The Quiet Storm

“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 small 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?”