Marie Ferrarella - How to Seduce a Cavanaugh

Kane took out his wallet and badge at the same time that she did. Kelly let him do the introductions as she continued to study the pair. The wife’s nerves seemed to be very close to the surface, while her husband just looked angry. Very angry.

“Detectives Durant and Cavanaugh,” Kane told the robbery victims. Closing his wallet, he returned it to his jacket pocket. “Are either of you hurt?” he asked even as he did a quick visual check.

Neither seemed to be bleeding, which was a positive sign.

Osborn fisted his hands and then relaxed them again. His frown—as well as his annoyance—appeared to be deepening. “I think I lost all feeling in my hands and my back’s killing me.”

“We can call the paramedics if you like,” Kelly offered sympathetically. Her focus was more on Mrs. Osborn than on the woman’s husband. The latter had an irritating manner about him, which might or might not have been due to finding himself the victim of a robbery. Kelly had a feeling it went far deeper than that. “They can take you to the hospital to be checked out.”

Osborn looked at her as if he thought she’d lost her mind to make such a plebeian suggestion.

“What? Checked out by butchers? No, thanks. I have my own top-rated specialist on retainer.” Wearing a robe over his pajamas, Osborn began to head for the nearest extension. “I’d like to call him now if you’re finished here.”

He was summarily dismissing them.

Kelly could see that Kane didn’t like the man’s superior attitude any more than she did.

“As a matter of fact,” Kane told the home invasion victim, “we’re not finished.” He put his hand down on the landline Osborn was about to dial. “We have a few questions we’d like you to answer.”

“What more do you want from us?” Mrs. Osborn asked, an edge of hysteria rising in her voice. “We’ve already told that...that beat cop standing outside what happened. What else is there?” she demanded again, her voice breaking.

Judith Osborn ran her hand along her throat, as if she was protecting herself from some sort of invisible noose hanging around her neck. That was when Kane noticed the ligature marks around Judith’s wrist. Picking up the hand closest to him, he examined it more closely.

It didn’t take much to guess what had happened. “You were restrained,” he concluded.

Judith timidly pulled her hand away as she whispered hoarsely, “Yes.”

At the same time her husband spat out, “Damn right we were. That little vermin had us tied up like turkeys waiting to be slaughtered,” he proclaimed indignantly. “I want that bastard’s head on a platter and I want it now !” It was clear he intended to get exactly what he demanded—or he was going to make someone else suffer for what he had gone through.

“I can understand you feeling that way, Mr. Osborn,” Kane told the man, sounding almost compassionate. “But that’s not quite the way we do things on the police force these days.”

The expression on Osborn’s face all but shouted that he didn’t give a damn how the detectives did things. He wanted revenge for being humiliated and held prisoner in his own home. “Then after you bring him in, just let me have ten minutes with him—”

Kane saw the same set of ligature marks on Osborn’s wrists. “Looks to me as if you’ve already had more than ten minutes with him.”

Accustomed to always getting his way, Randolph was obviously fuming at Kane’s comment. He made a show of pulling the cuffs of his pajamas down over the marks on his wrists.

To Kelly it was a little like the clichéd remark about closing the barn door after the horses had been stolen.

“He came into our bedroom while we were asleep. Our bedroom !” Osborn all but shouted to get his point across. “And he had the gall to hit me to wake me up!” His wife whimpered pitifully as Osborn re-created the scene they had just gone through. “Then he had my wife tie me up. My wife ,” he emphasized. Osborn glared now at the woman who, it was quite evident by his manner, he felt had betrayed him.

“I had to, Randolph,” Judith cried, distraught. “He was holding a gun on me. What did you expect me to do?” she asked. The almost painfully thin woman began to shake again.

“I expect you to think for a change,” Osborn retorted. “If you had given him any sort of resistance, I could have used that to get him off guard and taken his gun away from that pathetic sack of—”

“What you would have more likely taken,” Kane said, interrupting the abrasive man he was taking a real disliking to, “is a bullet, most likely to the stomach. And you would have bled out before we got here. Heroics don’t usually pay off,” he told the man matter-of-factly.

Osborn ran his hand through his graying hair. “I don’t need to stand here and be lectured to by a two-bit detective,” he bit off angrily.

“Well, it’s obvious that you certainly do need something,” Kelly said, cutting in. Her eyes met Osborn’s. Kelly didn’t look away. “A course in manners comes to mind.”

“You can’t talk to me like that,” Osborn shouted at her.

“It seems that I apparently just did,” Kelly replied with a wide, genial smile that was anything but.

Osborn began to breathe hard as he clenched his impotent fists next to his sides. “Do you have any idea who I am?” he demanded.

“Yes,” Kane replied in an even, controlled voice. “You’re a citizen of Aurora who has been robbed and as such you and your wife will get our full attention. There’s nothing to be gained by throwing your weight around. That doesn’t impress us. As a matter of fact, that really doesn’t work in your favor.”

“Did either one of you get a look at this guy—there was only one, right?” Kelly wanted to ascertain. She was doing her level best to get the couple’s attention back on the robbery and not on some high-spirited exchange between Kane and the male victim.

Judith bobbed her head up and down, a wreath of carefully salon-dyed brown hair floating about her face. “Yes. One. One horrible man.” She shuddered, running her hands up and down along her arms.

“Can you remember any physical features?” Kane pressed.

Judith shrugged. One of her nightgown straps slid down. She nervously tugged it up into place again, glancing in her husband’s direction as she did so.

Osborn was the one who ran the show, Kelly concluded. Mrs. Osborn gave them a description. “Average build, average height. Around Randolph’s age—”

“Which is the same as yours,” her husband bit off, taking offense that she had made it sound as if he was older than she was.

In response, Judith looked down at the rug, avoiding his eyes.

“Was there anything familiar about this man?” Kane asked. “Anything at all? The way he spoke or held his head? The way he moved around, perhaps?”

“Familiar?” The haughty inquiry came from Osborn. “We’re not in the habit of fraternizing with common burglars and thieves. Besides, the bastard wore a mask.”

“What kind of a mask?” Kane asked, hoping to gain some insight into the burglar’s mind-set.

“It was a clown mask.” Kane noted that the man was most obviously holding himself in check to keep from allowing a shiver to snake down his spine. “I’ve always hated clowns. They’re grotesque.”

“Can’t argue with you there,” Kane replied almost under his breath as he made a further notation in his notepad. “Have you had a chance to assess what the robber made off with?”

“Two very rare paintings and an antique revolver I kept on display there.” Randolph pointed to the credenza in the dining room. The stand on top of it was glaringly empty.