Cavanaugh in the Rough

by Marie Ferrarella

  Trying not to look as startled as she felt, Suzie glanced up. By then, the man who had invaded her space—as well as her unguarded dreams—had already crossed the room and was now in front of her, almost larger than life. Which was the way she usually thought of Chris O’Bannon, though she would have never admitted as much to him.

  “What are you doing down here?” she asked.

  Unfazed, he said, “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

  She went back to what she was doing, preparing the DNA sample so it could be matched against the hairs on the brush that Mrs. Wilson had lent her. “I am working,” she said in a measured voice.

  “Which was what you’ve been doing lately upstairs,” he told her patiently. “Have you decided to give up?”

  The expression in her eyes when she raised them to his answered his question. In no uncertain terms.

  “No, of course not. You’re a pit bull. You latch on to something and you don’t let go.”

  She gave him a withering look and got back to what she was doing. “If you don’t mind a little constructive criticism, O’Bannon, I think you need to brush up a bit on your flattery skills.”

  “I’m not trying to flatter you, Suzie Q,” he told her. “I’m just making an observation. And for the record, I think pit bulls have gotten a bum rap and have been pretty maligned. Trained correctly, they can be very loving, sweet pets.”

  She didn’t care for the veiled message she thought the detective was conveying. “I’m not about to allow anyone to try to ‘train’ me, O’Bannon.”

  The very idea of someone attempting to get the feisty investigator to do anything made him laugh. “I sincerely doubt anyone could ever even try,” he retorted. “Now, if you haven’t given up on the case, and you obviously haven’t, just what are you doing back down here in the lab?”

  She had always hated being questioned by someone who had no right to do so. O’Bannon had no authority over her and he wasn’t her superior, no matter what he thought of himself or what he believed his family connections bought him.

  Grudgingly, she told him, “I got permission to run the DNA sample to see if it matches up to the Wilson girl.”

  “Permission,” Chris repeated. And then he smiled, pleased. “So you took my advice.”

  She knew he was going to take credit for this. She was surprised he wasn’t dislocating his shoulder, patting himself on the back.

  “Let’s just say I went the logical route,” she told him tersely.

  The smile turned into a grin. A wide one. “Kills you to say it, doesn’t it?”

  She spared him one annoyed glance. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “So does this mean you’ll be tied up down here all day? Reason I’m asking is because I’m going back in the field and just thought you might want to come along.”

  Her eyes narrowed at his wording. “You make me sound like some puppy you expect to just come running after you.”

  Even in a lab coat, with her hair pulled back, making her appear like an old-fashioned schoolmarm, the woman still looked hot. She just seemed totally unaware of it, which made her even hotter, in his opinion.

  “No one would ever mistake you for a puppy, Suzie Q. Trust me,” Chris assured her. He began to edge away. “I’ll let you know how it goes.”

  Suzie knew she should just ignore him. But she couldn’t. Her curiosity had gotten the better of her. “Who are you going to question?”

  “I thought since we weren’t getting anywhere talking to any of the people who were at that party,” he said casually, playing out his line like a fishing pro, “maybe we should be talking to the people we know were supposedly behind the party.”

  She was instantly alert. “You mean Warren Eldridge?”

  “And Simon Silas,” he reminded her, still retreating from her toward the doorway. “There might be more, but for now, we have those two names.”

  Suzie made up her mind. The DNA test would take two days whether she was here or not. She might as well be productive while she waited.

  “Wait,” she cried, shedding the lab coat the same way a snake sheds its skin. She tossed it onto a chair. “I’m coming with you, O’Bannon,” she called after him.

  Hurrying to catch up, Suzie pulled off the rubber band holding back her hair and ran her hand through her locks, trying to coax them into order.

  Chris paused by the doorway, waiting. “Knew you couldn’t resist me.”

  “It’s not you,” she informed him. “I want to be there when you talk to those two, just in case you get tongue-tied or mesmerized by the fact that when they walk, hundred-dollar bills fall in their wake.”

  Chris pressed for the elevator. “Money doesn’t impress me, Suzie Q. Hard work and dedication, those are my downfall.”

  “Yeah, that and a size two with a tight butt.” She’d meant to only think that, not have it come out of her mouth.

  “You’re a size two?” he asked. She couldn’t tell if he was surprised or just teasing her. In either case, she wasn’t about to pursue the conversation. Some things were meant to be left in the dark on the closet floor.

  “Never mind what my size is. I’ll drive,” she told him as they got into the elevator.

  “Not a chance.” They were on the first floor in the blink of an eye.

  “Why not?” she asked. She exited the elevator first, but he had a longer stride and reached the rear door before her. “You drove all the other times.”

  “And I got used to it,” he answered pleasantly, holding it open for her. She glared at him as she marched out. “As to why not, let’s just say I want to go on living.”

  She hurried down the steps to the lot. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I’ve seen you pulling up into the parking lot,” he told her, then added a shiver for effect to make his point.

  “When?” she demanded.

  “A few weeks ago.” Spotting his vehicle, he made his way to it. Suzie was forced to follow. “I was the car you almost ran down.”

  That rang no bells. “I don’t remember almost running down a car.”

  “I know,” he said. He pressed on the key chain and all four locks popped up. “Point made.”

  Several retorts were burning on her tongue, but she bit them back. There was an outside chance that he was right. She did have a tendency to get distracted when she was lost in thought, and just because she hadn’t noticed a near run-in with another car didn’t mean that there hadn’t almost been one.

  Throwing open the door on her side, she grudgingly got in.

  “Where are we going first?” she asked the detective some ten minutes later.

  “Ah, she speaks.”

  “Cut the sarcasm or you’ll really hear me speak,” she warned him.

  “Fair enough,” he allowed. “I figure we’ll start at the top.”

  “Doesn’t answer my question.” There were two men seen on that video who could occupy that lofty position.

  “Well, although two men attending this not-so-secret bash are what the rest of us call ‘obscenely’ wealthy, Warren Eldridge’s got more than a slight edge in this department.”

  “So we’re going to see Warren Eldridge?” she asked.

  “There’s that keen mind again,” Chris acknowledged.

  She wanted to wipe that smile off his face, but a part of her wasn’t thinking about using her fist to do it—which irritated her even more.

  *

  Warren Eldridge, the CEO of one of the country’s leading tech companies, seemed to have a slight edge in every department. Young, good-looking, with both sailing and tennis skills that made him the envy of award-winning champions in those fields, he was sought after for speaking engagements as well as personal engagements, many of the latter by women who were eager for a chance to land the exceptionally eligible bachelor.

  Warren Eldridge’s office was on the top floor of the building that bore his name. Although he had called ahead to make sure the man was on the pr
emises, Chris still had to explain to an administrative assistant why they were there.

  After listening in stony silence, the humorless-looking staffer, a tall, lean, perfectly manicured young man who’d introduced himself as Lionel, said, “Yes, Mr. Eldridge said he was expecting you.

  “You’re in luck,” Lionel told them as he led the way down a long hallway. “Most of the time, Mr. Eldridge is in transit, traveling between cities or states. Even his GPS can’t keep up with him,” he added drily.

  “I’ve never seen so many testimonials, awards and photographs,” Suzie whispered to Chris under her breath, scanning the walls on either side of the hall as they were led to Eldridge’s penultimate office. “Is he trying to impress people?”

  “My guess is intimidate,” Chris whispered back. Seeing Eldridge with world leaders and the heads of well-regarded charitable foundations was enough to cause a lot of people he knew to become speechless.

  That went double for the handful of framed photographs of a younger-looking Eldridge standing next to a statuesque blonde who looked too gorgeous for words.

  In total, the photographs—especially the ones with the blonde—were enough to make them back away from wanting to question the man about anything that might have to do with a young woman’s murder.

  Suzie tended to agree with Chris’s assessment. “So you’re not just a pretty face,” she cracked.

  “Oh, I’m that, too,” he assured her so seriously that for a second she thought he was being serious.

  But there was just the faintest glimmer in his eyes that told her to think again.

  Warren Eldridge turned out to be even better looking in person than he was in his pictures, and just a little larger than life. When they entered, he turned around from his computer, flashing a smile that exhibited teeth, whitened to perfection.

  Ending a conversation on his cell phone, he pocketed it and rose from his desk, then crossed his office to meet them.

  An office, Suzie couldn’t help thinking, that could have housed all the people in the new homeless shelter he’d just dedicated last month to the memory of his late mother.

  The man was either very close to sainthood or he’d come from central casting to fill that role. Suzie wasn’t sure which description she felt was more likely.

  “It’s not every day that I have law enforcement agents coming to my office to see me.” Eldridge smiled warmly at them, his expressive blue eyes moving from one to the other.

  For a moment, Suzie felt as if those eyes were lingering on her cross, and she resisted the temptation to cover it with her hand. The next second Eldridge turned his attention to O’Bannon.

  “What is it that I can do for you, Detectives?”

  Chris got the introductions out of the way, although he had a feeling that Eldridge already knew their names. Warren Eldridge hadn’t gotten to where he was by not doing his homework and doing it diligently.

  “I’m Detective Christian O’Bannon and this is CSI Susannah Quinn.”

  Shaking their hands, the philanthropist CEO looked at Suzie intently, as if he was trying to place her. His hand still around hers, he addressed his words to Chris. “I think you mean Susannah Quinlan, don’t you, Detective?”

  Suzie felt as if an ice pick had pierced her, but she kept her expression stony. “No, it’s Quinn, Mr. Eldridge,” she told the man firmly.

  Eldridge inclined his head. “My mistake. For a moment, you reminded me of someone I thought I’d seen somewhere else. The mind plays tricks sometimes,” he confessed. His eyes shifting back to Chris, he asked, “So, why are you here? Some worthwhile cause you’d like me to contribute to?”

  “No,” Chris answered. “We’re just here for some information. We’d like to ask you about a party you threw a week ago last Sunday.”

  Eldridge sighed, looking like a man accustomed to being at the center of rumors and misinformation. “I’m afraid someone gave you a bad piece of intel, Detective. I didn’t throw any party last week, or the week before that,” he added for good measure.

  Suzie began giving the CEO clues to jar his memory. “The abandoned department store, Kresky’s. A couple of boys tried to crash the bash, but according to them, they were turned away. But they still managed to take a few videos through one of the windows that hadn’t been blacked out.”

  “We have a few good likenesses of you,” Chris added, taking blown-up stills of Eldridge that had been made from the videos. He spread them out one by one on the desk.

  Not a single muscle of Eldridge’s face twitched. The man was good. “A lot of people look like me, Detective.”

  Chris left the photographs where they were. “So you were never there?”

  Eldridge never blinked. He did, however, smile, pouring on the charm that had likely been a major asset in building his empire. “I didn’t say that.”

  “What did you say?” Suzie asked.

  He was all too willing to explain. “That I didn’t throw the party, as you suggested. I did help fund it, as did a few other acquaintances of mine. But I wouldn’t call that ‘throwing a party.’ That’s far too plebian a term, don’t you think?”

  What she was thinking right now, Suzie reflected, could land her in jail. But it might be worth it, if it meant wiping that look off the man’s face. Whether he was guilty or not, she didn’t like Eldridge or his manner. There was just something about him that got under her skin.

  “Did you happen to see this young woman there?” Chris asked, removing Eldridge’s photographs and replacing them with two of Bethany, taken from different angles.

  Eldridge assessed both pictures. “Is it just me, or does this young woman have no clothes on?” he asked, looking up at Chris.

  The detective’s eyes darkened. “It’s not you,” he answered. “She doesn’t.”

  Eldridge laughed drily and Suzie found she had to struggle to restrain herself. The man might very well be innocent of Bethany’s murder, but he was guilty of being an ass and a first-class jerk.

  “I assure you, Detective,” he was saying, “I would have remembered seeing a woman with no clothes on—and I didn’t,” he concluded simply.

  “She’s also dead,” Suzie pointed out, rather needlessly, she thought, given Bethany’s lack of color.

  Eldridge merely shook his head, as if her addition just backed up his version. “I didn’t see a dead woman at the party, either.”

  “Look again,” Chris requested. “Someone estimated that there were almost a thousand people attending that party.”

  Hearing the number only seemed to please Eldridge, as if it was another testimonial to add to his list. “Go big or go home—isn’t that the popular phrase these days, Detective?”

  “I’m not up on popular phrases,” Chris replied, his eyes on Eldridge’s. “I’m too busy trying to solve murders.”

  “I really wish I could help, Detective, I do,” the man said with sincerity. “But I’m afraid I can’t. I was only there for a brief period, just to make sure that everything was going well. Too crowded for my tastes, really,” he confided.

  “Where did you go after you left the bash?” Chris asked him.

  “I had another party to go to,” Eldridge said, as casually as if this was something they should have known. “I work very, very hard most of the time, Detective O’Bannon. But even a smart phone needs to recharge once in a while. This—” he indicated the pile of photographs of him that Chris had put to the side “—is how I recharge.”

  “Can anyone vouch for your being at the other party?” Suzie challenged.

  “Absolutely.” There was enthusiasm in Eldridge’s voice. “I can give you a list—a who’s who list of the richest people in the state,” he told them matter-of-factly, saying it as if that should bring an end to any further question.

  Picking up a pad from his desk, he dashed off the names, including the governor, two past senators and the winner of last year’s academy award, then tore the paper from the pad and handed it not to Chris but to Suzie.
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  “By the way, if you ever decide that you’d like a little change of pace from catching ‘bad guys,’ just give me a call, Ms. Quinlan.”

  “Quinn,” she corrected between clenched teeth.

  He’d done that on purpose, she thought. The question was why? Did he recognize her from the clips that had been in the paper or on the internet? But that had been three years ago. She’d moved, gotten a degree under her new name. There was no reason for Eldridge to have made the mistake.

  Unless it wasn’t a mistake on his part.

  “Sorry, my mistake again.” The apology dripped of graciousness. He handed her a card. “My personal number’s on the back. Now, if there’s nothing else, I’m afraid I have a meeting I need to get to. I promised to chair a fund-raiser for the children’s hospital in San Francisco. Tugs on your heart, seeing those kids going through pain like that. I’ve just got to try to do something about it, nudge other people to do something, too.” He glanced from the detective to the woman with him. “I can give you the details if either one of you are free.”

  “We’ll get back to you on that,” Chris told him.

  “All right, then, I’ll be waiting for your call, Detective. Until then, Lionel here will escort you back to the elevator. This building’s a positive maze and I wouldn’t want you getting lost.”

  Within a moment, the administrative assistant came for them, practically materializing out of nowhere.

  “We can find the elevators on our own,” Chris assured the stately, well-dressed assistant.

  “Mr. Eldridge would prefer if I escorted you,” Lionel told them without any inflection in his voice.

  *

  “Think he rusts in the rain?” Chris asked once they were in the elevator.

  “I don’t know, but I do know that I want to take a shower as soon as I get back to the precinct.” When Chris gave her a questioning look, she said, “Eldridge gives me the absolute creeps. There’s something almost slimy about him.”

  “From those photographs on his wall,” Chris pointed out, “a lot of people would disagree with you.”

  “A lot of people just want a piece of his pie,” Suzie countered.

  Chris nodded. “Probably truer than you think.”