Cavanaugh on Call

by Marie Ferrarella

  A red flag went up in her head. Her brother had asthma. She looked closely at the charge. Eva was getting the inhaler for him, not herself. That told her that, if nothing else, Ethan was with Eva.

  “Yes, it does,” Scottie murmured.

  She sounded almost preoccupied as she agreed, Bryce noted. He was struck by her lack of enthusiasm about this piece of information. And then it hit him why. “You already knew that,” he guessed.

  She said no, but there was next to no conviction behind the word.

  This was possibly the first lead they’d had in several days. Bryce was ready to go with it.

  “I’m going to pull her photo off her DMV license and we’ll show that to the pharmacy clerk, see if he recognizes her and if he has a current address on file for her.”

  “I can do that,” she told her partner. “That way, you can follow up on any other leads.”

  He looked at her. Hadn’t she been paying attention? “There are no other leads,” he pointed out.

  She seemed very anxious to get rid of him, he thought, and couldn’t help wondering why.

  Had she been someone else, he might have thought she was trying to take all the credit for herself, but she didn’t strike him as the type. They’d only been working together a few days, but he prided himself on his ability to read people and she wasn’t a glory hound like some other detectives had turned out to be.

  Something else was going on here, Bryce thought. But what?

  “Oh.” She felt a little deflated. If there were no other leads, then he was coming with her. She couldn’t very well shake him. “And you don’t have anything else you want to do?”

  “I’d like to sail around the world someday, but not until we solve this case,” he told her. “If you want to sit this out for some reason...” He let his voice trail off, waiting for her to either protest or agree to be left behind.

  Even if Ethan wasn’t involved in this, there was no way she wanted to sit this out. “No, I want to be in on this,” she told him.

  She already knew that the address on Eva’s DMV license was bogus. If the pharmacy had the woman’s actual address, she definitely wanted it.

  “Then let’s go,” he said, taking the DMV photograph he had just reproduced on the printer and tucking it into his pocket.

  * * *

  The pharmacy clerk squinted at the photograph Bryce held up for him.

  “Her hair doesn’t look like that anymore,” he commented. “It’s all these different colors now, like a peacock, but, yeah, I’ve seen her. She was here yesterday, picking up a prescription for somebody.”

  Bryce put the photograph away. “Who?” he asked.

  The clerk shook his head. “Sorry. Privacy laws,” the clerk explained. “They prevent me from giving you that information.”

  Bryce held up his badge to drive his point home. “This is a crime investigation,” he told the clerk.

  The clerk obviously thought of the most prevalent crime that affected him. “You mean that prescription was a phony?”

  Bryce was about to set the clerk straight but then stopped himself. If this misunderstanding made the clerk more compliant about the information he needed, namely the woman’s address, so much the better.

  “We’re checking that out,” he said vaguely.

  “Just a minute,” the clerk told him and then went to his computer to pull up the screen that gave him the information he needed. “Says here that the prescription was written for E—”

  Alerted, Scottie was quick to cut in before he said any more. “Why don’t you print that up for us?” she requested.

  “Sure.” The clerk hurried off to comply.

  “Looks like we’re finally getting somewhere,” Bryce commented.

  “Hopefully,” she replied.

  She didn’t sound all that confident, Bryce thought. What she sounded like was uneasy.

  Why?

  A couple of minutes later the clerk returned with the printout she’d requested. He held it out to Bryce but before he could take it, Scottie interceded and took the printout from him.

  “Thank you. You’ve been a great help. A lot of people owe you a debt of gratitude,” she told the startled-looking clerk, folding the page in two and tucking it into her messenger bag.

  “Um, always glad to help the Aurora P.D.,” the clerk called out after them as they left the pharmacy.

  Bryce made no comment. He waited until they were both inside the car and he was once again behind the wheel. Then, instead of starting up his vehicle, he looked at Scottie.

  “Why don’t you want me to look at the paper?” he asked.

  “It’s not that I don’t want you to look at it,” she told him. “I’m just trying to lighten your load a little.”

  He wasn’t buying that for a second. “We share the load,” he pointed out.

  Scottie knew how to twist and turn with the current and went with that. “Exactly. And going to question this woman is just me shouldering my share of the burden.”

  But Bryce continued to sit there. Rather than start the car, he took out the DMV photo they had showed the clerk. “You want to tell me about this woman?” he asked quietly.

  She could feel her pulse accelerating. That didn’t usually happen anymore because she’d gotten very good at looking someone in the eye and lying when she had to. But it wasn’t something she wanted to do.

  Taking a breath, Scottie tried to sound positive as she said, “I thought I already did. She’s a hacker with a sealed juvenile record. I’ve got a feeling that she might have a hand in this.”

  He didn’t ask her why, the way she expected him to. Instead he hit her with “How do you know her?”

  Her mind scrambled as she searched for something plausible to tell him.

  “Her name came up in another case,” she told him vaguely. That was true. It was that juvie case she’d mentioned.

  “I thought you only worked homicides before you came to my department.”

  “I did, but not everything is cut-and-dry.” She thought of Eva’s backstory, or at least the one she’d given the authorities. “Her parents were killed when she was a kid. She did what she could to get by.”

  Bryce nodded as he continued to listen. Some of the pieces were finally coming together. “You mean like hacking.”

  “Like hacking,” Scottie echoed.

  His eyebrows drew together as he looked at her doubtfully. “And that’s your only connection to her?” he asked.

  “Yes.” She went on the defensive before she could think better of it. “Why are you asking me all these questions?”

  Bryce blew out a breath. “I guess I’m just trying to get you to trust me.”

  “And you think you’re going to accomplish that by interrogating me?” Scottie questioned incredulously.

  That was her own damn fault, Bryce thought grudgingly. He could feel himself losing his temper and he struggled to rein it in.

  “I wouldn’t have to resort to that if you volunteered information.”

  “Look, if you wanted a chatterbox who never stopped talking and didn’t have a thought in her head that she didn’t immediately share with the world at large, then maybe you should ask Handel for another partner,” she told him, annoyed.

  Part of her was tempted to get out of the car and walk, but that was pointless.

  “You do know that there’s a happy medium between being a chatterbox and a monk who’s taken a vow of silence, right?” Bryce asked.

  Scottie sighed. They were just wasting time, going around and around about this. She’d told him as much as she intended to.

  “Look, my hunch about this woman got us here and it might help to get us closer to solving this case. Isn’t that enough?”

  He could see that, for now, that
was all she was about to share. He obviously needed to work on her some more before she was ready to come around and trust him. And trusting him was the goal.

  The fastest way, he surmised, was to get her to warm up to him and see him as more than just someone she worked with. “I guess it’ll have to be. For now,” he added as he started his car.

  Finally! she thought. “I’m beginning to understand why your last partner opted for another line of work,” she said. “You could drive a saint crazy.”

  “I guess it’s lucky for us that neither one of us is a saint.”

  She stared at his profile in silence as they drove, trying to figure out just what he’d meant by that and if she should be insulted—or worried.

  Chapter 11

  “You’re sure this is the address that girl gave the pharmacy clerk?” Bryce asked as he brought his sedan to a stop a stone’s throw from the pier. Just beyond that he could see the Pacific Ocean. There was no sign of any buildings.

  “Well, unless that asthma patient was part guppy, that woman gave the clerk a bogus address for him,” Scottie told him, crumpling the printout she was holding.

  “You think?” Bryce asked, annoyed that they’d come to another dead end. He put his hand out to Scottie. “Let me take a look at that printout the pharmacy clerk gave you.”

  Scottie made no move to surrender the crumpled paper. “Why? Don’t you think I can read?”

  Her reaction, despite the feisty nature he’d come to expect, was a bit unusual. He began to wonder if his new partner was hiding something. “You do realize that the more you resist letting me see that printout, the more curious it makes me?”

  Aware of her mistake, Scottie did her best to try to cover it up with banter. “Well, a little bit of curiosity could be a good thing. It does make life more interesting.”

  Bryce continued to hold his hand out, waiting. For once he didn’t look amused. “The printout, Scottie?”

  Scottie suppressed a sigh. She really had no options open to her. If they were standing outside right now, she could accidentally let the breeze capture the paper and take it away. But there were no breezes in the car and she had no recourse but to give him what he wanted. Reluctantly, not sure what he could glean from the printout, she surrendered the paper.

  As she did so, she told Bryce, “You really need to work on your trust issues.”

  “That’s a little like the pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it?” he pointed out. Smoothing out the paper she’d handed over, Bryce took a look at the information they had gotten from the pharmacy clerk. “‘Ethan Loomis,’” he read. He glanced up at Scottie. “This has got to be her partner.”

  “Not necessarily,” Scottie was quick to argue. “This might just be someone Eva was running an errand for. You know, this could represent her one good deed.” When Bryce looked at her, the expression on his face telling her that he clearly was not buying it, she shrugged. “I mean, it could be.”

  He wondered if she believed what she was saying. “What are the odds of that?” he asked.

  Scottie was forced to shrug her shoulders. She knew she was on weak ground. “I don’t know. I’m just saying that nothing is set in stone. The guy could be her brother.”

  “Different last names,” he pointed out.

  “It happens,” she responded.

  “True,” he agreed, “but my gut says that this ‘Ethan Loomis’ is involved in this somehow.”

  That made two of them, Scottie thought, but she did her best to try to talk her partner out of it.

  “And your gut is always right?” she asked him skeptically.

  “Pretty much,” Bryce answered. “Definitely enough to see if we can find any background information on this Ethan Loomis.”

  Until she knew exactly what was going on, she needed to get ahead of this, to play interference if she could.

  “Why don’t I see what I can find?” Scottie offered, doing her very best to sound helpful and eager.

  Bryce started his car again, making a three-point turn to go back the way they had come. Since this had turned out to be a dead end, he decided to drive back to the precinct.

  “Okay, you do that.” He made a sharp right at the corner then spared her a glance. “Oh, by the way, it’s at one tomorrow.”

  Trying to plan her next move and how to divert Bryce away from her brother, his last words confused her. “What’s at one tomorrow?”

  He’d had a feeling that she’d “conveniently” forget. “The party that Uncle Andrew is throwing to celebrate the birth of the newest Cavanaugh.”

  Oh, damn. That. The whole idea of a party had slipped her mind. The last thing she wanted to do was to attend a gathering and be surrounded with celebrating Cavanaughs, not in her present frame of mind.

  “Well, I hope you have a really nice time,” she told him.

  He’d expected this. “I don’t think you get it, ‘partner.’ Celebrating the birth of the newest Cavanaugh doesn’t just involve the family, in this case it also involves the person who helped bring that life into the world.”

  “You were there, too,” she reminded him, hoping this little bit of logic would be sufficient in running interference in this case.

  Bryce was not about to be dissuaded. He grinned at her, thinking that she was rather cute, trying to talk her way out of this. She had to know by now that she was coming to the party even if he had to hog-tie her and carry her there.

  “You were there more,” he said pointedly. He was still smiling at her, but it was clear he was not about to give in.

  “Tomorrow at one?” Scottie asked as if it was the first time she’d heard it.

  “Uh-huh.” He had a feeling she was up to something and he braced for it.

  “Sorry, I can’t make it,” she told him in all seriousness. “I have plans.”

  “From the intel I’ve gathered about you, you never have plans.”

  She wasn’t accustomed to people poking around in her life. “What do you mean ‘from the intel’ you’ve gathered? Have you been asking around about me?” Scottie asked. She could feel her back going up.

  Bryce proceeded with caution, tempering his answer. He had no desire to make her angry. His goal was to make her agreeable—or as agreeable as she was capable of being.

  “I have family working in Homicide,” he reminded her casually. “They had good things to say about you,” Bryce began. “But they all agree you’re not a mingler.”

  “‘All’?” she echoed. It sounded like he had taken a massive interdepartmental survey. “Just how many people did you talk to?”

  She was still on the defensive. Bryce walked his statement back. “Just a few.”

  Scottie did her best to restore peace between them and still put an end to the discussion. Why couldn’t he—and his family—leave her alone? She was aware that he just meant well, but that wasn’t the end result.

  “Well, then you know I don’t join in these kinds of things. Parties, I mean,” she clarified.

  Bryce nodded. She’d just made his point for him. “Which is how I know you don’t have plans.”

  She pressed her lips together. He got her. “I kind of walked into that one, didn’t I?”

  “That you did,” he told her with a wide, sexy smile that she was finding she was having a harder and harder time resisting. “So, when should I pick you up?”

  Oh, hell, the last thing she wanted was for him to escort her to the party.

  “You shouldn’t,” she told him. “I’m perfectly capable of driving myself over if you give me the address.”

  “Driving isn’t the problem,” he told her simply. “Parking is.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “This is going to be a full-scale, pull-out-all-the-stops kind of party,” he told her. His uncle, he knew, had
already started cooking in preparation for tomorrow. The whole family was coming, as well as a great many friends. “Most, if not all, of the family will be there,” he told her. “Which means that if you hope to find a parking spot in the same zip code as Andrew’s house, carpooling with me is the only answer.”

  Scottie looked at him. “I see through that, you know,” she told him. “You just don’t trust me to go.”

  He laughed. “Well, there’s that, too. But parking really will be a colossal bear,” he told her honestly. “Uncle Andrew encourages everyone to at least double up if possible.” Her resistance brought up a host of questions in his mind. “C’mon, Scottie, what are you afraid of?”

  That made her back go up immediately. “I’m not afraid of anything,” she insisted.

  He pretended to believe her and dropped the subject. “Good, then I’ll be by to pick you up at one.”

  She frowned, knowing it would do her no good to argue about it. She’d already learned that he wasn’t the type to give up. Ever.

  “Fine. I’ll be ready at one. Now is it okay with you if I try to find some information on this Ethan Loomis?” she asked sarcastically.

  “I’m counting on it,” Bryce answered as they pulled up into the police department’s parking lot.

  * * *

  Her plan was to compile just enough information on her brother to give Bryce something, but not enough to send him in the right direction to look for Ethan.

  But she discovered that she didn’t need to worry. Undertaking a search for Ethan, she found that there was nothing to give Bryce, substantial or otherwise. Ethan had somehow managed to eliminate any and all digital footprints that lead to him. As far as the internet was concerned, her brother didn’t exist.

  That made her worry even more.

  Scottie went from one site to another with the same results. “There’s nothing here,” she said out loud, stunned.

  Busy pursuing another avenue of investigation, Bryce looked up from his computer. “What did you say?”

  Frustration had her wanting to pound her fist on the keyboard. Restraining herself wasn’t easy. “I said there’s nothing here. On Ethan,” she clarified.