaren asked.

  “Well, I’m obviously not hearing as well as I should be.” Reaching the elevator bank, he pressed the down button. “Because if I were, I would have heard Barone say that you were primary on this.”

  The elevator arrived. She stepped inside and turned toward the front. They were the only two people in the car. “Sorry. I tend to be a little enthusiastic.”

  He laughed as the doors closed again. “Is that what you call it?”

  She knew she was going to hate herself for this. “What would you call it?”

  “Being a pain in the butt.”

  The best way to deal with things was through humor. She reverted to it now. “Potato, po-ta-to,” she replied with a quick shrug of her shoulders. She saw him taking the list that Carole had given them out of his pocket. She nodded at it. “So, how do you want to do this?”

  What he wanted to say was alone, but he knew that wasn’t going to get him anywhere. She apparently had the sticking power of super glue. Still, he decided to give it one try. “We could divide the list between us.”

  “I’m still new here,” she reminded him. “I would have thought that, since you’re primary on this,” she deliberately emphasized, “you’d want to question these people together—to make sure I don’t mess up.”

  He wasn’t in the mood for sarcasm. “Rosetti, I don’t want to do anything together,” he told her, “but it looks like I have no choice.”

  The elevator came to a stop and they got out on the ground floor. She followed him out of the building. “Tell me, is it just me who sets you off, or is it having a partner in general?”

  “Yes.”

  The single word hung in the air. Jaren took a breath. This had the makings of one hell of a long day. “Okay,” she declared, as if she knew where she stood.

  And she did. Barefoot in hell. But she’d survived worse and she was going to survive this. She made herself a solemn vow that she would.

  Their next stop was the hospital where Richard Barrett performed his mini miracles—skillfully reattaching nerve endings against defying odds. Everyone they spoke to on the floor attested to the fact that the surgeon had no equal. On a scale of one to ten, he was a twelve.

  But when it came to being human, that number dropped to a two.

  The woman in the administration office was able to provide them with the names and addresses of both the former Mrs. Barretts.

  Armed with both the list of patients and the addresses of his ex-wives, Kyle made the decision to interview the latter first. Sixty percent of the time, whenever a homicide victim was married or estranged, the search for the killer had to go no further than that person’s spouse or former lover.

  As it turned out, spouse number one was immediately dismissed. According to the doorman at the apartment building where she lived, Wanda Barrett had become Wanda Davenport a little over a week ago and was currently in Spain on her honeymoon with her brand-new husband. The doorman said he’d never seen the woman look so happy. For the time being, they believed him.

  Spouse number two wasn’t out of the country, she was in her apartment. Once Kyle identified himself and his partner and told the woman the reason they were there, Alison Barrett, a slightly overweight brunette with scarlet nails and a mouth that formed a wide frown, became livid.

  “That bastard!” she shrieked. With a swing of her hand, she knocked over a statue of Cupid that had been perched on a pedestal. It hit the marble floor, shattering. In her fury, she appeared not to notice. “He finally found a way to get around paying me alimony.”

  Jaren glanced at Kyle to see his reaction to this display of unbridled temper. “With all due respect, Mrs. Barrett,” she said, “I don’t think that death by wooden stake would have been his first choice to avoid making payments to you.”

  “You didn’t know Richard,” she fumed, pacing. “Life with him was hell and I thought that now, at long last, I’d be compensated for it.” Her eyes flashed with unsuppressed fury. “But he found a way to wiggle out of it.”

  “Your grief is touching,” Kyle commented.

  Her eyes blazed. “You want grief, Detective? Grief was being married to him and being treated as if I was some sub-intelligent species. He thought he was God and should have been worshipped accordingly.”

  “If you felt that way about him, why did you marry him in the first place?” Jaren wanted to know.

  Alison sighed, frustrated. “Because Richard could be very charming when he wanted. The problem was, once we were married, he didn’t want to be. He was out all day, out all night. Like some damn werewolf.”

  Jaren’s eyes met Kyle’s. The exchange was not missed by the victim’s ex-wife. She quickly backpedaled.

  “Not that I thought he was one,” she assured them. “Or a vampire,” she added for good measure. “What he was—and everyone who knew him knew this—was a self-centered bastard.”

  That made the opinion unanimous, Kyle thought. He had a feeling that they were going to have their hands full with suspects.

  “Just for the record, Mrs. Barrett, where were you this afternoon?”

  “Where I am every afternoon,” she replied haughtily. “Shopping. It’s one of my few pleasures.”

  “Anyone see you shopping?”

  She blew out an angry breath, as if this was a huge inconvenience. “I went with friends. I have receipts,” she volunteered. “I didn’t want to see him dead, Detective. I wanted to have him pay through the nose.”

  “Thank you for your time,” Kyle told the woman once she produced the time-stamped sales receipts to back her up. “We’ll see ourselves out.”

  As they left the opulent apartment, they could hear Alison Barrett heaping curses on her ex-husband’s dead head.

  “Woman makes a good case for the single life,” Kyle commented more to himself than to Jaren as they closed the door behind them.

  So do you, Jaren thought, but she decided to keep her observation to herself.

  Chapter 3

  Kyle glanced at his watch after he buckled his seat belt. He’d more or less promised to be somewhere. His exact words, when he’d received the invitation, were, “We’ll see.” The look on Andrew Cavanaugh’s face had told him that he was going to wind up coming. He supposed it wouldn’t do any harm to give this family thing a try.

  “It’s after five,” Kyle announced, addressing his words more to the windshield than to the woman next to him. “Why don’t we call it a day and get a fresh start in the morning?”

  The suggestion surprised her. She would have thought that O’Brien would have wanted to push both of them to the point of exhaustion—probably just to see what she was made of.

  She was relieved to find out that she was wrong. “Sounds good to me.”

  Like all first days on the job, this one had felt endless, going on much longer than eight hours. It would feel good to go home and unwind, she thought, even though home right now was an apartment filled with boxes waiting to be unpacked. Towers of boxes that made maneuvering around the premises a challenge.

  But at least she’d get the chance to chill out for a few hours.

  Despite a minor traffic snarl due to a two-car collision on the next block, they got back to the precinct in a fairly short amount of time. Getting out on her side, Jaren paused. The ride back had consisted of her talking in between the silences. O’Brien’s contributions to the conversation had been limited to occasional grunts, and even those she had to prod out of him.

  Still, Jaren thought it might be worth a try to ask. The worst that could happen
would be another grunt. “You know anywhere around here where I could get a decent meal? I’d prefer take-out, but if I have to sit at a restaurant, that’s okay, too.”

  Kyle peered at her over the top of the car for a long moment, debating. And then, because he knew he hadn’t been a joy to work with and the days that were ahead probably wouldn’t be any better, he made an impulsive decision, something he didn’t ordinarily do.

  “Yeah,” he finally said, “I do.”

  Maybe he got more human at the end of the day, she thought. “Really?”

  Kyle frowned. “You sound surprised.”

  “Well, I guess I am,” she confessed. What surprised her even more was that he seemed to actually be willing to tell her about the place. She’d half expected him to snap out a no.

  “If you didn’t think I knew of a place, why did you ask?”

  One slim shoulder rose and fell in a gesture that he found, if he were being honest, oddly appealing. Kyle forced himself to focus on her face instead.

  “There was always an outside chance,” Jaren replied. “And to be honest, after dragging almost every word out of you today, what I’m really surprised about is that you’re willing to share the information.”

  He didn’t make it an outright invitation. Instead, what he said was, “Best meals in town are at Andrew Cavanaugh’s house.”

  “Andrew Cavanaugh,” Jaren repeated, processing the name. It seemed to her that every third law enforcement officer at the precinct was named Cavanaugh. It took her a second to place this one. “Isn’t that the name of the old chief of police?”

  To her delight, she heard Kyle laugh. It was a short, quick sound, but it was a laugh nonetheless. “Don’t let him catch you calling him old.”

  “I didn’t mean old as in old,” she explained quickly. “I meant old as in former. Anyway, he’s a person, I’m looking for a restaurant.”

  He knew Andrew’s philosophy. The more, the merrier. He’d thought it was a myth—before he ever had a blood connection to the man—that Cavanaugh had what amounted to a bottomless refrigerator. The myth was that Andrew never ran out of food no matter how many people showed up at his table. Now that he’d been witness to it several times, Kyle knew this was actually a fact, as incredible as it seemed.

  Having Rosetti come along with him would provide no hardship for Cavanaugh. The opposite would probably be true. “I thought maybe you were looking for a memorable meal.”

  At this point, she’d settle for something that didn’t repeat endlessly on her throughout the night. “Well, yes, but—”

  His voice had a disinterested ring to it as he told her, “Doesn’t get any better than what Andrew Cavanaugh can whip up. Even his throwaways are better than most restaurants’ featured specials of the day.”

  He really did think she was pushy, didn’t he? “That might be, but even if I did know where the man lived, I couldn’t just go barging in and show up for dinner.” He surprised her by laughing in response. She looked at him in confusion. Was he pulling her leg? “Did I say something funny?”

  “From what I’ve gathered—and I’ve only interacted with the man a handful of times—that’s exactly what you can do.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The chief likes to cook and he really seems to like having his family around him. In his opinion, the best way he can get them to keep coming back is to keep feeding them.”

  O’Brien had missed one very important point, she thought. “I’m not family.”

  The glimmer of a smile intrigued her. Or was that a sneer? With him it was hard to tell.

  “You are if you’re a cop,” he told her.

  He had no idea why he was extending the invitation or saying any of this to her. The entire day, all he could think about was getting into his car and going home—to silence. At the very most, maybe he’d call Ethan or Greer to see how their day went. He’d already made up his mind that he wasn’t going to show up at Andrew’s tonight for the party.

  But for some reason he couldn’t quite fathom, he’d changed his mind. He knew that the former chief of police felt personally guilty for the way Kyle and his siblings had been physically and emotionally abandoned by the man responsible for bringing them into the world in the first place.

  Ordinarily, someone else’s guilt was none of Kyle’s concern, but Cavanaugh had tried to do right by them. He supposed that not showing up tonight would be an insult. It’d be tantamount to throwing the man’s hospitality in his face.

  That he felt a certain obligation to go was understandable. The real mystery was why he was asking Rosetti to come with him.

  Maybe it was as simple as just feeling sorry for her.

  And then again, maybe not.

  “I was thinking of dropping over there tonight. He’s having some kind of gathering,” Kyle explained vaguely. “If you wanted to tag along…” He left the rest unsaid.

  There was silence for exactly two seconds.

  “Sure. Yes. That would be very nice.” Eagerness increased with every word she uttered. And then she shook her head. “You know, O’Brien, you’re a damn hard man to figure out.”

  Kyle had a perfect solution for that. “Then don’t try.”

  “Now that sounds more like you,” Jaren responded, grinning. “Look, I just have to get my car. I’ll follow you over to the house.”

  He took out his worn notebook, vaguely realizing that there were only three empty sheets left. Kyle turned to a fresh one and wrote something down, then tore it out and held it out to her.

  “Here’s the chief’s address. In case you get lost,” he added when she raised a quizzical brow.

  There was no chance of that, he thought as he drove to the chief’s house. Jaren Rosetti followed closer than a heartbeat, leaving hardly enough room between his car and hers for a thin mint.

  When he pulled up to the curb, she was right there behind him, matching movement for movement. “You know,” he said as he got out of his car, “if there’d been an eager cop around, you could have gotten a ticket for tailgating.”

  “Lucky there was no eager cop around,” she countered, amused. They both knew that uniforms didn’t issue tickets to detectives unless gross misconduct was involved. Jaren examined the house number they’d parked in front of and turned to him. “This isn’t the address you gave me.”

  “That’s because there’s no space left to park in front of the chief’s house.” He nodded toward the middle of the street. “It’s one of their birthdays and he’s throwing a party. Everyone was supposed to come.”

  That stopped her dead. “Birthday?” Jaren echoed. She suddenly felt awkward, not to mention empty-handed. “But I don’t have anything to give.”

  “Why should you? You don’t even know Callie.” Callie was the chief’s oldest daughter, married to the judge whose kidnapped daughter she’d helped rescue.

  He had a point, but he was missing the main one. “But if I don’t even know her, why am I—?”

  “You hungry or not?” he demanded.

  “Hungry,” she confirmed. Hungrier for company than she was for anything that could be served on a plate, she added silently. While she was comfortable enough in her own skin, she had to admit that she did like the sound of people’s voices and she really enjoyed interacting with them.

  “Then stop arguing and come on,” he ordered.

  Jaren hurried to catch up as he walked quickly down the block.

  He was right. The entire way from where they parked to the front of Andrew’s house was jammed with cars, all going nose to tailpipe. She didn’t envy the owners when they attempted to free their rides in order to go home.

  Music greeted them before they ever reached the house, as did the sound of laughter. Andrew Cavanaugh’s house seemed to exude warmth.

  Walking up to the front door, Kyle didn’t bother ringing the bell. Instead, he knocked on the door. Hard.

  When there was no response, he tried the doorknob and found it wasn’t locked.
<
br />   “He leaves his door unlocked?” she asked, stunned. The neighborhood where she’d lived with her father had slowly gone downhill. By the time she’d sold the place, the front door had been outfitted with double locks coupled with a chain.

  Kyle glanced at her over his shoulder just as he opened the door. “If you were a thief, would you walk into this?”

  This was practically a wall of people, mostly detectives with their spouses and children. There was also a smattering of uniformed officers who’d come straight from work.

  “Not unless I had a death wish,” she agreed. It looked as if half the precinct had gathered here. There wasn’t a solemn face in the lot.

  This was it, Jaren realized. This was exactly what she’d longed for all of her life. Enough family stuffed into a house to make the very walls groan and bow. As far back as she could remember, there’d only been her parents and her. And, from the time she turned twelve—when her mother had decided that she’d just had enough and walked out, never to be heard from again—there’d been only her and her father.

  Officer Joseph Rosetti had been a handsome man, quick to smile, quick to tell a joke and quick to raise a glass in a toast—even if he was the only one in the room. Most of her childhood had been spent either taking care of her father, or searching the local bars for his whereabouts in order to bring him home. Despite his shortcomings, Jaren loved him dearly and she knew that, in his own way, her father had loved her, too.

  Just not enough to conquer the grip that alcohol had on him.

  More than once when she was growing up, she’d found herself wishing that there was someone she could turn to—an aunt, an uncle, a sibling or grandparent—just someone with a few good words to cheer her on and buoy her up. But the only family she had was a man who seemed intent on pickling his liver one bottle at a time.

  Eventually, he had. Liver failure claimed him, taking him, in her opinion, years before his time.

  Lost in thought and wishful thinking as she scanned the large group of people, she suddenly felt a large hand on her shoulder. Turning, she saw a tall, smiling man with the kindest blue eyes she’d ever seen. He’d placed himself between her and her new partner.