At first glance it looked like the old woman tripped and fell, tumbled down the curved steps and broke her neck, but, these days, who knew? Eugenia Cahill was a wealthy woman. The Cahills had weathered a number of financial ups and downs, but it was no secret their fortunes were solid and currently on a steep rise. But the family had suffered their share of nutcases too. Marla Amhurst Cahill a case in point. It seemed like too much of a coincidence for Eugenia to wind up at the bottom of the staircase less than seventy-two hours from the time Marla, her murderous daughter-in-law, had escaped from prison.
Paterno scowled. The thought that Eugenia’s daughter-in-law had escaped really gnawed at his gut. He’d worked his ass off to put Marla away years before, and now recently, because of overcrowding and her stellar behavior as a model prisoner, she’d been transferred to a lower-security facility.
What a mistake! He wouldn’t be surprised if some of the Cahill fortune had been used to grease the skids on that little maneuver. Within two years of the transfer, Marla had found a way to break loose of that country club disguised as a lock-up facility. It hadn’t come as much of a surprise to Paterno, but it pissed him off. In all his years in law enforcement, Paterno would be hard-pressed to come up with a more calculating, murderous bitch than Marla Cahill. The way he saw it, she should have been locked away doing hard time for the rest of her life.
And now she was out.
And her mother-in-law, keeper of the family fortune, had just suffered a quick, untimely death.
Coincidence?
No friggin’ way.
Paterno just didn’t take much stock in coincidence.
Especially not where Cahills were concerned.
But right now he didn’t want to deal with Jack Holt, or anyone else. Not until he’d gathered a little more evidence. Besides, Holt was a member of the press, and at the moment Paterno wanted reporters far away from his crime scene. “Go ahead and take your wife home,” he agreed. “If I need anything else, I’ll call. And here—” He reached into his wallet, grabbed one of his business cards, and handed it to Holt. “If she needs to get in touch with me, she can reach me at any of these numbers, including my cell.”
“Okay.” Holt’s face was still grim. “If this is a murder, we want to know. Immediately.”
“You will.”
Holt turned and jogged through the falling rain, his shoes slapping on the wet bricks. He skirted a camellia bush, his shoulder swiping a near-dead bloom, a few red petals dropping onto the ground.
Watching him leave, Paterno couldn’t help wondering if Holt had married Cissy Cahill for love or money. That was the trouble with having millions stashed away in stocks, real estate, or the bank vault—someone was always after a piece of it. You could never be certain if they cared for you because they truly found you fascinating and really loved you, or if they were attracted to you because of the number of zeroes on your bank statement.
Greed, before, had cost a few people close to the Cahills their lives.
He made a mental note to check out Holt. Phone records, he told himself, might help. Credit-card receipts and bank balances. If the old lady had been murdered. He glanced through the open doorway, spying the broken body of the little dead woman, appearing, in many ways, like a nestling that had fallen from its nest. In life, Eugenia Cahill had been a force to be reckoned with. Sharp as a tack and definitely the matriarch, she’d run this family with tiny iron fists and an incredible will.
Had she suffered an unlucky fall?
Or was it murder?
With Marla Cahill on the loose, he was betting on the latter.
Cissy spied Jack running toward the car and rolled down her window. “What’s happening? Can we leave?”
“The police are still investigating. They’re not sure what went on with your grandmother, and they’re being careful, just in case this isn’t an accident.”
“Not an accident?” she repeated, her worst fears slicing through her.
“Nothing’s decided,” he said, standing in the rain, the shoulders of his shirt drenched, his hair dripping, his face a mask of concern.
Cissy gazed at him. Murder? “No way…no one would want to kill Gran,” she protested, though, deep inside, hadn’t she considered that Eugenia hadn’t just fallen? Her mother’s escape. The cops’ surveillance. Homicide detectives in the house. They all added up to the simple fact that someone was likely behind her grandmother’s death. She felt herself shaking inside, unspoken denials forming on her lips.
“Paterno gave me the green light to take you home.”
Cissy didn’t want to leave with Jack, but she had to get out of here, away from the creepy old house with its dead body in the foyer and secrets locked away in all the other rooms. Now lights were glowing in the windows of all four stories, as if a giant party was in full swing, when, instead, police, photographers, criminalists, and God only knew who else were crawling through the rooms where she’d spent so much of her life.
“Come on, I’m drowning out here. Let’s go.”
A van marked as belonging to the coroner’s office rolled to the end of the drive and parked between the other vehicles scattered haphazardly on the rain-slickened streets. A reporter, wielding her microphone like a weapon, flew out of a news vehicle and hurried up to the driver of the van as soon as he stepped a foot on the pavement.
Cissy watched in horror as someone she assumed was the assistant ME gave a quick little interview.
“Practice your ‘no comments,’” Jack advised, and she remembered that he too had once been with a newspaper, chasing down the latest story not only in Los Angeles, when he was first out of college, but in the Bay Area as well. Now he’d already opened the passenger door and was unbuckling his son. “Come on, big guy, let’s go home.”
Beej, the traitor, flung his hands up and down and grinned like a goof for his father, who it seemed just happened to be his most favorite person in the world.
Although she wasn’t crazy about spending any more time with Jack, she didn’t have much of a choice. And, believe it or not, Jack’s company was a lot less stressful than the detective’s. She hauled her purse, diaper bag, and disreputable pizza box with her. Together they wended their way through the emergency vehicles and police barricade. As soon as they stepped onto the street, they were immediately assaulted by the same determined female reporter that had chased down the assistant medical examiner.
“Miss Cahill!” Cissy heard her name, but ignored the newswoman. “Can you tell us what’s going on? Who died? Was it murder?” The woman hardly paused for a breath, and Cissy pressed on, right behind Jack and B.J., refusing to look into the blinding light held by one of the television station’s crew, or the camera she knew was following her every move. “Does your mother, Marla Cahill, have anything to do with this?”
Cissy bristled and had to bite her tongue, all the while waiting impatiently as Jack unlocked the door of his Jeep.
“Have you heard from Marla Cahill since her escape?”
The locks of the Jeep clicked. Cissy opened the passenger door, nearly knocking over the cameraman.
“Back
