Cavanaugh or Death Read online

  “In Aurora?” he mocked. Growing just the slightest bit serious, Carver added, “Then we would have heard about it.”

  “Maybe they’re just getting started,” Moira countered.

  Carver eyed her in moody silence for several seconds, weighing options. “You’re not going to drop this, are you?”

  Her first reaction was to say no but she squelched it. Knowing better than to go up against the lieutenant outright, Moira tried to approach the subject in a calm, logical manner. “I really think there’s something to this, Lieutenant.”

  “Of course you do.” Carver swallowed the curse that rose to his lips. He paused for a long moment, as if weighing the pros and cons of her request. “Okay. I’m a reasonable man,” he told her.

  The jury’s still out on that, Moira couldn’t help thinking.

  “Go and investigate your heart out—just you, not your partner,” he clarified, adding, “Warner’s got real police work to do.”

  Moira had always maintained that she could get along with anyone, even the devil, but there was something about Detective Alfred Warner that made her wish she had another partner instead of the older, by-the-book detective.

  Maybe it was because the man reminded her too much of Carver.

  Whatever the reason, she was more than happy to investigate whatever was going on at the cemetery on her own. She wondered if the man realized that.

  “Yes, sir,” she replied.

  “Talk to the cemetery caretaker,” Carver suggested. “Find out if he knows anything or has noticed anything funny going on. See if this has happened before. But if you can’t find anything—and I’m talking something tangible here—in forty-eight hours, that’s it. I don’t want to hear any more about it. Forty-eight hours, that’s your window, Cavanaugh. Understood?”

  “Understood, sir,” she quickly responded. “And thank you, sir.”

  It was obvious from the expression on his face that he was far from happy about this, but he didn’t want to just arbitrarily ignore what she’d brought him just in case there was something to it.

  “Yeah, yeah.” Carver waved her away. “Just get out of my office. And close the door behind you,” he added sharply.

  “I always do, sir,” she responded with a smile as she gripped the doorknob.

  She thought she heard Carver mutter something caustic under his breath as she left, but she knew better than to ask what. Pretending she hadn’t heard his voice, she closed the door behind her.

  As she paused by her desk to make a notation on her computer, she glanced up to see that her partner had just walked in and was approaching his desk.

  The next moment he was removing his jacket and draping the twenty-year-old article of clothing over the back of his chair.

  Glancing over toward her, he asked suspiciously, “Who brightened your day?”

  She was not about to waste any time going into specifics. Warner had a habit of taking everything apart and down to the tiniest component. Opting for brevity, Moira simply said, “The lieutenant just gave me a case to look into.”

  Warner dropped into his chair. The fifteen pounds he had gained on the job in the past year caused the chair to creak loudly in protest.

  “Hell, I’ve already got too much to do,” he complained.

  “This is just a solo case, Warner,” she told him cheerfully. “Nothing for you to worry about.”

  Which, once the words were out, she knew was exactly what Warner was about to do since she wasn’t giving him any details. The detective was not keen on exerting more effort than he possibly had to, but neither did he like being purposely excluded from anything.

  Moira admitted to herself that it was small of her to bait him this way, but she had heard the man say several nasty things not just about her but about others in her family. It had been all she could do to hold her tongue when she did.

  Making the man feel as if he was missing out on something was, in her estimation, merely a small payback.

  “See you later,” she told him cheerfully as she walked away, heading toward the doorway.

  “Wait, what’s this case about?” Warner called after her.

  Moira pretended she didn’t hear the question and just kept walking.

  Her smile widened. Maybe she was being petty, but as far as she was concerned, Warner deserved it. She couldn’t ask for another partner—there had to be a specific reason for the request and saying that the man annoyed her just wouldn’t fly with the lieutenant—so she had to satisfy herself with this.

  Besides, according to her father, this was the kind of thing that built character. Had she actually said anything to her father, he would have advised her to stick it out with Warner.

  “I’m going to have one hell of a character by the time that man retires,” she mumbled to herself as she pressed for the elevator. “If I survive,” she added in an even softer whisper.

  Moira glanced around to see if anyone was nearby who might have overheard her monologue, but although there were a few people in the hallway, no one appeared to be in close hearing range.

  She would have to watch herself, Moira silently chided. She talked to herself far too often. She didn’t want anyone thinking, or worse, saying, that she was crazy.

  The elevator still hadn’t arrived. Impatient, Moira pressed on the down button a second time.

  Where was that damn elevator, anyway?

  It seemed to her that the thing ran slower and slower every day. She was anxious to get going before Carver suddenly changed his mind and had someone come after her so he could tell her to drop her yet-to-begin investigation.

  Now that she had gotten the green light to investigate the scene at the cemetery, she intended to make the most of it, especially since she was flying solo.

  She could tell by Carver’s expression that he hadn’t thought there was anything to her hunch. But she did. She was a Cavanaugh and she had yet to meet a single one of her extended clan who didn’t believe in hunches or rely on them heavily when push came to shove.

  The elevator still hadn’t made an appearance.

  Annoyed—and growing more so—Moira glanced up to see that according to what was registering above the elevator doors, the car was still on the sixth floor, where it had been for at least the past three minutes.

  What if it was broken again? The elevator had been out of commission for half a day last Tuesday. And before that it had been down for the better part of two days about a month ago.

  Giving up, Moira went to the stairwell. Good exercise anyway.

  The heavy door shut behind her as she entered the stairwell. Her hand was on the banister when she heard the sharp staccato of a pair of men’s shoes hitting the metal steps.

  Obviously someone else had lost patience with the elevator, too, she thought, glancing overhead to where the sound of quickening footsteps was coming from.

  Her mouth dropped open as, for the second time that morning, she found herself looking at the blond stranger from the cemetery.

  Chapter 3

  As she stood there, with the fire door closed at her back, Moira watched the blond stranger quickly make his way to the next staircase. Dressed exactly the same way as when he’d helped her to her feet outside the cemetery, the stranger appeared to take no notice of her as he headed down the stairs.

  “Hey, you!” Moira called out, stunned that he’d made no acknowledgment whatsoever that he wasn’t alone in the stairwell. “Wait!”

  Apparently the man had hoped to just keep going. However, since she was the only other person in the stairwell, surely he realized she was trying to get his attention.

  He paused for a moment midway down the stairs and was obviously waiting for her to either say something or to ask him a question.

  “What are you doing here?” Moira asked
, cutting the distance between them quickly. If the man from the cemetery was surprised to see her or even recognized her, Moira noted that he gave no such indication.

  “Going down the stairs,” he noted with minimal inflection. “Same as you, would be my guess.”

  Was he being funny or didn’t he understand the gist of her question? Upon closer scrutiny, he looked too intelligent to be dumb, so her guess leaned toward the former, even if his expression remained dour.

  “I meant in the precinct.” Her mind gravitated back to the cemetery and to what Carver had said about needing someone to sign a complaint regarding the headstone being disturbed. Was that what he was doing here? “Are you registering a complaint?” she asked. It seemed a logical explanation for his being there, although not why he was in the stairwell.

  There was no inflection in his voice as the stranger responded, “Not unless you intend to do something complaint-worthy.”

  Was he deliberately drawing this out or had she just misjudged him, after all, and he was just being obtuse? She tried again.

  “Then why are you in the building?”

  The attractive, breathless woman asked an awful lot of questions considering that they didn’t know one another, Davis thought.

  “Well, for one thing, they pay me to be here.”

  He watched as her eyebrows pulled together in bewilderment beneath her blond bangs.

  “Wait—you work here?”

  “Yes.”

  Moira regarded the stranger suspiciously, once again reevaluating him. He was having fun at her expense, she decided. The man probably was used to getting by on his good looks. Well, that wasn’t going to fly with her. “Doing what?” she asked.

  A slight, whimsical expression passed over his almost immobile face. “As much or as little as they want me to.”

  “You’re a cop.”

  “You’d make a hell of a contestant on one of those quiz shows. Me, I don’t have any patience for that kind of thing. So,” he concluded, calling an end to the unofficial interrogation session, “if you’re finished asking questions—”

  Moira took another two steps down, putting herself directly into his path and temporarily blocking his escape. “You were the guy chasing those two people at the cemetery, weren’t you?”

  He stifled a sigh. “Obviously you’re not finished asking questions. Why are you asking questions?” he asked, pinning her with a glare meant to put her in her place.

  “Because, to begin with, I’m not usually run over at six thirty in the morning—” she began.

  He cut her off, pointing out the obvious. “I didn’t run you over.”

  “No, but you were chasing the people who did,” she reminded him. “Why were you chasing them?” Had he caught them in the act of grave robbing or was there another reason he had been after them?

  He hesitated.

  She wouldn’t know that it was Davis’s habit to play it close to the vest and never reveal too much, even when the one doing the questioning was a bright-eyed, eager blonde his father might have described as being very “easy on the eyes.”

  “Let’s just say that I had a couple of questions of my own for them,” he answered simply.

  “Like why they were disturbing a gravesite?” she asked pointedly.

  He watched her for a long, hard moment and Moira felt as if this cop—if he really was one—was looking right into her head.

  She didn’t care for the way that made her feel.

  “What would you know about that?” he finally asked her.

  “Nothing,” Moira admitted, “which is why I’m asking questions.”

  He didn’t look as if he believed her. The man had the ability to make her want to squirm even though she was telling the truth. Only her mother used to be able to do that, Moira thought in grudging admiration. It took effort to meet his stare and not give any indication of what she was feeling.

  “But you knew the gravesite was disturbed.” He said it like an accusation.

  Moira refused to let him get to her. Instead she pretended she was talking to an uncooperative witness.

  “Because after you helped me to my feet,” she told him matter-of-factly, “I went into the cemetery to see what was going on that would make three people come tearing out of there.”

  She watched his rugged, handsome face grow stern.

  “You make it sound as if I was with them. I wasn’t. I was trying to find out the same thing,” he informed her somewhat grudgingly.

  She could see that getting information out of this man would be just like pulling teeth—that only made her more determined to get it.

  “So you don’t know what they were doing there?” she persisted.

  He shook his head. “Not a clue.”

  Moira paused for a moment, debating whether or not to say anything further.

  Until a couple of minutes ago she was more than happy to be investigating this possible grave robbery on her own, but it never hurt to have another set of eyes on the subject. And the blond stranger’s eyes were a really intriguing shade of blue; a perfect complement to his dark blond, somewhat shaggy hair.

  Moira made up her mind.

  “Want to find out?” she asked him. When he didn’t answer immediately, she decided he probably thought she was putting him on, so she went on to try to convince him to join forces.

  “My lieutenant’s giving me forty-eight hours to figure out why someone would be messing with a grave at the cemetery. I could use some help. Two sets of eyes are always better than one,” she added quickly, hoping that would convince him to agree to join her.

  “I don’t work in your division,” he pointed out evenly.

  Moira waved away the observation. “That’s no problem. Detectives get loaned out and cross department lines all the time. I could put in a request with your lieutenant—”

  “Captain,” he corrected.

  Moira never lost a beat. “With your captain,” she said, “and ask him to allow you to help me with the investigation.”

  “What would you say was your reason?” he asked, then challenged, “Why would you need my help over someone else’s, say, like, in your own department?”

  She had an answer ready for that, as well. “I could tell him that you were there at the time, that you think you saw something—”

  Davis cut her off. “I saw the same thing that you did.”

  Why was he fighting her on this? Didn’t he want to investigate these potential grave robbers? And if he didn’t, why didn’t he? Was there something here she was missing?

  “Still,” she continued, “you were in the cemetery at the same time they were—and you chased after them, causing them to flee the premises, possibly before they could finish doing whatever it was they were doing.” The more she talked, the more she sold herself on the idea, growing excited at the same time. “So, what do you say?” she asked brightly.

  His was not the face of a man who had been won over, Moira couldn’t help noticing.

  “I say that I don’t even know who the hell you are.”

  “Well, that’s easy enough to fix.” She put her hand out. “I’m Detective Moira Cavanaugh, robbery division.”

  He made no effort to take her hand. Instead he repeated her name. “Cavanaugh.”

  Moira dropped her hand. She knew adversity when she saw it. “One of the many.”

  She attempted to read his expression and found it utterly impossible. It was like trying to guess at the thoughts of a glass of water. Was he one of the ones on the force who outright resented her because of her name? She would like to believe that if he was, something in his eyes would give his feelings away. Disdain. Annoyance. Something.

  But he didn’t flinch. Didn’t look down his nose at her. Didn’t reel off his list of imagined Cavana
ugh offenses.

  All he’d done was repeat her name.

  So she tried again. “So, what do you say?”

  He appeared unmoved. “I say that there’s probably nothing to investigate.”

  “How can you be sure?” she asked. Then she qualified her question, aware that what she’d say would probably get to him. “Unless, of course, you’re the one who disturbed the grave and those two characters in black surprised you at it.”

  She watched the man’s face as she delivered her last guess. But there was no telltale look to give him away.

  Damn but he was a hard nut to crack.

  “Anyone ever tell you that you have a wild imagination?” he asked her.

  Well, at least she’d gotten a reaction out of him, Moira thought. “If cops didn’t have wild imaginations, half the crimes wouldn’t be solved. Thinking outside the box is what does it.”

  “There’s thinking outside the box and then there’s thinking outside the whole house,” he countered.

  It was easy to see which he thought she was guilty of.

  “You still haven’t given me an answer,” she pointed out, crossing her fingers as she asked, “Want to partner up for this?”

  “No,” he replied flatly.

  What Moira couldn’t possibly know was that the last thing he wanted was a partner. He’d lost two, not to mention both his parents, and at this point, he felt that bad luck always followed in his wake, striking down anyone he interacted with. He and everyone else would be better off if he just remained a loner, the way he was.

  The man on the staircase had aroused her curiosity to a higher level, but even so, Moira knew she couldn’t force him to be her partner. Nor could she get him to answer all the questions that were, even now, popping up and multiplying in her head.

  “Why?” she asked. “Tell me. Please.” Getting answers would have to be done with finesse, but only if she could get this man to talk to her on a regular basis—which she could, but only if they partnered up.

  The old saying about leading a horse to water but not being able to make him drink ran through her head.