Almost Dead. Lisa Jackson
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when he was getting the magazine off the ground and showed up at a lot of civic and charitable functions.
“Jack Holt?” she said, and he noticed the sharpened interest in her dark eyes. The wheels were turning in her mind. He didn’t wait for her to put two and two together. Jogging around her, he caught up with Paterno at the front door. “Don’t ring the bell,” he said as Paterno was just lifting his hand. Now Coco was having a fit, barking crazily, baying and whining in her little-dog voice. “Cissy just put the baby to bed. Let’s not wake him. Here.” He slid his key into the lock, and the door swung open. “I’ll get her,” he said, ushering the cop inside and pulling the door shut.
“Jack?” Cissy called from the top of the stairs. “I thought you understood—”
“We’ve got company, Ciss,” he said as Paterno set the crate on the floor.
“What? Who?” He heard her soft, familiar footsteps on the stairs as he opened the cage’s mesh door.
With an excited yip, a scrap of scruffy white fur bolted from inside the carrier and barked excitedly at Cissy’s feet as she reached the main floor. “Oh.” She had already pulled her hair into a ponytail, and the sleeves of her T-shirt had been pushed up her forearms, slightly wet, evidence of B.J.’s quick bath. She looked from Jack to the detective as she bent down to pick up the frantic, ecstatic dog, who was yipping and jumping up at her.
“I probably should have called,” Paterno said. “We found her”—he pointed at Coco—“locked in a cupboard in the library.”
“What?” she repeated.
“Would your grandmother ever put the dog in the—”
“Cupboard? No! Never!” Holding the wriggling terrier, Cissy was rewarded with a pink tongue that licked her all over her face. She couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah, yeah, I’m glad to see you too,” she said dryly to the dog, then actually chuckled at Coco’s enthusiasm. Looking at Paterno, she said, “My grandmother adored Coco, and I’m not kidding you, she would have died before she would have locked…” She blinked and shook her head. “Sorry. It’s…still processing…. The thing is, Gran would have never locked Coco in anything, including that,” she said, hitching her chin toward the crate. “I mean, this dog, from the time she was a puppy, sat on Gran’s lap while she watched television or knitted or read. My grandmother was meticulous to a fault. She absolutely detested dirt of any kind, but she didn’t care a whit about the dog hair when it came from this one.” Cissy rubbed Coco behind her ears, and the dog grunted happily, beady black eyes still glaring distrustfully at Jack and Paterno. “Thanks for bringing her by.” She shot a look at her husband as if to say, So what are you doing here?
Paterno reached into his pocket and pulled out a little spiral-bound notepad. “Since I’m here already, would you mind if I ask you a few more questions? Some clarification on a few things.”
Cissy wanted to tell him to wait till morning. It was on the tip of her tongue, but what good would it do, really? Put off the inevitable for one more night? She inclined her head and asked, “When I pick up my car tomorrow, can I go inside Gran’s house?”
“I think it’ll be okay.”
“Then go ahead with your questions,” Cissy said as she carried the dog into the living room. “I don’t know what more I can tell you,” she said and motioned to the couch from which Jack so recently had been evicted. “Please, sit down.”
“Thanks. What I need from you are the names of your grandmother’s friends and associates, their phone numbers, or addresses, if you have them. I have the ones that were on your cell phone. I was also hoping you could tell me a little bit about your grandmother, her routine.” He dropped onto the couch while Jack walked to the fireplace and lit the gas jets, gold flames instantly flaring over ceramic logs.
“Deborah, Gran’s companion, could tell you better than I can about what she did every day. Give me just a minute to take care of the dog, and I’ll be right back.” To Coco, she said, “I’ll bet you’re thirsty and maybe hungry too, huh?” She and the dog disappeared into the kitchen, and a few seconds later the sounds of banging cupboard doors and water running were accompanied by a series of sharp, staccato yips. Soon, Cissy, barefoot, returned, while the dog, presumably, was digging into whatever it was she found to feed it.
Jack watched as his wife retrieved her laptop from an upper shelf of the built-in bookcase near the fireplace, a “baby-proof” spot well out of the reach of B.J.’s curious fingers, then clicked it on. “It’ll be just a minute,” she said as she sat on a side chair while Jack braced himself against the mantel. As the computer began its clicking and humming to life, Cissy pushed her wet sleeves down to her wrists and answered the questions she could about Eugenia, telling the detective as much about her grandmother’s days as she knew.
“She’s on the board of Cahill House, which is what would once have been called a ‘home for unwed mothers.’ In fact, I think that’s exactly what it was called once. Now everything’s more straightforward, isn’t strangled by all the secrecy and shame, thank God. Cahill House is now a place for pregnant teens or twenty-somethings who don’t have support from their families. They can stay there, go to school, and get counseling while they’re awaiting the birth of their child.” She managed a smile. “It’s one of the truly philanthropic things my family’s done. And Cahill House has always been one of Gran’s pet projects, along with being on the board at the hospital.”
“Which hospital?” Paterno asked.
“Bayside.”
Paterno made notes while Cissy added, “Gran plays mahjong and bridge with different women every week. Mahjong on Wednesdays, I think, and bridge on Thursdays…or maybe it’s the other way around. I can’t remember. She gets her hair done without fail by Helene on Friday mornings and has for years. Helene has a shop somewhere around Haight-Ashbury. Lars would know the address.” The computer made a series of clicks as it came to life just as Coco trotted back to the living room and made a beeline for Cissy. “Oops,” she said, then placed the laptop on a side table while the dog settled onto her lap.
“Okay, here we go.” As Paterno wrote in a notepad, Cissy, without any inflection, rattled off names and phone numbers, many of which Jack was hearing for the first time. Afterward, she added, “Of course, there’s Cahill International, the family business. It was in bad shape a few years back, but I think it’s doing well again. I don’t really pay that much attention, but Gran still sits on the board. I mean sat on it. God, it’s hard to believe she’s gone.”
“You were close?”
“I wouldn’t say that, exactly.” Cissy shook her head. “I wasn’t that crazy about her, growing up, and she thought I was just okay. Believe me, she was all about a male heir for the family. It was ridiculous, so antiquated, but because of it, I only tolerated her when I was a kid. As a teenager I would have rather been anywhere else, and we lived with her. It was the worst!” She looked away for an instant, her features tightening with emotion. “But over the years we got closer, and then B.J. came along and Gran went nuts. Another boy, I suppose.” Her lips twisted wryly, and Jack hated the pain he saw in her eyes. “You know, I sometimes wonder how she would have reacted if he’d been a girl.” She looked up at Paterno. “Probably not the same. How is that for unfair?”
Paterno lifted a shoulder. “From what I see, not many families are perfect.”
She snorted, glanced through the window to the dark night beyond. Absently she rubbed her arms, as if a sudden chill had swept over her.
“Where are the rest of the family now?” Paterno asked.
“Around here it’s just me,” she said a little defensively, the way she always did when anyone pried too deeply about her family. She was prickly where they were concerned, and Jack didn’t blame her. “There’s my aunt and uncle, who are raising my brother in Oregon. You remember them.”
Paterno nodded. “You got a number?”
Absently