The Cavanaugh Code

Focused only on the stranger, Taylor almost jumped. The question came from her brother, Frank, another homicide detective. Frank had chosen that moment to come up behind her. Fresh off solving a serial-killer case and riding the crest of triumphant satisfaction, her younger brother grinned at her.

“You know the department frowns on taking their equipment for personal use.” He moved so that he stood next to the annoying stranger.

Taylor struggled to keep from telling her brother to butt out. “This isn’t a date, this is a suspect,” she bit off.

“A suspect?” the intruder echoed, still smiling that annoyingly sexy smile that seemed to undulate right under her skin, shooting straight to her core and warming it. “For what?” he asked innocently.

As if he didn’t know. “For the murder of Eileen Stevens,” she snapped.

“A suspect?” her brother repeated in disbelief, then looked, stunned, at the seated man. “Laredo?”

Taylor’s eyebrows narrowed over eyes the color of the midmorning sky. “Who the hell is Laredo?” she demanded.

“I am,” the stranger told her affably. The next moment, he half rose in his seat and extended his hand to her. “J. C. Laredo,” he introduced himself. “I came in to see if we might be able to have a successful exchange of information. I would have asked last night,” he went on, “but you looked a little too hot and perturbed to listen to reason.”

“Taylor hardly ever listens to reason,” Frank told the man as if he was sharing some sort of a family confidence.

“Taylor also has excellent hearing and is standing right here,” she pointed out angrily to her brother, struggling to hang on to her temper.

She felt Laredo’s eyes slide over her torso as they took full measure of her. Slowly they went from her head down to her toes. It took all she had not to shiver.

“You most certainly are,” Laredo agreed in a voice that told her he highly approved of the body he’d just inventoried.

Frank leaned his head in toward Laredo and said, “I think you got her angry. I’d be careful if I were you. Taylor bites heads off when she’s angry.” With that, Frank began to retreat.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Laredo promised. His eyes shifted over to Taylor. “Taylor, is it?” he asked, rolling the name over on his tongue as if he were tasting it for sweetness. Satisfied, he smiled. “I think we got off on the wrong foot last night.”

Frank was obviously still within hearing range because she heard her brother chuckle to himself and murmur, “Like that never happened before.”

Taylor took a deep breath, struggling to get her surprisingly frayed temper under control. She was going to kill Frank when she got the chance. Never mind that he was two months shy of his wedding. She’d be doing her almost-sister-in-law a favor. Frank could be god-awful annoying when he wanted to be.

“All right,” she said, her voice straining to sound civil as she faced the man sitting at her desk. “This is the season for goodwill toward men. I’m listening, Laredo. What were you doing at Eileen Stevens’s apartment last night?”

Since the man had gotten out of the handcuffs, she saw no point in asking how he had managed to elude the security guards in the building’s lobby. That had obviously been child’s play for him.

Laredo answered without missing a beat. “Probably the same thing as you.”

She didn’t like playing games unless they involved a board and little colored game pieces. “You said you weren’t a cop.”

The look on his face was innocence personified. “I’m not.”

“Then you weren’t doing the same thing that I was,” Taylor concluded curtly. “And you weren’t supposed to be there.”

Instead of arguing the point with her, Laredo surprised her by nodding his head. But just as she began to wonder why he was being so agreeable, he admitted, “I bent the rules a little. But I am investigating her death.”

She highly doubted that there were two investigations going on at the same time. They hardly had enough people to sufficiently cover all the city’s crimes now. If another branch of law enforcement was involved, someone would have told the Chief of D’s, who in turn would have warned her.

Handsome or not, this character, she concluded, was full of hot air. “By whose authority?” she asked, thinking that she was just giving him enough rope to hang himself.

She wasn’t expecting the answer he gave her.

“Indirectly, her mother, Carole Stevens. I’m actually doing this as a favor to my grandfather. He used to date the dead woman’s mother,” he confided.

Taylor felt far from enlightened. Was this man just making this up and hoping his charm would fill in the gaps?

“You’re contaminating a crime scene as a favor to your grandfather?” she challenged incredulously.

“I know enough not to contaminate the crime scene,” Laredo assured her in a voice that she found as irritatingly patronizing now as she had the night before. The next moment, he reached into his pocket. Every nerve ending went on the alert and she started to reach for her sidearm out of habit.

Laredo noted her reaction. “Relax,” he told her in a voice that could have easily been used to gentle a wild animal. “I’m just reaching for my wallet, not my Saturday night special.”

She deeply resented the smirk she heard in the man’s voice.

“Do you own one?” she wanted to know.

The term referred to a weapon that was the common choice of thugs and penny-ante thieves more than two decades ago, before far more colorful, sophisticated and seductively affordable weapons hit the streets.

“I own a lot of guns,” he informed her easily, placing his wallet, opened and face up, in the middle of her desk.

Taylor looked down at the private investigator’s license he was showing her. The photograph in the corner was a surprisingly good one. But then, the thought whispered along the perimeter of her mind, the photograph was of a surprisingly good-looking man.

“John Chester Laredo, private investigator,” she read out loud.

Taylor raised her eyes quizzically to his. Chester? Who named their kid Chester these days, even as a middle name?

“That’s me,” he responded, taking his wallet back and tucking it into his pocket.

Taylor blew out a breath, trying to put a positive spin on things. At least she didn’t have to waste time with the sketch artist. Now, instead of arresting the annoying man, she just had to get rid of him.

“All right,” she allowed, “for the time being, let’s just say you’re on the level.”

Was it her imagination, or did his grin just get more annoying? “Let’s,” he agreed.

She frowned. “That still doesn’t give you the right to be there, ‘bending rules,’” she said sarcastically, “and poking around.”

“I wasn’t ‘poking,’” he corrected affably, “I was looking. And obviously, if I thought the police would object to what I was doing—” he leaned forward slightly “—I wouldn’t have come out and made myself known to you last night, now, would I?”

For a second, he had her. She was willing to admit he had a point.

But then, the next moment she realized that there was no way for him to have known that she was with the police department. She could have been with the housing management—or even a thief, drawn to the apartment by the yellow crime scene tape to see what she could make off with.

“You’re a little large to hide, even in a place as big as that,” she pointed out. “It seems to me, given a choice, you decided that it was best to take the bull by the horns.”

His grin was really starting to get to her, which made her increasingly uneasy.

“I wouldn’t exactly use the term bull,” Laredo told her. “I have a lot of friends on the force. I didn’t think anyone would mind.”

Taylor’s eyes narrowed. Think again, Laredo. She didn’t like anyone even remotely messing with her crime scene. “Well, then you thought wrong,” she informed him tersely.