How to Seduce a Cavanaugh

by Marie Ferrarella

  The look he spared her was nothing if not skeptical. “Meaning with you?”

  If he was trying to get her to back down or to intimidate her, he was going to have to work at it a lot harder than that, she thought. “I don’t see anyone else in the car. So, yes, meaning me.”

  Kane laughed shortly. “Think a lot of yourself, don’t you?”

  She raised her chin ever so slightly, which was the only indication that she might have found the question combative.

  “What I just said has nothing to do with whether or not I think a lot of myself. I just happen to know my strengths and my limits. That’s all.

  “And if you’re wondering,” she continued, “I have inside knowledge—no pun intended—on the way the male mind works. I grew up with four brothers who were anything but docile. They supplied me with my education, and I diligently took notes,” she told him completely straight-faced.

  Without her realizing it, they had arrived at Valhalla.

  After Kane showed his badge, the man at the club’s entrance reluctantly opened the gates to allow them to drive on to the grounds.

  “Let’s see if you can put those so-called notes you took to good use,” Kane challenged her as he headed to the clubhouse.

  The route to the impressive structure was marked with a great many expensive, well-cared-for vehicles. The most conservatively priced of the lot turned out to be a silver Mercedes.

  “Never understood it,” she murmured, taking in the sea of pricey automobiles. The comment was more to herself than her partner since she just assumed Durant wasn’t paying attention to a word she said, anyway.

  Kane surprised her by asking, “Never understood what?”

  She managed to recover without missing a beat. “Pouring so much money into something that could so easily be totaled in the blink of an eye. Whether a car’s a Ford or a Ferrari, they’re both just a heartbeat away from becoming a mangled heap.”

  Kane shrugged. Expensive cars meant nothing to him. They’d never moved him, not even as a young boy. Life had been far too serious for him to be infatuated with an automobile.

  “They’re status symbols, I suppose,” he said.

  She took in the groups of golfers on the course just before they reached the clubhouse. “I know that, but this crowd doesn’t strike me as the type to be impressed by someone dropping a quarter of a million on a Lamborghini.”

  Thoughts of his father suddenly popped up in his brain. On those rare occasions when his father hadn’t been taking out his frustrations on him or his mother, his father had told him that if he ever won the lottery—the one that he was always faithfully buying tickets for—the first thing he’d intended to do was buy a fancy car. The kind that would make everyone sit up and take notice.

  “I’d get my due respect then,” he’d said. “Not like now.”

  Usually right after that, the scenario would disintegrate into his father blaming everyone else for his misfortunes. And shortly after that, Kane would be on the receiving end of a particularly vicious beating. That had seemed to be the only way his father could cope with the events in his life, by taking out all his frustration on either his wife or his son. Or both.

  Thinking of that now, Kane regarded the pricey vehicles. “You’d be surprised at what does the trick for some people. To some people, it’s all about the kind of vehicle they drive. The flashier, the better.”

  Not him, Kelly thought. Durant wasn’t the type to go for flashy status symbols. She would bet on it.

  But someone in his life, past or present, had valued flashy status symbols, she decided. She could tell by the way his tone had changed when he’d mentioned it.

  Kelly waited half a beat before falling in step directly behind Kane. She meant for him to go first. To her surprise, he deliberately slowed his pace just enough to allow her to catch up.

  She was about to thank him, then decided that Kane probably didn’t want her thanks. The less said on the subject, the better was probably the way he liked it. He was going to cause her to reevaluate her whole approach to partnerships, Kelly mused.

  “Is there something I can do for you?” a very tanned, very polished looking man in his midforties asked politely as he walked up to them. His clean cut looks and the touch of silver at his temples, in addition to his manner of carrying himself, all pointed to him as being someone in charge.

  And he was.

  “Detectives Durant and Cavanaugh,” Kane said, taking out his wallet and holding it steady to allow the man to have a closer look at his identification. Kelly did the same. “We were wondering if you could tell us if one of your members—a Randolph Osborn—was friendlier with any one of your members than he might have been with some of the others.”

  “Leon Edwards,” the man introduced himself. “I’m the director here.” He got back to the question that had been put to him. “Friendlier?” Edwards questioned, clearly amused. “You are asking me about Randolph Osborn, correct?”

  “We are,” Kane confirmed, clearly waiting for a more precise answer.

  The director seemed to gauge his words carefully. Memberships and high revenues in the form of donations were at stake here.

  “Mr. Osborn, I’m afraid, wasn’t what you would call friendly with any of the members,” Edwards said stiffly. “He did associate with a few of our members, if that’s what you mean.”

  Kelly stepped in, knowing her partner would take that as an affront. Kane, she was beginning to see, didn’t exactly have the gift of diplomacy. He favored the direct approach rather than attempting to sugarcoat his words. The man obviously never had subscribed to the old philosophy of catching more flies with honey than with vinegar.

  “Could you give us a list of the members’ names?” Kelly requested.

  Edwards looked at her and it was obvious to Kelly that he liked what he saw here better than he did when he was interacting with Kane. But there were still rules he obviously was obligated to follow.

  Edwards’s gray eyes shifted from one detective to the other. “Just what’s this all about, detectives?”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Osborn were the victims of a home invasion last night,” Kane informed the director matter-of-factly.

  The man’s eyes widened from their customary slits. Edwards appeared genuinely surprised. “Was anyone hurt?” he asked.

  Kelly could tell that her partner was going to give the director a flat “no” in response. It hurt nothing to give Edwards a crumb, feeding his obvious need to get something exclusive on the man, however minute.

  “Only Mr. Osborn’s pride,” Kelly confided, lowering her voice as if she was sharing something that deserved to be labeled a secret.

  “Well, I can understand that,” the man replied, bobbing his head up and down. And then, as if his brain was on some sort of ten-second delay, he looked up at the two detectives before him, clearly stunned. “And you two think that someone here is responsible for that home invasion?”

  That was stating it too blatantly. Kelly decided to reframe her answer so that it sounded more as if they were working with a turn-of-the-last-century mystery. “We think someone here can possibly give us a clue or some sort of a lead as to who might have wanted to do this to the Osborns.”

  “You mean break into their house and steal something from them?” Edwards asked. “I assure you that—”

  “No, we mean someone who might have wanted to humiliate Mr. Osborn,” Kelly was quick to correct the director’s misimpression.

  She glanced at Kane, then made up her mind that allowing Edwards to learn a little bit of the truth would help them close this case sooner rather than later.

  “We believe that whoever did it could have easily gotten in and out with the Osborns sleeping right through the entire ordeal, none the wiser,” Kane said. “The objects of the theft were on the first floor and the
Osborns’ bedroom is on the second.

  “But they were roused, tied up and made to sit through the robbery. The thief obviously wanted to observe their humiliation firsthand. Would you know of anyone here that Mr. Osborn might have had words with? Or maybe there was someone harboring ill will against him for some reason?” Kane supposed.

  “Someone?” Edwards echoed with a smirk he didn’t bother hiding. “Would you like those names alphabetically, chronologically or listed by the size of the offense?” the director asked them.

  “That many?” Kane marveled. Even he hadn’t expected this to be turned into a crowd scene, which was the way it was clearly heading.

  The director looked to either side of him as if to see if there was anyone within earshot.

  Apparently satisfied that he wasn’t going to be overheard, Edwards confided to the pair, “You didn’t get this from me, but that man never met an argument he didn’t like. It is getting to the point that the board is seriously considering asking Mr. Osborn to relinquish his membership if he can’t learn how to get along with the other members.

  “It would definitely be a shame to revoke their membership since everyone likes his poor, long-suffering wife.” And then Edwards’s face sobered as he focused on the subject. “But Mr. Osborn is making it very difficult for us to turn a blind eye to his irritating manner. We do have to think of the other members...”

  Kane glanced at her and Kelly could see by the look in her partner’s eyes that Kane felt the director had given them way more information than they wanted regarding the man in question.

  More is better than less, Kelly had decided a long time ago.

  “Absolutely,” Kelly heartily agreed. “Mr. Edwards, we don’t want to make your job any more difficult or challenging than it already must be, but we could really use that list of people that Mr. Osborn has had differences with.” When the director continued to look reluctant to comply, Kelly added, “We could get a warrant making you give us that list, but that would call a great deal of unwanted attention to your club. You don’t need that sort of publicity now, do you?”

  “No, of course not,” Edwards answered, his tan growing a few shades lighter right before her eyes. “All right. If you have something to write with, I can give you that list right now.”

  “You don’t have to check your records or surveillance tapes?” Kane questioned suspiciously.

  In response, the director tapped his temple. “All the records are right here, and I can access them whenever I want. That way there’s no fear of someone hacking into our database and making off with some—shall I say?—less than favorable information.”

  “Understood,” Kelly said, humoring the man. Then, just for good measure, she added another layer of sweetener. “This club is certainly lucky to have someone like you running the place.”

  The director beamed and wrote faster—just as Kelly suspected he would.

  Chapter 5

  “You thinking of applying here?” Kane asked her once she had the club director’s list in her hands and they had walked out of the clubhouse.

  Surrendering the list to her partner, Kelly looked at him, her expression clearly indicating that he had to be kidding. She wouldn’t have been caught dead associating with people who acted superior to anyone who didn’t bring in a seven-figure salary. Being around a group such as that was her idea of hell.

  “What makes you ask something like that?”

  “The way you were playing up to the guy, I figured you were trying to create a favorable impression so you could ask to fill out one of their applications.” Kane’s disapproving expression made it crystal clear what he thought of belonging to a club such as that.

  After reaching the sedan, Kelly got in. “I was playing up to him, as you so eloquently put it, to get that list without having to go plead our case in front of some ADA who then would have to get a judge to sign off on the warrant. Making nice with the director was the faster route to take,” she pointed out.

  Kane put on his seat belt and put the key in the ignition, but he left it there for a minute. He wasn’t finished just yet.

  “What’s the problem with getting an ADA and a judge to back us up? Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t you people have both in your extended stable of family members? You could have a warrant sent to your email faster than it takes to talk about it.”

  Kelly frowned as she raised her eyes to his. She was trying to control the sudden surge of temper she was experiencing. Generally easygoing to a fault, she found that this new partner could get to her faster than even her brothers could, doing their worst—and that was saying quite a lot.

  “Just because they’re in the family doesn’t automatically mean that we can use family to bend the rules,” she informed him.

  “Right,” he answered loftily. Kane didn’t believe that any more than he believed the Golden Gate Bridge was for sale. About to start the car, he spared her another glance. She didn’t belong here. She was too pretty, too distracting. He wasn’t some rutting pig, but he was human after all.

  Right now, Cavanaugh looked as if she could shoot darts from her eyes—with him as the target. “Wait, you’re serious?”

  “Damn straight I am. Just because the power is there doesn’t mean it’s there to abuse.”

  Looking more amused than convinced, Kane said, “I guess I stand corrected.”

  Her easygoing disposition didn’t mean she had been born yesterday. Kelly read between her partner’s lines. “But not convinced.”

  Kane shrugged. The old adage about Rome not being built in a day crossed his mind. “I’ll get there,” he told her cavalierly.

  Kelly took what she could get. “Fair enough, I guess. Let’s find out just how many of these people coveted Osborn’s paintings.”

  “‘Coveted’?” he echoed. Shaking his head, Kane started the vehicle. “You’re invoking biblical terms now?”

  She took no offense at his tone. “Think of it as broadening your educational base.”

  “My base is just fine, thanks,” Kane informed her. Kelly noticed that for once he didn’t sound curt. Was she making progress? Or was it just an oversight on his part?

  “There’s always room for improvement,” she maintained. Then, just in case he took that as a personal criticism, she added quickly, “For everyone.”

  He awarded her a long, scrutinizing look before looking back at the road.

  “Some more than others,” he agreed, and she knew he was referring to her.

  A freshly minted, snappy comeback hovered on her lips, straining to be released. But they weren’t going to get anywhere if this exchange degenerated into one-upmanship. One of them had to be the bigger person and just back off.

  Kelly blew out a breath.

  In this case, she supposed that for the sake of progress and future harmony, it was going to have to be her.

  * * *

  The list of Osborn’s so-called friends included ten names. Three of the people were currently on the premises.

  “They actually track their members when they’re on the club grounds,” Kelly had marveled in mild disbelief.

  One of the members could be found in the dining area—specifically at the bar, while the other two were on the immaculately kept golf course, apparently trying to lower their handicaps.

  “Since we’re here, might as well talk to them first,” Kane decided.

  * * *

  An hour later they were back in Kane’s sedan, none the wiser or further along in their investigation than when they had first arrived at the club.

  “Seven more to go,” Kelly said with a sigh, dropping into the passenger seat and closing her door. “Who knows? We might get lucky. Seven’s a lucky number, right?”

  “So now you’re superstitious?” Kane asked as he started his car again.<
br />
  “What I am is trying to stay positive. Approaching this with a negative attitude isn’t going to get us anywhere. Although I have to say that talking to those people makes me feel as if I need to take a shower.”

  She looked at her partner’s almost rigid profile, wondering if the man ever relaxed. He had exceptional bone structure, but right now she was looking at a museum statue, not a flesh-and-blood man.

  “I never knew that men were capable of being as catty and vindictive as women,” she confided, trying to get some sort of a response from Kane. Getting him to act human required far more work than she’d anticipated.

  “It all depends on their maturity level,” he commented, guiding the vehicle through the grounds and heading for the exit. “The men we talked to had a combined emotional age of about sixteen. Possibly less.”

  “I guess having a lot of money doesn’t always buy you peace of mind. Sometimes all it buys you is acrimony,” she theorized.

  Kane looked at her sharply. “Back up. What did you just say?”

  “What? You weren’t listening?” Kelly cried, pretending to be both surprised and offended. “And here I thought you hung on my every word.”

  Kane snorted. “More like I could hang you for uttering too many words,” he replied before repeating his question. “Now what did you just say?”

  To be honest, she wasn’t really sure what she had said exactly. Certainly not something that should have had him reacting this way. She tried to think and came up with something. “That I didn’t know men could be as vindictive as women.”

  He waved away the words as if they were solid entities. “No, after that.”

  Her thoughts seemed to run together. “That these men were full of acrimony. I’m paraphrasing it, but—”

  But Kane shook his head impatiently. “Before that,” he instructed.

  She wondered if he was coming unglued or if he was just trying to make her crazy. After again reviewing her earlier words, she came up empty. With a shrug, she told him, “I really don’t know what you’re referring to.”