Cavanaugh Strong

by Marie Ferrarella

  * * *

  The persistent buzzing crawled its way into her subconscious, burrowing in between the layers. It grew louder and louder. Loud enough to register with her brain.

  The buzzing slowly became identifiable. A cell phone.

  Was that her cell phone, trapped beneath the layers of her hastily thrown off clothing, vibrating and trying to get her attention?

  The sudden thought had her bolting upright just in time to see Duncan getting up to look for his own cell phone.

  “Talk about a rude awakening,” Duncan muttered. He heard her suck in her breath behind him. He had hoped to find out who was calling before it woke her up. Turning around, he saw her watching him somewhat uncertainly.

  Was she having regrets? Duncan wondered. “What’s wrong?”

  God, but she really was a magnificent sight, he couldn’t help thinking. Earlier, desire had colored his perception. But that wasn’t the case now and she was still as bone-meltingly gorgeous as she had been when they had first begun making love.

  “You’re naked,” she said.

  “I didn’t think I needed to get dressed to look for my cell. I think yours is ringing, too. Your cell phone,” he added in case she’d lost the thread of the conversation. She was holding her sheet against her. He found the display of modesty almost sweet.

  Sweet?

  What the hell was going on with him? he silently demanded.

  And why, after that exhaustive go-round, did he find himself reacting to the way she was looking at him?

  “Can’t find your phone?” Noelle asked shyly. She knew she shouldn’t be staring at him like this, but Duncan appeared to be so completely comfortable in his body that she found that she was having trouble making herself look away.

  “I lost it somewhere,” he said, smiling. He forced himself to get back to searching through the scattered clothing. Duncan moved a few more articles around—instead of ignoring the ringing and climbing back into bed with her.

  “Ah, found it,” he announced, plucking his cell phone from beneath the heap just beneath one of the two windows in the room. Opening the phone, he put it to his ear and announced, “Cavanaugh.”

  Noelle saw him listening, saw the serious look on his face and her attention was undividedly his as she tried to gauge what he could possibly be hearing on the other end. Was that a girlfriend calling him at this hour?

  And why was that the first thing that popped into her head?

  The man had millions of relatives, maybe one of them was calling about something, some family business. Wouldn’t that be more likely than his being tracked down in the middle of the night by some girlfriend or other?

  Get a grip, Noely, she ordered herself. He’s your partner, not your boyfriend.

  It didn’t help.

  “Right away,” Duncan was saying, and then he terminated the call.

  “You have to leave?” she guessed the moment he put down the cell.

  “We have to leave,” Duncan amended her question. “Unless you’d rather that I handled this alone.” As he talked, he gathered together his clothing, separating them from hers.

  She forgot to hold the sheet against her as she leaned forward and asked, “Handle what alone?”

  He glanced in her direction, meaning only to answer her question. However, seeing her like that caused him to take a minute to remember what he was going to say. “Some homeless guy was just the victim of a hit-and-run.”

  She waited for more, but he’d paused. “And this concerns us how?” she asked.

  “I asked Bridget—one of my cousins,” he explained even though Noelle hadn’t asked who that was, “to pass the word around in Homicide that we needed them to keep an eye out for certain details in the murders that came across their desks.”

  “What kind of details?” she asked.

  “That homeless guy—he’s dead by the way,” he informed her, “turns out that he had a life insurance policy in the pocket of his oversize coat. The policy was written out for him.”

  Noelle was out of bed in a flash, grabbing her cell from the floor. She didn’t even bother to sit down again before hitting the very first button on speed dial.

  Wearing just his jeans, Duncan came around to her side of the bed. “Who are you calling?” he asked.

  “Lucy,” she told him as she heard the phone on the other end ringing. “She’s going to have to stay with Melinda.”

  “Shouldn’t you get dressed before calling?” he asked her. Although he had to admit that he liked the view from here just the way it was.

  She merely shook her head. “I can be dressed in five minutes,” she promised.

  No woman could get dressed in five minutes, he thought. Looking around for his own shirt, he found it and quickly pulled it on over his head.

  “Five minutes? This I have to see.” He made it sound almost like a dare.

  “Six minutes if you watch,” she amended.

  Duncan grinned at her. The idea of watching her get dressed was only slightly less appealing than watching her get undressed.

  “Make it ten and I’ll share my popcorn with you,” he promised.

  Noelle arched one reproving eyebrow as she regarded him. “You don’t have any popcorn,” she pointed out.

  Duncan shrugged. “Minor detail.”

  He fell backward onto the bed when she pushed him. At the last moment, Duncan grabbed her hand and took her down with him.

  Getting dressed had to wait.

  Chapter 14

  Lucy arrived less than twenty minutes after receiving her granddaughter’s call. She didn’t look surprised to see that Duncan was still on the premises. On the contrary, she gave him—as well as the situation—a quick, approving nod as she sailed past the detective at the front door. “I see you decided to stick around, Duncan.”

  Noelle could just hear Lucy going on about this the next time they were alone. Her only hope was if the woman bought her denial. At any rate, it was worth a shot.

  “Actually, Cavanaugh just came by to pick me up,” Noelle told her, hurrying down the stairs. She tried to discreetly adjust the clothing she had hastily thrown on after she and Duncan had undertaken one more, albeit extremely quick, go-round for the road.

  “Really?” Lucy asked. The woman slanted another, more scrutinizing look in Duncan’s direction. “They don’t pay you detectives much, do they?”

  “What makes you say that?” Duncan asked.

  “Well, your clothing allowance has to be pretty meager.” Lucy’s eyes swept over him. “You’re wearing the same clothes you had on when you dropped her off here earlier,” the woman observed. “Not that you don’t look good in them,” she quickly followed up.

  “Melinda’s still asleep,” Noelle interjected, hoping to divert her grandmother’s attention. The last thing she needed was to have Lucy scrutinizing details. “You can stretch out in my room if you like.” She’d made sure to remake the bed, taking extra care to leave no signs of Duncan’s presence or the lovemaking they’d shared.

  “You’re not planning on coming back tonight?” Lucy asked, looking at Duncan significantly.

  “Never know how these things can go,” Duncan told her.

  “If I get back before morning, I can always sleep on the couch,” Noelle assured her. Pausing to kiss her grandmother’s cheek, she added, “Thanks for coming to the rescue.”

  “Anytime,” Lucy replied. “Stay safe!” she called after her granddaughter and Duncan as they left the house.

  “She didn’t buy it, you know,” Duncan told her as they made their way down the driveway to the curb where his sedan was parked. “Lucy’s a sharp little lady. She wasn’t buying that bit about my coming by to pick you up.” Especially since his vehicle was parked in exactly the same place it had been when Lucy
had left for home hours earlier.

  With a sigh, Noelle stood back, waiting for him to unlock his car. “I know.”

  “Then why bother saying it?” he asked. Unlocking her side first, he held the door open for her. A first in their case, he realized. Apparently the past few hours had left their impression.

  Noelle got in and began wrestling with an uncooperative seat belt. “Because you don’t just tell your grandmother that you’re making love with a guy who’s your partner at work.”

  Satisfied that she’d buckled up, Duncan started up his car. “She’s a pretty cool lady.” Glancing in his rearview mirror, he pulled away from the curb and wove his way out of her development. They were the only moving vehicle out at this hour. “I don’t think that would have shocked her.”

  The word made Noelle laugh. “Lucy doesn’t get shocked, she’s usually the one doing the shocking,” she said. When he slanted a glance in her direction, she responded with a vague shrug. “She has some very definite strong appetites, that’s all I’m going to say on the subject.”

  His imagination took it from there and he grinned broadly. “No wonder Shamus looked like he’d died and gone to heaven at Brennan and Tiana’s wedding. Lucy probably tickled him down to his very toes. Family talk has it that he’s thinking of asking her out.”

  As much as she wanted her grandmother to find someone to care about outside of just her and Melinda, the thought of Lucy getting involved with a Cavanaugh might not be such a good idea. “Listen, if you care about him, maybe you should talk him out of that.”

  He hadn’t expected that kind of a reaction from Noelle. “Why?”

  There was no other way to say it but to say it. “Lucy’s fickle.”

  It was her turn to wonder when her response made him laugh.

  “Number one,” Duncan enumerated, “Shamus is not going to listen to anything a new relative has to tell him—he’s a stubborn old man—and number two, it’s not like he’s looking for a long-term relationship to last the next half century. Hell, the man’s close to eighty. I think he’s earned the right to just say ‘live and let live.’ If Lucy makes him happy, let the man enjoy himself.”

  Noelle was silent for a second. She supposed that Duncan was right. She’d be the first to admit that she had a tendency to worry too much. “I guess that’s not such bad advice.”

  His eyes met hers for a second. “Depends on who it’s for,” he replied vaguely.

  Noelle couldn’t have explained why, but she had the strangest feeling that Duncan was putting her on some sort of notice.

  No, he’s not. Get a grip, Noely.

  It was just her imagination, she silently insisted. She had allowed her guard to slip and now she was supervulnerable. Vulnerable to actions and to suggestions, as well. Coupled with her overactive imagination and she could very easily drive herself crazy, Noelle silently warned herself. As wonderful as the past few hours had been, she should not have allowed them to happen.

  Yeah, right, the same little voice in her head mocked.

  She struggled to rein her imagination and her emotions back to their original borders, the ones that had been in place yesterday morning.

  Sparing a look at Duncan’s chiseled, sexy profile, she realized she was going to have a real struggle on her hands.

  She needed to get back to work, to dive headfirst into details. It was the only way she was going to survive.

  Blowing out a breath, she sat back in her seat. “So what do we know about this homeless guy?”

  Duncan reiterated the first piece of information he’d gotten. “He was a hit-and-run victim a couple of days ago.”

  “A couple of days ago?” she echoed. Why the time lag? The case either fell into their purview or it didn’t. That should have been evident immediately, shouldn’t it? “And we’re just hearing about it now?”

  “No one thought to call Vice over a hit-and-run,” he said, emphasizing the name of their department. “But after I told Bridget to keep her ears open for anything that might be part of the case we’re working on, she recalled someone talking about the homeless guy having an insurance policy premium notice in his pocket. She thought we’d want to follow up on that.”

  Duncan took the left turn quickly, barely making it through the yellow light before it turned red. Noelle braced her hand against the dashboard to keep from leaning into him. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him why his cousin had chosen to call him about it at this hour, but she decided that this Bridget was probably on the night shift and had most likely just found out about the hit-and-run.

  “Another strange thing according to Bridget,” Duncan continued, “was that for a homeless guy, he was pretty clean. He didn’t smell, his hair was washed and he’d had a shave.”

  “So maybe he wasn’t homeless,” she speculated. “Why would Bridget think he was?”

  That, at least, had a simple answer. “Because when he was found, the uniforms canvassing the area talked to a few of the homeless guys camped out under the 5 overpass and they said he was one of them. One of the homeless guys referred to him as Alfie.”

  This was getting really involved and confusing, Noelle thought. Closing her eyes, she leaned back against her headrest and murmured softly to herself, “What’s it all about, Alfie?”

  The classic tagline from an old movie rang a bell for Duncan. “You’re familiar with that?” he asked, surprised.

  She opened her eyes again and sat up a little straighter. “With what?”

  “Alfie,” he repeated. “You just quoted a line from the movie as well as from the theme song. It was a classic.” Opening himself up a little more to her, he added, “They remade the movie a while back.”

  “Let me guess, you’re an old movie buff.” Now, there was something she would have never guessed.

  “Not obsessively,” he replied, then admitted, “but I have seen my fair share of old movies.” He could see that she appeared to be amused by the thought of him watching movies over half a century old. “Hey, when you’re on stakeout night after night, you need something to while away the time.”

  His admission made him a little more human in her eyes—not that she was about to say so. She felt she’d already gotten in way too deep as it was.

  “I get it. You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” she said.

  Changing the subject, Duncan gave voice to the question that was on both their minds. “What’s a homeless guy doing with a life insurance policy?”

  She raised her shoulders in a hopeless, confused movement. “Beats me. Maybe he got lucky, found work and started to turn his life around.”

  “I can buy into that, but why get a life insurance policy?” he pressed. “People get policies to provide for someone else if they’re suddenly not around.”

  “Maybe this guy had a someone else,” she said, thinking out loud.

  “First stop is the morgue,” he decided, making a right turn at the next corner. “We’re going to need a picture of this guy to show around to those homeless people the uniforms talked to.”

  Only one problem with that. “If they’re still there,” Noelle qualified.

  “Let’s hope so,” he said, stepping on the gas.

  * * *

  Edwin Addams dropped his apple when he looked up. The sound of the door to the morgue opening had caught his attention. He jumped up from the stool he’d been perched on.

  “What did I do?” he demanded, glaring at Noelle. “Tell me what did I do. Who did I tick off?”

  Noelle crossed to the coroner. Duncan was right beside her. “What makes you think you ticked someone off—although you probably did,” she allowed.

  The scowl only grew deeper. “Because you keep turning up here to pester me.”

  Stooping down to pick up his apple, she offered it to him. When he comple
tely ignored it, she put the apple on the stool. “Just lucky, I guess,” she told the man. “Don’t worry, Addams, we’re not staying. We just need to take a picture.”

  “What kind of a picture?” he asked suspiciously.

  “The kind you snap with a cell phone,” Duncan answered for her.

  Looking like a man whose head was about to explode, the coroner drew in a deep breath and tried again. “Of who?”

  “You picked up a hit-and-run victim two days ago,” she said. “A guy named Alfie. Has anyone come by to claim him?”

  The heavyset man lumbered over to the large board he had on the opposite wall. He squinted at it for a moment. “It says his niece is sending someone to pick up his body in the morning, so I guess you’re in luck. He’s still with us.” Sarcasm dripped from every syllable.

  “His niece?” Noelle repeated, exchanging a puzzled glance with her partner. “We were under the impression that he had no family.”

  “I guess you can just crawl out from under that impression because it says here that he does.” Addams jabbed a pudgy finger at the line where the homeless victim’s information was written. “Now, are we done here?” Addams demanded.

  Noelle took out her cell phone and held it up for the man. “We need a picture, remember?”

  Rather than answer directly, he waved for them to follow him. “C’mon.” The coroner’s tone was less than inviting.

  Reaching the opposite end of the room, Addams was breathing heavily, as if he had taken part in some sort of a marathon rather than just crossing the room.

  “That one,” he said, pointing to the second drawer from the top, third row from the left.

  Duncan opened it and then pulled out the body residing inside on the slab. The man’s grayish face was a mass of cuts, contusions and bruises.

  “Wow,” Noelle commented under her breath, shaken by the sight.

  Addams looked at her, his disapproval glaringly apparent. “It was a hit-and-run, what did you expect?” the coroner asked.

  “Not quite so much damage,” Noelle admitted. “He looks like he was not only hit, but dragged.” Bracing herself, she snapped two shots in quick succession, verifying that each had come out looking as decent as possible under the circumstances.