The Quiet Storm Read online

  “Yeah. Something’s happened. My partner picked out something in the crime-scene photographs the other detectives must have missed. It might not mean anything, but it’s worth checking out.”

  Excitement flickered through her. “What is it?”

  There was just the slightest delay before he spoke. She wouldn’t have noticed it except it was the same pause she employed while she concentrated on trying to pick her words carefully. She had the impression the detective didn’t want to answer her question but he finally spoke. “Some unusual bruising on one wrist.”

  “Bruising? What kind of bruising?”

  Again he hesitated. “What you might expect to see if someone were to grab your wrist tightly.”

  Oh, Tina. Elizabeth drew a sharp breath as a host of terrible images slithered across her mind, of fear and violence and a terrible death. She sank down onto the piano bench. What had happened to the sweet, innocent girl who had loved to dance and to swim and who used to sit at this same piano for hours with her picking out “Chopsticks” and “Heart and Soul”?

  “Ms. Quinn?”

  “Yes. I’m here.”

  “I’m sorry. I thought you’d want to know.”

  “Thank you. I…I did. I do.” She drew a ragged breath. She had known this wouldn’t be easy. “So what now?”

  “I’m still trying to figure out how this slipped past the medical examiner and what else they might have missed. I’ve got a few other leads on this end. I’d like to talk to neighbors, co-workers, that kind of thing. I have to warn you, I don’t know how far we’re going to get. Coming in cold to a three-week-old murder is about as easy as trying to find hair on a frog. The trail cools a little more with every passing day.”

  “I know. But thank you so much for helping me. I…can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

  There was another pause, then he cleared his throat. “I’d like to take a look at her personal effects, too. See if she left an appointment book or address book or something that might give us a little more to go on. Can you tell me where I might find her belongings?”

  “Here. Everything is here. The landlord wanted her apartment cleared so he could make it ready for another tenant but we…we weren’t ready to go through her things yet. Luisa and I had them packed into boxes and brought here after the other detectives cleared the scene.”

  “Mind if I take a look at them?”

  “No. I…of course not.” She rested a hand on the sudden fluttering in her stomach. He wanted to come here, to her home. “When would be convenient for you?”

  “What about tomorrow afternoon?”

  So soon? The fluttering turned into a whole flock of nervous butterflies. But she couldn’t very well refuse, not when she had practically begged him to investigate the case. “Yes,” she finally said. “Tomorrow would work.”

  She gave him directions to Harbor View from the Dugans’ house just a mile away, and a few moments later they ended the conversation.

  After she hung up the phone, she rose from the bench and crossed the thick carpet to the tall, mullioned windows overlooking the Sound. Rain still battered against the glass and stirred the water into a choppy froth. The sun had almost set and the lights of the city across the water had begun to twinkle and dance.

  She watched them for a long time before she realized slow tears were trickling down her cheeks like the rain against the window. She swiped at them, grateful she’d had the wisdom to come in here away from Luisa and Alex.

  It didn’t escape her attention that she had grieved far more for Tina in the last three weeks than she ever did throughout her father’s long, lingering death from cancer or after he finally died last year.

  She had grieved a long time ago for what would never be between her and Jonathan Quinn. Maybe by the time he died she had no more tears left inside her for the cold, exacting man who never had any interest in trying to understand the daughter who tried so desperately to please him.

  Luisa and her daughter had been far more of a family to her than her own father. Of course Tina’s death would hit her hard.

  Knowing she was justified in her pain didn’t ease it at all. She stood in the dark music room for a long time, until the rain slowed and her cheeks were dry once more.

  Beau glared at the phone. “I don’t care about your backlog, Marty. That’s no excuse for incompetence. Any first-year medical student would have picked up on bruising like that. How could your guy have missed in an hour-long autopsy something my rookie partner saw after thirty seconds of looking at a grainy crime-scene photograph?”

  He listened to the medical examiner give the old familiar bull about his staff being overworked and underpaid. On the surface Marty Ruckman might seem like the consummate politician trying to cover his rear, but Beau knew him well enough to know the coroner cared as deeply as the detectives about finding justice for the dead.

  “Whatever the reason, Marty,” he finally said, “we both know this was a major screw-up and it’s up to you to make it right. I want you to personally go over the autopsy records and see what else this guy missed. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  He hung up without saying goodbye and thumbed an antacid off the roll in his desk. He didn’t need this today. He and Griff had a dozen other active cases, and he really didn’t have time for this kind of bureaucratic baloney first thing in the morning.

  And where the hell was his partner? Every time he turned around, the kid disappeared.

  He was about to send out an APB when he saw a curly-haired blond dynamo heading toward his desk. His mood immediately lifted.

  “Hey, it’s my best girl. This is a surprise!”

  Emma, Gracie’s seven-year-old stepdaughter, launched herself into his arms. “Hi, Beau. Grace said I could come back and see if you were here while she talked to her boss. I didn’t have school today so Grace and me are gonna have lunch downtown and go shopping for new clothes and maybe go to the park if Sean’s not too grumpy. Hey, guess what? I lost another tooth last night and the tooth fairy brought me two whole dollars and I’m saving it for a new Barbie.”

  When she slowed down to take a breath, he dutifully admired the hole where her tooth used to be, handed her one of the candy bars from his secret emergency stash and asked her how her new baby brother was working out.

  She gave him a disgusted look. “He’s boring. I thought he would be able to play by now. Mom and Dad and Lily say Sean’s just about the smartest baby in the world but I think he’s dumb as a rock. All he does is sleep and eat and cry.”

  He laughed—he couldn’t help himself—and kissed her blond curls. “He’ll grow out of it. Trust me. Pretty soon he’ll be picking the lock to get into your bedroom and inventing all kinds of ways to tease you.”

  He thought again that Emma was by far the best thing to come out of Grace’s marriage to Jack Dugan two years earlier. Beau was still withholding judgment about the cocky millionaire flyboy who had captured Gracie’s heart. Dugan had lifted her out of a dark, desolate place when no one else could reach her and he made her happy, so that counted for something. But he was also a reckless, arrogant son of a bitch.

  His daughter, on the other hand, was a complete doll. Almost as cute as Marisa had been at that age.

  Unexpected pain punched him hard in the chest at the thought of Grace’s daughter, and he glanced at the framed picture on his desk of a laughing, beautiful girl with dimpled cheeks and long glossy braids. Three years she’d been gone. Sometimes he could hardly believe it had been that long since they’d taken a trip on his boat or shared a picnic at the beach or played one of their fiercely competitive games of Horse at the basketball hoop hanging from Gracie’s little garage.

  It had been three years since she’d been killed in a drive-by shooting outside her school, and he still missed her fiercely.

  Jack Dugan and his daughter had forced their way into Grace’s life and helped ease her grief and guilt. He should be grateful to the man, and he was. But a part of him still felt smal
l and selfish for wondering why he couldn’t seem to find the same kind of peace.

  “You want some paper to color on while you wait for your mom?” he asked Emma.

  Little lines fanned up between her eyebrows as she tried to decide. “How about if I make you a paper airplane? My daddy just taught me how.”

  “Great. I’ve been needing one of those.”

  He handed her some scratch paper out of his drawer and grinned at her frown of concentration as she folded the paper with the precision of a laser surgeon performing a frontal lobotomy.

  She was almost finished when he spotted Gracie heading toward them. As usual, the air around her seemed to crackle with energy as she made her way through the squad room to his desk. Despite her lack of height and delicate appearance, she was a fierce cop who cared passionately about her cases.

  Just now she looked far from that hardened detective, loaded down with a baby carrier and a Winnie the Pooh diaper bag. He relieved her of both and urged her to sit down.

  Emma looked up and flashed her gap-toothed grin. “Hi, Grace. I’m making Beau one of my super-duper high-flyer airplanes Daddy taught me to make.”

  She grinned at her stepdaughter as she pulled little Sean out of the baby carrier. “And I’m sure Beau will find some way to make trouble with it. Like launch it at the lieutenant when his back is turned.” She turned back to Beau. “Sorry I took a little longer than I’d expected. I didn’t mean to let Em just run free. Were you in the middle of something when she came back?”

  “No. I was all done yelling by the time she got here, so she missed all my better cuss words.”

  “Uh-oh. Trouble with a case?”

  If Emma hadn’t been there with her wide eyes and her avid curiosity, he would have unloaded on Grace about it. Hell, she ought to be working the case with him, since this one was her baby. Besides, Grace had always had a way of seeing patterns and flags that evaded everybody else.

  But since she couldn’t very well pack that cute dark-haired new baby on her hip while she went out on interviews, he was on his own.

  He shrugged and chose to change the subject. “How’s the kid? Is he sleeping through the night yet?”

  Grace sighed. “Not yet. He still thinks he needs to eat every two hours. Kind of like someone else I know,” she said pointedly.

  “Hey, we’re both healthy, growing males. We need our food.”

  She snorted and he grinned back. He and Grace had been partners on and off for a dozen years, first on patrol and then as detectives. They knew each other inside and out and loved each other deeply, just not in a romantic way. She’d always been like an annoying little sister to him, but he couldn’t imagine his life without her.

  “What brings you down here?” Beau asked. “I didn’t think we’d have to see your ugly mug for at least another few months.”

  She made a face with features that were small and delicate and, he had to admit, far from ugly. “Keep it up and you won’t have to see it for longer than that.” She paused. “Actually, Beau, I just talked to Charlie about extending my maternity leave by another six months. I’m going to fill out the paperwork.”

  He stared at her, grim images of spending more time with an eager puppy of a partner like J. J. Griffin. He did a quick mental calculation. “A whole year? You’re taking a whole year off? You were just getting back in the groove!”

  “I’m sorry, Beau. I should have told you before I talked to Charlie and filled out the paperwork.”

  “Why do you need a whole year?” He knew he probably sounded like a spoiled little kid whose best friend was moving away but he couldn’t seem to help it.

  “When you have children, maybe you’ll understand. I didn’t have many choices with Marisa. You know what it was like for us. I was all she had and she was barely a few weeks old when I had to go back to work just to pay the rent. This time everything is different. I’ve discovered I’m not in a big hurry yet to rush back to all this. I just need a little time with Em and the baby. But I’ll be back, I promise.”

  “Not for a whole year!”

  “Come on, Beau. J.J.’s a good cop. You’ll break him in. Besides, you still have to promise to keep me up-to-date on what you’re working on. I’ll still be around so you can bounce cases off me. What put you in such a temper earlier?”

  He held up the Hidalgo file. “This.”

  She read the name on the tab. “Tina Hidalgo. Why does that sound so familiar?”

  “You should know since you’re the one who sicced her friend on me. Elizabeth Quinn, remember? You told her I would look into the closed case for her.”

  She caught on quickly. “You saw Elizabeth? Are you reopening it?”

  He nodded with a glare.

  “She must be so relieved.”

  “I don’t know about that. She’s a hard nut to crack.”

  “She’s just quiet. When you get to know her a little better, you’ll find out she’s a real sweetheart.”

  He wasn’t so sure. He had a feeling sitting in an ice-cold stakeout car in the middle of January would be warmer than spending any more time with Elizabeth Quinn.

  Grace frowned at him as she settled the baby back into the carrier. “You’ve got that look on your face again, Beau. She is a sweetheart. She’s just a little reserved with people she doesn’t know. Be nice to her, okay?”

  “I’m nice to everyone,” he growled.

  Before Grace could answer, the lieutenant’s booming voice carried through the whole squad room.

  “Riley! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Beau sent a quick glance to Emma, still folding what was turning into a whole fleet of paper airplanes. She had stopped working and was looking at him wide-eyed.

  “Uh-oh.” Gracie stood up. “Sounds like you’ve stepped in it again. This looks like a good time for us to run. We have a lunch date, anyway. See you later, Beau. Why don’t you come out for dinner next week? I’ll call you.”

  She kissed him on the cheek, then waited for Emma to do the same before leading her by the hand toward the door, the baby carrier in the other hand, just before Charlie reached his desk.

  Short, thickly built and in his midfifties, Charlie Banks was just about the best cop Beau had ever known. He had sharp instincts and a pit bull’s temperament when it came to investigations. A native of Boston, he still spoke with a hard New England accent and had little patience for stupidity.

  “I just got off the phone with the medical examiner,” he growled. “Imagine my surprise when he informs me you have reopened an investigation two other fine detectives of this department ruled a suicide. You mind telling me when the line-of-command fairy dropped by and granted you a free pass?”

  Beau winced. He supposed he should have told Charlie what he was up to. “I told a friend of Gracie’s I would look into the matter for her. I spotted a red flag or two so I’m just double-checking some things.”

  “Riley, how many damn times do I have to tell you? You can’t just hotshot around here, picking and choosing the cases you want to work on. You’ve got twenty active case files on your desk as we speak. Until you clear a few of those, you don’t have time to run around digging up self-inflicted gunshot cases.”

  “What if it wasn’t self-inflicted? Look at this photograph. Doesn’t that look like a bruise on her wrist?”

  Charlie squinted at the autopsy photo. “It’s a smudge on the film. That’s it. Certainly not enough to warrant any more use of this department’s time and energy.”

  The lieutenant saw a smudge on the print; Beau saw a woman who loved her son and inspired deep loyalty in her friends.

  “Charlie, I’ve got a hunch about this one. You mind if I work it on my own time?”

  His boss looked at him for a moment, then rolled his eyes. “You need a life, Riley.”

  “Yeah, tell me something I don’t know. So are we good on the Hidalgo case?”

  “Your time is none of my business. Do what you want. Just don’t do it when
you’re supposed to be working other investigations. You come up with something besides a hunch and a smudge on a photograph and we can talk about reopening the case. Until then, you’re on your own.”

  Beau watched Charlie walk back to his office, then looked once more at the driver’s license photo clipped to the manila folder. Tina Hidalgo had been pretty. He could see the signs of it even in the grainy picture. Underneath the hard, brittle shell of worldliness, her mouth was sweetly curved, like a ship’s bow, and her eyes were the same color as cinnamon sugar.

  Maybe she did kill herself. Maybe he was wasting his time. But everyone deserved somebody to stand up for her, even a junkie stripper like Tina Hidalgo.

  Chapter 3

  Elizabeth Quinn’s house was exactly as he expected—huge, elegant and imposing.

  Later that evening, Beau paused outside immense wrought-iron gates and studied the place. The massive structure was redbrick with rows of black shutters marching across the face. It was set back from the road amid glossy, perfectly manicured lawns on a chunk of waterfront property that must have set dear old Dad back a few bucks.

  He turned down the volume on an old Emmy Lou Harris CD and pressed the buzzer, flashing his badge and a curt wave to the security cam. A few seconds later the gates slid open, and he drove up a smooth-as-black-silk driveway.

  The Quinn estate—Harbor View, according to the sign out front—had probably never seen anything as disreputable as his old pickup, he thought with a small grin. Maybe it was about time they did.

  Old money had never impressed him like it did some cops, although very few people in Seattle except Grace knew why. Beau didn’t want it spread around that he had seen more than enough of it in his lifetime to know how controlling and corrosive too much of it could be.

  He walked to the door and rang the buzzer, listening to the low murmur of chimes inside the house. A small, plump Hispanic woman in her late forties opened the door almost before the last echo faded away. He was glad to see she wasn’t in one of those pretentious little black-and-white uniforms like the help in his grandmother’s home had been forced to wear. Instead she was dressed in jeans and a brightly patterned cotton T-shirt.