Detective on the Hunt

by Marilyn Pappano

  And Quint hadn’t come to peace with the reality of his loved one’s death.

  Just as Maura hadn’t come to peace with hers.

  Feeling unusually grim for a fresh new morning full of promise, JJ slid out of bed and walked to the bathroom in her socks, underwear and button-down shirt. Her hair stood on end, her eye makeup was smudged and her morning breath could strip varnish from a door. It was a scary thing for so early in the morning.

  A hot shower with lots of soap, suds and shampoo made her feel much better. She dressed, reapplied makeup, tidied the room and moved the files to the desk beside the windows. Traffic passed regularly on First Street, occasionally a voice called to another, and water dripped steadily from the roof edge, trickling to the sidewalk below.

  She had two sets of files from Mr. Winchester, sent as digital copies before she left home. Though both were on her tablet, she’d brought paper copies, too. She luxuriated in the digital world, but when it came to cookbooks and evidence, she liked books she could handle, paper she could write on, files she could spread out and see all once. In some old-fashioned part of her, it made details more knowable.

  The first set of files were condensed versions of Maura’s monthly expenses, covering the year before she’d arrived in Cedar Creek. The second set were credit card and bank records for the past six months. JJ felt naked without cash in her pocket, even if for nothing more than an emergency Pepsi, but not so Maura. Her withdrawals for cash were rare and minimal.

  She glanced through some of the pre-Oklahoma expenses. Seven hundred fifty dollars for a haircut and color. Twelve thousand dollars and change for clothing. Just under $18,000 for meals and drinks. Another $10,000 for jewelry. Fifteen thousand for shoes. In one freaking month. For one freaking person who already had closets filled with clothes and shoes that she never wore.

  She could have bought her own hotel for the money she’d spent on rooms, her own restaurant for the price of meals out. Her entertainment costs, translating to clubs and parties, averaged twenty to thirty thousand a month, depending on her location.

  What could JJ do with an extra hundred grand a month? Pay off her condo and her sisters’ houses. Give freely to every charity she supported. Fund her nieces’ college educations. She could send her parents on a luxury cruise. Support an animal shelter. She could buy a wicked-expensive pair of boots, take a few vacations, beef up her retirement account and...

  She couldn’t think of anything else.

  She liked working, once she removed the Dipstick factor from the equation. Liked traveling so seldom that it was special. Liked cooking her own meals and cleaning up after herself. Liked knowing what was in her closet and where she would be next month and that her friends loved her for herself because she had nothing to give them but herself.

  “Don’t ever get rich, sweetie,” she murmured. “You would fail spectacularly at it.”

  When her cell rang, she reached automatically to answer it, thought of her unpleasant awakening and checked caller ID. It was Quint, calling as he’d said he would. “Have you ever spent $700 on a haircut,” she began, skipping the greeting, “or $49,000 on your own birthday party?”

  There was a moment of silence before he mentally caught up. “My barber charges eight bucks. I pay her twelve because she’s my sister-in-law and she lets me sit at the kitchen table instead of making me go to the shop. And my entire family would never spend $49,000 on birthday parties in forty-nine years.” He paused, the radio audible in the background. “Are you seeing how the other half—more like half of half a percent—live?”

  “Yeah. It’s pretty astonishing. In the past six months, Maura’s spent $11,000 on facials and cosmetics. She’s twenty-five. How much help can she possibly need to look good?”

  “She was a little scary yesterday.”

  He was right about that. She’d been a pale reflection of the beautiful girl JJ had seen at the Evanses’ funerals five years ago. Losing weight, drinking and spending millions of dollars with little to show for it was evidently harder than it looked.

  And grieving, she reminded herself, feeling guilty that she’d left out the biggest factor in Maura’s downfall.

  “I would dearly appreciate a raise of ten or twenty thousand dollars. Hell, I’d be happy with five. It would be awfully nice to have a bit of a cushion in the budget. But there’s not a soul alive who could sell me a $9,500 pair of jeans. Or an $800 pair of sweatpants. Or a ninety-dollar lipstick. Maura bought eight of them at the same time.”

  “And yet you manage to look beautiful at a fraction of the price.”

  JJ’s breath caught, a hitch in her chest that came with a moment’s sharp throb. She wished he was sitting across from her so she could see his face, his eyes. Was he teasing, the way her fellow officers at home so often did, or just tossing a careless comment into the conversation, the way her mom and sisters did?

  Or did he, maybe, really think she was pretty? No, not pretty. Beautiful.

  She would really like for him to think she was beautiful. She certainly thought he was.

  When she drew a breath, it was unsteady, but her voice sounded totally normal. “Just think how good I could look if I didn’t buy my cosmetics at the drugstore.”

  There was another moment’s silence—did he regret the remark?—then he quietly said, “I don’t believe there are degrees of beautiful.”

  It was a good thing she was sitting, because sweet, warm heat washed over her, weakening her muscles, making her nerves quiver. She was glad he wasn’t sitting across from her, because she was fairly sure he never would have made the remark to her face. He was taciturn. Scowly and growly. Grieving.

  Not ready to move on? Or maybe thinking ever so slightly about it?

  Before the quiet became awkward, he changed subjects with relief evident in his voice. “If we want to talk to Zander today, we should head over to his house soon. He stays out late, sleeps in late. He doesn’t always sleep in his own bed, but it’s a place to start.”

  “I can be ready in five minutes.”

  “I’m sitting out front.”

  Leaning forward, she parted the blinds so she could see out and rolled her eyes at the sight of his truck. “I’ll be right down.”

  Chapter 6

  Beautiful? Quint scrubbed his hands over his face. Where had that come from? Sure, he’d been thinking it, but he hadn’t meant to say it. He wasn’t the sort to give compliments like that to people. He’d never told anyone that but Linny, and with her it had been so obviously true that there’d been no point in not saying it.

  But JJ was cute. Pretty, even. And okay, he’d woken up this morning with her image in his head. When he’d taken her back to the hotel after dinner, he had walked upstairs to her room with her, waited while she unlocked the door, set down her bag and took off her coat. She had come back, still wearing that orange hat and that broad, bright smile that came so naturally to her and lit up her entire face, and he’d been...

  Words and emotions had come more naturally to him before Linny died. Not communicating had become a habit. Not feeling. It was how he’d survived. Now, after so many months of isolating himself, sometimes he had to stop and think to find the right thing to say, to recognize the proper emotion. It had become his default behavior.

  Even now, after far too much thinking, he really wasn’t sure what he felt for JJ. Drawn to her? She was pretty. Confident. Sexy. Forthright. And who wouldn’t be drawn to that bright smile when their own smiles had disappeared?

  Tempted by her? Maura had proved he could be tempted. Then, in that situation, he’d had to resist. Giving in to her would have been the lowest point of his life without Linny. But giving in to JJ would be...

  She suddenly appeared at the passenger door, smiling, lively, brimming with energy. In deference to the warmer weather, her coat wasn’t done up to her neck, and the hat and gloves were missing from her out
fit. She wore jeans again, a light blue shirt and a darker blue pullover, and she brought with her a cloud of sweet fragrance and cool air when she climbed into the seat. She tossed her bag on the back floorboard, belted up and focused her gaze on him. “I could get used to being chauffeured around.”

  I could get used to doing it. Hell, he’d gotten used to things a whole lot less pleasant. Of course, he didn’t say that out loud. “What? Your chief won’t assign you a driver? Doesn’t he believe life was better when the little woman didn’t drive?”

  “Or vote. Or have an opinion.” She screwed up her face as she rubbed her nose. “He called this morning. Told me to report back to him instead of Winchester and he would decide what to pass on. Reminded me that I work for him. For the moment.”

  Quint shook his head as he pulled away from the curb. He understood her reasons for staying in Evanston. They were the same reasons he stayed in Cedar Creek. He could have gone to any city in the state, to any state in the union, and done more exciting work for more money and better benefits. But Cedar Creek was home. What it lacked in opportunities, it made up for in comforts. Linny had felt the same way.

  “At least you’re out of his reach for the moment. Experiencing cool weather. Eating great food.”

  “Hanging out with good people.” She fumbled in her pocket and came up with a pair of sunglasses.

  Not being able to see her eyes didn’t lessen the intensity of her gaze one bit.

  “Is there anything I should know about Zander before we get there?”

  “You’ve seen the highlights of his record. He chooses family over cops every time. He probably won’t be there. Hank probably will. He collects disability from a bad back that keeps him from working but hasn’t stopped him from playing basketball with his buddies—put one of them through a plate glass window last summer—or spending hunting season in the woods. Zander’s got a sister, Zoey, and a brother, Zeke. Zeke’s in jail over in Norman, but Zoey’s been a guest of the city almost as often as Zander has. She’s tough.”

  “What about Mom?”

  An image of Marisa the last time he’d seen her formed in Quint’s mind: thin, weary, looking a bad ten years older than she was. “Works twelve-hour shifts five or six days a week at the nursing home over on Aspen. Tries to be a calming influence, or used to, but raising hell is what the rest of the family does best.”

  “Wow. Sounds like the poster family for birth control. I’m guessing there are no grandkids yet?”

  That was a thought that would scare all the official types who had to deal with the family. “Please, God, no.”

  Odd. He hadn’t said that in a long time. God had let him down. He’d figured he would return the favor. But there it was, without even thinking.

  He turned toward the north side of town. The Bensons’ neighborhood, a single street two blocks long and halfway up the big hill, had never been a good one. When Hank and Marisa got married, he hadn’t moved out of his mother’s house; he’d just moved his wife in. Before Mrs. Benson had gone to the same nursing home where her daughter-in-law worked, she’d signed the property over to Hank, and the endless cycle of neglect and disrepair had continued.

  It wasn’t just that the house was old. It wasn’t that it had been cheaply built by relatives who hadn’t known what they were doing. It was a total lack of desire on anyone’s part to actually do anything with it. When a screen fell off, it stayed where it landed. When a window was broken by one of the kids, they taped a piece of cardboard over it. The only paint on the siding was sprayed on by Hank to cover up obscenities sprayed there by Zoey. The grass never got mowed, not even when the city levied fines against them, and the trash they threw down never got picked up.

  No wonder Marisa worked so many hours away and Hank and the kids didn’t object to spending time in jail. There was nothing homey about this place.

  “Sometimes I forget that every town has its less desirable areas.” JJ’s head swiveled from left to right, from one ramshackle house to another. All of them were better maintained than the Benson house, but they were still sad. The residents were elderly, having lived their entire lives on that street, or poor. They had nowhere else to go.

  The Bensons were just too damn lazy to care. Five adults, each with a regular income, could afford so much better than this. But only one of the adults had that regular income, he reminded himself.

  The street was still covered with snow and ice. Overhead, tree branches blocked the sun, and the hill rising up to the west rerouted the winds elsewhere. The Benson yard was patchy with new weeds and snow that partially covered their garbage. A half-buried hot water tank here, an old tire there, the chassis of an ancient pickup over there, two three-legged chairs nearby.

  There were two vehicles in the driveway: Hank’s battered Chevy and Zoey’s equally battered Mustang. Quint assumed Zeke’s car was wherever he’d been arrested this time and that Marisa’s was at her job. Zander had a motorcycle, which meant he often sneaked out with whoever’s car he could find the keys to when the weather was bad.

  Quint shut off the engine, took a breath and climbed out. JJ would have gone first up to the porch with its sagging support posts and broken steps, but he laid his hand on her arm. “You were a kid when you ducked that punch you told me about. You might want to stay behind me until it’s clear.”

  “Are you implying I’m old?” she asked, brows raised as if she was certain he couldn’t have actually said that. Before she could go further, the front door opened with a scrape and a groan. Hank Benson, six foot two and gone soft, stood there in sweatpants, a dirty T-shirt and socks. It was early for both the beer and the cigarette he held.

  “Hey, Quint, you seen Zeke lately?”

  “Last I checked, he was in lockup over in Cleveland County.”

  “Huh. Yeah, I seem to remember he was going over there to Norman for something. Dumb kid.” Hank scratched his jaw with the hand that held the cigarette. “Zander ain’t here, either, so that leaves me and Zoey, and I ain’t been outta the house in a week. Had a cold.” He coughed a few times for effect.

  Quint hid his grimace. If he considered how many germs he was exposed to in the daily course of his duties, he’d hole up in his bedroom and never come out. “Can we come in, Hank?”

  “Sure.”

  Hank stepped away from the door, and Quint grasped the metal handle of the wood-frame screen door. Considering the top half of the screen had been ripped loose and dragged across the porch floor, it wasn’t exactly functional, but he’d bet it hadn’t occurred to anyone to fix it or take it down.

  “Hey, Hank, don’t tell—”

  “Zoey! Police here for you!” Hank bellowed down the hall.

  The missile came from that direction, an opened bottle, spewing beer all along its trail. Quint reached behind him, catching JJ’s arm, and backed her up and to the right as the bottle slammed into the door frame, inches from his shoulder, then clunked to the floor.

  “What the hell—” JJ’s muscles were tight beneath his hand, her voice tipping somewhere between curiosity and anger.

  “She usually throws it hard enough to break,” he murmured, then raised his voice. “Come out where I can see you, Zoey.”

  After a moment, the girl—woman—stepped into view in the kitchen. Like her father, she wore sweatpants, a T-shirt and socks. Unlike him, she wasn’t the least bit soft. She was an inch taller than JJ and fifteen pounds lighter, and she swore, drank and fought like her brothers. Linny had been convinced Zoey was full of potential to bring men to their knees with nothing more than a seductive smile. Quint knew men went weak around her because they were scared to death of her. They found it hard to notice how pretty and sexy a woman might be when she was threatening to beat the tar out of them.

  “Let me see your hands,” he directed, and she obeyed with a sardonic smile. “We’re coming in to talk, okay?”

  “We
?” she echoed. Her gaze dropped to the floor—apparently, most of JJ was hidden behind his bulk, but her feet must have been visible—then she lifted onto her toes and leaned to one side. He released his hold on JJ, and she stepped out to his right, as anxious to see as Zoey was.

  With Hank bringing up the rear, they walked the short hall and into the kitchen. A wobbly table sat to the left, a mess of wrappers and bottles, both empty and full. Quint didn’t bother to look at the kitchen area. Dirty dishes, stale food, spills, trash. He’d seen it all before.

  “Don’t know why you couldn’t have thrown an empty bottle,” Hank muttered as he slid into a chair. “You’re gonna have to clean that up before your mother gets home.”

  Zoey ignored him and Quint and walked right up to JJ. The need to put himself between them niggled along Quint’s spine, but JJ wouldn’t appreciate it, and Zoey... Hell, no one knew how Zoey might take it.

  “I don’t know you,” she said flatly. “I know all the cops in town. I know all the cops in the county. Hell, I probably know all the state cops in Troop B. Who are you?”

  “JJ Logan.” JJ drew her hand from her pocket, showing her ID.

  “South Carolina. You can’t be after me, then. I’ve never been any farther east than Arkansas.” Zoey crossed her arms over her chest. “I heard you say Zeke’s in jail—idiot—so that means you’re here about Zander. Or his South Carolina girlfriend. Tell me what you want to know, and what I get for telling you, and maybe we can make a deal.”

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, JJ found herself in Zoey’s bedroom. It reminded her of descriptions she’d read of nuns’ rooms at convents: tiny, sparsely furnished, severely undecorated. There was a twin bed that fit so tightly between the walls that it must be hell to change the sheets, a small bureau and a half dozen wooden cubes stacked together. Only the exterior wall had Sheetrock. The other three had been framed to create the room, then left unfinished, studs exposed and used for shelving.