Cavanaugh or Death

by Marie Ferrarella

  Montgomery’s brow furrowed. “I thought that was already taken care of.”

  She’d assumed that since the man hadn’t been around previously, he hadn’t been filled in about the first grave. That was a detail she’d intended to fill in later, once they investigated the second grave.

  “Then you know,” she concluded.

  Montgomery allowed just a hint of a smug look to infiltrate his expression—as well as his tone. “I might play golf more than the average sane man, but not much escapes me when it comes to what goes on here at St. Joseph’s.” He gave a cursory glance through the rear window, which looked out on the cemetery proper. “Mr. Weaver informed me that the grave of one of our ‘occupants’ as you so amusingly put it was exhumed and that nothing out of the ordinary was found. Has anything changed since then?” Montgomery challenged.

  “Possibly,” Moira hedged. “This is another grave that’s been disturbed.”

  “Two graves have been disturbed?” Montgomery asked, looking both skeptical and just the slightest bit concerned.

  “That we know of,” Moira interjected. “There very well might be more that we don’t know about.”

  Montgomery didn’t seem to be buying into her theory. “Why would anyone be disturbing graves here?” he asked.

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Davis replied evenly, answering the man’s question before Moira could attempt to.

  The two men exchanged looks. Moira had the distinct impression that she was witnessing two elks sizing each other up before doing battle over territory.

  “Yes, of course,” Montgomery finally said. “Anything I can do to help. Which grave is it?” he asked, turning on his computer.

  Making himself comfortable, he waited to type the name in.

  Moira gave him as succinct a description as possible of the area, followed by the name on the headstone and the date that the woman had been laid to rest.

  “That’s before my time,” Montgomery told her when he heard the date.

  “The Valli family owned St. Joseph’s back then. I think their nephew ran the place for them. But they left all the files when they sold the place,” Montgomery explained as he conducted a search through the computer’s database. “Ah, here it is,” he declared triumphantly. “Marjorie Owens. It says here that her daughter, Janice, was the one who made the arrangements. I’ve got an address,” he offered, looking further through the file. The next moment he hit the print key and the printer behind him came to life. “But after all this time, who’s to say that the daughter is still there? Or anywhere,” he added significantly, handing her the printout.

  Given that the burial had taken place twenty years ago, the man could have a point, Moira thought. She made no comment on his speculation.

  “Thank you, you’ve been very helpful,” Moira said, folding the piece of paper with the woman’s last-known address. She tucked the paper—after looking at it—into her pocket.

  Pushing back his swivel chair, Montgomery turned it in her direction then stood. “Anything else I can help you with, Detective?” he asked attentively, his eyes sweeping over her.

  “We’ll let you know,” Davis told him, positioning himself so that he was between Moira and the man who ran the cemetery. He looked at Moira. “We’ve got to go,” he told her.

  They did, but she wasn’t exactly thrilled that Gilroy had suddenly taken the lead. But because she had to work with the man, Moira bit her tongue and hadn’t contradicted the detective in front of the cemetery director. Instead she’d thanked Montgomery again for his help and promised they would be in touch “soon.”

  However, once they were outside, heading toward Gilroy’s car, she looked at the detective and said, “That was kind of rude, don’t you think?”

  Gilroy’s response was bordering on indifferent. “He was hitting on you.”

  Moira rolled her eyes. “You never mentioned that you had a vivid imagination.”

  “I thought you women were supposed to have some kind of radar when it came to that kind of thing.”

  “We do,” she replied. “Which is why I know he wasn’t hitting on me. If anything, he was just harmlessly flirting.”

  Davis blew out a breath as he released the security lock on his vehicle. He had no patience with semantics. “Sorry, I’m not up on the finer points. I just know that slimy is slimy.”

  She was about to contradict him but instead she flashed a grin. “Why, Detective Gilroy, are you being protective?”

  “Just get in the car,” he growled.

  Moira made no move to do anything of the kind. “Please get in the car,” she corrected and waited expectantly.

  Davis looked as if he was going to spit fire. But, after a couple of minutes had gone by framed in icy silence, he finally repeated the line she had fed him and ground out, “Please get in the car.”

  “Much better,” Moira told him with approval.

  Then, opening the car door on the passenger side, Moira slid into the unmarked vehicle. As she reached for her seat belt, she glanced down at her hand. There was dust on it where she had touched the door.

  “Ever consider taking this car through a car wash?” she asked.

  “There’s a drought on,” Davis reminded her tersely, glad for the change in subject but none too happy about having any sort of shortcomings pointed out, no matter how accurate she was being or how trivial the shortcoming might be.

  “Birdbath, then,” she amended whimsically.

  “Don’t we have more important things to concentrate on than the cleanliness of my car?” Gilroy asked.

  “You’re absolutely right,” she agreed. “We have more important things to focus on than dirty cars or slimy cemetery directors.”

  Davis glared at her as he pulled out onto the street then relented. He was beginning to learn that engaging in verbal warfare with this woman was an exercise in futility.

  “Where to now?”

  He expected her to say back to the precinct and was caught off guard when Moira responded, “How about grabbing some late lunch while I call my sister, the computer wizard, to see if she can verify that this is Marjorie Owens’s daughter’s current address.”

  “You’re the primary.”

  “Yes, we’ve already established that,” Moira said patiently. Getting direct answers out of this man was definitely an exercise in patience. “Does that mean you don’t care if we eat or not, or are you hungry and just don’t want to admit to experiencing something as human as hunger?”

  He shrugged again, his wide shoulders moving rhythmically in their indifference. “If you’re hungry, I could eat.”

  Moira sighed. He actually challenged her patience even more than her brothers did. They’d probably love him, she concluded.

  “Someday, Gilroy, you’re going to have to practice giving straight answers to straight questions. You do realize that, don’t you?”

  “‘Someday’ is far from today,” he answered her. “I wouldn’t concern myself about it if I were you.”

  She knew he was telling her that they weren’t going to be working together long enough to be facing a “someday” in their future.

  “You mean I’m not growing on you?” she asked innocently.

  He glanced at her for less than half a second. “You mean like fungus?” he countered.

  Moira bit back a long sigh, dropping the subject. “Do you have anything against Hamburgers and Heaven?” she asked, referring to a semi-fast-food restaurant located in the general vicinity.

  His tone gave nothing away one way or another. “Nope.”

  “And with the resounding endorsement, we’re off to Hamburgers and Heaven.” Since he was driving, she gave him the general directions. “It’s located on Yale and Aurora Center Drive.”

  “I know where it’s locate
d, Cavanaugh,” he told her, never taking his eyes off the road.

  Since the place was not the hub of criminal activity, there was only one reason for his being familiar with the restaurant.

  “Do you eat there often?” she asked him.

  Davis didn’t bother to think his answer over. It was automatic and almost robot-like. “Once or twice.”

  Since his answer was so bland and emotionless, he wasn’t prepared for the woman’s pleased expression or for the words that followed.

  “This is good.”

  “‘This’?” he questioned.

  Moira gestured toward him and then to herself. “What we’re having here. This back-and-forth thing,” she said, gesturing again. “In case it escaped your notice, it’s called having a conversation.”

  The look he spared her said he thought she was crazy.

  “If you say so,” was all that Davis allowed himself to say.

  Moira smiled to herself.

  Sometime in the past ninety minutes she had decided not only to get to the bottom of whatever odd thing was happening at the cemetery, but also to get her tall, dark and silent partner to become a card-carrying member of the human race again.

  Even if it killed her—and possibly him.

  * * *

  “You do know that I have other work to do,” Valri asked her when she’d placed a call to her sister while she and Gilroy were waiting in the restaurant for their orders to be filled. “Real work. Official work,” Valri specified.

  “This is official work, Valri,” Moira protested. Because she caught Gilroy looking at her quizzically, she turned her back to him and lowered her voice, wanting to get this ironed out before she said anything to her temporary partner.

  “Just not my official work,” Valri pointed out needlessly.

  “I can’t help it if I’m not a computer expert,” Moira protested. “Some of us weren’t born with an ongoing Wi-Fi signal coming in.”

  “It’s called opening up a basic computer programming book and doing a little studying on your own,” her sister pointed out.

  “Say what?” Moira deliberately made a high-pitched noise that could have passed for static in her cell phone. “Sorry, Val, you’re breaking up. I’ll try to get you later.”

  With that, Moira terminated the call. Turning back in his direction, she saw Gilroy looking at her skeptically. Although she would have happily ignored him, she knew she couldn’t.

  “What?” she asked impatiently.

  “Your signal’s not breaking up.”

  Technically, he didn’t know if it actually was or not, but given that this was Cavanaugh, he definitely had his suspicions that she had just made the excuse up for some reason. Probably because she’d been backed into a corner.

  Moira didn’t bother denying it. “I know that. Val knows that, too. But it’s better than just hanging up on her outright.”

  She saw one of the servers come out from behind the counter, a tray with a number displayed on it in her hands.

  The young woman announced, “Number thirty-three,” as she looked around the immediate area for someone to raise their hand.

  “That’s us,” Moira said, rising to her feet from the booth.

  She was surprised when Gilroy put his hand on her arm as if to hold her in place. Without saying anything to her, he rose and went to take the tray from the young girl.

  Although on a tray, the food they had ordered was bagged rather than plated.

  “Want to eat inside or out?” he asked Moira when he returned with the tray.

  Rather than answer, she flashed him yet another wide smile.

  “You pick,” she told him.

  She was trying very hard to turn this into a decent working relationship. Gatherings at Andrew’s house were always filled with stories about how deep working relationships ran. She always listened on with envy. So far, she’d never experienced that sort of satisfying sensation herself.

  “I’m not sure if I’m up to making such a major decision,” he responded sarcastically.

  Well, she’d tried, Moira thought. “Fine, inside,” she said, choosing for him.

  Mildly curious, he asked, “Why?”

  She looked at him. Gilroy was joking, wasn’t he? “I didn’t realize I had to offer a rebuttal with my choice.”

  “Doesn’t matter to me one way or another,” he told her. “I was just trying for that ‘conversation’ thing you’re so hot about,” he told her as he followed her to the table she’d selected.

  “Sorry, didn’t realize you were actually making an effort. My bad. Okay... I said in here because this way we don’t mess up the interior of your car.” Then, in response to his skeptical look, she told him, “After all, your vehicle’s already dirty on the outside, I didn’t want to make a matching set of it by possibly dirtying the inside.”

  He regarded her thoughtfully for a moment. “You put this much thought into everything?” Davis asked as he set the tray down.

  Placing both bags of food as well as the soft drinks on the table, he deposited the tray off to the side.

  Moira flashed him another one of her wide smiles. Instead of growing accustomed to it, the way he would have thought, he found himself responding to it in ways he didn’t welcome.

  “I’m very deep,” she told him.

  He laughed shortly. “That’s one description for it,” Gilroy muttered.

  “Oh? And how would you describe it?” she asked, curious.

  He didn’t have to stop to think. “The word I’d use is opinionated.”

  Savoring a French fry, she shrugged at his answer. “All that means is that I have an opinion about most things.”

  He restrained himself from laughing at her answer. “How about having an opinion on everything?”

  “It’s better than being wishy-washy,” she pointed out.

  “Well, I can’t argue about that,” he responded.

  Moira laughed in response as she bit down on another large, thick French fry.

  “Sure you can,” she assured him.

  Davis decided that it was safer all around for both of them if he just didn’t respond.

  Chapter 12

  Moira and Davis were almost finished with their meals when her phone began to vibrate, letting her know that she had a call coming in.

  She wiped her fingers on one of the extra napkins on the tray and then pulled out her phone. Pressing the accept button, she said, “Cavanaugh.”

  “You’re out of luck, big sister,” Valri told her, getting to the heart of her call. “Janice Owens died two years ago. I couldn’t find any other next of kin listed anywhere so that lady in the cemetery has no one to put flowers on her grave.”

  Neither did the first person—also a woman—that they’d wound up exhuming, Moira thought, wondering if that was just a simple coincidence or if it was something that tied the two incidents together.

  In either case, Valri had done her job. “Thanks, Val, I owe you.”

  “At this point, you owe me quite a lot,” Valri pointed out, amused.

  She knew that Valri was kidding, but all the same, Moira did mean to pay her sister back somehow. “I’m good for it.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Valri laughed. “That’s what they all say.”

  “You know, that fiancé of yours is having a very bad effect on you,” Moira deadpanned and then said, “Talk to you later, kid,” before terminating the call.

  Having only half a conversation to work with, Davis had put his own interpretation to what he had picked up. “Bad news?”

  That depended on whether or not you were Marjorie Owens, Moira mused, thinking of her sister’s reference to the fact that there was no one left to put flowers on the deceased woman’s grave.

  “Yes and
no.”

  “Are you going to make me guess or do I get to pick which it is?” Davis asked.

  Mentioning the sad fact that Marjorie had no one to put flowers on her grave wouldn’t mean anything to Gilroy, she thought, so she merely summed up what Valri had told her.

  “There’s no next of kin for Marjorie Owens. Her daughter died a couple of years ago. That means we’re going to need to get another court order to exhume the body.”

  “Which you will pull out of your hat,” Davis declared with more than a touch of sarcasm.

  “It’s not quite that simple,” Moira pointed out to him.

  “It’s not quite that hard from what I saw the last time,” he reminded her. “Do I get to watch this court order materialize again?” he asked. “Or do I get to cool my heels in the car?”

  She would have thought that once was enough for him. The man was full of surprises. “Do you want to come along?”

  His shrug was just this side of indifferent in her opinion. “Might as well.”

  Moira laughed drily. “You really should contain your enthusiasm.”

  His eyes met hers. “You want enthusiasm, you should have teamed up with a cheerleader.”

  The way he had phrased his comment was not lost on her. “Oh, so you admit we’re a team?”

  He sighed like a man who knew he was going to have to remember to say even less than he usually did around this woman.

  “I’m admitting nothing,” he answered, “except that somehow I got sucked into this and the sooner we find out what’s going on, the sooner I get back to my life.”

  She couldn’t resist. He had all but fed her a straight line. “Because that life is so exciting.”

  “Because it suits me,” Davis stressed. And there was no place in it for a woman who had the annoying habit of invading his thoughts and derailing them from the very straight, focused path they were on. Even if she did have a smile like sunshine. Sunshine was highly overrated.

  Rising, he took the tray with its empty bags, napkins and what was left of their meals to the garbage container, upended the tray and then stacked it on top of the receptacle.