Cavanaugh Strong

by Marie Ferrarella

  Noelle didn’t like sharing things until she had a handle on it. In this case, she had no answer, nothing that stood out for her as even a remote answer, much less a reasonable one.

  But if Cavanaugh knew her, she also knew him. He would continue badgering her, most likely at inopportune times, until she gave him an acceptable answer to his question.

  She might as well save herself some grief and aggravation and tell him. “I’m trying to figure out why a man who had no family and only one really dedicated friend would take out an insurance policy. Henry had to have had something better to spend his money on than an insurance premium, don’t you think?”

  Duncan shrugged. “Depends. Who got the money once Henry was gone?”

  Noelle sighed, frustrated. “I asked my grandmother that, but she got sidetracked before she could give me an answer.”

  “It’s been a couple of weeks. She’s had a little time to deal with the loss. Ask her now if it’s bothering you that much,” he suggested. And then Duncan paused, studying her for a prolonged moment as a thought hit him. “You don’t think that Henry died of natural causes, do you?” he guessed.

  Noelle pressed her lips together. She still wasn’t in control of this subject and she didn’t want to say things that put her in a vulnerable position. Devoid of vanity, she still liked being perceived as generally being on top of things, not someone who allowed their imagination to run wild.

  “Lucy said he was the picture of health,” she replied cautiously.

  “The problem with pictures is that you only see what’s on the surface. There could be things going on underneath that you have no idea about. Old people die. It’s what’s expected, what they do. Nobody lives forever, O’Banyon.”

  “Right,” she said, blowing out a frustrated breath. “It’s what’s expected,” she repeated. And that could just be the whole point, she realized. “So nobody thinks twice, nobody looks into it if an old man like Henry suddenly dies.” Impassioned, Noelle leaned forward, lowering her voice so that only Cavanaugh heard her. “What if Henry was in the pink of health? What if someone decided to ‘help’ him along?” she postulated. She knew how crazy this sounded—but he had asked. “What if someone killed Henry before his time?”

  “You mean like a mercy killing?”

  “Mercy killing usually involves terminal patients who are suffering. Lucy said that Henry wasn’t sick,” she reminded him.

  “If you feel that way, that your grandmother’s friend was murdered, why don’t you bring this to Homicide’s attention?” he asked.

  For a smart cop, he was missing the obvious, Noelle thought. “And get labeled as a troublemaker? I don’t think so.” She was cautious, even if she did explore all the options. “I need some kind of tangible proof before I say anything to anyone.”

  “If you want, I could bring it to Brennan’s attention,” he said, mentioning his older brother who was currently a detective in the department’s homicide division. “He owes me a favor—or two,” Duncan told her, thinking of an off-the-record surveillance detail he’d performed for his brother recently. That had ultimately brought down a notorious flesh trafficker and was still fresh in Brennan’s mind.

  “Why would you do that?” Noelle had never liked being in anyone’s debt. Her eyes narrowed suspiciously as she looked at him.

  “Because it’s obviously bothering you,” Duncan answered, then asked a question of his own. “Have you always been this suspicious, or do I rate some kind of special treatment?”

  Both, she thought. Out loud she said, “Let’s just say that I like being careful. A lot of people have disappointed me.”

  Her answer made him wonder things about her that couldn’t be answered in a sentence or two. Still waters really did run deep.

  “I’m not ‘a lot of people,’” Duncan pointed out.

  No, he certainly wasn’t. Not with those looks, she thought. And it was precisely those looks that had put her on high alert and her guard up.

  “I like to find things out for myself,” Noelle replied.

  “The only way I see that happening is if I wind up doing what I say I’m going to do—hand this over to Brennan—with no ulterior motive,” he added, thinking that might have occurred to her next.

  “I’m probably making a mountain out of a molehill.”

  “Possibly,” Duncan agreed. “But then again,” he went on quickly, before his partner could shut down the discussion, “you could be reacting to a gut feeling and in my opinion, gut feelings trump a great deal of schooling and logic.” He looked at her pointedly. “You can’t teach ‘gut feelings.’ It’s just something you have to be opened to.”

  “Wait, let me guess. Police Work 101?”

  He let the crack slide and gave her a serious answer. “More like a Cavanaugh credo.”

  For a second she’d forgotten that he came from a family that had more cops than most small towns. Taking a deep breath, Noelle lightened up.

  “I appreciate your support,” she told him and realized that she actually did. “But I’d like to ‘chew on this,’ as you called it, for a while before I ask you to follow through on it.” Because there might not be anything to all this, she didn’t want to really get him involved until she was sure.

  He shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he answered, adding, “Do what you have to do and then, if you feel that there’s anything there, get back to me. My offer to help you is still on the table.”

  She nodded, mentally withdrawing from the conversation. But just before she did, she glanced up at him and said, “Cavanaugh?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

  She inclined her head, as if she was almost embarrassed to say it, then murmured, “Thanks.”

  His grin was lopsided and she tried not to look at it for more than a single beat, because it did things to her, sparked a new kind of awareness.

  “Don’t mention it,” Duncan said.

  She probably would have been better off if she hadn’t, Noelle thought. That she had tendered her thanks left her open to his speculation and she didn’t like being pigeonholed.

  * * *

  Noelle bided her time. She waited until her partner finally took a trip to the vending machine to secure a little energy wrapped in silver foil a couple of hours later.

  The minute Cavanaugh was clear of the squad room, she pushed aside the files she’d been inputting and called her grandmother.

  The woman picked up her phone on the second ring. “Hello?”

  “Lucy, it’s me, Noelle. How are you doing?” she asked, wanting to check on her grandmother’s state of mind before she asked her anything else.

  “Fine, sweetheart. Life goes on, right?” Lucy asked with a note of cheerfulness. “Don’t worry about me.”

  “Comes with the territory, remember?” Noelle asked. “You taught me that.” And then she got down to the main reason for her call. “Listen, Lucy, remember when you told me about how healthy Henry was and that he’d gotten himself a life insurance policy?”

  “Yes?”

  She could hear the patient wariness in Lucy’s voice, as if her grandmother was waiting for a shoe to fall. “I asked you who he left his money to and you never got around to telling me.”

  Lucy laughed shortly. “There’s a reason for that,” she anwered. “I don’t know. He never told me.”

  “You didn’t ask?” Noelle asked incredulously. Was everyone devoid of curiosity? Or did she just have a double dose of it?

  She was surprised by her grandmother’s tone. “I had more important things on my mind than asking questions about such foolishness.”

  Noelle wasn’t ready to give up just yet. “Didn’t it strike you as odd that he’d do something like that at his age?”

  Lucy laughed again, this time there was no edge to the sound, only a flash
of irony. “Honey, there were a lot of odd things about Henry.” And then she asked, “What are you getting at?”

  Noelle wasn’t ready to voice her suspicions just yet. Lucy had been through enough for the moment. She didn’t want to add the possibility of her friend being murdered for the insurance money until she was absolutely sure of it. If it turned out to be a wild theory, there was no point in getting Lucy upset.

  “I’m just filling out the picture for myself,” she told her grandmother.

  Lucy was sharp enough to quickly put the pieces together. “You don’t think that Henry died of natural causes, do you?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Noelle tactfully pointed out.

  “You didn’t have to,” Lucy said. “I can hear it in your voice. To be honest, if I had to make a choice, I would have said that Sally was the one who didn’t die of natural causes.”

  “Sally?” Noelle echoed.

  “That other person I was referring to when I told you that Henry was the second friend I had who’d died in the last few months,” she explained to Noelle.

  Her grandmother hadn’t really said anything much about this first friend who had died. Or maybe she hadn’t really been paying attention. It could have happened when she and Cavanaugh were hip-deep in getting the goods on a designer-handbag counterfeiting ring.

  “Tell me about Sally,” she coaxed.

  There was a lengthy pause on the other end. She was just about to ask if Lucy had heard her when the other woman began to answer. “There isn’t all that much to tell, really. One day she seemed like she was in fantastic shape—training for a 5 km marathon—the next day, she was gone.”

  “Dead?” Noelle asked.

  “Very. Her running partner got concerned when she didn’t show up in the park for their daily run, so she went to Sally’s house—Sally had given her a key. She let herself in when there was no answer and she found Sally in her bed, unresponsive and very cold. It looked like she’d died somewhere in the middle of the night.”

  “And you were suspicious?” Noelle pressed, wanting to get to the bottom line.

  “Well, yes. Sally said she’d gotten a clean bill of health from her doctor when she went for a checkup a couple of months earlier—that was just before she applied for a life insurance policy.”

  Noelle’s antennae went up on high alert. Two life insurance policies on senior citizens, two deaths. Was there a pattern here?

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Cavanaugh returning to his desk. His attention was clearly on her and her end of the conversation. She thought of calling her grandmother back. But right now, getting more details out of Lucy was more important to her than not arousing her partner’s radar.

  “Then Sally had applied for insurance, too?” she asked, just to double-check her facts.

  “Yes.”

  That couldn’t be just a coincidence, could it? That had to be a connection. Now all she needed was the right follow-through. “Why didn’t you tell me about Sally? And her life insurance policy?” she added for emphasis.

  Lucy made no apologies for her actions—or her lack of them. “Well, to be honest, I didn’t think you’d be interested.”

  Now came the big question. Mentally, Noelle crossed her fingers. “Would you happen to know if Sally got her life insurance policy through the same company that Henry did?”

  Lucy paused for a moment, obviously thinking and trying to remember the answer to the question. “I think she’d said something about deciding to go through a broker. Supposedly the broker was going to turn her onto the best insurance company to go with.”

  “Do you have his name?”

  “Her,” Lucy corrected. “I remember Sally said her broker was a woman and that she found women easier to deal with than men.”

  Noelle saw Duncan eyeing her curiously. For once it looked as if he wasn’t having any luck piecing together what was going on. Good.

  “Yes, I know what she means,” she told her grandmother. “Do you remember the broker’s name?” she asked hopefully.

  The next second, her heart sank—then buoyed up again, all in the space of one sentence.

  “No, but I have a card here somewhere. Sally gave me the woman’s card, saying that I might want to get a life insurance policy so that you won’t have to face any unexpected expenses that might come up when it’s my turn to kick the bucket.”

  The last thing in the world Noelle wanted to think of was her grandmother’s passing. “You’re not going to be kicking any buckets any time soon,” she informed the other woman firmly.

  The laugh was short, humorless and ironic. “That’s what I told Sally, but to humor her, I took the card anyway.”

  It was a good thing that she had. It might lead them to something—or at least allow them to rule out something if they didn’t.

  “Do me a favor, Lucy,” she went on to tell her grandmother. “When you go pick up Melinda from school today, could you swing by your place and find that card for me?”

  “Then you do think something’s wrong, don’t you?” Lucy pressed.

  As far as the world was concerned, she processed everything slowly. It was only the brass—and her partner—who knew exactly how fast she could be if necessary. And she intended to keep it that way.

  “Not sure yet, but having all the facts won’t hurt,” she answered her grandmother evasively.

  She heard her grandmother snort on the other end and knew that the woman wasn’t buying that. “I’m not sure where I put the woman’s card, but I’ll give you a call as soon as I find it.”

  “Great.” She was about to hang up when she remembered something else. “Oh, wait, one more question, Lucy. Did Sally have a family?”

  Lucy thought for a second, wanting to make sure she had her facts straight. “A few distant second cousins somewhere,” she recalled, “but beyond that, I don’t think so.”

  “She was never married?”

  “No, poor thing. According to her, she never found Mr. Right. I tried to talk her into Mr. Right Now, but Sally was stubborn. She didn’t want to hear about it. She said that she wanted the bells and the banjos—or nothing. She settled for nothing.”

  Well, she couldn’t blame Sally for wanting it all, Noelle thought. On the pragmatic side, this was beginning to sound eerily like a pattern that led to a fatal end.

  “Do you know who she took the policy out for?” Noelle asked next.

  “I think she mentioned that it was some charity or foundation. Sally was into helping others whenever she could. I told her to spend the premium money on herself, that you only go around once in life and should enjoy yourself, but she was adamant. Said that someone told her it was a good thing she was doing.”

  Noelle could feel the hairs on the back of her neck standing up. Was this “someone” the person who was responsible for her friend’s death? Possibly even for Henry’s death? She knew that sounded far-fetched and pretty much off-the-wall, but you never knew when something would pay off—and truth had a habit of being a lot stranger than fiction.

  “Would you happen to know who this ‘someone’ was?” she asked.

  “Haven’t a clue. I’d better go,” Lucy said abruptly. “School’s letting out soon. I’ll give you a call when and if I find the card,” she promised. The next moment, the line went dead.

  As Noelle hung up her desk phone, she could almost feel Cavanaugh watching her. When she raised her head so that her eyes met his, he had one question for her.

  “What did I miss?”

  She tried to play dumb, hoping to get him to drop the subject. “What do you mean?”

  He laughed, not taken in for a second. “I mean that I could see your detective antennae go up and quiver clear across the room and all the way down the hall. Now stop playing innocent and come clean. What did I miss?” he r
epeated.

  Chapter 5

  “You didn’t miss anything,” Noelle replied in a deliberately calm, disinterested voice, hoping that would be the end of it. But when Duncan continued looking at her, she knew he expected more. “I was just talking to Lucy.”

  “I gathered that much. And...?” he prompted, waiting.

  Why couldn’t she have gotten a partner who knew how to back off and mind his own business? she wondered. “And nothing.”

  “Your grandmother just called to hear the sound of your voice?” he asked.

  He wasn’t being entirely sarcastic since he knew that there was an outside chance that Noelle’s grandmother had just wanted to touch base, to hear the sound of her granddaughter’s voice as a way of dealing with her grief over losing a lifelong friend. He was the first to acknowledge that the familiar offered some comfort.

  But he had a gut feeling that there was more to the call than that. Pressing Noelle a little on the subject couldn’t hurt.

  “She didn’t call me.”

  “Ah.”

  Noelle narrowed her eyes, annoyed at the sound. Annoyed that he had managed to get into her head. “I called to see how she was doing.”

  Duncan inclined his head as if to coax her along. “And?”

  After a moment, she finally surrendered. “And to ask if she knew who Henry left his money to.”

  “I meant ‘and what did she say’ when you asked how she was doing, but let’s go with this instead,” he urged, pleased that she had volunteered something. “Did she know who he left his money to?”

  “No, she didn’t know,” Noelle admitted. “She did say that her other friend left her insurance money to some charitable foundation.”

  This was obviously taking a whole new turn. “Wait, what?” he asked, unclear as to what she was telling him. “That other friend you told me your grandmother lost, he was insured, too?”