LITMIR.BIZ

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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.

      “We’re just figuring that out now.”

      “You’re with homicide,” Holt pointed out flatly.

      “We haven’t ruled out any possibilities yet. As I said, we’re working on it.” Paterno wasn’t giving up anything for the time being. At first glance it looked like the old woman tripped and fell, tumbled down the curved steps and broke her neck, but, these days, who knew? Eugenia Cahill was a wealthy woman. The Cahills had weathered a number of financial ups and downs, but it was no secret their fortunes were solid and currently on a steep rise. But the family had suffered their share of nutcases too. Marla Amhurst Cahill a case in point. It seemed like too much of a coincidence for Eugenia to wind up at the bottom of the staircase less than seventy-two hours from the time Marla, her murderous daughter-in-law, had escaped from prison.

      Paterno scowled. The thought that Eugenia’s daughter-in-law had escaped really gnawed at his gut. He’d worked his ass off to put Marla away years before, and now recently, because of overcrowding and her stellar behavior as a model prisoner, she’d been transferred to a lower-security facility.

      What a mistake! He wouldn’t be surprised if some of the Cahill fortune had been used to grease the skids on that little maneuver. Within two years of the transfer, Marla had found a way to break loose of that country club disguised as a lock-up facility. It hadn’t come as much of a surprise to Paterno, but it pissed him off. In all his years in law enforcement, Paterno would be hard-pressed to come up with a more calculating, murderous bitch than Marla Cahill. The way he saw it, she should have been locked away doing hard time for the rest of her life.

      And now she was out.

      And her mother-in-law, keeper of the family fortune, had just suffered a quick, untimely death.

      Coincidence?

      No friggin’

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