The Quiet Storm. RaeAnne Thayne

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      She wiped suddenly clammy hands on the jeans she’d changed into after she returned from the city, then took the phone from Luisa.

      With a grim feeling that she would need all the concentration she could muster to hold her own with him, she slipped out of the kitchen and into the music room down the hall.

      “Hello?” she finally said, despising the thready edginess in her tone.

      “I thought maybe we were cut off.”

      In contrast to her own nervous squeak, the detective’s voice was deep and commanding, a smooth, rich bass. He had shades of the South in his voice, she discovered. Not much, just a hint of a drawl, like a slow-moving Georgia creek hidden in thick timber.

      Her mind went blank for a moment but she fought hard to regain composure. “No. I’m sorry. I needed to find a…quiet spot to talk.”

      “Big party going on?” Not exactly cordial in the first place, that voice dropped several degrees. He must not have a very high opinion of her if he thought she could come to the police station one minute speaking of her best friend’s murder, then return home to throw a soiree.

      Of course he didn’t have a high opinion of her. The first time they’d met, she had given him the coldest of shoulders and the second time she had sat at his desk all but wringing her hands like the helpless heroine of some silent film. He must think she was a complete idiot.

      Stupid cow. Stupid, tongue-tied cow.

      “No party,” she said finally, trying her best to silence the taunting ghosts of the past. “Just the usual chaos.” A boy, a puppy and Luisa, with her mournful eyes and disapproving frowns. “Has something happened?”

      “Yeah. Something’s happened. My partner picked out something in the crime-scene photographs the other detectives must have missed. It might not mean anything, but it’s worth checking out.”

      Excitement flickered through her. “What is it?”

      There was just the slightest delay before he spoke. She wouldn’t have noticed it except it was the same pause she employed while she concentrated on trying to pick her words carefully. She had the impression the detective didn’t want to answer her question but he finally spoke. “Some unusual bruising on one wrist.”

      “Bruising? What kind of bruising?”

      Again he hesitated. “What you might expect to see if someone were to grab your wrist tightly.”

      Oh, Tina. Elizabeth drew a sharp breath as a host of terrible images slithered across her mind, of fear and violence and a terrible death. She sank down onto the piano bench. What had happened to the sweet, innocent girl who had loved to dance and to swim and who used to sit at this same piano for hours with her picking out “Chopsticks” and “Heart and Soul”?

      “Ms. Quinn?”

      “Yes. I’m here.”

      “I’m sorry. I thought you’d want to know.”

      “Thank you. I…I did. I do.” She drew a ragged breath. She had known this wouldn’t be easy. “So what now?”

      “I’m still trying to figure out how this slipped past the medical examiner and what else they might have missed. I’ve got a few other leads on this end. I’d like to talk to neighbors, co-workers, that kind of thing. I have to warn you, I don’t know how far we’re going to get. Coming in cold to a three-week-old murder is about as easy as trying to find hair on a frog. The trail cools a little more with every passing day.”

      “I know. But thank you so much for helping me. I…can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

      There was another pause, then he cleared his throat. “I’d like to take a look at her personal effects, too. See if she left an appointment book or address book or something that might give us a little more to go on. Can you tell me where I might find her belongings?”

      “Here. Everything is here. The landlord wanted her apartment cleared so he could make it ready for another tenant but we…we weren’t ready to go through her things yet. Luisa and I had them packed into boxes and brought here after the other detectives cleared the scene.”

      “Mind if I take a look at them?”

      “No. I…of course not.” She rested a hand on the sudden fluttering in her stomach. He wanted to come here, to her home. “When would be convenient for you?”

      “What about tomorrow afternoon?”

      So soon? The fluttering turned into a whole flock of nervous butterflies. But she couldn’t very well refuse, not when she had practically begged him to investigate the case. “Yes,” she finally said. “Tomorrow would work.”

      She gave him directions to Harbor View from the Dugans’ house just a mile away, and a few moments later they ended the conversation.

      After she hung up the phone, she rose from the bench and crossed the thick carpet to the tall, mullioned windows overlooking the Sound. Rain still battered against the glass and stirred the water into a choppy froth. The sun had almost set and the lights of the city across the water had begun to twinkle and dance.

      She watched them for a long time before she realized slow tears were trickling down her cheeks like the rain against the window. She swiped at them, grateful she’d had the wisdom to come in here away from Luisa and Alex.

      It didn’t escape her attention that she had grieved far more for Tina in the last three weeks than she ever did throughout her father’s long, lingering death from cancer or after he finally died last year.

      She had grieved a long time ago for what would never be between her and Jonathan Quinn. Maybe by the time he died she had no more tears left inside her for the cold, exacting man who never had any interest in trying to understand the daughter who tried so desperately to please him.

      Luisa and her daughter had been far more of a family to her than her own father. Of course Tina’s death would hit her hard.

      Knowing she was justified in her pain didn’t ease it at all. She stood in the dark music room for a long time, until the rain slowed and her cheeks were dry once more.

      Beau glared at the phone. “I don’t care about your backlog, Marty. That’s no excuse for incompetence. Any first-year medical student would have picked up on bruising like that. How could your guy have missed in an hour-long autopsy something my rookie partner saw after thirty seconds of looking at a grainy crime-scene photograph?”

      He listened to the medical examiner give the old familiar bull about his staff being overworked and underpaid. On the surface Marty Ruckman might seem like the consummate politician trying to cover his rear, but Beau knew him well enough to know the coroner cared as deeply as the detectives about finding justice for the dead.

      “Whatever the reason, Marty,” he finally said, “we both know this was a major screw-up and it’s up to you to make it right. I want you to personally go over the autopsy records and see what else this guy missed. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

      He hung up without saying goodbye and thumbed an antacid off the roll in his desk. He didn’t need this today. He and Griff had a dozen other active СКАЧАТЬ