LITMIR.BIZ

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“The heating bill,” she repeated so Durant knew what she was talking about.

      For a moment, she’d forgotten who she was paired up with. The question was something she would have asked Amos. The latter would have speculated about the price and offered a decent guess. That was what she had loved about Amos. She could engage him in any sort of topic and he would always try to keep the conversation going.

      This new partner didn’t even indicate that he had heard her question.

      She glanced around and took in the security system keypad that was mounted right inside the door. “Looks sophisticated,” she commented.

      “Also useless if it didn’t alert the home owners that an intruder or intruders were coming in,” Kane pronounced rather dismissively.

      She was about to say something along the lines of “He speaks” but immediately dismissed the urge. She wanted to encourage Durant to share his thoughts with her. If she said anything remotely mocking or derogatory, she knew it would only make matters that much worse.

      And completely blow any chance of a decent partnership right out of the water.

      She also had a feeling that at this stage of their nonrelationship, kidding him was not the way to go. Instead, she played her role as the faithful sidekick and asked innocently, “Think it might be an inside job? You know, maybe someone who had a hand in installing the security system?”

      “Too soon to think anything,” he told her as he continued moving around the foyer, taking in as many details as he could before going to speak to the home owners. Both were badly shaken, according to the initial report that had come in from the patrolman who had been the first on the scene.

      The home owners were not difficult to locate. Kane followed the sound of raised voices and crying into the next room.

Chapter 3

      The woman’s back was to the doorway, so she didn’t seem to be aware that anyone else had entered her home—and her living room—until she heard an unfamiliar, deep male voice say, “Excuse me.”

      No doubt surprised and frightened, Judith Osborn jumped and stifled a scream as she swung around toward the sound of the voice she heard, apparently much to her husband’s disgust, if the expression on his face was any indication.

      “Damn it, Judith, get hold of yourself. They’re obviously with the police.” Randolph Osborn’s small, deep-set brown eyes shifted back and forth between the two strangers who had entered his home, as if he was assessing them. “You are with the police, right?”

      Kane took out his wallet and badge at the same time that she did. Kelly let him do the introductions as she continued to study the pair. The wife’s nerves seemed to be very close to the surface, while her husband just looked angry. Very angry.

      “Detectives Durant and Cavanaugh,” Kane told the robbery victims. Closing his wallet, he returned it to his jacket pocket. “Are either of you hurt?” he asked even as he did a quick visual check.

      Neither seemed to be bleeding, which was a positive sign.

      Osborn fisted his hands and then relaxed them again. His frown—as well as his annoyance—appeared to be deepening. “I think I lost all feeling in my hands and my back’s killing me.”

      “We can call the paramedics if you like,” Kelly offered sympathetically. Her focus was more on Mrs. Osborn than on the woman’s husband. The latter had an irritating manner about him, which might or might not have been due to finding himself the victim of a robbery. Kelly had a feeling it went far deeper than that. “They can take you to the hospital to be checked out.”

      Osborn looked at her as if he thought she’d lost her mind to make such a plebeian suggestion.

      “What? Checked out by butchers? No, thanks. I have my own top-rated specialist on retainer.” Wearing a robe over his pajamas, Osborn began to head for the nearest extension. “I’d like to call him now if you’re finished here.”

      He was summarily dismissing them.

      Kelly could see that Kane didn’t like the man’s superior attitude any more than she did.

      “As a matter of fact,” Kane told the home invasion victim, “we’re not finished.” He put his hand down on the landline Osborn was about to dial. “We have a few questions we’d like you to answer.”

      “What more do you want from us?” Mrs. Osborn asked, an edge of hysteria rising in her voice. “We’ve already told that...that beat cop standing outside what happened. What else is there?” she demanded again, her voice breaking.

      Judith Osborn ran her hand along her throat, as if she was protecting herself from some sort of invisible noose hanging around her neck. That was when Kane noticed the ligature marks around Judith’s wrist. Picking up the hand closest to him, he examined it more closely.

      It didn’t take much to guess what had happened. “You were restrained,” he concluded.

      Judith timidly pulled her hand away as she whispered hoarsely, “Yes.”

      At the same time her husband spat out, “Damn right we were. That little vermin had us tied up like turkeys waiting to be slaughtered,” he proclaimed indignantly. “I want that bastard’s head on a platter and I want it now!” It was clear he intended to get exactly what he demanded—or he was going to make someone else suffer for what he had gone through.

      “I can understand you feeling that way, Mr. Osborn,” Kane told the man, sounding almost compassionate. “But that’s not quite the way we do things on the police force these days.”

      The expression on Osborn’s face all but shouted that he didn’t give a damn how the detectives did things. He wanted revenge for being humiliated and held prisoner in his own home. “Then after you bring him in, just let me have ten minutes with him—”

      Kane saw the same set of ligature marks on Osborn’s wrists. “Looks to me as if you’ve already had more than ten minutes with him.”

      Accustomed to always getting his way, Randolph was obviously fuming at Kane’s comment. He made a show of pulling the cuffs of his pajamas down over the marks on his wrists.

      To Kelly it was a little like the clichéd remark about closing the barn door after the horses had been stolen.

      “He came into our bedroom while we were asleep. Our bedroom!” Osborn all but shouted to get his point across. “And he had the gall to hit me to wake me up!” His wife whimpered pitifully as Osborn re-created the scene they had just gone through. “Then he had my wife tie me up. My wife,” he emphasized. Osborn glared now at the woman who, it was quite evident by his manner, he felt had betrayed him.

      “I had to, Randolph,” Judith cried, distraught. “He was holding a gun on me. What did you expect me to do?” she asked. The almost painfully thin woman began to shake again.

      “I expect you to think for a change,” Osborn retorted. “If you had given him any sort of resistance, I could have used that to get him off guard and taken his gun away from that pathetic sack of—”

      “What you would have more likely taken,” Kane said, interrupting the abrasive man he was taking a real disliking to, “is a bullet, most likely to the stomach. And you would have bled out before we got here. Heroics don’t usually pay off,” he told the man matter-of-factly.

      Osborn ran his hand through his graying hair. “I don’t need to stand here and be lectured to by a two-bit detective,” he bit off angrily.

      “Well, it’s obvious that you certainly do need something,” Kelly said, cutting in. Her eyes met Osborn’s. Kelly didn’t look away. “A course in manners comes to mind.”

      “You can’t talk to me like that,” Osborn shouted at her.

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