Murder in the River City

by Allison Brennan

  “Don’t sound surprised.”

  “I’m not. I just didn’t realize you’d bought it. You used to drive by it all the time.”

  Shauna was stunned he remembered.

  “I’m fine. I’m home. Mike’s coming over. You can go.”

  He shook his head. “We need to talk.”

  She unlocked her door. “Ten minutes.”

  “Shauna—”

  “Sam, I’m done, okay? I get it now. Let the cops do their job. Obviously, Detective Black is taking me seriously now, and that’s all I wanted.”

  “I take you seriously, Shauna. We’re going to catch whoever killed Mack and attacked you.”

  She knew Sam would try, and perhaps that was all she should expect.

  Shauna walked through her too-hot house and turned on the lumbering air-conditioning unit in the dining room. At least one room would be inhabitable. She then went to the back of the house to the kitchen and grabbed a beer from the refrigerator. It wasn’t quite cool enough—the refrigerator seemed to work double time to keep everything at 42 degrees rather than 38, but it was better than nothing.

  Sam followed her. “This place is amazing.”

  A smile escaped. “I think so. It’s going to take me a while to do what I want with it. And I’m not going to half-ass anything. I know what I want, and I’m going to do it right the first time.”

  “You’ve always known what you want.” He nodded toward the refrigerator. “Can I have one too?”

  “If you can drink it in eight minutes. Because that’s all you have left.” Shauna handed him a bottle then went to the dining room and stood in front of the monster of an air conditioning unit. The dining room was more a dining hall, and she used half of it for her small square table and the other half was arranged as a living area because it was the coolest room in the house. “Can you believe someone cut into the wall to put this unit in? I can’t wait until I can afford central air.”

  She sat in the over-stuffed chair and put her feet on the ottoman. Sam perched on the edge of the sofa across from her. “Are you really okay?” he asked.

  “Yes. Sore, embarrassed, angry. And worried.”

  Sam frowned. “About the guy coming after you? I won’t let that happen.”

  “I’m not worried about him coming after me. He doesn’t care about me. He cares about whatever he was looking for.”

  “Shauna, everything about this case, on the surface, connects to the rash of robberies downtown. However, this break-in tells us there’s something more to Mack’s murder than what’s on the surface. We’re digging deeper into Mack’s life—you might not like what we find.”

  “If we find his killer, I can handle anything else.”

  “We? You mean Sac PD.”

  “Of course.” Sam looked at her with skepticism, and Shauna said, “I get it, Sam. I’m not a cop. You’re the cop. You do your job. I’ll do mine. Which is not being a cop.”

  He grinned at her. “I’m glad you have our roles figured out. And now that I know you’re better, run me through what happened today at Mack’s apartment.

  Shauna went through it all again, though she’d told Sam and John most everything she remembered when they were at the apartment.

  “The beer is gone—the bottles and the carton in the refrigerator,” Sam said. “You said there was a receipt. Do you remember which store?”

  She thought for a moment, then snapped her fingers. “Yes! Natomas Fast Gas, which is right at the freeway exit, time stamped Saturday just after midnight. Mack would have gotten off work at one in the morning, later if it was really busy, so he didn’t buy it.”

  “You don’t know for certain—”

  “It’s easy to check. Mack would have run the cash receipts on the register. That’ll be time-stamped.”

  “Let’s assume someone else brought the beer,” Sam asked. “Does Mack have a girlfriend?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “That’s most likely.”

  Shauna agreed, but said, “I don’t think it was a girlfriend. It was a man who tied me up, and he’s the one who took the beer.”

  “We can run it down.”

  Sam took a long drink of his beer and tried not to stare at Shauna. Shauna was calm, she even seemed to be warming to him. He wasn’t going to hold out hope that he could undo the damage he’d inflicted two years ago when she came to him—but he really wanted to turn back the clock and take back everything he’d said. He was free, she was free, he was back in Sacramento, she wasn’t going anywhere.

  Don’t go there, Garcia.

  He just wanted to keep the peace. Be friends. He didn’t want this tension between them. It was going to give him an ulcer.

  “I know it, um, was awkward when, um, I left Sacramento.”

  “Awkward?”

  “We’ve been friends for a long time.”

  “Friends,” she said flatly.

  Oh God, he’d really put his foot in it now. “I mean, our families.”

  “Family. Right. I’m the little sister you never had.”

  It felt like the temperature went up ten degrees. The air conditioner didn’t do squat. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Oh?” She raised an eyebrow and leaned forward. He could see the tops of her breasts where the curve of her sundress was unbuttoned.

  “I just meant,” he said, “that we’re going to be seeing each other, even after this investigation is over. A lot. I mean, Mike and I are still friends. And, um, I like Dooley. I hope we can go back to the way things used to be.” That’s not what he wanted. He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to take her to bed. But first things first. He’d hurt her, and the best way of winning her over was to court her back. Maybe. He hoped. Right now, with that odd look on her face that reminded him strangely of a cat ready to pounce, he wondered if he was wrong.

  “Me, too,” she said in a low voice.

  Something was very wrong, and Sam wasn’t sure what he’d done. “Good,” he said and smiled, but his smiled wavered when she smiled back, because something had shifted. What was she thinking? He didn’t know if he really wanted to know.

  He jumped up. “I should go. Mike will be here any minute.”

  “I’ll walk you out.” She stood and walked across the room. He stared at her legs as she left, then drained his beer before following.

  She stood at the front door and said, “Let me know what you and Detective Black find out, okay?”

  “Of course. And you should go to the station and look at mug shots in the morning, okay?”

  “Okay.” She smiled and put her arms around his neck. He was so shocked he wondered if she was drunk. Of course she wasn’t. He didn’t think she’d even finished her beer.

  “Sam,” she said in a low, sexy voice. “Your brotherly concern is touching. I mean, I have three brothers, why not four?”

  As she spoke she leaned in close to his face.

  He wanted her. He wanted to kiss her, to touch her, to carry her to her bedroom and make love to her. He leaned in, his heart pounding, remembering that kiss two years ago, the kiss of promises, the kiss he hadn’t been able to forget.

  Her lips touched his… then she moved and kissed his cheek. “See you tomorrow.”

  Chapter Ten

  Wednesday

  Sam had spent all morning on the phone trying to retrace Callie Wood’s last steps, but she was elusive. He’d talked to her parents who were justifiably upset, but they hadn’t spoken to her in four years. He’d learned a little about her childhood and how she got in with the wrong crowd. It angered him as much as it saddened him. Callie seemed to have had an average middle-class upbringing, two parents who were still married, and two younger siblings who were both now in college. But she’d thrown it away to chase after a boy who had led her into a life of drugs and theft.

  While Sam was working on the Callie Wood case, Shauna had gone through all the mug shots that fit the description of the man who had attacked her. But she hadn’t had a good l
ook at him, and there were no distinguishing features. That he was Caucasian, six feet tall, and approximately 180 pounds was the best she could do. She left to go to work, and Sam was still on the phone.

  John came in and tossed a list of names in front of him. “Shauna emailed me Dooley’s employee list yesterday, but I just got it this morning. Look at the terminated employees.”

  Sam scanned the list.

  Callie Wood.

  “Wait,” Sam said.

  “You see the connection?”

  “Yes—and now Simone’s preliminary report makes sense, but I need to ask her something.” Sam dialed Simone’s direct line and put her on speaker.

  “Simone, it’s Sam Garcia and John Black.”

  “Hello, boys.”

  “I have a question about your report on my victim from Discovery Park, Callie Wood.”

  “Ask away, you have two minutes.”

  “You wrote that there was broken glass at the scene that was mirrored glass inconsistent with glass on motor vehicles.”

  “Correct.”

  “Did you find any of this mirrored glass on the victim?”

  She said, “There was trace fragments on her neck, around the area she’d been strangled, and in her hair. Microscopic. But there was none on her shoes, so she didn’t step in it. However, I found crushed mirror fragments where the killer was standing while he strangled her. I postulate he had stepped on a mirror and pieces were embedded in his shoes. That transferred to the concrete at Discovery Park.”

  “Can you compare it to glass from another crime scene and see if it matches?”

  “Probably. We’re talking small amounts here, but I think I have enough to work with.”

  “Would you please compare it to the broken mirror from the Mack Duncan homicide?”

  Simone said, “Huh. You think they’re connected?”

  “Callie Wood was fired two months ago for stealing from the cash register.”

  “I’ll get my guys on it, but I’m slammed right now.”

  John said, “But you’re confident the mirror you found at Discovery Park is not from a vehicle.”

  “Yes, absolutely. And I can safely say that it was thick enough to have been from a bar mirror. I just can’t give you anything definitive right now.”

  “That’s good enough for now, Simone. Thanks.” Sam hung up and looked at John. “Our cases are connected.”

  John flipped through the reports. “Time of death for Duncan was 10:30, time of death for Wood was 11:30, take or leave. Wood had to have been involved with the murder.”

  “What if she went there with her latest boyfriend to steal the baseballs—she’d probably know the Babe Ruth was a forgery—and things got out of hand?”

  “Why kill her?”

  “Maybe she didn’t want to hurt Duncan, just steal the balls, and threatened to turn in her boyfriend. Or he thought she might.”

  John nodded. “Possible. Except there were at least two people in the bar.”

  “Callie Wood and her boyfriend?”

  “Not if she didn’t have glass on her shoes. We have footprints in the crushed glass so distinct that we can identify two males, one with a size twelve shoe, one with a size eleven. The prints weren’t so distinctive that we could get distinguishable markings, however.

  “Callie Wood is”— he looked at the report from Simone—“a size seven shoe.”

  “So they go to rob the place, she knows about the baseballs, and for a drug user, four thousand bucks is a good score,” John said.

  “Her two partners get out of hand. Or maybe Mack tries to chase them out with a baseball bat and they overpower him. Were there defensive wounds?”

  John nodded. “He had a broken arm and bruising on his upper back and shoulders. He was beaten before they used the bat on his head.”

  “A lot of rage.”

  “The guys may have been pumped up after killing him, maybe Callie was upset and they took it out on her.”

  Sam considered that. “She wasn’t beaten. She was strangled quickly and efficiently, according to the autopsy report.”

  “Taking out a witness?”

  Sam worried about Shauna. She’d been in Mack’s apartment, and it was likely that one of his killers had been the one to attack her. He must have known he didn’t have enough time to find what he was looking for and get out.”

  “I’ll talk to Patrick Dooligan and his staff about Callie Wood and her known associates, you check out her apartment,” John said.

  #

  The door to the outer office of Murphy & Sons jingled. Shauna called out, “I’ll be right with you!” and exited out of her accounting program. The business had been in the red for the last three years, though barely, and then her father had his heart attack and everyone felt they would go under. They were now almost in the black, and Shauna had a plan so that by the next fiscal year, they’d be back on solid ground. Enough so that she could hire an office manager and she could do what she did best—architectural design.

  Murphy & Sons was not her father and his sons, but her grandfather Frank Murphy, Senior and his five sons, her father being the oldest. Over the years, her uncles peeled away from the business, leaving only her dad to run it. And though all her brothers had worked at least part-time and summers for the business, none of them stuck around, either. That her paternal grandfather had died of a heart attack twenty years ago made Shauna even more worried about her sixty-year-old dad.

  “Hello, Shauna.”

  The familiar voice in her doorway surprised her. She looked up, nearly giving herself whiplash. “Jason!”

  Her former fiancé. Who had been in prison for three years for insurance fraud. He’d been charged with more, but that was all the DA was able to make stick, and he ended up serving only half his time. She knew he’d been out for six months, but she’d heard through mutual friends that he’d moved to San Francisco.

  “Is that pleasurable surprise or shocked surprise?”

  “Both?” she said, more shocked than anything.

  What happened with Jason had been one of the most difficult things she’d gone through as an adult. They’d been friends for years—since college—and she had liked him. Loved him, for a time. They had the same interests and same sense of humor and he’d been her best friend.

  Though she’d believed in his guilt—especially after he cut a deal with the DA—she’d stood by him—at least as a friend. Their wedding, however, was cancelled, and there was no going back.

  He stepped into her office. “You’re even more gorgeous than I remember,” he said.

  “You don’t look bad, either.” Jason Butler was one of the most beautiful men she’d ever met. Cover model gorgeous. He’d been voted Most Eligible Bachelor when they got out of college and he started working as an investment banker. He never let the recognition go to his head. In fact, he seemed amused by the whole thing.

  Shauna also believed people should be forgiven. She’d sat in the back of the courtroom where he’d plead guilty to insurance fraud and was contrite and humble. She thought he’d sounded sincere, and she’d told him as much before he went to prison. He’d asked her to wait for him, but she said she couldn’t, because even though she thought he should be forgiven for his mistakes, he’d lied to her, and that was something she couldn’t forget.

  “I thought you were in San Francisco,” she said.

  “For the past six months, trying to re-establish a career. Hard to do with a criminal record, but it’s coming along.”

  “I don’t doubt you’ll be back on top soon.” And he had a lot of family money to back it up. “I’m on my way to Dooley’s,” she said.

  He cringed. “Your grandfather still doesn’t like me.”

  “He’s old school, Jason.”

  “But you do.”

  “Nothing’s changed, if that’s what you mean.”

  “I heard you were dating Austin Davis.”

  Shauna looked at him quizzically. “Dating? Hardly. What�
�s with the questions?”

  “Just catching up, sweetheart.”

  “I went out on a couple dates with Austin, but there was nothing there. I guess he’s not my type.”

  “I could have told you that.”

  “You weren’t around.” Something was going on with Jason, but Shauna couldn’t figure it out. “So are you moving back to Sacramento or what?”

  “For a while. I have an apartment in the city, but for the last week I’ve been at my parents’ place while they’re in Europe.”

  “How are they?”

  “Same.” He laughed. “It’s really good to see you, Shauna.”

  She smiled. “It’s good to see you, too, Jason. Now, did you come by for a specific reason or just to chat?”

  “I want to hire you.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “I thought things were okay between us.”

  Sam would have a complete fit if she got involved with Jason, even platonically. Sam had, after all, arrested him. Shauna hadn’t spoken to Sam for nearly a year after that, except… that day before he left for L.A., two years ago. She remembered everything she’d ever felt for him over the years, and all the anger and frustration disappeared. Jason had broken the law, pled guilty, and went to prison. She had to forgive not only Jason for his crime, but Sam for arresting him. Sam had only been doing his job, even if he seemed to take too much pleasure in arresting Jason in front of her.

  All had been forgiven, on her end, and she told Sam as much.

  Then he rejected her.

  She’d never forget the look on his face last night when she kissed him on the cheek. She didn’t know what his game was, but there was no way she was going to kiss him again. No way she was going to instigate it. She thought that maybe he had wanted to kiss her last night, but she could see his apology.

  “I’m so sorry, Shauna. I didn’t mean to do that. I don’t know what happened.”

  She didn’t want an apology. When she and Sam kissed, they would both know what it meant, and there would be nothing brotherly about it. She had to know that he wanted her in the same way she wanted him.