Skeletons in the Mist (The McCall Twins) Page 3

  By the time they reached the edge of town, his endless prattle was unnerving her as much as the passing scenery. She recognized the main street of town, its architecture still exactly the same as it had been ten years ago.

  She ordered the cabbie to pull the car over and quickly climbed out, grimacing at the familiar smell and feel of her hometown. It was almost as if time had stood still.

  She paid the cab driver, wincing as the stash in her wallet shrank considerably. She was going to be in financial ruin very quickly, that was for sure. Her last paycheck wouldn’t be in the mail until Friday, which was four days away. Not only that, it had been docked several hours according to Myles, who had snooped into payroll for her. It wasn’t going to do her much good, in other words. She was going to need a job, and soon.

  Somehow that fact seemed easy to push into the back of her mind compared to the problem she had to deal with now with her brothers.

  The town hall loomed up in front of her, its large cement pillars somewhat intimidating for a small town like Cavern Creek. She knew the police department was housed behind the large glass double doors in front. A division of the Spokane city department, the substation housed ten or twelve cops, including a desk person. She remembered when the change from the sheriff’s department to the substation had occurred. She’d been twelve at the time. Her father had been against the restructuring, but it had been a bureaucratic thing.

  She felt sadness for the fact that the change in the department had been the beginning of the end for her father professionally. He’d retired a few years later, and lost himself in a deep depression.

  Forcing her thoughts back to the present, she let out a sigh of determination. She would have to handle this. Regardless of the memories surrounding her childhood, Dylan and Devon needed her. Sad as it was, she was all they had left.

  She picked up her duffel bag and shouldered her way past one of the glass doors, and into the not so spacious lobby. There was an elevator to the right that led upstairs to the mayor’s office and two more glass doors on the left that led to the police department. Being that it was a busy Monday afternoon, the building was crawling with activity.

  Roxy entered the police department, ignoring the feeling of déjà vu that swarmed her, and headed for the front desk. Two uniformed police officers stood behind the counter, one a man, the other a woman. Neither acknowledged her until she cleared her throat.

  The woman looked up, her dark eyes assessing as she viewed Roxy’s face, and then the rest of her, right down to the bag at her feet. “May I help you?” she finally said, her smile never quite reaching her eyes.

  Roxy had seen some attractive women in her life, but this woman took the cake. She was model tall and slim. The police uniform that would make most female officers look manly did nothing to distinguish the curves on this woman. She had dark hair, neatly combed back in a braid, and deep set brown eyes that gave her somewhat of a European look. She was stunning, in a word. Roxy momentarily wished she’d taken the time to find a place to shower and change. She’d been in a bus for hours and hadn’t cleaned up in nearly two days.

  “Can I help you?” the police officer repeated, obviously growing impatient.

  “Yes,” Roxy finally said, struggling to remember the name of the detective she’d talked to several days earlier. “I’m looking for a detective. McCall. At least I think that was his name.” She watched a flicker of interest move through the woman’s eyes. Then they narrowed impatiently.

  “Which McCall would you be looking for?”

  Now it was Roxy’s turn to narrow her eyes. “There’s more than one?”

  “There are more than two,” the male officer said, slightly more friendly than the woman was. He grinned halfway. “There are three. Two detectives, one officer. All brothers.”

  Her gaze narrowed further. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “We wish he was,” the woman said sarcastically. Obviously she had some sort of personal nature with one of these brothers. She gave Roxy another look of impatience. “If you can remember his first name, that would help.”

  Her mind was reading blank, and she shrugged helplessly.

  “There’s Chas, Trace and Josh,” the male officer said. “Chas and Trace are both detectives. Either one of those ring a bell?”

  “Chas,” Roxy decided definitively. The strange name seemed familiar.

  “Figures,” the woman cop said sourly under her breath, then turned and walked away, rolling her eyes.

  “Don’t mind her. She pulled an all-nighter last night. Cranky cops and desk clerks are the norm around here. We get short-handed.” The male officer smiled and Roxy was happy to note that his smile did reach his eyes. “Chas isn’t here at the moment. He’s out on a call. Shouldn’t be too long. You can wait if you want. Or I can find someone else to help you. Is this personal?”

  She hesitated, then finally shook her head. “It’s business. He called me a few days ago. He’s expecting me. I should probably stick with talking to him rather than someone else.”

  “Oh. Well, you can have a seat. If you want, I can call him.”

  “That would be fine,” she finally said, growing annoyed at the thought of sitting in the police station all day. The place was too eerily familiar to her, its memories coming back with brutal force. It just didn’t seem right that her father wasn’t sitting in a chair behind the wooden door that had once hidden the sheriff’s desk.

  She walked over to a row of black leather chairs and sat down in one, pulling her bag to rest at her feet. She almost wanted to wait outside, wishing for a little more neutral territory. But then outside wasn’t neutral either, she decided, and stayed put.

  She watched the clock, growing more anxious with every passing tick of the second hand. She observed the inner workings of the police department, which strangely, given the nature of her childhood, she’d never done before. There was a definite structure to the department and its protocol. She didn’t know if that relieved or scared her. And the reason she didn’t know that was because as much as she wished she could say differently, she didn’t know her brother anymore. She’d never really gotten the chance to know him at all.

  “Can I help you with something?”

  She heard the voice and looked up into the face of a large man with salt and pepper hair and expressive brown eyes that were narrowed in curiosity.

  This man’s voice did not match the one she’d heard on the phone. “I’m waiting for Detective Chas McCall.”

  Quiet for several moments, the man observed her. She was beginning to get unnerved, when he spoke again. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

  She stared at him for several seconds, completely at a loss. “I’ve been away awhile,” was all she managed to get out.

  He frowned. “Donovan Dewitt. Mayor Donovan Dewitt. You are Roxanne Tavish, correct?”

  She found herself nodding silently. While the idea seemed preposterous now that she was here, she’d hoped to keep herself relatively anonymous during her visit. Clearly that was not to be. Leave it to her to run into the mayor only mere minutes after arriving in town.

  She remembered the Dewitt name. Back when she’d lived in Cavern Creek, the Dewitt family had been well respected members of the community, though they hadn’t run in the same circles as her family had. They came from money, if she recalled correctly. Judging from the impeccable style of this man’s clothing, her memory was right on.

  “I was sorry to hear about your aunt. She was a good woman.” His voice was low and even, his expression impassive.

  “She was,” Roxy agreed, for lack of anything better.

  “I assume you’re here about your brothers.”

  “I am,” she answered, though she found herself annoyed at his intrusive personality.

  His expression darkened. “Well, good luck. You’re going to need it. Those boys have been cruising in and out of trouble for months now. This whole thing is no surprise to me.”

  She didn’t
appreciate his remarks and she found herself frowning. “I plan to reserve an opinion on things until after I speak with Detective McCall.”

  Dewitt shrugged his shoulders. “You’ll see what I mean when you meet the boys.” The phone in his pocket started to ring and he glanced at it. “I need to take this. Good luck,” he said again, and walked away.

  She breathed a sigh of relief once he was gone and checked the clock again. Fifteen minutes had passed. Fifteen irritating minutes.

  While she supposed she had to appreciate his position as a mayor looking out for the best interests of his town, Donovan Dewitt was a typical politician. He’d done his best to maintain a pristine, toothy smile with her, but Roxy was smart enough to notice the disgust bubbling underneath the surface of his dark brown eyes. He was not happy to see her back in his town.

  Well she had news for him—she wasn’t happy to be back either.

  “Excuse me. Are you waiting for someone?”

  She jumped, unaware that another man had entered the room and was standing right in front of her, his blue eyes assessing her cryptically. She immediately assessed him back. He didn’t look very old, probably late twenties. He was tall, well-built and had nicely chiseled features to his face. The blue and white police uniform gave him a rather distinguished look. He was handsome in a classic sort of way. There was something slightly familiar about his voice and maybe even his face, though she couldn’t really explain that thought. She decided he must be Chas McCall. “Are you Detective McCall?”

  The man grinned widely. “You got it half right.” He pointed at his rank stripes. “I’m a patrolman. My name’s McCall though. First name’s Josh. You must be waiting for one of my brothers.”

  “I’ve been down this road before,” she said, forcing a smile for his benefit. “Chas is the one I’m looking for.”

  “Ah. I should have known.” Officer McCall folded his arms over his chest. “Did he know you were coming?”

  She narrowed her eyes, a little surprised that this man was so nosy. “I’d prefer to talk to him, if it’s all the same to you. I talked to him earlier. It’s a police matter.”

  He looked curious, to say the least, and eyed her duffel bag.

  She started to open her mouth, when the double doors swung wide and several men walked in, all wearing plain clothes, and all with rather large guns strapped into their leather shoulder holsters. They screamed testosterone, and immediately Roxy knew one of them was Chas McCall.

  “Hey, bro. You’ve got company,” Josh McCall said, not removing his gaze from her face.

  Two men looked in her direction, one with an easy smile on his face, the other with a look of scrutiny. Other than the expressions, their faces were absolutely identical. They were obviously twins. Roxy stared, in spite of the fact that at one time she’d been a twin herself.

  She didn’t know who was who. What she did know was that if these men were McCalls, the entire family obviously had very good genes. Josh McCall was easy on the eyes. His brothers were drop dead gorgeous. They both had the same light brown hair and clear blue eyes. She guessed their heights to be at least six feet and their ages to be in the early thirties range. Dressed in slacks and button up shirts—one in white, the other in blue—they nearly looked like mirror images. She noted two tiny differences—one had the sleeves of his shirt rolled up and his tie loosened, the other didn’t. Obviously one was slightly neater than the other.

  “They’re twins,” their brother informed her, as though she were too mundane to notice.

  “I see that,” she finally said, eyeing first one twin, then the other. Their expressions remained the same—one skeptical, one smiling. The skeptical one finally nodded at her, his expression easing somewhat until his mouth finally broke into a grin.

  “She’s probably looking for me.”

  His twin stepped forward and gave him a shove. “In your dreams. I’m the one who got called.”

  “Why don’t you put them out of their misery and tell them which one you’re looking for?” Josh McCall suggested, more than slightly amused.

  “Chas,” she heard herself say, though she didn’t really feel like feeding either one of their egos at this point.

  The sloppier one grinned wider. “Told ya.”

  “Kiss it,” the other one said. “You’ll be sorry. He’s a slob.”

  They bantered momentarily back and forth and then the other men went about their business and left her alone with the man who was apparently Detective Chas McCall. He was certainly not what she had expected.

  “Sorry about that. Things around here aren’t very lively most of the time. We goof around with each other a lot.” He rested his hands on his hips as he perused her carefully. “So how can I help you?”

  “You sounded different on the phone,” she said, without thinking first. She wanted the words back but it was of course, too late.

  “I’m afraid you’ve lost me,” he eventually said, after studying her face for several seconds. “Do I know you?”

  She sighed, exasperated with herself. She’d never been all that good with people. This was one of the reasons she found it hard to hold down a job. Not only that, the fact that he had a rather large gun holstered to his side wasn’t making things any easier for her. She hated guns. “My name is Roxy Tavish. You called me about my aunt’s…” Her voice broke off and she quickly added, “My brothers.”

  Surprise crossed his face and he frowned at her. “You hung up on me.”

  “I’m sorry. You caught me at a bad time.”

  “So I gathered.” He looked at her curiously for a moment, then motioned for her to follow him. “We can talk back here. I have a cubicle.”

  “Don’t we all,” she muttered, grabbing her bag and following him.

  He tossed a look over his shoulder as he led her through a maze of work areas, and into a cubicle that had to be even messier than the one she’d left behind at the Chronicle. She winced and he grinned at her sheepishly. “I had an office I shared with my brother. We co-command here. He’s a bit of a neat freak. That didn’t last long, so here I am.” He sat down behind his disheveled desk and began digging through the piles of papers that covered it. When she remained standing, he gestured to the chair in front of the desk, which was also piled with papers and God knew what else. “Just toss that stuff on the floor. I’ll deal with it later.”

  “And I thought I was bad,” she mumbled, while shoving the papers and miscellaneous office supplies on to the floor with a swish.

  He ignored her at first, lifting a folder from the mess on his desk and studying it. Then he looked up and met her gaze, a smile in place on his perfect features. “If this doesn’t offend you, you must be a slob too.”

  She raised a brow. “Not like this, Detective. I assure you, you take the cake.”

  He ignored the jab and dug through the file folder. “So, I didn’t think you were coming. What changed your mind?”

  “Several things.”

  He waited for her to say more. When she didn’t, he shrugged his shoulders. “Why didn’t you call and let me know you were coming?”

  “I didn’t see the point,” she said frankly, crossing her legs and meeting his gaze. “It wasn’t as though we really had any options to discuss. Dylan and Devon are my brothers. Myra Tavish was my aunt.”

  “And?” he prodded, leaning back in his chair and looking at her curiously.

  “And my aunt died. My brothers obviously have no one else. That’s what you said, right?”

  After a moment, he nodded. “I did. That’s pretty noble of you. They are a big responsibility, especially considering their circumstances.”

  “Which are?” she asked, deciding to cut to the chase.

  “You want the brutal version or the sugar-coated one?”

  “I’ve seen brutal before. I can take it.” She waited while he studied her face again. For some reason, his perusal was making her want to squirm. It was almost as though he were reading her innermost thoughts like a
book. It was disconcerting, to say the least.

  But then he was a cop. It was in his job description to read people. And that stare was probably some sort of scare tactic. Well, it wasn’t going to work with her. She stared right back, her eyes unblinking. “Just give it to me straight, Detective. I’ve come a long way.”

  He was quiet a moment, then shrugged his broad shoulders, taking a pull at his already loosened tie. “Okay. I hate to be the bearer of more bad news, but apparently that’s all that’s on the table for you at the moment. Devon’s being charged with first degree murder. He’s a minor, but it’s likely the prosecutor will go for getting him tried as an adult.”

  She felt her heart clench in response to this news. She’d known things were bad. She hadn’t realized how bad until now. “He’s only fourteen.”

  “He’s fourteen—nearly fifteen,” Chas agreed. “And he was found in the house, at the time of the murder, with the weapon that killed your aunt in his hand.”

  “God,” was all she could say, her head shaking involuntarily.

  “I realize this has got to be a hard thing to face. I’m sorry.”

  She brushed his comments of pity aside with her hand. “I can take the truth, Detective. Sugar-coating the outside doesn’t change the center of the candy.”

  Clearing his throat, he folded his hands in front of him. “I think you should also know that your other brother, Dylan, originally told police he believed his brother shot your aunt. He has since changed his story from he isn’t completely sure, to not talking at all.” He leaned back in the chair again. “So you see my dilemma here. This is a very messy, and rather touchy situation.”

  She stared back at him, determined to hold her ground. “What I see, is that you have two very frightened young boys, whose aunt was killed in the house they lived in. That doesn’t make them guilty of anything, Detective McCall.”

  He raised a brow. “The fact that one of them held the bloody gun in his hand does. Not only that, neither boy is being particularly cooperative. One of them tried to bite my brother.”