Читать книгу Cavanaugh On Call - Marie Ferrarella - Страница 13

Chapter 4

This would be a perfect time to make a getaway, Scottie thought. Cavanaugh’s back was to her and he was busy trying to get the bartender’s attention. The latter was taking and filling orders like a house afire, but it still looked as if it might take him at least a few minutes to get to Cavanaugh.

If she slipped away now...

If she slipped away now, Cavanaugh would undoubtedly hunt her down and insist on collecting his “debt” at some other, probably less convenient, time. Scottie sighed. She might as well resign herself to getting this over with and out of the way.

It wasn’t easy, but she stayed where she was.

Cavanaugh came back faster than she thought he would, a mug of beer in each hand.

“You’re still here,” Bryce said. There actually was a note of surprise in his voice.

That made two of them, Scottie thought.

“I said that I would have that drink with you,” she reminded Cavanaugh. “What, did you think I’d make a break for it?”

She found herself, just for a moment and very reluctantly, being drawn in to the man’s genial smile. It was just this side of sexy and difficult to ignore.

“It crossed my mind, yes,” he answered.

Her eyes met his. Maybe ground rules were called for here. “When I say I’ll do something, I do it.”

Bryce placed her mug of beer in front of her and then, straddling his chair, set his mug down where he was sitting.

“Good to know.” He raised his mug, waiting for her to do the same. When she didn’t, he went ahead with his toast. “Well, here’s to a fruitful partnership.”

Scottie knew she couldn’t very well ignore the sentiment behind that, so she nodded, raised her mug and clinked it against his.

Taking a sip, she placed her drink down again. Glancing at her watch, she wondered how long she would have to remain at Malone’s before Cavanaugh would call them square and let her leave.

“So, do you do that often?” Bryce asked out of the blue.

Caught off guard, she stared at him, quickly reviewing their sparse conversation. She came up empty. “Do what?”

“Serve dinner at the homeless shelter. I assume that was what you were doing there.” He hadn’t seen her carry in any bags of clothes to donate, so he had come to the only conclusion he could about her thirty-five-minute visit to the shelter. “Very noble, by the way,” he added.

She frowned. What she’d heard about the Cavanaughs was true. Once they latched on to something, they just wouldn’t let go. She was going to have to answer him.

“Before you start fitting me for a halo,” she told Bryce, “I wasn’t there serving dinner.”

“Oh?” He watched her over the rim of his mug. “Then what were you doing at the homeless shelter?”

The words “none of your business” rose to her lips, but antagonizing Cavanaugh from the get-go would just cause problems and she already had more than enough of those. So, she grudgingly told her partner, “I was looking for someone.”

The look in his eyes told her that his interest had piqued a notch higher. “Who?”

Okay, this had gone as far as she was willing to go with it. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but what I do off duty is my own business.”

If she’d offended him, she saw no indication. “No, you’ve got that right. I was just going to volunteer to help you find that ‘someone,’ that’s all.”

He couldn’t help her, not without her opening up about Ethan, her brother’s past and her concerns that it had caught up with him again.

“I don’t need help,” she told him.

The last thing she needed was to have Cavanaugh looking for her brother’s whereabouts. It wouldn’t take much for him to unearth a slew of things she didn’t want anyone knowing. Once Cavanaugh started digging, it would be all too easy for him to make the leap from her brother and his particular set of skills to the current break-ins plaguing the city’s residents.

“I don’t know about that,” Bryce countered. She looked up at him sharply and he explained, “Maybe it’s because I was raised with so many relatives, always willing to pitch in, but to my way of thinking, everyone needs help at some time or other.”

“Fine,” she said with finality, hoping this would be the end of it. “When I decide that I need help, I’ll let you know.”

Bryce studied her for a moment and she could almost feel his eyes probing her, poking around in places he had no business being.

“Will you?” he asked. The expression on his face told her he wasn’t that convinced.

She instantly responded the way she knew he wanted her to. “Absolutely.”

“I thought you always told the truth.” The skeptical note in his voice told her she hadn’t managed to fool him.

Okay, time to go, Scottie decided. She’d done her due diligence, now she had to go home. She wasn’t sure just what her next move was since no one at the shelter had heard from Ethan in several months. Hearing that had just concerned her even more. Where was he? What had caused this break in his routine?

She refused to allow panic to take center stage. If it did, then she’d be lost, not to mention that Ethan might very well be lost, as well. She had a feeling he might need her at her sharpest.

Scottie pushed back her chair. “Well, this has been fun, but I’ve got to get going,” she told Bryce, preparing to get up.

But what she’d hoped would be a clean getaway hit a rather large stumbling block when a tall, muscular man moved right in front of her.

“Damn, it is you,” he said, surprised and pleased at the same time. He looked to Bryce, who was still seated. “Is the end of the world coming?”

Scottie looked up and found herself staring into the face of Duncan Cavanaugh, Bryce’s older brother and one of the people she had worked with on occasion while she’d been assigned to Homicide.

An incredulous expression on his face, Duncan looked at his brother. “How did you manage to talk her into coming to Malone’s? She always said no when she was working Homicide.”

Bryce grinned. “I guess she just finds me better company than you.”

“Yeah, like that’s the reason.” Duncan laughed, dismissing the answer and shaking his head. He turned back to Scottie who continued to look as if she was out of her natural habitat. “Well, it’s nice to see you, Scottie. Hope things are working out for you in Robbery.”

“Too soon to tell,” she replied quietly, unconsciously slanting a glance toward Bryce.

“Nothing’s changed, I see. Honest to a fault,” Duncan commented. He smiled at her. “It has its charm.” It was unclear if he was referring to her honesty or to her new department. With that, he raised his bottle in a silent salute. “Carry on, little brother.”

“Shouldn’t you be home?” Bryce asked. When Duncan looked at him quizzically, Bryce elaborated. “Isn’t Noelle due any day now?”

“Another week or so,” Duncan answered. A bemused smile played on his lips. “But you know that old adage about a watched pot not boiling—”

Hearing that, Scottie couldn’t help commenting, “I’m sure your wife must love being compared to a pot.”

“Actually,” Duncan told her, “she was the one who came up with that line when she insisted I go about my business normally. As if I could.” Duncan laughed with a shake of his head. “Lucy’s with her when I can’t be home,” he told his brother in case the latter thought he was just abandoning his wife.

“‘Lucy’?” Scottie repeated.

“Noelle’s grandmother,” Duncan told her. “She doesn’t like being called ‘grandma.’ Likes ‘great-grandma’ even less,” he added with a laugh.

“Still, don’t you want to be sober for your firstborn?” Bryce asked.

“I am sober, bro. So sober that it’s almost painful. This is a light ale,” he told them, holding his bottle aloft. “And I’ve only had one, which is my limit these days. I’m here more for the company than the libation,” Duncan confided. “Like I said, Noelle doesn’t like having me hovering around her, being nervous.”

“You, nervous?” Bryce echoed incredulously. Growing up, Duncan had always been the one who leaped first then looked, practically giving their late mother a heart attack more than once. “I thought you were the brother with nerves of steel.”

“His nerves might be made of steel, but he’s got a heart made out of pure mush,” Moira Cavanaugh, their sister, chimed in as she joined their small circle. “Hi, I’m Moira. I have the sad fortune of being their sister,” she told Scottie, indicating both men at the table.

Duncan was about to defend his good name when suddenly the first few bars of a song that almost everyone was familiar with rang out. It was a marching song written by John Philip Sousa. Both Bryce and Moira looked right at Duncan who, for the first time in his life, turned rather pale.

“It’s Lucy,” he cried before he even took out his cell. “I had Valri program that ringtone for Noelle’s grandmother so I’d know it was her calling.”

“Maybe she’s just checking in to see when you’re coming home,” Moira suggested, even though it appeared to Scottie that she was beginning to get excited, as well.

“What are the odds?” Duncan asked. Yanking the phone out of his pocket, he almost dropped it right in front of Scottie before he managed to get a better grip on it and then swipe it open. “Hello? Is it time?” he asked, his voice almost breathless. “Oh. Okay.” His shoulders sagged with relief as he told the caller, “I’ll pick it up on my way home. Be there in twenty minutes.”

Terminating the call, Duncan saw that all eyes around the small table and beyond were on him.

“Noelle wants me to pick up some mint-chip ice cream on my way home.”

Like the others, Bryce had thought it was “time.” The false alarm had him laughing. “Better get going then, bro. And give my love to Noelle.”

“Isn’t that how this whole thing got started?” Moira quipped innocently.

Duncan waved a silencing hand at her. He left his half-consumed bottle of ale on the table, nodding at Scottie as he said, “Nice to see you finally out after hours.” And with that, he made his way to the front entrance.

“I sure hope she gives birth soon,” Moira commented to Bryce and his new partner as she started walking away, as well. “Right now, Duncan’s moving around like a man in a trance.”

“As opposed to the way he’ll be moving around after the baby’s here and he hasn’t had a decent night’s sleep in a week.”

Scottie turned in her chair to see that the comment had come from Sean Cavanaugh, the head of the Crime Scene Investigation’s day shift and part of the older generation of Cavanaughs working in the precinct.

Obviously having overheard their conversation, Sean smiled warmly at the young woman at the table with his nephew.

“Poor guy doesn’t know that these are what he’ll look back on as ‘the good old days’ for the first couple of years as he struggles to get his ‘daddy legs,’” Sean said with a fond laugh.

“‘Daddy legs’?” Scottie repeated, looking toward the older man for an explanation.

“They’re just like sea legs except they’re a lot trickier to maneuver with,” Sean recalled, laughing softly as he remembered several instances. “After having seven kids, I ought to know.”

“I thought it was the mother who stayed up all night with the kids,” Bryce commented.

His uncle laughed, patting him on his cheek. “So young, so much to learn,” he commented with amusement. And then he looked at Scottie again, as if taking a close look at her this time. “You’re Bryce’s new partner, aren’t you?”

She and Sean Cavanaugh had never crossed paths. That he even knew who she was really surprised her. “Yes, but how did you—?”

The corners of Sean’s mouth curved, his expression almost bordering on the mysterious.

“There are no secrets in the police department, Detective Scott. And even less in the Cavanaugh world.” His green eyes took measure of her quickly and he clearly liked what he saw. “First time here at Malone’s?” he asked.

Was there a sign taped on her back that said tourist or something along those lines? Or was it that she just looked so out of place? She had to ask the man, “Now, how would you know that?”

“I head the CSI unit, Scottie. It’s my job to know everything,” he told her mildly. Turning toward the bartender, he signaled for the man’s attention. When he got it, Sean indicated the two people sitting at the table behind him. “The next round’s on me,” he told the bartender.

Scottie protested immediately. “No, I just stopped in for the one.”

“You don’t have to drink it,” Sean told her good-naturedly. “Just hold on to the bottle. ‘Getting a drink at Malone’s’ is, for the most part, just an excuse to linger on the premises and mingle with your brothers and sisters in blue.” His smile, a genial, comforting expression, widened as he added, “In my family’s case, that’s truer than you’d expect. Be seeing you around,” he said to both Bryce and Scottie just before he walked away and left the establishment.

“Two of the same, right?” the bartender asked, depositing two more bottles at the table that she was sharing with her partner.

“I really never drink this much,” Scottie told the man sitting opposite her.

“Like Uncle Sean said,” Bryce reminded her, “you don’t have to drink. It’s just an excuse to linger.”

She wanted him to get something straight right off the bat. “If I wanted to linger, I wouldn’t need an excuse,” Scottie told him.

His mouth quirked just a little. “The key word here being wanted,” Bryce guessed. It was obvious that she wanted to leave. He sat back. He would have wanted her to stay a bit longer, but he wasn’t about to tie her to her chair. “Well, you lived up to your bargain, so you’re free to go.” But before she left, in the spirit of honesty, he couldn’t help telling her, “I was just hoping that once you came, you’d want to stay a bit.”

Scottie had been feeling restless and antsy ever since she’d come out of the homeless shelter empty-handed. “I don’t like wasting time.”

Bryce gestured around to not just include their table but the surrounding people, as well. “This isn’t wasting time.”

She pinned him with a look. Everyone was sitting around, exchanging bits and pieces of what had once been conversation. They lived in a world of abbreviations and sound bites.

“All right, then tell me. What is it?” she asked.

“It’s recharging your batteries, maybe talking things out with other law-enforcement agents who might have a clearer perspective than you do. It’s clearing your head so that you can go home without keeping everything bottled up inside and scaring the person who means the most to you. At its simplest level,” Bryce added, “it’s networking.”

She focused on the first couple of points he’d mentioned. “So that’s what’s going on here?” she asked, doing her best to keep the sarcasm she keenly felt from infiltrating her voice. “Crime solving?”

“At times,” Bryce responded without blinking an eye. “And, like I said, at other times, it’s just kicking back, unwinding and recharging. That’s a lot more important than you think.”

“I do that at home,” she informed him and then, because it was getting noisier, she raised her voice and said, “I don’t need a network to get me there.”

“More power to you. Some of us, through no fault of our own, do need a little help with that, and being around other people who know what it’s like to lay your life on the line 24/7 makes it just a little easier to communicate.” She was leaving, he could see it in her eyes. Because his curiosity had always been unbridled, he grabbed the last chance he had and asked her one more time. “Who were you looking for at the shelter?”

His curiosity made her curious. “Why is it so important for you to know?” she challenged.

He repeated his offer, making it seem more appealing this time. “Because, you might have noticed, I have this huge network I can tap into.”

Bryce waved his hand around the bar. There were a lot of his relatives there, as well as a lot of fellow law-enforcement agents he’d had occasion to work with. Most were great believers in the “one hand washes the other” axiom as long as no laws were broken and no one was hurt in the process.

“And if you tell me who you’re looking for, I can help you find him—or her.” Bryce tagged the latter on just in case she was looking for a woman.

She supposed that he meant well, even though he was prying.

“Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.” Scottie rose. “Thanks for the drink.”

“You didn’t finish it,” he pointed out, standing.

Scottie paused to drain the last of the light beer from the first serving. The round that Sean had paid for stood untouched.

Despite the speed with which she drank the last of her initial beer, she felt nothing, not even a slight buzz.

“There you go,” she announced, dramatically putting the empty bottle down, then smiling up into her partner’s face. “Finished.”

But as she started to go, Bryce caught her by her wrist and held her in place. There was silent accusation in her blue eyes as she glared at him and tried to yank free.

“Why don’t you wait a couple of minutes until that hits bottom?” Bryce suggested. One drink was nothing, but he had no idea about her tolerance for alcohol and the last thing he wanted was to have her on the road when she suddenly became light-headed and unable to navigate that little thing she called a car.

“It’s light beer,” Scottie protested, trying to pull away again. But he only tightened his hold on her wrist. “There’s nothing to ‘hit,’” she insisted.

Bryce’s stance was unwavering. “Humor me,” he requested.