Crime and Passion. Marie Ferrarella

pure, radiant light in the night.

      Besides, she argued with herself, she’d gotten swept away in the excitement of what she was proposing to do. It had clouded her thinking. Walken would never hurt her. The most he would do is fire her, and she certainly couldn’t blame him for that. Not the way she blamed him for sweeping all those numbers under a proverbial rug, she thought grimly. She knew he was only thinking of saving the company, but she’d never believed that the end justified the means, not when the means involved fraud.

      She was overthinking again.

      God, but she needed some solace, a reprieve, if only for a little while, from the whole situation. She needed to do something fun, something carefree with Alex. There was a soul-renewing purity in her son’s innocence, in the echo of his laugh, that always helped her get back on course. Even when loneliness threatened to drag her down to unmeasurable depths.

      Making an impulsive decision, she called her baby sitter and asked her not to pick up Alex today. Then she went and sprang her son from his nursery school.

      “Hi, Mama.” He beamed at her. “Where are we going?”

      “What makes you think we’re going somewhere, sport?”

      His eyes danced as he looked at her. “Because we always go someplace when you come.”

      “Can’t pull the wool over your eyes, can I, Alex?” He cocked his head, looking at her. She could almost see him pulling in the words, trying to make sense of them. Sometimes she just wanted to eat him all up, he was that dear to her. “We’re going to the park, Alex. That okay with you?”

      Alex loved the park. If she let him, he’d be happy to live there. “Okay,” he echoed, dragging her by the hand to the car.

      And they were off.

      She was so busy enjoying Alex, enjoying the day, that she didn’t become aware of the feeling until sometime into the second hour. The feeling that someone was watching her.

      At first she convinced herself that the A.D.A., aided and abetted by Clay, had spooked her and that she only imagined things. After all, the park was full of parents, mainly mothers, with their children. With all that movement around her, it was easy enough to mistake that for someone watching her. The main park in Aurora had rides galore and diversions for children of all ages. At any given time, a great many people populated the area.

      Despite her arguments to the contrary, the gnawing feeling that there was someone shadowing her persisted. Drawing her courage together, Ilene pretended to go the ladies’ room with Alex. Once inside, the boy looked puzzled as they began to leave by the rear exit. “We playing a game, Mama?”

      “Yes, a game, Alex. Kind of like hide-and-seek.” Holding his hand, she circled around until she was behind the front entrance again.

      She was doing it to prove to herself that she was imagining things.

      She wasn’t.

      No wonder she felt as if she was being shadowed. She was. Clay was leaning against a tree, watching the entrance. Waiting for her to emerge again.

      Angry, she grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him around to face her. It was hard to keep from shouting at him, but she didn’t want to frighten Alex. “Why are you following me?”

      Clay looked at her, not surprised that she had caught on, only that she had done it so quickly. But one of the things he’d always liked about her was that she was sharper than any woman he’d ever been with.

      “Because Janelle and Captain Reynolds seem to think you’re in danger.”

      “The only thing I seem to be in danger of is running into people from my past who I don’t want to see.”

      Though tempted to make a flippant reply, Clay was more interested in the small boy whose hand she held. The one looking up at him with big blue eyes and a thousand-watt smile so like his mother’s.

      He nodded at the boy. “Is this your son?”

      Ilene placed her hands protectively on the boy’s shoulders as he stood in front of her. “Yes, this is Alex.”

      Not standing on ceremony, Alex tugged on Clay’s shirt and said, “Hi.”

      He spared the boy a smile in kind. “Hi.” Clay raised his eyes to Ilene. The boy’s existence raised a host of questions in his mind, questions he should have been able to bank down. “When did you get married?”

      She felt her back stiffening. “That is none of your business and neither am I. Go away, Detective Cavanaugh. Before I call a cop.”

      He couldn’t resist. “Half the force is related to me.”

      “Then I’ll find someone who isn’t,” she said over her shoulder as she hurried away with her son.

      This time Clay remained where he was.

      Chapter 3

      “Leaving already?”

      On his way through the crowded bar where he and other members of the police department gathered at the end of a long, hard day, Clay stopped several feet short of his goal, the front door. Even with the din cranked up an extra decibel or two, he still recognized the familiar voice. He’d been hearing it for all of his twenty-seven years.

      The bar was extra crowded tonight with retired as well as active police personnel taking up much of the available space. They’d come together to throw a party for one of their own. After several false starts at retirement, Detective Alvin “Willie-Boy” Jenkins was finally leaving the force. The older, florid-faced man had been a fixture with the department for as long as Clay could remember, having even gone six years partnered with his father until Andrew had been promoted to chief of police.

      It was Andrew Cavanaugh who had cleared up the mystery behind Willie-Boy’s nickname. It derived not from a familiar form of a name given him at birth, but from the fact that the police detective had become enamored with the old Robert Redford movie, Tell Them Willie Boy Was Here. He had seen it more times than even he could remember and could spout off lines of dialogue at the drop of a hat. No one knew why he was so fascinated with that particular piece of celluloid and no one wanted to ask. Willie-Boy tended to be very long-winded once he got started.

      Clay had toyed with the idea of saying good-night to the members of his family who were still in attendance, then decided that slipping out unnoticed was the better way to go. He’d underestimated his father’s eagle eye. At an age when most men were squinting to make out the written page or see beyond the reach of their hand, his father’s vision was still twenty-twenty.

      “Keeping tabs on me, Dad?” Clay turned to face the older man.

      Andrew raised a mug of dark brew and took a small sip before answering. “No, just wondering what’s up. You’re usually one of the last to go.”

      Clay shrugged, looking away. “I’m starting a new trend.”

      The hell he was, Andrew thought.

      Andrew wasn’t one to pry into his children’s affairs. Or so he liked to claim. In reality, the complete opposite was true. He took his role as father to heart and it had only intensified ever since his wife had disappeared fifteen years ago.

      That was the way he saw it. Rose had disappeared. Which meant that someday she would reappear. He refused to accept the fact that she had walked out of his life with heated, hurtful words hanging in the air between them, and then died. Everyone else outside of the family had long since taken the scenario as a given. Rose Cavanaugh had died in the river where her car was discovered. But since neither her body nor her purse had ever been recovered, to Andrew the case was still open.

      Rose was still his wife and she was out there somewhere, waiting to be found.

      And Clay was still his son, one of two, and always would be no matter what his age. Being a father meant being concerned. Rose would have wanted it that way.

      He