Cavanaugh or Death (13 page)

“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

M
oira 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.

Finished, he walked to the exit. Realizing he was leaving, Moira quickly followed him.

Their partnership, she thought to herself as she stepped up her pace, still had a ways to go before it could be considered fully operational.

* * *

“I had a feeling you'd be back,” Blake said when Moira was finally admitted into his chambers. “Another disturbed grave?” He asked the question as if it was just a mere formality and he already knew the answer.

Moira nodded. “I'm afraid so.”

Because she had called ahead, requesting a quick meeting regarding a possible second disturbance, Blake already had the court order printed and ready for his signature. He signed it now with a flourish. “Are you any closer to figuring out just what's going on?”

Moira shook her head. “No more than before, sir. But I'm hoping we'll get some more answers once we open this new grave.”

Putting his pen down, Blake handed over the signed order. “Well, let me know if you do find anything. I have to admit that this thing going on at St. Joseph's Cemetery has definitely aroused my curiosity.”

“You're not the only one, sir,” Moira assured the judge.

Satisfied they had what they needed, she said her goodbyes and walked back into the corridor.

Pocketing the court order, she headed toward the elevator. “Well, that didn't take long.”

Davis tended to agree. From what he'd heard from other detectives, the process to get a judge to sign off on a court order could be long, drawn out and tedious. This had been like the proverbial breeze.

“Maybe the judge should start a chain of drive-through court orders,” Davis quipped.

She didn't care for the joke at the judge's expense. Kincannon had made things easy for them. Related or not, he certainly hadn't had to.

“Would you rather get wrapped up in red tape?” she asked Gilroy.

The elevator arrived and they walked in. The button for the first floor was already highlighted, but he hit it again for good measure since there was no one else in the elevator with them.

“I'd rather you didn't have such a smart mouth and crack wise all the time,” he told her.

“Sorry, I only come in one basic design,” she told him with a straight face.

“Annoying?” he asked, guessing at the design she was referring to.

Moira ignored his comment and focused on the real reason they were together: the court order to exhume coffin number two.

She glanced at her watch. “Think it's too late to serve these papers on Weaver—or Montgomery—and to get the CSI team out to the cemetery to dig up Mrs. Owens?”

Davis shook his head. “It wasn't too late for those two characters who ran out of the cemetery,” he pointed out.

“Who you
chased
out of the cemetery,” she reminded him. “I'd run, too, if I had this tall hulk of a man chasing me.”

Davis frowned. “Don't split hairs.”

“You're right—” She saw the surprised look on his face and realized he thought she was referring to his last comment. She was quick to correct him. “It's not too late. Crime never sleeps, right?”

“Neither do detectives, apparently,” Davis observed wearily.

“Oh, come on,” she prodded, tongue-in-cheek. “You sound like you're not having fun.”

He stopped just in front of his car in the courthouse parking garage. Most of the spaces at this hour were empty. “I was wrong,” he told her.

She looked at him a little uncertainly. “About what?”

He got in behind the wheel. “Maybe you actually are perceptive.”

Moira grinned as she got in on her side. Once seated, rather than buckle up she reached for her phone again, this time to call whoever was on duty at the crime scene investigations unit. “I just might surprise you,” she promised.

“I don't think so,” he responded. “Not at this point.”

“Don't be so sure,” she cautioned whimsically. “You haven't known me that long yet.”

He slanted a glance at her. And if he had his way, he was never going to. “Like my mother used to say, thank heaven for small blessings.”

She heard the phone being picked up on the other end and temporarily suspended her conversation with Davis. “Hi, Uncle Sean. This is Moira. We've got another grave for your unit to dig up,” she said by way of introduction.

With a surprisingly minimum of detail, she filled the head of the CSI division in on the newest turn of events.

Ending the call, she turned to Davis. “We're meeting them there so we can serve the court order and get started,” she explained, putting her phone away. This time, she buckled up.

Davis appeared to be only half listening to her.

But she managed to get all of his attention as, settling back in her seat, she asked him, “What was she like?”

He'd already started his vehicle and was now pulling out of the parking space. “What was
who
like?” he asked, turning to the right and following an endless flow of arrows to get out of the underground maze. “I swear it's like playing leapfrog with you.”

Moira didn't take offense. She was beginning to know him at this point and she knew he was being defensive. “Your mother.”

His eyes on the winding path out to the street, Davis nonetheless stiffened. “Why are you asking me that now?” he demanded.

“You just brought her up—that ‘thank heaven for small blessings' line,” she reminded him when he said nothing. “What was she like?” Moira repeated.

He shrugged irritably. “I don't know. She was a mother,” he answered flatly. “What do you want me to say?” he snapped.

“Something personal,” she said honestly.

He had no intentions of getting personal—with her or anyone else. Personal meant forming ties, and ties, when ripped apart, bled.

“Look,” he said, exasperated, “we're working together—for a limited time,” he emphasized for the dozenth time or so. “We're not socializing—”

“Oh, that reminds me—” Moira interjected as if a memory had just crash-landed on her brain.

Had he not been driving, Davis would have closed his eyes, searching for strength.

“Now what?” he snapped, knowing he wasn't going to like what she had to say and knowing, too, that whatever it was, the answer—
his
answer—would be a flat, resounding
no
.

“One of my cousins—doesn't matter who because at this point, you're not going to get the names straight anyway—is having his baby christened and, as usual, Uncle Andrew is having a party—”

“Congratulations,” Davis said in a flat, sarcastic voice.

Moira pushed on, getting to the part she knew he would initially hate. Half the people who had been brought into the fold, so to speak, had to be dragged into it at first. Once entrenched, not a one of them had ever opted to leave. She figured that her family was just what her somber nonpartner needed.

She finally managed to get the invitation out. “And you're invited.”

She could see his jaw growing rigid as he drove. “No, I'm not,” he contradicted.

Moira decided to draw him a full picture since he wasn't getting it. “It's a lot simpler if you just say yes now instead of having the Chief of Ds call you into his office for a ‘talk' in a couple of days.

“Trust me, everyone's very partial to Uncle Andrew,” she pointed out. “What he wants, everyone sees that he gets. And all he wants is to have everyone eat well, socialize and have a good time. Not exactly a sinister plot to take over the world.”

Davis was far from convinced. “What is this
thing
you seem to have about sucking me into your family dynamics?”

She had two choices. She could feign ignorance or she could be honest with him and answer his question. She went with the latter. “Because I think you need a family, even if it's not your own.”

For her trouble, all she got was a dark, scowling look. “What you ‘think' doesn't really interest me, Cavanaugh,” he told her flatly.

“You want to wind up like Marjorie Owens and Emily Jenkins with no next of kin to leave flowers on your grave?” she asked.

Her question made no sense to him. “I'll be dead, it won't matter to me one way or another.”

Moira sighed and, for a moment, he honestly thought that was the end of it.

He should have known better.

Why didn't he want to have someone to care about? Someone who cared about him? No one could want that sort of loneliness by choice.

How do I get you to open yourself up, Davis?
she wondered. Because she really, really found herself wanting him to open himself up. To her.

“What are you afraid of, Davis?” she asked him after a few minutes had passed by.

It was the first time she'd called him by his first name and he couldn't say that he liked it—he also couldn't have said why, and that bothered him even more than his uneasy reaction did.

“What am I afraid of?” Davis repeated, as if to get the question clear in his head. “Female detectives who won't stop talking.”

Her face was the soul of innocence as she told him, “Sorry, don't know anyone like that.”

For an uneasy moment Moira thought the detective was going to light into her—and then he just started laughing. “You are something else again, Cavanaugh.”

“So, are you coming to the party?” Moira persisted, trying to corner him.

“Don't push it, Cavanaugh. We'll talk. Right now, we're here,” he pointed out.

Somehow he had managed to drive to the cemetery without her really fully noticing the fact.

“This is beginning to feel like home,” he joked in a tired voice.

“Only if you're a zombie,” she muttered, getting out of the vehicle on her side. “Okay, let's go find the happy recipient of the court order,” she urged, leading the way to the office.

Considering how much shorter she was than he, Davis noted, the woman certainly had long legs.

The next moment he banked the thought, banishing it as if it had never occurred to him. He had no business noticing things like that about the woman who kept insisting on referring to herself as his partner. He found himself anxious to solve the case. The sooner he did that, the sooner he would be free of her.