The message delivered, he saw Paul was typing a response.
Thanks, Detective in Training. Will check it out. Dump the casserole. I’ll bring home Maria’s.
Cliff snorted. He sent a thumbs-up and decided to clean the bathroom, his heart lighter than it had been since morning. Everything would be okay.
Chapter Five
“So how pissed off was Cliff at you for not telling him about the notes?” Rob drove while Paul ran through what he wrote down.
“On a scale from one to ten?” Paul grunted. “About four hundred fifty-six.”
Rob whistled. “Damn. What do you have to do to make it up to him?”
Sweat trickled down Paul’s neck despite the cool of the car’s air conditioner. “Something I’ve been putting off. Talking about Harley.”
Rob expelled a sharp breath. “That’s gonna be rough. I’m sorry. Cliff was his best friend, right?”
“Yeah. Next to our family, Cliff was the closest to him. And maybe…” Paul rubbed his jaw, staring at the cars passing them on the highway. “Just maybe, Cliff knew him better than anyone, us included.”
“Well, then hopefully when you two talk it out, you’ll get some peace. I know it still eats you up inside, but I never met your brother, so it wouldn’t be much help talking to me about it.”
“It’s okay. Cliff and I will work it out.”
“I have no doubt,” Rob said, exiting the highway. “Okay. Now what about the shots and the notes? You think they’re connected?”
“Don’t know. We’ll have to sort things through when we get back to the station.”
They turned onto the street, and Paul spotted the squat gray building of the Thornwood Park police station. “Let’s hope we get a chance to work on it and don’t get sidetracked.”
Once inside, Paul immediately placed a call to Manny. “Anything yet?”
“Bulldog, damn. Give us a chance. It’s only been an hour or so. Believe me, we got the whole team working on it.” He paused. “So…” Paul tensed but decided the time had fucking come.
“Yeah, Manny. It’s my house. I live there. With Cliff Baxter.”
Manny’s voice softened. “I understand the concern. And I’ll make sure to ride the lab. One of our own deserves the highest priority.”
“Thanks.” It shouldn’t be so hard to simply be yourself.
“Always, man.”
He hung up and sat for a second.
Rob came over and sat down. “Paulie. You okay?”
He gazed at Rob. “Yeah. Yeah, I am. I just told Manny I lived there with Cliff.”
Rob’s eyes grew wide. “Oh, man. You okay? Manny was cool with it? Lemme get you a cup of coffee.” To Paul’s amusement, he scrambled out of his seat and raced to the coffeemaker and back in the span of a minute. He proffered the cup of hot coffee to Paul. “Here. So it was good, right?”
Paul had to laugh. “Yeah, it was. It really was fine. I think Manny was afraid to ask, and then I thought to myself, ‘Why am I hiding it as if there’s something wrong with it?’ ” Emotions swirled inside him. “There’s nothing wrong with who I am. I’m the same as you and everyone else, so why should I have to be afraid?”
Rob gazed at him steadily. “You shouldn’t have to be. And now I hope you’re not.”
“It’s still not that simple.” He dropped his gaze to stare into the milky depths of his coffee. “It’s all easy for you. Straight is the norm. The expected. But every time someone asks me where I live, and I want to say, ‘With Cliff,’ it’s another time where I have to prepare myself, to make sure it’s safe to come out.”
“I’m sorry it has to be this way. You know how I feel about it.”
His lips ticked up in a quick smile. “I do. Every day I feel better about myself.”
“Well, good. Now you better haul ass and earn your keep.”
Paul chuckled. “The notes are in to test for fingerprints and for the handwriting analysis. Manny’s moved the file to the top. And we know the shots fired through the window came from a .357.” He pulled out his phone and opened the text from Cliff. “Cliff said a neighbor told him a clerk from Moonshine Liquors mentioned Travis was boasting about coming into money soon.”
“Interesting. Guess we’ll need to pay a visit there.”
“But until we get the info from Forensics, we should work on the Main Street robberies.” He clicked open the file on his computer, bringing up all the notes they’d scanned in. Over the past year, the department had been slowly converting all its hard-copy files to digital, and while Paul disapproved at first, he had to admit it was handy to have everything searchable on-screen instead of shuffling through boxes of files and papers. “I’ll call the first two—Today’s Man and the electronics store—and you can take the jewelry store and the Curry Spot. We can see if anyone’s willing to talk to us today, or if not, we’ll start setting up interviews for tomorrow.”
Rob hitched his chair closer to the desk. “Okay. Looks like they shot out the lock to the safe in the jewelry store. Forensics has the shell casings, and they’re from a Ruger LCP.”
“No weapons used at any of the other jobs, but they minimized the need to, because they hit the stores after they closed.” Paul clicked through the notes he and Rob had compiled over the past few months. “No known commonality between the stores, except they’re all members of the Thornwood Park Chamber of Commerce. Could be something.”
Rob picked up the phone. “Might as well start now.”
Paul pulled up the numbers he needed to call. Within half an hour, they had two appointments set up. Who knew everyone was so anxious to talk to the police?
Twenty minutes later, they pulled into a parking space in front of Twenty-Four Karat. Despite the break-in and burglary, the jewelry store was open and, from what Paul could see as they walked inside, busy. The display cases that had been damaged were covered by heavy cloths, but aside from that, not a trace remained that a violent crime had taken place there.
“Gentlemen, can I help you?” a tall man in his early fifties, with dark, silver-streaked hair greeted them. His accent made Paul smile.
“New York or New Jersey?”
The man’s bright-blue eyes twinkled. “Long Island, to be exact. I’m Jeffrey Rothstein, the owner.”
“Detective Paul Monroe, and this is my partner, Detective Rob Gormley, of Thornwood Park PD. We’d like to talk to you in greater detail about the break-in on July fifteenth.”
His eyes dimmed. “Would you mind if we went to the back? I have an office where we can sit and have some privacy.”
As they crossed the space of the jewelry store, they passed a woman behind one of the non-damaged display cases, showing a necklace to a customer. “Elana,” Jeffrey said, “I’ll be in the office.”
The woman’s gaze met Paul’s and then Rob’s. She nodded. “We’ll hold down the fort, don’t worry. Joshua is with me.” Her accent was light, but Paul noticed it right away and wondered where she was from.
“Joshua is our son,” Jeffrey said. “He works with us. Keeping it all in the family.”