by Kylie Brant
Minutes later she was pulling the door open to face Connally, his hands full of small covered cartons. She blinked at the incongruous sight. He walked past her through the apartment and into the kitchen. “I called earlier, but there was no answer. I figured it was early enough that you probably hadn’t eaten. This Chinese place was on my way over here.”
“Yes, we were out,” she murmured, watching in mingled fascination and annoyance as he set the cartons on the table and started pulling open cupboards and taking out dishes.
“I was just about to fix something for Danny and myself.”
“No need.” He set three plates on the table and began to rummage in drawers for silverware. “I brought plenty.”
“Is there something I can help you with?”
Her saccharine tone was wasted on him. He didn’t even look up. “No, I think I found everything. On second thought, what do you have to drink?”
“We have milk.”
Both adults turned to find Danny standing in the doorway of the kitchen, looking at the large detective with wide eyes.
“Aunt Meghan says you should drink milk with every meal. It’s good for your bones.”
Gabe quirked a brow at the boy’s solemn tone. “Milk it is, then.” Meghan crossed the kitchen in time to prevent him from searching through her cupboards for glasses.
“Do you mind?” she muttered through her teeth. Gabe cast a look at her and a corner of his mouth lifted.
“Not at all.” He stood aside while she took over.
“Where’s your gun?”
Gabe’s attention returned to the boy. “Locked in the trunk of my car.”
“What if you meet some bad guys on the way home?”
Pretending to give the question consideration, he said, “Well, I guess I’d have to take them with my bare hands.”
This seemed to satisfy the boy for the moment, so Gabe shifted his focus back to Meghan. The table before him had taken on an elegance he rarely encountered outside of restaurants, complete with place mats and napkins. The cartons had been moved to the counter, where she was emptying their contents into serving bowls. “You didn’t have to go to all this trouble for me.”
The look she sent him over her shoulder was scathing. “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t.”
“A nice table helps us remember nice table manners,” Danny parroted, clearly entertained to have a guest. “But you don’t have to worry about spilling. Aunt Meggie never gets mad about spills.”
“Good to know.”
The boy looked at the dishes Meghan was placing on the table and wrinkled his nose. “What’s that? I don’t like it.”
“How do you know, if you don’t know what it is?”
Ignoring Gabe’s words, Meghan told Danny firmly, “You like rice and you like chicken.” She scooped some of each onto his plate. “Try a little bit and see.”
While the boy slowly did as he was bid, she slipped into a chair that seemed much too close to Gabe’s. Surreptitiously she inched a fraction closer to her nephew and tried to make sense of the scene. Gabe Connally had bulldozed his way into her apartment, again, and was sitting at her table, as if he had every right to be there. As if he belonged there.
Firmly she avoided his gaze as she handed him one bowl after another. He seemed to shrink the small kitchen with his presence. Had she not had Danny’s eating habits to distract her, she doubted she’d be able to eat at all. As it was, nerves were dancing in her stomach.
“Have you ever shot anyone?” Danny asked Gabe as he picked at the unfamiliar food on his plate.
Gabe’s gaze went to Meghan first, then trained on the boy. “Yeah. I’ve shot some p—crooks.”
The boy’s eyes grew wide. “Did you kill anyone?”
Taking his time chewing, Gabe finally answered, “When cops have to fire their guns we usually try to wound the person who’s shooting at us.” His words seemed to satisfy the boy, but a sidelong glance to Meghan proved that his subtle verbal maneuver hadn’t been lost on her. Her lovely profile could have been etched from glass. He gave a silent sigh. Clearly the conversation wasn’t one that was going to inspire any additional faith in the police.
“If I eat one more bite can I have a peanut butter sandwich?” Danny wanted to know.
“Five more bites,” Meghan said firmly.
The boy cocked his head, apparently in familiar territory.
“Two more.”
“Four.”
“Three.”
“Deal.” She rose and made the sandwich while Danny attacked the food on his plate. When he finished, his attention shifted to Gabe again.
Searching for a subject to divert him, Gabe said, “You go to school?”
Danny nodded. “A new school. It’s better than the first one Aunt Meggie made me go to.”
Meghan turned quickly and slid the sandwich on Danny’s plate. “There you go, buddy. Eat up.”
His curiosity slightly roused, Gabe inquired, “You’ve been in two different schools since you came to live with Aun—your aunt?”
His mouth full of peanut butter, the boy bobbed his head in lieu of an answer. Taking a large gulp of milk, he said, “I didn’t like the other one. There was too much thinking. It made my head hurt.”
Gabe grinned, but his smile quickly faded as he observed Meghan’s reaction to the boy’s words. Her expression had stilled. When Danny glanced at her, he froze for an instant, his sandwich halfway to his mouth.
“I’m sorry, Aunt Meggie,” he whispered, his voice miserable.
She flashed him a smile that was obviously forced and said, “You know what? Since this is your TV night I’m going to let you finish eating in the living room.”
By the boy’s incredulous expression it was apparent that this was a rare treat, indeed. He lost no time bolting from the room, plate in hand. Moments later the sounds of an animated television show drifted into the kitchen. Gabe finished eating slowly, his gaze watchful. He wasn’t sure what had just passed between the two, but he was certain that something had. And although his curiosity was roused, it would be a waste of time to question Meghan about it. She was a long way from trusting him, and for some reason he was reluctant to put her in the position of lying to him again.
She got up and started clearing the table. When she reached for a dish near Gabe, his hand shot out, clamping around her wrist. Meghan hesitated, shooting him a startled look.
“Give that a rest for now. Don’t you want to know why I came by?”
“I am interested in this aversion you seem to have for the telephone.” With a discreet tug she freed her wrist. She curbed the urge to cover the spot he’d touched, trapping the heat that lingered there. She walked to the chair Danny had vacated, the one safely across from the big detective—sat and eyed him coolly.
He pushed away from the table. “I told you, I called earlier. I took a chance that you’d be home around dinnertime. If you hadn’t been—” here a large shoulder lifted, dropped “—I would have called again later.”
“That would probably be best.” His steady stare was a trifle unnerving. Meghan cleared her throat. “I mean next time. If there is a next time.”
Gabe hooked one ankle over his knee. “There’ll be a next time, Meghan. We’re partners, remember? You agreed to that, last night.”
She didn’t need the reminder. Her decision had never seemed more foolhardy. When she’d agreed to the arrangement, it had seemed simple to keep Connally at a distance. She would extract the information from him easily, while keeping Danny’s secrets. But nothing about the man seemed easy. She had a nagging suspicion that she’d seriously overestimated her ability to handle Gabe Connally.
“I tracked down the location of your sister’s car,” Gabe stated baldly. “It hasn’t become scrap metal yet, so a mechanic friend of mine is going to go look it over. If there’s something there the investigators missed, he’ll find it.”
“I…thank you.”
He watched Meghan carefully, noting the b
arely perceptible tremor in her hand as she smoothed one edge of the place mat on the table before her. “It’s pay-up time, Meghan.” Her gaze jerked to his, held. “I kept my word. It’s time to keep yours.”
“Not quite.” Her voice admirably steady, she never took her eyes off his. “I told you I was going to need proof that you actually followed through before I allowed Danny to cooperate.”
His gaze narrowed. “I have to provide you with proof, but I’m to take your offer of cooperation on faith, is that it?”
“Exactly.”
He let loose a breath that was half frustration, half disbelief. “You don’t want much, do you?”
She pressed imaginary wrinkles out of the place mat with quick, nervous movements. “Those are the terms.” She held her breath, a part of her almost wishing he’d refuse. Surely there must be an easier way to get what she wanted without having to deal with this man. She gauged his reaction carefully, noted the inscrutable expression on his face.
“Let me get this straight.” Was that sarcasm she heard in his voice? “You’re saying that I just have to trust you?”
She met his gaze squarely and pushed back the mingled dread and guilt his words elicited. “Yes. That’s what I’m saying.”
Danny’s attention strayed from the TV to the murmur of voices coming from the kitchen. He wondered if Aunt Meggie was mad that he’d talked about his old school in front of that detective. He tried hard to remember what he could say and what he was supposed to keep quiet. It made him tired sometimes, trying to keep it all straight. But he hoped Aunt Meggie wasn’t mad at him.
He sat really quiet on the couch and turned the TV down with the remote, but he still couldn’t hear what the grownups were talking about. He didn’t know why the big detective was at their house. He wasn’t like the men who had come to see his mom sometimes. And Aunt Meggie didn’t laugh a lot and talk loud like his mom did around those men, either. Sometimes he thought she really didn’t like the man much, and other times he thought she might be scared of him. But he didn’t try to check for sure. Raina told him it was cheating to peek in people’s heads.
Meggie. That was what his mom had called her, Danny remembered. But she’d said it in a voice that was hard and kinda mean. He didn’t know how anyone could be mean to Aunt Meggie. She was nice and never yelled.
Scrambling off the couch, he took his plate and set it carefully on the table with the lamp on it. There were only a few crumbs on the couch, so he pushed them onto the floor. Then, with a glance at the kitchen door, he climbed back up on the couch and turned to look at the TV again. But he wasn’t really thinking about TV.
Danny wondered if Aunt Meggie and the detective were telling secrets. The thought made his stomach feel funny. He didn’t like secrets. His mom had told him one, and then she got dead.
He stared hard at the TV, but tears burned his eyes anyway. His mom would be mad if she knew he hadn’t told Aunt Meggie the secret by now. He grabbed the remote and turned the volume way up, but the noise couldn’t drown out the worried thoughts that crept like shadowy animals in his mind. He was supposed to show his aunt what his mom gave him. That’s what she’d said.
But he hadn’t told, and it wasn’t an accident, either, like sometimes when he forgot things. He hadn’t told on purpose. Because the secret had made his mom dead. He didn’t know how he knew that, but he did.
And telling Aunt Meggie the secret just might make her dead, too.
Chapter 5
“Geez, the mope was living like a king.” Gabe prowled around D’Brusco’s apartment, using one gloved hand to pick up a small gold, sharp-edged blade. “You see this? He used solid gold to run his lines to fry his brains with. Sure a long ways from the cockroach-infested life he was leading the last time I busted him.”
Cal glanced over and grunted. “Has he always been a user?”
“Yeah.” Gabe replaced the blade next to the tell-tale white substance on the table. “Smack was his choice a few years ago, but he must have acquired a different taste. Looks like he was interrupted before he got to enjoy the private party he had planned.”
They proceeded with the search, pulling out drawers, painstakingly going through the contents, examining furniture. Gabe left his partner to do a quick search of the kitchen. There wasn’t much food in the refrigerator but the imported beer and expensive wine kept there had to have set D’Brusco back a bundle. Again, Gabe was struck by the heights to which the punk had risen. Quite a step up for a former fence. He let the refrigerator door swing shut and rummaged through the cupboards for a few minutes. When he moved to examine the sink, he hit pay dirt.
Cal heard his whistle of discovery and called from the living room, “Whaddya got?”
Gabe went into the living room, holding a large freezer bag aloft. “Pretty clever guy. Had his dope stashed in the garbage disposal. Guess we can figure he didn’t eat in a lot.”
He placed the bag into evidence, then watched Cal grapple with the entertainment center. “You want to give me a hand here?” his partner finally asked. “I think this front panel is false.” Gabe got on the other side of it, and together the two men wrested the paneled piece off the furniture.
Eyebrows skimming upward, Gabe murmured, “Lenny is just chock-full of surprises isn’t he?” He watched Cal reach in and pull out bundle after bundle of bills. He joined him in counting the piles, then they looked at each other. “Damn near thirty thousand dollars. Hell of a nest egg.”
“Whatever he was up to, he was getting paid pretty damn well for it,” Cal said.
“Or else this is the private stash Eddie was talking about.”
They moved into the bedroom, and a broad grin split Gabe’s face. “Hey, Cal, isn’t this the honeymoon suite you brought Becky to?”
“Ah, the famed Connally wit,” Cal retorted. “Immature, and yet…not funny.”
The room was decorated in a style reminiscent of early American brothels. The mirrored ceilings and heavy drapes lent an even tackier air to the tasteless artwork that adorned the walls. Assuming—Gabe squinted at the naked forms frolicking in one of the paintings—they would qualify as art.
The two men worked silently. Gabe pulled the drawers out of the dresser, riffled through them, then checked inside the bureau itself. A pleased sound escaped him. “Looks like Lenny forgot all about laws prohibiting felons from owning guns.” He released the heavy tape securing a Sig revolver from its hiding place, and held it up for Cal to see.
“The protection wasn’t going to do him much good kept in there.”
“Probably a second piece. And from the kind of money he was running with, he needed it.”
The rest of the room turned up little more than D’Brusco’s fetish for exceedingly raunchy porn. They moved to the closet, and Cal shook his head in disapproval. “Even money can’t buy him taste, can it?” The suits the man favored featured eye-popping colors and loud patterns. Grateful for the gloves he wore, Gabe gingerly checked the pockets of the suits and trousers.
“Look at these.”
Gabe turned to look at the wallet his partner had drawn from one of the suit jackets. Inside it was an Illinois driver’s license in D’Brusco’s name, and a half-dozen others with the man’s likeness, imprinted with phony names and addresses.
“You know, I’m quickly losing my faith in the rehabilitative nature of prison. Lenny seems to have picked up all kinds of bad habits there.”
“Pretty good forgeries, too,” Cal noted, dropping the wallet into the evidence bag. “Those don’t come cheap.” He rubbed his hand over his face. “All these stripes and plaids have me seeing double. Have you run across anything else?”
“Just this.” Gabe held up a matchbook advertising the Sunrise Lounge. “Heard of it?” When the other man only shook his head, Gabe flipped the cover open. “Looks like a telephone number scribbled on the inside. Cross your fingers. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“Maybe. We’re due a little luck in this investigation.”
It sounded as though a demented logger was using a battering ram on her door. Meghan jerked, and the pen she’d been using to list donors for the battered women’s fund-raiser slipped from her fingers and rolled across the floor. “What in heaven’s name…” She left her studio and crossed rapidly to the front door. Old-fashioned caution had her using the peephole, and a sound of dismay escaped her. A microsize Gabe Connally filled her vision, and the expression on his face was pure menace.
She stood undecided for a moment, creasing and recreasing the paper she’d carried with her. When he’d left here last night he hadn’t been happy with her. She’d refused to back down from him, and something told her that he was unused to the experience. But certainly he hadn’t left in a state that would warrant hammering her door with what looked like lethal intentions.
The pounding came again, awakening her from her lethargy and fueling a delayed sense of ire. Releasing the locks, she threw the door open and glared at Gabe, barely registering Madison’s presence at his side.
“Your social habits are deteriorating even further, Detective, if you’ve now decided to ignore the buzzer, as well as the telephone.”
“Since you seem to be ignoring both today, I had the super let us in.”
The super, she seethed silently, was going to get an earful from her. When she was working she often ignored any and all interruptions, letting her answering machine take messages she could return in the evening. But she could hear the callers speaking. She had to take the precaution in case an emergency arose with Danny. There was no way she would have missed Connally’s rasping tones. But he hadn’t bothered, apparently because only a face-to-face meeting would satisfy him.
Grasping the edge of the door in her hand, she watched him warily. She masked the trepidation spreading in the pit of her stomach with flippancy. “So, what is it now? You have an overwhelming urge to share lunch with me this time?”