Cavanaugh Stakeout Read online

  Yeah, he’d thought about it, Finn thought. And he’d totally rejected the idea from the get-go. He knew she had to be bright enough to pick up on that. “You are annoyingly persistent, you know that?” he said to the woman.

  Again, she smiled, as if they were sharing some sort of inside joke. “I think the word you mean is stubborn. Polish women are known to be very stubborn,” she told Finn. Before he could say anything, she added, “And if you think that I’m stubborn, you really should meet my sister.”

  “I think I’ll just pass on that,” Finn told her in a flat tone. He hadn’t wanted to meet her, much less any other stray family member, he thought. All he wanted right now was just to get rid of her.

  “Stubbornness really is an asset in my line of work,” Nik assured him. Hoping he might be weakening, she added, “You’ve got nothing to lose if we work together...and everything to gain.”

  Finn finished off his beer in one long draw. It was clear to him that he was not about to get that peace of mind he’d come in for so he might as well leave.

  “I’m not in the market for a hundred-pound headache,” he told her, putting his empty mug squarely down on the bar.

  Nik considered his remark. He obviously was referring to her. “Flattering,” she called out to his back. “But I’m actually a hundred and twenty pounds.”

  “Even worse,” Finn said over his shoulder as he walked out of Malone’s.

  For a moment Nik thought about following him out and continuing to try to win him over, but although she was every bit as stubborn as she claimed, it wasn’t in her to try to wear him down by making a pest of herself. She was fairly confident that Cavanaugh would come around eventually.

  And if he didn’t, she had other contacts to turn to. Contacts who would let her know if and when Finn Cavanaugh and his team made any headway in the search for Marilyn and why she’d been part of that carjacking.

  She remained where she was, nursing her drink until she was certain that Cavanaugh had driven away, and then she left Malone’s.

  * * *

  The phone rang at a little after two o’clock in the morning, jarring Finn out of an unusually sound sleep. Focusing on the light his cell phone emitted, he was almost tempted to ignore it, thinking that that pushy woman had somehow gotten his phone number.

  But being a cop was too ingrained in him to let his phone ring without answering it.

  He picked up the cell and swiped open the screen. “Finn Cavanaugh,” he all but barked into the phone.

  “Yeah, I know,” the voice on the other end of the line said. “Sorry to interrupt your beauty sleep, Cavanaugh, but I think you’re going to want to hear about this.” Recognition sank in. The voice belonged to the man who was sometimes his partner, Joe Harley.

  Sleep instantly evaporated from his brain. Instincts honed on the job, as well as at family gatherings, told him this had to be about his current case.

  “Go on,” he urged.

  “It looks like that woman who carjacked the chief’s father’s car might have just added murder to her list of offenses,” Harley told him.

  Maybe he was sleepy, Finn thought. He wasn’t processing what Harley had just told him. Taking a breath, he waited for the information to make sense. “Start from the beginning,” he insisted.

  “Okay.” Harley paused, then said, “A homeless guy looking for food in a Dumpster behind a restaurant found more than he bargained for.”

  Impatience flared. “Harley, I’m not in the mood for games.”

  “You’re even less fun after midnight than you are before,” his occasional partner complained. Enunciating very slowly, Harley told him, “A homeless guy found the body of a woman. She’s been dead for less than a day,” he added.

  The way Harley had worded it, the body didn’t belong to their suspect. So why—? “And you’re telling me this because—?”

  “The dead woman was clutching a piece of paper in her hand,” Harley said. “CSI managed to get a print off it.” He paused dramatically. “Guess who that print matches?”

  At this point, Finn was really having trouble holding on to his temper. “Surprise me,” he said between gritted teeth.

  “It belongs to that girl you’re looking for in connection with your granddad’s mugging.”

  Since this investigation had started, he had already corrected Harley three times, explaining that Seamus was his grandfather’s brother, not his grandfather. He decided that there was no point in restating that fact to Harley again. Besides, that wasn’t the important part.

  “Where’s the dead woman now?” Finn asked, throwing off his covers and getting out of bed. There was no way he was going to be getting back to sleep at this point.

  “They just took her body to the medical examiner for an autopsy.”

  So far, that was standard procedure. “And where are you?” Finn asked.

  “Still at the crime scene.” There was a pause and Finn assumed that the man was checking with someone, or looking at a street sign. “McFadden and Adams,” Harley added.

  “Okay, I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Finn said, walking toward his closet to get his clothes.

  “The CSI night-shift team is almost finished collecting all the data they found near and around the body,” Harley told him.

  “Still want to see the crime scene for myself,” Finn said, juggling his phone against his ear as he pulled on his slacks. They might have overlooked something. It wouldn’t be the first time that had happened, Finn thought.

  Harley sighed. “Knew you’d feel that way. I’ll stay here.”

  Almost dressed, Finn looked around for his shoes. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” he promised.

  “That’s about the only good thing about coming out at this time of night,” Harley responded. “There’s no traffic to hold you up.”

  That didn’t mitigate the fact that he would have much rather slept through the night. “I’ll try to remember that,” Finn said just before he terminated Harley’s phone call.

  * * *

  Jake Newman, the head of the night-shift team, was just about to finish packing up so he and his people could leave, when Finn arrived. Newman’s perpetually pained look deepened as he looked up to see who had pulled up.

  “Can I help you, Detective Cavanaugh?” the rather nondescript, slightly hunched man asked.

  “Did you find out the victim’s name yet?” Finn asked as he came toward Newman.

  Instead of answering him, Newman had a question of his own. “Things rather slow in the robbery division, I take it?” he asked as he snapped shut his kit.

  Finn didn’t care for the man’s attitude, but he wasn’t about to get into an argument with him if he could help it. “I have reason to believe that this is tied into Seamus Cavanaugh’s carjacking case.”

  Newman sighed. He knew when to back off. “I won’t have any answers for you until I’ve had a chance to go over everything. I’ll leave anything I find for your uncle on the day shift.” Newman couldn’t help himself and let off one zinger. “Or do you people just operate by using mental telepathy?”

  “No telepathy,” Finn replied in a voice that was completely devoid of any emotion. “Just the regular forms of communication.”

  Newman frowned, picking up his case. “I’ll try to remember that,” the night-shift CSI leader said coldly.

  Finn bit his tongue to keep from uttering a retort. Mainly he did it because he realized that the somewhat belligerent night-shift leader was using some of the same chip-on-his-shoulder comments that he had used when he’d talked to that stubborn insurance investigator.

  He didn’t care for being on the receiving end, he thought.

  And she probably didn’t care for it, either, Finn admitted. He supposed that he owed her some sort of an apology.

  Later.

  * * *

 
It took him until five in the morning to finish going over the crime scene to his own satisfaction, and also to stop wrestling with his conscience. He found the business card that the insurance investigator had given him. At the time, to keep from littering, he had shoved the card into his pocket. And then promptly forgot about its existence.

  Because he’d changed his clothes, it had taken him a little while to locate the card. When he finally did, he called the number printed on it, expecting to talk to a recorded announcement at best. He was prepared to leave a message.

  He wasn’t prepared to hear the phone on the other end ring only once before it was picked up. And he definitely wasn’t prepared to hear her voice breathing huskily in his ear. Nor was he expecting to feel that warm shiver dancing down his spine in response.

  “Hello?” He had woken her up, he thought. Why that threaded a warm, sexy feeling through him was completely beyond him—and definitely not welcome.

  Recovering, he asked, “Is this the pushy pain in the neck?”

  Any trace of sleep on Nik’s end vanished instantly. “Detective Cavanaugh, how lovely to hear from you. What can I do for you?” she asked.

  He heard rustling on the other end and assumed that she was getting out of bed. He instantly shut down that image and forced himself to focus on the reason he was calling. “You can wipe that smile off your face for openers.”

  Nik grinned. “I’m not smiling, Detective.”

  There was no way he was going to believe that. “Yeah, you are.”

  “And what makes you say that?” she asked, looking for her clothes. She wasn’t the neatest person when it came to her own things.

  “Because you know I’m calling you because I—” He paused as he forced himself to form the words. She deserved to know why he was calling.

  “Because?” she prompted, waiting.

  It took him another minute before he could get the words out without choking on them. “Because I might need your help.”

  Chapter 5

  Finn’s somewhat surly, tersely worded statement left her speechless.

  Almost.

  “Wait,” Nik responded after a beat had passed by, “let me look outside my window and see if there are four horsemen riding up to my door.”

  Finn blew out an annoyed breath. “What the hell are you talking about? What four horsemen?” he demanded. Was the woman still asleep, or was she just given to babbling nonsense?

  “You know,” Nik answered him calmly, knowing that would probably irritate him even more. “Like the ones that are supposed to be approaching when the end of the world is coming.”

  The biblical reference caught him off guard. His mind hadn’t been going in that direction. He’d been trying to make sense out of what she was saying.

  “Very funny,” Finn retorted darkly. “Are you interested or not?” he demanded.

  It was obvious to Nik that the detective was one second away from hanging up. She kept her voice cheerful as she backtracked.

  “Oh, you had me at ‘because,’” she said. “I am definitely interested.” But he had also piqued her curiosity for another reason. “Am I allowed to ask you what caused this sudden change of heart?”

  Finn knew that the insurance investigator would find out what had motivated him to call her once she got here, but every word he volunteered was uttered grudgingly. “A woman was found in a Dumpster last night.”

  “Okay.” That didn’t really answer her question. Nik waited for more. When the detective didn’t enlighten her any further, she tried prompting him as she held her cell phone close to her. “And?” she asked as she pulled clothes out of the closet and quickly began to get dressed.

  He knew why this was hard for him. He didn’t like asking for help, even if there was no way around it. Besides, he felt this somehow put her in the driver’s seat. “And they found a note in her hand.”

  She felt as if she was pulling every word out of his throat. Calling her was his idea, not hers, but she refrained from pointing that out. She didn’t want him being any more defensive than he already was.

  “What was in the note?” she asked.

  Belatedly he realized that he hadn’t asked that question and thus had no answer for her. That was a grave oversight and one he wasn’t about to admit to. “That’s not the important part.”

  “All right, what is the important part?” Nik queried. There had to be some sort of a connection for Cavanaugh to have called her.

  “There was a partial thumbprint on the paper,” he said.

  Nik finished pulling on her jeans and zipped them. “Let me guess. Marilyn’s?”

  “Give the lady a cigar,” he said, imitating the voice of a game-show announcer. “You got it on the first try.”

  Pulling her hair out from inside her sweater, she shook her head to let her hair fan out down her back. “Where are you?”

  “Still at the scene of the crime,” Finn answered.

  Getting information out of this man was definitely like pulling teeth—slowly. But at least she was getting it, she thought. That was something.

  “And the scene of the crime is?” Nik asked, her voice going up at the end of the question.

  “McFadden and Adams.”

  She knew where that was. One of her favorite Mexican restaurants was located there.

  “Don’t go anywhere,” she told him. “I can be there in twenty minutes.”

  Twenty minutes. Finn did a quick calculation. If it took her twenty minutes to get here, that meant that she lived somewhere in his vicinity, he thought—unless she was coming from another direction, he amended. He supposed he could get Valri to find out where the annoying investigator lived—if he was really interested in finding out.

  The next minute he decided that he would just be buying trouble if he went that route.

  “All right, get a move on. I’ll wait,” he told the woman grudgingly.

  Finn realized that he was saying the last part to a dead phone. The insurance investigator had terminated the call.

  Saying a few choice words under his breath, Finn tucked away his cell phone.

  * * *

  Nik got to where the detective was waiting in just under seventeen minutes.

  As she came to an abrupt stop, he stepped to the side and waited for her to get out of her car.

  “How many lights did you go through?” Finn asked her the second Nik got out of her car.

  “None.” Nik saw the skeptical look on Cavanaugh’s tanned, handsome face. “I learned how to time the lights,” she said. She could tell that he didn’t believe her, so she explained. “If you get the first one and keep going at a certain speed, you can catch a green light at all the intersections. I learned that from my dad.”

  “Your dad,” Finn said.

  He still sounded as if he thought she was making things up, she thought. “Yeah, my dad was part of the original work detail that put in the traffic lights back when Aurora was still in its planning stages.”

  Finn didn’t really know how to respond to that. He certainly didn’t want to travel down memory lane with this woman, so instead he focused on the reason he’d called her in the first place.

  “Let’s go. It’s this way,” he said.

  Finn brought her to the location where the body had been discovered. They both looked over the area very carefully, although there really wasn’t anything to be found.

  “I’m not really sure if this has any sort of a connection to the woman we’re looking for,” the detective admitted.

  “You said there was a note,” she reminded him. That would mean a connection, Nik thought.

  “Yes, and her thumbprint was on it, but for all we know, the dead woman might have just picked the piece of paper up and had it on her person when she was killed. I don’t know if it actually had anything to do with her murder.”

&nbs
p; And she got the impression that he really didn’t know what was on the note, so there was no sense in asking him that again, Nik thought. She tried another tack. “How did the woman die?” Nik asked him.

  That much he could tell her, even though the information was secondhand. “According to my partner, who called me, she was stabbed through the heart.”

  Nik filled in the blanks from the way the detective worded his answer. “Then you didn’t see her?”

  Finn looked at her sharply. “And what makes you say that?”

  Nik answered automatically. “Elementary, my dear Watson,” she teased. Then, seeing that the man appeared to be in no mood for a lighthearted answer—why didn’t that surprise her?—she replied seriously. “It was the way you phrased your answer.”

  “Well, you’re right.” She was surprised he actually admitted that. “They had already taken the body to the medical examiner when I arrived,” Finn told her, his voice sounding exceedingly serious.

  Nik automatically glanced at her watch as she asked, “What time does the medical examiner’s office open?” She began to walk back to her car.

  This was a mistake, Finn thought. He had really managed to open up a can of worms by calling her. Whatever she could add to the investigation, it wasn’t worth having to put up with this would-be insurance detective stomping through his investigation.

  “Why do you want to know that?” he asked her.

  She stopped and turned around. She would have thought the answer to that would have been pretty self-evident. “So we can confirm her time of death and the manner in which she was killed. Why are you asking me ‘why?’” she asked. “I know this isn’t your first investigation—and, believe it or not, it’s not mine, either. You called me so you obviously want me here. Why don’t you stop pretending that you find me annoying and let’s get on with this and be on the same page?” she told him.