Hard To Handle

by Kylie Brant

  And then he needed to find a different hiding place for his last stash of nicotine. A bloodhound had nothing on Cal.

  In the car Gabe gave his partner an abbreviated version of his meeting with Meghan last night, leaving out the details of their arrangement. Conducting a private investigation of a closed case wasn’t exactly against department regulations, but it usually didn’t earn one any friends, either. Gabe didn’t doubt his ability to discreetly get the information he needed, but decided against burdening Cal with all the facts. His partner had a way of asking way too many questions.

  They tried all the locations Parker had mentioned, but were unable to find Siemons. Finally they parked outside the man’s shabby duplex and prepared to wait for him.

  “You ever figure how much time we spend sitting in a car waiting on some punk?”

  “Yeah.” Cal’s voice sounded odd. Gabe slanted a look at him. “I wonder sometimes what it would be like to work a nine-to-five job. Someplace you just punch out and leave the work at the office.”

  “Becky after you to quit the force?”

  The other man caught his partner’s gaze on him and said hastily, “No, of course not. But things change after you get married, you know? You start to imagine what it would be like for your wife to open the door to a pair of uniforms, knowing they’re there to tell her you bought it in the line of duty.”

  “I guess.” It was different for Cal, Gabe acknowledged, because now the man had someone to consider besides himself. And he recognized the unspoken truth in the man’s words, as well. In the event of Gabe’s death, there’d be no address to send the uniforms to. His foster parents had retired five years ago and moved to Florida.

  “The thing is—” Cal stared out the window “—we’ve kinda been thinking about having a baby. Guess you could say we’re in the planning stage.”

  Nothing he could have said would have shocked Gabe more. Clearing his throat, he searched for an appropriate answer. “Yeah? That’s great. I mean…good luck with that.”

  His partner shrugged, embarrassed. “Well, now you know what made me start thinking. Not that I’d ever quit the department, but a man has to consider his family’s security.”

  “I guess.” What Gabe knew about family, the kind of family Cal meant, wouldn’t fill a thimble. He could admire his partner for his ambitions in that direction while shying away from the idea himself. There was something to be said for having only yourself to consider. There was no one to disappoint then, because no one was relying on you. And if alone sometimes meant lonely, that could be dealt with. The thought of making the kind of commitment Cal was talking about terrified him.

  To break the monotony and distract them both, Gabe leaned forward and reached into the glove compartment, withdrawing a cellophane-wrapped package of cream-filled snack cakes.

  Immediately Cal groaned. “Oh, no. Don’t tell me you’re actually going to eat those. Why don’t you just inject poison into your veins and be done with it?”

  “Somehow I don’t think it’d be the same.”

  His partner watched, half reproving, half envious. “Those things are filled with cholesterol. Do you even know what your cholesterol level is? I’ll bet it’s through the roof. Do you realize what that means?”

  “That I’m filled with buttery goodness?”

  “No, that you’re a heart attack waiting to happen.”

  Gabe waved the remaining cake in front of Cal’s face.

  “This one’s got your name on it, buddy.”

  The man looked away. “The difference between the two of us,” he began, “is willpower. I’ve got it, you don’t.”

  “Smell the fragrant junk-food aroma.” Gabe continued to dangle the snack in front of Cal’s face. “Think of the burst of flavor, the sugar high, the empty, delicious calories.” He barely finished the words before his partner grabbed the snack from him and devoured it in three quick bites.

  Cal looked at Gabe, who was convulsed with laughter. “You know how many miles on the Stairmaster it’s going to take to undo this one moment of weakness?”

  “Forget that. I’ll bet Becky will be able to smell the junk food on your breath.” Cal blanched, reached in his pocket for a breath mint. “I’m gonna have to tell her that you snuck it despite all my efforts to stop you.” His partner’s retort was stemmed by Gabe’s next words. “There he is.”

  The detectives got out of the car, and Eddie spotted them immediately. He ran the last few feet to the steps in front of his duplex, and took them two at a time. Gabe and Cal made it to his door seconds behind him.

  “Hey, I got nuthin else to say to you guys.”

  “Let’s go inside, Eddie. Get off the street.”

  The man ignored Gabe’s suggestion. “I done my part. That charge was dropped, and now I’m square with the system. I don’t have to tell you nuthin’ else.”

  “You want to have this conversation out here?” Cal inquired. “We don’t care. Broad daylight, in front of your friends and neighbors…if you don’t mind being seen with us, that’s fine.”

  Considering his options, Eddie sucked in his bottom lip, making his receding chin all but disappear. A curious passerby who looked their way seemed to make up his mind. “Yeah, okay. But let’s take it away from here.”

  Dejectedly, he walked back to the car and got in. Gabe turned on the ignition and pulled away from the curb. “You know what you just did back there?” Eddie demanded. “Man, in this neighborhood if a guy’s seen talking to the likes of you he could be killed.”

  “We’ve got a little problem with that information you passed on to us.” Gabe adjusted the rearview mirror to catch Eddie’s reflection. “D’Brusco has disappeared.”

  “Yeah, that’s a problem, but it ain’t my problem, you know?”

  “It is now.” Cal said, turning in his seat to face the man.

  “Give us some ideas about where he might have gone. Names of people he hangs with.”

  “Oh, man, you guys never give up!” Eddie hunched down in the seat.

  “You said you were tight with D’Brusco in the old days,” Cal reminded him.

  “That don’t mean I know nuthin’ about him now.” He caught Gabe’s stare in the mirror. “Yeah, okay, so we ran into each other that once. Had some beers, talked about old times.”

  “And he told you he was smurfing for some bigwig whose name wasn’t mentioned.” Gabe’s tone was impatient.

  “And he was getting rich doing it. ’Course, that might not have all been from his salary.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  Eddie swallowed and wished Connally would just concentrate on driving. That glare of his made him damn nervous. “Well, he mighta said something like he was starting his own private account.”

  “You mean he was skimming from the take?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. We were both wasted, all right? Now let me out here, I’ll catch a bus home and we’ll call it even.”

  They didn’t do as he requested until after some more lengthy questioning, but they got nothing else of value from the man. He couldn’t, or wouldn’t, give them any ideas as to where D’Brusco had gone and claimed he had no ideas about the identity of the man Lenny had left his apartment with. Finally Gabe dropped him off in front of a bus stop, and Eddie climbed out of the car with undisguised haste.

  “You know, with all the time we spend with punks like him, it’s a wonder we have any faith left in humanity.” Gabe steered the car into a small break in traffic.

  “You see that van behind you, don’t you?” Cal began. With one look from Gabe he went silent. Safety with his partner at the wheel was a chancy thing, but it was even more dangerous when Gabe argued with him. The man had a hair-raising habit of taking his eyes off the road while he was trying to make a point.

  “Not to mention saints like D’Brusco,” Gabe continued. They’d spent several days watching the man, whose only real job in the outlets had seemed to be to collect the daily take and deposit it in a bank.
He’d used a different bank for each branch of the store, but that in itself wasn’t unusual. Cal had followed him inside a few of the banks, lingering nearby while the man conducted his transaction. He’d been obviously well-known each place he went. At each a teller would address D’Brusco by name.

  Trouble was, none of the names he’d been addressed by were his own.

  “He had a pretty good scam going,” Gabe mused.

  “Video rental businesses are an ideal sink—just feed cash into the system. Nobody’s gonna spot an additional five hundred or a thousand coming in daily through the tills if it’s done gradually. Lenny was in charge of cleaning up someone’s extra cash. He just put the money with the daily take and deposited the whole thing in the bank.”

  “According to Eddie D’Brusco had decided to start taking a little something extra for himself,” Cal said. He never took his eyes from the road, as painful as it was to watch. He preferred to know when his time was coming.

  Gabe gauged the upcoming traffic light and decided he had time to make it across the intersection. The sound coming from his partner’s side of the car had him grinning. “Ol’ Lenny had really hit it big this time.”

  “Gives a whole new way of looking at his disappearance, doesn’t it?”

  “Way ahead of you, Cal. If someone else got wind of his private account, could be Lenny didn’t escape with a friend of his after all.” The two men exchanged a glance, sharing the unspoken thought. One rule of money laundering was that constant control had to be maintained over the entire process. Theft of the money couldn’t exactly be reported to the police.

  If their informant was correct about Lenny’s secret fund, it was increasingly likely that the guy who left D’Brusco’s apartment had been sent there to eliminate him.

  “How do you think he’s doing?”

  As the woman turned the question neatly back on her, Meghan glanced over her shoulder before replying. Danny was safely out of earshot, playing contentedly with Legos in the corner of the office. “I’m not sure. He seems better. I mean, there haven’t been any more outbursts.”

  Raina Nausman regarded her with the aura of serenity that was so much a part of her. That was the first thing Meghan had noticed about the woman upon meeting her for the first time two months ago. There was a timelessness in the woman’s eyes that belied the soft wrinkles on her face, the whiteness of her hair. And the serenity was coupled with a keen insight and wisdom that had been Meghan’s savior many times in recent weeks.

  “So the new school continues to be a good fit.”

  Meghan nodded. “You were right about the small class sizes being less stressful for him. I haven’t had any complaints from his teachers at all, and I’ve been monitoring his progress regularly.”

  “So, yes.” Raina patted Meghan’s hand as she spoke, her accent giving a lilt to her words. “We work well together.”

  Meghan managed a smile, but worry was still uppermost in her mind. “I just want things to be as normal as possible for him. I don’t want him growing up…different.”

  Raina surveyed her steadily. “But he is different, Meghan. I can teach him shielding, so he will not feel bombarded by others’ thoughts and emotions. I can teach him to respect the mental privacy of others. But he will always be different.”

  Feeling the subtle censure in the woman’s voice, Meghan bit her lip, the familiar guilt and anxiety warring inside her. “I understand.”

  Relenting, Raina said, “As do I. You do not want Danny to make the mistakes his mother did, is this not true? And together we can prevent that. By giving him the understanding that was absent in your sister’s younger years.”

  Understanding. Meghan met the woman’s calm gaze with her own. No, there had been no attempts by her mother or grandparents to recognize the burden Sandra’s ability must have been for her. Meghan was only recently coming to understand it herself. She’d been years younger than her sister; vulnerable; easy prey for the psychological ambushes Sandra had delighted in. She’d learned to fear her sister’s gift and later to prevent those mental invasions. But she’d never sought to understand it until Danny.

  Her gaze shifted to the boy again. He’d concocted some sort of flying machine and had it swooping through the air, making the appropriate noises. He wasn’t as quiet as he’d been when he’d first come to live with her, when they’d each walked on eggshells for fear of upsetting the other. He was becoming less like the sad, too-wise wraith who slipped into and out of rooms silently, and more like a normal five-year-old boy. Some of the credit for that was due to exposure to others his age, and even more was due to the woman across from her.

  Desperation had led Meghan to Raina Nausman, coupled perhaps with a touch of divine intervention. Unprepared to handle any child, Meghan had been especially ill equipped to deal with Danny. She’d thought she’d been doing the right thing entering him in school for the first time. The private kindergarten she’d carefully chosen was supposed to be one of the finest in the city.

  But the problems had started almost immediately. There had been arguments and tantrums at school, and Meghan had been called on an almost-daily basis. More and more frequently the otherwise quiet little boy had engaged in outbursts at home, refusing to go back to school. Unsure of whether she was encountering a burgeoning discipline problem, delayed grief or something else, Meghan had sought help. And her search for someone to assist her in understanding the special little boy in her care had led her, eventually, to Raina.

  The retired parapsychology professor had the necessary background to help Danny. And if Meghan suspected that Raina’s empathy for the boy came from more than intellectual learning, she was grateful enough for the woman’s help to shunt aside her own personal fears.

  “He seems happy.”

  Meghan’s gaze sought the older woman’s. “Do you think so?”

  Raina patted her hand again. “I do. Although he misses his mother, I believe he has adjusted well to the stability you represent for him. Children need structure.”

  “I suppose.” There had been plenty of structure in her own childhood, Meghan recalled, in the form of edicts on behavior befitting a Tremayne, but it hadn’t equaled stability. Her mother’s frequent marriages, the endless parade of nannies and the upheaval Sandra had taken pleasure in causing had created chaos in her childhood. Meghan relied on common sense and advice from Callie to fashion a home life for Danny that was as normal as possible. Certainly she had nothing in her own experience to draw from.

  Meghan glanced at her watch and rose to leave. Her twice-weekly visits with Raina always seemed to pass too quickly. “Danny, it’s time to go. Get your coat.” To Raina she said, “Thank you. Talking to you always helps me bring things into perspective.”

  “And what about that police detective you mentioned? Have you put him into perspective, as well?”

  Meghan paused in the process of putting on her coat. With more confidence than she felt she said, “I have that matter under control.”

  When she’d told Raina of the incident in the alley, the woman had gently questioned the boy. To Meghan’s dismay, he’d perceived some thoughts from one of the men. What he was able to relate, however, barely made sense. It was sheer rationalization, but Meghan was certain that even if they could afford to share the information with Connally, it would make little difference.

  “What will you do if he should find out about Danny’s ability?”

  “That’s exactly why I plan to keep the detective as far away from the boy as possible,” Meghan said firmly. But the woman’s question had caused an undeniable chill. “I don’t anticipate any real problems. Detective Connally isn’t really the type to believe in psychics, at any rate.” Meghan tried for a smile. “The two of us make an odd pair. He wouldn’t put any stock in Danny’s ability, and I dwell too much on it.”

  “And yes,” Raina said, in that gentle voice of hers, “you are perhaps worse than a nonbeliever of the phenomenon, Meghan, you are a victim to it. In the end, y
our barriers are more formidable, I think, than those of your detective.”

  Meghan faced the contents of her refrigerator unseeingly, Raina’s words echoing in her mind. She welcomed the woman’s familiarity with Danny’s abilities, but it was distinctly unsettling to have that calm equanimity turned on her. Forcing herself to concentrate, she focused on dinner possibilities. In the past she would have been satisfied with salad or a bowl of soup, but felt compelled to offer more nourishment to Danny. Not that the boy had an exceptionally developed palate. The only things he ate without complaint were peanut butter sandwiches and pizza.

  The buzzer rang, indicating a visitor outdoors. Crossing to the intercom, she pressed the button. “Yes?”

  “Buzz me in, Meghan.”

  There was no mistaking the low timbre of that voice, just as there was no mistaking its immediate effect. The raspy tone was like a long sensuous stroke down her spine. The prickle of awareness that followed dismayed her.

  “Meghan.” A hint of demand had entered his voice. “I need to talk to you about our arrangement.”

  She didn’t answer; she couldn’t. No man in her dismally limited dating experience had prepared her for dealing with Gabe Connally. Frost didn’t work with him; he simply ignored it. And her aloof distance that other men had complained of, some bitterly, appeared just as ineffective. With his focused intensity he was proving about as avoidable as a battering ram, and having that single-minded attention turned on her was more than a little unnerving.

  Their kiss, heated and uninvited, had managed to undermine her earlier certainty about using the man and skating away unscathed. But where it had shaken her, it had left him unmoved, a fact she found both irritating and relieving. The incident had proved that she could use him for information and not worry about the consequences of unwanted attentions. Ignoring the sly inner voice questioning just how unwanted those attentions would be, she pressed the button to allow his entrance.