Cavanaugh Undercover. Marie Ferrarella
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his glass to his other hand, he offered it in a handshake, which Brennan easily took. “Brennan,” Brennan told him.
The expression on Thomas’s face told him that he didn’t need to make the introduction. His name had made the rounds. “My father’s Sean Cavanaugh, the—”
“—head of the daytime crime scene investigative unit,” Brennan completed. “I looked over the roster at the department before I came here.” Even so, he couldn’t untangle the confusion associated with what Thomas was telling him. “But if your father’s a Cavanaugh, then I don’t—”
Thomas decided to tell this story from the beginning. “There was a time when he didn’t know he was a Cavanaugh. You notice the strong resemblance between my father, Sean, and the former chief of police, Andrew—the guy whose life you saved,” he added.
Brennan nodded. “Yeah.”
“Well, so did a lot of other people a few years ago. They thought that the chief was snubbing them and flat-out ignoring them. Since he was doing no such thing and wasn’t even in these places they claimed to have seen him, he did a little detective work of his own to see if he could track down this man who supposedly had his face.
“That led to tracking down a few important details—like where he was born, when, all that good stuff. Turns out that the day my dad was born, so was another male baby. And if that wasn’t enough of a coincidence, they were both named Sean. One was a Cavanaugh and the other was a Cavelli—Two Cs,” he emphasized.
“And let me guess, the nurse got them confused.”
“Give the man a cigar. Story goes she’d just been told her soldier fiancé had been killed overseas by a roadside bomb. She was completely beside herself and just going through the motions to keep from collapsing in a heap. To add to our little drama, the infant the Cavanaughs brought home died before his first birthday.”
“I guess that trumps a divorce and estranged brothers,” Brennan quipped.
Thomas held up his hand, indicating that he not dismiss the matter so quickly. “Not when the reunion brings twenty-four more Cavanaughs to the table.” He laughed.
Brennan looked around. He knew that all his siblings and cousins, not to mention his father, aunt and uncles, hadn’t all been able to make this gathering. Despite that, it still looked like a crowd scene from some epic, biblical movie.
“Just how many Cavanaughs are there?” he asked, looking at Thomas.
“You asking about Cavanaughs strictly by birth, or are you including the ones by marriage, too?”
Brennan shrugged. “The latter, I guess.” He’d heard that once you entered the inner circle, you were a Cavanaugh for life.
“Haven’t a clue,” Thomas admitted honestly, keeping a straight face. “But I’m betting we could have easily had enough people to storm the Bastille back in the day.” The oldest of the Cavanaugh-Cavelli branch—not counting his father, Sean—Thomas grinned as he raised his glass in a toast to Brennan. “Welcome to the family.”
Brennan laughed. “Thanks,” he said, draining his own glass. Being part of what was perceived to be a dynasty felt rather good from where he stood.
* * *
Tiana Drummond didn’t pray much anymore.
It was an activity she’d given up even before her father, Officer Harvey Drummond, had died. There didn’t seem to be much point in engaging in something that never yielded any positive results.
The official story given out about her father’s untimely demise was that he’d died on the job, in the line of duty. That, strictly speaking, was true—as far as it went. But the whole truth of it was that her father had died because he’d been drunk while on duty and it had drastically robbed him of any edge he might have had. Drawing his weapon faster than a punk bank robber hadn’t even been a remote possibility and consequently, Officer Harvey Drummond had died by that bank robber’s hand.
At the funeral—a no-frills version mercifully paid for by the patrolmen’s union—she and her younger sister, Janie, had heard glowing words about a man neither one of them recognized, much less knew. It was the way his fellow officers on the beat knew him.
The father that she and her sister remembered was a man who’d been both too bitter and too strict to do anything but give them the minimal basic shelter while trying to verbally and physically break their spirits every opportunity he got. For her part, rather than run away from home the way she’d been tempted to do more than once, Tiana had done what she could to protect her sister. She got between her father’s punishing hand and Janie time and again. Some of the scars didn’t heal.
Harvey Drummond blamed both of his daughters for the fact that his wife had left him, disappearing one day while they were at school and he was at work. Sylvia Drummond had left nothing in her wake but a note secured by a fish-shaped magnet to the refrigerator that said “I can’t take it anymore.”
The note had been written to him, but Harvey maintained that it was their behavior she couldn’t take, hers and Janie’s. He took his rage out on them every time he was drunk. Which was often.
Tiana and her sister endured hell on a regular nightly basis.
But once their father no longer walked among the living, life got better. Harder financially despite his pension, but better because she and Janie were finally allowed to pick up the pieces of their souls and do their best to reconstruct those pieces into some sort of workable whole again.
But the years they had had to endure with their father had left their mark, affecting them differently. Tiana, always self-sufficient, became more closed off. More distrustful of any man whose path crossed hers. Any relationships that looked as if they might have some sort of potential she quickly shut down before they ever flourished.
Janie, on the other hand, desperately craved attention, hungered for affection and was starved for approval—the three As Tiana called them—and looked to any man hoping that he would provide her with them. Janie, Tiana had asserted more than once, was far too trusting, while Tiana only trusted men to stir up trouble and make situations worse. She knew that she wasn’t being altogether fair in her estimation—but at least she was being safe.
Tiana would have been the first to admit that their late father was good for one thing—he had, without really meaning to, provided her with valuable connections. Connections on the police force. While Tiana had never wanted rules bent in her favor, she wanted to make sure that they weren’t bent against her, either. All she had ever wanted was a fair shot at whatever she set her sights on. In this case, it was becoming part of the police department.
Eventually, while taking college courses on her computer at night, Tiana joined the San Francisco police force, managing to impress them with her physical stamina—another unintended “bonus” of surviving her father’s brutal treatment.
Once she joined up, it wasn’t long before she found her way to the crime scene investigative unit, a subject that had always fascinated her.
Every penny Tiana earned that didn’t go to cover basic living expenses went toward Janie’s education. Her only request was that Janie attend a college within the state so she could keep an eye on her. Janie was very disgruntled at what she perceived to be a restriction. “You’re just like Dad,” she’d railed.
The words cut her deeply, but Tiana had remained firm on this one condition. She had to since she felt that Janie, while not exactly outwardly rebellious toward her, was far too naive and prone to making bad judgment calls.
Like the boyfriend she’d gotten mixed up with, a supposed senior at the same college that seventeen-year-old Janie was attending—the University of San Francisco.
When she first met Wayne Scott, the light of Janie’s life, Tiana had felt really bad vibes coming from this man. The occurrence took her by surprise because she generally didn’t believe things like that