“Excuse me?”
“You’re getting a new mother-in-law,” Shamus repeated gleefully, then happily added, “I’m getting married.”
Stunned, Rose glanced toward her husband for confirmation, not really expecting any. When Andrew nodded, her jaw dropped.
“Dad popped the question to Noelle’s grandmother, Lucy.”
The years had taught Rose Cavanaugh to take everything that came her way, large or small, in stride. After having gone missing herself for eleven years due to a car accident that had left her with amnesia, and then nearly losing her husband to a serial killer a little more than a year ago, everything else, she felt, could be dealt with.
And that went double when it came to a certain happy man in his late seventies. “So when’s the big day, Dad?” she asked.
“Saturday,” Shamus told her.
Well, maybe not everything, she silently amended. She stared at her father-in-law, dumbfounded. The man was an endless source of surprises not just to her, but to everyone else in the family.
“Really?”
Again, her husband, Andrew, was her source of confirmation as well as her veritable rock. “Really,” he told her.
“Wow” was the first word out of Rose’s mouth. For the moment, she didn’t trust herself to say anything else. And then she grinned at her father-in-law.
“Congratulations, Dad. I guess this is when you have that son-father talk with him,” she said, glancing over at her husband. Rose didn’t even attempt to keep a straight face as she said that.
But Andrew merely shook his head. “There is nothing that anyone can tell my father. Ever.”
“And don’t you forget it,” Shamus agreed, winking at his daughter-in-law. At the moment, he deemed himself to be the happiest man on earth.
Chapter 10
When her cell phone rang the next morning an hour after she’d gotten to work, Valri was aware that the call could be coming from any one of a number of people. She wasn’t exactly a recluse and had her share of friends, not to mention the fact that she had far more relatives who had her cell number than the average three people put together.
However, for the most part, if her phone rang during her work hours, more likely than not it was something that had to do with her job.
But even keeping all this in mind, Valri was completely caught off guard by her caller.
She answered her cell on the third ring, identifying herself in her most professional voice.
“Cavanaugh.”
There was a pause on the other end. When she received no response, she thought that the caller was a wrong number, or that the signal had been dropped. In either case, she didn’t have time to waste on someone who wasn’t identifying himself or herself.
About to terminate the call, she heard a very deep, resonant voice ask, “Valri?”
The voice was vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t immediately place it.
Her cautious “Yes?” had Alex looking up at her from his desk.
So far, she had gotten no further with resurrecting the data on the smashed laptop and they were planning to go out to canvas Rogers’s neighborhood in a few minutes. The idea at this point was to show the sketch that Mara had given them around and hope someone recalled seeing the man.
Alex saw the confusion on her face.
“Problem?” he asked her, his eyes indicating the cell phone in her hand.
Since she couldn’t answer Alex directly, she raised and lowered her shoulders to indicate that she hadn’t a clue if the person on the other end of the call could be categorized as a problem or not.
The next moment, she had her answer as the man on the other end of the line identified himself.
“Valri, this is Andrew Cavanaugh. I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” the man asked.
“Chief Andrew Cavanaugh?” she asked in disbelief. Out of the corner of her eye she could see that she had managed to capture her partner’s full attention now. He started listening intently.
“I’d rather you thought of me as Uncle Andrew, actually,” Andrew told her with a kindly laugh punctuating his statement.
“Yes, Chief. I mean—”
Valri pressed her lips together as she upbraided herself. She was tripping over her own tongue, trying to be respectful and still addressing him according to the man’s wishes.
What was wrong with her? It wasn’t as if she hadn’t ever spoken to the man before. She had. Several times. But the exchanges had been face-to-face and exceedingly brief in nature. Talking to him on the phone somehow seemed to change those parameters.
“That’s all right,” Andrew assured her gently. “You can call me anything you’re comfortable with. I’ll get right to the point. The reason I’m calling is that I need your help.”
“My help?” she asked, practically stuttering. She couldn’t think of a single thing that she could do for the former chief of police that either he or someone in his more immediate family couldn’t do first and most likely better.
“I’m afraid so,” he confirmed. “My brother Brian tells me that you are an absolute wizard when it comes to dealing with anything involving technology, say like the social media.”
Instead of making the reason for his call understood, his request created more complications. Maybe if she asked a few questions, this would get clearer for her.
“You want me to set up a Facebook page for you?” Valri asked, making what was probably a wild guess—although the man had mentioned social media, so who knew? Maybe he was sticking his toe in, testing the waters before he made up his mind one way or another.
His laugh, deep, warm and hearty, instantly shot down her theory.
“No, no, nothing like that,” he told her when he finally stopped laughing. “Here’s the situation—I need to notify a large number of people about an event taking place this Saturday and I need to do it as soon as possible.”
Valri had already grabbed a pencil and had begun making notes on the first piece of paper she found the instant the former chief of police had said he needed her help.
The scenario he’d just painted had her instantly trying to come up with a satisfying answer she thought that the man could work with. “Well, a Facebook page could take care of that for you,” she theorized.
“What if they don’t all have that?” he asked, then added, “Facebook pages,” to clarify what he was asking. “Isn’t there some other way?”
She hadn’t thought of someone not having a Facebook page. All the people she knew did, even if they only glanced at it once in a while.
“Good point,” she responded. Half a second later, she had another possible solution to the man’s problem. “There’s Twitter social networking. We could send out a mass message that way.”
More silence, which told her that the chief was giving her solution some thought. Glancing up at Alex, she saw that he was continuing to watch her as if he could glean things from her side of the conversation and her body language.
“What if some of these people don’t Twitter?” Andrew asked.
Valri grinned, but felt it best not to correct the chief about the proper terminology just yet. The last thing she wanted was for the man to think she was trying to undermine him.
“As long as they have a cell phone,” Valri assured her great-uncle, “I can get the message to them.”
“Sounds good,” Andrew responded enthusiastically. “I knew you’d come up with a solution.”
Valri was surprised how good that simple compliment made her feel.
“I could work up a list of people and get that to you—” the chief was saying.
“I could stop by your house this evening, sir, and pick it up,” she offered.
“No, no reason for you to go any more out of your way than you already will b
e. I’ll have someone from here drop the list off as soon as I’m done with it. They’ll leave it on your desk in the squad room if that’s all right with you.”
“Sure, fine,” she agreed, then felt compelled to ask, “You know where I am?”
Her surprise was greeted with another gentle laugh. “Valri, I’m the former chief of police. I retired from the force, I didn’t die. I know where everyone in the family is. Oh, by the way, keep this Saturday open,” he told her.
“Of course, sir,” she instantly agreed. And then her curiosity got the better of her. “If you wouldn’t mind telling me, why am I keeping it open?”
“Because, if you agree to come, you’ll be attending your first Cavanaugh wedding. I’ll get back to you about the list,” Andrew promised her. The next moment, he was gone.
She stared at the phone in her hand even though her great-uncle was no longer there. It seemed that even the older generation moved fast, she mused. Valri returned her cell phone to her back pocket.
“Okay, what was all that about?” Alex asked her the moment she had tucked away her phone.
Valri looked up at him, still a little dazed and slightly dumbfounded by what had just transpired. “The chief just asked for my help.”
“I figured that part out for myself,” he told her. “Just what did the chief of Ds say?”
Valri blinked, then realized the error. “No, not him, the other one.” The puzzled expression on Alex’s face told her she wasn’t making herself clear. But then, she was really still a little muddled herself. It wasn’t every day that the former chief of police singled her out and called, asking for her help of all things.
“What other one?” Alex asked. As far as he was concerned, she was talking in riddles.
“The chief of police,” she told him. “The former chief of police,” she emphasized, then, frustrated that she was still coming across as if her brain had just been fried and then scrambled, she amended her amendment and declared, “Andrew Cavanaugh.”
Alex frowned slightly, trying to follow what his partner was saying. “I thought he’d retired.”
“He did,” she acknowledged.
“Then why?”
“This is a personal matter,” Valri quickly added, making the distinction.
“Oh.” He took that to mean that the subject was off-limits to everyone else. “Okay.” He tactfully backed away from the matter. “Ready to go?” he asked. “Or do you have to dash out of here in compliance with whatever this personal matter is?”
She tried to read between the lines. Was he annoyed, envious or just amused by all this? She decided not to let it worry her. All she could do was play it as straight as she could and not give her partner any cause to ask for a transfer.
Using various links and connections, she’d managed to find out a few things about her partner. She’d also discovered there was next to no information about his parents or family. She thought it odd, but then, not everyone was born a Cavanaugh with an open book for a life.
“No, this doesn’t require any dashing,” she assured him. “I’m ready to go if you are.”
In response, Alex pushed back his chair and got to his feet. “Then let’s get to it.”
“You’re not going to ask?” she said as they went down the corridor to the elevator.
“Ask what?” He pressed the down button.
“What the chief—what Uncle Andrew,” she corrected, thinking it might be easier for Brody to follow what she was saying if she used the man’s name instead, “wants me to do.”
The elevator arrived almost immediately. Alex waited for her to get on first. Following Valri on, he pressed the button for the first floor. “You said it was personal.”
And that was his reason? Wasn’t the man human? she wondered.
“I know, but aren’t you the least bit curious?” Valri asked.
“What good would it do?” he asked. “I’m assuming that since you didn’t immediately volunteer the information on your own, you either can’t, or won’t. You were probably told to keep it under wraps.”
“Actually, Uncle Andrew didn’t tell me anything specific, other than to keep Saturday open because there was going to be a wedding.”
“A wedding?” he echoed. They got off on the first floor. “Whose?”
“Don’t know yet,” she confessed. “But one of the two is a Cavanaugh.”
“Well, that narrows things down,” he commented sarcastically.
Valri spread her hands wide. “That’s all I know, except that Uncle Andrew wants to notify a lot of people about it.” She thought for a second, then asked, “Who do you think it is?”
Alex shook his head. “Sorry, I’m not very up on your family.”
She sighed. “It’s an awful thing to admit, but neither am I. I mean, I know it’s not anyone from my branch of the family, but that’s where it stops. I’m still in the process of learning everybody’s names.”
“Well, that makes you one up on me,” he freely admitted.
“Have you heard any rumors?” she asked, still trying to guess who her new uncle was going to be holding a reception for.
“None I can think of. I don’t pay attention to rumors. By the way,” Alex continued as they made their way to where he’d parked his car this morning, “I think you should know that I can only really focus on one thing at a time. Pull anything more into the mix and I don’t always do my best work.”
Reaching the vehicle, Valri stared at him over the roof of his car, surprised. “You’re actually admitting that?”
Maybe he shouldn’t have, he thought. It wasn’t exactly 100 percent true. He could concentrate on more than one thing at a time, but when he did, his laser-like focus lost a little of its sharp edge. And the last thing he wanted to be distracted with was something dealing with the Cavanaughs’ social life.
“Yeah, why?”
She sat in the shotgun seat and secured her seat belt. “Most guys I know—and I’m referring mostly to my brothers and my male cousins—would rather die than admit that they can’t multitask.”
“Well, I’m not ‘most guys,’” he told her, getting in himself. He buckled up, then added, “And multitasking is highly overrated.”
Valri grinned at him, amused. “I believe that that is otherwise known as sour grapes.”
“Believe whatever you want,” Alex told her with a careless shrug. “It’s a free country.”
She smiled, settling back in her seat as Alex turned his key in the ignition. “Amen to that,” she said in reference to his last words.
* * *
Some five hours later, they got back into his car, soul-wrenchingly weary with absolutely nothing to show for it.
“Well, that was a colossal waste of time,” Alex said to her in disgust.
They had knocked on a total of twenty-three doors in what had until recently been Hunter Rogers’s neighborhood. They wound up speaking to a total of eleven different people—the rest had either not been home, or pretended not to be and didn’t come to answer their doors.
None of the eleven they did speak with had anything to tell them. It seemed that none of the former gamer/hacker’s neighbors recognized the man in the drawing. There hadn’t even been one who hesitated before saying that the man in the sketch was unfamiliar.
“Think we got it wrong?” Valri asked, looking down at the sketch she’d shown to people over and over again. Belatedly, she buckled her seat belt around her.
About to start up the car, Alex left the key where it was and looked at her. “What do you mean?”
Maybe she was off base about this, but then what were partners for if not to use as sounding boards for half-gelled ideas?
“Maybe Bigelow hadn’t recalled the guy’s features accurately,” she ventured, then looked at Alex to see if he thou
ght she was completely wrong.
But all Alex did was remind her that in a good many cases, “Eyewitnesses are notoriously inaccurate.”
“Yes, but Bigelow was so positive.” Valri recalled watching the gamer when Mara had completed the sketch. The gamer had all but crowed that she’d gotten it dead-on.
“Especially when they’re so positive,” Alex underscored.
Valri blew out a long, frustrated breath. She knew what this meant. They were back to square one, and she hated that.
“So now what?” she asked as he turned his key and the car came to life.
“Now we go back and I watch you try to communicate with the dead.” When Valri looked confused, he laughed and said, “Otherwise known as extracting information from a laptop someone had committed computer-icide on.”
That was always an option, she thought, and true to her stubborn nature, she hadn’t given up on the laptop yet. But that was extremely slow going and she wanted to do something now.
Valri decided to couch her desire to do something other than sit at her desk in language that was more acceptable to the male of the species. “That doesn’t sound like much fun for you,” Valri told him.
“And banging your head against a brick wall is fun for you?” It was obvious that that was how he saw her working with the smashed laptop: as a basic experiment in futility.
Valri thought his words over, then shook her head. His metaphor wasn’t accurate. “It’s not a brick wall,” she told him. “It’s plasterboard and in my experience, limited though it is, there’s usually something hiding right behind plasterboard.”
Her late mother’s cousin was in construction and one summer she and a couple of her brothers had worked with him, renovating an old house for extra money. Life had been a lot less complicated then, she thought wistfully. But then, there’d been no pitting herself against the criminal element to get her blood racing, either.
“Hiding?” Alex asked.
It was the thoughtful way that Alex said the word that caught her attention. “What are you thinking?” she asked.
Her question surprised him. Was he that transparent? Or had she gotten that good at reading him so fast? Neither answer was acceptable to him, but the second one was also rather unnerving, as well.
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