Читать книгу How to Seduce a Cavanaugh - Marie Ferrarella - Страница 11

Chapter 3

The woman’s back was to the doorway, so she didn’t seem to be aware that anyone else had entered her home—and her living room—until she heard an unfamiliar, deep male voice say, “Excuse me.”

No doubt surprised and frightened, Judith Osborn jumped and stifled a scream as she swung around toward the sound of the voice she heard, apparently much to her husband’s disgust, if the expression on his face was any indication.

“Damn it, Judith, get hold of yourself. They’re obviously with the police.” Randolph Osborn’s small, deep-set brown eyes shifted back and forth between the two strangers who had entered his home, as if he was assessing them. “You are with the police, right?”

Kane took out his wallet and badge at the same time that she did. Kelly let him do the introductions as she continued to study the pair. The wife’s nerves seemed to be very close to the surface, while her husband just looked angry. Very angry.

“Detectives Durant and Cavanaugh,” Kane told the robbery victims. Closing his wallet, he returned it to his jacket pocket. “Are either of you hurt?” he asked even as he did a quick visual check.

Neither seemed to be bleeding, which was a positive sign.

Osborn fisted his hands and then relaxed them again. His frown—as well as his annoyance—appeared to be deepening. “I think I lost all feeling in my hands and my back’s killing me.”

“We can call the paramedics if you like,” Kelly offered sympathetically. Her focus was more on Mrs. Osborn than on the woman’s husband. The latter had an irritating manner about him, which might or might not have been due to finding himself the victim of a robbery. Kelly had a feeling it went far deeper than that. “They can take you to the hospital to be checked out.”

Osborn looked at her as if he thought she’d lost her mind to make such a plebeian suggestion.

“What? Checked out by butchers? No, thanks. I have my own top-rated specialist on retainer.” Wearing a robe over his pajamas, Osborn began to head for the nearest extension. “I’d like to call him now if you’re finished here.”

He was summarily dismissing them.

Kelly could see that Kane didn’t like the man’s superior attitude any more than she did.

“As a matter of fact,” Kane told the home invasion victim, “we’re not finished.” He put his hand down on the landline Osborn was about to dial. “We have a few questions we’d like you to answer.”

“What more do you want from us?” Mrs. Osborn asked, an edge of hysteria rising in her voice. “We’ve already told that...that beat cop standing outside what happened. What else is there?” she demanded again, her voice breaking.

Judith Osborn ran her hand along her throat, as if she was protecting herself from some sort of invisible noose hanging around her neck. That was when Kane noticed the ligature marks around Judith’s wrist. Picking up the hand closest to him, he examined it more closely.

It didn’t take much to guess what had happened. “You were restrained,” he concluded.

Judith timidly pulled her hand away as she whispered hoarsely, “Yes.”

At the same time her husband spat out, “Damn right we were. That little vermin had us tied up like turkeys waiting to be slaughtered,” he proclaimed indignantly. “I want that bastard’s head on a platter and I want it now!” It was clear he intended to get exactly what he demanded—or he was going to make someone else suffer for what he had gone through.

“I can understand you feeling that way, Mr. Osborn,” Kane told the man, sounding almost compassionate. “But that’s not quite the way we do things on the police force these days.”

The expression on Osborn’s face all but shouted that he didn’t give a damn how the detectives did things. He wanted revenge for being humiliated and held prisoner in his own home. “Then after you bring him in, just let me have ten minutes with him—”

Kane saw the same set of ligature marks on Osborn’s wrists. “Looks to me as if you’ve already had more than ten minutes with him.”

Accustomed to always getting his way, Randolph was obviously fuming at Kane’s comment. He made a show of pulling the cuffs of his pajamas down over the marks on his wrists.

To Kelly it was a little like the clichéd remark about closing the barn door after the horses had been stolen.

“He came into our bedroom while we were asleep. Our bedroom!” Osborn all but shouted to get his point across. “And he had the gall to hit me to wake me up!” His wife whimpered pitifully as Osborn re-created the scene they had just gone through. “Then he had my wife tie me up. My wife,” he emphasized. Osborn glared now at the woman who, it was quite evident by his manner, he felt had betrayed him.

“I had to, Randolph,” Judith cried, distraught. “He was holding a gun on me. What did you expect me to do?” she asked. The almost painfully thin woman began to shake again.

“I expect you to think for a change,” Osborn retorted. “If you had given him any sort of resistance, I could have used that to get him off guard and taken his gun away from that pathetic sack of—”

“What you would have more likely taken,” Kane said, interrupting the abrasive man he was taking a real disliking to, “is a bullet, most likely to the stomach. And you would have bled out before we got here. Heroics don’t usually pay off,” he told the man matter-of-factly.

Osborn ran his hand through his graying hair. “I don’t need to stand here and be lectured to by a two-bit detective,” he bit off angrily.

“Well, it’s obvious that you certainly do need something,” Kelly said, cutting in. Her eyes met Osborn’s. Kelly didn’t look away. “A course in manners comes to mind.”

“You can’t talk to me like that,” Osborn shouted at her.

“It seems that I apparently just did,” Kelly replied with a wide, genial smile that was anything but.

Osborn began to breathe hard as he clenched his impotent fists next to his sides. “Do you have any idea who I am?” he demanded.

“Yes,” Kane replied in an even, controlled voice. “You’re a citizen of Aurora who has been robbed and as such you and your wife will get our full attention. There’s nothing to be gained by throwing your weight around. That doesn’t impress us. As a matter of fact, that really doesn’t work in your favor.”

“Did either one of you get a look at this guy—there was only one, right?” Kelly wanted to ascertain. She was doing her level best to get the couple’s attention back on the robbery and not on some high-spirited exchange between Kane and the male victim.

Judith bobbed her head up and down, a wreath of carefully salon-dyed brown hair floating about her face. “Yes. One. One horrible man.” She shuddered, running her hands up and down along her arms.

“Can you remember any physical features?” Kane pressed.

Judith shrugged. One of her nightgown straps slid down. She nervously tugged it up into place again, glancing in her husband’s direction as she did so.

Osborn was the one who ran the show, Kelly concluded. Mrs. Osborn gave them a description. “Average build, average height. Around Randolph’s age—”

“Which is the same as yours,” her husband bit off, taking offense that she had made it sound as if he was older than she was.

In response, Judith looked down at the rug, avoiding his eyes.

“Was there anything familiar about this man?” Kane asked. “Anything at all? The way he spoke or held his head? The way he moved around, perhaps?”

“Familiar?” The haughty inquiry came from Osborn. “We’re not in the habit of fraternizing with common burglars and thieves. Besides, the bastard wore a mask.”

“What kind of a mask?” Kane asked, hoping to gain some insight into the burglar’s mind-set.

“It was a clown mask.” Kane noted that the man was most obviously holding himself in check to keep from allowing a shiver to snake down his spine. “I’ve always hated clowns. They’re grotesque.”

“Can’t argue with you there,” Kane replied almost under his breath as he made a further notation in his notepad. “Have you had a chance to assess what the robber made off with?”

“Two very rare paintings and an antique revolver I kept on display there.” Randolph pointed to the credenza in the dining room. The stand on top of it was glaringly empty.

“Were the paintings down here, too?” Kelly asked.

Judith bobbed her head up and down in response to the question.

“They were the first thing anyone saw when they came into the house,” Osborn answered bitterly, gesturing to the vacant spaces on the wall. The only things that testified to the paintings’ existence were two nails in the wall.

“Did he take anything else?” Kelly asked the angry home owner.

“No.” He shook his head. “Just the paintings and the revolver.”

She realized the man hadn’t been outside to see his vandalized automobiles. Just as well right now, she told herself.

Despite Osborn’s answer, Kelly went down a list of popular items to steal—and fence. “No jewelry or expensive bottles of wine or—”

She didn’t get to finish her list. Osborn was glaring at her as he rudely interrupted. “What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand, Detective?”

She was tempted to say something cutting that would put the man in his place, but considering the trauma he and his wife had just gone through, Kelly decided to cut him a little slack.

She turned toward her partner and bounced a theory off him. “Wouldn’t it have been easier just to take the paintings and the antique gun and disappear without bothering to wake up Mr. and Mrs. Osborn?” It seemed to her a far easier way to proceed as well as to avoid possibly getting overpowered and caught.

“Yes,” Kane agreed thoughtfully. After a beat, he added, “Unless—”

“Unless he wanted them to be alerted to what he was doing. He wanted to rub their noses in it,” she concluded, excited about this possible twist and its implications. Turning back to the home invasion victims, she asked Osborn, “Is there someone who would want to watch your reaction to the robbery? Maybe even take some pleasure in it?”

“The people at the club are all a bunch of jealous bastards,” Randolph spat out. “Any one of them could have done this.”

“No.” The nervous denial came from his wife. “They’re our friends.”

Osborn shot his wife a furious, disgusted look. “If you believe that, you stupid cow, you’re even more pathetic than I thought.”

“There’s no need to get abusive, Mr. Osborn,” Kane coldly informed the man, stepping between Osborn and his wife.

“I can get whatever the hell I want with my wife. I’ve just been robbed, and I sure as hell am not going to be lectured to by one of the Keystone Cops.”

It was Kelly’s turn to step in. She was beginning to realize it was going to be hard narrowing down the list of people who hated Osborn’s guts and wanted to see him humiliated. Undoubtedly, it was a nonexclusive, fast-growing club.

“I’d be very careful if I were you, Mr. Osborn,” Kelly warned the man in what sounded like a very deceptively mild voice. “Or you just might wind up reaping exactly what you sow.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Osborn angrily demanded.

Kelly didn’t bother explaining. “You’re a very smart man, Mr. Osborn. I’m sure you’ll figure it out on your own eventually. Now then, we’ll need a list of all these ‘unfriendly’ friends you think might be capable of breaking into your home for the opportunity to torture you by robbing you. Also an exact accounting of everything that was stolen.”

It was clear that Osborn was about to say something less than cooperative, but Kane cut him off before he could speak.

“When you finish with the list, you can give it to Officer Riley,” Kane told the man, pointing out the officer to him. He was fairly certain that although the officer had undoubtedly introduced himself to Osborn when he’d arrived on the scene, the latter had taken no note of his name, or even thought the man had a name.

The officer was now standing guard just inside the foyer.

“And where are you going to be?” Osborn demanded in less than genial tones. He sounded like an employer wanting an accounting from a lowly lackey.

“We’ll be off working your case,” Kane replied, the picture of restraint.

The only telltale sign of inner fury was that Kane’s breathing pattern had grown just a little bit shorter.

Kelly held her tongue until after they’d taken their leave. The minute they were outside the front door, Kelly’s words came rushing out.

“Wow. For a minute there I thought you were going to strangle him,” Kelly told him. “Not that anyone in the immediate world would have blamed you. That man was some piece of work.”

“If I strangled him, I might have done the world a favor,” Kane speculated. In his opinion, Randolph Osborn was a colossal waste of flesh.

“No argument,” Kelly agreed. “It’s just that you might have had to fight me for the honor of bringing about the man’s demise.” She shook her head as she looked over her shoulder at the twenty-room house. “Makes me think that this so-called robbery was definitely not just a random act of chance.”

Kane sounded her out. “You think someone targeted him?”

She couldn’t tell by Kane’s tone if he agreed with her or not. All she could do was tell him how she felt about the crime.

“With every fiber of my being,” she said with enthusiasm. “It only makes sense.” Her voice picked up speed. “Whoever did it wanted to see Osborn agonize over losing his precious treasures. There’s no other reason why he would have deliberately woken Osborn and his wife up, tied them up and then dragged them downstairs to bear witness to the robbery. It was most likely someone Osborn belittled or stiffed in some deal—or both. I’d bet my pension on it,” she concluded.

“Which probably amounts to fifty dollars a month at this point in your career,” Kane said dismissively. “As to it being someone Osborn had wronged somehow, it looks like that club includes everyone over the age of three. That’s a hell of a lot of people to question,” Kane concluded.

“There has to be a way to narrow down the list,” she told him.

Kane frowned as he reached his vehicle. Offhand he couldn’t think of a way to accomplish that. He glanced in her direction as he sat behind the steering wheel. “I’m open to suggestions if you have them.”

Getting into the passenger side, Kelly shook her head. “Right now all I can think of is that I’d like to strangle the condescending, smug, giant creep myself.”

For a second, Kane allowed himself to be amused. She was almost cute when she got angry. Now there was a word that shouldn’t ever be paired with the word partner. He knew without being told that if he said as much to her—that she was cute when she got angry—there would be hell to pay. Something to think about, he mused, “Tell me, does that go above or below the part that says protect and serve?” he asked.

She took no offense at his so-called question.

“I’ll let you know when I figure it out.” She turned her attention to another detail in the investigation. “Those marks on Mrs. Osborn’s wrists looked pretty deep,” she commented. “You think that whoever is responsible for this has a grudge against her, too?”

He shrugged. “It’s possible,” Kane allowed. “Or maybe, for our suspect, it’s a matter of guilt by association. She’s married to the miserable reptile, so in the burglar’s mind she’s every bit as bad as her husband is.”

She nodded. “Could be that, too,” she agreed.

“Let’s see what their so-called friends at the club have to say about the Osborns,” he suggested, then Kane looked at her. They were currently missing one little detail. “Did Osborn happen to mention what club he belongs to?”

She shook her head. “There are four clubs in Aurora that a man like Osborn might want to belong to. My vote is with the one that’s the most exclusive—and the most snobbish.”

Kane knew the exact place. “Valhalla,” he said. “That’s the one that checks into your lineage before allowing you to join. Members had to have relatives that go all the way back to the Mayflower.” He saw the frown on Kelly’s face. Out of left field, the thought came that even when she was frowning, this pain in his posterior was damn attractive. He promptly buried it, forcing himself to focus on the case. He caught himself wondering if she knew something he didn’t.

“What?”

She waved a hand at his question. Her reaction had nothing directly to do with the case. “I just hate snobs.”

“If your hunch is right, then apparently the snobs have the same kind of feelings about Randolph Osborn and his wife.”

Satisfied that they might be onto something, Kane put the key into the ignition. The engine had trouble catching the first two times. The third try was the charm. The sedan dutifully purred into service.

Kelly nodded toward the front of the car. “You should have that looked at,” she suggested.

Kane shrugged dismissively. “It’s just being temperamental.”

That he was assigning feelings to the vehicle took her completely by surprise. “It’s a car,” Kelly pointed out. “It doesn’t have any emotions to govern its actions.”

“My car might disagree,” he told her, completely tongue in cheek.

Kelly found herself laughing. “If you had a car that was actually capable of disagreeing, you’d be at least ten times more wealthy right now—if not more—and definitely living the life of ease.”

Money, and its lack or presence, didn’t play a role here. Not for him.

“If I were wealthy,” he told her, “I’d still be doing exactly what I’m doing right now. Protecting and serving. And chasing bad guys.”

The admission caught her completely off guard. She hadn’t pictured him as being that dedicated. “You’re kidding.”

“I don’t kid,” Kane deadpanned.

The way he said it, Kelly caught herself thinking that she could really believe it. But it was what he said next that really threw her for a loop.

“Cavanaugh.”

She turned her head to look at him, waiting for what she assumed was most likely going to be a put-down.

“Nice work back there.”

Stunned, for a moment she had absolutely no comeback for that.