How to Seduce a Cavanaugh

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.

“It seems that I apparently just did,” Kelly replied with a wide, genial smile that was anything but.

Osborn began to breathe hard as he clenched his impotent fists next to his sides. “Do you have any idea who I am?” he demanded.

“Yes,” Kane replied in an even, controlled voice. “You’re a citizen of Aurora who has been robbed and as such you and your wife will get our full attention. There’s nothing to be gained by throwing your weight around. That doesn’t impress us. As a matter of fact, that really doesn’t work in your favor.”

“Did either one of you get a look at this guy—there was only one, right?” Kelly wanted to ascertain. She was doing her level best to get the couple’s attention back on the robbery and not on some high-spirited exchange between Kane and the male victim.

Judith bobbed her head up and down, a wreath of carefully salon-dyed brown hair floating about her face. “Yes. One. One horrible man.” She shuddered, running her hands up and down along her arms.

“Can you remember any physical features?” Kane pressed.

Judith shrugged. One of her nightgown straps slid down. She nervously tugged it up into place again, glancing in her husband’s direction as she did so.

Osborn was the one who ran the show, Kelly concluded. Mrs. Osborn gave them a description. “Average build, average height. Around Randolph’s age—”

“Which is the same as yours,” her husband bit off, taking offense that she had made it sound as if he was older than she was.

In response, Judith looked down at the rug, avoiding his eyes.

“Was there anything familiar about this man?” Kane asked. “Anything at all? The way he spoke or held his head? The way he moved around, perhaps?”

“Familiar?” The haughty inquiry came from Osborn. “We’re not in the habit of fraternizing with common burglars and thieves. Besides, the bastard wore a mask.”

“What kind of a mask?” Kane asked, hoping to gain some insight into the burglar’s mind-set.

“It was a clown mask.” Kane noted that the man was most obviously holding himself in check to keep from allowing a shiver to snake down his spine. “I’ve always hated clowns. They’re grotesque.”

“Can’t argue with you there,” Kane replied almost under his breath as he made a further notation in his notepad. “Have you had a chance to assess what the robber made off with?”

“Two very rare paintings and an antique revolver I kept on display there.” Randolph pointed to the credenza in the dining room. The stand on top of it was glaringly empty.

“Were the paintings down here, too?” Kelly asked.

Judith bobbed her head up and down in response to the question.

“They were the first thing anyone saw when they came into the house,” Osborn answered bitterly, gesturing to the vacant spaces on the wall. The only things that testified to the paintings’ existence were two nails in the wall.

“Did he take anything else?” Kelly asked the angry home owner.

“No.” He shook his head. “Just the paintings and the revolver.”

She realized the man hadn’t been outside to see his vandalized automobiles. Just as well right now, she told herself.

Despite Osborn’s answer, Kelly went down a list of popular items to steal—and fence. “No jewelry or expensive bottles of wine or—”

She didn’t get to finish her list. Osborn was glaring at her as he rudely interrupted. “What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand, Detective?”

She was tempted to say something cutting that would put the man in his place, but considering the trauma he and his wife had just gone through, Kelly decided to cut him a little slack.

She turned toward her partner and bounced a theory off him. “Wouldn’t it have been easier just to take the paintings and the antique gun and disappear without bothering to wake up Mr. and Mrs. Osborn?” It seemed to her a far easier way to proceed as well as to avoid possibly getting overpowered and caught.

“Yes,” Kane agreed thoughtfully. After a beat, he added, “Unless—”

“Unless he wanted them to be alerted to what he was doing. He wanted to rub their noses in it,” she concluded, excited about this possible twist and its implications. Turning back to the home invasion victims, she asked Osborn, “Is there someone who would want to watch your reaction to the robbery? Maybe even take some pleasure in it?”

“The people at the club are all a bunch of jealous bastards,” Randolph spat out. “Any one of them could have done this.”

“No.” The nervous denial came from his wife. “They’re our friends.”

Osborn shot his wife a furious, disgusted look. “If you believe that, you stupid cow, you’re even more pathetic than I thought.”

“There’s no need to get abusive, Mr. Osborn,” Kane coldly informed the man, stepping between Osborn and his wife.

“I can get whatever the hell I want with my wife. I’ve just been robbed, and I sure as hell am not going to be lectured to by one of the Keystone Cops.”

It was Kelly’s turn to step in. She was beginning to realize it was going to be hard narrowing down the list of people who hated Osborn’s guts and wanted to see him humiliated. Undoubtedly, it was a nonexclusive, fast-growing club.

“I’d be very careful if I were you, Mr. Osborn,” Kelly warned the man in what sounded like a very deceptively mild voice. “Or you just might wind up reaping exactly what you sow.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Osborn angrily demanded.

Kelly didn’t bother explaining. “You’re a very smart man, Mr. Osborn. I’m sure you’ll figure it out on your own eventually. Now then, we’ll need a list of all these ‘unfriendly’ friends you think might be capable of breaking into your home for the opportunity to torture you by robbing you. Also an exact accounting of everything that was stolen.”

It was clear that Osborn was about to say something less than cooperative, but Kane cut him off before he could speak.

“When you finish with the list, you can give it to Officer Riley,” Kane told the man, pointing out the officer to him. He was fairly certain that although the officer had undoubtedly introduced himself to Osborn when he’d arrived on the scene, the latter had taken no note of his name, or even thought the man had a name.

The officer was now standing guard just inside the foyer.

“And where are you going to be?” Osborn demanded in less than genial tones. He sounded like an employer wanting an accounting from a lowly lackey.

“We’ll be off working your case,” Kane replied, the picture of restraint.

The only telltale sign of inner fury was that Kane’s breathing pattern had grown just a little bit shorter.

Kelly held her tongue until after they’d taken their leave. The minute they were outside the front door, Kelly’s words came rushing out.

“Wow. For a minute there I thought you were going to strangle him,” Kelly told him. “Not that anyone in the immediate world would have blamed you. That man was some piece of work.”

“If I strangled him, I might have done the world a favor,” Kane speculated. In his opinion, Randolph Osborn was a colossal waste of flesh.

“No argument,” Kelly agreed. “It’s just that you might have had to fight me for the honor of bringing about the man’s demise.” She shook her head as she looked over her shoulder at the twenty-room house. “Makes me think that this so-called robbery was definitely not just a random act of chance.”

Kane sounded her out. “You think someone targeted him?”

She couldn’t tell by Kane’s tone if he agreed with her or not. All she could do was tell him how she felt about the crime.

“With every fiber of my being,” she said with enthusiasm. “It only makes sense.” Her voice picked up speed. “Whoever did it wanted to see Osborn agonize over losing his precious treasures. There’s no other reason why he would have deliberately woken Osborn and his wife up, tied them up and then dragged them downstairs to bear witness to the robbery. It was most likely someone Osborn belittled or stiffed in some deal—or both. I’d bet my pension on it,” she concluded.

“Which probably amounts to fifty dollars a month at this point in your career,” Kane said dismissively. “As to it being someone Osborn had wronged somehow, it looks like that club includes everyone over the age of three. That’s a hell of a lot of people to question,” Kane concluded.

“There has to be a way to narrow down the list,” she told him.

Kane frowned as he reached his vehicle. Offhand he couldn’t think of a way to accomplish that. He glanced in her direction as he sat behind the steering wheel. “I’m open to suggestions if you have them.”

Getting into the passenger side, Kelly shook her head. “Right now all I can think of is that I’d like to strangle the condescending, smug, giant creep myself.”

For a second, Kane allowed himself to be amused. She was almost cute when she got angry. Now there was a word that shouldn’t ever be paired with the word partner. He knew without being told that if he said as much to her—that she was cute when she got angry—there would be hell to pay. Something to think about, he mused, “Tell me, does that go above or below the part that says protect and serve?” he asked.

She took no offense at his so-called question.

“I’ll let you know when I figure it out.” She turned her attention to another detail in the investigation. “Those marks on Mrs. Osborn’s wrists looked pretty deep,” she commented. “You think that whoever is responsible for this has a grudge against her, too?”

He shrugged. “It’s possible,” Kane allowed. “Or maybe, for our suspect, it’s a matter of guilt by association. She’s married to the miserable reptile, so in the burglar’s mind she’s every bit as bad as her husband is.”

She nodded. “Could be that, too,” she agreed.

“Let’s see what their so-called friends at the club have to say about the Osborns,” he suggested, then Kane looked at her. They were currently missing one little detail. “Did Osborn happen to mention what club he belongs to?”

She shook her head. “There are four clubs in Aurora that a man like Osborn might want to belong to. My vote is with the one that’s the most exclusive—and the most snobbish.”

Kane knew the exact place. “Valhalla,” he said. “That’s the one that checks into your lineage before allowing you to join. Members had to have relatives that go all the way back to the Mayflower.” He saw the frown on Kelly’s face. Out of left field, the thought came that even when she was frowning, this pain in his posterior was damn attractive. He promptly buried it, forcing himself to focus on the case. He caught himself wondering if she knew something he didn’t.

“What?”

She waved a hand at his question. Her reaction had nothing directly to do with the case. “I just hate snobs.”

“If your hunch is right, then apparently the snobs have the same kind of feelings about Randolph Osborn and his wife.”

Satisfied that they might be onto something, Kane put the key into the ignition. The engine had trouble catching the first two times. The third try was the charm. The sedan dutifully purred into service.

Kelly nodded toward the front of the car. “You should have that looked at,” she suggested.

Kane shrugged dismissively. “It’s just being temperamental.”

That he was assigning feelings to the vehicle took her completely by surprise. “It’s a car,” Kelly pointed out. “It doesn’t have any emotions to govern its actions.”

“My car might disagree,” he told her, completely tongue in cheek.

Kelly found herself laughing. “If you had a car that was actually capable of disagreeing, you’d be at least ten times more wealthy right now—if not more—and definitely living the life of ease.”

Money, and its lack or presence, didn’t play a role here. Not for him.

“If I were wealthy,” he told her, “I’d still be doing exactly what I’m doing right now. Protecting and serving. And chasing bad guys.”

The admission caught her completely off guard. She hadn’t pictured him as being that dedicated. “You’re kidding.”

“I don’t kid,” Kane deadpanned.

The way he said it, Kelly caught herself thinking that she could really believe it. But it was what he said next that really threw her for a loop.

“Cavanaugh.”

She turned her head to look at him, waiting for what she assumed was most likely going to be a put-down.

“Nice work back there.”

Stunned, for a moment she had absolutely no comeback for that.

Chapter 4

Was that a compliment?

Seriously?

Kelly looked at her solemn partner in barely contained astonishment.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me the first time,” he told her flatly.

“Actually, I did,” Kelly admitted, then smiled broadly at him when his glance toward her turned accusatory. “But it has such a nice ring to it. Humor me and say what you said again.”

Kane blew out a breath as he shook his head. Served him right for going soft for a second. So far, none of what transpired was convincing him that partnering was a good way to go for a man such as him. He returned to his original belief: There was no upside to having a partner. Definitely no upside to having a crazy partner.

“You’re a real pain in the butt, Cavanaugh. You know that?” Kane accused her.

Kelly pretended to seriously mull over his words. “No, I don’t think that’s what you said. It was something about my having done good work.”

Scowling at her, Kane continued to face forward, his eyes on the road. “Keep this up and you’ll negate any good effects you managed to accomplish.”

Kelly merely laughed as she shook her head. “You are a very tough crowd to please, Durant.”

He was beginning to think this woman he’d been stuck with would drive him crazy inside of a week. He didn’t do his best work agitated. One way or another, there would be a breakup in their future—and very soon.

“I don’t know what the hell that means,” he growled. “But I’m not going to ask.”

“It means—”

Still driving, Kane took his right hand off the steering wheel and held it up much the way an old-fashioned traffic cop directing the flow of vehicles would have.

“I said I’m not going to ask. That implies that I don’t want to hear you dissecting your own words. In case you’re unclear on the concept, that means—”

“Okay, moving right along,” she quipped, interrupting his explanation and calling a halt to that line of conversation. With a sigh, Kelly looked out the window at the road before them. For the first time she took note of the route he was taking. It was a different one than they had taken to the high-end residential community. “Are we going directly to the club?”

This time Kane didn’t even bother glancing in her direction. “What does it look like?”

She had a great deal of patience, but it was in finite supply. This man had to be put on some kind of notice, she thought. Otherwise, this testy behavior was liable to continue for days.

“It looks like one of us should seriously think about stopping by the hospital to have a boulder-sized chip removed from their shoulder,” she told him in a sweet, matter-of-fact manner that not even the most critical of people could find fault with.

“Then, once that chip is removed, maybe we’ll have a shot at working together a bit more smoothly.” Or at least she could hope that would be the outcome of the proposed venture, Kelly silently added.

The look he gave her was far from happy or even mildly approving. “This is as smooth as it is going to get.”

“You underestimate yourself,” she told him. Adding, “As well as me.”

He’d tried, he’d really tried, Kane thought. But there was a time when you just had to recognize that the deck was stacked against you. It was time for him to cut his losses and just withdraw.

“I have no estimation where you’re concerned,” he told her in a distant, removed voice. “As for me—no offense—but I just don’t like having a partner.”

“None taken,” she responded cavalierly. “And I kind of picked up on the fact that you are less than thrilled about this arrangement. But you know what, Durant? There’s a reason the department sends their detectives out in pairs, so you might as well get used to it.”

She didn’t think he would come up with an answer so fast, but he did. “It cuts down on the number of cars they have to provide.”

She stared at his profile, rather amazed at the way Kane’s mind worked. “Wow, you really are cynical, aren’t you?”

He continued watching the road as he went. “Never claimed to have a sunny disposition.”

And this woman was nothing if not a Pollyanna, Kane thought. Pollyannas required a happy, hopeful atmosphere around them. That just wasn’t him and it never would be.

“If you want to ask for another partner, I won’t contest it,” he said.

“Contest it?” she echoed. Just how dense did the man think she was? “You’d probably break into a happy dance.” The momentary mental image of the solemn, handsome detective suddenly swaying to some melody only he heard had Kelly grinning. “And that is something that I would actually pay to see,” she admitted. “But not enough to break up this beautiful friendship we’ve got going here between us.”

“What beautiful friendship?” he all but growled.

“The one I’m laying the groundwork for,” she replied cheerfully. “Pay attention, Durant. And FYI, I’m not a quitter. That means that I don’t take off at the first sign of a problem—or the promise of a difficult partner,” she deliberately added. “You’re just going to have to get used to that.

“So, if you were hoping to get rid of me by giving me a sample of your sunny disposition, sorry, it’s not going to happen. By the way, the answer to the question that I asked you earlier about why the department pairs up detectives, it’s so that they can have each other’s backs. I figure you’re too good a cop not to have mine, and I sure as hell am going to have yours,” she told him in no uncertain terms.

“As for the rest of it, you want to sulk and behave like some dark and brooding character out of one of Byron’s poems, go right ahead. Be my guest. But you’ll be missing out on some pretty terrific conversations,” she predicted.

The look he spared her was nothing if not skeptical. “Meaning with you?”

If he was trying to get her to back down or to intimidate her, he was going to have to work at it a lot harder than that, she thought. “I don’t see anyone else in the car. So, yes, meaning me.”

Kane laughed shortly. “Think a lot of yourself, don’t you?”

She raised her chin ever so slightly, which was the only indication that she might have found the question combative.

“What I just said has nothing to do with whether or not I think a lot of myself. I just happen to know my strengths and my limits. That’s all.

“And if you’re wondering,” she continued, “I have inside knowledge—no pun intended—on the way the male mind works. I grew up with four brothers who were anything but docile. They supplied me with my education, and I diligently took notes,” she told him completely straight-faced.

Without her realizing it, they had arrived at Valhalla.

After Kane showed his badge, the man at the club’s entrance reluctantly opened the gates to allow them to drive on to the grounds.

“Let’s see if you can put those so-called notes you took to good use,” Kane challenged her as he headed to the clubhouse.

The route to the impressive structure was marked with a great many expensive, well-cared-for vehicles. The most conservatively priced of the lot turned out to be a silver Mercedes.

“Never understood it,” she murmured, taking in the sea of pricey automobiles. The comment was more to herself than her partner since she just assumed Durant wasn’t paying attention to a word she said, anyway.

Kane surprised her by asking, “Never understood what?”

She managed to recover without missing a beat. “Pouring so much money into something that could so easily be totaled in the blink of an eye. Whether a car’s a Ford or a Ferrari, they’re both just a heartbeat away from becoming a mangled heap.”

Kane shrugged. Expensive cars meant nothing to him. They’d never moved him, not even as a young boy. Life had been far too serious for him to be infatuated with an automobile.

“They’re status symbols, I suppose,” he said.

She took in the groups of golfers on the course just before they reached the clubhouse. “I know that, but this crowd doesn’t strike me as the type to be impressed by someone dropping a quarter of a million on a Lamborghini.”

Thoughts of his father suddenly popped up in his brain. On those rare occasions when his father hadn’t been taking out his frustrations on him or his mother, his father had told him that if he ever won the lottery—the one that he was always faithfully buying tickets for—the first thing he’d intended to do was buy a fancy car. The kind that would make everyone sit up and take notice.

“I’d get my due respect then,” he’d said. “Not like now.”

Usually right after that, the scenario would disintegrate into his father blaming everyone else for his misfortunes. And shortly after that, Kane would be on the receiving end of a particularly vicious beating. That had seemed to be the only way his father could cope with the events in his life, by taking out all his frustration on either his wife or his son. Or both.