Double Play (7 page)

She looked around
the messy apartment and pointed to the sofa. “Oh uh, okay. Here,
okay?”

“
Yes,
ma’am.”

She pointed at
Quinn. “This is my brother. Do you want him, too?”

“
No
ma’am, we like to hear each account separately. Sir, if you could
just wait right there, my partner will take your statement when he
gets here.”

“
Whatever.”

Detective Kahn
took a notepad out of his jacket pocket and pulled an ink pen off
the side. “Now this is your apartment, correct?”

“
Mine
and my fiancé’s.” She pointed across the room at Benji, seated at
the dining table. He’d put his
E. Coli Happens
hoodie over
his flannel pajama pants, but his hair was still poking out in all
directions. He was leaning back in the chair with his arms crossed
over the graphic of a blob that she could only guess was an E. coli
bacterium. He looked a lot more relaxed than she felt.

“
Right, the teacher. And you’re the team reporter for the
Soldiers?”

She
nodded.

“
Were
you on the balcony when the incident occurred?”

“
No,
sir, I was not. I was sleeping in my room with my boyfriend—uh,
fiancé—when we both woke up to a shout.”

“
So
you weren’t even part of the party?”

Cat frowned at
the word. “Party” conjured up images of blaring music, dancing and
keg stands. At least, Quinn’s parties.

“
It
wasn’t a party, just some guys playing cards.”

Detective Kahn
glanced around the apartment as though visually documenting each
beer bottle, cigar butt and crumb into evidence.

“
So
you say you heard a shout. What happened after that?”

“
We
ran out here and saw the guys on the balcony.”

“
Which
guys was that?”

“
Uh,
my
half-
brother and some
Soldiers players.”

“
Which
players?”

He was firing the
questions so fast Cat began to feel like her statement had become
an interrogation.

“
A-Adam Alvarez, Joel Faulk and Damien Staats.”

“
I
see.” He paused, methodically tapping his pen. “Do you socialize
with these players on a regular basis?”

Cat didn’t
socialize with any Soldiers on any sort of basis. The celebration
at Roger’s steakhouse had been the first time she’d been in the
room with them when she hadn’t been on the clock.

She scoffed. “No.
They came over to play poker with Quinn. We’d all been at Roger
Aiken’s steakhouse for a celebration party earlier this evening and
they must’ve made plans then. Benji and I were already asleep when
their game started.”

The detective
surveyed the apartment again. “You slept through all of
this?”

“
We’re
deep sleepers.”

“
If
you were asleep, you probably don’t know if they were
inebriated?”

“
Yes,
sir. I mean, no, sir, I don’t know.” He was even lankier ten years
ago and back then, Quinn had the constitution of an African Bush
Elephant. Even if he’d drunk all these bottles himself, she doubted
he’d been tipsy.

“
Did
you or your fiancé play cards with them at all?”

“
No,
sir.”

“
You’re sure about that?”

“
Yes.”
Cat narrowed her eyes at his insinuation. “I would remember if I
got out of bed in the middle of the night and played a game of
cards.”

“
Mm-hmm.” He made a note in his notepad.

She peeked at his
notepad. “Is Ryan going to be okay?”

“
Well
I can tell you he won’t be starting tomorrow’s game.” The officer
chuckled and then looked up with a sheepish smile.
“Sorry.”

She pressed her
lips together and raised her eyebrows in response.

“
Now,
Ms. McDaniel, something’s bothering me.”

“
Okay
….”

“
This
table over here ….” he pointed behind him to the dining room where
Benji and the officer sat. Benji met her eyes and smiled softly.
“That’s where they were playing cards?”

Cat
nodded.

“
It
looks like there’s six places there, but I only count five guys.
You’re sure there wasn’t anybody else here tonight?”

Cat considered
the table. She didn’t know how he could distinguish individual
places with all the beer bottles scattered about. Poker chips were
gathered together in a few neat little piles and the cards were
strewn everywhere. She swallowed. “No, sir. But like I said, I was
asleep. When I woke up, there was only Quinn, Joel, Damien and
Adam.”

“
And
Ryan, of course.”

“
Y-yeah. Obviously.”

He nodded and
stuck his pen and pad back in his front pocket. “Well, that’s all
the questions I have for now.”

Relief flowed
through her and as she exhaled. She was bone tired. She could smell
the fresh pot of coffee wafting through the air and saw a mug in
front of Benji and a couple in the hands of officers. She wondered
if there was any left.

“
I
know where to find you should anything else arise. I heard over the
radio that they’re going to be contacting Roger Aiken but we’re
going to instruct him not to come here. I don’t need a brassed-off
general manager disrupting my crime scene. This investigation is
already going to take us well into lunch.”

Relief and
fatigue were instantly dispatched, replaced by anxiety and jitters.
She jerked her head up. “Crime scene? He fell off the balcony. It
was an accident, not a crime.”

“
Well,
why don’t you just let us determine that?”

Cat glared over
at Quinn, but he was too busy with his own statement to notice. His
eyes were glazed over, but she could tell from his clenched jaw
that this was due to his aversion to law enforcement rather than a
need for sleep. She almost pitied the officer, who probably had yet
to get Quinn to state his full name.

Detective Kahn
brought her attention back to him by picking up her latest SABR
Journal and thumbing through the pages. “I’m sure you’re about to
have a busy day of your own explaining to the City of Buffalo why
their All-Star starter won’t be available for game one.”

Her hands were
clasped in her lap and she unconsciously began to wring them.
Breaking the news to the fans would be bad enough but when the rest
of the media leaked that it happened in
her
apartment—and
they would—Lord knows she would ride a juicy scandal like this into
the sunset. It would bury her.

She saw Detective
Kahn observing her handwringing and stopped, shaking her hands out
and rising to her feet.

“
Let’s
just hope Ryan’s okay.”

Cat meant it with
every cell in her body. Both the young pitcher’s career and her own
lay in the hands of the emergency room doctor.

After the
interview with Detective Kahn had concluded, Cat opted for a hot
shower over extra sleep. She doubted she’d get much sleep anyway,
with the pit of foreboding yawning in her stomach. She and Benji
had exited the loft and headed to work while it was still teeming
with cops, leaving Quinn to play host to their crime scene. Benji
had early morning labs every Thursday and Cat knew Roger Aiken
would be waiting for her at Soldier
s
Stadium.

She pulled into
the parking lot just as the sun began to rise between the historic
skyscrapers that formed the Buffalo skyline. She squinted at the
pinkish orange rays reflecting off Roger’s Bentley parked in the
front row. Its driver’s side door opened and she’d barely set one
foot outside the Jeep when he charged over. Cat stepped out and
grabbed her bag. She raised her hand up to stave off any
admonishment he was about to give her.

“
I
know. You don’t have to say anything.”

This must be what
Paige feels like.

She’d met Roger
and his bratty daughter when she’d interviewed for this job. On
that day she’d seen this exact gape of shock and disappointment on
his face; only then it’d been directed at his flesh and blood. Cat
didn’t grow up with paternal lectures and definitely wasn’t in the
mood to star in
Father Knows Best
today. Of course, he was
the boss, so it didn’t really matter what she was in the mood
for.

“
Catriona, what the hell? This is just ….” He rubbed his
wrinkled forehead as he gathered his thoughts.

“
Roger, I’m sorry.”

“
You
know I’m always in your corner, but you host an unsanctioned poker
game where my best pitcher breaks his arm a day before the
playoffs? How the hell can I back you on this?”

Cat burst into a
smile that she thought was going to jump off of her face. “It was
just his arm?”

“
He
broke his arm.”

“
Yes!”
She squeezed her eyes shut and took a moment to appreciate
this.

Thank
you, God, Buddha, Zeus, Ryan Brokaw’s guardian angel, the doctors
at Buffalo General, Lady Luck ….

She peeked open
her right eye. “Wait, which arm?”

Roger frowned.
“His left.”

Ryan Brokaw was a
righty.

Cat grinned. “His
left? That’s awesome!”

Roger didn’t
share in her jubilation. He was still staring at her with the stone
face of paternal consternation. “Before you celebrate, I should
tell you that even though it’s not his pitching arm, he’s going to
be on the disabled list for at least six weeks.”

Cat sighed and
let her back fall against the side of the Jeep. She didn’t need a
calendar to figure out what that meant. Considering that he had
fallen two stories and remained unconscious, they should’ve been
ecstatic he wasn’t dead, but if their best starter couldn’t pitch,
the Soldiers
'
season
might very well be over.

Roger nodded, as
though reading her thoughts. “That means that if by some miracle we
make it through this series and the next, he still won’t be able to
pitch in the championship.”

“
That
means we’re—”

“
Screwed.” He sighed. “Screwed would be the word you’re looking
for there, Catriona. Our season just ended.”

“
No.
No.” Cat reached over and gave his limp arm a motivating shake. “We
still have the best rotation in the league.”

“
Over
six months of the regular season. We both know pitching wins
playoffs and right now, we’re without an ace. We might as well
start refunding championship tickets now.”

He turned on his
heel and slumped toward the entrance. Cat threw her laptop bag over
her shoulder and caught up with him, her
black satin pumps
chirping annoyingly on
the pavement with each step.

“
Come
on, that’s not fair. Our second starter—hell, our third
starter—would be an ace on any other rotation.”

Roger relented
with a shrug. “Even so, this is a distraction we don’t need. I’ve
got three other players getting the hairy eyeball for their
involvement and my crack reporter is due for a presser of her own
in an hour.”

“
A
press … what?”

Cat
attended
press conferences; she wasn’t the
subject.

Roger nodded with
a grimace as he opened the door for her. “Yeah. They want you,
baby. One of the best players in baseball fell fifteen feet from
your balcony. You didn’t think the media was just going to let that
go, did you?”

“
How
do they even know already? The sun just came up.”

“
Maybe
the roosters told ’em.” Roger smirked. “The best pitcher in town
was admitted into the biggest hospital in the county. What do you
think?”

Cat stepped in
front of him as they reached the door, trying to plead her case eye
to eye. “I don’t know what you heard, but I wasn’t even there—at
least, not really. I was asleep. It was my brother who threw the
party.”

“
Trust
me, my dear, it doesn’t matter who shit on your lawn.” He reached
past her and opened the door. “You’re the one who has to scoop it
up.”

Cat trailed him
inside and let the steel door slam behind her. “That’s not
fair.”

“
Tell
me about it. Remember the parents of that sixteen-year-old who sued
me because their daughter got knocked up in the
bleachers
? The judge threw out the case,
but I still had to shoulder a half a billion questions from the
media.”

“
Not
to mention all the jabs from the late night comedians.” Cat smiled
fondly. Roger had been a good sport the next day, even forwarding
along the video clips that swirled around the team’s email accounts
and cellphones. Of course, that had been a joke. This was all too
serious for everyone involved.

“
Roger, you don’t understand. I won’t … I can’t sit in front of
all those people. I mean, I don’t have anything to tell
them.”