Cavanaugh in the Rough

by Marie Ferrarella

  “Hey, O’Bannon, did you happen to notice that one photograph of him on the tennis court?”

  He thought for a moment, then recalled the photograph she was referring to. “What about it?”

  “He was holding his racket in his left hand.”

  “Which means he’s left-handed,” Chris realized.

  “Which means he’s left-handed,” Suzie concluded, with what Chris could have sworn was a smile of vindication.

  Chapter 14

  “We’re going to need more than that if we want to be able to charge Eldridge with the murder,” Chris pointed out. “Right now, his being left-handed just comes under the heading of ‘circumstantial.’”

  Did he think she didn’t know that? “Of course we need more,” she retorted. “I was just pointing out the obvious,” she added defensively.

  He got into the car, then waited until she followed suit and closed her door.

  “What was that back there?” he asked.

  She knew O’Bannon wasn’t going to let the billionaire’s remark go. Crossing her fingers, she pretended not to know what he was referring to. Maybe he’d just drop it. “You mean other than him being a preening peacock?”

  She was dodging his question, which made him even more suspicious. “I mean the bit with Eldridge thinking your last name was Quinlan.”

  She shrugged, continuing to look out of the front window. “He obviously made a mistake.”

  Chris would have agreed with her, except for one thing. “Is that why you looked so pale when he mentioned that other name?”

  “I wasn’t pale.” Realizing that she was raising her voice, Suzie deliberately lowered it before continuing. “I just found him pushy and annoying.”

  He thought of all the people who were eagerly trying to secure just five minutes of the man’s time. The photographs on his wall bore testimony to that. “You’d be in the minority.”

  Unfazed, Suzie shrugged her shoulders. “Doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

  “No,” he agreed, “it doesn’t.” Pausing at a red light, he looked thoughtfully at the woman beside him and changed the subject. “You feel up to interviewing Simon Silas with me, or would you rather I took you back to the lab so you could babysit that DNA test?”

  They both knew the test wouldn’t go any faster if she was hovering over it, waiting for results. He’d be the first to point that out. Was he trying to get rid of her?

  “I’m fine, O’Bannon. Just drive,” she ordered, “and let’s go see what Silas has to say.”

  *

  What Simon Silas had to say consisted of two words: “Go away.”

  The much sought after movie producer, mogul and would-be philanthropist was on his way out when they were shown into his office by one of the three receptionists Silas kept out front.

  The producer’s office suite was smaller than Eldridge’s, but far more ostentatious in its decor. His walls had just as many, if not more, framed photographs of the man, taken with a whole host of celebrities, both current and past. He was photographed with a lot more attractive women than Eldridge had been, as well.

  Another difference between the two was that Silas was not nearly as genial and charming as Eldridge had been at their meeting. In fact, he was waspish and curt.

  His mood did not change when he saw their credentials. Instead, he continued to make his way out of the office and to the elevator.

  “Talk to my assistant. The one that looks like she knows something,” he told Chris.

  Chris deliberately placed himself in the man’s way. They were both the same height, and for a moment, it appeared to be a stalemate.

  Silas scowled. “You caught me at a bad time, Officer,” he snapped, attempting to circumvent the situation.

  “That’s Detective,” Chris corrected.

  The next moment, Suzie blocked the man’s path, preventing him from going anywhere.

  “When would be a good time?” Suzie challenged.

  “I’ve got a few hours free at the end of November,” Silas answered coldly. “Why don’t you check back with me then?”

  “Sorry, not good enough,” Chris told him. Through with playing games, he told the movie producer, “We’ll settle for a few minutes now—either here or at the precinct. This is a murder investigation.” There was no arguing with his tone.

  Silas sighed. “All right. Civic duty and all that,” he muttered. But rather than head back to his office, he instructed, “Walk with me to my car.”

  With that he continued to make his way to the elevator.

  Settling for the flimsy compromise, Chris decided to accompany the movie producer to the elevator, and ultimately, to his car. He could always still take the man in if Silas’s answers weren’t satisfactory.

  Reaching the end of the hallway, Silas pressed for the elevator. It arrived almost immediately. Once on it, he turned and looked at Suzie, on his right.

  “Anyone ever tell you that you have fantastic cheekbones? Ever consider a career in movies?” he asked. It was obvious by his manner that the line had served him well in the past.

  Suzie narrowed her eyes, summarily rejecting what the producer was prepared to suggest. “I prefer forensics,” she informed him.

  Reaching over, Chris halted the elevator in mid-descent.

  Startled, Silas demanded, “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Getting your attention. Mr. Silas.” Chris calmly took the photograph of Bethany out of the folder he was carrying and held it up.

  “Get that out of my face,” the movie producer snapped, waving it away. “What is it, a still from some cheap horror movie?”

  “No,” Chris said, setting the man straight, “that’s a photograph of a woman who might have attended that so-called secret bash that you and your friend Warren Eldridge, underwrote and attended in the abandoned department store.”

  Silas’s deeply tanned complexion darkened even more. “Just what are you accusing me of?” he demanded hotly.

  “Nothing yet,” Chris answered mildly. “Right now, all I want to know is if you recognize her.” He held the photograph up again.

  Silas pushed it away a second time. “No!” Appearing more than a little agitated, the man demanded, “Now can I go?”

  “For now,” Chris allowed. Reaching over again, he pressed the button to restart the elevator. “We’ll get back to you.”

  “There’s no point,” Silas insisted. “I never saw that woman—alive or dead. I was with friends,” he told Chris haughtily, then cited five names, all of which belonged to well-known actresses. “Call them,” he snapped. “I’ll even give you their phone numbers.”

  “That would be helpful,” Chris agreed, in a docile manner that further irritated the producer.

  By now they had reached the ground floor. Taking out his worn notebook, Chris handed it to the producer. Carrying it was something he had picked up from one of his cousins, who believed in jotting down notes while they were still fresh in his mind rather than dictating them into an app on his smart phone.

  Biting off a few choice words, Silas quickly wrote down the names and cell phone numbers of all five actresses, then pushed the notebook back in annoyance.

  “So, are we done?” he asked.

  “For now,” Chris repeated.

  The producer stormed off to his vehicle, cursing a blue streak as he went.

  “Notice anything?” Chris asked Suzie as he pocketed the notebook.

  “Yes.” She knew exactly what he was referring to. She’d watched as the producer had written down the names of the women he was using as his alibis. “Silas is left-handed, too.”

  “Hell of a coincidence,” Chris remarked. “If it were strictly up to me, of the two I’d pick him for the doer. Although I’d have to admit it is kind of stereotypical.”

  “There’s a reason for stereotypical,” Suzie told him as they got back into his car. “A lot of it is based on a layer of fact.”

  Intrigued, Chris paused before starting his engine. “
So you think Silas killed Bethany?”

  Something in her gut had told her it was Eldridge, but then, after being around Silas, she found herself thinking it might be him. She needed more.

  “I don’t know yet,” she admitted.

  “Indecision,” Chris noted with an approving nod. “It’s a start.” With that, he started up the vehicle. “So, about tomorrow.”

  There was just no such thing as relaxing around this man, she thought irritably. “What about tomorrow?”

  Guiding the car out of the parking structure, he said, “It’s Saturday.”

  “Usually comes after Friday,” Suzie responded, doing her best to keep the conversation as vague as humanly possible.

  He ignored what he took to be sarcasm and became more specific. “I hear that Uncle Sean got you to agree to come to the get-together.”

  “‘Agree’ makes it sound as if it was voluntary on my part,” she pointed out, and it was no such thing. “He bribed me.”

  Chris saw nothing wrong with that. “Hey, whatever gets you to the gathering...” He deliberately let his voice trail off.

  “Gathering,” she echoed. “You make it sound like some kind of a benign counsel meeting.”

  He was not about to get sucked into a war of words. “Nobody counseling anybody, just a lot of stories being swapped while eating some really good food,” he told her with enthusiasm.

  From what she’d heard, these things occurred all the time. The Cavanaughs at the precinct worked alongside family members all week. Why would they want to get together in their off-hours?

  “Is this mandatory for you people?” she asked.

  “If you’re asking does everyone come to every one of these things, the answer’s no. If you’re asking do we want to come to every one of Uncle Andrew’s get-togethers, then the answer’s yes. But is attending the get-togethers ‘mandatory’? No, of course not.” He sighed as he turned down another major street. “Why, are you trying to find a way to wiggle out of it?”

  “No!” Suzie all but snapped out her denial in no uncertain terms. She didn’t like him trying to get inside her head.

  Chris was about to say something in response when his cell phone rang. He frowned, hoping it wasn’t something bad. Holding on to the steering wheel with one hand, he pulled his phone from his pocket with the other and swiped it with his thumb.

  “O’Bannon,” he declared as he held the device near his ear.

  Wondering if it was a private call, Suzie glanced at his face as he listened to whoever was on the other end.

  His expression told her this was business, not pleasure—not that it mattered to her, she silently insisted.

  “Right,” he said grimly. “I know where that is. On our way.” Terminating the call, Chris sighed as he dropped the phone back in his pocket.

  Suzie didn’t like the grim set of his jaw. “You know where what is?” she asked.

  “The location of the body,” he told her, making an abrupt U-turn.

  “What body?” she asked, even though she had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that she already knew the answer to that.

  His answer was short and to the point. “Our killer struck again.”

  She thought of the list of victims they had put together, all blondes, all in their midtwenties, who were very possibly connected to the man who had killed Bethany Miller. And now O’Bannon was telling her there was another one?

  “Just now?” she questioned.

  “Won’t know that until the ME makes his—or her—call,” Chris told her. He flipped on the siren as he sped up.

  When was this going to end? Suzie wondered, feeling sick to her stomach. “Why do they think it’s the same killer?”

  He cited the description he’d just been given. “Twentysomething semi-nude blonde, strangled. Sound familiar?”

  Her mouth had gone dry. “Too familiar,” she answered.

  *

  The latest victim had been found in a recently abandoned movie theater by a homeless man who’d gone in seeking shelter. The old theater, once a majestic opera house, had just been sold and was about to be renovated and turned into a multiplex.

  “Let me guess—this was the scene of another party?” Suzie asked Sean when they arrived.

  Her boss had gotten there ahead of them with the rest of his team and had just begun to investigate the crime scene.

  Sean lowered the high-definition camera he was using to capture details of the scene and shook his head. He couldn’t say one way or another.

  “If it was, I want to hire whoever cleaned this place up after the party, because there isn’t anything left to indicate there ever was a party thrown here. That doesn’t mean that there wasn’t,” he was quick to qualify. “Jury’s still out on that.”

  The victim was almost out of sight, hidden against what had been a concession stand. Chris crossed over to the young woman. She could have been Bethany Miller’s twin. There was no question about it, the killer definitely had a type.

  “Same bruising on the left side?” Chris asked his uncle.

  Sean nodded. “Looks that way. Oh, and there’s one more piece to add to the puzzle,” he said, just as Chris began to turn away.

  “Go ahead,” Chris urged.

  “The killer’s tall,” Sean told them.

  “Because he picks tall blondes?” Suzie asked, guessing at how Sean had come to that conclusion.

  But her boss shook his head. “No. A lot of short men like tall women. All of Mickey Rooney’s wives were taller than he was,” he cited.

  Suzie exchanged looks with Chris. She saw that he didn’t recognize the name, either. “Who?”

  “Never mind,” Sean answered. “I’m showing my age. The point I’m getting at is that the killer didn’t just strangle his victims, he lifted them off the ground while he was doing it. In order to do that, he had to be taller than they were.”

  “Okay,” Suzie replied. “Left-handed and tall, not to mention strong. It takes a certain kind of strength to be able to lift them off the ground like that.” She tried not to dwell on the image. “Looks like we’re narrowing the cesspool,” she commented.

  “In the meantime,” Chris said, “we need to find out who bought this property.”

  “You think it was Eldridge?” she asked.

  But Chris gave no indication one way or another. “All I’m thinking is that we needed to get every scrap of information we can to build this case. Eventually, it’ll lead us to the bastard who’s killing these women.”

  Eventually.

  The word seemed to echo in her head.

  “You really believe that?” she asked as they left the premises.

  “I have to,” Chris answered. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to do my job. Hell, I wouldn’t be able to get up in the morning. Speaking of morning,” he said as they finally got back to his car, “what time do you want me to pick you up tomorrow?”

  Preoccupied with this latest murder, Suzie stared at him. It took her a couple seconds to connect the dots. When she finally did, she said, “I don’t.”

  “You want to drive to Uncle Andrew’s in your car?” he questioned. “You know where his house is?”

  He made it sound as if the former chief of police’s house was located in some mysterious hidden valley. “I’ll find it,” she answered.

  The way she put it, Chris came to the only logical conclusion he could. “So you don’t know where his house is.”

  She wasn’t sure whether or not to be insulted. She supposed O’Bannon meant well. But she didn’t like being perceived as a hapless female. That was the last thing she was.

  “I’ve been finding places in this city for the last two years,” she informed him. “Don’t worry, I’ll find his.”

  “Yeah, but that means you’ll have to park your car.”

  “Well, I don’t plan on carrying it in with me.” Just what was he getting at?

  “What I mean is that if everyone comes to the gathering in their own car, that�
��s going to be a hell of a lot of cars out there, taking up an awful lot of space. It’s a lot smarter if we carpooled.”

  Before she could make a comment on that one way or another, he told her, “I’ll pick you up at eleven—unless you want to go earlier.”

  “No.” What she wanted was to not go at all, but she knew that wouldn’t fly. These Cavanaughs seemed to get their way no matter what the objections. She tried one last argument. “But if we go together, we have to leave together.”

  Chris nodded. “Sounds right.”

  Did she have to hit him over the head with a two-by-four? “What I’m trying to say is that I might want to leave before you do.”

  And then he said what she was afraid he was going to say, totally invalidating her last defense against going with him. “I promise to leave whenever you’re ready to go, no questions asked.”

  Yeah, right. She didn’t buy it for a second. “How gullible do you think I am?” she asked.

  “I don’t think you’re gullible at all, Suzie Q,” he told her. “Scout’s honor,” he declared. “You say the word and we’re gone.”

  There was no way she could envision him being a Boy Scout. Not with that glint in his eyes. “When were you a Scout?” she asked.

  He was ready for her. “You want to call my mother and ask? She has pictures to prove it,” he told her.

  She didn’t know if she believed him or not, but she did know that the Cavanaughs had a tendency to stick together and back one another up, so there was no point in even pretending she was going to ask for proof.

  She was going to this thing and there was no getting out of it.

  “No,” Suzie answered with a sigh. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “Face it, Suzie Q,” he told her as he drove back to the precinct’s parking lot. “You and I really need this break. The case is getting hot and we need to step back for a second in order to maintain the proper perspective on it.”

  Arguing wasn’t going to get her anywhere. Besides, there was a part of her that tended to agree with him. “Maybe you’re right,” she conceded.

  “I usually am.”

  Then again, his answer made her contemplate strangling him, which, all things considered, seemed rather appropriate in this case.