Page 10 of No Artful Refusal
Chapter 4
Cade walked into thestation, coffee in hand and a smile on his face for the desk sergeant.But instead of the expected good morning exchange, the sergeant held up a slip of paper.“A tip came in for you, detective.”
Cade stopped short.“For me?”
“Asked for you by name.”
He took the slip of paper and read the short message.“Didn’t give you a name, huh?”
The sergeant shrugged.“An exercise in community service, according to the caller.”
“Gotta love a concerned citizen,” Cade muttered.
He read the note as he hustled upstairs to his desk.The tipster claimed a valuable Monet-esque painting had been stolen from a college museum.They’d even provided the suspect: Janice Willoughby, a graduate student working in the department.
His stomach knotted.
Anonymous tip on a non-violent crime, plus a name to go along with it?In his head, those details added up to Devyn Norris.Not cool.He wasn’t her personal detective, ready to jump whenever she left a message.
Carefully, he set the note down on the center of his desk.He stared at the slip of paper while he chugged down his coffee.Wasn’t his practice to ignore a tip, but he had his normal caseload to think about.
Was a stolen painting more important?
Not in his opinion.Moving the message aside, he pulled out his chair and got busy while the caffeine kicked in.He spent an hour replying to emails from the state’s attorney’s office on a couple of cases that would go to trial soon.He added another court appearance to his calendar, but he didn’t recall much about the case.
Looking it up, he stifled a groan.It had been a breaking and entering case that crossed his desk about a month after his girlfriend died.No wonder he was foggy on the details.He blocked out a few evening hours to refresh his memory so he didn’t undermine the prosecution.
Those early days—lost in his grief—he’d been a serious liability in the field.Now that he was feeling better, he wanted to do better for the folks counting on him.So he stayed focused on the concrete tasks in front of him, everything else taking precedence over the tip throughout the day.
He left the note where he’d see it in the morning, but he continued to ignore it for two more days.No more messages came in and he’d convinced himself the tip didn’t matter when Hoffman cornered him in the breakroom.
“Seriously, Laurier?”She waved the message in his face.“Why did you ignore this?”
“I didn’t ignore it,” he fibbed.“It’s called prioritizing.”
Her dark eyebrows climbed toward her hairline.“We’re going.”
“Hoffman—”
