“Not Shepherd?”
“No,” I said. “I doubt Marcus would allow Shep anywhere near Sunny right now.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He’s the cop that turned her in. If she confesses even one detail that helps the murder charges against her, he’ll report it to Santana.”
“He’d do that to his own sister?”
“He’s already done it to her,” I said.
Gilley sat with his arms crossed as he fell silent and stared out the window. I could tell he wanted to say something judgmental and was holding it back.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“Gil,” I pressed. “Say what you’re going to say.”
“Fine. Do you think dating someone who’s capable of throwing his twin sister in jail is a good idea?”
“What was he supposed to do?” I asked him. “She confessed to murder in front of him and fifty other people standing close by. It’s not like he could’ve pretended that she hadn’t said what she’d said and hadn’t backed that up with a paper bag full of bloody clothes.”
Gilley scowled and went back to staring out the window. “Well, I could never date someone like that.”
“Come on, Gil,” I begged. “Shepherd’s a good guy caught in an impossible situation.”
“I still don’t like it,” he insisted.
“I don’t, either, but I’d rather date a principled, honest, decent man than a liar and someone unprincipled. I had that in my last relationship. I don’t need it in this one.”
“Maks?” Gilley asked in surprise, referring to a man I’d briefly dated before Shepherd.
“No, not Maks,” I said. “Tom.”
“Oh, your ex.”
“Yes.”
Gilley sighed. “Okay, Cat, it’s your life. Live it however you want.”
We arrived at Chez Kitty a few minutes later, and Spooks greeted us warmly at the door, with lots of tail wagging and wiggling against our legs.
“Poor guy,” I said, setting down the groceries and then bending to give Spooks a hug. “He’s been home alone all day.”
“I gotta get a walk in for him,” Gilley said, looking through the window at the darkening sky.
I pointed to the door. “Go,” I said. “I’ll put the groceries away and start the pasta and cut the grapes for the chicken Veronique.”
Gilley grabbed Spooks’s leash and kissed me on the cheek. “You’re a lifesaver,” he said. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”
I spent the next five minutes just hauling in all the bags from the car and unpacking them. Then I put hot water from the hot water spigot into a pot, set it on a burner, and turned the flame to high. I then got out a knife, a cutting board, and the green grapes in the fruit bowl on the counter. Checking on the water for the pasta, I was happy to see it beginning to boil. I got some penne pasta out of the cupboard and dumped the whole box in. After setting the timer on my watch, I picked up the knife. I had cut exactly two grapes when I heard the front door open.
“That was fast,” I called out to Gilley.
“What was fast?” Shepherd replied.
I whirled around. “Oh!” I exclaimed. “I wasn’t expecting you tonight.”
Shepherd rubbed his eyes and blinked several times. “I know. I should’ve called, but I really wanted to see you and couldn’t handle it if you’d said no.”
I set down the knife and hurried over to him, then hugged him fiercely. “I’ll always have room for you here, Shep.”
He hugged me back just as tightly, swaying the two of us back and forth. “Thank you,” he said softly. Then, with a big inhale, he said, “Hey, good lookin’. Whatcha got cookin’?”
“Chicken Veronique. Would you like some?”
“Depends on what Veronique means.”
I laughed. “It’s a dish made with chicken, pasta, green grapes, white wine, and lots of cream.”
“That sounds good,” Shepherd said, and he looked surprised.
“Gilley’s recipe,” I admitted, pointing to a seat at the table before I returned to the grapes. “Sit,” I told him. “And tell me how your day was.”
“Exhausting,” he said.
“Did you work on the Purdy case?”
“I did. All damn day. Went in circles on it. There’s technically no phone record on Purdy’s phone or in his records that matches up with any of the guys on your suspect list.”
“Oh! I have another name for you.”
“Who?”
“Killington Cavill.”
“The race-car driver?”
“Everybody knows this guy but me,” I said.
“He’s a really good driver,” Shepherd said, getting up to go to the fridge and peer inside it hopefully.
“Bottom of the door,” I said. “On the left.”
“Ahhh,” he said, bringing up a bottle of pale ale. “You two really know how to spoil a guy.”
“Back to Cavill,” I said. “We think he went back to Scotland a year ago.”
“You haven’t checked?”
“Not yet.”
“I’ll look into it,” Shepherd said. “How’d you pinpoint the name?”
“Darius. I showed him the script, and he told me that Yelena had dated his uncle, and he remembered seeing her with Cavill during the pandemic.”
“Hold on,” Shepherd said. “Yelena dated Darius’s uncle Roy?”
“You knew him?”
“I did,” he said. “Sweet old guy. Had a ton of money.”
“Which is probably why Yelena found him attractive.”
Shepherd grunted. “Yeah. That seems to have been her pattern. How’s D doing, anyway?”
“He seems to be holding up,” I said. “Or as well as can be expected. When we saw him today, he was singing a lullaby to Finley.”
“He was?”
“You sound surprised.”
“That just sounds really nurturing, and I never took Darius for the nurturing type.”
“Why not?” I asked.
He shrugged. ”Darius didn’t have much of a home life growing up. His parents split when he was four, and his mother moved through husbands like a beaver through wood.”
“Really?” I said. “That’s sad. Does she live around here too?”
“Nah,” he said. “She’s in Singapore, on husband number six. Or maybe seven. Each one of them she takes to the cleaners when she files for divorce, but this latest husband made her sign a prenup.”
“A gold digger like her signed a prenup?” I said.
Shepherd tipped his beer at me. “I found that curious, too, until Darius told me that they actually worked out a compromise. If his mom stays with this husband for the next ten years, she’ll get half his money.”
“Wow,” I said. “Why do kind men always end up with the worst women?”
“Don’t know,” he said. “Still, Darius’s mom isn’t all bad. She’s made Finley the heir to her fortune.”
“Well, that’s comforting,” I said. “Finley will never want for anything.”
“Except his mother,” Shepherd said. I stopped slicing the grapes and went to him, hugged him around the shoulders and kissed the top of his head. “I love you,” I said. “And I’m so sorry you and your family are going through this.”
“My hope is that Santana bungles the investigation. I’m counting on Marcus to seed some doubt into the jury.”
“He will,” I said. “He will.”
Shepherd patted my arm and said, “Back to the Purdy case. It turns out the counselor wasn’t as retired as he let on.”
“He was still seeing clients?”
Shepherd held up three fingers while he took a long pull from the bottle.
“Only three?” I asked.
“Yeah. Two are elderly women with too much money and too many squabbling family members. I talked to both of them. They know each other, and the one recommended the other. They were really upset to hear that Purdy died.”
“I be
t,” I said.
“He was well liked by his clients,” Shepherd continued. “I called a few from the last couple of years. They all raved about him.”
“Who was the third client?” I asked.
“That’s some shell company, which I’m having a heck of a time tracking down. It’s gonna take me a week of red tape to come up with a name connected to it.”
I looked up from the cutting board, having cut a nice pile of grapes. “I have faith,” I told him, moving to the stove to stir the pasta.
“Where’s Gilley?” Shepherd asked. “And Spooks?”
“They’re on a walk. They should be back any minute.”
“Aw, man,” Shepherd moaned. “I am starving. I was hoping you guys would already have dinner made.”
“We’re not the only ones who can cook, you know.”
“Are you looking at me?”
“Yep.”
“Cat, you know I can’t cook.”
“Anyone can cook, lovey. You just need to commit to learning how.”
Shepherd got up and came over to me. “Okay, Obi-Wan. Teach me.”
I got out all the ingredients from the fridge, including the chicken tenders, and began to heat them in a frying pan. I showed Shepherd how to tell when the chicken was done by pressing on his palm, then on the chicken, so that he could compare the two pressures.
When the chicken was done, I had Shepherd slice the tenders up into bite-sized pieces while I stirred a quarter cup of white wine into the still hot pan. It bubbled almost immediately.
“Would you hand me that?” I asked, pointing to the flour jar on the counter closer to him.
Shepherd slid it over to me. “Whatcha gonna do with that?”
“Make a roux.”
“What’s a roux?”
“It’s when you add a little bit of melted butter to a little bit of flour, stir until the butter is absorbed, then add a little more melted butter, and a little more and more, until the roux is the consistency of cream soup.”
“Okay. My next question is, why?”
“It’s what we’re going to use to thicken the sauce,” I said before showing him how I did it. I put some butter in a small dish, placed the butter in the microwave, and melted it. Then I filled another small dish with a generous teaspoon of flour, pulled the butter from the microwave, swirled it around to melt the last bit of it, then added a little to the flour and stirred that until it was absorbed. I continued adding butter until the roux was the consistency of soup.
Shepherd then watched while I poured a whole cup of cream into the pan with the bubbling wine and stirred it to keep it from overheating. Then I folded in the roux and stirred until it thickened the sauce right before tossing in the grapes, and waited for them to heat up a bit. Once they were just starting to soften, I tossed in the chicken tender pieces, finishing it all off with a bit of salt and pepper.
Shepherd stuck his finger into the sauce to taste it. “Mmm,” he said. “That’s good!”
I smiled and removed the sauce from the heat, drained the pasta, and had Shepherd set out three place settings while I loaded up three plates with pasta then sauce.
“I’m sorry!” Gilley called out as he burst through the door. “Spooks saw a cat and pulled the leash right out of my hand! I had to chase him for, like, a mile before I got him to come back.”
Shepherd and I turned to look at Gilley, then Spooks, then Gilley again.
Spooks was panting and looking rather proud of himself.
Gilley was panting and looking rather frazzled.
“Come,” I said to him, picking up two of the plates and bringing them to the table. “Sit. We’ll eat, and you’ll feel better.”
“Thank God you made dinner,” Gilley said. “I’m starved!”
“Feed Spooks first, though,” I said.
Gilley snapped his fingers and got out Spooks’s new bowl, poured a half a cup of kibble into it, and set it on the floor. The pup went right to it, and he would’ve gulped it down, but the new bowl was a maze of curved ridges, which allowed him to eat only one bit of kibble at a time.
At last, we all sat down and ate together, and I didn’t remember ever feeling more comforted by the presence of these two men.
Just as we were finishing up, Shepherd’s phone buzzed. He took it out of his pocket and looked at the display, his brow knitting when he read the caller ID.
After getting up, he walked a few steps away and took the call. “Lieutenant,” he said.
“Oh, God,” I whispered to Gilley. “I hope he’s not in trouble again.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Why else would Shep’s lieutenant be calling if not to bawl him out for some petty thing?”
We both watched Shepherd intently as he ran a hand through his hair and was obviously rattled by whatever his boss was telling him. “When?” he asked sharply.
Gilley and I exchanged a nervous look.
“Where’s he now?”
There was a set to Shepherd’s shoulders that told us the news was bad. Just how bad, I thought, we’d soon find out.
“All right. I’ll head there now.”
Clicking off the call, he turned to look at us, and something in his eyes made my own eyes well up. The news wasn’t just bad. It was personal to us.
“What?” I said, my voice cracking.
Shepherd came back to the table and sat down. Taking up my hand, he said, “There’s been a car accident.”
My first thought was that it had to do with my sons, and the tears overflowed and slid down my cheeks. “Wh-wh-who?” I said.
“Marcus,” he said.
I blinked and shook my head a little, unable to take in fully what Shepherd was telling me. “Who?” I repeated.
“Marcus Brown,” Shepherd said.
I put a hand to my mouth, and Gilley stared at Shepherd in stunned silence. “But I just talked to him,” I squeaked.
“When?” Shep asked.
“Like, an hour and a half ago.”
Shepherd nodded. “I’m going to the hospital,” he said.
“He’s in the hospital?” Gilley said, his own eyes watering.
“Yeah, Gilley. It’s bad. They had to use the Jaws of Life to get him out of his car.”
“Did he lose control?” Gilley asked and I was surprised to see he, too, was crying.
Shepherd shook his head. “It was a hit-and-run. We think Marcus may have been targeted.”
I was also shaking my head. This couldn’t be happening. I adored Marcus, and I didn’t want him hurt. I didn’t even want him scratched.
“We’ll go with you,” Gilley said, jumping to his feet.
Shepherd nodded. “We need to go now, though.”
I got up and grabbed all three plates, hustled them to the sink, then hurried to get my coat and purse. “I’m ready,” I said while Shepherd was slipping into his.
Gilley didn’t even bother with a coat. He just headed to the door and hurried outside.
“Are you okay to drive?” Shepherd asked me.
“Why? You’re not taking us there?”
“I’ll be working the case all night, Cat. You’ll need your car.”
I was panting with worry. “I’ll be okay,” I said.
Shepherd kissed the top of my head, and we moved on out the door.
Chapter 18
We arrived at the hospital and followed Shepherd inside. Gilley and I were both silent and numb. I’d prayed all the way over, and while I walked behind Shepherd, I continued to pray.
Shepherd came to a stop at the information desk. He spoke softly, but I still heard him and saw him flash his badge as he asked about Marcus.
The information desk clerk pointed to his left and said, “That way, past the elevators to the end of the hall. Then turn right and follow that hallway to the end. The trauma unit is through the double doors, and you can ask the nurse on duty for more information about Mr. Brown, Detective.”
“Thanks,” Shepherd said, then
thumped the counter between them two times before turning away, back to us. Pointing ahead, he said, “This way, you two.”
Again, we trailed behind Shepherd, who was following the clerk’s directions. At last, we came through a set of doors, and immediately, I felt the energy shift to one of urgency. Doctors and nurses were rushing around in a no-time-to-waste kind of way.
Gilley inched closer to me and took up my hand. I squeezed it to reassure him, but I felt so vulnerable and scared in that moment, so I stopped several feet behind Shepherd, who approached the nurses’ desk with his badge out.
He and the nurse spoke; then he nodded and came back to us.
“He’s in surgery,” Shepherd said. “He’s got a collapsed lung and some internal bleeding. The nurse will have the surgeon come out and speak to us as soon as they’re done operating.”
I swallowed hard, barely managing to hold down a sob.
Shepherd stood across from me and Gilley, and then he opened his arms wide and said, “Get in here, you two.”
We both rushed forward and wrapped our arms around him and each other, and that hug did me a world of good.
Afterward, we sat quietly in the waiting area, where a TV with the sound off but closed-captioning on played a sitcom.
As the time closed in on 9:00 p.m., a woman in scrubs, booties, and a surgical cap walked in and said, “Detective?”
Shepherd got up, and Gilley and I did too. He moved forward to walk a few feet away with the surgeon; we held back but took up holding each other’s hands again.
Shepherd spoke to the surgeon at length, and I saw him taking down the details on the small pad of paper he always kept on him.
At last, they nodded to each other, and she walked away, while he turned back to us.
“He’s stable,” he said.
Gilley and I both let out a huge whoosh of air. “Oh, my God,” I said, putting my free hand to my chest, where my heart was thumping wildly inside. “Thank God!”
Gilley put both his hands together in prayer and looked skyward, then shook his praying hands at the ceiling. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” he said.
Shepherd also looked relieved. “He’s in the ICU right now, and they’ll keep him sedated for at least the next twenty-four hours, but the surgeon said she was able to stop the bleed and repair and expand his lung again. She also needed to put a few pins into three of his ribs to support the rib cage and keep it from collapsing again. He’s also got a pretty good head wound, but the CT scan didn’t look too bad, she said. He’s probably got a solid concussion but no brain bleed.”
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