Mallory Kane - The Heart of Brody McQuade

Brody pushed his fingers through his hair in frustration. “Somebody dropped the ball on the keys. The manager should have told me about them, or the homeowners’ association. Some body I’ve talked to had to have known about the keys. Either they’re too dumb to know how important those keys are, or they’re protecting someone.”

As he spoke, Victoria remembered playing with a ring of keys on the floor of her grandfather’s house.

I built you the biggest house in the world, Toto, and when you grow up, you’ll live there like a princess in an ivory tower .

Thinking about her grandfather made her sad. Thinking about the ivory tower made her shiver.

She took a deep breath. “Well, the answer is ‘too dumb to know how important they are.’”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s me. I know about the keys. Until you asked about them I hadn’t thought about them in years.”

“Years? What are you talking about?”

Victoria nodded. “My grandpa designed and built Cantara Gardens.”

“Your grandfather?” Brody’s tone dripped with exasperation. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I didn’t think about it. That was more than twenty-five years ago. I was in preschool, or grade school.”

She knew she sounded defensive. She was . This… Ranger , with his hot intensity and unbending attitude, expected everyone to be as single-minded and passionate as he was. Not that she could blame him. His little sister, his only family, was dead, and the killer lived somewhere in Cantara Hills.

“So your grandfather owns the condos? I guess it’s easy to see how you could forget that your grandfather is probably the one person who could tell us who has keys. Please tell me he’s alive.”

“Oh, don’t worry. Lucky for you he’s still around.”

Brody winced. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just—”

“I know how you meant it.” She angled her head and sent him a disgusted look. “No, Grandpa doesn’t own the condos. He was a contractor. But his contract with the homeowners’ association contained one caveat. That the penthouse at Cantara Gardens would always be available for use by the Kirklands.”

Brody’s expression deteriorated into disgust. “So you don’t even pay for this massive waste of electricity and resources?”

Victoria stuck her chin in the air. “That’s right, Lieutenant McQuade. I don’t even pay for it. I wonder how long it’s going to take you to get over the money thing. I wouldn’t have thought you were such a snob.”

Brody gaped at her. “Snob?” He took a long breath. “I’m not a snob and I don’t give a damn about whose money is whose. I just want to find out who killed Kimmie.” He hadn’t meant to say that. He’d meant to say who was killing tenants in the condos .

Her eyes, which had been sparking with anger, turned soft. “Oh, poor Kimberly. Brody, I am so sorry—I haven’t even asked how you’re doing.”

He held up a hand. “Save it. You said enough at the time.”

He looked at the keyhole in the back door, shining the little flashlight this way and that, trying to see if he could detect any metal flakes. He pulled out his cell phone and called Egan.

“Working hard, boss,” Egan said as soon as he answered.

“Caldwell, did you check the dead bolt on the back door of Victoria’s penthouse? Had a key been used?”

“I swabbed the keyhole. It looked like there might be some metal shavings. I’ve got the swab.”

“Good. The shavings looked new?”

“I’ll have to get them under the microscope, but I think so.”

“Thanks.” Brody pocketed his phone and turned to Victoria. “Where’s your grandfather now?”

“He’s in a nursing home near my parents’ home.”

Nursing home . His heart sank. “Is he lucid?”

Victoria’s lips curled up in a little smile. “Oh, yes, indeed. He can still beat me at chess.”

“So what’s he doing in a nursing home?”

“He’s diabetic, and he had a massive stroke several years ago. He’s paralyzed on his right side. He needs constant care.”

“Where are your parents?”

She cocked her head. “You mean you don’t know?”

“I know where they live. I know they’re retired and they spend a lot of time traveling. But no, I don’t know exactly where they are.”

“Let’s see. This is August? Then they’re on a photo-safari in Kenya.”

“Can we talk to your grandfather? I’d like to be able to account for all of the old keys.”

“I don’t know. He’s a proud man. I’m not sure he’d want a Lieutenant Texas Ranger to see him so helpless and weak.”

Brody understood, but this wasn’t about an old man’s dignity or about respecting the elderly. This was about Kimmie.

It was a cinch, though, that Victoria was going to be protective of her grandfather. He’d ask the manager, but unless the manager could account for every single master key, he’d have to insist on seeing Victoria’s grandfather.

“At least now I’ve got a pretty good idea how the perp got into the other apartments. Somehow, he has a card that lets him in through the front gate and the lobby door, and then he used a master key to let himself into the apartments.”

He closed the back door. “But the penthouse is different. None of the other apartments have two levels. None have a set of back stairs. And none of the other apartments require the use of a master electronic card.”

He looked around the small space. There was a second door between the clothes dryer and the wall. “I guess that’s the door to the back stairwell?”

Brody opened the door, which meant he had to step backward. His arm pressed against her breast.

She pulled away and her back hit the wall.

Working hard at ignoring the feel of her breast against his arm, he shone his flashlight up the dark stairwell. “So the perp managed to get in the back door, and he came up the back stairs. That’s how he got to you before your alarm sounded. He only had a fifteen-second window, right?”

She nodded.

“Caldwell processed the stairwell. He said he found a good bootprint in the dust. Do you not use these stairs?”

Victoria looked up at the narrow spiral staircase. “I don’t like them. It’s awfully cramped in there, and kind of spooky because it’s so steep.”

“What about your housekeeper?”

Her hackles rose. Why did everything he said make her defensive? “I don’t have a housekeeper. So nobody uses it.”

He looked up at her, his dark gaze mesmerizing. “Tell me exactly how long it’s been since these stairs have been used.”

“I moved in here two years ago last December. When I looked at the apartment the manager insisted on taking me all over, including up the stairs.” She gave a small, dry chuckle. “I think he just wanted to watch me walk up the stairs in a straight skirt.”

Brody’s brain immediately conjured up an eight-by-ten glossy of the manager’s view from the bottom of the stairs. He clenched his jaw. “So you’ve never used the stairs since?”

She looked him in the eye and lifted her chin. “Okay, in the interest of full disclosure—”

Ah, hell . She was about to spout lawyer crap for who knew how long, and when she was done he wouldn’t know any more than he already did.

“The week I moved in, I had an open house. There were probably fifty people or more. Everyone was touring the place.”

“So there could have been fifty people on these stairs? Fifty people who saw your back door with the dead bolt, and who know the back stairs lead right up to the hall outside your bedroom.”

She hadn’t thought about that. He could see it in her eyes. “It…it was just a party.”