Cavanaugh Or Death

Only when the doors were securely closed did Moira reach behind her head and touch the back of her hair—and frowned.

Damn, she thought, annoyance nibbling away at her. Malloy was right. For some reason, in her hurry to get to the precinct on time, she had somehow neglected to dry the length of hair right in the middle.

She briefly thought about going into the bathroom and making unorthodox use of the hand-dryer, but shrugged away the idea.

With luck, no one would look in her direction until that section of her hair air-dried itself.

Right now she had something more important on her mind, Moira reminded herself as she reached her floor. She wanted to tell her lieutenant about the suspicious scene she’d stumbled across at the cemetery.

Much as she hated being restrained, she knew that she needed his blessings before she could begin to investigate.

Chapter 2

Before getting down to the business at hand, Moira paused in the break room long enough to get a cup of what passed for coffee in the precinct. It was universally agreed that the quality was poor, but at least the coffee was hot. In addition, it was also extremely bitter. The combination definitely revved up her engine and put her in a fast-forward mode.

Fortified and sufficiently jolted into a keenly alert state, Moira placed what was left of the black swill on her desk and marched herself into her superior’s small, glass-enclosed office.

Legend had it that Lieutenant Jacob Carver had once been a passably decent-looking man. Years on the force had etched themselves into his jowl-lined face, giving him what appeared to be a permanent hangdog frown, accented by scowling, bushy eyebrows that came close to meeting over the bridge of his patrician nose; all of which looked more than mildly intimidating to most newly minted detectives assigned to his squad.

Although Moira didn’t welcome interaction with the less-than-jovial man, she wasn’t intimidated by him, either. Growing up in a family of seven, most of which had excelled in rowdiness before they had reached the age of three, had given her a spine of steel and a sense of self that served Moira quite well in her chosen field. She was polite, and deferred to higher authority when she had to, but she was never intimidated.

The door to Carver’s office was closed. He wasn’t—and never had been—an open-door kind of superior. If a subordinate wanted an audience with the man, they had to follow a number of rules—the first of which was knocking before entering. The second of which was to be invited in before entering.

Moira paused to knock and then, not waiting for an invitation, she opened the lieutenant’s door. “Got a minute, Lieutenant?”

“Got sixty of them in every hour,” he responded without looking up from the report he was currently writing.

Since Carver hadn’t said no, Moira took that as an invitation by default and proceeded to enter the man’s inner sanctum.

“I’d like to run something past you,” she told the man, closing the door behind her.

Ordinarily she would have just left it open, but she knew that Carver was incredibly secretive about every conversation he had with anyone, especially any of his people. It didn’t matter about what. He liked maintaining an air of secrecy.

Carver ignored her for a moment, undoubtedly with the hope that she would simply go away. But everyone in the precinct had come to realize that the name Cavanaugh was synonymous with stubbornness and, though it irritated him, he’d learned that the one assigned to his division was no exception.

So when Moira remained inside the room, he sighed, put down his pen—a holdout of a bygone era, Carver still liked to use pen and paper rather than keyboard and mouse—and looked up.

“And what is it that you want to run past me, Cavanaugh?” he asked wearily.

Moira had long since decided not to take offense at the way Carver uttered her surname. There were Cavanaughs in every department of the precinct and, while most of the police personnel were on friendly terms with them, there were others who were not. The resentful ones believed that the Cavanaugh name instantly bought those who wore it a certain amount of leeway and gave them access to shortcuts that other officers and detectives were not privy to.

Carver was on the fence when it came to buying into that philosophy.

She could, however, detect the resentment in her lieutenant’s voice whenever he said her last name in a tone that sounded as if he was partially taunting her. Such as now.

“When I was out for my run this morning—” Moira started.

As she began to answer his question, Carver reached for a powdered-sugar-dusted cruller, one of two that he always picked up every morning on his way to the precinct. He paused for a moment, giving her a dark look as if she’d thrown the line in to mock him and the pear-like shape his body had taken on over the years.

“Oh, yeah, I forgot. You’re big on health, aren’t you?”

The look in Carver’s brown eyes challenged her as he bit into his cruller with a vengeance. Powdered sugar rained down on the page he’d been writing on, but he seemed not to notice.

“It wakes me up,” Moira replied matter-of-factly. She wasn’t about to get sucked into a debate about the pros and cons of what she did in her private life. “Anyway, as I passed by St. Joseph’s Cemetery entrance—”

Carver stopped eating. “You run past the cemetery?” he asked incredulously. “Maybe you should transfer to Homicide if you like dead people so much.”

Moira had no idea how the man managed to make the leap from what she was telling him by way of background information to what he’d just said, but again, she detected the antagonistic note in his voice and didn’t rise to the bait.

“I like being on this squad just fine, sir,” she replied. “Anyway, these two figures—”

“Figures?” he questioned skeptically. “You mean, like, zombies?” It was clear that he was mocking her and not about to take anything she said seriously unless she forced him to acknowledge it in that light.

“No. Like, robbers, sir,” Moira corrected matter-of-factly, doing her best to get to her point and not be sidetracked by his interjections. “They were dressed in black and wearing ski masks. One of them ran right into me and just kept going—”

Carver dusted off his hands and reached for the crumpled napkin in the bag that contained the crullers. “I’m guessing there’s a point to this ghost story, Detective.”

“There is, sir. I went into the cemetery to find out why the two figures were fleeing—”

He eyed her impatiently. “Let me guess, Dracula was after them.”

She hadn’t wanted to mention this until she’d gotten Carver to agree to let her investigate the tampered-with gravesite. “No, as a matter of fact, there was some blond guy running after them—”

“Ah, the plot thickens,” Carver mocked. “Does this ‘blond guy’ have a name?”

“I’m sure he does, sir, but he ran by too fast for me to ask him,” she said, now impatiently trying to get to her point.

“Too bad, this sounded like it might have gotten interesting.” Carver looked wistfully at the second cruller but apparently decided to wait until he was alone again before having it. “Is there a point to this haunting little tale, Cavanaugh?”

“I went into the cemetery and saw that one of the headstones had been disturbed. I think—as strange as it might sound—that they were trying to rob a grave.”

Carver stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. Certainly she’d lost his interest, mild as it had been to begin with. “And you want to do what about that?”

Moira squared her shoulders defensively a little bit as she said, “I’d like permission to investigate the site so I can see if they were trying to dig something up.”

Carver’s frown deepened. To his way of thinking, he had likely indulged the detective way too long. It was obvious that he wanted her out of his office and out of his thinning hair. “In case it has escaped your attention, Cavanaugh, this is the robbery division.”

“I know that, sir,” Moira answered evenly, painfully aware that shouting at the man would get her nowhere except reprimanded—if not suspended. “Grave robbing would fall under that heading.”

“Grave robbing,” he repeated, clearly stunned.

This wasn’t going well but Carver, despite all his foibles, was, at bottom, a decent detective, or had been before he’d assumed command of Robbery. That was the part of him she was attempting to reach.

“Yes, sir.”

His eyes narrowed as he pinned her in place. “Who complained?”

Moira wasn’t sure what he was getting at. “Excuse me, sir?”

“Who complained?” he repeated evenly before spelling it out for her. “In order to go out and investigate this so-called ‘headstone disturbance’ we need to have someone file a complaint.”

The lieutenant was crossing his t’s and dotting his i’s. He only did that when it served his purpose—or he didn’t want to okay something. She knew for a fact the man bent rules when he wanted to.

Playing along, she said, “Okay, I’ll file.”

Carver sighed dramatically. “Didn’t anyone in that family of yours teach you anything, Cavanaugh? You can’t be the one to file a complaint. In this case, as you’ve laid it out, you’re a jogger, not an interested party.”

“But I’m very interested,” she persisted, picking up on the word he’d used. “What if there’s a cult of grave robbers out there?”

“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.