blew out a breath, trying not to let his temper get the better of him. This wasn’t anything new. He’d dealt with idiots before. “I need a name, Mr. Harrison. Who sold you the property?”
Harrison stopped walking. “My lawyer handled it. He dealt with some long-time employee who worked here. The guy was acting on behalf of the owner.”
The man was definitely a challenge to his patience, Malloy thought. “I still need a name, Mr. Harrison.”
“I don’t have a name,” Harrison snapped irritably. “I already told you. My lawyer handled all that. He does all my transactions.”
“All right, then I’ll need his name,” Malloy said, the calm timbre of his voice belying the way he really felt about this verbal square dance.
Part of him would have felt a certain amount of satisfaction if he could have discovered that Harrison was behind these murders. He made a mental note to investigate the man’s background and his general whereabouts twenty years ago—although he would have been very young at the time.
“Fine,” Harrison bit off. “I’ve got his card in that tin can of an office up there.” He waved his hand contemptuously toward the trailer.
“Lead the way,” Malloy said amicably, fairly certain that Harrison wasn’t aware that he was being led up to that trailer already.
Harrison frowned at the former owner’s living accommodations. “First thing in the morning, I’m having that piece of junk hauled off and getting a real RV set up in its place until I can have a building erected.” He aimed a penetrating glare at the detective next to him. “Unless that’s against the law, too.”
Malloy counted to ten in his head before he addressed the owner’s contemptuous statement. “None of it’s against the law, Mr. Harrison. There are just procedures that have to be followed.”
“Procedures be damned,” Harrison snorted. “I’m losing money here.”
“And I’m very sorry about that, Mr. Harrison,” Malloy responded, his voice almost singsong in tone, even as he deliberately assumed a contrite expression. “You could write a letter to the department, detailing the inconvenience that this investigation is causing you—not to mention the money it’s costing you,” he added, then approximated a sympathetic tone, saying, “Maybe they’ll reimburse you.”
Again Harrison stopped walking, wonder written across his dour face. “They’d do that?”
Malloy eased himself out of the corner with the skill of a savvy con artist, something he had picked up by observing the people he tracked down and arrested.
“I don’t handle that end of it, but nothing’s impossible,” he told the nursery owner innocently.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the amused look on Sean’s face. The latter had come closer and overheard him. It took effort for Malloy to maintain a completely unaffected and neutral expression as he followed Harrison the rest of the way up the incline and into the trailer.
The trailer’s interior had a musty smell, thanks to piles of papers that hadn’t been sorted and either filed away or disposed of in a long time. Harrison cursed roundly under his breath as he searched his desk.
“Here!” Harrison declared dramatically, finally finding the business card he was looking for. He all but slapped it into the detective’s hand.
“You might want to call ahead and tell him I’ll be stopping by,” Malloy advised. He slipped the business card into his wallet and tucked the wallet away. “Do you remember when you bought this property?”
Suspicion crowded the distrustful brown eyes. “Almost five weeks ago. Why?”
“That was going to be my next question,” Malloy told him, his voice deceptively friendly sounding. “Why?”
Harrison’s dark eyebrows drew together in a perplexed look. “You mean why did I buy it?”
“Yes.” It seemed a simple enough question on the surface, Malloy thought. “Was it a lifelong passion of yours to surround yourself with greenhouses full of exotic plants? Or were you looking for a business write-off when you bought this property? Or...?”
He let his voice trail off. There was still the possibility that Harrison had somehow been involved in these murders that made up the cold case. Maybe the man knew about the bodies buried here and didn’t want them falling into the wrong hands. In his haste to make money, he’d forgotten that the bodies were on this side of the property rather than the developed side.
Malloy watched the nursery owner and waited for him to respond.
Harrison stared at him for a few moments, then shrugged. “I just wanted my own business, and I thought that being in charge of a nursery like this would be relatively stress free.” He punctuated the sentence with a dry, self-mocking laugh. “How’s that for a stupid move?”
“Not necessarily a stupid move, Mr. Harrison. Things’ll be resolved one way or another,” Malloy assured him. “So, you didn’t know the owner before the property changed hands?” he asked innocently.
“Didn’t know the owner after it changed hands, either,” Harrison retorted. “All I know is what my lawyer told me. The nursery used to belong to this collector who got too carried away collecting. He opened up a nursery and did a fair amount of business. He died some fifteen, eighteen years ago and left the place to his sister. She kept the place going, turning it into a real thriving business. When she got sick, she put one of the employees in charge. Eventually she asked him to sell it for her and then I got it. End of story.”
Malloy glanced out of the window down to the site of activity at the far end of the property. From this vantage point, he could see his uncle, the two other members of the CSI team, not to mention the doctor with the killer legs, still working the multiple grave site, all under the entertained eyes of the four construction workers.
The latter group gave no signs of moving, the former gave no indication that they were about to stop. All of which put a decided crimp into Harrison’s anticipated opening date.
He turned around to look at the new owner. “I’m sorry, I missed the last sentence,” Malloy apologized. “What did you just say?”
Harrison frowned at what he took to be the detective’s inattention. “I said, ‘End of story.’”
“I’m afraid not yet,” Malloy corrected, looking at the man pointedly.
The Cold Case Division of the Aurora PD was not a very big department. Nor was it a very popular department to work for. Tracking down sometimes decades-old information was definitely not to everyone’s taste. Patience was at a premium.
When Malloy had been promoted to the rank of detective and put in his application to join that division, he’d viewed working cold cases as a challenge, a way to prove his mettle and his tenacity. Because of his last name, he knew he had to work harder. Cavanaughs were scrutinized closely and held up to a higher standard. This was his way of proving himself.
But there was just so much of a challenge
