Page 9 of Almost Dead (The Cahills 2)

“There was a car,” he admitted. “But the officers got called away.”

“Called away?”

“A reported shooting just down the street.”

“At the same time that my grandmother fell down the stairs?” she asked, disbelieving. A coincidence? Her grandmother dies soon after Marla escapes, and while it’s all happening, the officers assigned to watch the house are suddenly jerked away? “Did they catch the shooter?”

Paterno’s long face didn’t give up a clue. “Not yet.”

“You mean, it just happened?”

“About an hour ago.”

“An hour.” Her heart knocked as the coincidences kept stacking up. “Gran hasn’t been dead long. She was…was,” Cissy’s voice cracked. “She was still warm when I searched for a pulse….”

“How did you get in?”

“I have my own key,” Cissy explained dully. It was difficult to process.

Paterno looked at B.J. “Why don’t you wait in the car? Where it’s dry and warm. We might have a few more questions and in the meantime the house is going to be considered a crime scene.”

“She fell down the stairs. Where’s the crime?” But Cissy already understood what he was suggesting, and the thought, that her mother might somehow be involved, turned her stomach. This couldn’t be happening. And yet here she was, standing on rubber legs, feeling almost as if she were having an out-of-body experience.

“Was anyone else home with her?” Paterno asked, ushering her from the front porch.

Feeling the rain run down her neck, Cissy made her way back to the car. “No…I mean, I don’t think so.” As they reached the Acura, B.J. whimpered in her arms, and she whispered into his little ear, “It’s okay, honey. Ssshhh.”

Paterno opened the driver’s side door, and the pent-up aroma of tomatoes, oregano, and garlic greeted her. She slid the seat back, then, with her child on her lap, sat behind the wheel while Paterno climbed into the passenger side of the car, one foot crushing the lid of the pizza box.

Too late he shifted his shoe. “Sorry.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Right now, nothing much did. She felt numb inside. Aside from her baby, she didn’t really care about anything.

Fortunately, B.J. was thrilled with his position and was “driving” the car, both his little hands on the steering wheel.

Sitting with his feet straddling the dented pizza box, Paterno retrieved a pen and small notebook from his coat pocket. “You were bringing dinner to your grandmother?”

She nodded. “I usually visit her on Sundays, because she’s alone. I always come with something to eat, something fun, I think, fix it for her, then we watch some television show, you know, Jeopardy or Wheel of Fortune with Coco and—” She stopped short, her head snapping up. “Where’s the dog?”

“What?”

“Gran’s usually alone except for Coco. Her little white mutt of some kind that she absolutely adores. I didn’t see the dog in the house, and that’s really weird. Grandma takes that dog everywhere. They’re practically inseparable.” She scanned the grounds as if the dog had somehow slipped through the door.

“We’ll find it,” Paterno said, but made a note in his little pad. He touched her on the arm. “You were saying…You watch television….”

“Tonight we were going to have pizza because I was running late….” Cissy looked down at the crushed white box and couldn’t believe that less than half an hour ago she’d been worried about explaining why she didn’t have time to cook something her grandmother liked better than takeout from Dino’s. Now she was stuck in a car with a cop she didn’t trust, her grandmother dead. She cleared her throat, tried to think straight. “Anyway, it’s usually just the three of us. Me, Grandma, and Beej. Deborah, the woman who is basically her companion and, um, you know, isn’t really a ‘caregiver.’” Cissy made air quotes with her fingers. “Gran would never put up with that, bu

t she’s got the companion. Deborah has Sundays and Mondays off, and the day maid, Paloma, leaves around five, I think. Elsa, the cook, she only works, oh geez, Monday through Friday unless Gran was having company…and…and, oh, Lars, the chauffeur, works until, I don’t know…Five? Six? Something like that, unless Grandma needs him, and then they work something out.” She was trying to keep it all straight, though she knew she was rambling. “So then we watch some inane show and…and…oh damn.” She started crying again, then, disgusted with herself, angrily scraped the tears away.

“Mommy?” B.J. asked, twisting his head backward to look at her.

She managed a smile. “Mommy’s okay.” An out-and out lie. “Can we go now?” she asked the detective just as a vehicle for the crime-scene team rolled to a stop and added another roadblock to the driveway. Worse yet, she saw through the open gates that some of the neighbors had stepped onto the street, clustering together under the spreading branches of a large oak tree. Cissy groaned, then groaned again as a news van roared up the hillside and double-parked a few houses down. “This just gets better and better.”

“I can drive you home. Unfortunately it’ll be a little while. It would help if you could give me a list of the people who work here. Names and addresses.”

“I don’t have them on me, but Gran did. I’ve got a couple phone numbers on my cell. For Deborah and Lars. I don’t have the rest, but I do have some of her friends at home on my computer.”

“I’ll need what you’ve got.”

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