by Nancy Bush
“No,” she admitted, holding on to him tightly. But when he kissed her lightly on the mouth, just enough to remind her how good it had been, she eased out of his embrace before things could heat up. “You didn’t bring your bag in,” she observed.
“I thought I might stay tonight, but some things have come up with my job. I don’t want to leave you and Tucker here alone, but . . .” In lieu of continuing he reached for her again and his hand swept up into her hair. She tilted her chin up, and this time the kiss was warm and more insistent.
“Okay,” she said a bit breathlessly when he reluctantly released her. “Just hurry back.”
He nodded. “There are a lot of loose ends that need to be tied up around here. I really want to talk to Edmund Mikkels, but there’s not time today. Last time I saw him, he wouldn’t say anything, but he wasn’t a happy man. Victoria said he was crumbling. Maybe he’s ready to talk about Teresa. But I have more things to check at work, too. You good to stay here?”
“I’m packed for a night or two,” she said. “But there are things I need to take care of in Los Angeles as well. I’ll see how it goes, but I may have to go back for a day or two and then return.”
“We’ll figure it out.”
He leaned in and kissed her a third time, this one quick and hard, then let her go, closing the door behind him as he left.
Callie picked up her bag and headed upstairs, finding the room that was laid out for Tucker with a number of age-appropriate toys lined on the shelves and a dark brown comforter on the bed designed with running horses. She continued on and saw the door was open to the very next room. When she stepped inside she found the decor to be more nondescript: a queen bed with a cream-colored quilt and an antique, oak dresser with a matching oval mirror above it. There was an en-suite bathroom with a shower, vanity, and toilet room done in cream and light green.
Hearing voices downstairs, she realized Victoria and Maya were heading out the door together and she figured Maya was also Victoria’s driver.
Callie went back downstairs, grabbed Tucker’s suitcase, and took it to his room. By its size, she figured they were going to have to get him some more clothes and soon, and by the look of the weather, he was also going to need something warmer than the shorts and T-shirts he’d worn in Martinique.
She had returned downstairs to the great room when she heard the back door slam open and the familiar pound of running feet. Tucker never went anywhere unless it was at full tilt.
“Calleee! Horses and le chats!” He ran toward her and they met in the dining room.
“They have cats?” she asked.
“Furrall cats,” he said. “In the barn. They catch the mouses.”
“Feral cats,” Callie said.
“Uh-huh.” He then did a U-turn back toward the kitchen and the back door.
Before he could go through it, the door opened again and a man in jeans, boots, and a denim work shirt stepped in. “Hello,” he said in surprise, seeing Callie standing in the doorway between the kitchen and butler’s pantry.
Tucker whooped upon seeing him and said, “Knock, knock!”
“Hey . . .” he said, seeming even more startled to see the boy. To Callie, he said, “My dad said Victoria’s grandson was showing up. I guess this is him.”
“Knock, knock!” Tucker demanded.
“Tucker, just a minute,” Callie warned.
“I’m Teddy Stutz. Cal’s son.” His hand shot out and clasped hers. In the next breath, he asked Tucker, “Who’s there?”
“Lena,” Tucker said promptly.
“Lena, who?” Teddy asked.
“Lena . . . um . . . you say,” he declared, pointing at Teddy.
“Lena on my shoulder, I’m tired?” Teddy guessed.
“Oui, oui. Yes!” To Callie’s surprise, Tucker ran to Teddy Stutz and gave him a big hug before trying to squeeze past him and head out the back door again.
“Where are you going?” Callie called as she followed him through the kitchen.
He stopped short and turned to look at her, his gaze spying the peanut butter sandwich Maya had left on a plate beneath plastic wrap. “Pour moi?” At Callie’s nod, he yanked off the wrap, grabbed half the sandwich, then thrust himself through the outside door, yelling, “Cal! Cal!” as the door shut behind him.
“Whew,” Teddy said.
“So, you’ve met Tucker already,” Callie said with a smile.
“Just now? Oh. Yes. Looks like he’s acclimating pretty well. I’m not around here all that much, but I remember him as a baby. First time I’ve seen him in years. He’s grown up a lot.”
Teddy Stutz was sandy-haired and lean with eyes a cool blue shade and a set of dimples that she could already tell he knew how to use. Or maybe she’d just grown too cynical about men.
“You look just like her, by the way, which I’m sure you’ve heard already.”
Callie didn’t have to ask whom he meant. “A few times. You knew Teresa?”
“We all knew her.”
“That doesn’t sound . . . good.”
“She didn’t really fit in very well around here, but everybody knew her. The married guys’ wives hated her. The single guys were all in lust with her.”
“Are you counting yourself? And which one are you, married or single?”
“I was probably the only single guy who didn’t care about her. It takes one to know one, y’know?”
“In what way?”
He gave her a sideways look, seemed to think something over, then shrugged. “Well, hell, you’re bound to hear anyway. I’m the big disappointment to my father. Had a little trouble when I was younger. Wild-ass kid stuff. Owed some money to some people who didn’t like to be kept waiting. But that was years ago.”
Sounded like he was a gambler, and she could believe that about him in the few minutes she’d known him. “What do you do now?”
“Just now I’m working at the ranch.” He shrugged. “So, what’s your deal? How’d you get to be a part of this?” He circled a finger to include the whole Laughlin Ranch.
Callie told him about meeting both Tucker and West in Martinique, how West had mistaken her for Teresa initially, and how after Teresa’s body was discovered, Victoria had doubled her already intense efforts to gain custody of Tucker and bring him back to the ranch. Smiling faintly, she finished with, “I didn’t want to leave Tucker so I came along. Victoria seems to be a woman who gets what she wants.”
“Well, she apparently wants a great-grandson. Who’s the supposed guardian here? Victoria?”
“I think that’s her plan,” Callie admitted carefully. “I really don’t know.”
“What about Talia? She’s a generation younger.”
Callie shrugged.
“She’s jonesin’ for my dad, you know,” Teddy confided.
“Talia?”
“Yep, he’s the only reason she really ever comes back here. She and Victoria . . .” He drew an imaginary line across his neck, as if slicing off his own head. “They don’t get along.”
“Victoria sent Talia to Martinique to help West bring back Tucker,” Callie pointed out.
He barked out a laugh. “Well, if she sent Talia, she must not trust West at all. I’ve never met him. What’s he like?”
“She trusted him enough to start the investigation,” Callie said loyally.
“Take it from someone who knows: Victoria’s not going to allow some non-pedigree into the Laughlin trust, so if that’s what you’re thinking, you better let that go right now. Talia isn’t her favorite person, but she comes from San Francisco and her family has some deep pockets. Craig scored when he married her, in Victoria’s opinion. I don’t know that the old man felt the same way, but he’s gone and Victoria remains, so it’s her rules and only her rules.”
Callie didn’t know how to respond so she remained silent. She tried to get a bead on his feelings, but Teddy Stutz just kept a secret smile on his lips, as if he knew something she didn’t, and she suspected maybe he did.
&n
bsp; He leaned in. “I’m just sayin’, there’s no way to work your way in here with Victoria running things. Once she’s gone, you might have a shot.”
Callie stared at him. “You seriously think that’s why I’m here?”
“No, of course not.” He winked at her as they heard the sound of Tucker’s running feet just before he burst through the back door again.
The pain in his head was like a hammer pounding in a stake. Andre squinted his eyes as he followed the old woman’s Cadillac to downtown Castilla, which was a hodgepodge of buildings off I-5 with one main street. Victoria’s maid was at the wheel. At least she wasn’t spending all his money on extra employees, though he wouldn’t be the same way once he had control. He would take the handmaidens to Tahiti, he thought suddenly. He could be a king and they would be his queens. No squatty refugee camp like his father’s ratty kingdom had been because they’d cut him off.
The pleasant vision faded almost as soon as it had materialized, shattered by the continued pain inside his skull and the remembrance that the handmaidens weren’t anything he wanted them to be.
His cell phone rang and he glanced down at it, recognizing the number as one of the handmaidens’. But which one? He knew this. He knew it a second ago but now it escaped him. He didn’t have Bluetooth on but he answered anyway. “Yes.”
“I just saw you drive by,” Naomi said.
Ah, yes. Naomi. He almost asked her what she was talking about before he remembered he’d told her that he was going to Castilla. Had he told the rest of them . . . no . . . He couldn’t now recall why he’d told her. Wasn’t she supposed to be on a job somewhere . . . Laguna . . . ? “Where are you?”
“By the hardware store.”
He’d seen it on his right as he drove by, he realized vaguely. Glancing in his rearview mirror, he saw the brown Chevy parked at the curb.
“Did you see the Cadillac in front of me?” he asked.
“The white one? Yeah. Is it hers?”
Suddenly the floodgates of memory opened and he recalled spilling his plan to Naomi. Only Naomi. It was like being really drunk sometimes, or on drugs, this passage of time and loss of recall. He’d confided in Naomi that Victoria was the only person between him and his inheritance, which wasn’t exactly true now that he knew about the boy.
“It’s hers,” he confirmed. “Follow her. I don’t know where she’s going, but she’s plotting against me.”
“Are you sure?” Doubt had crept into her voice.
“Yes,” he said, instantly furious.
“It’s just that your memory . . . we’ve talked about this . . .”
“Stop being a fucking nurse and get to the job! What happened with Laguna?”
“You said this was a priority.”
He hated hearing his words coming out of her mouth, but yes, he recalled bits of that conversation now, too. “Tell me where she goes. I want to know what she’s up to.”
“Where will you be?”
“At the ranch.” The pain was a screech inside his head. “Get rid of her.”
“You mean . . . ?”
“Yes! Kill the withered, old bitch!”
He hung up, so angry he could scarcely think. He saw the Cadillac turn into the parking lot next to a brick building and noticed the discreet sign for Merritt Law, her law firm, headquartered in Beverly Hills. Of course they had an office in Castilla. That just showed how much money she had at her control, that her lawyer specifically kept a nearby office just for her.
Hate burned through him. He hoped Naomi would be as good as her word. He needed one of them, just one, to finally do something right for him!
As the businesses along the main street began petering out he made a U-turn to get back to the freeway entrance. He witnessed Naomi’s Chevy turn into the lot after the Cadillac as he drove by, glad to keep the Xterra away from the scene, just in case someone had told Victoria what he drove.
Two hours later, his phone awoke him from a trancelike state where the skulls had again chattered at him without moving their mouths. He remembered he didn’t want Victoria dead until he’d won her over. The timing was all wrong, he recalled, staring through the windshield in his same place on the ridge above Laughlin Ranch.
“Yes?” he asked.
“It’s done,” Naomi said breathlessly, and she hung up and was gone.
It was after four by the time West entered the station and his energy was flagging. The day had started early in Miami and he’d been traveling by plane or car through most of it. He’d damn near gone straight back to his apartment when he reached the Los Angeles city limits, needing a brief nap, but instead he’d picked up a sandwich and black coffee from a Starbucks and gone in search of Dorcas and Lieutenant Gundy, both of whom were out when he came in.
“Damn,” he muttered, calling Dorcas on his cell. His partner answered that he was at a nearby coffee shop, a cop favorite, with Gundy at that very moment. It was within walking distance so West left the Explorer where it was parked and hoofed over to Donny O’s.
Pete Dorcas was still built like a Mack truck. Big arms, thick neck, wide chest, buzzed blond hair, and a Clint Eastwood squint that was the result of vanity, as he really needed to wear glasses for a mild vision correction but wouldn’t. He intimidated practically anyone who didn’t know him, which had worked well for West on more than one occasion when they’d taken down a suspect together. Now, Pete grinned upon seeing West and motioned for him to join them at their corner table. “Siddown. How’s the globe-trottin’ goin’? The lieutenant and I were just talkin’ ’bout cha.”
As West took a seat, he looked at Gundy who’d climbed from patrolman through the ranks to his current position. A tall, lean man with perfect silver hair, an expensive dark blue suit, and a knotted, yellow tie at his throat, the lieutenant gazed back at West and didn’t waste any time before saying, “Captain Paulsen is being relocated and we want you to take your old position back.”
West almost said, “His crimes catch up to him?” but knew that wouldn’t be political. He was lucky Gundy had taken an interest in having him back. “Look forward to it,” he responded instead.
Almost immediately, Gundy, who’d been sitting with a half-empty cup of coffee while Dorcas was working on a piece of peach pie, got up, shook West’s hand, and said, “Get the paperwork done. Good to have you back,” and was gone.
“Since when do you fraternize with the bosses? And what happened to Paulsen?” West asked.
“Since everybody wants to cover their ass. Nobody’s sayin’ it, but Paulsen fucked up with you. He got all personal about his daughter and took it out on you. He’s also got his own boys, y’know.”
West nodded. “I know.”
“Too many favors being passed out. The kinda shit that happens all the time, but it finally got in Gundy’s way. Today, I just ran into him here and we’d just nodded at each other when you called, so he invited me to sit down. I think he wanted to see which way the wind was blowin’ with you.” He snorted out a laugh. “You look like hell, by the way.”
“All that globe-trotting. Anything more from Martinique?”
Dorcas scooped up the last bite of pie and said around it, “No autopsy report yet, but I did find a California license for Teresa Laughlin. Picture looks like your sister-in-law, so I’m pretty sure it’s her. Recently changed her address to a studio apartment on Barrington.”
“I know Barrington. Have you been there?”
“You’re kiddin’, right? Hell, no. I got me some pie to eat.”
West smiled. “All right. Give me the address.”
“It’s at my desk.” The waitress had already left the slip, so Dorcas checked the price, muttered about Gundy leaving him to pay for his coffee, then threw some dollars down and walked back to the station with West. He’d jotted the particulars down in a notebook and he ripped off the page and held it out.
West took it and asked, “Who’s working the Cantrell vehicular homicide?”
“Osbirg and B
ibbs were on it. It stalled out. Osbirg’s out, by the way.”
Harold Osbirg and Jay Bibbs were partners who had worked out of their department and had been favorites of Captain Paulsen. Dorcas didn’t have to tell West that Osbirg had been removed because of cronyism with Paulsen. Thinking of that, West wondered what had happened to the woman who’d been teamed with Dorcas while West was on leave. “Where’d Jiminez end up?”
“She was bumped from Robbery, so that’s where she went back to. She was too good-lookin’ to be my partner anyway.”
West yawned, thinking of Jade Jiminez. She was an attractive Hispanic woman with a humorless husband who worked for the LA transit system and thought his wife should be promoted faster than her years and ability would prove. “She is too good-lookin’ to be your partner,” he agreed, then headed out, wishing the paperwork was already processed so he could just get to work.
Back in the Explorer, his thoughts turned to Callie, as they did every time he was alone. He couldn’t leave her with Victoria indefinitely. He knew how irascible the old woman was, and he didn’t want Callie that far away from him anyway. Maybe after a while, Tucker would settle in and she could come back to LA.
Except that she loves him and he loves her, too, and they shouldn’t be apart.
How the hell was this going to work? He had a vision of himself burning up the freeway between LA and Castilla every time he got a day off, and that just made him feel more tired.
He picked up another coffee and found enough energy to check out Teresa’s apartment. See if there was an on-site manager who might let him inside, although without his identification he thought it highly unlikely.
He caught a second wind about the time he showed up at the apartment complex. There was no one at the manager’s office, so he walked down the east side of the building to an inner corner unit, which, according to the address, was Teresa’s studio. He cupped his hands to the front window and attempted to peer through a tiny crack in the drapes. He couldn’t see much of anything, although he thought the room might be bare. On a lark, he twisted the doorknob and about fell over when it opened beneath his hand. Aware he was on shaky legal ground, he glanced around to see if anyone was looking, then pushed open the door.