She was about to say something placating and apologetic to the belligerent watchman when she noticed Abilene shifting beside her. The next thing she knew, he was placing himself between her and the man in the doorway.
“Take it easy, man,” Abilene advised, his voice mild. “Might help you fall back to sleep if you calm down a little.”
By his subdued expression, it was obvious that the night watchman had become aware of the rather pronounced differences in height between him and the detective. Rather than say something sarcastic or cynical, the man nodded and backed up into the security of his apartment. The next moment, he’d shut the door.
For a second, Kendra was stunned. Turning, she was all set to tell Abilene that she didn’t need him to run interference for her or play the big, bad guardian, but then she decided to let the matter drop. Maybe Abilene, in his own clumsy, heavy-handed way, was trying to be helpful. Even, perhaps, protective.
The last thought shimmied through her, creating a shiver she managed to tamp down. Maybe she was just working too hard. But she couldn’t stop now.
Two doors away from the crime scene they found their third person to interview. Unlike the other two tenants, he was neither half-asleep, nor bleary-eyed and belligerent. Tyler Blake, a “currently” out-of-work actor according to his own description, was both friendly and more than willing to answer questions without seeming desperate for company.
And, also unlike the other two tenants they’d interviewed, Blake admitted to having heard something earlier that day.
“It sounded like two people arguing, but I just thought that someone had their TV turned up loud,” he admitted ruefully. “I didn’t pay attention and then it was quiet again. Sorry,” he apologized, flashing a contrite smile at Kendra.
“Nothing to apologize for, Mr. Blake. You couldn’t have known what was going on,” she told him. Another question occurred to her and she asked, “Were you by any chance friendly with Mr. Burnett?”
The out-of-work actor shrugged. “Just small talk at the elevator and the mailbox. You know, ‘Just another great day in Paradise,’ that kind of thing. We never talked about anything personal, anything that mattered,” he clarified.
“Did you know his girlfriend?” Abilene asked out of the blue. Up until now, he’d been rather quiet, letting her take the lead and choosing to listen rather than to question.
Tyler looked surprised at the question. “You mean to talk to, or by sight?”
“You tell us,” Abilene replied, leaving it up to the actor to fill in the blanks.
“Well, I saw them leaving his apartment a couple of times, but I never had any conversations with her, if that’s what you mean.” A self-deprecating laugh escaped his lips. “Fact is, I’m not sure if I could pick her out of a lineup if I had to.”
“Well, lucky for you that won’t come up,” Abilene told him. “Burnett’s girlfriend was found dead in his apartment this morning.”
Tyler’s eyes widened in absolute shock. Perfectly round and black like small marbles, they gave the impression that they would fall out of his head at any minute.
“He killed her?” he asked in disbelief, his voice trembling.
“Right now, that seems to be the working theory,” Abilene told the actor. “Unless you know something different.” He paused, giving the actor a moment for the information to sink in. “Any thoughts on that?” he prodded.
Tyler really looked surprised then. “Me? No. No,” he assured Abilene while trying to suppress a shiver of his own. “Just all sounds kind of creepy, that’s all. When I did see them together, they looked happy—I guess,” he tagged on with a shrug.
“You guess,” Abilene repeated slowly, watching Tyler’s eyes.
Tyler drew himself up to be a little taller, a little straighter. Abilene still towered over him. “Well, yeah. I didn’t stare at them or anything. I’ve got my own life,” he said. “And my own girlfriend,” he added with pride. “She’s my fiancée, actually,” he clarified. “And she doesn’t like me staring at other women,” he added with a grin.
“I hear you,” Abilene said with a conspiratorial laugh. “They can get really jealous on you for just being yourself. Nothing wrong with a guy just looking.”
“If you think of anything else,” Kendra said, interrupting what looked as if it had the makings of a guy fest and taking a card out of her pocket, “call this number.” She tapped the phone number beneath her name. “Ask for Detective Cavelli.”
“So, is that the name you’re going with, Good? Cavelli?” Abilene asked as they walked away from the actor’s apartment.
Why did his questions immediately get her back up? It was, after all, a legitimate question. But coming from Abilene, it got under her skin.
Just as he did.
She supposed she was being unfair—but that still didn’t change her reaction.
“It’s the name on the card,” she told him. They stopped at the crime scene one last time. The crime scene investigators were apparently wrapping things up, she thought. That was their cue to leave. “I didn’t want to confuse him. So far, this actor’s our most lucid witness.”
“Or at least he’s playing the part of one,” Abilene commented as they walked over to the centrally located elevator. His comment had her looking at him quizzically and he shrugged. “Hey, he’s an out-of-work actor—they need audiences like most people need air.”
“Speaking from experience?” she asked.
“In a way,” Abilene admitted. “I dated an actress once.” And then he laughed. He’d dated several of them, actually. At different times. Beautiful women with beautiful faces, all clamoring to be used—finding a personal hell on the other side. “Hard not to in this state.”
“Dated an actress,” Kendra repeated. Probably a whole bunch of them, possibly at the same time. He had the charm to pull it off, she decided. If you liked that sort of thing, she couldn’t help adding. “How nice for her,” she commented dryly.
“Nice for both of us,” he said, then added with a smile, “Short and sweet.”
Something in his voice caught Kendra’s attention—and, though she wouldn’t have admitted it in so many words, it also aroused her curiosity, among other things she chose not to explore.
“Is that a requirement with you? ‘Short and sweet’?” she repeated when he just looked at her.
His mouth curved devilishly. “As a matter of fact, yes, it is.”
She’d been right about him, she thought as she got in behind the wheel of the Crown Victoria. Abilene was a player, trading on his exceedingly good looks and satisfying his appetite whenever the spirit moved him. She bet it moved him a lot.
“Where to now?” he asked as he buckled his seat belt.
“Back to the precinct to see what kind of information we can find about the late Summer Miller.” She turned on the ignition. “By the way, what was that back there? With the actor,” she specified.
“It’s called being a detective and gathering information. Also questioning a witness. Why?” he asked her. “Wasn’t I supposed to do any talking? Am I just supposed to be your strong, silent backup?”
She sincerely doubted the man knew the meaning of the word silent. For now, until she got used to him, she just wanted him to stay out of the way, not suddenly step up and take the lead. She had no problem sharing that position if the person she was sharing it with had respect for her. But Abilene wasn’t giving off any of those vibrations. At least none on a frequency she was receiving.
“I only thought, this being your first case, you’d just observe,” she told him.
“This is my first homicide, not my first case,” he corrected. He wasn’t some wet-behind-the-ears rookie to stand in awe of her. If that was what she wanted, she should have gone with one of the department’s newly minted detectives, not him. “The actor just brought up some questions for me. Sorry, was I supposed to clear them with you first before asking him?”
It wasn’t exactly a belligerent question, at lea
st not in tone. But she could feel him challenging her nonetheless. Rules and boundaries needed to be established, here and now. Or maybe she was just reading too much into it. These days, she wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
Maybe she just needed to unwind. Find a way to relax a little. She wondered what her sisters were doing after work tonight. Bridget was usually all caught up in her fiancé these days, but that still left Kari.
Maybe she’d give Kari a call—after she called Thomas to ask him to look into her new partner’s background. She’d feel a lot better if she knew the kind of person she would be working with. Hotshots and red-hot investigators tended to come across the same way sometimes. It would be good to have a second opinion on what, exactly, she had on her hands here.
“Well, was I?” Abilene pressed.
Kendra blinked, then realized that she’d lost the thread of the conversation. She needed to ask for clarification—and that annoyed her.
“Were you what?” she asked, sparing him a quick glance as she eased the car to a stop at a red light.
Abilene suppressed an impatient sigh. “Was I supposed to clear it with you first before I asked the actor any questions?” This time, there was an edge to his tone.
That would be nice.
She knew the detective was being sarcastic. She supposed, in his place, she would have felt the same way.
Okay, so she was being testy. But that was because she didn’t like change and she didn’t like the fact that he had a way of looking at her that made her stomach muscles cramp up.
Kendra did her best to temper her own voice. “Of course not. I was just surprised to hear you asking questions, that’s all.”
Matt decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. Shrugging, he stood down and relaxed again. Maybe the woman wasn’t a class-A pain in the butt. She just came across like one. But maybe she had a reason to—one that he intended to find out, provided there was a reason.
“Look,” he said amicably, “there’s going to be a period of adjustment. I get that. If we’re going to make this work, then we need to get things out in the open.”
She was on her guard again. “What things?” she asked.
“Things that bother us about the other person.”
She could feel his eyes on her. It made her feel like squirming. So much for a truce. She would still hang on to the hope that this collaboration of theirs was only temporary.
Kendra made a right turn at the next corner. “I’ve got a better idea.”
“Okay, I’m game.”
Pushing down on the gas, she flew through the next light just as it was turning red. She wanted to spend as little time in close quarters with this man as possible. For some reason, he seemed to deplete her oxygen supply. “Why don’t we just see if we can find out who killed Summer Miller and just where Ryan Burnett ultimately ran off to.”
He laughed shortly. Yeah, that was definitely another option. “You mean just work the case.”
Kendra continued to look straight ahead as she drove. “I mean just work the case.”
Abilene tempered the sarcastic retort that rose to his lips. “It might surprise you to know, but that was what I was doing when you asked me what I was doing,” he told her.
Kendra blew out a breath. Maybe the key to surviving this union was to exchange as few words as possible—and to keep to well-ventilated areas. “Point taken. Okay, Abilene, as you were.”
He grinned. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Kendra wondered just how long she had to wait before she could officially request a change of partners without having the chief think that she was being unreasonable.
Chapter 4
Utilizing a couple of prominent social networks, a little more than an hour into her internet search, Kendra discovered that Summer Miller had no immediate family in the state.
The only listed relative turned out to be a distant cousin, someone named Sandra Hill, who lived in Springfield, Illinois.
But even that proved to be a dead end. When she tracked down the cousin’s phone number and tried it, she was informed by an automated voice that the number she had dialed was “no longer in service.”
Dropping the handset back into the cradle, Kendra sighed and shook her head.
Abilene looked up from the list of newly accumulated phone numbers related to the case. “Something wrong?”
“Just hit a dead end, that’s all.” Her frown deepened as she stared at the last site she’d pulled up. “Hopefully not the first of many,” she commented. In response to the questioning rise of Abilene’s eyebrow—the extraneous thought that her partner had incredibly well-shaped eyebrows for a man floated through her head out of nowhere—Kendra filled him in. “The victim’s cousin’s phone is currently disconnected and I can’t seem to find anyone else to call.”
Although relieved not to have to notify a grieving family member of the young woman’s untimely death, she felt sad to think that no one was there to make funeral arrangements for Summer Miller.
“Maybe there’s a roommate or a best friend who can supply us with the names we need,” Abilene suggested. “We can go check out where she lived. You still have her license, right?”
She’d almost forgotten about slipping that into her pocket. Her intent had been to drop the wallet off with her father at the crime lab—it would give her an opportunity to ask him some questions about the body—but then she’d gotten sidetracked. “Right.”
“All right, then. Let’s go,” he said, already on his feet. “We’ve got the address, let’s see if there’s a roommate or a talkative neighbor.”
Before she could rubber-stamp his suggestion, Abilene’s cell phone rang. He paused, digging it out of his shirt pocket. Glancing at the caller ID, it was his turn to frown. Without thinking, he dropped back into his chair and turned it almost 180 degrees, deliberately cutting himself off from his partner.
When he spoke, his voice dropped down a couple of decibels.
Either action would have aroused Kendra’s curiosity. That he did both increased her curiosity a hundredfold. Ever since she could remember, she’d always had this almost overwhelming desire to know—everything—to get to the bottom of any matter.
This was no different.
As she pretended to write out her notes and some of the points she wanted to touch on later, Kendra listened intently, taking in what Abilene was saying to whomever was on the other end of his call. Lucky for her, Kendra had excellent hearing because her partner’s voice was so low, it almost could have qualified for mental telepathy.
“No, I can’t right now.” He sighed, like a man searching for the right words and the strength not to raise his voice and yell in utter frustration. “You knew that this was going to be just temporary. Yes, you did,” he insisted. “You’re smart enough for that. No,” he said in a firmer voice. Then, in the next moment, as Kendra continued to eavesdrop, she heard her partner relent. “All right, all right, don’t cry,” he told the person on the other end—obviously a woman. She could tell from his tone that he was a man who really hated tears. “Okay, I’ll see you after work,” he agreed. “We’ll go out.” Abilene paused, listening. As did Kendra, trying to piece together what was going on without being obvious about it. “It’s the best I can do.”
With that, he terminated the call. Dropping the cell phone back into his pocket, Abilene blew out a frustrated breath. As he glanced toward his partner’s desk, it took him less than a second to come to the conclusion that she’d been listening in on his half of the conversation. Given her nature, it didn’t surprise him.
His eyes met hers and he waited. He wasn’t about to say anything unless she was.
He didn’t have long to wait.
“Former girlfriend you dumped?” she asked, nodding toward the pocket with the cell phone in it. Getting up, she pushed in her chair.
“No,” was all he said. They went into the hall together.
The single word vibrated with finality and an entire
collection of No Trespassing signs.
So be it, she felt in a moment of empathy. If the tables had been turned, she wouldn’t have wanted to be quizzed, either. She thought back to a little more than eighteen months ago. There’d been some really intense, poorly muffled conversations with Jason in the days before his suicide that she wouldn’t have wanted to repeat, either.
“Sorry,” she apologized, hitting the Down button for the elevator. “None of my business.”
He hadn’t thought that she was capable of an apology—at least, not one to him. Not when it came to something like this.
Because she had backed off, Matt found himself loosening up just a little.
“That was my mother,” he told her.
Kendra looked up at him sharply. That wouldn’t even have been her tenth guess.
“Your mother?” Kendra replayed the short conversation in her head, viewing it in a completely different light. She was still convinced that the other woman had been crying. Compassion flooded through her, not to mention a new, warm feeling as she regarded the man who’d been sitting across from her.
“You need to see her, I can cover for you,” she offered.
Matt shook his head. Running to his mother’s side wasn’t going to help anything—or change anything. “Thanks, but no. This isn’t anything new, even though she never seems to see it coming.” The elevator car arrived and they got in. He paused for a second, debating whether or not to say anything else, then shrugged. It wasn’t all that much of a big deal, he told himself. “My mother’s got a habit of getting mixed up with the wrong kind of men.”
Kendra thought of her desk and the brand-new notes she’d just written that now rested like so many new snowflakes on top of her other, older notes. Who knew—maybe that was ultimately Summer Miller’s story as well. “A lot of that going on lately.”
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