The Cavanaugh Code

Chapter Three (#ulink_b0b6c3e6-93b4-5236-a4f1-61ea3676336c)

Laredo had gotten to his position in life by reading people correctly. Innate instincts had trained him to be an excellent judge of character. Consequently, he knew when to push and when to step back.

He also knew when a little extra persuasion might help him wear down barriers. He had a feeling that the sexy-looking blonde with the serious mouth did not respond favorably to being either opposed or coerced.

Moving slightly forward in the chair so that his face was closer to hers, Laredo looked into the woman’s eyes. They were a shade lighter than his own. And very compelling. You could tell a lot about a person by the way they looked at you and her eyes never wavered, never looked away.

“C’mon, Taylor,” he coaxed, “what’s the harm in sharing information?”

She didn’t want him getting familiar with her. He wasn’t her friend, he was an annoying man and she was still debating having him arrested for tampering with evidence.

“It’s Detective McIntyre,” she informed him stiffly, and then added, “and I don’t talk about ongoing investigations with civilians.” And that, she hoped, would bring an end to any further discussion of Eileen Stevens’s murder.

The corners of Laredo’s mouth curved in what she could only think of as a devilish grin. A wicked expression flared in his eyes as he said, “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

Taylor would have felt better if she’d thought that the air-conditioning system had broken down that morning. At least then she would have had something to blame for the sudden overwhelming wave of heat surging through her body, leaving no part untouched.

Stalling for time as she tried to get a grip, Taylor blew out a breath. Laredo’s eyes, she noted, never left hers.

The way she saw it, she had three ways to go here. She could keep sparring with this annoying private investigator and, most likely, get nowhere while taking precious time away from her investigation. That option held no appeal because she was already behind without a partner’s help.

Her second choice was to get someone to eject this overconfident ape from the premises, but she had the uneasy feeling that Laredo wasn’t lying about having friends in the department. If he knew her brother, he had to know others as well. Trying to get him thrown out might make her seem like a shrew—and it probably wouldn’t work anyway.

Or, door number three, she could toss Laredo a crumb in exchange for finding out exactly what he knew. There was the chance that he had stumbled across something. After all, he had managed to get to Eileen Stevens’s penthouse apartment before she had. Who knew how long he’d been there or what he might have seen—and taken?

Door number three it was.

Taylor braced herself. “All right, what do you have?”

She watched as his smile unfurled further. Why did she get the feeling that he was the spider and she was the fly, about to cross the threshold into his open house?

“I believe I said, ‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.’ That means that you go first, as it should be,” he added, “since my mother taught me that it should always be ladies first.”

Try as she might, Taylor just couldn’t form a mental picture of the woman who’d given birth to this larger-than-life, annoyingly sexy specimen of manhood.

“You have a mother?”

The question had slid from her mind to her tongue before she could stop it. What the hell was he doing to her manners and, more importantly, why was she letting him do it? Once this case was over, she was definitely going on vacation. Her batteries needed recharging.

“Had,” Laredo quietly corrected, his seductive grin toning down several wattage levels—and becoming all the more lethal for it.

Taylor did her best to steel herself. For all she knew, Laredo could just be orchestrating this to make her feel guilty. If she felt guilty enough about stumbling onto this sensitive area, he might think she’d fold easily.

It made sense, but even so, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d just stomped across ground she shouldn’t have. She was extremely sensitive when it came to matters that concerned family. Family was, if anything, her Achilles’ heel.

Her family was chiefly responsible for who and what she was today. She’d joined the force and become a police detective because her mother had been one before her. And, because of what she’d seen transpiring in her family as a child, she was gun-shy when it came to relationships. The moment one appeared to go beyond being an inch in depth, she bailed, remembering what her mother had gone through with her father. No matter that her mother’s second marriage seemed made in heaven; it was the tempestuous first one that had left its indelible mark.

Taylor found it ironic that while she had implicit trust in the men she’d been partnered with when it came to life-and-death situations, she absolutely refused to trust any man with her heart. Taylor staunchly opposed revealing her vulnerability.

Rallying, Taylor squared her shoulders. “Okay, here’s what I’ve got.” She deliberately ignored the touch of triumph she saw enter his eyes. “Graduating fifth in her class from Stanford Law School, Eileen Stevens worked her way up extremely fast. She became a much sought-after criminal lawyer who rarely lost a case. None in the last five years. Her list of clients reads like a who’s who of the rich and famous—or infamous,” she added, thinking of a couple of so-called “wiseguys” who were on the list. “She was made partner at her law firm six months ago. According to the electronic calendar they found by her bed, the woman ate and slept work 24/7. She didn’t appear to have a social life that wasn’t connected to the firm.”

Taylor paused for a moment, wishing she understood how a woman with no social life could end up the victim of a very personal crime. “But someone hated her enough to tie her up and wrap a wet piece of leather tightly around her neck, then wait for the strip to dry and strangle her. My guess is that the process took at least a couple of hours.”

“How do you know they waited?”

Laredo didn’t look impressed by her conclusion, just mildly curious, like someone asking study questions they already knew the answer to.

She told him anyway. “The carpet is thick and lush—my guess is that it’s fairly new. There was a set of shoe prints set in it next to the bed, like someone had stood there for more than just a minute. The killer, watching her die.” The comforter beneath the woman’s body had been all tangled, as if Eileen had thrashed around while tied to the bedpost, trying to get free, but Taylor didn’t add that, waiting to see if Laredo would.

He didn’t. Instead, he merely nodded at her narrative. “So far,” the private investigator told her, “we’re of a like mind.”

“And you have nothing to add?” she demanded. He was playing games with her, just trying to find out what she knew. She didn’t like being duped.

“I didn’t say that,” he told her evenly, his gaze locked on hers.

“So?” she asked impatiently.

“I don’t have anything from the present—yet,” Laredo qualified. “But what I do have is more of a background on Eileen.”

Taylor crossed her arms before her, waiting. “Go ahead.” It was an order, not a request.

Laredo obliged and recited what he’d learned since his grandfather had come to him with this.

“Eileen Stevens was thirty-eight and the complete epitome of an obsessed career woman. But she wasn’t always so goal oriented. When she was a seventeen-year-old high school junior, Eileen got pregnant.” He saw the surprise in Taylor’s eyes and knew she wouldn’t be challenging the worth of the exchange between them. “Her mother wouldn’t allow her to have an abortion. The baby, a boy, was turned over to social services the day he was born. From what I gathered, the experience made Eileen do a complete one-eighty. She turned her back on her former wild life and buckled down to become the woman she is today.”

“Dead,” Taylor couldn’t help pointing out.

A hint of a smile touched his lips. “I don’t think that was in her plans.”

If Laredo was trying to undermine her by laughing at her, he was in for a surprise, Taylor thought. She’d survived growing up with Zach and Frank, expert tormentors both.

“Anything else?”

Laredo spread his hands wide. “That’s it so far.”

She doubted it, but she had no way of keeping him for interrogation at the moment. “And who did you say you were working for?”

“I’m doing this as a favor,” he told her even though he was fairly certain that she hadn’t forgotten. She was probably just trying to trip him up, which was all right, he thought, because in her place he probably would have done the same thing. “My grandfather used to date Eileen Stevens’s mother. Carole Stevens was a single mother who worked double shifts as a cocktail hostess to make ends meet. That didn’t exactly leave her much time to be a parent and from what I gathered, as a kid Eileen needed a firm hand. After she graduated high school, they became estranged for a number of years—”

“Because her mother refused to allow her to have the abortion.” Taylor guessed.

Laredo inclined his head. “That was part of it, yes,” he acknowledged.

So he did know more than he’d just admitted. “And the rest of it?”

He shrugged. “Just the usual mother-daughter animosity.”

She didn’t like the way he just tossed that off. Taylor felt her back going up. Something about him made her want to contradict him no matter what he said.