Rumors: The McCaffertys

by Lisa Jackson

  “Me, too, Dad,” she said, and bent down to kiss his forehead where thin strands of white hair couldn’t quite cover his speckled pate.

  “You’ve been busy, I see,” he said, holding up a folded newspaper. “Lots going on.”

  “Always.”

  “That’s the way I remember it. Even in my day, there weren’t enough men on the force.”

  “Or women.”

  Ronald snorted. “Weren’t any women at all.”

  “Maybe that’s why you weren’t so efficient,” she teased, and he swatted at her with his newspaper. She ducked into the kitchen and was greeted with squeals of delight from her nephews, Aaron and Spencer, two dynamos who rarely seemed to wind down.

  The boys charged her, nearly toppling their mother in the process. “Aunt Kelly!” Aaron cried. “Up, up.” He held up chubby three-year-old arms and Kelly obligingly lifted him from the floor. He had a mashed sandwich in one hand and a tiny toy truck in the other. Peanut butter was smeared across the lower half of his face. “You comed.”

  “That I did.”

  “Came, she came,” Karla corrected him.

  “You’re such a baby,” Spencer needled.

  “Am not!” Aaron rose to the bait as quickly as a hungry trout to a salmon fly.

  “Of course you’re not,” Kelly said, swinging him to the ground and wondering just how much peanut butter was transferred to her sweater. “And neither are you,” she said to her older nephew, who grinned, showing off the gap where once had been two front teeth. Freckled, blue-eyed and smart as a whip, Spencer enjoyed besting his younger sibling, a half brother. Karla, two years younger than Kelly, had been married twice, divorced as many times, and had sworn off men and marriage for good.

  “Here, you can mash the potatoes,” Karla said as she snatched a wet dishrag from the sink and started after a squealing Aaron, who took off into the dining room.

  “Papa!” Aaron cried, hoping his grandfather would protect him from his mother’s obsession with cleanliness.

  “He won’t save you,” Karla said, chasing after her youngest.

  Kelly’s mother, Eva, was adding a dab of butter and a sprinkle of brown sugar to already-baked acorn squash. The scents of roast pork, herbs and her mother’s favorite perfume mingled and rose in the warmth of the kitchen as she shook her head at the melee. “Never a dull minute when the boys are around.”

  “I see that.” Kelly rumpled Spencer’s hair fondly, cringed at the wail coming from the dining room, then rinsed her hands and found the electric beaters so that she could whip the potatoes. Over the whir of the hand mixer, Aaron’s screams, the microwave timer and comments from Charlie, her parents’ pet budgie, who was perched in his cage near the front door, Kelly could barely hear herself think.

  “I’ll make the gravy,” Karla said as she tossed the dirty rag into the sink.

  “Mission accomplished?” Kelly glanced down at a more subdued Aaron. His face was clean again, red from being rubbed by the washcloth.

  “Yeah, and it’ll last all of five minutes. If we’re lucky.”

  Kelly’s mother chuckled. A petite woman with fluffy apricot curls and a porcelain complexion, she doted on her two grandsons as if they were truly God’s gifts, which, Kelly imagined, they were. It was just too bad they had such louses for fathers. Seth Kramer and Franklin Anderson were as different as night and day—their only common trait being that they couldn’t handle the responsibilities of fatherhood.

  “Are we about ready?” Eva asked, and Kelly clicked off the beaters.

  “I think so.”

  It took another five minutes to carry everything into the dining room, find a booster chair for Aaron, get both boys settled and served up, but soon Kelly was cutting into a succulent slab of herb-seasoned pork. She finally relaxed a little, the tension in her shoulders easing as they ate and talked, just as they had growing up. Except there were two more chairs crowded around the Formica-topped table now, for two boys who were as dear to her as if they’d been Kelly’s own.

  “So what gives with all that business with the McCaffertys?” her father asked around a mouthful of pork. “I read in the paper there’s speculation about foul play.”

  “Isn’t there always?” Kelly asked.

  “With that group there is.” Eva’s eyebrows pulled together, causing little lines to deepen between them.

  “Yeah, they’re an untrustworthy lot, there’s no doubt of that.”

  “Amen,” Karla said as she cut tiny pieces of meat for her youngest son.

  Kelly didn’t comment. For years the name McCafferty had been tantamount to Beelzebub or Lucifer in the Dillinger home. She saw her mother give off a soft little sigh as Eva poured gravy onto her potatoes. “I suppose it’s all water under the bridge,” she said softly, but the pain of the old betrayal was still evident in the lines of her face.

  Ron scowled into his plate. “Maybe so, but it doesn’t mean I have to like ’em.”

  “John Randall is dead.”

  “And I hope he rots in his grave.”

  “Dad!” Karla said sharply, then glanced pointedly at her sons.

  “Well, I do. No reason to sugarcoat it. That son of a bitch didn’t care a whit about anyone but his own kin. It didn’t matter how many years your mother put in working for him, passing up other good jobs, he still cut her loose when times got a little rocky. And what happened to her pension, huh? There wasn’t any, that’s what happened. Bad investments, or some such crock of—”

  “Dad!” Karla said again.

  “Karla’s right. There’s no use discussing it in front of the boys,” Eva agreed, but the sparkle in her eyes had faded. “Now, if you’ll pass me the pepper…”

  And so the subject was gratefully closed for the duration of the meal. Their father even found his smile again over a piece of his wife’s lemon meringue pie.

  After the plates had been cleared and the dishwasher was humming with a full load, Ron challenged the boys to a game of checkers on a small table near the fire. Aaron climbed onto his grandfather’s lap and they played as a team against Spencer, who thought he could beat them both as he’d practiced how to outmaneuver an opponent on a computer.

  “The boys could really use a father figure,” Karla observed, watching her sons relate to their grandfather as she fished in the closet for her sons’ coats and hats. Sadly, she ran a hand through her spiky strawberry-blond hair. “All they’ve got is Dad.”

  “They do have fathers,” Kelly reminded her.

  Karla rolled her expressive green eyes. “Oh, give me a break. They have sperm donors, nothing else. Boy, can I pick ’em. Some people are athletically challenged, I’m love challenged.”

  “You and the rest of the women on the planet.”

  “I’m not kidding. I can see when anyone else is making a mistake, but I seem to have blinders on when it comes to my choice in men.”

  “Or rose-colored glasses.”

  “Yeah, those, too.” She was pensive, running long fingers along the stitching in Aaron’s stocking cap. “But then you never take a chance, Kelly. I mean, not on love. You take lots of chances in your career.”

  “Maybe I’ve been too busy.”

  “Or maybe you’re just smarter than I am,” Karla said with a sigh. “I don’t see you making the same mistakes I did.”

  “You forget I’m a career woman,” Kelly said, reaching for her coat. “A cop.”

  “So am I—a career woman, that is—and don’t tell me that being a beautician and owning your own shop doesn’t count.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” Kelly said, laughing.

  “So…when are you going to tuck your badge away long enough to fall in love?”

  “As soon as you put down the perm rollers, shampoo and clippers.”

  �
�Very funny.”

  “I thought so.” She slipped her arms through the sleeves of her coat, hiked it up over her shoulders and began working on the buttons.

  “I think we both could take some advice from Randi McCafferty. You know she wrote a column for single people?” Karla asked, then added, “Of course you do—what was I thinking? You’ve been working on the case for weeks.” She held up Spencer’s coat, then called toward the living room. “Come on, boys. Time to go.” Both kids protested and Karla said to Kelly, “I was only kidding about Randi McCafferty’s column. The last person I would take any advice from is a McCafferty.”

  “Maybe they’re not all as bad as we think,” Kelly said as she reached into her pocket for her keys.

  “Oh, yeah? So now they’re sprouting wings and halos?” Karla shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  There was a whoop from the living room as Spencer actually beat Aaron and his grandfather. Aaron burst into tears, and from the twinkle in Ron Dillinger’s eyes, Kelly was certain he’d let his eldest grandson win.

  “Come on, boys, time to go,” Karla called again. In an aside to Kelly, she added, “Getting them out of here is like pulling teeth.”

  “No!” Aaron cried, refusing to budge from his grandfather’s lap while Spencer just ignored his mother, no matter what tack she took. Eventually she wrestled her youngest into his ski coat, hat and mittens while Spencer, lower lip protruding in an exaggerated pout, shrugged into a quilted pullover with a hood.

  “You boys be good, now,” Eva said as she emerged from the kitchen without her apron. She planted a kiss on each boy’s cheek and slipped them each a tiny candy bar left over from Halloween into their hands.

  “I be good!” Aaron said, trying to tear off his mittens to get at the bit of chocolate.

  “Mom!” Karla admonished.

  “I just can’t help myself.”

  “Here, let me get it.” Kelly unwrapped the chocolate morsel, then plopped it into Aaron’s open mouth.

  “He’s like one of those nestlings you see on the nature shows,” Karla grumbled good-naturedly. “Aren’t ya, little eaglet?”

  Aaron grinned and chocolate drooled down his chin.

  “I’ve got to get out of here. Come on, Spence.” With that she bustled out the door, leaving Kelly to say goodbye to her parents.

  “Everything good with you?” her father asked, worry in his dark eyes as he rolled his wheelchair into the foyer.

  “Couldn’t be better.”

  “But the boys on the force, they’re not giving you any trouble?”

  “None that I don’t deserve, Dad. This isn’t the 1940s, you know. There are thousands of female cops these days.”

  “I know, I know, but it just doesn’t seem like a job for a woman.” He held up his hands as if warding off the verbal blow he was certain was heading his way. “No offense.”

  “Oh, none taken, Dad, none at all. You’ve just denigrated every woman police officer I know, but am I offended? Oh, no-o-o. Not me.”

  “Fine, fine, you’ve made your point,” he said with a chuckle. “Just don’t let anyone give you a bad time. None of the boys you work with and especially none of the McCaffertys.”

  “Can’t we just forget about them?” Eva asked.

  “Impossible.” He cranked the wheelchair into the living room and returned with a copy of the Grand Hope Gazette, folded to display an article on the third page of the main section, an article about Thorne McCafferty’s small plane crash. “And this is after a couple of weeks have passed.” He skimmed the article. “Seems as if there’s some question as to whether or not there was foul play involved, and this here reporter thinks maybe the plane crash and the sister’s wreck might be related. Bah. Sounds like coincidence to me.” He glanced up at Kelly, his bristly white eyebrows elevated, inviting her opinion.

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss the case.”

  “Oh, cut the crap, Kelly. We’re family.”

  “And I’ll confide in you when I need to, okay? Now… I’ve got to run. Duty calls.”

  She bussed each of her parents on the cheeks, then hurried outside to her car. The snow had stopped falling, but because of the dark clouds, she couldn’t see a solitary star in the dark heavens. Her breath fogged in the air, her windshield was frozen, and she shivered as she cranked on the ignition.

  Like clockwork, the engine fired and she drove away from the warm little bungalow with its patches of golden light and wide front porch. Her parents were aging, more rapidly as the days went by. Her father had never been his robust self after the gunshot blast that had ruined his career and crippled him for life, and her mother, strong woman that she was, had never complained, had taken care of a convalescing, depressed husband and two young daughters. She’d landed a job with John Randall McCafferty as his personal secretary to help make ends meet. John Randall had promised her raises, promotions, bonuses and a retirement plan, but his fortunes had changed, and after his second divorce and a downturn in the economy, he’d been left with nothing but the ranch. Eva had lost her job and all the promises of a substantial nest egg had proved to be empty, the money that was supposed to have been set aside dwindled away by bad investments—oil wells that had run dry, silver mines that had never produced, stock in start-up companies that had shut down within months of opening their doors.

  There had been talk of a lawsuit, but Eva hadn’t been able to find a local attorney ready to take on a man who had once been a political contender in the area, a man who had been influential and still had connections to judges, the mayor and even a senator or two.

  “Don’t dwell on it,” Kelly told herself. She drove across the town where she’d grown up, wheeled into the parking lot of her row house and used the remote to open her garage door.

  Though there hadn’t been a lot of money in her family, she’d grown up with security and love from both her parents. That was probably more than any of the McCafferty children could say. She climbed up the stairs to her bedroom on the upper floor, changed into her flannel pajamas and a robe, then made herself a cup of decaf coffee and sat at the kitchen table, scouring the notes she’d taken on Randi McCafferty’s accident and Thorne McCafferty’s plane crash.

  So many questions swirled around John Randall’s only daughter and no one, it seemed, could come up with the answers. Kelly had interviewed all the brothers, everyone who worked on the Flying M Ranch, all of Randi McCafferty’s friends in the area. All the while she’d kept in contact with the Seattle police, who had handled interviewing Randi’s friends and associates there, in the city where Randi had lived and worked. It wasn’t usual procedure, but this case was different with Randi being pregnant, giving birth, then lying comatose in the hospital, her half brothers crying foul play.

  But until Randi McCafferty came out of the coma, the mystery shrouding the youngest of John Randall’s children would most likely remain unsolved.

  Kelly glanced down at the notes she’d taken and two questions loomed larger than the others. First and foremost, who was the father of Randi’s son, and second, was she writing a book and what was it about?

  Doodling as she sipped her coffee, she thought about the case, then, as a headache began to cloud her mind, she finished her coffee and leaned back in her chair. In her mind’s eye she saw Matt McCafferty as he had been at the office and later in the hospital. Chiseled features, dark eyes, square jaw and hard, ranch-tough body. He came on like gang busters, looking as if he was ready to spit nails, but there was more to him, deeper emotions she’d witnessed herself as he’d stood over his sister’s bedside. Feelings he’d tried to hide had crossed his features. Guilt. Worry. Fear.

  Yes, she decided, there was more to Cowboy Matt than met the eye.

  She stretched and yawned, scraped her chair back and started for the bedroom when the phone jangled loudly. She picked it up o
n the extension near the bed and glanced at the clock. Eleven forty-seven. “Hello?” she said into the receiver, knowing it was bound to be an emergency.

  Espinoza’s voice boomed over the line. “Kelly? We’ve got a situation. Meet me down at St. James Hospital ASAP.”

  “What happened?” she asked, already stripping off her robe.

  “It’s Randi McCafferty. Someone just tried to pull the plug on her.”

  Chapter 3

  Somewhere a phone was ringing, jangling, intrusive, but the woman, naked to the waist, her uniform tossed over the back of a chair in the unfamiliar room, didn’t seem to notice.

  Brring!

  She walked forward, tossed her long red hair over her shoulder and flashed him a naughty smile. With a wink, she said, “So come on, cowboy, show me what you’re made of.” Her dark eyes sparked with a wicked, teasing fire and her lips were full, wet and oh so kissable.

  Aching, he reached forward to pull her close and lose himself in her.

  Brring!

  Matt’s eyes flew open. He’d been dreaming. About Kelly Dillinger, and he was sporting one helluva proof of arousal. He blinked, the image disappearing into the shadows of the night. Down the hallways of the old ranch house, the phone blasted again. Groggily, he glanced at the digital display of his clock. Nearly twelve. Meaning whoever was calling wasn’t waking up the McCaffertys with good news.

  Randi. His heart nearly stopped. Slapping on the light, he didn’t wait for his eyes to adjust but yanked on the pair of jeans he’d tossed over the foot of the bed and threw a sweatshirt over his head. He was striding barefoot down the hall when the door to the master suite was flung open, and Thorne, wearing boxer shorts, his cast and a robe he hadn’t bothered to cinch, was hobbling toward the stairs.

  “That was Nicole from the hospital. Someone tried to kill Randi,” he said tersely.

  “What?”

  “Someone put something into her damned IV.”