Almost Dead (3 page)

“The cavalry,” Cissy said to her son, though she had a bad feeling about the boatlike first vehicle. It brought back memories she didn’t want to recall, recollections of another bad time in her life ten years earlier, the horrific events that had landed her mother in prison.

When the first cop rolled out of the driver’s side of the Caddy, her heart sank. He didn’t have to flash his badge or utter his name. She knew him because Detective Anthony Paterno had been in charge of the investigation that sent her mother to prison. His hound-dog face sported a few more lines, and his thick hair was more shot with gray, but otherwise he, like his car, had changed little.

“You’re Cissy,” he said.

“Yeah. This is my son, B.J., er, Bryan Jack. Come on. This way.” She glanced past Paterno to the paramedics. “Maybe there’s a chance Gran can be revived,” she said, hope blooming in her heart, though she was pretty certain it was too late. Holding B.J. as if she thought she might lose him again, she half-ran up the brick walk to the front door. Paterno and his partner, a tall, mannish-looking woman with simple glasses and a short haircut, were on her heels, the paramedics and firefighters a step behind.

“Stay here,” Paterno said, motioning to a bench on the porch while his partner, who introduced herself as Janet Quinn, stepped through the open doorway. “Jesus, what happened?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t here when she fell…. Oh God.” Swallowing hard, Cissy cradled B.J. close to her body while rocking back and forth.

“Mama sad,” B.J. said, and she nodded.

“Very.”

“Mama cry?”

“Oh, maybe.” She smiled through her tears and kissed his head. Shielding her son from the open doorway, she didn’t try to look inside to the foyer. She’d seen enough.

Two EMTs, hauling equipment, rushed past her.

“Careful. This could be a crime scene,” Paterno said as they entered.

“We got it, Detective,” the female EMT said. “Back off. Let us work. Oh hell…she’s already gone.”

All of Cissy’s hope died.

“Nothing left to do but bag and tag her,” the second EMT said so emotionlessly Cissy caught her breath. This was her grandmother, for God’s sake! Not just some unknown, unclaimed, unloved body! The woman they were talking about was Eugenia Cahill, a short, sharp, sassy woman who had run corporations, played competitive bridge, and sat on the boards of…Oh God, what did it matter what boards she’d sat on? She was gone.

“No sign of forced entry,” Quinn said. “We’re checking to see if robbery was a motive.”

Still on the porch, Cissy turned away from the drama inside. The whole scene was surreal, and Cissy, holding her son, watching rain drizzling down from the night sky, realized for the first time that she’d never see her grandmother alive again. She blinked back a fresh spate of tears. Theirs hadn’t been a loving relationship, in fact they’d had more than their share of knock-down, drag-out fights when she’d been a teenager living here, but she’d loved Eugenia, and, aside from an uncle and aunt now in Oregon, and another uncle in an institution, Eugenia was the only family she had left. Certainly her closest relative, besides James, her half-brother.

Except for Marla. Remember her? Your mother? The damned escaped convict. You have to count her.

And what about Jack?

She didn’t want to think about her louse of a husband right now. Daring another look inside, she saw one of the EMTs shake his head. Cissy swallowed hard. She’d known from the second she’d seen Eugenia that the old woman was dead, but it hit so much harder when her suspicions were confirmed.

Paterno walked back outside. “Your grandmother—”

“I know.” She was shaking inside, but managed to keep some sort of calm. Her mind was racing in a zillion directions, but she tried to focus on the detective with his sober face and dark eyes. “But why…I mean, you’re with homicide, I thought. Why did you come so soon?” Before he could answer, she understood. “Oh, I get it. This has to do with my mother, doesn’t it?”

“We’d like to find her.”

She shivered when she thought about Marla Amhurst Cahill as a free woman. Though Cissy didn’t want to jump to conclusions, it seemed damned coincidental that her grandmother had fallen down the stairs within a few days of Marla’s escape.

Her mother, if nothing else, was clever. Sly. But it would have been just plain stupid to return here. The police had been staked out on the street near the gates…. Or had they? Her grandmother had complained about them yesterday, but where were they tonight?

A cold feeling settled in the pit of her stomach.

“So, what took you so long to get here? I figured that someone was staking out the house. Gran had said a couple of detectives were parked on the street.”

“There was a car,” he admitted. “But the officers got called away.”

“Called away?”

“A reported shooting just down the street.”

“At the same time that my grandmother fell down the stairs?” she asked, disbelieving. A coincidence? Her grandmother dies soon after Marla escapes, and while it’s all happening, the officers assigned to watch the house are suddenly jerked away? “Did they catch the shooter?”

Paterno’s long face didn’t give up a clue. “Not yet.”

“You mean, it just happened?”

“About an hour ago.”

“An hour.” Her heart knocked as the coincidences kept stacking up. “Gran hasn’t been dead long. She was…was,” Cissy’s voice cracked. “She was still warm when I searched for a pulse….”

“How did you get in?”

“I have my own key,” Cissy explained dully. It was difficult to process.

Paterno looked at B.J. “Why don’t you wait in the car? Where it’s dry and warm. We might have a few more questions and in the meantime the house is going to be considered a crime scene.”

“She fell down the stairs. Where’s the crime?” But Cissy already understood what he was suggesting, and the thought, that her mother might somehow be involved, turned her stomach. This couldn’t be happening. And yet here she was, standing on rubber legs, feeling almost as if she were having an out-of-body experience.

“Was anyone else home with her?” Paterno asked, ushering her from the front porch.

Feeling the rain run down her neck, Cissy made her way back to the car. “No…I mean, I don’t think so.” As they reached the Acura, B.J. whimpered in her arms, and she whispered into his little ear, “It’s okay, honey. Ssshhh.”

Paterno opened the driver’s side door, and the pent-up aroma of tomatoes, oregano, and garlic greeted her. She slid the seat back, then, with her child on her lap, sat behind the wheel while Paterno climbed into the passenger side of the car, one foot crushing the lid of the pizza box.

Too late he shifted his shoe. “Sorry.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Right now, nothing much did. She felt numb inside. Aside from her baby, she didn’t really care about anything.

Fortunately, B.J. was thrilled with his position and was “driving” the car, both his little hands on the steering wheel.

Sitting with his feet straddling the dented pizza box, Paterno retrieved a pen and small notebook from his coat pocket. “You were bringing dinner to your grandmother?”

She nodded. “I usually visit her on Sundays, because she’s alone. I always come with something to eat, something fun, I think, fix it for her, then we watch some television show, you know,
Jeopardy
or
Wheel of Fortune
with Coco and—” She stopped short, her head snapping up. “Where’s the dog?”

“What?”

“Gran’s usually alone except for Coco. Her little white mutt of some kind that she absolutely adores. I didn’t see the dog in the house, and that’s really weird. Grandma takes that dog
every
where. They’re practically inseparable.” She scanned the grounds as if the dog had somehow slipped through the door.

“We’ll find it,” Paterno said, but made a note in his little pad. He touched her on the arm. “You were saying…You watch television….”

“Tonight we were going to have pizza because I was running late….” Cissy looked down at the crushed white box and couldn’t believe that less than half an hour ago she’d been worried about explaining why she didn’t have time to cook something her grandmother liked better than takeout from Dino’s. Now she was stuck in a car with a cop she didn’t trust, her grandmother dead. She cleared her throat, tried to think straight. “Anyway, it’s usually just the three of us. Me, Grandma, and Beej. Deborah, the woman who is basically her companion and, um, you know, isn’t really a ‘caregiver.’” Cissy made air quotes with her fingers. “Gran would never put up with that, but she’s got the companion. Deborah has Sundays and Mondays off, and the day maid, Paloma, leaves around five, I think. Elsa, the cook, she only works, oh geez, Monday through Friday unless Gran was having company…and…and, oh, Lars, the chauffeur, works until, I don’t know…Five? Six? Something like that, unless Grandma needs him, and then they work something out.” She was trying to keep it all straight, though she knew she was rambling. “So then we watch some inane show and…and…oh damn.” She started crying again, then, disgusted with herself, angrily scraped the tears away.

“Mommy?” B.J. asked, twisting his head backward to look at her.

She managed a smile. “Mommy’s okay.” An out-and out lie. “Can we go now?” she asked the detective just as a vehicle for the crime-scene team rolled to a stop and added another roadblock to the driveway. Worse yet, she saw through the open gates that some of the neighbors had stepped onto the street, clustering together under the spreading branches of a large oak tree. Cissy groaned, then groaned again as a news van roared up the hillside and double-parked a few houses down. “This just gets better and better.”

“I can drive you home. Unfortunately it’ll be a little while. It would help if you could give me a list of the people who work here. Names and addresses.”

“I don’t have them on me, but Gran did. I’ve got a couple phone numbers on my cell. For Deborah and Lars. I don’t have the rest, but I do have some of her friends at home on my computer.”

“I’ll need what you’ve got.”

She found her phone in her purse, scrolled down her contact list, then rattled off the phone numbers that she had. “Deborah Kropft, here it is.” She told him the number. “And Lars Swanson; I know I have his because sometimes he drives Beej and me.” Again she gave him a number. “Paloma’s last name is Perez, and I…I think she lives in Oakland. Her husband is Estevan. There’s another maid, Rosa, who has worked for Gran on and off for years. Her last name is Santiago. I’m not sure where she lives, but Gran has records in the library, I think. By the phone. A card file, not on a computer…. She rarely used her PC….” Oh Lord, she was rambling again.

“We’ll check. Thanks.”

“Can we leave now?”

“Not just yet, but soon. Promise,” he said solemnly. “I’ll be back in a few minutes, then we can wrap this up, and if I have more questions, I’ll call or stop by, or, if it’s easier, you can come to the station.”

“I really don’t have anything more to say, and I really need to get my son home.”

“I know. I’ll make it quick.” Paterno stepped outside and turned his attention to someone who had appeared from the crime-scene-unit’s vehicle. Together they walked briskly back up the brick walk that now was cluttered with cops and emergency workers. No way was she going to take a ride from the detective. They could just find a way to unblock the damned driveway. For now, though, it looked like she was stuck. Which really sucked. “Okay, buddy,” she said to B.J. “Nothin’ else I can do. Looks like it’s you and me. How about we eat in the car?”

“I drive.”

“Mmm. Later.”

He started to wail as she shifted him from her lap, but she ignored the coming tantrum, strapped him into the passenger seat, grabbed some extra napkins from the glove box, and opened the pizza box.

She pulled out a small piece and handed it to him. His cries quickly subsided. Yesterday, she would have worried about her leather seats. Tonight, she realized it wasn’t a big deal. Any slopped-over tomato sauce or strings of mozzarella cheese could be wiped up. Her grandmother would never be able to complain about stains ever again.

As B.J. pulled off a piece of pepperoni, examining it closely before stuffing it into his mouth, Cissy stared out the rain-splattered windshield and up at the old house. Its shingle and brick walls rose four stories above the basement garage, which was flanked by rhododendrons, azaleas, and ferns, all currently collecting rain and shivering in the wind. The windows on the first two floors glowed—warm patches of light that belied the horror inside. She lifted her gaze upward to the third floor and the dormer of her old room, the place where she’d spent most of her miserable teenage years.

At that time she’d hated living in the city, had preferred the ranch. All that had changed, of course.

Maybe Cissy should have moved back here as her grandmother had suggested when she’d kicked Jack out of the house, but she hadn’t wanted to give up her independence. And besides, this huge, rambling house didn’t hold all that great of memories for her.

Now Gran was dead.

Her throat tightened painfully. Her whole life seemed to be falling apart. Her mother was an escapee, her grandmother dead, her husband…Oh, she didn’t even want to go there. She glanced at her child, happily chewing on a piece of pepperoni as she broke off a bit of cheesy crust. She offered it to B.J., and he took it eagerly, crushing it in his tiny fist.

So lost in thought was she that she didn’t see a shadow pass by the car, didn’t realize someone was staring through the window of the driver’s door until there was a quick rap of knuckles on the glass. She jumped, turned quickly, nearly sending the rest of the pizza into the steering wheel only to find Jack Holt peering inside.

“Geez!” she said, her heart knocking, then, under her breath, added, “Well, B.J., look who arrived.” She couldn’t believe it. “Daddy’s here.”

The last thing Cissy needed right now, the very last, was to deal with her soon-to-be ex. Reluctantly, she rolled down the window. Along with a gust of rain-washed air, she caught a hint of his aftershave and a whole lot of unwanted memories. As upset as she was, she still noticed the hint of beard shadow covering his strong jaw and the laserlike intensity of his blue eyes.

“You okay?” he asked.

Stupid question. “Do I look okay?” She was shaking her head and trying not to cry. “No, I’m not. I’m not okay at all.” She wouldn’t break down, would
not
in front of him. “It’s Gran. She’s…she’s…Jack, she’s dead.” Her voice cracked over the last word, and she mentally kicked herself.

“Ciss,” he said quietly, and it got to her so much she had to look away.

“Dad-dee!” B.J.’s little arms shot straight up as if he could will his father to reach through the window and grab him. Marinara sauce streaked his face, the console, and the seat.

“How are ya, big guy?” Jack asked as B.J. waved his arms frantically in the air. “Here…” He walked quickly around the car, opened the passenger door, and, ignoring the grease and marinara sauce covering his son, unbuckled the seat belt and slid into the passenger seat. “You’re a mess,” he said, holding the boy, and Beej, the traitor, laughed and showed off all thirteen of his teeth.

“Dad-dee!” B.J. said again, his face shining with delight.

Cissy’s headache thundered.

“I’m sorry about Eugenia.” Jack touched her on the shoulder, and she tensed.

He seemed sincere, but then he’d always been able to play the part of the attentive boyfriend, romantic fiancé, or loving husband if he wanted to.

She wasn’t buying his act. She knew him too well and how pathetically easily he charmed her. Even now, when she was grieving and guilt-riddled, she felt that ridiculous male-female connection that had always been a part of their relationship. Damn him with his open-collared shirt, thick, mussed hair, and dimples that creased when he smiled. The trouble was Jack Holt was too damned good-looking for his own good. For
her
own good. She should have known better than to ever get involved with him. From the first time she’d set eyes upon him at that benefit party for Cahill House, a home for unwed mothers established by her family years before, she’d been intrigued. And doomed. She’d sensed he’d been the only man with a touch of irreverence in the whole damned ballroom, the only person, other than herself, who had found the stuffy affair boring.

Even after Jack’s father introduced them, Cissy had avoided Jack. She was just putting in her time at the affair. However, he soon figured out that she too wasn’t “into” it and kept trying to strike up a conversation with her. At first cool, she’d eventually had to laugh at his wry, self-deprecating humor. She’d even ended up flirting with him, and, of course, he’d responded. They’d escaped that damned party to start what should have been a short fling and ended up in Las Vegas a few months later with a quickie marriage and promises of love ever after.

What a joke!

A mistake of immense proportions.

Except for B.J.

Their son was the only part of their ill-fated marriage that was worth the heartache. As lousy a husband as Jack was, he did seem to adore his kid. The feeling was obviously mutual, and the one thing she hated about the separation and impending divorce was that B.J. wouldn’t grow up under the same roof as his father.

“What happened?” Jack asked, his brows slammed together, his blondish hair artificially darkened with rain.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I think Gran fell down the stairs. She could have tripped or had a stroke, I guess. The thing is, she
always
took the elevator. I never saw her on the stairs. She didn’t even consider it. So how…?” Sighing, she leaned back against the seat and fought an overpowering sense of guilt. “I was late. Our furnace was acting up all day, and I couldn’t get a repairman out cuz it’s the weekend. Then B.J., contrary to how he’s acting now, was fussy as all get-out. Nothing made him happy. Nothing…well, except obviously you, now.”

Jack flashed her a grin.

“So I waited for the pizza-delivery guy to come, then drove over an hour or so later than usual, and…and…” In her mind’s eye she saw her grandmother’s tiny, broken body sprawled upon the tile floor, the pooled blood beneath her short hair. Cissy’s stomach churned. “And by the time I got here, I found her on the floor of the foyer. I knew she was dead, but I called 9-1-1 and…” She clenched her teeth. “I think that if I’d gotten here earlier, when I was supposed to…maybe things would have happened differently. Maybe she’d still be alive.”

“Don’t go there, Ciss. It’s not your fault. You know that.”

She nodded shortly, fighting emotion.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, and this time when he touched the back of her neck, she didn’t shrink away.

She would like, for just a few minutes, to not reopen her eyes, to push the pain aside and let someone, even Jack, comfort her. Just until she could pull herself together.

“Can I get you out of here?”

“Blocked in.” Blinking rapidly and running a finger under her eyes, she shot a look through the foggy back window. The crime-scene van, Paterno’s car, a fire truck, and several police cars, their lights still strobing the night, were parked behind her, clogging the driveway and the street. More people had crowded around the gates—two neighbors whom she recognized, a jogger, and someone walking his dog—all congregating under the spreading bare branches of the ancient oak tree across the street. All their faces appeared ghostly in the watery blue illumination of the flickering streetlight that her grandmother had always complained about.

“My car’s out front,” Jack said. He smiled faintly at her in the darkness. “We can escape.”

Like Marla,
she thought but didn’t say it.

“I think Paterno wants to talk to me again.”

“The homicide dick? The one who put your mom away?”

“One and the same.”

Jack’s eyes narrowed as the windows of the car continued to fog. “But I thought he left town. What the hell is he doing here? What’s he got to do with this?”

“I don’t know.” The headache Cissy had been fighting all day intensified, pounding at the base of her skull again. Lately, Jack had that effect on her.

“But homicide? As in murder? Jesus, what is this?” His jaw turned hard as stone.

“I said ‘I don’t know.’” She lifted a shoulder, realized he was still touching her, and looked pointedly at his hand.

Jack got the hint and pulled it back to wrap around B.J., who was still happily munching on his squeezed piece of pizza. Plopped as he was on his father’s lap, the kid was happy, really happy, for the first time all day. Great. Cissy didn’t want to think about the future and what that might spell.

“I’ll get you out of here.”

“I can take care of myself.”

He shot her a glance that begged to differ, and she realized she looked a mess, mascara running from her eyes, hair matted from the rain, grief probably etched all over her face.

“This’ll only take a second.” He started to get out of the car.

“Wait a minute,” she said, but resisted the urge to grab his arm. “How’d you get here so quickly?”

“I was looking for you. I called several times, but you didn’t answer. I knew you came here on Sunday nights, so I thought I’d surprise you.” For the first time since he’d shown up, there was a bite to his words, something more than just casual conversation.

“What was so all-fired important that you would interrupt my dinner with Gran?”

“Not interrupt,” he corrected. “Join.”

“Join?” She gave him a cool look.

His jaw clenched a little harder, and his intense eyes seemed to drill a hole right through her. “Because I was served today.”

Her stomach lurched. Of course. “The divorce papers.”

“Yeah. The divorce papers,” he said with more than a bit of acrimony. He shoved his damp hair out of his eyes, and a muscle began to work in the side of his jaw, just like it always did when he was angry.

She winced. “And you thought discussing it in front of Eugenia would be a good idea?”

“I don’t think anything about it is a good idea,” he said and reached for the handle of the door again. “I’ll talk to Paterno and see if I can get you out of here.”

“Jack, don’t do anything stupid.”

“Too late,” he muttered and got out of the car, slamming the door behind him and jogging up the path to the front door. She watched him through the windshield. He shouldn’t get involved. She shouldn’t have let him, and she should
not
be noticing the way his khakis hugged his butt as he ran. Damn it all, she’d
always
found him attractive, even now, when her grandmother was lying dead in the foyer. Sniffing loudly, she confided in her son, “Your mom’s a basket case.” She reached over and touched his nose. “Don’t tell anyone, okay? It’s our little secret.”

“Secret.” He nodded, then looked through the window. “Where Dad-dee go?”

“On an errand; he’ll be right back.”

“Right back.”

“Um-hmm.” She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the rearview mirror and cringed. The woman staring back at her was a mess. Layered, streaked hair flattened by the rain, the whites of her eyes bloodshot, her nose red, and, along with the streaking mascara, her makeup a mess, lip gloss long gone, skin splotchy from crying, and a damned zit or two. Crap. She looked like hell.

And Gran’s dead.

A lump filled her throat.

She just wanted to go home. And not with either Paterno, and his damned questions and suspicious eyes, or Jack, who had a way of worming himself deep into her heart. “Help me,” she muttered, leaning back against the seat and trying not to be irritated that Jack, true to his nature, had decided he had the right to talk to the police as if he were still a member of her family. Couldn’t he just go away? She’d already suffered one shock tonight and was still dealing with the thought that her grandmother was dead.

Dead!

Her eyes burned again.

So what was Jack doing here, acting as if he were some kind of knight in shining armor, showing up as if he cared one little whit about their family? What a joke! She would love nothing more than to believe for one little second that he actually loved her and that she could draw from his strength. That, of course, was an idle and supremely ridiculous thought.

Jack Holt was a lot of things, a tower of strength not being one. She didn’t dare make the mistake of trying to lean on him again. Cissy sniffed loudly then caught B.J. staring at her, his little face puckering. She forced back her tears. “Hey, little man, gonna eat that?” she asked, opening his fingers and retrieving the squashed piece of pizza. He shook his head, and she scraped the remains of cheese and marinara sauce from his plump fingers. “I don’t know about you, but I’d like to get outta here.”

“Go home!” Beej said as she wiped sauce from his cheeks, leaving a reddish stain around his mouth.

“You bet, big guy. As soon as we can.” She turned on the engine, forcing a little heat into the car. “As soon as we can.”

“The husband. At two o’clock,” Quinn warned, barely moving her lips. She and Paterno were in the foyer of the massive old house, both squatting next to Eugenia’s body. But Quinn had looked up and out the open front door.

Paterno also recognized Jack Holt, editor and owner of
City Wise
, a slick rag about San Francisco, bearing down on him.

Just what they needed. “What’s he doing here?”

“Who knows? The wife probably called him.”

“I’ll cut him off at the pass.” Straightening, his bad knee popping a bit, Paterno ambled to the door to block the entrance to the house. “Sorry, potential crime scene.”

“I get it. I’m Jack Holt, Cissy Cahill’s husband.”

“Detective Paterno.” They’d never met before, but Paterno had seen Holt’s picture often enough, either smiling from the glossy pages of his magazine or in the local newspaper, his raffish image caught at whatever charity event was in the papers.

Jack Holt, somewhere around thirty-five, was definitely high profile, part of the see-and-be-seen crowd. Whether in a tuxedo or casual golfing clothes, the guy was just too slick for Paterno’s taste. Now, though, he was just a worried family member running through the rain, determination and sadness etched into the sharp-bladed planes of his face.

Holt swept in a sharp breath. Looking past Paterno, he obviously caught a glimpse of the dead woman. Momentarily, his expression jolted with pain.

“What can I do for you?” Paterno asked.

Holt forced his gaze back to the detective. “I want to take my wife and kid home. My car’s on the street. Not blocked in like hers. I can bring her back here later, maybe tomorrow, to pick up the Acura when you’re finished.”

Fair enough. “Shouldn’t be a problem, but I still may want to ask her some questions.”

Holt’s lips flattened. “I don’t know what more you want from her. Cissy brought our son for one of their weekly dinners with her grandmother.” Peering around Paterno to the crumpled body on the floor, Holt winced a bit, and Paterno wondered if maybe there was more to the man than he’d first thought. “Cissy was running late and found Eugenia at the bottom of the stairs. Then she called 9-1-1. End of story.”

Paterno didn’t like the younger man’s tone. Felt his patience slipping. “I’m just asking questions. Trying to get to the bottom of this. I’m sure your wife understands that we want to find out what happened to Mrs. Cahill. And to do that, I’ll probably be talking with both you and your wife again.” He stepped onto the porch. “So why don’t you tell me where you were tonight? You got here pretty damned quick.”

Because I was on my way over here already. To see Cissy…
Every muscle in Holt’s body tensed. “Wait a minute,” he said, eyes narrowing as the wheels turned in his mind. The temperature on the porch seemed to fall another five degrees as rain gurgled in the eaves and trickled through the downspouts. “Eugenia fell. Tripped and lost her balance and ended up at the bottom of the stairs.” He glanced inside again, apparently mentally calculating the distance between the old lady’s body and the foot of the stairs. “You’re not thinking any foul play was involved?” But as he posed the question, he gave Paterno a penetrating look.