McQuaid's Justice

by Carly Bishop

  Cam’s head jerked up. “She’s yours?”

  “Mine to handle. Yeah.”

  “What genius decided that?”

  “Mike Brimmer. Special Agent in Charge.” Cam knew who Cy’s boss was. Every lawman in Colorado and Wyoming knew the head of the FBI division. The point was, the assignment came from the top and wasn’t open to debate.

  “Tell him to find someone else.”

  “Yeah. That’ll go over real well.”

  “Tell him you forgot everything you ever knew about signing. Tell him you’re too rusty.” But he could see Cy wasn’t going to do that. By the time the McQuaid boys hit puberty, even the hankering to fabricate a load of b.s. had been knocked out of them. “Tell Brimmer the truth, then.”

  “What? That I got my heart busted by a deaf kid and I don’t want to go there again?”

  “Just say you have a conflict of interest and leave it at that.” He looked gently at Cy. “It’s the truth, isn’t it?”

  “And the next time it comes up?”

  “What? Another deaf witness? How likely is that, Cy?”

  He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, Cam. The thing is, I don’t want to deal with it, and we both know life just keeps handing you the same old crap till you do.”

  Cam cussed, short and sweet, but the wind blew it away. Walking away from your heartaches wasn’t one of those things that had survived their breeding, either. A man played the hand he was dealt and he didn’t cry about it or jaw it to death, and damn straight he didn’t flinch. It was some sort of natural wonder the two of them could even discuss this.

  “Maybe it won’t be a big deal to talk to her,” Cam offered. “Slam, bam, thank you, ma’am. Ask your questions. You’re in, you’re out, you’ve done what you had to do.”

  Nodding, Cy straightened and pulled open the door. He would do what the job required. Behind the badge, a man just did.

  Inside, Cam raked a hand through his hair. “So. You gonna show the picture to Susan?”

  “I haven’t made up my mind.” Cam had to have an inkling what purpose it would serve to confront their stepmother with the photo, or he wouldn’t have asked. Amy Reeves was not Susan’s kid, but the likeness of a woman the age to be Susan’s daughter had set him to thinking.

  “The thing is,” he lowered his voice now that they were out of the wind, “what if Susan did have a kid? What if she already had a husband? What if the old man not marrying her was over some obstacle like that?”

  “A kid. Susan with a kid.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re kidding. Tell me you’re kidding, because if you’re not kidding you need to get your head examined. Tell Brimmer—that’ll get you off.”

  Cy’s jaw cocked hard to the right. “That’s always been your problem, Cam. You just never know when to let up.”

  Cam swore again, shorter, uglier, but this time there was no wind to carry it off and it hung between them. “Cy, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean...”

  But it was out. He’d get over it. They both would. “Forget it.”

  Cam nodded. Swallowed hard and let it go too. “Cy, we’re talking Susan, here. Do you really think she would cut out on a husband and kid? I don’t buy it. Not even if the sorry son of a bitch beat her black and blue every Saturday night. Not Susan.”

  “All I’m saying is that ever since we were kids she’s defended the old man. You can’t believe her in one instance, like you trust she wouldn’t have run out on a family, and then turn around and ignore her defending Dad.”

  “The hell I can’t,” Cam argued. He took off Gramps’s sheepskin coat and tossed it at the nail where it caught, then lodged a boot on the fender of the old blue Buick. A line of glass bricks just below the eaves around the top of the garage let in daylight enough to see by, though not much more.

  “Come on, Cam. We’re not kids anymore. We both know nothing is ever so cut-and-dried that—”

  “I thought I might find you two out here.” Susan stood in the doorway, framed by the light behind her since the garage was half-dark. Slipping into a sweater, she closed the door tight behind her. “What’s not all that cut-and-dried?”

  “Go on back inside, Susan. Cam and I are just hashing a few things out.”

  She shook her head. The boards were tight enough no draft got through, but the wind still whistled through the rafters. “Neither one of you sounds too happy with the other, right now. I don’t want you to come to blows over this. I’m right, aren’t I, assuming you were talking about coming to your dad’s birthday celebration?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What then?”

  “It’s back to the same old same old, Susan,” Cam answered respectfully. “Why you tolerate the old man.”

  “Tolerate? Cameron, you listen to me, and you too, Cy. Try to finally get this through those hard heads of yours. Your dad treats me fine, and you can believe he ’tolerates’ me every bit as much as I do him. What is it with you men?” she chided, her voice going lower as she got more passionate, where most women would get shrill.

  She squared off with Cy. “How is it that you can stand up there on that hillside recalling your grandpa’s words about a man being able to depend on the love of a good woman, and then deny your father has any right to it? And you,” she turned to Cameron. “What can you be thinking?”

  “Susan—” Cam began, but she cut him off. She knew exactly what their beef was. What it had always been. She understood it well enough back in Texas, when they were kids and how the ugly names the other kids called her for living with Jake landed them in fistfights all the time.

  “Cy? Are you going to tell me what’s going on now?”

  The two looked at each other over the top of her head. She looked to Cy, as she had always looked to him, being the oldest, to explain. He took the photo of Byron Reeves’s daughter out of his coat pocket and handed it to her without a word.

  She took the picture and studied it for a long, long time, but she didn’t betray the slightest emotion. Somehow, Cy had thought she would.

  “I’d ask what you were thinking, but I guess I already know.” She looked up from the photo. “She’s a beautiful young woman, just the age to be a daughter of mine. Is that what you want to know, Cy?”

  He shook his head. “I know she’s not yours, Susan. She’s the daughter of a federal appellate court judge.”

  Dragging in a ragged, halting breath, she shivered so hard that the picture fell from her fingers and fluttered to the floor.

  “Susan?”

  As if she hadn’t heard Cy, she jerked forward to reach for the photo. Cam held out a hand to stop her and sank to his haunches to retrieve the picture and exchange a what-the-hell-is-this-about glance with Cy.

  “Susan, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” She shivered again, crossing her arms and digging her fingers into the sleeves of her sweater. “It’s just... I wish she were mine, Cy. Not having my own child was...” She broke off. Tears welled up in her eyes. Finding only more to hold against Jake, Cameron swore. Cy waited for her to finish. “It’s about my only regret”

  Cameron’s look wanted to know if Cy was satisfied yet.

  “It didn’t have to be that way, Sus.”

  Susan bucked up, just as she always did, defending their old man more fiercely than ever, more disappointed in the two of them than she had ever let show. “Your father has always done what he had to do and so have I. We don’t get everything we want in life. You don’t have to understand the choices your father made...or I made. You don’t get to judge them either. You want him to do the honorable thing by me. I’m telling you, he has.”

  Turning away, she went for the door. “I’d appreciate it if you’d find Matty and the three of you go bury your grandfather now, before it gets dark out, or snows.”

  Chapter Two

  The old Chamberlain mansion unnerved Amy Reeves. It always had.

  Midway to the top of the hill overlooking Table Mountain Mesa, the mansi
on sat among a stand of enormous Colorado blue spruce, protected on all sides by an intricately designed twenty-foot wrought iron fence.

  The edifice was constructed of native moss rock. Classic cornices stood out above artfully carved friezes. Huge stone griffins, fabulous marble renditions of the mythical half-eagle, half-lion beasts, decorated the capstones at the gates and the pinnacles of arches on the front door and each window.

  Amy was an architect, and could appreciate the balance of materials with the artistry of design, but on her its charm was lost, for the wrought iron spikes on each upper window of both wings were far more functional than decorative.

  Chamberlain House was where her grandma Fiona had lived ever since they put her away, years ago. As a child she had never arrived to visit without wondering if they put children away too.

  The wind whipped around the estate in fierce arctic gusts, and even her classic black wool business suit wasn’t enough to prevent the January cold slicing through her.

  She lowered the trunk door of her Lexus and eyed the edge to make sure it had locked shut. Then, altering her grip on her oversized blueprints portfolio, she turned and made her way through the parking lot to the entry of the upscale sanitarium. Granny Fee wanted to see the designs for which Amy had won the prestigious Bechtel Award in architectural design.

  The doorman, a veteran of Chamberlain himself, smiled at her and mouthed a good afternoon. Amy nodded, smiled back and went past the portly old gent. Though outside light slanted through massive windows at the central landing of wide twin staircases, the interior felt dark, cavernous and deserted.

  She left her blueprint case at the bottom of the stairs, then turned and walked back across the lobby area to sign in, feeling the heels of her pumps ricocheting against the marble flooring.

  She signed her name in what was euphemistically called the guest register beneath a couple of names she didn’t recognize, which didn’t often happen. The middle-aged receptionist, whom Amy had sometimes caught snoozing, carefully ignored her. This was nothing unusual, for the woman had never believed that Amy could possibly read her lips.

  Still, the tension radiating from the woman disturbed Amy. Something was terribly wrong. Was it Fiona? Amy whirled away, snatched up her case and flew up the stairs.

  She turned into the west wing. Her grandmother’s room was at the far end. A flurry of activity near Fiona’s door urged Amy to hurry down the long carpeted hallway. Orderlies milled uncertainly nearby. Other patients stood peeking fearfully out of their doors.

  Then Amy saw the head nurse, Faith Dunston, dart out of Fiona’s door, headed for the room where the narcotics were locked up.

  Alarmed, Amy pushed past the attendants and entered her grandmother’s room. A well-remembered, if heartbreaking, scene met her eye. Fiona had dozens of music boxes lining the shelves of her room, and the frail woman was going from one to the next winding each, turning them all on.

  Amy heard none of them, not one. Nor could she hear the two strangers, men standing near the far wall in business suits, exchanging glances and speaking to each other. But though she couldn’t hear them, their expressions betrayed their complicity in pushing Grandma Fee into this bizarre behavior.

  For one desperate moment Amy relived the chaos, a sliver of time years and years ago when she could still hear, and Grandma Fee had been reduced to this same sad activity. The “Blue Danube Waltz” clashing with “Lara’s Theme” clashing with Joplin and Bach and Sondheim till Fiona couldn’t hear herself think, let alone the voices that plagued her.

  The clamor, the sheer din of a hundred music boxes playing at once had spelled the end of Grandma Fiona living at home.

  Fending off the powerlessness of her child-self to do anything about it, and the sensation of vertigo the memories thrust upon her, Amy cast the two men a withering glance. She dropped her blueprint case and shoulder bag on the floor and crossed the small room to Fiona’s side. Angling her body between Fiona and the shelves of music boxes, she caught her grandmother’s hands.

  Garbed only in her soft lavender dressing gown, Fiona was regally tall, matching Amy’s height, but her body had wasted away, gone painfully thin. For a moment Fiona’s rheumy violet eyes met Amy’s without a hint of recognition and dismay shuddered through her rigid body. In the next instant, Fiona threw her arms around Amy.

  Sobbing, she crooned words Amy couldn’t hear. Still, Amy clung to her grandmother, absorbing the shudders, the vibrations of sound, stroking Fiona’s shriveled, bony back. The two men stood by looking too large, too ridiculously masculine in Fiona’s small, indelibly feminine Victorian room. One of the two, the shorter, stockier, balding and vastly more uncomfortable one, stared uneasily out the window, clearly unwilling to encounter the wrath in Amy’s expression.

  The other met the angry reproach in her eyes over Fiona’s shoulder with studied disregard. He was well over six feet tall, and dark-haired, with steady, unnerving chinablue eyes. Broad in the shoulders, slim in the hips, he had an air of unequivocal control.

  As brazenly masculine as he was indifferent to the turmoil he had caused, he reached with his left hand into his pocket and came out with a leather case that fell open to a badge and federal credentials. With his right hand, he spelled, then signed to her as he spoke.

  “My name is Cy McQuaid, FBI, Denver. This is Special Agent Ted Povich. We have the permission of your father to interview his mother.”

  Deeply shocked at his ability to sign, Amy blanched, dismissing him, signing, “My father did not intend this result when—if—he gave his permission.” She turned away, asserting her own power. McQuaid could not make his explanation if she refused to look at him, to read his lips or watch his hands.

  She wanted him and his embarrassed sidekick out of here, away from her. Away from her beloved, distraught Granny Fee. Surely he would leave.

  Faith, Fee’s nurse, returned with a syringe in hand. Amy stepped away from Fiona to block her administering the hypodermic, gesturing no.

  No.

  The nurse came at her head-on. Unlike the receptionist, Faith Dunston had never had any difficulty believing that Amy understood her perfectly. “Get out of the way, Amy. Your grandmother—”

  No, Amy repeated. Her cheeks flamed. She had rarely felt more vulnerable. She managed in the hearing world every day of her life. Managed brilliantly. But she felt undone by the indignity of this perfect man with his undoubtedly perfect hearing who had caused this disaster, watching her mutely confronting her grandmother’s nurse, and she resented him all the more for it.

  Faith Dunston ignored everything but Amy and Fiona, who had begun again to wind her music boxes, one after another. “Must I call the orderlies, Amy?”

  Yes, Amy signed. To get them out of here. She knew that Faith would not understand her ASL, but McQuaid might. And Faith would get her meaning. The intruding men had caused her grandmother’s hysteria. They should be made to leave.

  Faith shook her head. “Amy, I would respect your wishes under ordinary circumstances. Fee would calm down herself alone with you. I know that. But it is important that these men speak with her. You must either leave or stand out of the way. Now.”

  Amy drew a deep, shaky breath. She had no authority to refuse the medication, even on her grandmother’s behalf, only Faith’s regard for her. There was nothing she could do to prevent the nurse from administering the sedative.

  Amy winced. She had no intention of abandoning her grandmother to these self-important, uncaring men, but she couldn’t bear to watch the drug-induced, unguarded euphoria descend on Fiona’s dear old face.

  She veered away, acutely aware of the taller of the two men. Of the power of his body as he brushed by her. Of his intention to silence the melee of music boxes.

  She stepped in his path. If the only thing she could prevent was his touching Granny Fee’s most cherished possessions, it would have to be enough.

  CY BACKED OFF, let Amy Reeves take over. He wanted a cigarette. Badly. It had been a l
ong time since he’d been party to an interview that had deteriorated as quickly as this one had. His beat was terrorists and felons. He was about as far out of his element as he could be dealing with a woman like Fiona Reeves.

  Or her granddaughter.

  He could bum a smoke from Povich. What he couldn’t do was take it outside, which was what he would have to do if he wanted to smoke. He couldn’t leave. Or more to the point, take his eyes off Amy Reeves in the flesh.

  She was all in black, from her leather pumps to the designer suit, the slim skirt split to mid-thigh, the shoulders lightly padded. Black silk stockings molded to her shapely, athletic calves. Her hair, spilling like a cut of raw silk over her shoulders, was a very deep red, nearly brunette. She wore unusual cuff earrings, white gold or platinum, that wrapped around the outer curve of her ears. He searched for references in his mind to adequately describe the color and texture of her skin, and found none.

  Alabaster.

  Maybe.

  But now her cheeks and neck were mottled, stained by her outrage at the turmoil he had caused.

  To stand his ground he focused on the expected resemblance to his stepmother. Like Susan’s, Amy Reeves’ mouth was too wide, her lips too full. There were other superficial similarities, but if Cy had met her before he ever saw a photograph, he’d have been hard-pressed to draw the comparison.

  Susan was strong.

  Amy Reeves had a certain unyielding, willful femininity that defied so simple a characterization.

  Susan inspired comfort.

  Amy Reeves sparked tension. And if he were to be truthful about it, he’d have to label it sexual—and admit to himself that his response to her, his attraction to her was one-sided and none of her doing. The last thing this woman meant to convey was a come-on.