The Quiet Storm

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.

“Welcome, Officer. Please come in.”

Something about the tightness around her mouth warned him she wasn’t exactly thrilled to have him there. He wondered why but didn’t have time to dwell on it before she led the way through an elegant foyer down a confusing series of hallways and finally to a large room at the rear of the house.

The first thing he saw was a wide bank of floor-to-ceiling windows with a killer view of the downtown Seattle skyline across the water.

The second thing was Elizabeth Quinn.

Wearing jeans and a thick, cream-colored turtleneck sweater, she sat on the floor with her back to the door, plopped down right in the midst of what looked like a whole convoy of toy trucks involved in some massive pileup. In front of her was a dark-haired little kid who looked to be a couple of years younger than Em. Both Elizabeth and the kid were gesturing wildly.

It took Beau a few beats to figure out what she was doing waving her hands around like that. Sign language, he realized. The boy was hearing impaired, at least judging by those aids in his ears, and the ice princess was communicating with him.

In a million years he never would have expected to find her like this, cross-legged on the floor playing with a little kid. He suddenly remembered a flash of their conversation from the day before.

Tina has a son. A beautiful little boy. He lives with his grandmother and with me.

This must be the kid. The file hadn’t even mentioned him, so of course it wouldn’t have included the information that he had a hearing impairment. Was the woman who answered the door his grandmother, then? Tina Hidalgo’s mother?

Why did she fairly crackle with animosity toward him? Didn’t she want her daughter’s case reopened? What did she have to hide? the cop in him wondered.

In a cool, emotionless voice the older woman announced his presence. “The policeman is here.”

Elizabeth whirled around and looked up at him, two bright splashes of color scorching her cheeks. “Oh. You’re early.”

“A few minutes. The ferry wasn’t as crowded as I expected.”

“I…come in.”