Cavanaugh's Surrender (14 page)

No, damn it, you don’t have time to wallow and indulge yourself,
she silently upbraided herself now
.

Paula’s killer might be somewhere in this crowd of people, paying their last respects. Observing the effects of what he’d done. Getting high on the grief. She couldn’t afford to let herself come apart. She couldn’t fail Paula now. This was all she could still give Paula—her killer’s head on a platter.

Standing next to her, Logan could feel Destiny tensing, and he automatically looked around to see if there was anything wrong. It was a large area to scan. The former chief of police had thrown open his doors—literally—and people drifted in and out, making use of not just the house but the patio and the garden beyond that.

Nothing seemed to stand out to him.

“What’s wrong?” he asked Destiny. “Other than the obvious.”

She took a deep breath before answering him, still carefully surveying the immediate area. “Her killer might be here.”

Logan had his doubts about that. “I really don’t think that—”

Impatient, she cut him off. “Think about it. The killer was someone Paula’d had a relationship with. Everyone listed on her cell phone told me they’d be here, and they are. Not only that, but they brought other people who knew Paula. Whoever she was involved with
had
to be on that cell phone list. Which means he’s got to be here. I can feel it,” she insisted.

Logan reconsidered. He supposed her argument had merit. Looking around again, he found the numbers to be almost overwhelming. If the killer was here, it was a matter of hiding in plain sight.

“So what do you want to do?” he asked Destiny.

Catching killers was a combination of luck and skill, she’d come to decide. Mainly luck.

“Mingle. Talk. Hopefully pick up on something.” Right now, there was nothing else they could do.

“In other words, interact with the guests.” He didn’t see that as being any different from what one would expect a family member in this circumstance to do at a funeral reception. “Okay,” he agreed.

Something in Logan’s voice caught her attention. He was volunteering to join her. That wasn’t what she’d had in mind. “I didn’t mean that you had to do this, too.”

There was no way she was getting rid of him, Logan thought. Granted, Destiny was putting up a tough exterior, but he had three sisters. He knew an act when he saw one. Destiny was both fragile and vulnerable inside. She needed him.

“Two sets of ears are better than one,” he told her philosophically. “Besides, I’m the—”

“Primary,” she concluded for him. “Yes, I know.” There was no note of exasperation in her voice the way there had been the other times. “Okay, ‘Primary,’” she agreed. “Let’s see what we can discover.”

What she discovered was that, at least on the surface, Paula apparently had no enemies. Everyone thought the world of her. And, despite the fact that there were several people Paula had considered to be
very
close friends, not one of them had a clue who her new lover had been. Unlike all the other times she was seeing someone, this time she’d become very secretive, and for the most part she seemed exceedingly happy.

Until the night she’d sent out her last text message to her close group of friends.

Destiny felt as if they were going around in circles. It was getting incredibly frustrating for her.

“Why don’t you take a break?”

The suggestion came from a deep voice behind her. Turning, she found herself looking up into Andrew Cavanaugh’s slightly lined, kindly face. His eyes reminded her of Logan’s, she realized.

“A break?” she echoed, not really sure what the former police chief and present-day miracle worker was telling her.

Andrew smiled at her knowingly. “I’ve been a cop long enough to know when someone’s on the job. Take a break for the rest of the evening,” he advised. “Don’t worry, you’ll find your sister’s killer.”

“How can you know that?”

“Because I also know ‘abnormally stubborn’ when I see it,” he told her. “You have that look in your eyes. You’ll find the killer,” he repeated. “Just not today. Today is for your sister.”

“So is finding her killer,” Destiny countered.

Andrew laughed, shaking his head. “Like I said, stubborn. Make sure there’s something left of you after you find the killer,” he advised, looking at her pointedly. “Otherwise, he would have gotten two victims, not just one.”

“He’s right, you know,” Logan told her as they watched the senior Cavanaugh retreat into the kitchen to tend to something else he was making.

Destiny sighed, then moved her shoulders in what seemed like a semishrug. “I know.”

Logan wasn’t fooled. He was beginning to tune in to her body language pretty well.

“That doesn’t mean you’re going to take his advice to heart, though, does it?”

Her first impulse was to deny his assumption, but it didn’t seem quite right to lie to Logan after everything he’d done for her. For Paula. So she shook her head and told him the truth.

“Nope.” With that, she began to walk away. She had people to talk to. Lots and lots of people.

Logan sighed and picked up his pace. If she was determined to do this, he wouldn’t let her do it alone.

Along with her friends and coworkers at the nonprofit hospital, a great many of the people whom Paula had gotten to contribute to the hospital over the years were at the reception, as well. And, it seemed to Destiny, they too felt saddened that Paula had been cut down decades before her time.

Even so, when she saw Drake Simmons, the CEO whose name she had managed to make out in the otherwise useless diary, talking to another one of the mourners, Destiny felt her pulse accelerate.

Approaching him, she forced herself to thank him for taking time out of his busy schedule to attend the service. After introducing her to Howard Palmer, his assistant, he went on to express his shock and dismay.

“Terrible thing.” Drake Simmons repeated the words with such feeling Destiny was convinced that he was about to make some sort of a confession to her. Perhaps take her aside and tell her about his affair with Paula. But the man made no effort to speak to her alone, saying what he had to say in front of his assistant and Logan. “Part of me still can’t believe that someone so young, so lovely and full of life is really dead.”

Was it her imagination, or did his voice tremble just then?

The CEO looked at her for a moment, then confided sadly, “I just saw her recently.”

How did you see her? Did you see her in the bathtub, her wrists slashed because you slashed them? Did you watch the life oozing out of her?
Destiny did her best to look curious so as to urge the man on with his narrative.

“Oh?”

“Yes,” he told her, his voice taking on a somber tone. “We met in my office. I wanted to give her my company’s contribution personally. That children’s hospital she worked for, she was their brightest star,” he said with feeling. “I really don’t know what they’re going to do without her. Usually the people behind fundraisers turn out to be irritating, incessantly asking for more and more contributions until you wind up slamming the door in their faces—figuratively, of course.”

“Of course,” Destiny echoed, a smile pasted on her face.

“But Paula was different,” he told her. “She made you
want
to give and give until it almost hurt.” He laughed softly to himself, as if reliving some private little joke the two of them had shared. And then he cleared his throat, coming back around to the present. “I don’t know about anyone else,” he said, deliberately raising his voice as he looked around the immediate area, “but I’m sending a personal contribution to the hospital foundation she worked for in her memory. I hope everyone else does the same.”

Destiny smiled broadly and nodded. “That’s extremely nice of you, Mr. Simmons. I’m sure that Mrs. Ruben will be very grateful and will appreciate your generosity. Just as she appreciated Jacob Deering’s contribution.”

Simmons looked a little annoyed to be sharing the spotlight with someone else, but then a sadness seemed to overtake him as he said, “It’s the very least I can do for Paula.”

It was only because she hadn’t wanted to turn her sister’s wake into a spectacle that Destiny refrained from verbally cornering Drake Simmons and firing questions at him until she got him to confess his affair.

More important than that, she didn’t want to publicly drag Paula’s name through the mud, and that would be what calling Simmons out about his affair would amount to.

The moment she was alone with Logan, she told him exactly what she was thinking. “That sounds like someone with a guilty conscience to me.”

Logan tried to get her to temper her assessment by presenting another take on the scene. “Or like someone who’s genuinely going to miss your sister and thought this might be a fitting tribute, donating to the hospital for whose cause she worked so diligently.”

She looked at Logan sharply and frowned. “Why are you taking his side?” she asked. It was a struggle to keep her voice down.

“I’m not taking anyone’s side,” he countered mildly. “I’m trying to keep an open mind.”

He sounded way too calm for her. Well, why shouldn’t he be? she silently demanded. It wasn’t
his
only sister who’d been killed.

“Don’t keep it too open, or everything’s going to come spilling out,” she retorted.

He stared at her, trying to make sense out of what she’d just said. After a beat Logan decided that frustration and anger were shutting off the woman’s ability to think clearly.

Taking her by the elbow, he directed her toward one of the tables against the wall. Bottles of beer, alcohol and soft drinks were all there, waiting for thirsty guests.

“I think you need a drink,” he told her, then specified, “Just one,” in case she thought that he was attempting to get her drunk. “So you can stop being so uptight.”

Her eyes narrowed and she tossed her head. “Maybe I want to be uptight,” she fired back.

Logan calmly mixed vodka and orange juice together over an avalanche of ice, taking care to go heavy on the juice. After holding it up for his own examination, he was satisfied. Only then did he hand the tall, frosted screwdriver to Destiny.

“Nobody wants to be uptight,” he assured her. He nodded at the glass he’d given her. “Now drink up. ‘Doctor’s’ orders.”

Doctor, her foot. He was no more of a doctor than she was. Doctor Feel Good, if anything, she thought grudgingly, taking a sip without thinking.

“Trying to get me drunk, Cavanaugh?” she challenged, raising her chin as if daring him to take a swing at her.

“No, what I’m trying to do,” he replied evenly, “is to get you to relax a little. Right now, you look like you’re going to snap in two any second. Either that, or do double duty as an ironing board.”

“Always looking out for me.” The words were said sarcastically, but he pretended not to take them in that manner.

“As long as you’re working with me, yes,” he answered, “I am.”

Destiny looked at her new and very temporary partner over the rim of her frosty glass. The anger and the sadness within her melted into the background, as if something in his eyes had physically pushed them back.

She took a deep breath to steady her nerves. “Thanks,” she murmured.

Had he not seen her lips moving, he would have sworn that he was just imagining that he heard the soft sound of her voice.

But he
had
seen them move, and he did “see” the word
thanks
on her lips. Maybe there was hope for the woman yet. That was good, because being without any hope was a horrible place to be. He couldn’t begin to imagine what that had to be like. Waking up each morning without wanting to.

Without a reason to.

That had to be terrible.

Slipping his arm through hers, Logan urged, “C’mon, let’s get back to ‘mingling.’ Lots more ‘suspects’ to talk to.”

She got the feeling that he wasn’t just teasing her, he meant it. And she was grateful to him for that.

* * *

“I don’t know how to thank you,” Destiny told Andrew with deep sincerity.

It was late. The reception had been over for more than an hour. The last of the mourners had left about forty-five minutes ago after once again expressing their deep sorrow over Paula’s death. Drake Simmons and his personal assistant were among the last to go. Though she’d made it her mission to have their paths cross several more times throughout the day and evening, nothing new was said.

She was forced to place her impatience on hold. She had a debt to repay in some small way. She began by preparing an endless stack of dirty dishes for the dishwasher.

“You already have. Four times at last count. This makes five,” Andrew told her warmly.

The next moment, he took the dish she was rinsing out of her hands. Instead of putting it into the open dishwasher, he placed it on the counter. The dishes didn’t have his attention. She did.

“Go home, Destiny,” he ordered. “Get some rest. You go back to fighting the good fight tomorrow.” And then he turned to Logan, who had never been very far away throughout the entire day. “You might want to follow her in your car, make sure she goes home,” Andrew advised after a beat.

During the course of the latter half of the reception, she’d gotten a few leads that she wanted to follow up. For her that meant getting into the precinct computer.

Logan obviously sensed that by the look on his face. Was she that transparent? she wondered.

The thought was less than pleasing. Not that she had any desire to be a woman of mystery. After all, this was her partner for now. But neither did she want to come across like a person whose thoughts were right out there for everyone to read.

“I’m going home,” she assured the man who had done so much for her today and had asked for absolutely nothing in return.

She didn’t like owing people, but it was, as one of Andrew’s daughters—Teri, she thought—had assured her, the Cavanaugh way. Everyone just helped out everyone else without thought to compensation—or bribes.

“Of course you are,” Andrew said in a tone that told her that he most certainly
did not
believe, not even for a moment, that left to her own devices Destiny would drive home and just go to bed.