Not the Best Day (3 page)

“The toy fiasco and the dog I can explain. I don’t know what you mean about the pants—”

Erin interrupted. “Do I
want
to know how he ‘messed up your dress pants’?”

“Oh my God. Will you get your freaking mind out of the gutter? I’m pissed off at him. I did not cream my pants at the sight of him or whatever you’re thinking. He drove too close to the curb and splashed black slush all over my legs.”

“I’m sorry about that, dude.”

He actually seemed contrite. But I was exasperated and wasn’t going to be swayed by a gorgeous face that was even more adorable all humble and embarrassed like that.
No, no. No.
I’m pissed. I have a reason to be pissed. I’m going to stay pissed. I don’t care what he looks like.

“Yeah, well, that doesn’t clean my pants, now does it?”

“Send me the bill. Really. I’ll take care of it.” His face brightened up like he had just thought of something. “Oh, actually this worked out great. Well, except for the ‘no go’ on Erin’s brother. But running into you. I mean, ‘the guy from downtown’ you, because of course you’re Erin’s brother too, but that’s not what I…. Anyway. When you left with the dog, you forgot your packages. I put them in my car and went to the vet’s as soon as I could, but you were already gone. I got your address—”

“They absolutely should not have given you that.”

He turned sheepish. “Well, I may have flashed my badge and said it was police business.”

I took a deep breath so I wouldn’t punch him square in the mouth. “Great, now they think I’m a felon or something.”

His eyes got big, as if he hadn’t even thought of that. “No, I told them you had inadvertently helped the police on a big operation and I wanted to thank you.” He brightened and held eye contact. “Which is undeniably true, by the way. The last piece fell into place because of the diversion, and you were willing to take the dog to the vet. I couldn’t leave the scene, but I didn’t want to leave the little guy or make him wait until I got him there. You absolutely helped me out by taking him for me.”

“Uh-huh,” I grunted, but it was just a little harder to be mad at him. “To the tune of hundreds of dollars.” But my heart wasn’t in the reprimand. If he had actually been working… and he seemed like he was concerned about the dog. But no, I was pissed at him. I needed to try to hold on to that.

“Yeah, about that. I left the check in between the door when you didn’t end up being home, but I didn’t want to leave your packages, so I have them in the car.”

“What do you mean check?”

“For what you already put down on the dog’s bill. I wanted to pay you back for that. And I’ll cover the rest of it. It was totally my fault. And I want to take care of it. I wanted to then. I just couldn’t leave. I really am very grateful that you were willing to take charge. I don’t think anyone else would have.”

“Yeah, well this season doesn’t bring out the love and giving as much as people think.”

He chuckled. “Don’t I know it?”

Erin had been swiveling her head like she was following a tennis match this whole time but finally found an entrance into the conversation. “Clint, you said you were going to tell us about the case.”

“Oh yeah.” And there was that bashful expression again. “I forgot.” He addressed me. “The kid that ran out of the toy store? He’s one of a whole group of kids that have been committing minor crimes during the day. Picking pockets, shoplifting. That sort of thing.”

I was still angry, even though I was having to work a little harder at it. But this actually helped. “And that’s why you couldn’t leave your prized sting operation? To catch a bunch of underage pickpockets?”

He rolled his eyes. It seemed like he might finally be getting a little tired of my abrasiveness.

“It was hardly a sting operation, but no, we weren’t after the kids. Well, not to prosecute them. Not all of them.”

Erin smacked me. “Would you let him tell the story? He’s been bristling with disgust over something for a while now, and he can finally tell me, so stop the interruptions.”

I drew my lips into that flat line that all little brothers give their sisters when they don’t want to do what they’re told but think they probably better. I silently gave… Clint… the go-ahead gesture.

He nodded and continued. “We were after the ring leader. The few kids we’ve managed to get away from him in the past call him Fagin. But he’s not at all like the guy from the book or movie. There’s more than picking a pocket or two going on here. And not all the kids are willing participants. This Fagin’s name is actually Cavanaugh—and yes, that’s part of what was leaked and what the chief will confirm, so I’m okay telling you—and he pulls in any kid on the street that he can get his hands on. Some join of their own accord, thinking stealing for this guy isn’t all that bad for a roof over their heads and some guaranteed food now and then. The problem is the stealing is just their day job. He hires the kids out at night too, if you know what I mean. All of them. Kids as young as seven. Boys and girls. If they don’t do what he wants, he turns them out but also makes sure they can’t find food or shelter anywhere. He has a couple of teenagers acting as overseers and what amounts to a small SS squad to enforce that. Same goes if anyone is stupid enough to leave. That’s why our only hope to get the kids away from him was to arrest him and make it stick.”

Shit, I was losing my “mad.” This did sound like a noble reason to be downtown and to stay there instead of taking a dog to the vet’s. “But did you have to knock me down in the store?”

He turned red again. And dammit, I shouldn’t be so attracted to it, but he was just so endearing when he did that.

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I was trying to miss you, but you went to pick up a package or something, or for some reason twisted the wrong way just as I passed you, and I clipped you as I ran by. I couldn’t stop and help because I had to look like an irate customer chasing the kid that stole his wallet. I had ‘irresponsibly’ counted my large bills at the place I had been in right before the toy store when I noticed out of the corner of my eye that the kid was looking at me. He followed me into the toy mart, and I bent over to tie my shoe, giving him a good target.”

And dammit, now I was thinking about his ass, but I continued to listen.

“We needed him to grab the wallet. That was pretty much the crux of the whole operation. There was a tracking device and mic inside the lining. We wanted him to take it back to Cavanaugh. So when I ‘lost’ him on foot, I jumped in my car like a crazy person and kept circling around the block searching for him. When I finally moved on from where he was hiding and was circling farther down, he ran back toward the hideout. Backup sighted him while he was busy running from me and relayed with a couple other units when he zigzagged back to the den. Then we waited. We needed to confirm that Cavanaugh was there with at least one verifiable stolen item. That would be enough to arrest him.”

“All of that and you’d arrest the guy for possession of a stolen wallet?”

“Well, we’d have the tape of the kid giving it to him and his accepting it as his due, and he couldn’t just claim he took it from the kid and was going to give it back. It was enough to temporarily get him off the streets.”

Erin’s attention was rapt and she asked, “Was that enough, though? Didn’t you take a big chance? That’s an awful lot of work for a couple nights in jail.”

“Well, getting him off the streets for good was one of the goals, but perhaps the more immediate one was getting those kids away from him. Once we had him in custody, we swept in and rounded up all the kids we could. We know from talking to the ones we did get that we didn’t find them all. There are still units in the area watching the hideout, hoping some more will come ‘home’ and we can get them too. Cavanaugh has them so mixed up that they run from us and to him, instead of just the opposite.”

I could see the moment Erin switched from my sister listening to an interesting story to a social worker worried about a huge influx of kids at a time of year that must already put a strain on resources. “I don’t have my phone on me. Let me go make sure they didn’t call me in to help with this.”

By now it was getting pretty tough to hold on to my anger. “Okay, but why the slush incident? And I saw you run over a curb. Surely you should have been driving better.”

“Well, for the most part, it was for the cover. The curb thing was, anyway. I saw the kid in the alley, and I wanted him to think I was a big enough threat to get him to move on and not just hole up in there. The slush thing I honestly don’t remember. I might have gotten a little too involved in the cover, but there were several times when I noticed kids that were probably part of the gang. I radioed it in so we could keep an eye out for them later or hunt for them if need be.” He got the most sincere expression on his face. “I really will pay to have them cleaned.”

I shook my head. “It’s not like they’re expensive. I don’t have them dry cleaned or anything. I just wash them on cold.”

“Then that stain isn’t going to come out. You said it was black. I’ll buy you a new pair.”

I grinned a little. “Now you’re just trying too hard. It’s fine. It sounds like you had noble reasons for all of it.”

He smiled too but shook his head. “That doesn’t excuse it. I truly am sorry.” He smiled wider and joked. “You just didn’t catch me on the best day.”

I chuckled. “I’m getting that idea, yes. Don’t worry. All is forgiven.”

He burst into a beaming smile that, I swear, rivaled the sun itself. And the last dregs of anger melted away under its warmth. I reached out to take his hand and gestured with the other toward the sofa in the corner where I’d been hiding most of the night. “Come on. Come tell me why my sister thought we’d be such a good match.”

Two Years Later

“A
RE
YOU
telling that story again?” Clint asked patiently as he slid into his rightful place on the loveseat beside me at Erin’s annual Christmas party.

“It’s a good story,” I defended. “It’s how we met. What can be more important than that?”

“Well,” answered Joseph, one of Erin’s new friends, virgin to the “Clint and Henry” story, “As important as the love story is, I’d like to know what happened to Cavanaugh.”

“See?” Clint playfully swatted my shoulder, then slid his arm around me and pulled me close to take the sting from his words. “No one wants romance anymore. They want police drama.”

“What are we? Hollywood?” I mock glared at him. “I tell the stories I want to tell.”

“Even if your audience all goes to the bathroom or gets a sandwich?” Clint teased.

Erin was walking by and just had to join in. “Or your audience goes to find something less painful to endure… you know, like a root canal?”

I threw the pillow at her. Why would they call them “throw pillows” if you weren’t supposed to throw them at your sister? I’d had this discussion with her time and again.

“Ummm….” Joseph cleared his throat. “Cavanaugh?”

Clint chuckled. “Yeah, he went away for a long time. We got the teenaged overseers to flip on him. They were seventeen, and the DA agreed not to try them as adults if they gave up Cavanaugh. They were only too happy to help us put him away. They’d been with him for years and had been on the dirty side of it too. We placed most of the kids in foster families. There were some named by the overseers that we never did find. They’re probably still out on the street or, worse, were taken in by someone like Cavanaugh. He’s not the only one out there. He’s just the worst one we knew about.”

“So.” Kim snuggled up to Joseph on the couch opposite our loveseat. “You found all the kids homes for Christmas?”

Clint shrugged a shoulder. This was another part he didn’t like. “Not all. As many as we could. For some we actually found biological families who had been looking for them and reported them missing. Some of the others we placed in foster homes.”

“What he won’t tell you is that the police department took up a collection and got each and every one of those kids a gift for Christmas. Clint helped deliver them, even to the ones who were in group homes or hospitals.”

Kim melted even more. “That’s so beautiful. So they didn’t all get homes by Christmas, but they did eventually, right? They’re all doing fine now, right?”

“I would love to say that they were. But you don’t go through shit like that, especially as young and as long as some of them endured it, and not get messed up. Many of them, yes, are in good homes, and the foster or, in some cases, adoptive or biological parents are working with them and they’re getting help, and they’ll probably be fine-ish eventually.”

Kim smiled, and I knew Clint didn’t want to go on, but one of the many things I loved about him was that he wouldn’t lie.

“But some of them keep running away from whatever home we put them in. Some become violent when they’re angry. No doubt what they saw Cavanaugh do. Some have already been in and out of juvie. We didn’t fix it all. I wish we could have.”

“But you helped.” I slapped at his chest, only partially playfully. “Give yourself credit. You did what you could. You helped.”

As usually happened when “Daddy” got maudlin, we were attacked by a full-grown shepherd mix. Noël jumped onto our laps and tried to wiggle into the nonexistent space between us. Clint automatically started to pet her, as he always did when we visited Erin. Clint had paid for her vet bills as promised, but he couldn’t have a dog. I didn’t want one but was willing to take her if need be. Erin went with me to pick her up, though, and had fallen in love. So it worked out all the way around.

“My therapy dog.” Clint beamed.

“Works, doesn’t it?” I leaned in and kissed him.

“So does that.” And there was that adorable red shade on his face.

“Yeah,” I stage whispered. “But we can’t engage in
that
therapy in public.” Then, because the color had started to fade, I added, “Unless you want to, because I’m all for it, and I’m sure we can convince at least a few—”