Cavanaugh or Death (4 page)

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

A
s 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.

His was not the face of a man who had been won over, Moira couldn't help noticing.

“I say that I don't even know who the hell you are.”

“Well, that's easy enough to fix.” She put her hand out. “I'm Detective Moira Cavanaugh, robbery division.”

He made no effort to take her hand. Instead he repeated her name. “Cavanaugh.”

Moira dropped her hand. She knew adversity when she saw it. “One of the many.”

She attempted to read his expression and found it utterly impossible. It was like trying to guess at the thoughts of a glass of water. Was he one of the ones on the force who outright resented her because of her name? She would like to believe that if he was, something in his eyes would give his feelings away. Disdain. Annoyance.
Something
.

But he didn't flinch. Didn't look down his nose at her. Didn't reel off his list of imagined Cavanaugh offenses.

All he'd done was repeat her name.

So she tried again. “So, what do you say?”

He appeared unmoved. “I say that there's probably nothing to investigate.”

“How can you be sure?” she asked. Then she qualified her question, aware that what she'd say would probably get to him. “Unless, of course, you're the one who disturbed the grave and those two characters in black surprised
you
at it.”

She watched the man's face as she delivered her last guess. But there was no telltale look to give him away.

Damn but he was a hard nut to crack.

“Anyone ever tell you that you have a wild imagination?” he asked her.

Well, at least she'd gotten a reaction out of him, Moira thought. “If cops didn't have wild imaginations, half the crimes wouldn't be solved. Thinking outside the box is what does it.”

“There's thinking outside the box and then there's thinking outside the whole house,” he countered.

It was easy to see which he thought she was guilty of.

“You still haven't given me an answer,” she pointed out, crossing her fingers as she asked, “Want to partner up for this?”

“No,” he replied flatly.

What Moira couldn't possibly know was that the last thing he wanted was a partner. He'd lost two, not to mention both his parents, and at this point, he felt that bad luck always followed in his wake, striking down anyone he interacted with. He and everyone else would be better off if he just remained a loner, the way he was.

The man on the staircase had aroused her curiosity to a higher level, but even so, Moira knew she couldn't force him to be her partner. Nor could she get him to answer all the questions that were, even now, popping up and multiplying in her head.

“Why?” she asked. “Tell me. Please.” Getting answers would have to be done with finesse, but only if she could get this man to talk to her on a regular basis—which she could, but only if they partnered up.

The old saying about leading a horse to water but not being able to make him drink ran through her head.

“My answer is just no,” he replied.

Now what?

Moira took a conscious, figurative step back and shrugged. “Your loss, Detective...?” She let her voice trail off, waiting for him to fill in a name.

Instead he replied, “That is a matter of opinion.”

He hadn't responded the way she'd hoped he would. The man just didn't know how to play the game, she thought, frustrated.

Or maybe he did but just refused to.

Moira took one more stab at it. “Oh c'mon, you've
got
to have a name.”

“Yes, I do.”

For just the tiniest split second she entertained the idea of justifiable homicide. Then, taking a deep breath, she asked, “So what is it?”

If nothing else, the woman had succeeded in making him curious as to how far she was going to go with this. “There's no reason for you to know.”

“Detective,” she said, a slight edge working its way into her voice, “there're just the two of us in this stairwell and accidents can happen at any place, any time.”

Disciplined restraint kept him from laughing at her. “I'm no expert, but my guess is that I outweigh you by a good fifty pounds.”

She was one step below him and from this vantage point, he towered over her. Moira Cavanaugh didn't give an inch as a fire came into her eyes. “The first rule of martial arts is using your opponent's weight against them.”

To Moira's surprise, she heard a dry laugh escape the detective's lips.

“You really are determined to get your own way, aren't you?” he asked her. “Let me guess, you're an only child who was always indulged.”

Boy, did he have the wrong number. “I'm one of seven who had to fight her way to the top each and every time.
Nobody
indulged
anybody
in my family,” she informed him proudly.

There was no point in his telling her that she wasn't the only one trained in martial arts—his parents had signed him up for classes to help build his confidence because he had been small for his age and had been picked on in school. What he'd learned at that very young age had helped him hold more than his own in life.

He regarded her in prolonged silence, then, just as she appeared ready to walk away, said, “I'll talk to my captain myself.”

Stunned—she'd been ready to give up on the man
for now
—Moira wanted to make sure she understood what he was telling her. “Are you telling me that you're willing to partner up with me?”

He didn't answer her directly. “You said your lieutenant gave you forty-eight hours.”

“Yes.”

He shrugged. “I guess I can put up with anything for forty-eight hours—as long as that's the real time limit,” he qualified, looking at her as if he could easily tell if she was lying.

She met his scrutiny head-on. “That's the real time limit he gave me.”

He caught the last three words she'd added on and wondered if that was the loophole she was giving herself. Not that it really mattered. He'd been thinking about looking into the disturbed grave himself, just in his off-hours. What this woman proposed gave him official capacity to do it, which made the investigation that much easier to undertake.