Murder in the River City (7 page)

“Detective Black already told you I talked to him?”

“Yes. We work together.”

Something was wrong with this conversation. She went back to the beginning, where he’d told her he was at Dooley’s to tell her to back off.

“And,” he interrupted, “I’ll keep you in the loop. I wouldn’t want you parking yourself under the oak tree for answers.”

“What?”

“This is a matter best left to the police,” he said.

It was his tone that set her off. So patronizing, so mightier-than-thou. He treated her like a little kid, not a self-made businesswoman with a solid head on her shoulders. He should know better—he knew what she’d gone through during college to prove to her father that she was smart and talented enough to work in the family business. How hard it was to be given the opportunity her father handed freely to her brothers and they didn’t even want it. And Sam damn well knew she’d been more successful in her endeavors than anyone—except herself—expected. She’d won awards for the family construction company for her blend of contemporary efficiency and nostalgic details in their buildings. Even in this difficult economy, their business was almost in the black.

“I want to talk to Detective Black,” she said, irritated that Sam was not taking her seriously. And she thought he’d listened, but he was just playing her. She crossed her arms, defiant.

“Shauna.” He rolled his eyes.

That infuriated her even more. “You tell John Black I want a report on his investigation or I
will
go back to the station!”

“Like that got you anywhere this morning,” he said with a snort as he finished his beer.
Her mouth dropped open. Then closed. Then open again. “Ooh!” She clenched her fists, stood up and stomped behind the bar again.

“Hey, babe, can I get another pint?” he asked her with a wink.

A wink!

“Get it yourself!” She slapped open the double doors leading to the kitchen and left.

Sam smiled at Shauna’s retreating back. Temper on a hair-trigger. It had been so much fun teasing her when she was a kid. It was just as fun now. Whoever landed her would have his hands full, but it would be a fun ride.

He frowned. What was he doing playing these games? She might not have a boyfriend, but she had plenty of dates. Mike had filled him in on Shauna, not knowing how he felt about her. She probably had a half dozen guys waiting in the wings.

Dooley came over and exchanged his empty pint with a fresh one. “Laddie, you really pissed her off.”

“How’d you guess?” Sam asked with a shrug.

“How can you keep tabs on her, if she’s mad at you?”

Sam sighed. “I promise, Dooley, I’ll watch her back as much as I can while working two homicides.”

He should be grateful she was even speaking to him. He’d told her she was like a
sister
to him. Nothing could be further from the truth. But it was too late to do anything about it.

Chapter Seven

After leaving Dooley’s, it took twenty minutes of driving in her air-conditioned Jeep to cool down, both her body heat and her temper. That man infuriated Shauna. And her granddad had conspired to bring him into her business.

Shauna wasn’t an idiot. She knew she had a temper. She knew she was curious. And sometimes her tenacity got her in trouble. Nothing serious—but she couldn’t let bullies run roughshod over others.

In high school, she’d once confronted a football jock who thought he could use his bulk to intimidate smaller boys into humiliating themselves. She had been a jock herself—she played volleyball and soccer—and no way was she going to let athletes get a bad name because one of them was all attitude. She owed her brothers a debt of thanks for teaching her basic fighting skills, because she got jock-boy on his knees with a bloody nose. It was worth the weeklong suspension.

And then in college, one of her professors had propositioned her roommate—go away for the weekend, and she’d get an A. Monica had been embarrassed and upset, but was willing to do it because she needed to keep her grades up to maintain her scholarship. Shauna convinced her to say no, the horny prof gave Monica a D, and Shauna set him up to confess what he’d done. Monica ended up with a B+ in the class and Shauna destroyed the tape. Well, she destroyed the tape she’d played for
him.
She kept a copy in case he needed reminding that sex for grades was a big no-no.

While Shauna didn’t put John Black or Sam in the same categories as bullies, they both treated her like she was some annoying fly who didn’t know any better. They might be cops, but that was clouding their judgment. Sam said he was taking her seriously, but how could she be sure? He hadn’t taken her seriously when she told him she loved him. He’d been skeptical when she explained the baseballs.
Maybe
he was going to follow through, but he’d been back for what? A couple days? Could he convince that big detective Black she was right? Was Black only looking at this as a robbery, not something more?

Shauna wanted the truth.

Ten minutes later, she parked in front of Mack’s apartment. Dooley had given her the key earlier and asked her to throw out any food that could spoil, take out the garbage, gather up his mail and any insurance or banking papers. Dooley had Mack’s will, if the scribbled paper would hold up in court. She remembered when Mack had written it out, on the back of a ticket pad.

In the event of my death or incapacitation, I give power of attorney to Patrick Dooligan.

Shauna had been the witness, though she’d told both of them that they should write up something a bit more formal.

Mack had said, “I don’t have much, and I trust Dooley to give away my trinkets.”

Nine years Mack had worked for Dooley. He’d attended her high school graduation. Then her college graduation. He’d become part of the family. His death was senseless.

She took a deep breath. Now was not the time to get weepy.

She walked up the stairs to the second floor and unlocked Mack’s door with Dooley’s key. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust from the bright August sun to the dim light. As they did, her skin tingled. The place was a mess. She’d only been inside the apartment a few times before, and while Mack had never been tidy, this was beyond bachelor slob.

Shauna closed the door and carefully walked around. Had he been robbed? Someone who heard that he’d been killed maybe looted his place because they didn’t think anyone would notice? That seemed weird. And his large, flat-screened television and his computer were still in the living room.

Each of her three brothers had told her she was suspicious by nature. Nothing valuable seemed to be missing, so Shauna pulled out a garbage bag from a cabinet and emptied out the refrigerator. There wasn’t much—milk, orange juice, fruit, a few take-out boxes from Dooley’s, some that should have been tossed days ago. She left the partial six-pack of beer and everything else that hadn’t been opened. She’d get Mike or Skip to help her pack up the apartment this weekend. She suspected Dooley would want to do it, but he couldn’t do it all. 

The garbage under his sink was half-full. She emptied it into the bag, then wound a twist-tie around the top and put it by the door. Dooley would need to access his bank account or insurance records, so she went over to Mack’s desk and sat down.

The drawers were a mess. It looked like someone had been looking for something, dumped out the papers, then put them all back. That didn’t seem right. She went into the bedroom. The bed was unmade, and the two of the dresser drawers were partly open.

“Someone was here,” she said out loud. She pulled out her cell phone and dialed Detective Black. He didn’t answer—of course—and she left a message.

“This is Shauna Murphy. I’m at Mack Duncan’s apartment in South Natomas, and I think he’s been robbed. Call me back. Please,” she added, hoping being polite would expedite a return call.

She then went to look up Sam’s number, but it wasn’t in her cell phone. Damn, she’d deleted it when he moved to L.A. To put him out of her mind, because every time she went to call her brother Skip, she had to scroll past Sam’s name.

Maybe that was for the best. Work with the lead detective, not Sam. Plus, she didn’t want to see him again so soon. She needed to harden her heart a bit more.

Maybe next year she could look at him without feeling an ounce of lust.

Right.

She looked around the apartment again and considered cleaning it up, but if she was right and someone had broken in, she shouldn’t touch anything else. She winced, thinking about the desk and the kitchen she’d gone through. Fortunately, she hadn’t touched the computer or anything in the bedroom, so if the police came in they could still dust for prints or do whatever they needed to do.

On the coffee table she noticed two beer bottles. They were different—same imported beer, but one had the label peeled off.

Shauna had drunk beer with Mack many times. He
never
peeled off the label. There were no other beer bottles around, and the brand was the same as the beer in the refrigerator—a brand Shauna didn’t think Mack would buy on his own. If he wasn’t drinking Harp from the tap at Dooley’s, he bought domestic.

She went back to the refrigerator and, using a dishcloth to prevent smudging any fingerprints, took out the remaining six-pack of imports. There were four left. Tucked in the case was a receipt. The beer had been bought after midnight on Saturday. Mack usually closed at one Friday and Saturday nights, so she doubted he’d bought it. Who was he visiting with?

It was probably nothing important, but no one who’d come into the bar today had said they’d been with Mack Saturday night. As far as Shauna knew, he didn’t have a girlfriend. And most of his friends were from Dooley’s.

“Stop being so damn suspicious,” Shauna said. She put the beer back in the refrigerator and pulled out her phone to call Detective Black. Again.

The front doorknob jiggled.

Shauna jumped, put her hand to her mouth to stop herself from calling out. If it was Detective Black, he would have knocked, right? Because she’d said she was here.

The knob jiggled again. It didn’t sound like a key. Why hadn’t she put on the security chain?

Because you didn’t think someone was going to break into a dead man’s apartment.
 

The lock clicked and Shauna realized that as soon as the door opened, the intruder would see her in the kitchen. She was trapped. The only place she could go was quickly around the corner and into the bedroom.

She took three large, silent steps from the kitchen into the hall, three more steps to the bedroom door and slowly pushed it open. She saw a swath of light cut through the apartment and she didn’t dare close the bedroom door for fear of being seen.

The front door closed so quietly she almost missed it. There was no place for her to go without being seen from the living room, except behind the half-open bedroom door. She stepped as silently as possible behind the door, held her breath, and peered through the crack. She couldn’t see anyone from the narrow angle, but heard someone moving through the apartment.

She clicked her phone to silent and sent Black a text message:

Someone is in Mack’s apartment. I’m trapped in the bedroom. Call Sam Garcia.

She dialed 911 and then the door slammed into her body, pushing her hard against the wall. The back of her head ached. She dropped her phone. A man she’d never seen before pulled her out from behind the door and threw her across the room. The back of her head hit the dresser and she froze, too stunned by the blow to move.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

Fear flooded her veins. Adrenaline kicked in and she got up on all fours and crawled across the floor.

He followed and kicked her. Her head hit the dresser and she fell on her side.

“I already called the police!” she shouted. Had the 911 call gone through? She didn’t know where her phone went.

Get up! Fight!

Dizzy and scared, she began to scream but he slapped her.

He wore a hoodie and gloves. She cataloged all the features she could remember. White. Clean-shaven. Taller than Mike, shorter than Sam.

“Shit,” he muttered. He grabbed the lamp off the nightstand and pulled her arms up behind her.

She screamed when her shoulder dislocated from its socket.

“Shut up!” he said and wound the cord tightly around her hands in a figure eight. Then he pulled a T-shirt from Mack’s drawer and shoved it so deep in her mouth she gagged.

She couldn’t hear anything through the ringing in her ears. The pain from her shoulder burned her entire body, making her nauseated. Her vision blurred, whether from the throbbing pulse in the back of her head or from the nearly unbearable pain in her shoulder. If she hadn’t had dislocated her shoulder twice before, she was certain she would have passed out. She focused on breathing through her nose as her pulse raced, bringing her to near panic.

Tears ran down her face, in pain and anger and a deep fear she’d felt only once before: yesterday morning, when she thought her grandfather was dead.

She tried to move, to hide, when she realized he was no longer in the bedroom, but each movement made her cry into the gag and made it harder to breathe.

The intruder didn’t leave the apartment immediately. He spent a long minute looking for something, while she scooted slowly over to the corner where she’d dropped her phone, tears burning her eyes. Her phone started singing her ring tone from
Riverdance.
It was under the bed somewhere, no way she could reach it tied up and in pain.

The front door closed and she was alone.

She hoped.

Chapter Eight

John had called Sam as he was leaving Dooley’s. “I got a text message from Shauna Murphy that there’s an intruder at Mack Duncan’s apartment and she’s hiding in the bedroom.”

Sam’s blood ran cold as he ran to his truck. “I’m on my way.”

“So am I. I dispatched a patrol car, ETA six minutes.”