The Quiet Storm. RaeAnne Thayne

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      “I’ll be home soon,” she finally repeated. “Give Alex a kiss for me when he wakes up and tell him I’ll take him down later to watch the…” Swim. Quack. This time she forced herself to concentrate until the word came to her. “To watch the ducks.”

      She hung up the phone and stared out the windshield at the dim, unnatural light inside the garage. Despite Luisa’s reservations, Elizabeth knew she was doing the right thing by pursuing this investigation, no matter how difficult she might find it.

      For Alex and for Luisa.

      And for Tina, who had never called her stupid.

      An hour after Elizabeth Quinn walked out of the precinct, Beau could swear her subtle perfume like just-ripe peaches still lingered in the air, sweet and fresh and oddly innocent.

      Like her.

      He frowned. Now why the hell would such a thought enter his head? He didn’t know about the innocent part but he knew for sure she wasn’t sweet. She was cold and snobby. The ice princess, who didn’t have the time of day for a cop unless she wanted something from him.

      Somehow the nickname didn’t jibe with the quiet, solemn woman who had faced him with trembling hands and chewed-to-the-quick fingernails.

      There was more to Elizabeth Quinn than her reputation. He had a feeling she was far more complex than the facts of the case she had asked him to look into.

      With a sigh he turned back to the file. What did she expect him to find that the other detectives couldn’t? The file told a grim story of a troubled woman who had hit rock bottom.

      Tina Hidalgo, age twenty-eight, had been found by a nosy neighbor peeking through open blinds. She was dead of a gunshot wound. The Glock with only her fingerprints on it—the Glock she had purchased illegally the day before she died—was on the floor, underneath her dangling fingers. The medical examiner said the bullet entry and exit were consistent with a self-inflicted injury.

      She had powder burns on her hand.

      And she had left a note, short and succinct.

      I’m sorry.

      He looked at the copy of the note included in the file. Her girlish handwriting with its big loops and rounded letters looked shaky, but that was only to be expected by someone under severe emotional strain. It definitely matched other samples of her writing, also included in the file.

      Elizabeth Quinn had left out a few interesting little tidbits during their meeting. Like Tina Hidalgo’s drug problem. The night of her death, she had enough heroin in her system to launch the space shuttle.

      Elizabeth had also neglected to tell him her friend had been fired the week before from her sometime-job as a stripper for frequent absences from work—and even more damning, this wasn’t her first suicide attempt. Seven years earlier, she’d had her stomach pumped after swallowing a bottle of painkillers.

      It was a clean case. Speth and Watson hadn’t missed anything. He set his pen down and rubbed at the ache between his eyes he always got when he read too much.

      He wasn’t going to enjoy telling Elizabeth Quinn his conclusions. He could just picture that devastated grief in her pretty blue eyes again.

      “What’s all this?”

      Beau looked up from the file. He’d been so engrossed in trying to figure out how to break the news to Ms. Moneybags Quinn he hadn’t noticed the return of his temporary partner.

      “Hey, Griff,” he greeted the clean-cut, scrubbed detective. Fresh off patrol, J. J. Griffin was eager to learn the ropes in the violent crimes division. He was a little too idealistic, maybe, but Beau figured that shine would wear off after another month or two.

      “How was the dentist?”

      Griff flashed his teeth. “Great. Not a single cavity, as usual. I’m telling you, it’s all about flossing.”

      “Thanks for the tip.”

      The kid ignored his dry tone and picked up the case file. “This is that Hidalgo case Speth and Walker caught, isn’t it? I thought they told the lieutenant in yesterday’s briefing they were signing it off as a suicide.”

      “They did. I’m just taking another look for a friend of the victim’s.”

      “That classy piece I saw sitting at your desk before I took off?”

      Beau decided he didn’t like the slightly besotted look in Griff’s pretty-boy eyes. He grunted an assent.

      “What are you looking for?” his partner persisted.

      “The friend doesn’t agree it was self-inflicted. She thinks we’re missing something.”

      “Like what?”

      “If I knew that, the case wouldn’t still be closed, now would it?”

      In his relentlessly cheerful way, Griffin didn’t appear to take offense at Beau’s curt tone. He pulled a chair over. “Mind if I take a look?”

      Beau shrugged. If the kid wanted to waste his time, too, he wasn’t going to stop him.

      He was examining the medical examiner’s report again when Griff plopped a photograph on top of it. “What’s this smudge here?”

      “Where?”

      The kid pointed it out. Beau frowned and reached into his desk drawer for a loupe for a closer look. What he saw through the magnifier sent red flags flashing all over the whole case.

      “I’ll be damned,” he muttered.

      “What is it?”

      “Her wrist is bruised. See? Right there?”

      “Like she was tied up?”

      He looked carefully at the autopsy photo. “No. They’re not deep enough for that. And only the right hand is bruised.” The writing hand, the trigger finger.

      As if someone had held her wrist just long enough to force her to write that brief note. And then held it tight and helped Tina Hidalgo commit suicide.

      Why hadn’t CSI picked up on it? And why wasn’t it in the ME’s report? Maybe because the rest of the facts in the case pointed so overwhelmingly to suicide.

      It still might be, he reminded himself. Tina Hidalgo could have gotten those bruises hours—or even days—before her murder.

      But all his cop instincts were warning him that everything in this case wasn’t as it appeared at first glance.

      It looked like Elizabeth Quinn would get her way after all, probably just as she always did. Her friend’s case would go back into the active pile, which meant he was going to have to see the ice princess again.

      He didn’t even want to think about whether his tangle of emotion at the thought was dread or anticipation.

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