Twilight Whispers Read online

  When Cavanaugh would have argued that he was more than capable of handling the case, if that was indeed what Jordan was wondering, his pride held his temper for him. “Captain Haas will be retiring by the end of the year. I’m the senior detective under him. Given the need for continuity, Ryan thought I’d be a far better man to handle the case.”

  Jordan nodded, accepting the explanation. He also accepted the fact that Robert Cavanaugh was well-spoken, his voice showing barely a hint of a Boston accent. He came across as being cultivated, at least relatively so given his occupation. “You think you’re in for a long haul, then?”

  Cavanaugh gave a negligent shrug. “I’m in for as long as it takes.”

  Jordan was beginning to suspect that his adversary was not only well-dressed and well-spoken, but shrewd. He wasn’t volunteering a thing. “How it’s going?”

  “It’s going.”

  “Have you come up with anything?”

  “As in anything that might suggest that it was something other than what it appeared to be on the surface?”

  “That is why you’re investigating, isn’t it?” Jordan answered disdainfully.

  Slowly but firmly, Cavanaugh nodded.

  “And?” When Cavanaugh simply stared blankly at him, he prodded further. “Have you found anything fishy?”

  “You mean, evidence that someone stole onto the boat and committed a double murder?”

  “That’s right.”

  “We’re working on it.”

  Jordan could feel his patience fraying. Getting information from Robert Cavanaugh was like pulling teeth. “Has the lab finished its work?”

  “Not all. It takes time.”

  “How much time?”

  “A week, two, three.”

  “For one lab report?”

  “For in-depth analyses of a hundred small details.”

  Jordan absently batted at a fly that had settled near his mug. “Do you have any leads?”

  “Not yet.”

  “What are you hoping for?”

  “I’m not hoping for anything. Regardless of what you think, a policeman doesn’t hope for murder.”

  Jordan sighed. The man obviously had a chip on his shoulder. “Let me rephrase the question, then. What are you looking for?”

  “Anything out of the ordinary.”

  “A murder-suicide in families like ours is out of the ordinary.”

  “That’s one of the reasons we’re conducting an investigation.”

  “What are you working on now?”

  “Anything … everything.”

  “Look, Detective Cavanaugh,” Jordan said, gritting his teeth, his gaze sharp as he shot forward in his seat, “my family has been through enough in the past eleven days to deserve a little more than vague answers.” His tone was low, dangerously so, and a muscle high in his cheek twitched. In another less public place he would have exploded, venting the full force of his wrath on Cavanaugh. As it was he was struggling to contain himself. “Two of our members are dead, and we think we have a right to know what you’re doing to find out why they’re dead. We’d like to know exactly what you did yesterday, exactly what you’re doing today, and exactly what you plan to do tomorrow.”

  Cavanaugh couldn’t restrain himself. He had too many negative feelings about the Whytes and Warrens to allow Jordan Whyte to try to intimidate him. He too sat forward, his eyes narrowed. “Look, Mr. Whyte, I don’t believe I owe you anything. I work for the state, in case you’ve forgotten, and the only responsibility I have is to investigate this case to the best of my ability and then present my findings to the appropriate authority, which will take any action necessary.”

  “As a servant of the state you’re answerable to the taxpayers,” Jordan snapped back. “And I can assure you that my family pays its share in taxes.”

  “Does it?” Cavanaugh asked with just the right amount of sarcasm. Taxes were another of his peeves, since he firmly believed that, thanks to loopholes of one kind or another, the rich never paid their share.

  Jordan wasn’t fazed by his question. He went on in an even more condescending tone. “You obviously haven’t done your homework as thoroughly as you’d like to believe or you’d never have asked that.”

  “And you haven’t done your homework as thoroughly as you’d like to believe if you think that I haven’t done mine!” His eyes were filled with fire. “Forget the fact that Haas is retiring. Forget that I’m the senior man under him. The real reason I got this case is that Ryan believes I can do a better job with it than anyone else in the department. I’ve had a whole lot of time to prove myself. I worked my way up from the bottom of the force. No one handed me anything for free; my promotions were solely on merit. I work hard, I’m thorough, and I’m a stickler for details. Don’t underestimate me, Mr. Whyte.”

  Jordan was momentarily taken aback. He wasn’t accustomed to people standing up to him, particularly when he used his guaranteed-to-have-them-shaking-in-their-boots look, which he thought he’d been using for the last few minutes. Cavanaugh was tough. Cracking him would take a different approach.

  He took a deep breath as he slowly sat back, and his arms, which had been propped on the table during his attack, dropped limply to his sides. “You don’t like me, do you?”

  It was Cavanaugh’s turn to be taken aback. He hadn’t expected such directness or such resignation. “Whether I like you or not is irrelevant,” he said crisply but calmly. “This is a case, just like any other case. Who you are is secondary to the fact that two people are dead. They could have been two vagrants from Pine Street, and if there was reason to think they’d been murdered rather than that they’d drunk themselves to death I’d be carrying out an investigation every bit as intensely.”

  Jordan, who couldn’t help but be impressed by the man’s apparent integrity, tipped his head to the side and frowned gently. “How’d you get into police work?”

  The question surprised Cavanaugh, but he had nothing to hide. “I served in Vietnam, and by the time I got back I’d developed a fixation on law and order.”

  “When were you there?”

  “Sixty-seven through sixty-nine.”

  “And you made it back in one piece,” Jordan marveled, moments before his eyes grew distant. “You were one of the lucky ones. Four of my college buddies didn’t do so well; three came back in boxes and the fourth hasn’t made it back at all.”

  Cavanaugh wasn’t about to be upstaged. If Jordan was playing for sympathy, he could match him. “I lost two friends there. We all had college deferments but our luck ran out after graduation. There are times when I wonder if we’d served earlier—or later—whether things would have been different. My friends were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  College. Jordan hadn’t expected that. He had assumed that the bulk of the Boston police force, particularly those who had started from the bottom as Cavanaugh said he had done, presumably in the late sixties or early seventies, had signed on directly from high school. “Where did you go?” When Cavanaugh frowned uncomprehendingly, he prompted, “To college.”

  “University of North Carolina.”

  Jordan’s curiosity increased. “You’re younger than I’d expected. When did you graduate?”

  Cavanaugh allowed himself a dry smile. “The same year you did. I believe we were rivals.”

  Jordan had gone to Duke. He grinned. “You bet we were. Did you play football, too?” When Cavanaugh nodded, his grin broadened. “We must have played each other.”

  “More than once. I knew who you were. Everyone knew Jordan Whyte, the star quarterback of the Blue Devils.”

  “And you?”

  “A wide receiver. You wouldn’t have heard of me. I was a special team player mostly.” Kickoffs and punt returns comprised the majority of the time he had spent on the field. No, no one had heard of him, least of all the star quarterback of the Blue Devils.

  “Hey, not bad,” Jordan declared. “Not bad at all. Special teams are really important.
Some of the most dramatic turns in games happen when special teams are on the field.”

  “Hey, listen,” Cavanaugh cautioned, holding up a hand, “that was a world away. I’m not making apologies for what I did. You don’t need to patronize me—”

  “I’m not doing that. I meant what I said.” His features mellowed as he reminisced. “There was one game we played where we were down by a touchdown with a minute and forty seconds left on the clock. It was a fourth down and punt situation. Our special team came on, the punt was made, and the other team—I think it was Georgia Tech—fumbled. We recovered the ball and ran all the way for the touchdown. Now that was exciting!”

  Cavanaugh couldn’t help himself. “So did you break the tie and win?”

  “Lost by a last minute field goal.” He shrugged. “That’s the way it goes sometimes.”

  “Do you ever wish you’d gone pro?”

  “Me? Nah. I have weak knees. I’d never have made it in the pros. There’s a time and a place for everything; my playing days were well left behind when I graduated.”

  Cavanaugh knew that he ought to get back to business, but his curiosity got the best of him. “You own a hockey team. Why that instead of football?”

  Jordan’s smile was lopsided. Cavanaugh tried to decide if he was aiming at self-derision for effect. “Can you see me calling the plays from the owner’s box? I’d be impossible to work for; it would be too frustrating to sit still and keep my mouth shut. Besides,” he cast a glance at two men who had just settled at the counter and lowered his voice, “buying a football team was exactly what people would have expected from me. I can’t be that predictable, now, can I?”

  Cavanaugh chuckled. “No. You can’t. You do enjoy doing the unexpected, don’t you?”

  “Yes. And it’s not only for other people’s benefit.” Jordan wanted to make that clear. He had been criticized for being a showman once too often. “I do what excites me, and the unexpected does excite me. Which isn’t to say that something is automatically exciting simply because it’s unexpected. I’m picky in what I choose to do, and I’m lucky in that I can afford to be picky. I’m not as impulsive as some people think. But we all do need breathers. Doing the same blessed thing day in and day out would drive me insane.” He paused, thinking. “Isn’t it the same for you? Don’t you get a little rush when a new and challenging case is dropped on your desk?”

  Cavanaugh took his turn swatting at the fly. “I think any detective does. The most exciting ones—maybe the hardest to solve—are those in which the unexpected happens.” He looked Jordan in the eye. “It’s the little twist here or there that makes things interesting.”

  If he was trying to make the point that Jordan’s involvement in the murder of his brother would be a welcome twist, he failed. Jordan was on one aspect of his wavelength, though. “Which, I suppose, brings us back to the case you’re working on now.” He’d been fingering the handle of his mug, but looked up at Cavanaugh and spoke softly. “I think we got off on the wrong foot before. It was my fault and I apologize for that. It’s just that my family hasn’t been able to get many answers, and it’s frustrating.”

  “It’s frustrating for me, too,” Cavanaugh stated, but his defenses were down. “Things take time. I make calls, but one report or another isn’t done. Take the ballistics report. I need the results to show whether the bullets that killed your brother and sister-in-law were, in fact, fired from the gun we found in Mark’s hand. But the chief ballistician has been on vacation, and personally, I don’t trust the judgment of the guy under him, so we wait.”

  Jordan took a sip of his tepid coffee, then lowered the mug to the palm of his free hand. “We’ve discussed it—my brother and sister and the Warrens—and none of us can find justification for the idea of a murder-suicide. We’re convinced they were murdered.”

  Cavanaugh maintained a neutral expression, debating how much to reveal of his own thoughts. He certainly wouldn’t tell Jordan right off the bat that he suspected his family or the Warrens. And he wasn’t sure that he did. He wanted to, but wanting didn’t make a case.

  Did he think Jordan was capable of murder? At first impression, no. Jordan seemed to wear his feelings on his sleeve. He appeared to be forthright, quick to spit out his thoughts, legitimately concerned about the case. If he had been a murderer, he would have shown some sign of nervousness; experience had taught Cavanaugh that even the most consummate actors betrayed themselves with the twitch of a lip or the blink of an eye at the wrong moment. No, Jordan wasn’t a murderer, unless he was truly pathological—and there was always that possibility.

  Cavanaugh couldn’t rule it out anymore than he could rule out the vague chance that Jordan had intentionally tossed out the possibility of murder to cover his own involvement.

  He decided on a cautious course, revealing only as much as Jordan could learn from another, properly placed phone call. “So far we can’t find a motive for murder-suicide either. Money seems to have been a problem—”

  “You checked out his credit cards and the bank. I know. We got calls afterward.”

  “It’s my job.”

  “I’m not criticizing.” The fly was by Jordan’s ear; he took a distracted swipe at it. “Mark owed a lot but not enough to kill himself over.”

  “We’ll be scouting around L.A. later in the week.”

  “He dabbled in drugs,” Jordan offered, figuring that Cavanaugh would learn it anyway. There were other things Cavanaugh might also learn, but Jordan wasn’t about to reveal them at the moment. He wasn’t yet sure how far the detective could be trusted. “Cocaine mostly. But he didn’t have a serious problem and the autopsy didn’t show anything in his blood, so he wasn’t wacked out at the time of the shootings, not that casual snorting does that anyway. If he’d been fooling with something hallucinogenic I could understand it. But not cocaine.”

  Cavanaugh agreed. “And we didn’t find any signs of organic disease in either of them. Sometimes if a person is diagnosed as having a terminal illness he decides to end the waiting, but that wasn’t the case here.” He paused, deciding that he might as well probe while he could. “Do you think there could have been some disagreement between them caused by Deborah’s pregnancy?”

  Jordan shook his head. “They wanted kids. Mark told me so himself, and even though Deborah had a hard time after the first one died—”

  “The first one?”

  “Stillborn. Four years ago.” He watched Cavanaugh pull a small notebook from his breast pocket, flip it open and jot down a note. “She’d been in therapy to ease her over it, and I’m sure she had to be nervous the second time around, but she did want the baby.”

  “Could I speak with her therapist?”

  “Sure, but he’s in L.A. Gil probably has the name and number. I’ll get it for you if you want.”

  Cavanaugh nodded, rubbed a finger on his upper lip as he studied the pad, then returned his gaze to Jordan. “So you do think they were murdered.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Any specific suspects?”

  “No.”

  “How about the others—your brother, sister, the Warrens? Did they have any suggestions?”

  “No. Mark and Deborah spent most of their time in California. Mark kept the boat here and they took it out whenever they came East, but other than holidays and traditional family times we didn’t see much of them. Who their friends were, who they worked with, who might have wanted them dead—and why—we just don’t know.” He looked frustrated again. “We do know that they had every reason to live. And,” his voice hardened in conviction, “we do know that Mark wouldn’t have had the guts to pull that trigger on himself, let alone on Deborah.”

  They sat in silence for a minute before Cavanaugh finally spoke. “The last of the lab reports may tell us something, and I’ll be sorting through the contacts anyway.” He returned the notebook to his pocket. “I’d like to speak with other members of your family and the Warrens.”

  “I’m not sur
e they’d have anything to add.”

  “Something they think is totally irrelevant may give me a clue.”

  “It might be difficult, especially for my mother and Lenore, but if you think it’s important.…”

  Cavanaugh did, but he wasn’t insensitive to Natalie and Lenore’s plights. “I’ll hold off on those two for awhile. What about the McNees and the Morells?”

  Jordan faltered for the first time, his body going still. “What about them?”

  “I’d like to speak with them. Sometimes the help picks up things that those who are closest to the victims miss.”

  “I suppose that makes sense,” Jordan said after a slight hesitation.

  Cavanaugh studied Jordan closely. “Katia Morell—she lives in New York, too, doesn’t she?”

  It was a moment before Jordan answered. “You know that she does. You also know what she does.”

  But Cavanaugh didn’t, not in detail, at least. He hadn’t gotten that far in his investigation. “She’s in … advertising is it?”

  “She’s an art director with an ad agency.”

  “I’d like to talk with her.”

  “Is that necessary?”

  “I think so.”

  This time when Jordan sat forward it was with an odd, beseeching look on his face. “Please. Katia is a totally innocent bystander in all this. She’s been in New York for eleven years. She has her own life and her own interests.”

  Cavanaugh wasn’t quite sure why Jordan was being protective of Katia, but he remembered the look they had exchanged at the cemetery and the suspicions he had had then. “She’s special to you, isn’t she?” he asked.

  Jordan stared at him. He wondered if he was that obvious about his feelings or if Cavanaugh was simply very perceptive. In either case he sensed that the question had been asked man to man rather than detective to relative of the victim, and it was in that vein that Jordan answered.

  “Yes. She’s special.”

  Cavanaugh would have asked more, but something held him back. He felt he was treading on thin ice where this line of questioning was concerned. “If I contact her, will she cooperate?”