Cavanaugh or Death

by Marie Ferrarella

  “Very,” she replied.

  “Then let’s go,” Davis urged. As they walked toward the elevator, he asked, “Do you want to drive this time?”

  Moira shook her head. “Nah, why mess up a good thing?” she asked casually. “Besides, I’ve gotten used to being chauffeured around.”

  “Now that I can believe,” Davis remarked, coming up to the elevator doors.

  “Let’s use the stairs,” she unexpectedly suggested, going to the stairwell door just beyond the elevator.

  That succeeded in getting her a rather surprised, approving nod in response.

  “Don’t have to twist my arm,” Davis told her, opening the stairwell door.

  Not only were the stairs faster for him when he factored in the time spent waiting for the elevator car to arrive, he also viewed them as being far less confining than an elevator car.

  Moira snapped her fingers at the so-called missed opportunity. “And here I was looking forward to inflecting physical pain on you.”

  His eyes met hers and held for just a moment. “Maybe some other time.”

  “Maybe,” she agreed, ignoring the sudden, unexpected flutter she was feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Davis reached the outer door first and stepped to the side as he held it open for her.

  “Thanks,” she told him as she walked past him. Maybe chivalry wasn’t dead after all, she thought, even though the man looked rather rough around the edges.

  He merely nodded. “They were nice, by the way,” he told her, following her out.

  Moira looked at him, caught off guard by the remark that seemed completely out of left field. When he said nothing further, she prodded a little, trying to get him to elaborate.

  “And by ‘they,’ you mean?”

  Davis didn’t spare her a glance. “The flowers you left at my parents’ grave.”

  She still didn’t know how he had concluded that she was the one who had brought them. There’d been no card in the basket to give her away. “Just how did you figure out they’d come from me?”

  Davis gave her a penetrating look as they exited the building. “You really have to ask that?”

  Was he telling her that no one else ever left flowers at his parents’ grave? That struck her as sad, but she knew better than to ask.

  Thinking back to the first time she realized what he was doing at the cemetery at that hour, she recalled that there hadn’t been any other flowers to be seen except for the ones that he had left on the grave himself.

  “I guess not,” she murmured.

  “My car’s parked over there,” Davis pointed it out, officially changing the subject.

  In deference to their renewed association, Moira left it alone.

  * * *

  “So much for being lucky,” Moira murmured to her reluctant partner as they walked into the old-fashioned, quaint chapel and then from there into the small office.

  No one seemed to be around the office, but they could see Weaver through the back window, working on the property.

  “We don’t even know if he knows how to work a computer,” Davis added, thinking the information they were currently looking for had to be on the cemetery’s hard drive.

  Moira considered his statement. “Well, the man looks like he’s probably under fifty and I’ve got a feeling that he’s not as dumb as he pretends to be, so the odds are most likely in our favor.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Davis advised. “He might not be dumb, but the last time he wasn’t exactly cooperative, either.”

  Moira agreed, but that was then, this was now—and she had an idea regarding that. “Maybe the threat of spending a little time behind bars for interfering with a criminal investigation might do wonders for Mr. Weaver’s sense of cooperation.”

  “Maybe,” Davis allowed, but it was obvious to her that the other detective really did not sound all that convinced.

  They found the groundskeeper doing what amounted to bare minimum maintenance by the first row of tombstones. He was raking away clusters of leaves that appeared to be newly fallen by virtue of the fact they still looked green instead of a faded shade of brown.

  At least Weaver did something to earn his keep besides being stubbornly uncooperative when it came to giving out information, Moira thought.

  Coming up behind him, Moira raised her voice as she addressed Weaver’s back. “Excuse me.”

  “Yes?” the groundskeeper asked, preoccupied as he turned around. The partial smile on his thin lips faded immediately when he saw who it was trying to get his attention. “You again.”

  Moira flashed a wide, completely insincere smile at the man.

  “Did you miss us?” she quipped.

  Heavy eyebrows pulled together in a scowl. “No,” Weaver answered dourly.

  “Then I guess it’s unanimous,” Moira said, conveying her speculation to Gilroy as if it were a revelation. “Let’s see if we can make this quick for all our sakes,” she told Weaver. “We need some background information on Marjorie Owens.”

  Weaver’s sloping shoulders rose and fell in a dismissive shrug. “Don’t know who that is,” he told her.

  He turned his back on the two detectives and returned to his raking.

  “Was,” Moira corrected. Then added, “She’s buried here.”

  “Lots of people are buried here,” Weaver replied, still keeping his back to them. “Doesn’t mean I know their names.”

  “Fair enough,” Moira conceded, circling around Weaver until she was facing him. “But we’re not asking if you dated her. We just want to find out who paid for the plot and who notified whoever was in charge here twenty years ago of the eminent burial.”

  Weaver stared intently at the ground as he raked harder. “Don’t know that, either.”

  Was the man being deliberately obtuse? Or was there another reason for his stonewalling? Moira couldn’t help wondering. In either case, he was making this difficult for them.

  “We don’t expect you to know that off the top of your head, Weaver,” Davis growled at him, succeeding, Moira noted, in making the groundskeeper nervous. “But the cemetery does keep records and I’m guessing that those records are on that nifty-looking computer I saw on a desk in the office in the chapel.”

  Again Weaver shrugged, obviously determined to remain out of this investigation. “Wouldn’t know. I’m not allowed on that computer.”

  Moira exchanged glances with Davis. She could well believe Weaver. She wouldn’t want the groundskeeper touching anything electronic of hers, either.

  “Okay,” she said evenly, doing her best not to lose her temper with this man and his singsong answers. “Who is allowed to touch that computer?”

  Weaver continued raking. He acted as if he was talking to himself rather than to the two police detectives. “The man in charge.”

  “Who is...?” Davis asked, his tone making it quite clear that he was reaching the end of his patience with the groundskeeper’s so-called “innocent bystander” performance.

  “Mr. Montgomery,” Weaver answered, raking harder as he continued to avoid making eye contact with either of them, especially Gilroy.

  Moira gritted her teeth. She wondered if Weaver realized how close he was to being arrested for impeding an investigation. “Does this ‘Mr. Montgomery’ have a first name?”

  “Yeah,” he answered, raking diligently even though the section he was working was now clear of leaves.

  She glanced toward Gilroy, wondering if it was going to come down to flipping a coin to see which of them would strangle the man first. She could tell by the expression on Gilroy’s face that he was entertaining the same kinds of feelings about the groundskeeper that she was.

  “And that is...?” she asked tersely, waiting for the man to
volunteer Montgomery’s first name.

  Weaver finally spat out the name begrudgingly. “Robert.”

  Still raking, the groundskeeper was about to try to distance himself to another area until Davis suddenly took a firm hold of the rake’s handle, immobilizing the garden tool—and Weaver.

  “This Robert Montgomery anywhere on the property?” he asked, grinding out each word.

  When Weaver finally looked up—afraid not to—he was almost shaking. “I haven’t seen him today.”

  “Does he have a number where he can be reached?” Davis asked. The look in his eyes dared the groundskeeper to try to stall even for a couple of minutes.

  “He’s got a number.” The groundskeeper’s phrasing was not wasted on either of them. For what it was worth, Weaver was obviously going to continue to try to drag the matter out.

  “We’d appreciate it if you gave us that number,” Moira told him.

  The note in her voice warned him that there would be grave consequences if he didn’t volunteer the number immediately. The fear element came in when she didn’t specify just what those consequences would be.

  “I haven’t got it,” Weaver informed them, attempting to make one final stand.

  His bravado vanished into thin air when he saw the male detective take a step toward him.

  “But I can get it for you,” he quickly volunteered, nervously looking toward the chapel.

  “That would be very nice,” Moira told him, adding a firm, “Now,” in case the groundskeeper missed the salient point.

  Dropping his rake, Weaver all but ran into the chapel, sparing one nervous glance in Gilroy’s direction as he took off.

  Davis didn’t allow the groundskeeper to get too far ahead of them.

  Entering the office, Weaver went directly to the desk and conducted a quick search through a large black leather-bound address book propped up next to the computer.

  Pages stuck together beneath his nervous fingers as the groundskeeper pawed his way through a couple of earmarked sections before he found what he was looking for.

  “Here it is,” Weaver announced, holding the address book up like an offering to them.

  Moira took possession of the book, made a mental notation of the phone number and handed the address book back to the other man who regarded her with curiosity.

  “Don’t you have to write it down?” Davis asked as she took out her cell phone. It was apparent that she intended to place a call to the number in the address book.

  “No,” Moira replied, beginning to press the keypad. “I have a tendency to remember things once I look at them.”

  “You mean like one of those photographic memory things?” Weaver asked, obviously fascinated with the very notion of that capability.

  “Something like that,” Moira replied.

  Hearing the line on the other end of her cell phone being picked up, she held up her hand for silence in the office.

  Less than five minutes later, after identifying herself and explaining to the man on the other end of the cell phone why she was calling, Moira terminated her call.

  “He’s on his way,” she told Gilroy in response to the silent question she saw in his eyes. She tucked her phone away. “According to Montgomery, he doesn’t live all that far away from here.”

  “Is it okay for me to leave now?” the groundskeeper asked almost timidly, addressing his question to Gilroy rather than to her.

  “By ‘leave’ you mean the office or the cemetery?” Davis asked.

  The question just made the groundskeeper appear even more timid.

  “The office,” he replied hoarsely, watching Gilroy as if he expected the man to lunge at him at any given moment.

  Davis waved the man out of the room. Weaver lost no time in scurrying out.

  “Do you strike fear into people’s hearts on a regular basis, or is this a recent hobby you just picked up?” Moira asked him, amused.

  “It comes in handy,” Gilroy told her. Then, moving closer, he looked at her more intently. “You don’t look like you’re afraid.”

  She nearly laughed at the idea that she could be afraid of him.

  “There’s a reason for that,” she returned. “I’m not. I grew up with four brothers. There’s very little I’m afraid of. And you, Gilroy, are not one of them.” Which was a lie. There was something about him that she was afraid of, but it had nothing to do with the standard definition of fear. He made her nervous—and he made her want things that would get in the way of any working relationship they might have.

  Assuming a confident air was getting harder and harder for her.

  His expression remained unreadable. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he told her.

  Looking around the small office, Davis came to the conclusion that housekeeping was not this Mr. Montgomery’s first priority. Granted, everything appeared to be neatly in place, but a very visible layer of dust on the desk, shelves and furnishings had more than settled in on the area.

  Davis ran two fingertips across the top of the computer. He left behind a trail running across the surface.

  Rubbing his fingers against his thumb to diminish the feel of grit, Davis casually asked her, “What do you really think is going on here?”

  Ordinarily she thought nothing of tossing around theories, but this time she didn’t want to get pinned down. Not by him. Not if she turned out to be wrong. She wanted to bring her A game when it came Gilroy.

  “Too soon to speculate,” she replied. “About the only thing I can say with relative certainty is that nobody’s making off with body parts in order to resell them on the black market.”

  “Are you saying that because the body was intact in that coffin we opened earlier this week?” he asked.

  “Well, that does add weight to the supposition,” Moira allowed, glancing at her watch. She was timing Montgomery. “But the main reason is that both of the coffins were buried twenty years ago. Twenty-year-old body parts are definitely not in demand for anything but possibly building your own specimen of a zombie or whatever the popular undead thing is being called these days,” she said, suppressing a shiver.

  Even so, Davis took note of the way she stiffened her shoulders.

  “Not a fan of zombies I take it?” he asked and she could have sworn she saw more than a glimmer of an amused smile on his lips.

  Once it was out on the table, she saw no reason to deny it. She’d always been taught to own her fears and to get in front of them.

  “In no manner, shape or form,” she assured him, recalling, “I even hated ghost stories as a kid.”

  “And now?” he asked with obvious interest.

  Maybe the man was human, after all, she thought. At least he was initiating a conversation.

  “Now I just find them a waste of time. The living have got too many quirks and hang-ups, I don’t need to deal with the notion of walking dead people.”

  “Is that why you’re not in Homicide?” he asked casually.

  “That,” she admitted, adding, “and I like foiling bad guys.”

  Just then the door opened and a tall, older man with hair that was graying at the temples and a small, trim moustache he may or may not have dyed on a regular basis, walked in.

  His vivid blue eyes swept over the people in his office, slowly taking measure of them, one at a time.

  “I’m Robert Montgomery,” he announced rather needlessly.

  Chapter 11

  Moira was the first to reach the man, putting her hand out to greet him. “Thank you for coming in on such short notice, Mr. Montgomery.”

  “Well, it is my office,” the man pointed out. His eyes swept over her and it was obvious that Montgomery was scrutinizing her. “But you did just catch me in time. If you’d called ten minutes later, you would have missed m
e. I was on my way out.”

  Moira guessed that she was being put on notice. He wanted this kept short. Answer our questions the right way and it will be, she promised silently.

  Out loud she said, “I’m sorry we’re taking you away from whatever you had planned for the afternoon, Mr. Montgomery, but this’ll only take a few minutes.”

  “Robert, please,” the dapper man said to Moira, completely ignoring the fact that there were two detectives in his office not just one. “And it was just a golf game. Coming down here just postpones the inevitable.”

  Moira wasn’t sure if she understood what he was attempting to infer.

  “The inevitable?” she asked.

  “My losing to my brother-in-law,” Montgomery said matter-of-factly. “He and I have been playing together for over twenty-two years and I think I can count the number of times I’ve won on the fingers of one hand.”

  “If that’s the case, why would you go on playing?” Davis asked.

  If it were him, he would have given the game up a long time ago—not that golf held any sort of fascination for him anyway. The game moved much too slowly for his taste. There had to be better things to do with one’s time than attempting to hit a small white ball farther than the person playing with you.

  “Fresh air, exercise, they say it’s good for me,” Montgomery answered flippantly. “And my brother-in-law pays for drinks at the end of each game. Winning puts him in a good mood,” he confided to Moira with a self-satisfied wink.

  “We were wondering if you could give us the name of whoever made the funeral arrangements and burial request for one of your older ‘occupants,’” Moira said, using the term for lack of a better one.

  Montgomery sat at his desk, but rather than turn on his computer he looked at Moira and said, “Might I ask why?”

  “We’d like to contact them if possible. We—” Moira glanced toward the other detective, expecting Gilroy to contradict her inclusion of him in this particular part of the narrative. When he didn’t, she continued. “We discovered that this person’s grave has been disturbed and we’d like to see if we can find out why.”