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  Davis fell into place beside her as they walked away from the grave and the groundskeeper.

  “He’s not as dull-witted as he looks,” Davis commented.

  Something else they agreed on, she thought in surprise. “I’d say not by a long shot.”

  “He could just be protective of his job,” Davis suggested, speculating. It was obvious he thought the odds of that were rather slim.

  “Maybe,” she agreed slowly, thinking. “Or maybe there’s more.”

  “Maybe,” he agreed. “The shame of it is that we’re probably not going to find out.”

  She looked at him in surprise. “Why would you say that?”

  “Because we need a court order to dig up whatever’s in that grave.” Had she forgotten about that?

  Reaching the car, she waited for him to release the locks to open the door on her side, but even when he did, she remained standing outside the vehicle.

  “I got that part,” Moira commented.

  “Did you also figure out how we’re going to get a court order without any tangible evidence to show any self-respecting judge? There’s no way he or she would rule in our favor.”

  When she merely smiled broadly at him, he told himself not to rise to the bait. He wasn’t going to ask her just what she had up her sleeve. It was obvious to him that she wouldn’t be looking so pleased with herself if she didn’t have something tucked up there.

  His resolve lasted just long enough to open the door on his side and get in behind the steering wheel.

  At that point he finally gave in to the curiosity suddenly and relentlessly nibbling away at him. “What?” he finally asked impatiently.

  Moira played the moment out a little longer, just until she’d gotten into the passenger side of the car and buckled up her seat belt.

  Then, as Gilroy started up the vehicle, she said to him, “The beauty of being a Cavanaugh is that there’s always someone in the family to turn to no matter what the situation you’re facing calls for. Since you’ve made a religion of keeping to yourself, you’re probably not aware of the fact that the Cavanaugh family tree has at least two judges in it.”

  “At least?” he echoed. “Don’t you know how many?” He assumed she was an expert when it came to flaunting all the various so-called branches of her family tree.

  Moira nodded, admitting, “There might be more, but I have to admit that I’m still in the process of learning everyone’s name, the nature of their relationship to everyone else and what they all do within the department—or how they’re affiliated with it if they’re not working directly within the police force. For instance, one of my second cousins is a vet,” she told him, referring to Patience Cavanaugh Coltrane.

  “So what all those words that just came flooding out of your mouth mean is that we’re getting our court order, right?”

  Moira’s eyes, he noted unwillingly, seemed to sparkle like gleeful stars as she happily answered, “You bet we are.”

  Chapter 6

  Judge Blake Kincannon rose from behind his desk the moment he heard the knock on his chamber door. He’d been waiting for them.

  “Door’s not locked. Come in, Moira,” he said, welcoming the young woman he had spoken to on the phone less than fifteen minutes ago.

  She wasn’t alone, as Blake already knew she wouldn’t be.

  He regarded the tall, serious-looking detective who entered in her wake, smiling at both of them with equal warmth.

  She’d gotten through to the judge faster than even she had anticipated. There were definite advantages to being connected to a support system as all-encompassing and large as the Cavanaugh family.

  “Thank you for seeing us on such short notice, Judge,” Moira said as she walked into the man’s fourth-floor chambers.

  “We’re family, Moira. Outside of the courtroom, you can call me Blake,” Greer’s husband told her. He turned to look at Davis. “And this is your partner?”

  Moira didn’t want to correct the Judge, especially since he was about to do them a huge favor. But she didn’t want Gilroy getting upset again, either.

  She chose middle ground.

  “This is the detective I’m working on the case with,” Moira responded, nudging the conversation along in a slightly different direction. “Davis Gilroy from Major Crimes. Gilroy, this is Judge Blake Kincannon.”

  “Otherwise known as Greer’s husband,” Blake told him wryly as he shook the other detective’s hand. “Sorry,” Blake apologized, “I just assumed you were partners.”

  “Just until we figure out what’s going on at the local cemetery,” Moira explained before the other detective could say anything.

  Blake nodded, accepting the explanation. “Why don’t you sit down and tell me what you need for that to happen?” Blake suggested, gesturing toward the two seats in front of his desk.

  “As I told you on the phone, we need a court order to exhume a coffin from St. Joseph’s Cemetery.” She repeated the reason she’d given him when she’d called. “The ground under and in front of the headstone has been disturbed recently and we’d like to see if anything was either taken from or added to the gravesite.” Her words echoed back to her and she gave him an apologetic smile. “I know it seems kind of strange—”

  Blake raised his hand, stopping her apology. “Don’t worry about it. The longer I’m in this job, the less anything surprises me. Do you have any kind of evidence to back up your—I’m assuming hunch?” he finally said.

  “I—we—” Moira corrected herself since she had, after all, brought Gilroy into the judge’s chambers with her “—have pictures of the area in question.” She took out her cell phone.

  Pressing the app for photographs, she quickly pulled up the pictures she’d taken earlier at the cemetery. Turning the phone over to Blake, she slid to the edge of her seat as she watched him go through the array.

  The judge looked over the evidence carefully then raised his eyes to glance at Greer’s cousin. “And you took these...?”

  “Just before I called you,” Moira told him.

  “Certainly looks as if the grave has been tampered with.” Blake turned the cell phone back to her. “I’d say this is definitely worth looking into. Give me a minute,” he requested.

  Pulling up a screen on his computer monitor, he skimmed through a menu until he found the form he needed to sign and turn over to Moira. He hit Print and then leaned back to the small table where his legal aide had set up a new printer just a week ago. Two seconds later, he was holding the appropriate form in his hand.

  “Tell me,” Blake said as he placed his signature on the required line and then nodded toward the silent detective beside Moira, “does he ever talk?”

  “Only when he feels he needs to,” Moira replied, doing her best to look serious.

  Blake handed the form to Moira and turned his attention to the detective who had come in with her.

  “Let me give you a friendly little piece of advice, Detective. Speak up. Cavanaugh women rarely come up for air and if you don’t speak up once in a while, you’ll find yourself just swept up in their wake. I speak from experience,” he told Davis with a warm laugh.

  Since their business was in essence concluded, Davis rose to his feet. The judge followed suit. Davis noticed that the man had maybe on inch on him, if that. “I’ll keep that in mind, Judge.”

  “Just something to think about,” Blake told him. He walked the duo to the door. “See you at the next family gathering,” he said to Moira. “You, too,” he added, looking at Davis. “Andrew Cavanaugh’s known for throwing parties for no other reason than because it’s Saturday, or February, or the sun is shining—and his credo has always been the more, the merrier.”

  “Thank you for this,” Moira said quickly, indicating the court order. She didn’t want to give Gilroy a ch
ance to say anything to the judge about Andrew’s parties. There was time enough for her to raise that topic later. Right now, she didn’t want to give Gilroy another reason to be disgruntled.

  Blake nodded. “Be sure to let me know how it turns out.”

  “Count on it,” Moira promised as she left the judge’s chambers.

  Blake paused to shake Davis’s hand before the detective left. “Remember,” Blake reminded him, “speak up.”

  “He meant that, you know,” she told Davis as they walked down the hall to the elevator.

  “What?” Davis reached past her and pressed the down button. The elevator arrived almost immediately. “To speak up?”

  “That, too, probably,” she conceded. “But I’m talking about Uncle Andrew’s philosophy.” Stepping into the elevator car, she waited until he got on next to her and then pressed for the first floor. Her arm brushed against him as she did so. The warm shiver ambushed her out of nowhere. On a whim, she decided to see how Gilroy would react to the judge’s suggestion if she pushed it a little. “You’re invited to the next family gathering—especially since we’re working together.”

  “By the time the next ‘family gathering’ happens,” Davis told her, “we won’t be.” And that would be a good thing, he thought, because this woman was really getting to him—in a way he just couldn’t allow. “And, besides, I’m not family, anyway.”

  No one else got on and the elevator went straight down to the first floor. “You’re a cop. That automatically makes you family as far as Uncle Andrew is concerned.”

  “Why?” Davis asked. It didn’t make any sense to him.

  Arriving on the ground floor, they got out. “Uncle Andrew used to be the chief of police until he took early retirement.”

  Davis laughed shortly. “Couldn’t take the pressure anymore?”

  Maybe in his world, people did that, she thought, feeling suddenly protective of the granduncle she hadn’t always realized she was related to. “His wife went missing and he had five kids to raise,” she corrected tersely.

  Despite his resolution to steer clear of personal topics, he found that Cavanaugh had managed—once again—to arouse his curiosity. “She walked out on him?”

  Moira enjoyed correcting him. “No. As it turned out, she was in a car accident—went over the side of the road and into the lake,” she summarized quickly. “And when she came to, she’d lost her memory.”

  Yeah, right, Davis thought. He’d learned to hold stories like that highly suspect. “Convenient,” he murmured.

  Moira did her best not to lose her temper as they descended the front steps toward the parking lot. “Not really—and she really did lose her memory. They found the car and everyone figured she was dead even though they couldn’t find a body. But in between taking care of his family, Uncle Andrew never gave up hope that his wife was alive. He pieced together and followed up on every single clue he could find.”

  “And?” Davis asked with a touch of impatience when she didn’t continue.

  Moira suppressed a smile, pleased that she had managed to get him sufficiently interested enough to ask her the question.

  “And eventually he found her. She was a waitress at this little diner up the coast. He confronted her with family photographs and stories and convinced her to come back with him, hoping to jog her memory.”

  The women he knew would have thought the man to be a stalker and would head in the opposite direction. But he asked, “Did he?”

  This time she did smile. “Eventually, yes.”

  He laughed drily again. “I was right. You Cavanaughs are a stubborn bunch.”

  Moira’s grin was wide and self-satisfied. “You don’t know the half of it.”

  “You’re right, and I’m not going to know,” he informed her. Glancing at his watch, he announced, “Less than forty-four hours to go.”

  Rather than get annoyed that he was keeping such close track of the time, Moira said brightly, “Just think, if this job doesn’t work out for you, you can get one as the town crier.”

  He ignored the comment. Instead, reaching his car, he released the locks and got in behind the wheel again. “Back to the cemetery?”

  Moira nodded. “Back to the cemetery,” she confirmed.

  * * *

  Avery Weaver, the groundskeeper, frowned as he looked up from raking a small patch of leaves that had fallen from a large, shady deciduous tree.

  “You again?” he fairly snarled, seeing the two detectives walking into the cemetery.

  “Looks that way,” Moira replied. “We’ve got that court order you were so anxious to look at.” She took it out of her pocket and handed it over to the scraggly man. “And we brought friends,” she added, indicating the navy van pulling up behind Gilroy’s car.

  Written in large block letters on the side of the van were the words Crime Scene Investigations. Stopping directly behind Davis’s unmarked car, the van’s driver and passenger both disembarked.

  Two members of Sean Cavanaugh’s CSI team looked to Moira for their directions. “Which grave is it, Moira?” the driver asked.

  “It’s that one,” Davis told him before Moira had a chance, pointing out the grave in question.

  Moira looked in her nonpartner’s direction. “I see you’re taking Blake’s advice and speaking up.”

  Davis shrugged carelessly. “The man sounded like he knew what he was talking about,” was all he said as he turned to watch the two CSI agents mark off the grave and then begin digging.

  He wasn’t the only one watching. But, unlike Davis, in the groundskeeper’s case, Weaver was looking on uneasily.

  And then Weaver turned toward them. “You need me for anything else?” he asked, addressing his question to Moira.

  “Not unless you know of another grave around here that’s been disturbed or tampered with,” Moira told him.

  The tall, lanky man pulled back his thin shoulders, emphasizing his complete lack of physique.

  “No, but there’s going to be a burial at the other end of the cemetery in about an hour and I should get over there to make sure everything’s ready for it.”

  Moira inclined her head. She saw no reason to have the man hang around right now, getting in their way. For the time being, his usefulness had ended.

  “Where can we find you in case we have any more questions?” she asked.

  “I’ve got a room right off the office.” Weaver pointed in the general direction of the small one-story building. And then he added in a vague manner, “I’ll be around.”

  “Sure he will,” Davis commented under his breath as the groundskeeper scurried away.

  Moira glanced in his direction. “You don’t trust him, either?”

  “The man’s a weasel,” Davis observed. “What’s to trust?”

  Moira laughed. “Well, at least we’re on the same page when it comes to that,” she commented.

  Ninety minutes later, Emily Jenkins’s coffin was exhumed and brought up out of what was to have obviously been the woman’s final resting place.

  The two crime scene investigators who had just hoisted the coffin placed it on the ground next to the large hole they had excavated.

  Riley O’Shea looked toward Moira, aware that she was the primary on the case. “You want to do the honors?” he asked.

  Moira shook her head. The last thing she wanted to do was to pry the lid from the coffin and find herself looking down at a twenty-year-old corpse. “You’re the experts here.”

  “Okay, brace yourself, Detectives. This is not going to smell pretty,” Riley warned, adding, “If you’ve got handkerchiefs with you, I’d suggest using them.”

  Moira shook her head. “Never carry one,” she said just before she felt a handkerchief being put into her hand. Surprised, she looked to her left and saw that
Gilroy was giving her the one he’d taken out of his pocket.

  “Don’t you want it?” she asked him.

  Davis’s expression remained solemn as he shook his head. “I wouldn’t be giving it to you if I did, would I?” he asked her tersely.

  The man was a total puzzle to her. “Thanks,” she murmured just as Riley and Conrad, the other CSI agent, succeeded in prying open the coffin lid.

  The stench that first greeted them was overwhelming and, for a moment, Moira thought the coffee and bag of corn chips she’d consumed in lieu of breakfast this morning was going to be coming up.

  Mind over matter, Moi. Mind over matter, she counseled herself, thinking the words over and over again like a mantra until she finally regained control over her cramping stomach muscles.

  “What were you hoping to find?” Riley asked them, setting the lid to the side.

  “A reason why the grave was disturbed,” Davis replied.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Cavanaugh nod her head, agreeing with his response. He noted that the color had drained ever so slightly from her face. He wondered if she was the type to faint and so positioned himself closer to her, just in case he had to move quickly to catch her.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “I’m fine,” she answered a little too quickly and a little too tersely, even to her own ear. “Thanks,” she added, her voice a little more subdued.

  Riley examined the coffin’s contents more closely. And then he shook his head, indicating that he didn’t find anything amiss.

  “My guess is some kids playing a prank, or maybe this was a frat initiation that didn’t quite gel. In any case, nothing seems to be missing. Body’s in the coffin,” the man reported. “You want us to take it to the lab, or just put it back?” he asked her. “Your call.”

  Moira had just gotten herself to look into the coffin. Wearing plastic gloves, she started to conduct her own review of the coffin’s interior when she heard the groundskeeper shout.

  “Put it back!” Weaver ordered, walking toward the emptied gravesite.