Charity pressed on, telling him most of the reasons she wanted to delve into James Cahill’s past. He rubbed his chin as she talked, but seemed interested, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands over his rail-thin abdomen, eyebrows knitted together, so she made her pitch to go to San Francisco, and that’s when he slammed the door.
“You expect air fare, hotel rooms, and . . . what? A daily allowance for cab rides and meals?”
“Uber rides,” she corrected him. “And they’ve got great public transportation with BART and ferries and cable cars and trolleys and—”
“Hold on. You’re getting way ahead of yourself. Way ahead. Look around, would you?” He motioned widely to include the vast space beyond the glass walls of his office. “Does it seem like we’ve got that kind of money?” He barked out a laugh. “Get real!”
She wasn’t about to give up. “This is the kind of story that could sell papers. Lots of papers.”
Shaking his balding head, he let out a sigh. “Even if I wanted to, if you somehow convinced me to pay for your little trip, I can’t.” His smile faded as the deepening lines of worry crowded across his forehead.
“This story could breathe life back into the paper.”
“We’re already on life support as it is. I’m sorry.” He spread his hands over the mess on his desk. “No can do.”
Charity realized further arguing would prove pointless. “Fine.”
As she got to her feet, he gave a warning. “Remember. This is O’Day’s story.”
She shot Earl a defiant glance. “It will be when, instead of it being about a missing woman, it’s the news of a freaking three-point shot right at the buzzer!”
And then she decided to take matters into her own hands and stormed out, yanking open the door and running into Seamus O’Day on the threshold. The older reporter was juggling a half-eaten donut and a cup of coffee. A wave of hot coffee sloshed out of the cup to splash against the front of her jacket and drizzle downward, dripping onto the toes of her boots.
“Oh, sorry,” he said, flushing a bit beneath his woolen cap.
“Perfect,” she muttered, squeezing past him, which wasn’t easy as he was an ex-college football player who, over the past thirty years, had gone to seed and was nearly as wide as he was tall.
She didn’t respond when he said under his breath, “You know you should be careful when you’re opening doors.”
You fucking has-been!
But she didn’t say it out loud. Not this time. She’d save those parting words for the time when she could leave the Clarion, Riggs Crossing, and the likes of good-old-boy reporters like Seamus O’Day in her dust.
Wouldn’t it be perfect if she went down to San Francisco, got the story of her life, and didn’t bother reporting it through the rag here in Washington? As Earl had said, there was no HR department, nor did she have any kind of non-compete agreement. She was totally freelance, and therefore she could shop her story around. And she intended to do just that.
Take that, Earl Ray, she thought and smiled as she clicked on the remote to open the door of her van.
James Cahill was her one-way ticket out.
CHAPTER 20
Son of a bitch.
Finally, they were getting somewhere, or so Rivers hoped. At his desk at the station, he checked to make certain he had his keys, shoved back his chair, and, with his blood fired up a little, made his way to Mendoza’s desk.
Nose to her computer screen, she was scrolling through reports but glanced up at him. “Yeah?”
“Guess who had an epiphany?”
Her eyebrows shot up, and she must’ve seen the gleam in his eyes. “Not James Cahill.” When he smiled, she said, “Really?”
“So he says.”
“Just like that?” She snapped her fingers. “He called to tell you?”
“Yep. He offered to come in later today, but I thought we’d go pay him a visit.”
She was already pushing back her chair. “You think he might run?”
“Not so much run as have a change of heart, maybe talk to an attorney.”
“What’re we waiting for? Let’s go.” She was already climbing out of her chair and heading for the locker room. After donning jackets and hats, they headed outside, where the sky was the color of steel, heavy clouds threatening, the temperature hovering just under freezing.
Mendoza glanced at the heavens. “Another storm on the way.”
Rivers climbed behind the wheel, and she strapped herself into the passenger seat.
“So I’ve done some research,” she said as he backed the Jeep up, then put it into DRIVE and maneuvered around a department cruiser that was just wheeling into the lot.
“On?”
“A couple of things. First, I checked with Deputy Mercado, who had talked to Megan Travers’s folks about her going missing, but it was strange. They didn’t sound all that worried, not the mother in California nor the divorced father, Donald Travers.”
“Sounds like she’s pulled this kind of disappearing act before.”
“Never quite this bad, but yeah. And I double-checked their alibis.”
“Solid?”
“Mom was at a wine tasting in Napa, the dad in Chicago with his family. And then I did a little digging on the Cahill family.” She was into her phone again, scrolling down. “They’re worth millions, and it’s been that way for generations. The family owns a huge mansion on a hill in San Francisco with views of the bay and the Pacific. The matriarch, James’s grandmother . . . let’s see, her name was—oh, here it is. Eugenia Cahill.”
“She’s dead?”
“Murdered.” Mendoza slid him a glance. “A lot of that in the Cahill family,” she added, still reading. “Really thinned them out. James’s father and mother are alive, along with his sisters. They live in southern Oregon. Then he has a half-sister, Cissy, who’s got a couple of kids and lives with her husband, still in San Francisco.”
“That’s it?”
She was still reading as Rivers avoided the knot of traffic in the center of town and took side streets as far as the bridge, where he
