by Kylie Brant
"This one?" He lifted a cup someone had pointed to and groaned aloud. "Oh, no, thought you had it that time, I surely did. Have to tell you I don't even know where it's at myself."
"Look in your pocket," Shae suggested. All eyes in the room turned toward her. Pushing away from the door, she approached the table. "Give them their money back, Da. Every cent of it."
He looked up and beamed. "Shae, angel of my heart, look at you, beautiful as an Irish morn."
Since the closest her father had been to Ireland was a pub in Queens, the compliment lacked sincerity. "The money?" Her voice was edged in steel. "Now." Their gazes did battle for a moment, before he moved the cups around with lightning-like speed and then lifted one with a flourish, producing delighted murmurs from the group.
"There you go now," he told them magnanimously. "Never had any intention of keeping a dime of it." The fact that he could utter such a bald-faced lie without batting an eyelash was a testament to both long practice and absent conscience.
Shae waited until the money had been collected before saying, "If everyone wouldn't mind, I need a little privacy with my father." She watched grim-faced as his newfound friends gave him friendly goodbyes before filing out of the room.
Ryan beamed at her. "Look at you in those scrubs and coat. You look just like a doctor."
"I am a doctor. And this is a hospital. You aren't welcome here, Da, and if I ever find out you've been running your sidewalk scams here again, I'll call security."
He stacked the cups neatly on top of each other. "You left me no choice, Shae girl. Wouldn't answer my calls. Wouldn't call me back. Couldn't even get in to your apartment to see you." He gave her a wink. "That's a dandy little security system you got for yourself, by the way. Topnotch."
"Some people might take all those things as hints."
"You don't want to give me names for potential clients." He shrugged hugely. "I can accept that. All I want is a wee spot of cash to get my latest business venture started and I'll leave you alone."
"No names. No cash."
It was as if he hadn't heard her. He probably hadn't. Ryan O'Riley only heard what he wanted to. And no wasn't a word he was fond of. "I'll pay you back, of course. In lieu of interest, I can let you in on this deal, too. Make your investment back and then some."
She gave an incredulous laugh, shaking her head. He'd even fleece his own daughter without a second thought. "You'll never change. I don't know why that always surprises me. Maybe I'm more like you than I thought, because I won't change, either. I didn't fall for your lies when I was a kid and I won't now. You're wasting your breath."
Amazingly her words seemed to convince him. The ever present smile was wiped from his face. A surge of bitterness filled her, resentment for what this man had taught her about distrust. A lesson she'd learned all too well.
"I know you've always held your childhood against me." The sigh he gave could have been real. Probably wasn't.
"Thanks to you, I didn't have a childhood. I had an absent father, broken promises and more tutoring than necessary in the dangers of letting people too close."
He looked away. Swallowed hard. "Well, if that's true, then I am sorry for that. Because it's a cold world out there with no one close to you, Shae girl. Maybe I didn't make the best choices all the time when you were a kid. Maybe it hurt you in ways I never considered. But you've been grown up for a long time now. You can't blame your choices on your da anymore."
He got up, for once seeming every one of his years. He moved to the door slowly, then paused to look back at her. "You were always the toughest sell I ever tried to make. I could come home after being away months and dangle the silliest, sparkliest little bauble in front of you and you'd never once reach out for it. I could see in your eyes how much you wanted it sometimes. But you wouldn't make a grab. What I'm hoping is that if something comes around now, you'll take that step. Life is pretty dull without taking chances."
Blinking furiously, she said, "Ryan O'Riley's life motto."
He said nothing else. Opened the door and prepared to walk through it. She'd watched him walk away a hundred times before. She would never know why she stopped him this time. "Da." She moistened her lips when he looked back at her. "I… One of my patients is wanted by the police. He's called me, so there's a device on my line. It lets them trace the calls." Ryan's eyes widened. "There are a couple detectives outside when I'm here or at home. I just wanted you to know, so you don't get caught up in that."
He stared at her for a moment before smiling boyishly. "Well, I appreciate that, Shae, I surely do." One eye slid shut in a sly wink. "Don't you worry about me, though. I've always been careful."
She watched his retreating back, reflecting on his last words. Yes, she'd always been careful, too. For the first time in her life, though, she was wondering if it was possible to be too careful.
* * *
Chapter 14
« ^
"I don't know what we can do about it." Cade and Josh were walking back to the squad room after releasing Logan. "It's not like we can start searching every house on the lake that has a pool on the off chance we find LeFrenz in one of them."
"Maybe we should start patrolling that area, looking for the car."
The suggestion would take manpower they couldn't afford. "Maybe the lieutenant can get that turned over to the patrol units." Cade's voice stopped once he got back to the squad room and saw the man standing beside his desk. Walking away from Josh, he drawled, "Aren't you afraid the company's going to go belly-up with you running to the city every chance you get?"
James Tremaine, turned, grinned. "The mark of a well-managed company is that it doesn't need the CEO there every minute in order to operate smoothly."
The two men clapped each other on the back. "So what brings you to the city?" Dropping into his desk chair, he motioned for James to pull up a vacant seat. "Run out of that fancy wine you're so fond of?"
"Since you pilfer my wine cellar every chance you get, if I found myself short, I'd know where to look for it." James sat, with an eye to maintaining the crease in his trousers. "I need some information." With effort Cade hid his surprise. It wasn't often that James admitted to needing anything even from his family. "I'm looking for a private investigator who was in business years ago. This was the name of the company." He handed a slip of paper to Cade. "I can't find any record of it now, and I don't know the name of the employees who worked there."
"How long ago was it?"
"Twenty years."
"Okay." Cade put the paper in his notebook, where he'd remember it. "What's going on?"
James was already rising. "Just an old case the company hired out. I ran across some records and started wondering about it."
The explanation didn't quite satisfy Cade. "Twenty years ago you weren't even at the company. Why's it matter now?"
His brother gave a shrug. "Maybe I have too much time on my hands. It's a puzzle I want solved. I have to get back. I promised Sam and Juliette I'd pick up the wedding invitations."
Cade let that go, although the thought of James playing errand boy was laughable. There was no point in questioning his brother further, because it was obvious he wasn't in the mood to share more, at least not at the moment. But as he watched James's retreating back, his gaze fell to the slip of paper, and his naturally inquisitive nature took over. Two decades ago would have been the time of the accident that had taken their parents' lives.
He looked at the doorway James had disappeared through. What sort of twenty-year-old case would be puzzling his brother enough to request help for it? And what did it have to do with Tremaine Technologies?
His thoughts were interrupted when Lieutenant Howard came out of his office, looking grim. "An officer in Eighth just found a body in burnt-out car. Color and plates could match the one of the security tape at the Quik-Mart."
Cade was already shrugging into his jacket. "Do they know who it is?"
"The upper body is burned beyond recognition. Someone torched t
he car and guy. But they found I.D. on him belonging to Jonny LeFrenz."
The Orleans Parish coroner's office was never Cade's favorite destination. He and Birtch had waited in a couple folding chairs at the end of the hallway for their guy to get his turn with the coroner. Given the workload of the place, he knew how fortunate he was to get the case prioritized.
But now, standing next to the stainless steel table that held the stiff, it was hard to feel lucky. The stench of burned flesh and singed hair filled the room. He sent a glance to Birtch, who was making a valiant attempt to keep from retching. "Here." He passed him the bottle of wintergreen oil to rub on the inside of his mask. "Use this. It helps."
"If you're going to toss your cookies, do it in the sink over there. I'm expecting company." This attempt at a joke was accompanied by a cackle of merriment. The coroner, Herb Clements, was the best Cade had ever worked with, but his sense of humor left something to be desired.
Cade had often thought the man resembled a cadaver himself. Tall and thin, with a low brow and deep-set eyes, the man was rumored to curl up and nap on one of the autopsy tables when things were slow. It suited Cade not to believe that.
"So who's your friend, Tremaine?"
He knew Herb well enough to know that he was talking about the corpse, not Birtch. "I.D. says it's Jonny LeFrenz. We want to be sure."
Herb looked up at him. "The guy who downed one of your men at Charity?"
Cade nodded. "He was seen the night before last on Bourbon Street
. We don't know anything after that until he was found in the car. Looked like the vehicle had been set on fire."
"So the guy was probably dead when it was torched." Birtch was keeping his gaze fastened on his shoes.
"We'll see," Clements said reprovingly. He didn't like anyone drawing conclusions before he'd had a chance to do his examination. He took out his pocket-size tape recorder and turned it on to record the date, time, and identity of people in the room. Cade watched as he walked around the table, dictating the condition of the body and the clothes it was clad in.
Then he took photographs of the body from every angle before enlisting the detectives' help disrobing it. Each article of clothing was carefully placed in a separate bag and labeled. The shirt had to be cut away, and the remaining pieces dropped into another bag.
"So what's your priority, today, Tremaine? Time of death, cause of death or ID.?"
Cade knew the examination today would answer all three questions, but there was really only one he was interested in. "Identification first." He had to be certain that the bastard was dead. That was the only way Shae would be safe again.
"Any identifying marks you know of?"
"He had a tattoo on his back. Fright shoulder blade. A skull and crossbones."
Clements rolled the corpse over, pursed his lips. "Probably won't be able to be sure, at least not right away. Looks like the back of him took the brunt of it. Seat probably caught fire behind him."
"Any chance of getting a fingerprint?"
"Depends on the extent of the burns. Let's see." Clements picked up one of the hands. The burns had made the fingers curl into the palm. Setting it down, he walked around the table to examine the other. "You might get a decent print from the middle finger over here. It's not as bad as the rest on this hand."
Cade could hear Birtch take a deep breath, as if the sight of those blackened gnarled hands had made him queasy again. "Ink and cards in the same place?" He was already moving over to the set of cupboards in one corner.
"Don't get in a hurry," the coroner admonished. Cade waited impatiently while the man carefully searched beneath the fingernails of the corpse for trace evidence, before cutting the nails and sealing them in yet another bag. Then Cade pulled on a pair of gloves and, with no little difficulty, inked the fingertip Clements had suggested. The finger was stiff, making it difficult to roll across the card for a full print. When he was satisfied with the result, he looked over at Birtch. His face around his mask had a faintly green tinge, but he was still on his feet and looked steady enough.
"You going to be okay here?" When the other man nodded, he looked at Clements, who had picked up what looked like a pair of pruning shears. "I'm going back to headquarters to see if I can make a match. If this doesn't do it, we'll have to try DNA. We should be able to get samples to match from LeFrenz's apartment." He took off the mask and used it to wipe the wintergreen oil from his nose. Then he peeled off the gloves and tossed them away. The stench was going to be more difficult to get rid of. He knew from past experience that it would be in his hair, in his clothes.
"Call me when you find out," Birtch said. Nodding, Cade headed out the door.
Once back in his car, he reached for his phone and called the hospital while he drove to the Records Division. A nurse at the desk informed him that Dr. O'Riley had already left for the day. He was about to try her at home, then hesitated. On second thought, there was no reason to talk to her until he had a positive I.D. to report. And that was the reason he put his phone away again, he told himself firmly. Not because of a streak of cowardice he hadn't known he possessed.
Cade's eyes were trained on the city traffic, but his thoughts were on the scene in his apartment last night. It was difficult to imagine, given his expertise dealing with skittish witnesses, how he could have handled the situation any more poorly. But the situation had been too important, too personal, for finesse. Finesse would have only delayed the inevitable, at any rate.
He pulled into the building's parking lot, cruised for a spot. Every time he thought he'd reached Shae on any level, she fought to regain distance. Physically. Emotionally. And each time was like a keen-edged blade slicing into his chest. He didn't know when he'd let it matter this much. And he sure as hell didn't know what he was going to do about it.
Cade took the card with the corpse's fingerprint and handed it to the records division officer at the desk. The man would scan the print and feed it into the Automated Fingerprint Identification System. His cell phone rang, distracting him from the nerves knotted in his stomach as he waited for a match.
Lieutenant Howard's voice greeted him. "I got some news while you were out. Quentin's task-force team scored a big bust last night when they arrested that Trax gang member, Justus Davies. Davies was shot, but before he died, he admitted to being behind the shooting in City Park."
Cade felt a vise squeeze his chest. "Did he…" He took a deep breath, scrubbed his free hand over his jaw. "Do we know why yet?"
"Not yet." Sympathy tinged Howard's tone. "Maybe as they round up the rest of the gang, some might spill more details. But this is partial closure, at least, for Carla. Do you want to tell her?"
"Yeah." The lieutenant ended the conversation a few moments later, leaving Cade to his ghosts. Brian's killer had been caught. He tried to feel something. Anything. But there was no sense of justice. No feeling of retribution. Only emptiness. Because a good man was still dead, and they still didn't know why. Life wasn't always neat. And some questions never found answers.
He released a breath. He'd call Carla later, once he'd gotten home. He hoped she'd get more satisfaction from the news than he did.
Several minutes later, the machine signaled a match. A measure of tension seeped out of him. This at least, would close the door on the danger facing Shae. He knew how important it was to her to get her life back under control. Without complications. Without him in it.
He leaned forward to examine the information on the computer screen. Then he froze. Blinked. Stared again.
The computer had come up with a match all right. Trouble was, the print didn't belong to Jonny LeFrenz, but one Frederick "Freddie" Latham.
Brian's missing snitch.
Someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to make sure everyone thought Jonny LeFrenz was dead.
Cade bolted away from the computer and headed for the door. A feeling of foreboding descended, dark and heavy. And it wouldn't be lifted until he'd seen Shae again and made su
re she was all right.
When her doorbell rang, it took conscious effort to quiet her rocketing pulse. Logically she knew it wasn't Cade, even if he'd found someone to let him in. But logic didn't always dictate emotion.
Looking through the door's peephole, she saw TeKayla's gap-toothed grin. The little girl was giggling. Something inside Shae lightened. Hopefully the child had gotten over her disappointment and forgiven her. Smiling, she flipped off the alarm system, unlocked the door and pulled it open. "You don't know how happy I am to see you."
"Angel Eyes." Jonny LeFrenz stepped away from the wall he'd been leaning against. Beside the door. Out of sight. With lightning speed he had his hands on the little girl's shoulders, holding her in front of him. His smile was ugly. "I'm glad to see you, too. Let us in."
Her gaze riveted on the grip he had on the girl, Shae had no choice but to swing the door open, allow them both entry. Blind panic had wiped her mind clean. All she could think was that the worst had happened. Someone else had been caught up in the situation because of her.
"Surprise, Dr. Shae!" The little girl's squeal was delighted. "You din't know your cousin was coming to see you, did you? Did I do good, Dr. Shae? He made me promise not to ruin the secret."
She couldn't even manufacture a plastic smile. "You did real good, honey. Now maybe you should go back outside. Let me talk to … my cousin."
"Cute kid." LeFrenz's hands flexed on the girl's shoulders. "Maybe she should stay."
Icebergs bumped in Shae's veins. "We have a lot of catching up to do. It'll be easier to do alone."
"Maybe you're right. I know where to find her if I need to." His warning couldn't have been clearer.
"Go to your apartment, honey." A thin thread of desperation sounded in Shae's voice.
But TeKayla was already skipping out the door. "I can play outside. My mom's home and she said so."
Her phone began ringing. Once. Twice. Again. She made no move toward it. Instead, she watched helplessly as LeFrenz swung the door shut and stalked toward her. "You look surprised. Don't know why. I promised you I'd be around to see you, didn't I?"