“Welcome, Officer. Please come in.”
Something about the tightness around her mouth warned him she wasn’t exactly thrilled to have him there. He wondered why but didn’t have time to dwell on it before she led the way through an elegant foyer down a confusing series of hallways and finally to a large room at the rear of the house.
The first thing he saw was a wide bank of floor-to-ceiling windows with a killer view of the downtown Seattle skyline across the water.
The second thing was Elizabeth Quinn.
Wearing jeans and a thick, cream-colored turtleneck sweater, she sat on the floor with her back to the door, plopped down right in the midst of what looked like a whole convoy of toy trucks involved in some massive pileup. In front of her was a dark-haired little kid who looked to be a couple of years younger than Em. Both Elizabeth and the kid were gesturing wildly.
It took Beau a few beats to figure out what she was doing waving her hands around like that. Sign language, he realized. The boy was hearing impaired, at least judging by those aids in his ears, and the ice princess was communicating with him.
In a million years he never would have expected to find her like this, cross-legged on the floor playing with a little kid. He suddenly remembered a flash of their conversation from the day before.
Tina has a son. A beautiful little boy. He lives with his grandmother and with me.
This must be the kid. The file hadn’t even mentioned him, so of course it wouldn’t have included the information that he had a hearing impairment. Was the woman who answered the door his grandmother, then? Tina Hidalgo’s mother?
Why did she fairly crackle with animosity toward him? Didn’t she want her daughter’s case reopened? What did she have to hide? the cop in him wondered.
In a cool, emotionless voice the older woman announced his presence. “The policeman is here.”
Elizabeth whirled around and looked up at him, two bright splashes of color scorching her cheeks. “Oh. You’re early.”
“A few minutes. The ferry wasn’t as crowded as I expected.”
“I…come in.”
She scrambled to her feet. The boy rose, too, watching him out of huge, thickly lashed eyes that didn’t appear to miss anything. Beau started to greet him, then remembered the boy wouldn’t hear the words. Unsure if the boy could read lips, he finally opted for a wave and a smile.
“This is Alex,” Elizabeth said, signing for the boy’s benefit as she spoke. “Alex, this is Mr. Riley.”
The boy smiled shyly and held out his hand like a perfect little gentleman. Beau tucked his grin away and crouched to his level, shaking the offered hand solemnly.
“I need to talk to our visitor for a while so you can go play with your…” Elizabeth paused for a moment as if her mind wandered or she forgot the words she was signing while she spoke aloud. “Grandmother,” she finally said. “Abuela. Can you do that? I’ll try to tell you a story before bed.”
The boy nodded. Picking up one of the trucks—a miniature blue Peterbilt with bright orange flames licking down the sides—he hurried past Beau with another shy smile and slipped his hand into the older woman’s.
A young, leggy yellow Lab Beau hadn’t noticed before bounded up from a corner and padded after them, leaving Beau alone with Elizabeth in the surprisingly comfortable, lived-in room at odds with the formality he’d seen in his quick glimpse of the rest of the house.
Elizabeth nibbled her lip for a moment then blew out a breath. “Alex is…was Tina’s little boy.”
“And his grandmother?”
“Luisa. She’s been housekeeper here since I was a baby. She and Tina lived in an apartment above the kitchen.”
The woman was a tangle of contradictions. She wore what was probably a three-hundred-dollar sweater to play trucks on the floor with her housekeeper’s grandchild and she spoke of them more like family than servants. He had to admit he was intrigued in spite of himself.
“Nice digs,” he finally said, scanning the recreation room’s plump leather couches surrounding a huge flat-screen TV. Watching Sonics games here would be almost as good as courtside seats.
Not that he would ever have the chance for either, he reminded himself. This was business. Strictly business.
She shrugged. “It’s too big for just me and Luisa and now Alex. I’ll probably sell it eventually but I hate to give up the view.”
He shifted his gaze reluctantly from the TV to the city landscape across the water. “I can see why.”
“I’m sure you’re anxious to begin,” she said after a moment. “Tina’s things are stored in…”
Her voice trailed off, and she paused for a few seconds. The color that had begun to fade now returned. “A room upstairs,” she finally finished. “If you’ll follow me, I’ll show you the way.”
He gestured to the door and she led him without a word to retrace the route he and the housekeeper had taken from the front door, then up a long, curving flight of stairs rising from the entry.
She wasn’t much of a chatterer, he couldn’t help but notice. Was it snobbishness or just reserve, as Grace had said? He followed her up the stairs, trying hard not to ogle her long, luscious legs in whitewashed blue jeans. They weren’t designer threads, he observed, just plain old off-the-shelf Levi’s that looked as if they’d been well-worn. Another piece to the puzzle.
At the top of the stairs she took off to the left and he followed her past at least ten closed doors.
How the hell many rooms were in this mausoleum anyway? he wondered. If the Quinn publishing fortune ever took a downturn, she could always open a medium-size hotel.
Finally they reached the end of the hallway and she opened the door. Inside he found a good-size bedroom where a small huddle of cardboard boxes had been stacked neatly against a wall. Not many boxes, he noted, maybe not even a dozen. A pitiful legacy for a woman who had walked the earth for twenty-eight years. The thought made him sad.
Elizabeth seemed to be on the same wavelength. “It’s not much,” she said, her voice small and sorrowful. “I’m not sure what you hope to find here.”
“I’m not, either. I’ll know when I see it.”
“Would you prefer if I left you alone?”
He smiled a little at the barely concealed eagerness in her expression. Obviously, something about him made Miss Millionaire Quinn nervous. He had to admit he liked the sensation.
If it was true what Grace said, that Elizabeth was only reserved around people she didn’t know, maybe she just needed to spend a little time with him to thaw some of that ice.
“No, stay. You might see something out of place, something I would otherwise miss.”
Elizabeth stared at that small smile, at the way the sun-bronzed skin creased at the corners of his mouth and the sparkle in those green eyes. That smile was entirely too appealing for her peace of mind. It made him seem far too approachable, not nearly as terrifying, and she wondered what he would do if she snapped at him to knock it off, to just keep his blasted smiles to himself. She couldn’t, of course. Not if she didn’t want to appear any more ridiculous than she already did with her awkward pauses and jerky, stop-and-go conversation.
Staying here with him was the last thing she wanted to do. Every instinct in her shouted for her to escape while she could, to put as much distance between them as possible, which in a house as sprawling as Harbor View was a fair span. But she couldn’t do that, any more than she could politely ask him to please refrain from smiling in her presence.
Instead she forced herself to pull a low ottoman nearer the boxes. She perched on it with her hands folded in her lap and tried hard not to stare at the way the powerful muscles in his back flexed under his casual black golf shirt as he hefted a large box from the stacks and lowered it to the floor.
They lapsed into silence as he unfolded the flaps of the box and began sorting through the contents. It was so difficult seeing these things of Tina’s that she had used and loved lying forlorn, jumbled together i
n boxes.
Neither she nor Luisa had been able to bring themselves to sort through the boxes yet to decide what they would keep and what they would give to Goodwill.
She found it disconcerting—heartbreaking, even—to see these bits and pieces of Tina’s life examined by a stranger, no matter that she had brought him into this, no matter how well meaning his motives.
I’m sorry, she mouthed, with a prayer that Tina could hear her.
“So the victim—Tina—was the daughter of your housekeeper?”
Caught up in her thoughts, it took her a moment to register the sudden question. She blinked. “Yes,” she answered carefully. “I was only a few months old when they moved in. My mother died a short time after I was born and Luisa raised me.”
“Luisa, not your father?”
She thought of her father and the wide, unbreachable chasm between them. “He was…” Distant. Cold. “Busy. He had little time for a young child.” Especially one who tried so hard to please her father that when she finally did start to talk, years past the normal time, her words never came out right when he was around.
Beau Riley raised one of those dark eyebrows as if to encourage her to say more, but she stubbornly resisted, choosing to change the subject instead. “Tina and I were only a year apart so we were constantly together. Really, we were more like…like sisters than anything else.”
“How long did she live here?”
He was subtly interrogating her. She knew it and fought a burble of panic at having to answer a long string of questions. But if it would help him get a better idea for Tina’s life, she would try. “After high school we both moved to L.A. We shared an apartment while I attended college and she tried to find work as a model.”
That was where the wildness in Tina had first emerged, while Elizabeth had been desperately trying to pass her classes. She hadn’t noticed the changes at first, too consumed with her own struggles, trying to focus on her school-work with the awful specter of one more failure looming over her shoulder every second.
As the months passed, they had grown further and further apart until they would go days without their paths crossing even though they shared living space. Elizabeth spent every waking moment at the library and Tina had a jampacked social life and worked two jobs while she waited for the big break that never arrived.
“But you both came back?”
“Yes. My father was ill. I returned to care for him.” Though he didn’t want her here, even at the end.
“And Tina?”
She relaxed, discovering it wasn’t so very difficult to talk with him after all. For all his disconcerting abruptness the other day in his office, Detective Riley obviously must have a great deal of practice listening to people. “Her modeling career wasn’t going well. She came home to find work and it was during that time she became pregnant with Alex. After that, she stayed so Luisa and I could help with him.”
“Is the boy’s father involved in his life?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “I don’t know who he is. I wish I did, but Tina would never tell us.”
That had stung, she had to admit. But it was just another in the tangled web of secrets her friend had kept from her and Luisa, secrets she had ultimately taken to her death.
“Tina was…troubled, Detective. Angry.”
“Angry at who? The kid’s father?”
She thought about it then shook her head. “I don’t think so. She loved her son very much. ‘He’s a gift,’ she used to say. ‘A sweet and precious gift.”’ To her chagrin, her voice broke on the last word. Sudden tears choked her throat, burned her eyes.
Her heart ached to think what Tina would miss as her son grew up. She wouldn’t see his baby fat melt away or send him off to his first school dance or be able to buy him his first razor. She would miss teaching him to drive and arguing with him about curfews and preparing him for college.
She wouldn’t miss those things, though, Elizabeth vowed fiercely even as she wiped at her tears with a handkerchief she dug out of her pocket. She and Luisa would take care of Alex. They would love him and teach him and never, ever make him feel as if his disability made him any less of a person.
She looked up and found Detective Riley watching her out of those intense dark eyes that seemed to see right past her defenses.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured.
“Don’t be,” he answered, his voice gruff, then he turned back to sorting through Tina’s belongings. He might have only been trying to avoid an overemotional woman but she didn’t think so. He was giving her time and space to compose herself. The unexpected kindness warmed her far more than she wanted to acknowledge.
As a hardened detective he must have seen many grieving friends and relatives, she thought. And perhaps some who didn’t grieve. That was probably harder.
Why did he do it? she wondered. Grace Dugan said he was one of the best detectives in Seattle. When he works a case, Beau is relentless, like a junkyard dog with a bone. He’ll gnaw it and gnaw it until he shakes out the truth.
She was suddenly very grateful to have this particular fierce detective on her side, no matter how nervous he made her.
They worked through several boxes with only the occasional comment or question from Beau as to whether she recognized items or noticed anything missing.
After they opened most of the boxes containing the average flotsam and jetsam of a person’s life—a pitifully few knickknacks, some dishes, Tina’s collection of hatpins—he opened one that sent color climbing up Elizabeth’s cheeks.
These were Tina’s work uniforms. Her feathers and leathers, she had called them—the costumes she had worn while working as a stripper, albeit a well-paid one.
Beau cleared his throat and pulled out a minuscule nurse’s uniform that wouldn’t have concealed a single thing on any self-respecting female over the age of six, complete with thigh-high sheer white stockings and a perky little cap.
An odd, glittery heat uncurled inside her at the sight of such a silly, frilly thing in his masculine hands.
“You didn’t tell me your friend was in the medical profession.”
Oh! He had to know perfectly well what Tina did for a living. She couldn’t think how to respond to his tongue-in-cheek observation, even if she could find the right words.
At her silence, he looked over at her and his teasing grin slid away. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have joked about it. Given the circumstances, it was in bad taste, and I apologize.”
Finally she managed to smile. Tina would have laughed out loud at his comment. And under other conditions, Elizabeth would have joined in. “No. It’s…it was a joke to her. That’s all it was. She thought it was hilarious that she could make so much money for a few hours’ work.” She paused. “She didn’t like being a stripper, but it was helping her improve her life. She was taking computer classes, going to Narcotics Anonymous meetings. Looking for a better apartment.”
He watched her out of those probing green eyes for a moment, then finally spoke. “She had heroin in her system the night she died. Did you know that?”
Elizabeth nodded. “The other detectives told us. She must have had a…” She had to scramble for the right word. Difficulty? Backtrack? No. Those words fit but they weren’t what she was looking for. She hit on it after what she hoped wasn’t too noticeable a pause. “Relapse. She must have had a relapse. Before that, she had been clean for almost six months.”
“Do you know why she would have purchased a gun the day before she died?”
“I don’t. I’m sorry. She didn’t say anything to us. Maybe she was being threatened about something. Debts, maybe. I know she had quite a few. I tried to help her with…with money. A hundred times I tried to help her but she would only get angry.”
“That must have been difficult.”
“Yes,” she answered, hoping the simple word would conceal the world of pain behind it. When they were children, the disparity between their financial situations hadn’t existed. Only as t
hey grew older had Tina begun to resent that Elizabeth would never want for anything.
Nothing financial, anyway, she thought with old, familiar bitterness. Her father had paid her bills—her tuition, her car, her apartment. Or rather, the trust fund he and her mother had set up for her before her birth paid her expenses. But Jonathan Quinn had given her little else.
To her relief, the detective didn’t seem inclined to pursue that line of questioning. He opened the last box. Halfway through, he found the soft burgundy Coach handbag she had given Tina for Christmas the year before. Another harsh sliver of grief jabbed into her. Tina had adored that purse and had used it constantly.
“Pay dirt.” Beau pulled it from the box. “Just what I hoped to find.”
“Why?” She managed to squeeze the word out around the lump in her throat.
“I don’t mean to sound sexist here but most of you women carry your lives around in their purses. All the little bits and pieces that give a clear picture of who you are, what you do with your days. Makeup, credit cards, appointment books. Everything. I’m willing to bet that somewhere in here hides the key to unlocking the mystery of what really happened that night. We just have to find it.”
Chapter 4
Elizabeth couldn’t contain a small gasp as the detective dumped the contents of Tina’s purse out on the bedspread in the guest room. It seemed a terrible invasion of privacy, letting him paw through the contents. Like reading someone’s diary or opening another person’s mail. A woman’s purse was sacred!
I’m sorry, she whispered again to Tina. Even as she thought the words, she knew Tina wouldn’t have objected. Not if it meant finding out the truth about her death.
“A lot of cops think working a case is like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle with half of the pieces missing. To me, it’s more like a big, dead-serious scavenger hunt. The clues are there, you just have to know where to look for them. Then work your tail off to figure out what they mean.”
The Quiet Storm Page 4