Page 13 of Almost Dead (The Cahills 2)

“Detective Paterno.” They’d never met before, but Paterno had seen Holt’s picture often enough, either smiling from the glossy pages of his magazine or in the local newspaper, his raffish image caught at whatever charity event was in the papers.

Jack Holt, somewhere around thirty-five, was definitely high profile, part of the see-and-be-seen crowd. Whether in a tuxedo or casual golfing clothes, the guy was just too slick for Paterno’s taste. Now, though, he was just a worried family member running through the rain, determination and sadness etched into the sharp-bladed planes of his face.

Holt swept in a sharp breath. Looking past Paterno, he obviously caught a glimpse of the dead woman. Momentarily, his expression jolted with pain.

“What can I do for you?” Paterno asked.

Holt forced his gaze back to the detective. “I want to take my wife and kid home. My car’s on the street. Not blocked in like hers. I can bring her back here later, maybe tomorrow, to pick up the Acura when you’re finished.”

Fair enough. “Shouldn’t be a problem, but I still may want to ask her some questions.”

Holt’s lips flattened. “I don’t know what more you want from her. Cissy brought our son for one of their weekly dinners with her grandmother.” Peering around Paterno to the crumpled body on the floor, Holt winced a bit, and Paterno wondered if maybe there was more to the man than he’d first thought. “Cissy was running late and found Eugenia at the bottom of the stairs. Then she called 9-1-1. End of story.”

Paterno didn’t like the younger man’s tone. Felt his patience slipping. “I’m just asking questions. Trying to get to the bottom of this. I’m sure your wife understands that we want to find out what happened to Mrs. Cahill. And to do that, I’ll probably be talking with both you and your wife again.” He stepped onto the porch. “So why don’t you tell me where you were tonight? You got here pretty damned quick.”

Because I was on my way over here already. To see Cissy… Every muscle in Holt’s body tensed. “Wait a minute,” he said, eyes narrowing as the wheels turned in his mind. The temperature on the porch seemed to fall another five degrees as rain gurgled in the eaves and trickled through the downspouts. “Eugenia fell. Tripped and lost her balance and ended up at the bottom of the stairs.” He glanced inside again, apparently mentally calculating the distance between the old lady’s body and the foot of the stairs. “You’re not thinking any foul play was involved?” But as he posed the question, he gave Paterno a penetrating look.

“We’re just figuring that out now.”

“You’re with homicide,” Holt pointed out flatly.

“We haven’t ruled out any possibilities yet. As I said, we’re working on it.” Paterno wasn’t giving up anything for the time being. At first glance it looked like the old woman tripped and fell, tumbled down the curved steps and broke her neck, but, these days, who knew? Eugenia Cahill was a wealthy woman. The Cahills had weathered a number of financial ups and downs, but it was no secret their fortunes were solid and currently on a steep rise. But the family had suffered their share of nutcases too. Marla Amhurst Cahill a case in point. It seemed like too much of a coincidence for Eugenia to wind up at the bottom of the staircase less than seventy-two hours from the time Marla, her murderous daughter-in-law, had escaped from prison.

Paterno scowled. The thought that Eugenia’s daughter-in-law had escaped really gnawed at his gut. He’d worked his ass off to put Marla away years before, and now recently, because of overcrowding and her stellar behavior as a model prisoner, she’d been transferred to a lower-security facility.

What a mistake! He wouldn’t be surprised if some of the Cahill fortune had been used to grease the skids on that little maneuver. Within two years of the transfer, Marla had found a way to break loose of that country club disguised as a lock-up facility. It hadn’t come as much of a surprise to Paterno, but it pissed him off. In all his years in law enforcement, Paterno would be hard-pressed to come up with a more calculating, murderous bitch than Marla Cahill. The way he saw it, she should have been locked away doing hard time for the rest of her life.

And now she was out.

And her mother-in-law, keeper of the family fortune, had just suffered a quick, untimely death.

Coincidence?

No friggin’ way.

Paterno just didn’t take much stock in coincidence.

Especially not where Cahills were concerned.

But right now he didn’t want to deal with Jack Holt, or anyone else. Not until he’d gathered a little more evidence. Besides, Holt was a member of the press, and at the moment Paterno wanted reporters far away from his crime scene. “Go ahead and take your wife home,” he agreed. “If I need anything else, I’ll call. And here—” He reached into his wallet, grabbed one of his business cards, and handed it to Holt. “If she needs to get in touch with me, she can reach me at any of these numbers, including my cell.”

“Okay.” Holt’s face was still grim. “If this is a murder, we want to know. Immediately.”

“You will.”

Holt turned and jogged through the falling rain, his shoes slapping on the wet bricks. He skirted a camellia bush, his shoulder swiping a near-dead bloom, a few red petals dropping onto the ground.

Watching him leave, Paterno couldn’t help wondering if Holt had married Cissy Cahill for love or money. That was the trouble with having millions stashed away in stocks, real estate, or the bank vault—someone was always after a piece of it. You could never be certain if they cared for you because they truly found you fascinating and really loved you, or if they were attracted to you because of the number of zeroes on your bank statement.

Greed, before, had cost a few people close to the Cahills their lives.

He made a mental note to check out Holt. Phone records, he told himself, might help. Credit-card receipts and bank balances. If the old lady had been murdered. He glanced through the open doorway, spying the broken body of the little dead woman, appearing, in many ways, like a nestling that had fallen from its nest. In life, Eugenia Cahill had been a force to be reckoned with. Sharp as a tack and definitely the matriarch, she’d run this family with tiny iron fists and an incredible will.

Had she suffered an unlucky fall?

Or was it murder?

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