Cavanaugh Stakeout Read online

  And he did.

  “You missed your calling, you know,” he told her as they walked to the outer doors. “You should have been a social director.”

  Nik took it all in stride. “I know you meant that sarcastically but I’ll take that as a compliment regarding my people skills.”

  He had a feeling she would. Finn lifted one muscular shoulder in a dismissive half shrug. “Whatever floats your boat,” he said. “You want to come with me to Hanover and Wallace?” The suggestion surprised her. Nik thought she was going to have to talk him into letting her come with him. “I’ll drive,” he added.

  She sensed he expected her to make a counteroffer. “We could go together and I could drive,” Nik said as they went down the back steps to the parking lot.

  Finn looked at her, surprised that she had made the offer in all seriousness. He laughed dryly. “Not unless you want to learn a whole bunch of new words—and not even then,” he added with finality.

  If he thought that would embroil them in an argument, he was wrong, she thought. She was totally amenable to his suggestion. She was just glad to be going along.

  “Since you put it so nicely, how could I refuse?” she asked with a broad smile.

  Just when he felt he had her all figured out...he didn’t, Finn thought. The woman definitely kept him up on his toes.

  Preoccupied with the newest information that Valri had given him, Finn didn’t fully realize that the latter fact didn’t really bother him.

  * * *

  Hanover and Wallace was a prestigious accounting firm located on the southern edge of Aurora. There were no run-down sections in the city, but the southern section was known to be particularly upscale. The area was right next to Quail Hill, which was currently the last word in expensive homes and upscale buildings.

  “Wonder what the rents run here,” Nik mused as she got out of the passenger side of Finn’s unmarked vehicle.

  This ritzy area was way out of his league, Finn thought. Out loud, he said, “You know what they say, if you have to ask...”

  “You can’t afford it,” Nik concluded, nodding. “That’s okay,” she said. “I’m not looking to move. I like where I am.”

  Which stirred his curiosity. “Where is that, by the way?”

  “In Aurora,” she answered vaguely.

  She was playing games, Finn thought. Why? Did she think he was going to stalk her if he knew where she lived? If he really wanted to do that, he could find out where she lived from Valri.

  But the fact that she was deliberately withholding the information had him pressing her. “Just where in Aurora?”

  Nik smiled. “In a nice section,” she answered evasively.

  “They’re all nice sections in Aurora,” he pointed out.

  “I know,” she replied brightly. “That’s what I like about the city. It’s incredibly neat and clean—and safe,” she added. She’d lived here ever since she was a teenager. “At least for the most part.”

  It irked him that she refused to tell him where she lived. It irked him even more that that fact bothered him. It shouldn’t matter to him where she lived. All that should matter was whether or not she was an asset to his case.

  He had far more important things on his mind than this woman’s little evasive games.

  That fact didn’t really seem to help.

  The offices of Hanover and Wallace were located on the twelfth floor of the newly renovated Atwater Building. Nik and Finn took the express elevator up.

  “I think I left my stomach on the ground floor,” Nik told the detective when the elevator doors opened on the twelfth floor in a matter of seconds. She was definitely queasy, she thought.

  “You can pick it up when we go back down,” Nik told her dryly.

  Instead of getting annoyed at him, as he expected, he heard Nik laugh at his comment.

  “Humor.” She nodded her head in pleased approval. “You know, I guess there is hope for you yet, Detective Cavanaugh.”

  His eyebrows drew together. He did his best to look at her darkly, although he didn’t quite succeed. “I’m glad you think so,” he told her. “That means a lot.”

  Nik would have had to be deaf to miss his intonation. “But sarcasm is still your go-to move, isn’t it?” she said.

  The expression on his face grew just a tiny bit darker. “I really don’t suggest analyzing me, Kowalski. Not if you know what’s good for you.”

  “Too late,” she replied brightly. “I’m afraid that you’re just too fascinating a personality to ignore, Cavanaugh.”

  He blew out an irritated breath. “Now who’s being sarcastic?” he asked.

  She turned her head to him just as he was about to open the firm’s door. “I guess you’re rubbing off on me.”

  He sighed, shaking his head. He was allowing himself to get sidetracked. “Look, if you can’t get yourself to focus on the reason we’re here—”

  “I’m focused,” she told him, then repeated for emphasis, “I’m focused.” And then, just before he opened the door leading into the firm, she said, “I’m sorry. I get carried away sometimes.”

  He only wished that she would get carried away—literally.

  Tamping down his growing irritation, he gave her a scrutinizing look. “Are you ready?” he asked.

  In all seriousness, she answered, “I’m ready.”

  And then, right before his eyes, the woman he’d regarded as annoying seemed to transform back into the serious investigator he had first decided to join forces with.

  Finn nodded his head. “Then let’s do this.”

  Chapter 10

  Hanover and Wallace’s receptionist, Miriam Harris, according to the nameplate in the middle of the oversize desk she was standing behind, was more of a moving target than a stationary figure. She appeared to be so busy that she didn’t even realize they had entered the large outer office until Finn had cleared his throat to get her attention.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you standing there.” She tapped her monitor, pulling up a screen. “Who do you have an appointment with?”

  “Actually,” Finn began, “we don’t have an appointment.”

  The woman sighed as she shook her head. Wisps of auburn hair were coming undone around her face and neck. She looked as if she was weathering a windy day right here in the office, Nik thought. The woman appeared to be on the verge of unraveling.

  “I’m sorry,” the receptionist said with what seemed like genuine distress. “We’re not taking any walk-ins right now. The assistant who’s supposed to be here scheduling the appointments hasn’t been in in two days and everything is just falling to pieces...appointment-wise,” she added as an afterthought. “If you’d like to call back in a couple of days, we can see about fitting you in with one of our accountants. I’m sure everything will be back to normal by then.”

  The woman seemed to be doing her best to be congenial, but it was obvious to Nik that the receptionist was caving in under the pressure.

  “Is this the assistant who hasn’t been in the office the last couple of days?” Finn held up his phone, showing the receptionist a photograph of Julie Everett that had been taken in the morgue after the dead woman had been put back together following her autopsy.

  Despite the fact that she had been cleaned up, there were bruises evident on Julie’s neck and on the side of her face. It was obvious that she had been the victim of some sort of an assault—and that she had not emerged the victor.

  Miriam Harris’s brown eyes widened. “That’s her!” she cried. “That’s Julie!” Her eyes darted from Finn’s phone to his face. “She looks awful. What—what happened to her?”

  Not trusting Finn to break the news to the already fragile-looking woman, Nik took over. “I’m afraid she’s dead, Ms. Harris.”

  “Dead?” the receptionist repeated in a shaky voice fraught w
ith disbelief. When she could finally form words, she asked, “When? How...? Who?” The third question came after a beat.

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Finn told her, his voice a little less abrupt than it had been a moment ago. He took out his wallet and held up his ID and his badge. “Detective Cavanaugh with the Aurora PD,” he told the woman. Then, because he felt it might cut down on any unwanted questions, he added, “This is Investigator Kowalski. We’d like to ask you a couple of questions about Ms. Everett.”

  The receptionist looked as if she was suddenly folding up right in front of them. Not because she had something to hide, but because of the idea that someone she had interacted with so recently was abruptly no longer among the living.

  “Ma’am?” Finn persisted.

  “I don’t think there’s much I can tell you,” she told him nervously. “I mean, we weren’t friends or anything. I just knew her from work,” the receptionist explained, her eyes going from the detective to the woman beside him. “From here,” she clarified. “Julie was sent here by a temp agency. Our regular scheduling assistant is out on maternity leave,” she added. “Are you sure that Julie’s, you know, dead?”

  “Very sure,” Finn replied. He got back to questioning the woman. “So you never saw her talking to anyone outside of the office?”

  Miriam shook her head, her hair becoming more and more undone. “I’m way too busy to keep track of the comings and goings of the other people in the office,” the receptionist said, her voice quaking. And then she lowered it, her eyes furtively looking on either side of her. “I just notice if they don’t do their job.”

  “And did Julie do her job?” Nik asked in a friendly, conversational manner.

  It was obvious that the receptionist was torn between telling the truth and speaking well of the dead. After a beat, Miriam compromised.

  “She did as much as could be expected, but you could see that she wasn’t all that interested in it, not that you could really blame her.” The woman became a little more animated in her answer. “Although why take on a job if you don’t intend on doing it right?”

  Sensing the woman was looking for someone to agree with her, Nik answered, “Absolutely.” She knew that Finn wanted to establish a timeline if that was possible, so she asked the receptionist, “When was the last time you saw Julie? Do you remember?”

  “Oh, yes,” the receptionist said without hesitation. “She came to tell me that she had to leave for a doctor’s appointment. Right in the middle of the day,” the woman said with disapproval, “and she never came back.” A look of horror suddenly took over her features, washing away the annoyed one that had begun to take hold. “You don’t suppose that was when she was killed, do you?” Her distress instantly doubled. “I’ve been complaining about her not coming back and all along, she was lying dead somewhere. Oh, I’m a terrible person,” Miriam cried, clearly distressed by her own behavior.

  “Her body was discovered early this morning,” Finn told the receptionist. “All indications were that she was killed either late last night or early this morning, not two days ago.”

  Miriam exhaled, apparently finding some sort of solace in the information. “Oh, all right then, I feel better.” She looked stricken again as her words played back to her. “I mean, I don’t feel better, but...you understand?” she asked, as she looked from one of them to the other.

  “We do,” Nik assured her. She saw Finn taking a card out of his pocket.

  “If you think of anything else, please call,” he told the receptionist. “My number’s on the back,” he said, pointing to it. Then he added, “The department’s number is on the front.”

  Nik noticed that the receptionist only seemed to be interested in the number on the back of the card. She wondered how long the woman would wait before calling him on the pretense of giving him some miscellaneous piece of information.

  * * *

  “You know she’s going to call you, right?” Nik asked him as soon as they walked out of the accountants’ suite of offices.

  “As long as she has some more information...” Finn responded, his voice trailing off.

  He was missing the point, Nik thought. “I had no idea that you were an optimist,” she said with a laugh. “You know, the more I think about it, the more interesting you become.”

  He stopped at the elevator and pressed the down button. He wasn’t following her. “So what are you saying? You don’t think that she’s going to call?”

  “No,” Nik answered, stepping into the elevator and bracing herself for its swift descent. “She’s not going to have any information. Once the shock of actually knowing someone who was murdered started to wear off, she started looking at you like she was a hungry lioness and you were a very large cut of T-bone steak.” She smiled up at him despite the queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach as they went down. “Rare.”

  He laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “Very imaginative.”

  “Very accurate,” Nik corrected.

  She mentally blessed the elevator when it arrived at the ground floor.

  They walked out of the elevator, and the doors closed immediately, even before they reached the outer exit. “Well, I don’t know about you,” Finn said, “but I think that I’m going to call it a day.” He held open the exit door for her.

  “Don’t forget that you have to drive back to the station first.” When he looked at her with confusion, she reminded him, “My car’s there, remember?” She was fairly certain that he probably wasn’t happy about having to chauffeur her back. Taking pity on him, she gave Finn an alternative. “Or I could just call a cab and have the driver take me over there.”

  But he shook his head as they walked over to where his car was parked. “It was my idea to use just one car—my car,” he said. “So I’ll take you back.”

  Right now, a cab still sounded like the way to go in her opinion. She didn’t like putting someone out—especially when they made her feel that they were being put out.

  “You make me feel like your own personal penance,” she told him.

  He nodded, approving her choice of words. “That’s a very good description.”

  “I’ll find my own way back,” she informed Finn.

  But he caught hold of her arm as she began to take out her cell phone, ready to call for a ride. “I said I’d take you, so I’ll take you. End of story.”

  “End of story,” she echoed, putting her phone back in her pocket. She offered him a smile, which he ignored.

  * * *

  “So, same time, same place tomorrow?” Nik asked him cheerfully once Finn pulled his car up next to her vehicle.

  His eyes gave nothing away, not even a hint of whether or not she had guessed right. “I’ll let you know,” he told her solemnly.

  Nodding, she assured him, “I’ll be here.”

  “I meant I’ll call,” he told her.

  That didn’t change her answer. “Funny, I meant I’ll be here. In the flesh,” she added. When she saw the impatient look on his face, she reminded him of one crucial fact. “We still haven’t found Marilyn,” she reminded him. “And I promised Kim that I wouldn’t stop looking until I found her daughter.”

  The frown on his face was not one of censure, but was one of mild surprise. “Are you always this diligent about keeping your promises?” he asked.

  Nik didn’t waver or hesitate even for a second. “Always,” she answered.

  He nodded as she got out of his car. “Okay then.”

  She realized that he hadn’t said anything one way or the other about meeting her tomorrow.

  “That’s not an answer,” she pointed out as he began to drive away.

  “It is in my book,” he said, then he was gone.

  This man took a lot of getting used to, she thought grudgingly.

  * * *

  Wanting to
check on Kim, she swung by the woman’s house and saw another car parked in her driveway.

  Had Marilyn come back, or did the car belong to Kim’s sister? Knowing she couldn’t take anything for granted, Nik sat in her car across the street from Kim’s house and dialed the woman on her cell phone.

  Kim’s voice sounded thick, as if she was crying, when she answered after several rings. Nik refrained from asking her about it.

  “Hi, Kim, it’s Nik—”

  Instantly the other woman seemed to come to life, and asked, “Have you heard anything? Is Marilyn all right? Is she—?”

  “We’re still looking,” Nik told the woman. “I just thought I’d check with you to see if she had tried to call you.”

  “No.” Nik could almost see the woman’s chest deflating. “Nothing,” Kim answered in a voice that throbbed with fear.

  “Did your sister come to stay with you?” Nik asked, staring at the car in the driveway.

  “Yes, she’s here now.” Kim’s voice took on a note of complaint. “But all she does is lecture me that I was too soft on Marilyn.”

  “Your sister means well—and she’s worried,” Nik added, hoping that would make a little of what was happening tolerable. “I’ll check in on you tomorrow,” she promised.

  “And you’ll call me if you hear anything about Marilyn?” Kim pleaded.

  “You’ll be my first call,” Nik assured her. “Kim, I’ve got to go,” she said, sensing the other woman’s reluctance in letting her hang up.

  “She is all right, isn’t she?” Kim asked, her voice begging for reassurance.

  Nik honestly didn’t know the answer to that and she didn’t want to lie to the woman, but at the same time, she didn’t want to crush her, either. So she said, “Just remember to keep positive thoughts.”

  And with that, Nik took the opportunity to terminate the call.

  * * *

  Nik stayed up, making a list of all the different possible scenarios, but she had to admit to herself that it was just an exercise in futility. The scenarios all led nowhere. There just wasn’t enough available information to go on, despite the fact that both Marilyn and Julie were connected to the accounting firm, one permanently and one just as a temp. It might mean something, but most likely, it was just a coincidence.