Chapter 2
J amie enjoyed the view of Pauley walking away from him very much. Her rounded hips undulated gently in her washed-out jeans. Even in casual denim she took care with her appearance, the jeans sporting an ironed crease down the front of her legs. Her shapely derriere appeared firm and toned. He felt more than a stirring of interest.
“Checking out her arse won’t do ye any favors,” said a young voice in his ear.
With a slight flush, Jamie turned to face the suddenly disgruntled Natalie. He raised his eyebrows in a disapproving stare.
“That’s an inappropriate way to speak about yer boss, young lass. Ye need to be tending to yer business and nae be talking about her behind her back.”
“Since she’s my mother, I can talk about her any way I like.” With a huff, Natalie set the laptop on the desk and opened her kit. “And what I said is true. She’s nae interested in men, if ye get my drift.”
Jamie felt a twinge of disappointment at the girl’s crude hints, but his sense of propriety still rose to the foreground. “Like I said, ye have no need to be discussing yer boss, especially if they are yer parent, to strangers in the manner ye did,” he replied in a stern tone.
“Are ye going to tattle on me?” she asked.
Jamie locked eyes with hers, silently wondering what was up with the lass? With startling clarity, it hit him. He hadn’t seen any rings on Pauley’s fingers. Mayhap she was divorced or her husband had died. Either way, young Natalie must see him as interested in her mother—and she didn’t like that.
“Since I’m obviously old enough to be yer father, I don’t do tattle these days,” he mocked. “Yer mother seems like a professional who knows how to do her job well. Ye just concentrate on being half as efficient as she is, and I’m sure ye’ll go far.”
With a flushed, insolent look, she handed him the laptop. “Aye, sir.”
Jamie took the laptop and strolled towards the kitchen after Darro. He could feel Natalie’s eyes stabbing him in the back. She’d yielded, but she was still suspicious.
So, Pauley had a daughter. He had a daughter too, and Pauley had been kind and thoughtful of Lucerne outside. Was Natalie that first child she’d been speaking about that made her sick during her pregnancy? If so, she must have at least one more running around somewhere. Unfortunately for Natalie, trying to deflate his interest in her mother wasn’t going to work. If Pauley was single, he was certainly attracted enough to ask her out.
Mayhap he could get Angus to get his Sinh network going and find out any information available on Pauley MacBride. The Sangster Information Network Hub, similar to the Ladie’s Aid Telephone Society, actually worked. He’d seen it in action himself when Angus’s wife, Poppy, had a stalker after her. Darro’s station hands had been able to stop and hold the stalker at Neamh until they found out who he was and what he wanted. Then again, if he let Angus know about his interest in the beautiful detective, it would be all over Inverness within minutes. He certainly wasn’t ready for that.
“Ye doing okay, Dad?”
Jamie realized he’d walked outside and was staring at nothing but the parking lot when Lucerne’s question interrupted his thoughts.
“Huh? Oh...aye, lass. Just thinking about what I’m going to do with my time until the police have finished with the building.”
“Seems to me ye have been thinking about a bit more than that,” Darro teased, waggling his eyebrows up and down. “Has a certain someone finally caught yer interest?”
“If ye mean have I noticed the detective is attractive, then aye, I noticed,” he huffed. “It’s a long way from appreciation of an attractive lass to the alter though, so don’t go getting any ideas.”
“How about getting some breakfast with us, Dad? We got the call from the police just as we were sitting down to eat and I’m starving,” Lucerne intervened.
Darro took the hint and didn’t say anything else although Jamie could feel him speculating.
“Aye, yer daughter is wanting to visit Xoko’s for some coffee with smoked salmon and scrambled eggs on sourdough,” he added. “Plus, whatever fancy sweet treat they have on offering this morning,” he teased Lucerne, “since we are in town.”
Jamie glanced at his watch. Time was creeping down the backside of 7:00 a.m. and he hadn’t eaten yet. He’d come in almost an hour earlier than normal due to some paperwork he’d wanted to get caught up, and had brought in a meager offering of a cold egg sandwich and an orange to eat a bit later.
That could wait.
Xoko’s homecooked food sounded a lot tastier—and the company of his daughter even better. His house felt emptier than usual since she’d married Darro back in February, and he was glad of the chance to visit with her.
“Aye, I haven’t eaten either, so that sounds good,” he agreed.
The door banged behind them and Jamie turned to see Pauley. “If ye are finished with us, we are heading out to get some breakfast.”
Pauley nodded. “I just need all of ye to come down to the police station sometime today so we can get fingerprints and statements,” she replied. “For elimination purposes in order to sort through the prints we find,” she added.
“I promise, right after breakfast,” Lucerne replied. “I need to eat something now that the nausea is receding. Those dry crackers in my bag just aren’t killing it.”
“I totally understand.” Pauley shot her a sympathetic smile.
“Xoko’s is just a few blocks away, de ye want to walk or ride?” Jamie asked his daughter.
Darro spoke up firmly. “We’ll be riding. I no want to get halfway there and have Lucerne go into labor or something.”
Jamie chuckled. “Getting edgy lad?”
“Ye bet I am.”
“Must be yer first then,” Pauley remarked. “My ex-husband was edgy with our first too.” A shadow flitted briefly across her face.
“How many do ye have?” Jamie asked curiously, noting the past reference of her husband.
Pauley hesitated and then answered. “Three. Two boys and a girl, Mr. MacNamara.”
“Just call me Jamie, since we’ll be in touch a lot while ye are working our case. It’s less of a mouthful than Mr. MacNamara.”
Before she could answer, Lucerne laid her hand on Pauley’s. “And I’m Lucerne and this is Darro,” she said. “We’re not much on formalities when something like this is going on. I hope ye can find whoever did this, and figure out what happened to that poor man inside.”
Pauley seemed to relax. “Ye can call me Pauley,” she replied to Lucerne’s kind gesture. “And I can’t tell ye any details of the case, but just be assured that the poor man inside was nae an upstanding citizen. I knew him the minute I saw his photo,” she added. “The real question is how did someone get the best of him? Because it wouldn’t have been easy.”
They were all silent as they pondered the ramifications of her statement, then Darro briskly rubbed his palms together. “Aye...well...we’d best be going. We’ll tend to our statements and fingerprints after breakfast.”
“Thank ye,” Pauley replied with a nod.
Jamie nodded at Pauley with a grin, knowing he was going to ignore her admonition to call her Detective MacBride. “Until later then, Pauley.” He turned and went down the steps to his car. She didn’t answer but he could feel her watching him as he walked away.
Was that a good sign?
On the way to the restaurant, Jamie’s stomach growled. He didn’t eat out often, preferring to fix his own food at home and have leftovers stored a week ahead. Processed food, although very tasty, was expensive and hard on the waistline. He wasn’t inclined to gain weight, but he also didn’t want to risk it either. Walking around town and running now and then on the riverwalk along the Ness River kept him in fairly decent shape. Plus, he had a weight set at home and did a workout with those three mornings a week.
Rhonda, his very American wife, had been gone almost three years now, and he still missed her every day. With her bright red hair, green eyes, and gorgeous figure, she’d been the flame of his life and the light of his existence until cancer had doused her glow and taken her away from him.
In reality, Jamie was probably more introvert than extrovert, which had worked well for him and Rhonda. It enabled him to endure the long, lonely months on his own when she would be in America with her family while he was traveling on business trips around the world. Sometimes he would be in a location unfit for a woman and a child for months at a time, coordinating the movements for large equipment to be used and moved between countries. Their situation had suited Rhonda because she was the real extrovert, and came from a huge family in Louisiana where she loved to spend time when he wasn’t around.
It had been really good money and he’d retired early from globe-trotting with a healthy investment portfolio and a great pension. They had planned on traveling together when they were both retired, but that dream had been painfully put to rest.
His sudden interest in Pauley made him a bit uneasy; it felt disloyal to Rhonda’s memory. Granted, Rhonda would have wanted him to move on. They had talked about the inevitable event that one of them would be left alone one day. He just hadn’t figured it would be him.
***
P AULEY STUDIED THE film from the cameras at Happy Housekeepers in disbelief. Hitting replay and reaching for her cup, she sipped her coffee as she watched the desperate young man race up to the back door of the Happy Housekeepers, shove something in between the door and the frame, and then enter the building and slam the door behind him. He was unlucky there wasn’t a deadbolt because it wasn’t ten seconds later that Tommie barreled in right behind him.
Granted, it was night time with no full moon and only a small porchlight on the back of the premises, but she could swear the figure resembled her youngest son, Luca. The thought of that monster cornering her son sent cold chills racing down her spine. She couldn’t be sure it wasn’t Luca, although there was no good reason for it to be him.
The film from the front camera was a little more illuminating, but not by much. As Jamie had said, the lad didn’t so much as glance behind him as he shot out the front door in the early morning dawn and never looked back.
The clothing was just like so many young men these days. Raggedy trousers slung low on the hips, and a black bomber jacket that appeared miles too big for the youth. Luca didn’t own a bomber jacket, nor a pair of ratty black tennis shoes with no markings on them. The kid was particular about his clothes, preferring name brand items that she couldn’t afford. Which was why she’d insisted he get a job, so he could buy the stuff he liked. She would supply him with clothes, but they would be things she could afford on her budget, not jeans that cost 150 pounds a pop.
The kid had no idea of what he wanted to do with his life, although she’d managed to get him into two years of basic schooling at a community college geared towards animal husbandry since he loved animals, but he hadn’t enrolled in a university this year to continue with anything.
Hence her demand that Luca find a job. He wasn’t going to lay around home playing video games and accomplishing nothing just because he wanted a break from school. Not while she was paying for his clothing, anyway.
Surprisingly enough, he did find a job at a local animal shelter, but that salary would hardly support the clothing he wanted to wear. Some of the stuff he’d appeared in, plus his sudden secrecy about his life, had set off an alarm in Pauley’s cop intuition. Where had he been all night? He was home now, but she knew he hadn’t been before she left the house this morning because she’d checked.
He hadn’t answered his phone either. Not until after she’d gotten the call from the dispatchers about Happy Housekeeper’s break-in. On her way to the case, he’d returned her call and said he’d stayed over at a friend’s house, and asked why he needed to make excuses for where he spent his time. Of course, she’d called the friend and he had confirmed it. Kids always stuck together unless you could manage to interrogate them separately in a police station. She wasn’t about to do that.
Yet.
When Chief Inspector Quinn Tannock snapped his fingers in front of her face, she started.
“What has ye concentrating so hard that ye are ignoring everyone around ye?” he asked with a grin. “I need to see ye in my office, if ye can tear yerself away.”
Pauley yawned and pushed her chair back. “Aye, sir. I was just watching the video from the murder case this morning.”
He lost his grin. “That’s what I want to talk to ye about.”
She nodded and followed him into his office where he shut the door behind them. She took a seat in front of his desk as he walked around the wooden monstrosity and sat down, the old chair creaking slightly when he did so. The Chief Inspector was in his early sixties and well able to retire, but he liked his job and chose not to. He was also physically fit with thick, iron-gray hair, piercing gray eyes, and a commanding air that she respected.
“So, what do ye want to know, Quinn?”
“Have ye figured out who killed Tommie Ruskag yet?” he asked, steepling his fingers as he watched her closely.
“When I do, ye’ll be the first to know,” Pauley replied with an uneasy feeling. Quinn didn’t ask idle questions. Did he know something? “Why do ye ask?”
“Because something’s come up that ye need to know about,” he replied with a definite air of regret.
Something was up, his attitude making Pauley tense and her pulse leap. Whatever it was, she had a sudden uneasy feeling it was connected to her son.
“Detective Peterson got a call from Hope Barks animal shelter. It appears a couple of the employees there were horsing around the employee lockers and bumped into one of them. It opened and a bag fell out.”
Pauley’s stomach tightened with each word Quinn spoke. Hope Barks was where Luca worked. The feeling of her world about to fall out from under her made her light-headed. “Who did the locker belong to and what was in it?” she asked, her pulse rate increasing.
Quinn hesitated and then leaned forward. “It belonged to yer son, Luca,” he replied bluntly. “The clothes had fresh blood on them. Couldn’t be more than half a day old.”
“Maybe someone just shoved the bag into the first available locker,” Pauley protested, feeling the cold creeping like probing icy fingers through her body. Instinctively, she knew that wasn’t the case.
Quinn shook his head. “I watched the video myself with Detective Peterson. The clothing looks exactly like the clothes the kid who ran was wearing. I should be hearing from the M.E. anytime now with the owner of the blood sample. I’m betting it will be Tommie Ruskag.”
“That doesn’t mean the clothing belonged to Luca though,” she gritted, trying to deny what was staring her right in the face.”
Quinn sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Ye know how this works, Pauley. Mica is bringing him in for questioning as we speak. I don’t need yer permission because he’s twenty-one, but I did want ye to know. Maybe they don’t belong to Luca...but maybe they do. We have no choice but to follow where the clues take us, I just wanted ye to be prepared.”
Pauley gave a short nod, her jaw clenched. She knew how it worked, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. “And if it is Luca? The crime scene speaks for itself, Quinn. There is no doubt it was self-defense.”
“That may be true, but I still have to take ye off the case, Pauley. Mica Peterson will be investigating all of it. Luca is young, with no criminal history. If it is self-defense, then he’ll nae be charged with anything. But my advice to ye is to get him a good lawyer and find out what he’s been up to. Take a few days off, bond with yer son. The lad appears to be getting into things he has no business being a part of.”
“He won’t even talk to me,” Pauley snapped, unable to keep the bitterness out of her tone. “How am I supposed to bond with him?”
“When he’s released into yer custody, I suggest ye find a place to get him out of town for a while. Someplace that won’t be easily accessible to the people he’s mixed up with.
“Aren’t ye getting ahead of yerself? We don’t even know if it was Luca yet. And if it was, there may be a perfectly good explanation. Maybe he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe he saw something go down that he shouldn’t have seen.”
Unable to stay seated, Pauley stood up and paced. “There could be any number of reasons Tommie was chasing him, Quinn. It doesn’t mean he’s joined a gang or something.” She turned to face him across the desk. “I want to hear the interview from another room and see his face when Mica talks to him,” she insisted. “I’ll know if he’s lying.”
Quinn stood up, watching her with a guarded expression. “Are ye sure about that?”
She stared mutely back at him wanting to tear him to shreds and kick the desk in frustration, but it wouldn’t do any good. It wasn’t his fault and she knew he would try to help as much as he could. “No, I can’t be completely sure,” she finally admitted to him and herself. “But I still want to see the interview.”
Pauley wasn’t sure about anything at the moment. Luca was the private sort, just like herself, and never had been one for confidences. He was only 15 when Peter cheated on her and she’d subsequently divorced his dad. It hadn’t been pretty, and Luca had been more susceptible to Peter’s lies than Natalie and Elliot were. When Luca needed a real father figure, Peter chose to be bitter and blame her for their break-up.
Quinn’s phone beeped and he held it up to look at it. “Mica’s bringing him in now,” he said. “Ye don’t have to do this, Pauley. No one would blame ye.”
“He is my son, I would blame me,” she replied, turning to walk out into the main room. Her mother’s heart shattered at the expression on Luca’s face as the burly Mica held his elbow and escorted Luca with his wrists handcuffed behind his back. Luca looked terrified, unsure of himself, and lost. He was limping, there were bruises on his face and neck, and a black eye was coming up on the right side.
“Luca,” she whispered, shocked at the evidence right in front of her. There was no doubt he’d been in a fight, and if it was with Tommie Ruskag, he was lucky to be alive. She wanted to run to him and hold him like she had when he was little, protect him with her life, and keep him safe from the Tommie Ruskags of the world.
“Mum?” he asked uncertainly, looking back at her as Mica walked him past her. “Mum...I-I’m sorry. I-I didn’t mean to...” His voice trailed off and he hung his head.
Pauley stepped in behind Mica and touched his shoulder. When he turned them both around, she asked, “Can we have a few minutes, Mica?”
Mica looked over at Quinn and her boss nodded. “Interview room three,” Mica replied gruffly, a sympathetic look on his face.
Pauley followed them into the interview room and Mica took off the cuffs. “Five minutes, Pauley. We just came from the hospital so his injuries have been seen to. Bruised ribs and the like, but nothing major. He was lucky,” he added, and then closed the door.
Luca drank her in. “I-I guess you must hate me about now?” His eyes, so like her own, fearfully searched her face.
“Of course I don’t hate you,” Pauley replied stepping up to cup his face with her palm. “Are ye okay, Luca? I can’t believe ye stood up against that monster and won.” Her voice cracked as her emotions overwhelmed her. Pauley was no longer a tough police detective; she was a mother with tears in her eyes who needed to embrace her child.
Luca flinched when she hugged him, but he put his arms around her. “Am I going to jail, Mum? The detective told me I was under arrest for manslaughter, but I told him I was only defending myself. What’s going to happen to me?”
The uncertainty in his voice was laced with something else she couldn’t define. Was it belligerence mixed with a defensive belief in his actions? There must be a hundred different emotions broiling in his heart, mind, and stomach as he realized the immensity of what he’d done. Her son had killed a man, even if he hadn’t meant to, and that meant he had to take on that responsibility. It’s never easy to take a life, and there was nothing she could do to absorb that blow for him, or protect him from the repercussions. Her heart ached for him.
“The first thing ye need to do is not to answer any questions until yer lawyer gets here. And I mean no questions at all. I’ll get one for ye,” she said, wiping her eyes. “And ye’ll be bonded out until yer hearing. Then they will decide if there’s any need to go to court. But ye will let yer lawyer handle that. There shouldn’t be any reason for them to hold ye in here without bond. Tommie Ruskag is a well-known criminal. Can ye do that?”
Luca nodded, looking relieved to have a path to follow. “Aye, I can handle that.”
“When ye get home, we need to talk, Luca.”
His face became guarded and Pauley could see him retreating from her. She sighed and rubbed her forehead. This wasn’t going to be easy if he wasn’t willing to come clean with her. How she wished she had someone she could rely on to support her and give her advice. Being a mother never came with instruction manuals, not for any stage of life.
The door opened. “Time’s up, Pauley,” Mica’s quiet voice sounded behind her. His big, rangy frame glided into the room, giving the impression of the floor moving him along instead of him moving along the floor. It was uncanny at times how such a big man could be so liquid.
“Thank ye, Mica.” Pauley caught Luca’s gaze before turning away. “Remember, wait for yer lawyer.”