Cavanaugh or Death Read online

  His eyes narrowed as he glared at her. “That’s called hot air,” Davis pointed out.

  “Potato, potato,” she countered. “By the way,” she told him, completely devoid of fanfare or ego, “I’m primary on this.” It was best to lay down the ground rules right from the start.

  Moira fully expected the detective to balk at that and was surprised when he merely shrugged.

  “Figured you would be,” he commented.

  Moira congratulated herself on containing her surprise. “Oh, and why’s that?”

  “You brought the case to me, not the other way around.”

  “I’ve got a hunch you don’t bring anything to anybody,” she couldn’t help saying. The man definitely wasn’t one of those kids whose report card read, “Works and plays well with others.”

  Still, she had to admit that he intrigued her. Maybe even more than just a little.

  Gilroy studied her for a prolonged moment and she had absolutely no idea what was going on in the detective’s head. She really hoped that this wasn’t going to be a regular thing while they worked together. Moira hated being in the dark about anything, especially when it came to her partner. Warner wasn’t a bundle of joy, but he was very predictable and that, in turn, made her feel confident.

  “Maybe we will work together well, after all,” he exhorted.

  That could have knocked her over with a feather. It was official. Detective Davis Gilroy was entirely unpredictable.

  Clearing her throat, Moira moved on.

  “Okay, first order of business, we take the elevator down. I get enough exercise first thing every morning jogging around this city for an hour.”

  “Every morning?” he questioned, making it sound as if he found her claim suspect.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Why?”

  She gave him the same answer she gave herself every morning. “It wakes me up.”

  “Getting out of bed should be able to do that for you,” he said drily.

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” she quipped, her remark indicating that it clearly didn’t.

  With that, she led the way to the far end of the hall where the elevator was located. She pressed for it, hoping that it would show up before Gilroy decided to take the stairs again. She wasn’t altogether certain the man would wait for her by the precinct’s rear doors if he got there first.

  Though she had been the one to talk him into joining forces with her, she had no idea what to expect from this tall, handsome walking clam.

  The next moment she made a mental note to ask Valri to look into his background and give her a thumbnail sketch. Maybe if she had that, she’d be a little more prepared when it came to what to expect from him.

  She had a very strong feeling that even after they spent some time on the job together, Gilroy wasn’t the type to fill in the blanks unless he was absolutely forced to. And while she did like her share of surprises, she also liked to know what she was getting herself into.

  Her instincts told her that Gilroy was a good cop and a damn fine detective—what she’d told him about her reasoning was true—but that still didn’t tell her enough about Gilroy the man, other than that he was an only child—and that was something she’d uncovered on her own. Most of all, she wanted to know how far she could trust him, and if he had her back.

  “You want to drive?” she asked him as they got into the elevator.

  He looked at her before answering.

  She was beginning to think that carefully analyzing the person he was talking to was a thing with him and that he never spoke just off the cuff.

  “You don’t?” he asked her after a beat.

  Moira shrugged. “I don’t care one way or the other. Why?”

  “I just figured that, as primary, you’d want to be in control.”

  His reasoning was just a tad flawed. Odd as it might have seemed, that gave her a little bit of hope again. She wasn’t after perfect when it came to a partner, she was after sharp.

  “Driving a car doesn’t make me in control. Staying in control of the situation makes me in control,” she told him matter-of-factly. “That doesn’t include insisting on playing a glorified taxi driver.”

  Her response had him regarding her thoughtfully for another long moment before conceding, “Okay, I’ll drive.”

  She had a hunch that he preferred it that way. Score, Cavanaugh side.

  Contrary to the ending in Casablanca, Moira thought, this did not have the earmarks of the beginning of a long, beautiful friendship.

  But she would give it her best shot—at least for now. She was a firm believer in working with the present. That way, if all went well, the future would take care of itself.

  Chapter 5

  “I’m assuming that you want to use your car,” Davis said, waiting for her to point the vehicle out in the parking lot.

  “Why would you assume that?” Moira asked. “We’ll use yours. After all, you’re used to the way your car handles and you’re the one who’s driving.”

  Davis had to admit her reasoning made sense. “Logical.”

  “You sound surprised,” she noted.

  He raised and lowered his shoulders in a vague, disinterested shrug. “Maybe I am,” Davis allowed, leading the way to his vehicle.

  “Okay, partner,” she said, getting into his car, “our first stop is going to be the cemetery.”

  Gilroy had just turned the key in the ignition, but the car remained in Park. “Don’t call me that,” he retorted angrily. “You are not my partner.”

  “Don’t be shy, Gilroy,” she said to him. “Tell me what you really think.”

  His flash of temper had taken even him by surprise. He worked now to get it under control. “I think you should call me by my name or just detective.”

  Moira stared at the man in the driver’s seat, wondering just what the hell had happened here. “But not ‘partner.’”

  One look at his face and she could see that there was no way to penetrate the barrier he’d just thrown up. “Not partner,” he echoed.

  And they said women were difficult to deal with, Moira thought sarcastically.

  But she’d gone out of her way to ask for him. Rescinding her request so early into the game was out of the question. She was stuck—at least for the next forty-seven and a half hours.

  “Mind if I ask why?” she asked.

  “Yes—” he bit the word off “—I do mind.”

  Okay, there was just so much patience she had available. This was going to get resolved—one way or another.

  “Well, too bad,” she retorted. “I’m primary and if you’re going to bite my head off, I’m going to need to know why.”

  What he wanted to say was that it was none of her business—but maybe, in a way, it was. So he grudgingly dispensed a few words. “Because I refuse to have anyone else on my conscience.”

  Moira shook her head. “Still need more of an explanation than that,” she informed him. “And put the car into Drive—I’m assuming you can drive and talk at the same time,” she interjected, “because right now, we’re wasting time.”

  Scowling, Davis did as she’d asked, at least as far as the vehicle was concerned. Backing out of the space he was in, the detective shifted the transmission into Drive and left the precinct’s rear parking lot.

  “Okay, you’re driving,” she noted after several minutes of silence had gone by, “but that’s only half of what I asked you to do. Talk to me, Gilroy—notice how I used your name there and didn’t make a reference to what most will assume is our on-the-job relationship? Why did you just jump down my throat when I called you my p—”

  Unwilling to hear the term, Davis cut her off. “Because the last two people who called themselves that are in the same cemetery we
’re driving to right now.”

  “So you lost your part—” she began and again she got no further.

  “I lost two,” Davis emphasized. “Two of them in three years.”

  “Unfortunate,” she allowed, “as well as unusual. But it happens. More than a lot of us like to think about, but that still doesn’t mean—”

  “It means that I don’t want another partner. I only agreed to go along with this because it’s got a preset time limit. As far as I’m concerned, we’re just two detectives from two entirely different departments, riding in a car together and trying to get a few answers about a possible case.”

  He wasn’t about to be preached to by a so-called golden girl from a family who, for the most part, led charmed lives.

  “Did each of them take a bullet for you?” Moira asked.

  Pulling over to the curb, Davis abruptly stopped the car. “No,” he retorted. “Anything else?”

  Yes, there was something else, she thought. She wanted to know why he was being so mysterious about it. Everyone had wounds, some large, some small, but no one in this line of work came out the other end untouched.

  “If they didn’t take a bullet for you, why are you being so hard on yourself?” she asked.

  “Because they took a bullet,” he snapped. It was obvious that he thought she was being obtuse.

  “And you’re...what? Some superhero who’s supposed to deflect bullets from hitting your partner?”

  Disgusted, Davis turned off the engine. “This isn’t going to work.”

  “No, it’s not,” she agreed. But instead of telling him to turn around and go back to the precinct—the way he fully expected her to—Moira said, “Not until you get rid of that massive chip on your shoulder and stop snapping at every second word I say.”

  He glared at her. She was really getting on his nerves. “Maybe you talk too much.”

  Her shrug was indifferent. “I’ve been told that. But you obviously don’t talk enough,” she countered pointedly.

  “You just said I jumped down your throat.”

  “Talk.” She emphasized the word again. “Not snap.” Then, before he could stop her, Moira leaned over and pulled the key out of the ignition. To his amazement, she hid it behind her back. “Now we’re not going anywhere until you tell me what else is bothering you.”

  His look only grew darker. Anyone else might have relented—or at least cringed. Moira stubbornly held her ground.

  “Other than you?” he retorted.

  Moira inclined her head. “Other than me.”

  He’d had just about enough of this back-and-forth jousting. “We’re supposed to be solving a possible case,” he reminded her tersely. “Not having a roadside therapy session.”

  Instead of backing down the way he hoped, she flashed an annoying smile at him.

  “Two for the price of one, Gilroy—no charge for the therapy session,” she added glibly. “Now, what’s this thing you have against having a partner? You don’t strike me as someone who’s superstitious,” she told him.

  It wasn’t superstition if you kept getting proved right time after time—beginning with his parents. He’d survived the accident, they hadn’t. Likewise with his partners—they’d either gotten pinned down or ambushed. Each time it was the same. He’d survived. They hadn’t. He wasn’t about to go through this again.

  “And maybe you’re not as good at reading people as you think,” he told her, about to open the door on his side.

  “Where are you going?” Moira demanded.

  He didn’t have to tell her but he did. “Back to the precinct. We’re not that far away from it. I can walk from here.”

  He started to swing open the door on his side when she leaned over and grabbed him by the arm. Because she’d caught him by surprise, she managed to get him to sink down in his seat again.

  “And tell your captain what?” she asked.

  “That you couldn’t put up with me and decided you’d made a mistake. I won’t have any trouble convincing him,” he assured her tersely. “Now, are you going to let go of my wrist or are you waiting for me to gnaw it off?”

  A hint of a smile curved the corners of her mouth. “Might be interesting to watch at that,” she allowed. Then, growing serious, she said, “Here,” and returned his key to him.

  Davis looked down at it in his hand. “You want me to drive back to the precinct?” he grumbled. Maybe she was feeling guilty for putting him through the wringer. He didn’t care about the reason; he just wanted this to be over.

  “No,” Moira countered patiently, enunciating each word, “I want you to drive to the cemetery. The gravesite we’re investigating isn’t in the precinct, it’s in the cemetery.”

  Davis regarded the key he was holding thoughtfully, then finally put it into the ignition and turned it. The engine came back to life. Grudgingly, he began to drive the vehicle without sparing her a glance. “You don’t give up easily, do you?”

  “See, you’re learning about me already,” Moira remarked far too cheerfully to suit his mood.

  “We’re not going to be together long enough to learn things about each other.” His voice was dark and foreboding.

  She merely smiled at him in response. “We’ll see,” she told him.

  They might not even last the entire forty-eight hours, Davis couldn’t help thinking. Not if he gave in to this growing urge he had to strangle her.

  * * *

  Moira’s second, far more intense look around the area where she’d first noticed that the gravesite had been disturbed convinced her that her hunch was right. Gilroy had obviously stumbled across something going on at the cemetery.

  From the looks of the immediate area directly in front of the headstone, the ground had been disturbed, quite possibly dug up, very recently.

  She squatted for an even closer look and was surprised when Gilroy followed suit, squatting directly beside her.

  When she looked at him quizzically, he said, “Two sets of eyes, remember?”

  She nodded then asked the next logical question. “And what do your eyes see?”

  “Same as yours,” he answered. “The dirt in front of the headstone’s been freshly packed.”

  Well, at least they were on the same page about that, she thought.

  “Yet there’s been no addition to the headstone,” she observed. “That means that no spouse or relative is now eternally resting beside our original occupant, Mrs. Emily Jenkins,” she said, glancing at the name she’d noted earlier. “So why the disturbance?” she asked, looking thoughtfully at the ground in front of the headstone.

  “Somebody obviously dug her up,” Gilroy said, a touch of impatience in his voice.

  Maybe not the woman herself, but at least the coffin, she thought. Out loud she allowed, “Maybe. But if so, why?”

  “Only one way to find out,” Davis answered, pointing out the obvious.

  “Can I help you?”

  The unexpected question came from directly behind them.

  Startled, Moira swung around and found herself looking at a somewhat rumpled, sleepy-eyed man in tan, grass-stained jeans and a work shirt. The man, most likely the groundskeeper, Moira guessed, was round-shouldered, looked to be around forty-plus and did not appear to be holding up all that well.

  He was also scowling.

  “Detectives Cavanaugh and Gilroy,” Moira said officially, identifying herself and the man beside her before venturing to even begin to answer the groundskeeper’s question. First she had a question of her own. “And you are...?”

  “Asking you if I can help you,” the man replied, repeating his question.

  “You could start with your name,” Moira responded. She followed her request with a ghost of a smile that she didn’t mean.

  The man’s deep
-set eyes grew even smaller as he regarded her closely. “Why do you want to know my name?” he asked.

  “He’s as helpful as you are,” Moira murmured to the detective beside her. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimmer of Gilroy’s frown. “Because we’re investigating a possible crime committed here,” she told the groundskeeper.

  “There’s been no crime,” the man informed them indignantly, looking from one detective to the other. “I would have known.”

  Because you’re so sharp and on top of things, Moira thought.

  “The ground around the grave’s been disturbed,” Davis pointed out, annoyance framing every syllable. Unlike Moira, he had no patience and no time to waste with niceties.

  But at least he speaks!

  It was all Moira could do to keep the words from leaping from her lips. She gave Davis an approving look that only seemed to intensify his scowl.

  “Sometimes animals dig around here,” the groundskeeper told them, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

  “Not the full length and width of a grave,” Moira countered. “If we dig up the grave, what’ll we find?” she asked the older man pointedly.

  “A lawsuit slapped on the police department by the man’s family as well as the cemetery unless you have a court order.” He looked from one detective to the other, this time with a trace of superiority evident. “You don’t have a court order with you, do you?” the groundskeeper assumed smugly.

  The way he asked, it was obvious that he expected a negative response to his question.

  Rather than say anything to the man, Moira took out her cell phone and began snapping photographs of the gravesite from all angles. Because he stood as immobile as one of the marble statues, she moved the groundskeeper out of the way then proceeded to take a full panoramic view of the grave in question.

  “We’ll be back,” she promised. “And if that grave looks any different than the way it does on these pictures, you’re going to have a great deal of explaining to do,” she promised him. With that, she turned on her heel and addressed her reluctant partner. “Let’s go, Gilroy.”