Mission: Cavanaugh Baby Read online

  She blew out a breath. “Well, he did walk out on her and the baby, but that could just be a case of responsibility jitters,” she pointed out, knowing she was speculating. “Maybe we should stop by my place and I can take Albert with me,” she suggested with a smile that was way too innocent to be real. “See what he has to say.”

  “Now he’s a talking dog?” Shane asked as they drove to the address Brenda had secured for them.

  If Ashley heard the amusement in his voice, she pretended not to. She took his mocking question as an opportunity to educate him. “All animals talk to you. You just have to listen.”

  It wasn’t a theory he subscribed to, but he let it go for now. All he did was point out the obvious. “The dog just might not like him.”

  “If he walked out on my pregnant mistress and made her cry, I wouldn’t be too crazy about him, either,” she said.

  “What makes you think she cried over him?” Shane asked, curious where she got her information.

  “Easy, his pictures were still up in her apartment. If the breakup was something she orchestrated or was hoping for, or held a grudge against him for, she would have smashed his pictures—or thrown them out. But she displayed them.”

  “Okay, you made a believer out of me,” Shane told her with a laugh.

  “Take me back to the precinct,” she requested, “so that I can get my car and then—”

  “We’ll go see this guy together,” Shane concluded for her.

  He wasn’t willing to let her go off on her own, she thought. “Afraid I’ll steal your thunder?” she quipped.

  “Afraid you might create thunder if you don’t hear any,” he countered matter-of-factly.

  Ashley sat in the passenger seat, silent as she struggled to hang on to her temper. He’d just insulted her. How was she supposed to work with a man who had all but just said she wasn’t trustworthy? “Are you doubting my integrity?”

  He looked a little mystified as to how she had arrived at the bizarre conclusion. “More like I’m worried about your enthusiasm to bring this guy down no matter what.”

  “I want to bring down whoever it was who killed that poor woman and stole her baby, nothing more, nothing less,” she informed him with feeling. “No matter what you might think of me or my dog catching job, I don’t lie, Detective Cavanaugh. Is that understood?” she asked, watching his face intently.

  “Understood,” he finally replied after more than a minute had gone by.

  “Okay, then, step on it,” she urged. “Since you obviously don’t trust me to do this on my own, let’s find this guy before he decides to pick up and disappear for good.”

  She had a feeling that time was of the essence if they were going to save the baby. She refused to think about the possibility that the infant was dead. Backup had already conducted a thorough search of all the Dumpsters in the area.

  “The sooner we get this done,” she told him, “the sooner you can get back to your evening.”

  He laughed shortly as he eased to a stop at an intersection. “Nothing much to get back to.”

  She found that difficult to believe. The man was, after all, handsome as well as charming. Both attributes were known to attract a swarm of women. He struck her as someone who would want to make the most of that.

  “No hot date waiting for you, wondering where you’ve got to?” she asked.

  “No date, hot or otherwise,” he told her, easing back on the gas.

  She glanced at his profile. She would have thought it would be more rigid than that. The fact that he was alone for the night didn’t seem to bother him at all. Why?

  Deciding to be up-front with him, she asked, “Is this where I’m supposed to feel sorry for you?”

  “No. But if you want to feel sorry for me—”

  Here it comes, Ashley thought, bracing herself for practically anything.

  “You can feel sorry for me because I’ve got a mouthy temporary partner who seems to want to turn every other word between us into a fight.”

  She said nothing to begin with, then eventually, she gave in to his assessment. She had been a wee bit thin-skinned and touchy. It came from years of being embroiled in actual verbal assaults—sometimes physical ones, as well. As far as partners went, temporary or otherwise, Shane seemed like a pretty good guy. He deserved a chance, she told herself.

  “Point taken,” she conceded. “I’m just used to fighting for every single foothold, every step I make. Nothing ever came easy for me.”

  And the bitterness shows, he couldn’t help thinking. Still, pointing it out wasn’t a way to make it go away. It would accomplish just the opposite.

  When he was certain she was finished and he wouldn’t be interrupting her, Shane made the argument for his defense.

  “I just want you to keep one thing in mind. I have three sisters, none of whom I have ever felt superior to for more than an intoxicating moment. The seven of us were raised by parents who taught us to regard one another as equals—no matter how inferior my sisters thought my three brothers and I were,” he added with a grin. “Got it?”

  “Got it,” she answered and this time, for some reason, she believed that she did.

  * * *

  “You think we can make this snappy?” the handsome, boorish young man asked in response to the two badges that were being held up for his perusal in the doorway of his studio apartment. “I have a date with this really hot model, and she does not want to be kept waiting—know what I mean?” He directed the last part to Shane. It was accompanied by a self-satisfied smirk.

  He was the type of man, Shane concluded, that women enjoyed scratching their eyes out—with more women standing on the sidelines, applauding.

  “We’d like you to answer a few questions,” Shane told him. “Now,” he intoned as the man opened his mouth again to lodge another protest. “Know what I mean?” Shane asked. He looked pointedly at the victim’s former boyfriend.

  “What’s this about?” Simon demanded as he reluctantly allowed them to enter his tiny studio apartment.

  Walking in, Ashley noted the scattered clothing on the backs of chairs and the sofa. There was more on the unmade bed. A forlorn pizza box was buried headfirst in the overflowing garbage pail.

  “A little cramped, isn’t it?” Ashley asked, taking it all in.

  “This is just temporary,” Simon informed her dismissively. His tone demanded that she back off with those kinds of questions or suffer the consequences.

  This is just temporary, he’d said. Until he found another woman to sponge off of, Ashley thought with contempt.

  “Ask your questions so I can go, okay?” he insisted. He obviously didn’t like the way she was looking at him. As if he were a fascinating train wreck she couldn’t seem to draw her eyes away from.

  “When did you last see Monica Phillips?” Shane interjected.

  Surprise as well as anger crisscrossed his features. “This is about her?” he asked.

  “Answer the question, please,” Shane instructed firmly.

  Simon was too busy being indignant and angry to answer any question directly.

  “Look, whatever she’s saying, she’s lying,” he said heatedly. “She’s not even my girlfriend anymore. I’ve been seeing someone new, someone who appreciates me. Allison Sales,” he said proudly. “So Monica is just telling you lies.”

  “She’s not telling us much of anything,” Ashley countered, wondering if the guy would even care to hear that his former girlfriend had been killed.

  “Well, that’s a first,” he declared tersely, as though spitting out an apparent bad taste in his mouth.

  “So is death, for her.”

  “Yeah. Wait, what? Who’s dead?” he demanded after playing back the words he’d just heard Ashley saying to him.

  “Who do you th
ink, Einstein?” Shane asked. His hands itched to take a swing at this guy. Just one swing. He was a poor excuse for a human being, and no one would miss him once he was gone.

  Annoyed then puzzled, the man’s face was a mask of confusion for exactly fifteen seconds before it looked as if his brain had suddenly kicked in. He thought hard for a moment. Ashley wondered if the effort was going to cause him to implode.

  “You’re not talking about Monica, are you?” he cried, stunned.

  Ashley fixed him with a look that dared him to curse. “And if we were?”

  “It’s not possible,” Wilson insisted. “I just talked to Monica a couple of days ago. She was alive then,” the genius pointed out. “How can she be dead?”

  Shane decided to give him all the details, carefully watching his face as he spoke. “Somebody decided to give her a C-section early—without the benefit of an anesthetic.”

  Simon’s liberally tanned face turned completely pale as he clutched at his stomach.

  The next moment, his knees buckled beneath his weight—despite the fact that he was rail thin—and he made it to the kitchen, where he promptly purged the contents of his stomach into the sink.

  Shane winced as the image and the smell got to him. He expected to see Ashley react in much the same manner. Instead she followed the man into the kitchen and ran the water until the last of the pungent stomach contents had been sent down the drain.

  “Need a minute to pull yourself together?” Shane asked the suspect.

  The man couldn’t answer. He held his hand up instead, signaling that he couldn’t speak for fear of another bout of purging.

  It came, anyway.

  Shane’s eyes met Ashley’s. There was a look in them that he couldn’t quite fathom—but it didn’t appear as if she was loaded for bear any longer, at least, not where this man was concerned.

  From the looks of it, he and she had arrived at the same conclusion. But he wasn’t the type to count chickens before the nest was even prepared. So instead, he waited for her to be the one to make the statement.

  He didn’t have a long wait.

  “I don’t think he’s our killer.”

  Chapter 11

  Stepping back from the man they were questioning, Shane motioned for her to follow suit. When she did, he asked, “What makes you think he’s innocent?”

  Ashley frowned at the wording he used. “I wouldn’t exactly call Simon innocent,” she returned. There was contempt in her eyes when she glanced over at the retching man. “He’s guilty of absolutely reprehensible behavior—but I don’t think he killed Monica Phillips.” She winced slightly as Simon went through another round of what by now amounted to dry heaves. “Nobody throws up on cue like that. Not without two fingers going down their throat or a dose of ipecac.”

  Shane nodded. “I tend to agree with you,” he said. Looking over at their former suspect, he told the man, “We’re going now. Do yourself a favor and don’t leave town for a while.”

  Simon made an unintelligible response, his throat obviously raw at this point.

  “You realize that this brings us back to square one,” Shane told her as they left the victim’s former boyfriend’s studio apartment.

  Ashley chewed on lower lip for a moment. “Not necessarily.”

  Her assertion caught him off guard. What had he missed? “Okay,” he urged. “Enlighten me.”

  She’d been wrestling with her thoughts about the heinous nature of the crime and why anyone would choose to do it the exact way they had rather than just hit the victim over the head, or better yet, stab her through either the heart or a major artery if they just wanted her dead. The method was very precise. “I think she was killed for her baby.”

  Shane was open to anything. “You mean, like for a black market ring?” he asked. “I don’t know. Seems kind of barbaric to me. There are plenty of women willing to give up their unwanted babies, especially if there’s any kind of a monetary incentive involved. Sadly, there’s no shortage of unwanted babies,” he pointed out. “We see those kinds of headlines all the time—Baby Found in Dumpster—that sort of thing.”

  She was still fairly certain she was right. “The fact that the killer took an unborn baby might mean that it was more personal. I don’t think this was a baby meant to be sold. This was one the perp was going to keep, or give to someone close to him or her who might have lost a baby.”

  As she warmed to her subject—and grew more convinced that she was right—Ashley’s voice swelled in volume. “Whoever did this wanted an infant, a baby from ‘scratch,’ so to speak, so that the perp could raise it from the first moment it drew breath.” Her eyes met his, and she could see that he thought her theory had merit. “Could be someone who lost a baby during childbirth, and the need to replace that baby was just too overwhelming to ignore.”

  Shane looked at her for a long moment. There was something in her voice that caught his attention; that made him think that this was more than just a theory for her. Did she know someone like that, someone who’d lost an infant and had entertained a desperate plan to fill the hole that had to have been left in that person’s heart after going through that sort of loss?

  “You sound like you’re speaking from experience,” he said quietly. “Are you?”

  For a moment Ashley had lost herself in the past without realizing it. She reconnoitered quickly.

  “What? Me? No,” Ashley denied quickly and with feeling. “I’ve just got a large capacity for empathy, that’s all.”

  There was no way she was about to share something as personal as the loss of her baby with him. Nine months of preparing, of coming to terms with the situation of being a single mother and then, near the end, of looking forward to it only to be faced with a cold reality and forced to make the best of it—as if there was a best to it—without a drop of emotional support from anyone. Because there had been no one, a fact that, coupled with her loss, had very nearly broken her. But then she’d rallied.

  She always rallied.

  “Empathy usually means that you’ve gone through the same thing,” Shane told her, his eyes still on hers.

  “Sympathy,” Ashley said, stressing every syllable of the word. “I meant sympathy.” And then her indignation took hold. “Are we trying to solve a murder or correct my word choice?” Ashley asked impatiently.

  “Nothing in the handbook that says we can’t do both,” Shane told her mildly.

  Her frustration was beginning to mount. Ashley could feel herself on the edge of an explosion, and no good could come from that. He could easily get her dismissed from the case, and at this point, she felt invested in it.

  “You know, you’re right,” she said with a false brightness. “We should call it a night. I don’t know about you, but it’s way past my bedtime.”

  He knew it was all an act—a man didn’t grow up with three sisters and remain clueless to such things—but it was also for the best. They were both getting a little punchy, and that was when accidents happened and details got overlooked. His first homicide was way too important to him for him to take any chances that might mess him up.

  “Mine, too,” he told her. “I’ll drive you back to the precinct so you can get your car, then head on home myself.”

  Ashley merely nodded in response to his offer. She didn’t trust herself to conduct a conversation with him at this point. Her emotions were much too close to the surface, stirred up as they had been by some of the details of this case.

  * * *

  When Shane drove into the precinct’s parking lot some twenty minutes later, he absently noted that most of the cars had left for the night. He pulled up beside hers. Unable to wait a second longer, Ashley fairly bolted out of his vehicle.

  “See you in the morning?” Shane called after her.

  His question caught her by surpri
se. It also pleased her. Part of her had been braced for a confrontation since she’d thought Cavanaugh would want to handle the rest of the investigation by himself. That he had just assumed she was in it for the long haul was a weight off her shoulders. Her energy would be better spent on the investigation and not on second-guessing him.

  However, given what she’d experienced in her formative years—that nothing was ever done altruistically—she was rather suspicious about the detective’s motives.

  “Sure,” she finally answered. “I’ll come up to your squad room in the morning.” Ashley assumed that Cavanaugh would prefer her coming up to his department rather than his coming down to hers. That was fine with her. The space in Animal Control was rather limited and austere, even by department standards.

  Shane nodded just before he drove away. “Good,” he called out.

  But Ashley was already getting into her car, and if she heard his last word, she gave no indication.

  * * *

  Shane had no idea what to make of her, but he knew he was ready to try to unravel the mystery that was Ashley St. James. The fact that he wanted to amazed him in itself. After Kitty, he had been certain that he didn’t want to approach anything that even remotely felt like a relationship. The intrigued way he felt about Ashley just told him that nothing was carved in stone.

  He smiled to himself. His father always encouraged him to remain flexible....

  He saw the light immediately.

  The light was on in his ground-floor apartment. Shane was positive that he’d turned all the lights off before he’d left this morning.

  Which meant that someone was in his apartment.

  He never took his eyes off the front door as he pulled his car up into the carport right in front of the apartment.

  One hand on his weapon, Shane eased his key into the lock and slowly turned it, taking care not to make any noise as he opened the door.

  There was someone in his tiny kitchen. He recognized her just as his weapon cleared his holster.

  His body, completely rigid and on high alert less than a second earlier, relaxed now as he blew out a long, exasperated breath.