Detective on Call

by Regan Black

  “Being under a microscope didn’t make you feel rushed?”

  “Of course it did, but McRath and I worked the case beat by beat. We didn’t jump to conclusions. We followed the evidence.”

  “You followed planted evidence.”

  Good grief. He hoped not, but he understood why she was devoted to that theory. “You have no evidence to support that theory. Look, no one likes your client, but she has serious influence in this town, not to mention the charitable donations. The prosecutor wouldn’t have followed through with this case if he’d thought we half-assed any aspect of it.”

  “You’re aware the prosecutor and Mr. Wentworth are friends.”

  “Everyone tied to the case was aware,” Emmanuel confirmed. “The man was out of town with a rock-solid alibi,” he reminded her. “You think the prosecutor was helping a friend get rid of his wife?”

  Reaching up, she rubbed the back of her neck. It was all he could do not to jump in and help. “The prosecutor would have the means to manipulate things within the department.” She shook her head, as if to clear it of the troubling thoughts. “I don’t think Ed cared enough about Anna’s flings to set her up for murder, but maybe I’m overlooking another reason.”

  “I doubt it,” Emmanuel said. “Mr. Wentworth was solid in the interview. More embarrassed about a body turning up on the grounds once he learned it wasn’t anyone he’d known. That sounds callous, but knowing the family, you get it, right?”

  “I do. One of Ed’s top priorities is protecting the reputation of the Wentworth name.” She rolled her eyes. “For Elizabeth’s future.”

  If Pippa succeeded in overturning this conviction, it would be all kinds of trouble for the prosecutor as well as the GRPD. Enough trouble that maybe the prosecutor hired someone to drive Pippa off the Wentworth case. Emmanuel couldn’t put that doubt in her head, not when she had CI business to deal with.

  Pippa’s gaze returned to the paper in front of them. “Perception is a tricky thing,” she said. “You arrived at a crime scene and saw things a certain way. When I look at the pictures, I see it all so differently. Who had reason to paint the picture you saw?”

  “Let’s take a different tack,” he suggested. “Rather than consider who wanted to frame your client—”

  “Because that’s half the city,” she interjected.

  He cocked an eyebrow.

  “Fine. It’s ninety-eight percent of the city.”

  He liked the twitch at the corner of her rosy lips. “Who in the GRPD had any reason to get rid of Hicks? As soon as we found his intent to blackmail her, we knew Anna had means and motive. Combined with evidence at the scene...”

  “Slam dunk,” she finished for him. “I’ve been looking at this angle, too, though not within the GRPD.” She open several windows on her laptop. “I need to get set up for the loan application, but go ahead and take a look at those articles. It’s all from gossip sites and society pages. I’m going to compare his known dates and lovers. Let me know if any names have ties to GRPD or the prosecutor’s office.”

  She went to her office while he tried not to groan over Hicks’s dating history. The man liked to party with the rich and slightly famous. He ran across one name and nearly swallowed his tongue. It couldn’t be related, and yet it had to be connected.

  “Here,” he said, his throat suddenly tight. This had never come out before, and they’d interviewed everyone recently tied to Hicks. Or so Emmanuel thought.

  “You found something?”

  “Someone.” He dragged the mouse and highlighted the name for her.

  “Leigh McRath.” Her eyebrows climbed toward her hairline. “Is she related to Detective Joe McRath?”

  “His daughter.” Emmanuel pinched the bridge of his nose. This looked bad, but it had to be a fluke. Joe couldn’t be involved in this debacle. He was a decorated cop who took real pride in the work he did for the city. He was a mentor, an inspiration.

  The sergeant pushed hard at times, but he closed cases and didn’t cut corners. Years ago there had been rumors that he’d gone off the rails on a case involving the death of a little girl, but no disciplinary measures or formal complaints had resulted.

  Joe couldn’t have known about Leigh’s ties to Hicks when they landed the case. If he had, he would’ve recused himself or spoken with the lieutenant about the distant connection to the victim.

  “You never spoke with her?” Pippa asked. “I don’t have any record of either you or Joe interviewing her.”

  “I didn’t question her.” He shook his head. “We did the divide-and-conquer thing on several peripheral connections.” His stomach cramped, and he was glad he hadn’t had more stew. “Joe took most of the prior relationships.”

  “On purpose?”

  “No. No reason to think so at the time.” What if Joe had taken the relationships to keep Leigh’s name out of the investigation? He pushed back from the counter and swore low and long in Spanish. His mother would wash his mouth out with soap even now if she’d heard him. This was bad.

  “Hey. Relax,” she said, suddenly offering comfort. “It’s a connection. One probably random link you didn’t know to explore. Just because Hicks and Leigh dated doesn’t mean she did anything wrong.” Pippa nibbled on her lip again. “Maybe he just wanted to spare his daughter some embarrassment.”

  “You don’t think a father would go to any lengths to protect his daughter and keep her out of jail?”

  She opened her mouth to reply and snapped it shut again. “I’ll grant you, that’s a fair motive. But only if that’s what happened. It gives me a new potential suspect, a new direction to check on, which is something I didn’t have before.”

  No comfort in that for him. He had years of police service. Enough experience that he shouldn’t have missed this piece of the puzzle. His career combined with his upbringing gave him a double dose of that protective instinct that made him a good cop.

  Or so he’d thought. Had he been lazy that day at the scene, looking only at the evidence laid out for him? As a detective’s daughter, Leigh might have a good idea of how to stage a crime scene if she’d tagged along with her dad and studied his cases.

  “Clearly, you need to follow this thread,” Pippa said. “What if it was Leigh? Look at the dates. They broke up six months before the murder. If she was brokenhearted, why wait six months and then frame Anna?” Pippa crossed her legs and drummed her pen on her knee. “As Joe’s daughter, she might have easier access to a gun, but how would she have accessed Anna’s jewelry?”

  He didn’t have those answers. A good detective would’ve asked those questions at the time, not weeks after the prime suspect was sentenced to life in prison. “Pippa, the evidence box is missing. No one else on your list has such a clear connection to Hicks or such a substantial motive.

  “Leigh McRath has both. She has access if her father helped. Who knows what he might have done to keep the heat off his daughter?”

  “Those are questions I can pursue,” she said. “Thanks to you.”

  As if that made him feel any better. This was definitely a rock and a hard place kind of situation. When Joe caught wind of this, he’d turn on Emmanuel for helping Pippa. Missing evidence box or not, the entire GRPD was likely to turn on him for helping a lawyer working “against” them. He wanted to ask her to be careful, and yet he had no right.

  “I won’t throw you under the bus, Detective,” she promised. “But first, it’s time for me to infiltrate the Capital X system. I can’t afford to be late on this.”

  Naturally, helping Brody was the only thing that would momentarily divert her attention from exonerating Wentworth. Through the years, Emmanuel had listened to Griffin vent about Brody. Everyone in the family agreed the kid meant well, but it often bothered Griffin that Brody usually looked for quick fixes to his troubles rather than putting in the tough hours to get where he wanted to
go.

  Days ago, Emmanuel thought overturning the conviction was a lark and the real threat to Pippa was moving close to Capital X. Now it felt as if both cases had grown teeth and claws and there was no clear path to safe ground.

  For either of them.

  Chapter 8

  Pippa opened the new laptop and followed the directions provided by CI’s resident tech expert, Ashanti Silver. She’d created a step-by-step list so Pippa could find her way to the Capital X site and loan application portal on the dark web.

  Emmanuel was hovering, as promised. It wasn’t easy to ignore him, and she wasn’t even sure she wanted to try. The sizzle she felt when he was close was addictive. If she was reading the signals correctly, he felt something more than a passing cooperative interest.

  Not that they could do a thing about it when she was neck deep in two cases, one of which he was far too entangled with.

  “Wow, that’s not what I expected at all,” he said.

  He was leaning close enough that she could smell the crisp scent of his cologne. He must have gone home at some point during the day, because the fragrance had been faint this morning and was much fresher now. She had no business being tempted or enticed by that smell.

  “It looks as slick and clean as any other legitimate bank.”

  “Which is probably why they get away with what they’re doing,” she pointed out. She scrolled through the site, taking a look at products and account options. “If I didn’t know how they operated, I’d think this was a great answer for a loan, especially to get a business off the ground.”

  “You’re smart enough that you’d come to your senses when you saw the terms,” he said.

  His compliment warmed her. “True.” She sat back, staring at the screen and giving herself some needed distance. From the man more than the assignment.

  “Second thoughts?”

  “A few,” she admitted. And all of them were about him. She really hadn’t expected to like Emmanuel after what he’d said in court, and she didn’t know quite how to proceed since he’d shown himself to be a person of high integrity. “It’s hard to imagine a person being so underinformed or so desperate that they’d agree to such exorbitant interest rates,” she said.

  “Not to mention the repayment schedule.” Emmanuel stood up and pushed a hand through his wavy hair. She thought he could probably use a trim, then decided that was something Anna Wentworth would say. Pippa found him ridiculously attractive just as he was. The hairstyle wouldn’t make any difference. She really needed to find a boyfriend or dive back in to the dating-app scene.

  She shivered. During her last attempt, she’d lost patience with the whole messy system. She didn’t mind casual hookups, but at this point in her life she was looking for something different. Something more substantial. The men those apps wanted to match her with didn’t meet that criteria. Even when she changed her preferences, looking for someone a little older, she’d never been matched with anyone half as intriguing as Emmanuel.

  Sliding away from her dangerous thoughts, she focused on the task at hand. There were big buttons on the loan screen for preset loan amounts. She chose the $25K button, the amount Kiely had determined her alias needed and would easily qualify for. Not that any of them believed Capital X turned down an opportunity to suck in a consumer.

  Emmanuel was leaning close. “You don’t have to watch every keystroke,” she said, trying to be cool when she really didn’t mind the warmth of him at her back.

  “I’m curious you referred to this as an infiltration,” he said.

  “It feels that way,” she admitted, her blood running hot with the excitement. Excitement over the role she would play in saving Brody, not over the man at her back. She couldn’t possibly let those little flutters of attraction grow into something more. Even if he hadn’t been Griffin’s friend, they were on opposite sides of a case that was important to her heart.

  “Why is the time so specific?” he asked.

  “The timing fits with the background my sister and brother created for this person I’m pretending to be.”

  It was no shock when he reached over and flipped through the papers, quickly getting a read on the fake Alison Carrington. She was thoroughly distracted by his hands. A flat, long-healed scar wrapped under his right thumb, disappearing into his palm. During her single semester of art in undergrad, the professor had devoted a solid week on the mechanics of human hands. With a subject like Emmanuel, she might’ve aced that section.

  Shifting her focus back to the application, she finished entering the personal information, including a social security number and driver’s license. Then she added in the details about work history. If she screwed this up, Riley would never forgive her and they might never save Brody. She double-checked all of the basic information and then clicked the arrow to go to the next part of the application. Here she inputted information about her finances, including current debts and any collateral.

  After that it was a page about the loan itself, confirming how much she was asking for and how she planned to use the money. She filled out those fields per the paperwork provided and clicked the button to continue.

  “You sure about that address?” Emmanuel asked when it was time for her to review everything one last time before hitting Submit.

  “This is the address they gave me,” she replied. “Can’t change it now. Why don’t you approve?”

  “I don’t disapprove,” he said. “It’s just pretty darn close to this neighborhood.”

  “No one can connect me to Alison Carrington. That’s the whole point of a new computer and the IP magic Ashanti cooked up.”

  “Right, right.” He tucked his hands into his pockets and took a step back.

  She appreciated his attempt to give her space, even if he wasn’t much good at it.

  She checked the box confirming she’d reviewed all of her materials and that it was all correct. As if Capital X would bother going after a loan applicant for a fraudulent application. Satisfied, she pressed Submit. They only got aggressive with clients who didn’t pay them back in accordance with the absurd terms.

  “Done?” he asked.

  “Looks that way.” She hesitated, since the loading wheel was still spinning. There. She pointed to the screen and the flag that said her application was successfully submitted.

  The scowl on his face was evidence of his concern. “What next?”

  She signed out of the program and shut down the new laptop registered to the Alison Carrington persona. “Time to relax,” she said. “As much as possible anyway. According to the site, the approval process can take up to forty-eight hours for a decision.”

  She wasn’t sure why butterflies were suddenly doing aerial stunts in her belly. It wasn’t her credit or her person on the line. She had only used the materials provided by her sister and brother. They hadn’t even told her who would be playing the role of Alison at the address she’d provided. Someone had to perform day-to-day tasks in case they were being observed, but Pippa’s was still the face on the fake ID. There was no reason it should come to that, but Pippa accepted that she might have to step in and be familiar with the identity if there was an unforeseen emergency. She wasn’t trying to be a slacker, but so far, all she’d been was a convenient pair of hands who’d completed a few online forms.

  She carried the laptop and its charging cord to the office, where she knelt down near the floor safe. Having pulled back the rug, she entered the combination and tucked the equipment away. At Emmanuel’s quizzical expression, she explained that she could check the email through an incognito window on her own device if necessary.

  “I guess that’s it.” Pippa straightened the rug and dusted off her hands. What happened now? “At least we’re making progress on one case.” Even if her contribution was minimal.

  It was nice to have that task done. No more wondering. Assuming the Carri
ngton application would be approved, they would soon be drawing the ire of Capital X enforcers. Maybe even the same team who had broken Brody’s fingers. Maybe she hadn’t come up with the fake identification and background, but she was definitively helping. Thanks to Brody’s ties to the family, Capital X would be smart to avoid the Coltons, but by taking on this alias, she was contributing for her siblings, Brody and everyone else Capital X would bilk if they weren’t stopped.

  “You do carry a strong sense about right and wrong,” he said.

  The look he gave her was pure appreciation, and she felt overheated in an instant. “Never tried to hide it. Besides, you’ve got plenty of the same traits.”

  “As character flaws go, I’ll take it,” he said.

  “Same. Though I don’t believe the pursuit of justice is a flaw.” She turned to the wall, determined to ignore the noisy fan and dehumidifier. “What do you know about interior decorating?”

  “Only what I can’t forget when my sisters are chatting,” he replied. “Why?”

  “I might make this a feature wall instead of just repainting.” If he wasn’t going to leave, she had to find some common ground. She folded her arms and tried again to imagine floor-to-ceiling beadboard. “Beadboard or wallpaper or...”

  “You’re too modern for beadboard,” he said absently, looking around the space.

  She was inordinately pleased by that observation. “That was my thought. I’d invite you to sit down and toss around ideas, but—” She gestured to the fan. “And you probably want to get going.”

  “Only if you’re kicking me out,” he said. “We haven’t opened that bakery box yet.”

  She’d almost forgotten about the treat during the thrill of making a stand online and the presence of the man who’d been thoughtful enough to bring over something special. “You can’t possibly be worried about Capital X striking tonight.”

  “Let’s just say I’m overly cautious about several things,” he said.

  “Does that include chocolate?”