Cavanaugh's Bodyguard by Marie Ferrarella Page A

from his father in Florida. Seems that the patriarch of the family is flying home for the express purpose of meeting this lost branch of the family that has suddenly surfaced and Andrew is spreading the word that he wants everyone to gather together for the old man.”
    “And the lost branch of the family, that would be you?” Josh guessed.
    “Not me specifically,” she protested. “It means my whole family.”
    “Of which you’re a part.” He was stating the obvious and he knew it, Bridget thought. She’d forgotten how irritating he could be at times. “By the way,” Josh continued and she braced herself, “I heard you identify yourself as Bridget Cavanaugh. Does that mean you’ve made your decision about which last name you want to use?”
    It hadn’t really been her decision to make, she thought. It had actually been a foregone conclusion from the get-go.
    “That means,” she told him, “I can’t fight City Hall, and if my father was born a Cavanaugh, I guess that makes me one, too.”
    He found her resigned tone amusing. “It’s not exactly a death sentence. you know.”
    “I know. It just feels weird, that’s all.” She searched for a way to make him see her point. “It’s like all your life, you think of yourself as a duck and suddenly, you find out that you’re actually a goose. It takes some getting used to.”
    He laughed quietly to himself and then told her, “Swan.”
    She didn’t understand. “What?”
    “Don’t think of yourself as a goose,” he told her. “Think of yourself as a swan. It might make the transition easier for you.”
    Just what was he reading into her words? “I’m not vain—” she protested.
    He cut her off before she could get going. “Never said that.”
    “Besides, swans have bad dispositions.” She looked at him pointedly.
    Josh shrugged innocently. “Just trying to help,” he told her.
    “You want to help?” She turned his hand so that he could see his palm with the writing on it. “Drive here,” she instructed and then, belatedly, let go of his hand so that he could use it to drive with.
    Josh grinned. “Your wish is my command.”
    “If only,” she muttered under her breath. But he heard.
    His grin grew wider.
    * * *
    “SexyDude” turned out to be the email name used by George Hammond. Hammond, a rather nondescript, stoop-shouldered man with a seriously receding hairline, worked as a tax form preparer for one of the larger tax consultant firms. They found him with a client and extracted him in order to have “a few words” with him.
    Bewildered, Hammond became rather hostile when he realized he was being questioned about the way he’d spent his previous evening. He became even more so when Diana Kellogg’s name was brought up.
    “I’ll tell you how I spent my evening with her,” he said angrily. “I didn’t. She never showed. I went to that expensive club she picked out—they had a damn cover charge,” he complained. “I sat there for two hours, nursing one watered-down drink and watching the door, waiting for her to walk in. But she never showed up.” A little of his anger subsided as he looked from one detective to the other. “Why are you asking me about her? Has she done something?” He seemed almost eager to hear something bad in connection with the woman who had stepped on his ego.
    “No, not intentionally,” Bridget replied solemnly.
    “Then what?” Hammond demanded.
    “Diana Kellogg was murdered last night,” Josh told him. Both he and Bridget watched the man’s face.
    “Murdered?” Hammond echoed incredulously. Then, rather than display any sense of horror or outrage that someone should wantonly snuff out a life like this, Hammond actually seemed to be smiling. “Well, I guess that if she was murdered, she wasn’t really standing me up.”
    For two cents, she would have wrung the jerk’s neck, Bridget thought.
    As if reading her mind, Josh placed his hand on her shoulder, anchoring her to her spot. “No,