Cavanaugh Cold Case (12 page)

Not that it mattered, she silently added, because whether or not he understood, she had no intentions of becoming some kind of a cultivation project for him or any of the other Cavanaughs. If she wasn't willing to be one for her mother, she certainly wasn't going to be one for one of his family.

“That makes infinite sense,” Malloy told her honestly. “I know exactly what you're talking about. It's like every wedding that takes place in the family just makes them hungry for another one. I'm surprised that Uncle Andrew hasn't started looking for someone for my dad.” He laughed, knowing that the motivating factor, at least in his family, was love. His entire family meddled, and it was all due to a sense of love. Which made it just that much harder to fight. But he intended to. “It's as if there's some unwritten law that no Cavanaugh can remain single indefinitely.”

Kristin suddenly laughed.

“What?”

“Maybe your Uncle Andrew thinks of himself as a modern day Noah, sending everyone off two by two.” So saying, she thought about what Malloy had told her about his family earlier. “Does your dad like being single?”

Though he came from a close-knit family, his father wasn't the type for long, soul-baring talks—or short ones, either.

“He doesn't say anything,” Malloy answered, “but I get the feeling that he hates it.”

Kristin nodded. “That's just like my mother. I know that she misses my father like crazy even though she's not alone by any stretch of the imagination. My grandmother lives with her, and there's always someone coming or going in the house, like her sisters and my cousins. Plus there's a small bunch of grandnieces and nephews to occupy her time—but all she can focus on when I see her is when am I going to get married and make her a grandmother. I don't think she realizes that that's liable to just drive me away.”

“You could bring her to one of Andrew's get-togethers to distract her,” he suggested, finishing his beer.

Kristin rolled the offer over in her head. Turnabout just might be fair play in this case, she mused. Maybe being subjected to something like that would finally make her mother cease and desist trying to match her up with her “soul mate.”

“Maybe,” she said, letting the matter drop for now.

He found the word very hopeful. He'd made progress with the ice princess. “Maybe” was a great deal better than a flat “no.”

“Maybe,” he echoed, toasting the possibilities behind the word.

Chapter 11

F
olding her used napkin and neatly placing it on her empty plate, she put the near-depleted mug of beer on top of it, then looked up at Malloy.

“I'd better be going home,” Kristin told him, rising to her feet.

Her limit was one beer. Anything more and she felt obligated to take a cab home, even though she had the ability to imbibe several without feeling its effects. It was far better in this case to be safe than sorry.

“Okay,” Malloy said, rising himself. The check had already been taken care of, and he left a couple of bills now as a tip.

Was this going to be a problem, she wondered. “Just because I'm leaving doesn't mean you have to,” Kristin pointed out.

“Yeah, I do,” Malloy replied, saying it as if it was a given.

“Why?” she asked.

They'd discussed coming here, but neither one of them had said anything about what was to happen after they'd had that drink he'd wanted to buy her. Served her right for letting her guard down.

“Because I'm following you home,” Malloy told her simply.

She should have known. Still, she really felt disappointed. He had been going up in her estimation, now he was back down to tomcat level.

“Look, just because you sprang for a cheeseburger—which I offered to pay for twice,” she reminded him, “doesn't mean that you—”

“Have to follow you home to make sure that spare tire holds up to get you there?” he filled in quickly. “Yeah, I do.”

That caught her off guard. “Wait—what?”

“The tire I put on,” he reminded her. “Remember, you had a flat?”

If he was talking down to her, he was
really
going to regret it, she thought fiercely.

“You said it would last for fifty miles. I don't live fifty miles from here,” she pointed out. She was still more than half convinced that he was just using this concerned Good Samaritan act as an excuse to follow her home and then talk his way into her house.

“
Ideally
it should last for fifty miles,” he emphasized. “But if our line of work has taught us nothing else, it's taught us that the world is not a perfect place where things go perfectly according to plan.”

She wasn't some dewy-eyed innocent, and she resented him treating her that way. “Well, I'm
perfectly
capable of taking care of myself,” she informed him in a no-nonsense voice.

He glanced toward the window where he noticed sheets of rain coming down. “It's still raining,” he pointed out.

What did that have to do with anything? “And I don't melt.”

“It's a lot easier to skid in the rain if you have a blow out,” he told her. “I'd still feel better knowing you got home safe. Look, if you're worried about me being the one who follows you home, I can get Bryce to follow—or Kelly, if you prefer.”

She paused for a moment, trying to connect the name to a person. “You mean your brother?”

“Or my sister,” he added. “Take your pick.”

“I don't know either one of them,” she protested. The idea of asking a stranger to follow her seemed ridiculous.

Malloy sighed. Nobody could accuse this woman of making things easy. “You don't have to ‘know' them, all you have to do is drive to your home. Safely,” he underscored. “They'd just be following to make sure that happens.”

She scrutinized him, looking for some telltale sign that would give away his true intentions. She didn't find any.

“You're serious?” she asked uncertainly.

“As an autopsy,” he answered.

Kristin frowned. “You could have picked a better simile.”

The corners of his mouth slowly curved. She had difficulty looking away, even though she knew she really should.

“I don't think so,” he replied, his eyes shining with humor.

Kristin sighed, giving in. The last thing she wanted to do was cause a scene here in the bar, and she had a feeling if she continued opposing him, this was going to wind up turning into a scene.
He
might not wind up losing his temper, but she had a feeling that she would.

“You're my penance, aren't you?” It wasn't a question, it was an accusation.

“For what?” he asked, curious.

“I don't know, but it must have been something really bad I'm blocking out,” she told him, giving up. “Okay, you can follow me home.” Kristin's eyes narrowed as she told him in no uncertain terms, “But I am
not
inviting you inside.”

“Didn't ask you to,” he told her as they walked out of the bar.

Their departure was noted and followed by more than a few pairs of eyes.

Once outside, still standing beneath the bar's eaves, Kristin opened her umbrella. “Once we get to my car,” she told him, raising her voice to be heard above the noise generated by the wind and the rain, “you can take the umbrella to where you parked.”

Malloy had no comment one way or another. With his hand beneath her elbow to guide her, they made their way together to the first row of vehicles where Kristin had parked.

When she opened her door and slid into her seat, she offered the umbrella to Malloy.

“You hang on to it,” he told her. “And wait for me to pull up before you take off.”

“Take it,” she insisted, thrusting the umbrella handle at him.

But Malloy had already taken off, running, without it.

“He has
got
to be the most infuriating man,” Kristin muttered under her breath as she tossed her umbrella onto the passenger seat.

By the time she had buckled up, put her key into the ignition and turned on her lights, she saw the headlights of Malloy's car as he approached her row.

“Boy, that man moves really fast,” she murmured to herself, then laughed dryly. “But then, we already knew that.”

Backing out of her parking space, Kristin drove out of the lot.

She told herself she wasn't going to, but she wound up glancing up into the rearview mirror a number of times to assure herself he was still there.

Why she even did that, she hadn't a clue. She was certain that he wasn't about to lose her. Undoubtedly, Malloy had a great deal of practice following women to a variety of destinations. The man was probably part bloodhound.

The unexpected rain made traveling the slick streets less than smooth. She'd noticed that whenever it did rain, California drivers did one of two things, they crawled as if fearing that doing anything over thirty miles an hour would lead to their certain, untimely death. Or they flew, traveling well over the speed limit in an effort to outrace both death and raindrops.

Either way, traveling on freeways and thoroughfares during the rain was definitely a challenge.

But finally, it was over, and she was pulling into the driveway of her modest, two-bedroom townhouse. Kristin hit her garage door opener although she would have really preferred to keep the house sealed up until she could watch Malloy's car drive past her home and off to his.

Parking in the garage, she got out of the vehicle just in time to see Malloy pulling up behind her and then parking his vehicle.

Damn.

She held her breath, waiting and watching him. Now what?

For a brief second, she thought about closing the garage door and just going into the house. But his car was positioned so that the nose of his hood was in the direct path of the garage door's descent. If it detected anything in its way, the door's safety feature wouldn't allow it to come down and crush something.

Besides, abruptly closing the garage door would be running, and she didn't run. She sent others running—and if he made just one wrong move, Detective Malloy Cavanaugh was going to be joining that group shortly, she promised herself.

She never took her eyes off him as he came closer.

“Yes? Did you forget to say something?” The way she asked, she was clearly issuing a challenge to him, daring him to say anything in his own defense rather than just getting back into his car.

He wondered if the woman had any idea just how damn appealing she looked right at this moment, with her eyes blazing that way. She would never know the intensity of the control he was exercising.

“As a matter of fact,” he replied, “yes, I did.”

Suspicion entered her eyes. “What?” she asked.

Malloy made no effort to get any closer even though standing where he was caused him to get progressively wetter. “Don't forget to call in tomorrow morning to tell my uncle you're going to be coming in late.”

All sorts of red flags were going up in her head. “Why? Because we'll be having so much fun in bed?” she asked sarcastically.

“I was going to say because you had to stop by the tire store to get a 205/65r15 tire to replace the flat you have, but what you just said is definitely not an unappealing idea, either.”

The look he gave her was sexier than sin, and she could feel her temperature going up by the microsecond.

“Oh.” Heat was climbing up her neck, turning her face a bright shade of pink. “I thought that you—I mean that I—I'm sorry.”

“Don't give it another thought,” he told her. “On second thought, judging from the color on your cheeks, maybe you should.” His grin was boyish and wicked at the same time. “I'll see you tomorrow sometime,” he said just before he got back into his car.

As if someone had snapped their fingers, Kristin magically came to as the car began to pull away.

“You make me crazy,” she shouted after it.

Despite the wind and the rain, he'd heard her.

“The feeling,” Malloy said to the reflection he saw in his rearview mirror, “is mutual.”

* * *

He came in early, intending on going through the rest of the missing person flyers he'd flagged and reviewing the little they knew about the cold case so far.

When the phone on his desk rang, he didn't hear it at first. By the time he did, he yanked the receiver up impatiently. He wasn't getting anywhere, and it frustrated him.

“Cavanaugh,” he bit off.

No one responded. For a moment, he thought that whoever had called had hung up. But then a rather faint female voice asked, “Are you the detective who came to the campus the other day, looking for information about Abby Sullivan?”

Malloy snapped to attention. “Yes, I am. Who am I talking to?”

“This is Rachel McNeil,” the woman told him. “I had several classes with Abby.”

“Were you friends?”

“Not really, but I knew her. And Zoe.”

“Zoe?” he asked,

“Zoe Roberts,” the woman on the phone said, supplying the girl's last name. Something stirred in the back of Malloy's head, but it was gone before he could grab hold of it.

“Zoe and Abby met in college,” Rachel went on to tell him, “and they got pretty close from the way it looked. Studying together, that kind of stuff. I don't know if this means anything,” she said apologetically.

“Go ahead,” he coaxed. “Sometimes the slightest small thing breaks a case.”

“When Abby didn't turn up in her classes, Zoe became really worried. She was certain that Abby hadn't just dropped out or taken off. She told anyone who'd listen that something bad had to have happened to Abby, and she was going to find out what.”

“And did she?” he asked in a calm, restrained voice. He didn't want to frighten the woman off.

“I think Zoe disappeared, too. At least, I never saw either one of them again.”

As he listened, Malloy made notes to himself. “How did you happen to hear that I was looking into Abby's disappearance?” he asked.

“I teach at UCA now. Teachers talk,” she added almost as an apology.

He took down her phone number and thanked her for coming forward. “I'll be in touch,” he promised.

“Please, let me know if you find out anything,” Rachel requested. “I always wondered what happened to them.”

“I'll get back to you,” he promised just before he hung up. His mind was already racing.

* * *

“Did you get your tire replaced?” Malloy asked as he walked into the morgue some time later.

She'd gotten in over an hour ago, having bribed the man at the tire store to put her at the head of the line and get her back on the road within the half hour. That and flashing her medical examiner credentials had her out the door in twenty-two minutes.

“You mean you haven't already checked my car out in the parking lot?” she asked. When he said nothing but continued to look at her, Kristin sighed. “You do realize that you're treating me like a two-year-old.”

“Two-year-olds don't drive,” he pointed out, still obviously waiting for his answer.

“Yes,” she told him through gritted teeth, “I got my tire replaced. You really didn't have to come by to check on me.”

“I didn't,” he answered honestly. “I came by to tell you that I think I might have identified another one of the victims.”

She forgot about being annoyed at the way she felt he was treating her. “When? How?”

“That victim you identified, Abby Sullivan,” he said by way of setting up the background. “I went to the college she was attending when she disappeared and talked to the teachers she had who were still there.”

This wasn't anything new, she thought, disappointed. “I know, you told me. Nobody remembered her.”

“Well, it seems that word got around the college that someone was asking questions about her and that Abby might have been killed by a serial killer.”

“Okay,” she said. He still wasn't saying anything new. “How does that get us the identification for a second victim?”

“Seems that one of the current professors at UCA was a student at the same time that Abby was and they shared a few classes. According to her, they weren't close, but they were friendly enough.”

Kristin stopped pretending she was working. “How do you know this? Did she call you?”