Cuff Me (11 page)

Y
ou’re grumpy today,” Vincent said, handing Jill a mocha.

She took a sip of her sugary coffee. “That’s supposed to be my line.”

He studied her through the dark lenses of his sunglasses. “You good?”

“Yeah,
real
good,” she snapped.

She wasn’t good. At all.

Tom was flying in from Florida tonight, and she should be over the moon, but instead she felt… nervous.

She had butterflies, but not the kind she’d been wishing for just days earlier. Instead she had a terrible sense of foreboding.

“Really? Because you look kind of—”

“Can we just focus on the case?” Jill snapped, interrupting whatever insult Vincent likely had at the ready.

He was silent, and for a moment Jill had the strangest sense that maybe her rejection had hurt him. That maybe he wanted her to talk—to confide in him.

And then he shrugged. “Works for me. Got any new thoughts?”

No.

No, she did
not
have any new thoughts on who freaking killed Lenora Birch, and it was starting to get ridiculous.

Worst of all, their lack of progress had led to other investigators being assigned to the case. Something that had never happened in Jill’s career. Or Vincent’s.

“Why aren’t you more upset?” she asked as they headed toward their car.

“’Bout what?”

“About the fact that they had to bring in extra resources for the case because we can’t do our job.”

He shrugged. “Whatever catches the killer.”

She jumped in front of him, holding up a hand so he had to stop. “Okay, my turn to ask. What’s going on with you?”

“Don’t know what you mean.”

“You’re
seriously
okay with the fact that this case is destroying our perfect record? That there’s a very real chance someone else will solve this before we will?”

Vincent shrugged. “They can throw as many resources at this as they want, but it’s still going to be us that finds the guy. Or the woman.”

She narrowed her eyes. “How can you be so sure?”

He grinned, completely confident. “Because we’re the best, baby.”

Baby?
Jill watched in puzzlement as he moved around her and continued down the sidewalk.

Something was weird with him. Definitely.

Jill darted after him. “Okay, well then, what’s our next move because I can only talk to the same people so many times. Should we go back to question Holly Adams? She’s the only one who—”

Vin shook his head. “I don’t want to make that trek again until we have something else to go off of.”

“So then what?”

He rocked back on his heels. “We start over.”

“Sorry, come again?”

“We start the case all over. Repeat from the very beginning when we arrived at Lenora’s house.”

“Sort of hard to do a do-over in a homicide investigation case,” she said. “The whole lack of body, and whatnot.”

“So we’ll pretend.”

“And the point of this exercise?” she asked as she jerked open the car door.

He glanced at her over the hood, tapping his fingers against his cup thoughtfully, looking very serene, and very un-Vincent-like.

“We missed something, Henley. It’s the only explanation. Think about it: we’ve never had this much trouble on a case. It’s never taken us more than a couple days to have a solid list of suspects, and most of the time we’re leaning toward one suspect—the right one. But this case… we did something wrong. So let’s go fix it.”

He lowered himself into the car, and Jill rolled her eyes, following suit.

“Why do you think we missed something?” she asked as he turned the ignition.

“We were off our game. Unused to each other after your three months away.”

“Ah,” she said, understanding why he was so Zen about all of this. “
That’s
why you’re okay with this. Because you’ve transferred the blame to me.
I
was the one who left.
I
was the one who was gone for three months.
I’m
the one who messed up our routine…”

He said nothing as he headed toward the Upper East Side—to Lenora Birch’s house, which was still lined in yellow tape.

“Please, stop with all fervent denials,” she muttered.

He glanced over at her. “I don’t blame you for going to Florida to take care of your mom, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“Just the getting engaged to another man part?”

Jill hadn’t meant to let that last part out. She heard the way that it had come out and cringed. Why had she thrown in the “another man” part. It made it sound like she and Vincent had some history—

He said nothing for several moments. Not until he’d pulled up to the curb a couple blocks down from the Birch home.

He pivoted in his seat, one hand going around to the back of her headrest as he studied her.

Still, he was silent, and Jill’s temper snapped. She leaned forward and plucked the damn glasses off his face, tossing them none-too-gently up on the dash.

But seeing his eyes did nothing to diffuse the strange tension in the car. If anything, their eye-to-eye contact made it worse.

What the hell was going on here?

Also, why was it so damn hot in this car? It was winter, for God’s sake.

He jerked his eyes away then, and without a word climbed out of the car, slamming the door.

Jill’s temper was good and truly bubbling now, and she was out of the car in record time, just as he was coming around the front of the car.

“Listen, Moretti. You don’t get to just walk away when I’m talking to you, you—”

Vincent never stopped moving. Not until he was in her face, crowding her until her back was all the way against the car, mere inches separating their tense bodies.

Jill was appalled to realize that she was breathing hard. So was he, both of them all but vibrating with anger, and… and something else.

His dark gaze was furious as it burned down into hers.

“You’re spoiling for a fight, Henley.”

“I’m not—”

“You are,” he interrupted. “You keep poking at me, baiting me. You want me to say something, but damned if I know what you’re looking for.”

Jill swallowed nervously then and had to look away, because damn it… he was right. He was totally, totally right, on all counts.

“I—”

He moved imperceptibly closer. She felt his breath on her face, coffee mingled with the mint, and suddenly she couldn’t look away from his mouth.

“Let’s get one thing straight,” he said in a gravelly voice. “You were right before. You were the one who left. You were the one who met a man. You were the one who got a ring on your fourth finger in record time. You left me, yes. But I don’t resent you for it, and I never have. You got that?”

“Yeah,” she said softly. “I got that.”

“I may not be the effusive type, but I care about you,
Henley. I want you to be happy, even if that means you and I part ways. You got that too?”

Jill’s heart should have flown at that moment. He cared about her.
He cared about her.
He’d never come even remotely close to admitting it, and just a few months ago, the admission would have sent Jill flying over the moon.

Vincent Moretti cared about her. He wanted her to be happy…

And yet… she wasn’t happy. Not at the moment.

Because as quickly as the euphoria had come on, it fled. For some utterly unidentifiable reason, his admission left her more melancholy than if he hadn’t spoken at all.

Almost as though it wasn’t enough.

He pulled back slowly, and she felt the loss of his body warmth acutely. She lifted her hands to pull him back, only to realize the utter insanity of that. Instead she shoved them in her pockets and squeezed her eyes shut.

Tom. Think of Tom. You’ll see him in just a few hours, and everything will be fine…

“Henley, let’s get a move on it. We’ve got a case to solve,” Vincent called, already several feet down the sidewalk.

Right. She took a deep breath, opened her eyes.

They had a case to solve.

Likely the last they’d have together.

Might as well make it a good one.

V
incent’s apartment was the one place where the Moretti family never gathered. Ever.

He didn’t blame them.

His place was quintessential bachelor pad.

Beat-up hardwood floors. A Spartan black leather sectional that had probably seen better days even back in the Reagan administration. A dented coffee table. Nary a throw pillow in sight. A big-ass TV that had cost far more than the couch, coffee table, and nonexistent throw pillows combined.

He kept the kitchen clean, but it was small; just big enough for him to keep himself fed, and certainly not large enough to host his big, chronically hungry Italian family.

Vincent was also the only family member to live in Queens. His parents were on Staten Island, Elena in
Midtown, and his grandmother and brothers in Upper West Side. His place wasn’t exactly “on the way” to anything.

But none of that was why his family avoided his house like the plague—especially come feeding time.

No, the reason that his house was Absolute Last Choice of Moretti family gathering spaces had to do with the fact that while the rest of his place was rather Spartan, his walls were colorfully and frequently adorned.

With crime scene photos.

Corkboards competed for space only with the dry erase whiteboards, and every last surface was generally covered with pictures, notes, charts, and even the occasional good, old-fashioned,
I-thought-they-only-did-that-in-the-movies
string running among various pieces of evidence.

Technically speaking—he wasn’t supposed to have any of this out of the office.

But Vincent had never been a stickler for the rules.

This was how he solved crimes. This was
where
he solved crimes. Sure, he had a desk at the precinct, and he put in the bare minimum of face time in order to not get his ass fired.

But the office was bullpen style. A bunch of desks pushed together, his one of dozens in the middle of a crowded, ever-buzzing room.

He couldn’t think there. Couldn’t get inside the mind of the victims, and certainly not inside the head of the suspects.

Vin needed space, and visuals, and above all else,
quiet
.

It was that last one that was turning out to be really fucking hard to come by on a Sunday evening.

The phone would not stop ringing.

“What,” he snapped into the phone without glancing at the caller ID.

He’d already heard from:

His mother (how come you never come to dinner anymore?).

His father (did you catch the guy yet?).

His grandmother (will you pick me up from my colonoscopy on Tuesday?).

Luc (Jill’s not seriously marrying that guy, right?).

And Elena (do you want to buy my old smoothie machine? I’m getting an upgrade? No? What if I give it to you? Still no?).

Vin figured it was Anthony’s turn. His big brother wasn’t the chatty type, but he’d been known to take his hobby of lecturing to the cell phone once or twice.

But it wasn’t Anth.

“There’s that sweet voice I know and love,” the low voice on the other end said in a cooing, mocking voice.

Vincent grinned. “Well, son of a bitch. If it isn’t the prodigal son.”

“Prodigal brother to you,” Marco said.

“What’s that? You seem to be breaking up—must be because you’re in
Goddamn California
.”

“Easy, Grandpa. This isn’t a World War One radio. Cell towers work just as well here as they do there. Probably better.”

Vin sat down on his couch, well aware that he was still wearing an atypical, broad smile.

Of all his brothers, Marc had always been the one to piss him off the least. Younger than Vin by two years, he’d been easier to relate to than Anth, who’d always pissed everyone off with his interfering tendencies.

And Marc had been the
cool
brother. The one who was always just a couple inches taller than you, just a little bit better than you in sports, and in the case of Marco and Vincent, was about ten times
nicer
than you.

It wasn’t that Marc was soft. Not in the least. The man was six feet two inches of sheer muscle, and his intolerance for the “bad guys” ran blood-deep. He could also be stubborn, impatient, and intense.

But people
liked
Marc. Liked his quick smile, his sense of humor, his good-old-boy charm.

So yeah, Vincent had idolized his brother as a kid, even though the other was younger.

As adults, they’d been close too. Closer than he was with Luc or Anth. And then Marc had up and left for California with barely a month of warning, all for a woman.

“How’s Hollywood?” Vin asked just to needle his brother. “You busy working on your tan?”

Marc didn’t live anywhere close to Hollywood, but the thoroughly East Coast Morettis clung to California clichés whenever they talked to Marc.

Partially out of ignorance, but more so out of persistent dismay that one of their own had up and left them for the other coast.

“Absolutely,” Marc said. “Just got done pruning my poolside palm trees.”

Vin smiled. Marc was just about the only brother who’d mastered the skill of not letting his siblings get under his skin.

“And Mandy?” Vin asked, not that he much cared.

Marc’s girlfriend was… well, suffice it to say, none of the Morettis had ever been able to figure out what Marc saw in Mandy Breslin.

She was pretty, yes. Stunning, even, in a Barbie-esque kind of way. She was also manipulative, selfish, and completely allergic to anything resembling work.

It galled Vin that they’d moved to California for her “acting” career, and yet they were living off of Marc’s salary while Mandy waited for her big break.

“She’s good,” Marc said.

Vincent’s eyes narrowed, noticing the delay in Marc’s response. “Gone on any auditions lately?”

Another pause. “No. Her agent’s called with a few possible commercial slots, but she wants to hold out for something bigger.”

Of course she did.

“How’s Jill?” Marc asked before Vincent could press the issue. “Rumor has it she’s getting married.”

Well played, Big Brother. Well played.

“Yup.” Vincent’s voice was curt.

Marc didn’t take the hint. “And how do we feel about that?”

“We, being the Moretti collective, or…?”

“Good point,” Marc said. “I already know how the rest of the Morettis feel about it. How are
you
handling the news?”

Vincent slouched back on the couch. “Not much to handle. My colleague is getting married. Not exactly earth-shattering.”

Marc snorted. “Really? That’s where you’re going with this? Jill’s a colleague now?”

“She’s my partner.”

“I know who and what she is,” Marc said quietly. “I also know who and what she is to
you
.”

Do you? Because I sure as fuck don’t know.

“Can we not talk about this?” Vincent grumbled.

“Sure,” Marc said easily. “How about you tell me about this case you and your
colleague
are working on.”

That
, Vincent could do.

Hell, he needed to do it. He’d been staring at his boards for hours now and couldn’t shake the sense that something was just out of reach…

He filled Marc in on the Lenora Birch case.

Told him of finding the body but without a single sense of what might have gone down. Told him that they’d interviewed all of the usual suspects—ex-lovers, ex-husbands, jealous ex-lovers of Lenora’s ex-lovers…

And nothing.

He and Jill had been following Vincent’s suggestion of “starting over.” They’d interviewed everyone again with fresh eyes and ears, and they weren’t any further along than they were before.

Vincent stood to stare at his board, his eyes locking on the wide-eyed stare of a deceased Lenora Birch, silently begging her to tell him her secrets.

He rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t know, man,” he told his brother with a shake of his head. “The method—shoving someone over a railing—screams crime of passion. But the complete lack of evidence, the lack of fingerprints, or so much as a hair could mean premeditation…”

“Or someone who’s remarkably cool under pressure,” Marc said. “A crime of passion followed immediately by levelheaded damage control.”

“Could be,” Vin mused. “But that’s the part that’s tripping me up. Crimes of passion generally stem from, well, passion. And Lenora Birch’s love life, while not uncomplicated, hasn’t turned up anything worth killing
over. Best as we can tell, she held herself apart from other people. She was… removed.”

“Huh. Someone scared to connect, to get too close to another person,” Marc said. “Sounds… familiar.”

“I don’t think she was scared,” Vincent mused, ignoring Marc’s not-so-subtle jab about Vincent’s lack of relationships. “It’s like she focused her energy somewhere else.”

“Well, we can get that right?” Marc said. “Sure, we Morettis are all husbands or boyfriends or brothers or sons, but aren’t there times when we’re a cop first? When that takes up all of us. Those days when we’re married to the job, you know?”

Vincent froze in the middle of his pacing, a familiar prickle of knowing rippling along his spine.

“Say that last part again,” he commanded his brother.

“Um,” Marc said. “I said we were cops first… that some of us were boyfriends, although of course not you, because you just have a
colleague
—”

“That’s it,” Vincent said, interrupting yet another jab.

“What’s what?”

“What if it was a crime of passion,” Vincent said excitedly. “But not passion in the sense that we usually think of it. Love and sex and all that.”

“Um—”

Vincent tucked the phone under his ear, moved toward the board, and began plucking down pictures of ex-lovers.

“You said we were married to our job,” Vincent said hurriedly. “What if Lenora Birch was the same. What if the reason she held herself apart from people all those years was because her focus—her
heart
—was her career.”

“Not following. Remember, of the two of us, you’re the
detective who solves crimes. I’m the sergeant who chases bank robbers. Spell it out for me.”

Vincent didn’t respond. His brain was humming with the hunch that had been eluding him this entire case.

“Marc, you’re a fucking genius,” he muttered.

“Thanks?”

“I gotta go,” Vincent said, hanging up before even giving his brother a chance to say good-bye.

Two seconds later, he was making another phone call, this time to his partner.

“Henley,” he said the second she picked up the phone. “Get your butt over here. Now.”