The Quiet Storm

Chapter 2

Several hours after her visit with the terrifying police detective, Elizabeth still couldn’t quite seem to catch her breath.

She sat on a bench near the water’s edge watching Alex toss stick after stick into the shallows in the hope that his new puppy would chase after it.

He wasn’t having much luck. Although she was a yellow Labrador, Maddie either didn’t have the retriever instincts of her breed or she didn’t quite catch the concept of fetch just yet. Instead of bounding into the water after the stick, she planted all four of her gangly legs on the rocky beach and watched the boy with a bemused expression on her jowly face.

Probably the same expression Elizabeth had worn at Beau Riley’s desk earlier—that slightly panicked what-am-I-supposed-to-do-now? look.

The detective’s opinion of her shouldn’t matter at all. She knew it. But she hated imagining what he must have thought of her sitting in front of him with her thoughts and words atangle. Pathetic. He must have thought she was absolutely pitiful, and he had probably agreed to help her only so he wouldn’t have to deal with her anymore.

She sighed, angry with herself for continuing to dwell on this. Was she so narcissistic, so desperately eager for approval, that she really cared why the man had agreed to help her? His motives didn’t matter. Finding Tina’s killer was the important thing.

Still, she couldn’t help wondering with bitter regret why he seemed to bring out the worst in her, first the night of Grace Dugan’s fund-raiser and then today at the police station.

Most of the time she was far more composed. She could go days without stumbling over her words or missing more than the occasional conversational beat.

If she did start to have trouble, she had learned over the years that she could invariably hide the worst of it behind a veneer of chilly reserve.

It was just her bad luck that Beau Riley—the first man she’d been attracted to since Stephen—made her forget all her usual defenses, made her feel just like a stupid, stuttering girl again.

And there was the real trouble, she admitted. She was attracted to him, to that masculine combination of dark wavy hair, green eyes and lean, dangerous features.

She knew better. Experience could be a cruelly effective teacher. A man as brash and confident as Beau Riley would want nothing to do with someone like her.

Alex grunted suddenly, and she looked up from her grim thoughts in time to see him throw the last stick from the pile he’d collected so carefully into the water with more pique than precision. He made a garbled series of sounds, each more frustrated sounding than the last as he glared at the dog he had adored until now.

Elizabeth mentally kicked herself. Usually she was far more attuned to Alex’s moods. Why hadn’t she noticed his mounting frustration over his inability to make Maddie do what he wanted? If she had been paying attention—instead of brooding over her encounter with Beau Riley—she would have picked up on the signs and headed this minitantrum off at the pass.

She, of all people, should have sensed it. Heaven knows, she had enough experience herself with that same suffocating frustration over the past twenty-seven years.

Rising swiftly from the bench, she touched Alex’s shoulder so he would face her. As soon as he turned, she had to fight the urge to kiss that adorable scowl off his little face.

Don’t give up, she signed.

Maddie’s a stupid dog, he responded, his hands that were still chubby with baby fat a little clumsy with the signs.

No she’s not. We need to work a little harder to teach her what we want. I’ll help you.

Alex’s bottom lip stuck out. I don’t want to. Maddie’s a stupid dog, he repeated.

Not stupid. Young. She won’t learn unless we take the time to teach her. Come on, I’ll help you.

For the next half hour they worked with the dog, trying to teach her to obey the hand signal for fetch. Elizabeth was tempted several times to use verbal commands with the dog but she resisted, remembering the advice of Alex’s speech pathologist.

Maddie was Alex’s dog, a birthday gift from her and Luisa a month ago, just a week before Tina’s death. As her master, he should be able to command her. Since the boy’s oral speech was unreliable to nonexistent, his speech therapist thought it best to use only hand signals with the dog.

With a little instruction, Maddie was a smart thing, Elizabeth thought as the dog finally managed to figure out what they wanted from her. At last, she eagerly bounded after the stick and brought it back to Alex, who giggled and let her lavish doggie kisses on his face.

His frustration forgotten, the boy and dog wrestled happily in the thick carpet of grass above the shoreline. Elizabeth returned to her bench, content to watch them, her love for this sweet child a thick ache in her throat.

She remembered that first moment she had seen him, shriveled and red and already squalling his little heart out. Tina had asked her to be her labor coach, so she had been there throughout that miraculous day he entered the world.

Every time she thought about seeing him born, she wanted to weep with joy that she had been allowed to play such an important role in his life.

She’d been there, too, at the routine six-month well-baby check with Tina when his pediatrician first suggested the child couldn’t hear. And at the subsequent specialist appointments when the doctor’s suspicions had been confirmed.

She loved him as fiercely as if he had been her own child, and she wanted to do all she could to make sure he lived a happy life and grew up to be a confident, self-assured young man who would never look at his hearing impairment with any kind of shame.

While they worked with the dog, storm clouds had begun to gather over the water. It was getting late, and Luisa would probably have dinner ready soon, she realized.

She had waited just a moment too long to herd the boy and dog inside. By the time she managed to get Alex’s attention to sign that it was time to go in, the first drops of rain began to pelt them.

She and Alex raced for the house, laughing as Maddie jumped around them with excitement. By the time they made it to the back door off the kitchen, the skies had opened in earnest and they narrowly escaped getting drenched.

Inside the vast, gleaming kitchen, they were met by the luscious aroma of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies baking and by Luisa holding out the cordless phone to Elizabeth.

“For you.” Luisa didn’t bother to hide her disapproval. “I was taking a message when I heard you come. It’s the policia. That detective.”

Elizabeth froze, gazing at the phone as if it had suddenly barked at her like Maddie. She hated the funny twirling in her stomach but she couldn’t seem to control it.

She wasn’t at all sure suddenly if she could handle another encounter with Beau Riley just yet. Maybe in a few days.

She almost instructed Luisa to take his number so she could call him back after she had a chance to muscle up the courage. Then Alex brushed past her, caught in the gravitational pull of the cookies, and the words tangled in her throat.

Alex. She had to remember Alex. Maybe Detective Riley already had new information about Tina’s death. He didn’t strike her as a man who wasted any time. She had no choice but to talk to him and find out if he’d learned anything.

She wiped suddenly clammy hands on the jeans she’d changed into after she returned from the city, then took the phone from Luisa.

With a grim feeling that she would need all the concentration she could muster to hold her own with him, she slipped out of the kitchen and into the music room down the hall.

“Hello?” she finally said, despising the thready edginess in her tone.

“I thought maybe we were cut off.”

In contrast to her own nervous squeak, the detective’s voice was deep and commanding, a smooth, rich bass. He had shades of the South in his voice, she discovered. Not much, just a hint of a drawl, like a slow-moving Georgia creek hidden in thick timber.

Her mind went blank for a moment but she fought hard to regain composure. “No. I’m sorry. I needed to find a…quiet spot to talk.”

“Big party going on?” Not exactly cordial in the first place, that voice dropped several degrees. He must not have a very high opinion of her if he thought she could come to the police station one minute speaking of her best friend’s murder, then return home to throw a soiree.

Of course he didn’t have a high opinion of her. The first time they’d met, she had given him the coldest of shoulders and the second time she had sat at his desk all but wringing her hands like the helpless heroine of some silent film. He must think she was a complete idiot.

Stupid cow. Stupid, tongue-tied cow.

“No party,” she said finally, trying her best to silence the taunting ghosts of the past. “Just the usual chaos.” A boy, a puppy and Luisa, with her mournful eyes and disapproving frowns. “Has something happened?”

“Yeah. Something’s happened. My partner picked out something in the crime-scene photographs the other detectives must have missed. It might not mean anything, but it’s worth checking out.”

Excitement flickered through her. “What is it?”

There was just the slightest delay before he spoke. She wouldn’t have noticed it except it was the same pause she employed while she concentrated on trying to pick her words carefully. She had the impression the detective didn’t want to answer her question but he finally spoke. “Some unusual bruising on one wrist.”

“Bruising? What kind of bruising?”

Again he hesitated. “What you might expect to see if someone were to grab your wrist tightly.”

Oh, Tina. Elizabeth drew a sharp breath as a host of terrible images slithered across her mind, of fear and violence and a terrible death. She sank down onto the piano bench. What had happened to the sweet, innocent girl who had loved to dance and to swim and who used to sit at this same piano for hours with her picking out “Chopsticks” and “Heart and Soul”?

“Ms. Quinn?”

“Yes. I’m here.”

“I’m sorry. I thought you’d want to know.”

“Thank you. I…I did. I do.” She drew a ragged breath. She had known this wouldn’t be easy. “So what now?”

“I’m still trying to figure out how this slipped past the medical examiner and what else they might have missed. I’ve got a few other leads on this end. I’d like to talk to neighbors, co-workers, that kind of thing. I have to warn you, I don’t know how far we’re going to get. Coming in cold to a three-week-old murder is about as easy as trying to find hair on a frog. The trail cools a little more with every passing day.”

“I know. But thank you so much for helping me. I…can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

There was another pause, then he cleared his throat. “I’d like to take a look at her personal effects, too. See if she left an appointment book or address book or something that might give us a little more to go on. Can you tell me where I might find her belongings?”

“Here. Everything is here. The landlord wanted her apartment cleared so he could make it ready for another tenant but we…we weren’t ready to go through her things yet. Luisa and I had them packed into boxes and brought here after the other detectives cleared the scene.”

“Mind if I take a look at them?”

“No. I…of course not.” She rested a hand on the sudden fluttering in her stomach. He wanted to come here, to her home. “When would be convenient for you?”

“What about tomorrow afternoon?”

So soon? The fluttering turned into a whole flock of nervous butterflies. But she couldn’t very well refuse, not when she had practically begged him to investigate the case. “Yes,” she finally said. “Tomorrow would work.”

She gave him directions to Harbor View from the Dugans’ house just a mile away, and a few moments later they ended the conversation.

After she hung up the phone, she rose from the bench and crossed the thick carpet to the tall, mullioned windows overlooking the Sound. Rain still battered against the glass and stirred the water into a choppy froth. The sun had almost set and the lights of the city across the water had begun to twinkle and dance.

She watched them for a long time before she realized slow tears were trickling down her cheeks like the rain against the window. She swiped at them, grateful she’d had the wisdom to come in here away from Luisa and Alex.

It didn’t escape her attention that she had grieved far more for Tina in the last three weeks than she ever did throughout her father’s long, lingering death from cancer or after he finally died last year.

She had grieved a long time ago for what would never be between her and Jonathan Quinn. Maybe by the time he died she had no more tears left inside her for the cold, exacting man who never had any interest in trying to understand the daughter who tried so desperately to please him.

Luisa and her daughter had been far more of a family to her than her own father. Of course Tina’s death would hit her hard.

Knowing she was justified in her pain didn’t ease it at all. She stood in the dark music room for a long time, until the rain slowed and her cheeks were dry once more.

Beau glared at the phone. “I don’t care about your backlog, Marty. That’s no excuse for incompetence. Any first-year medical student would have picked up on bruising like that. How could your guy have missed in an hour-long autopsy something my rookie partner saw after thirty seconds of looking at a grainy crime-scene photograph?”

He listened to the medical examiner give the old familiar bull about his staff being overworked and underpaid. On the surface Marty Ruckman might seem like the consummate politician trying to cover his rear, but Beau knew him well enough to know the coroner cared as deeply as the detectives about finding justice for the dead.

“Whatever the reason, Marty,” he finally said, “we both know this was a major screw-up and it’s up to you to make it right. I want you to personally go over the autopsy records and see what else this guy missed. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

He hung up without saying goodbye and thumbed an antacid off the roll in his desk. He didn’t need this today. He and Griff had a dozen other active cases, and he really didn’t have time for this kind of bureaucratic baloney first thing in the morning.

And where the hell was his partner? Every time he turned around, the kid disappeared.

He was about to send out an APB when he saw a curly-haired blond dynamo heading toward his desk. His mood immediately lifted.

“Hey, it’s my best girl. This is a surprise!”

Emma, Gracie’s seven-year-old stepdaughter, launched herself into his arms. “Hi, Beau. Grace said I could come back and see if you were here while she talked to her boss. I didn’t have school today so Grace and me are gonna have lunch downtown and go shopping for new clothes and maybe go to the park if Sean’s not too grumpy. Hey, guess what? I lost another tooth last night and the tooth fairy brought me two whole dollars and I’m saving it for a new Barbie.”

When she slowed down to take a breath, he dutifully admired the hole where her tooth used to be, handed her one of the candy bars from his secret emergency stash and asked her how her new baby brother was working out.

She gave him a disgusted look. “He’s boring. I thought he would be able to play by now. Mom and Dad and Lily say Sean’s just about the smartest baby in the world but I think he’s dumb as a rock. All he does is sleep and eat and cry.”

He laughed—he couldn’t help himself—and kissed her blond curls. “He’ll grow out of it. Trust me. Pretty soon he’ll be picking the lock to get into your bedroom and inventing all kinds of ways to tease you.”

He thought again that Emma was by far the best thing to come out of Grace’s marriage to Jack Dugan two years earlier. Beau was still withholding judgment about the cocky millionaire flyboy who had captured Gracie’s heart. Dugan had lifted her out of a dark, desolate place when no one else could reach her and he made her happy, so that counted for something. But he was also a reckless, arrogant son of a bitch.

His daughter, on the other hand, was a complete doll. Almost as cute as Marisa had been at that age.

Unexpected pain punched him hard in the chest at the thought of Grace’s daughter, and he glanced at the framed picture on his desk of a laughing, beautiful girl with dimpled cheeks and long glossy braids. Three years she’d been gone. Sometimes he could hardly believe it had been that long since they’d taken a trip on his boat or shared a picnic at the beach or played one of their fiercely competitive games of Horse at the basketball hoop hanging from Gracie’s little garage.

It had been three years since she’d been killed in a drive-by shooting outside her school, and he still missed her fiercely.

Jack Dugan and his daughter had forced their way into Grace’s life and helped ease her grief and guilt. He should be grateful to the man, and he was. But a part of him still felt small and selfish for wondering why he couldn’t seem to find the same kind of peace.

“You want some paper to color on while you wait for your mom?” he asked Emma.

Little lines fanned up between her eyebrows as she tried to decide. “How about if I make you a paper airplane? My daddy just taught me how.”

“Great. I’ve been needing one of those.”

He handed her some scratch paper out of his drawer and grinned at her frown of concentration as she folded the paper with the precision of a laser surgeon performing a frontal lobotomy.

She was almost finished when he spotted Gracie heading toward them. As usual, the air around her seemed to crackle with energy as she made her way through the squad room to his desk. Despite her lack of height and delicate appearance, she was a fierce cop who cared passionately about her cases.

Just now she looked far from that hardened detective, loaded down with a baby carrier and a Winnie the Pooh diaper bag. He relieved her of both and urged her to sit down.

Emma looked up and flashed her gap-toothed grin. “Hi, Grace. I’m making Beau one of my super-duper high-flyer airplanes Daddy taught me to make.”

She grinned at her stepdaughter as she pulled little Sean out of the baby carrier. “And I’m sure Beau will find some way to make trouble with it. Like launch it at the lieutenant when his back is turned.” She turned back to Beau. “Sorry I took a little longer than I’d expected. I didn’t mean to let Em just run free. Were you in the middle of something when she came back?”

“No. I was all done yelling by the time she got here, so she missed all my better cuss words.”

“Uh-oh. Trouble with a case?”

If Emma hadn’t been there with her wide eyes and her avid curiosity, he would have unloaded on Grace about it. Hell, she ought to be working the case with him, since this one was her baby. Besides, Grace had always had a way of seeing patterns and flags that evaded everybody else.

But since she couldn’t very well pack that cute dark-haired new baby on her hip while she went out on interviews, he was on his own.

He shrugged and chose to change the subject. “How’s the kid? Is he sleeping through the night yet?”

Grace sighed. “Not yet. He still thinks he needs to eat every two hours. Kind of like someone else I know,” she said pointedly.

“Hey, we’re both healthy, growing males. We need our food.”

She snorted and he grinned back. He and Grace had been partners on and off for a dozen years, first on patrol and then as detectives. They knew each other inside and out and loved each other deeply, just not in a romantic way. She’d always been like an annoying little sister to him, but he couldn’t imagine his life without her.

“What brings you down here?” Beau asked. “I didn’t think we’d have to see your ugly mug for at least another few months.”

She made a face with features that were small and delicate and, he had to admit, far from ugly. “Keep it up and you won’t have to see it for longer than that.” She paused. “Actually, Beau, I just talked to Charlie about extending my maternity leave by another six months. I’m going to fill out the paperwork.”

He stared at her, grim images of spending more time with an eager puppy of a partner like J. J. Griffin. He did a quick mental calculation. “A whole year? You’re taking a whole year off? You were just getting back in the groove!”

“I’m sorry, Beau. I should have told you before I talked to Charlie and filled out the paperwork.”

“Why do you need a whole year?” He knew he probably sounded like a spoiled little kid whose best friend was moving away but he couldn’t seem to help it.

“When you have children, maybe you’ll understand. I didn’t have many choices with Marisa. You know what it was like for us. I was all she had and she was barely a few weeks old when I had to go back to work just to pay the rent. This time everything is different. I’ve discovered I’m not in a big hurry yet to rush back to all this. I just need a little time with Em and the baby. But I’ll be back, I promise.”