wasn’t something that he really felt he could tackle alone.
So when Malloy got back to the squad room and saw that his partner was not sitting at his desk, he grew somewhat anxious and testy.
For the past week, Frank Weatherbee had been on vacation, but he was due back today. Malloy looked over toward his partner’s desk to see if there were any telltale signs of life—like Weatherbee’s ever-present bag of barbecue chips—on his desk. But there were no chips. Not a thing was out of place, which Malloy didn’t take as a good sign. When Weatherbee was in, everything on the detective’s desk was out of place.
Malloy scanned the squad room. “Anyone seen Weatherbee?” he asked, raising his voice so it would carry throughout the room.
The detective sitting closest to him, Wade Cooper, shook his head. “Haven’t seen Weatherbee since he went waltzing off on his vacation, the lucky SOB.”
“Well, he should have come waltzing back this morning,” Malloy pointed out, annoyed.
“Maybe he decided to take an extra day,” Cooper guessed, a vague, careless shrug punctuating his statement.
“He knows better than that,” Malloy said, rejecting Cooper’s suggestion. “We’re shorthanded in the department to begin with—and he knows I’ll kill him.”
Cooper shrugged again, his narrow shoulders hardly making a ripple beneath the wrinkled houndstooth jacket he wore. “Hey, I’m just guessing here. Why don’t you ask Julie?” he said, referring to the department’s administrative assistant. The woman’s desk was just outside of their captain’s cubbyhole of an office. “Maybe Weatherbee called her to say he’s running late because of traffic.”
Malloy hoped that was all that it was, although it was getting on in the day and if his partner was going to be here, he would have already made it in.
It wasn’t traffic.
When Malloy asked Julie Myers about his partner, he found out that Weatherbee had called in. But the word “traffic” had never entered the conversation.
However, something else entirely had. Something else that Julie went on at length to explain. As he listened, Malloy’s mouth dropped open. Talk about rotten timing.
“He did what?” Malloy asked, staring at the woman who had been with the department longer than his uncle Brian had been the chief of detectives.
Patiently, Julie repeated—verbatim—what she had just told the annoyed-looking detective. “Weatherbee said he broke his leg and can’t come in.”
The hell he couldn’t, Malloy thought in disgust. He’d seen some of his cousins power through with gaping holes in their sides, not taking a break until the case they were working on was all wound up and closed.
Didn’t people believe in work ethics anymore?
“I need him,” Malloy argued. “Hasn’t Weatherbee ever heard of crutches?”
Julie gave him a sympathetic look. “The detective said he was too banged up to use them.”
That had Malloy momentarily reconsidering his reaction. “Was Weatherbee in a car accident?” he asked Julie.
The older woman shook her head. “No, a bike accident. From what he told me, he and his wife collided while they were biking through the Los Angeles Forest.” There was a drop of sympathy in her voice as she told him, “Weatherbee’s mother is taking care of both of them.”
“Biking?” Malloy echoed incredulously, still working with that piece of information. “What’s he doing on a bike? The guy’s as coordinated as an octopus crossing the Painted Desert.” He blew out a breath. It would have been funny if it wasn’t so damn annoying and inconvenient. “Of all the stupid, harebrained—”
“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger,” Julie protested, raising her hands to ward off his words before they became too colorful. “I just took Weatherbee’s call. I didn’t rent him the bikes.”
Malloy nodded, a somewhat contrite expression on his face. He shouldn’t be taking his frustrations—or Weatherbee’s stupidity—out on her. Julie had nothing to do with the situation. It wasn’t her fault that his partner was one sandwich short of a picnic.
“Yeah, sorry, you’re right.”
Malloy frowned to himself as he looked back out at the squad room. It was small, as far as squad rooms went, with fewer than half the number of detectives that departments like Homicide and Robbery had.
Everyone was up to their eyeballs in caseloads.
He looked back at the older woman. “Hey, Julie, how would you like to get out from behind that desk and go out in the field to work a case with me?” he asked, only half kidding.
Humor quickly dissipated in the face of the less-than-eager look the woman gave him. “I know, I know,” Malloy sighed. “What was I thinking?”
Julie answered without even sparing him a glance. “Probably some illicit thoughts about the hot little number you spent the weekend with would be my guess.”
Taken by surprise, Malloy stared at the administrative assistant. “How did you know about that?” he asked, both amused and slightly mystified.
“Because, Malloy, you always have a hot little number to spend the weekend with,” Julie answered. There was a note of affection in her voice as she told him, “If you were my son, I’d have sent you to a monastery a long time ago.”
“No, you wouldn’t have,” he contradicted with far more blatant affection, “because then you wouldn’t be able to see my bright, shining face every week.”
Julie shook her head in amazement. “You really do flirt with every woman you come across, don’t you?”
“Only if they’re breathing—” and then he winked “—and lovely, like yourself.”
“This is April, Cavanaugh, and way too early for you to be shoveling deep piles of snow. Go work your case before it gets any colder,” she advised, waving him on his way.
He had been right earlier, Malloy thought as he walked away. This definitely did not have the makings of one of his better days.
Hopefully, he thought as he got into his car again five minutes later, this day wasn’t going to get any worse.
* * *
It didn’t get worse, but it didn’t get better, either. The man he had driven over to see, Roy Harrison’s lawyer, was not in his office.
“When will he be back?” Malloy asked the inert-looking young woman at the front desk of William James, Esq.’s office.
The young woman, who Malloy assumed was either the lawyer’s administrative assistant or his younger sister attempting to work off a debt, mechanically mouthed an answer to his question. “Monday.” Then added, “Two weeks from now.”
“Two weeks?” Malloy echoed. Was the man representing an out-of-state client? “Just where is he?”
The
