Marie Ferrarella - Cavanaugh Or Death

The thought that she’d had more graceful moments flashed through Moira’s mind.

Stopping for a second, the dour-looking stranger put his hand out to her. Her ego bruised, Moira accepted his help. There was a time for pride and a time for practicality. This was one of those latter times.

“You okay?” he asked in a resonant voice as he pulled her to her feet.

“Yes.”

She was about to add a coda that it actually depended on his definition of “okay” since her unexpected sudden meeting with the pavement had jarred her to the roots of her teeth, but Moira never got the opportunity.

The blond stranger was off and running after the duo in less time than it took for her words to form in her head.

Dusting herself off, Moira stared after the stranger’s departing figure, no longer able to see the two he was chasing and trying to overtake. They’d had too much of a head start on him.

It seemed as if everyone was in top physical form, she thought grudgingly. The next moment the chivalrous, silent stranger disappeared from her view.

Moira sighed. Maybe all this was just a figment of her bored imagination, but somehow she strongly doubted it.

At this point dawn was laying the finishing touches for its dramatic entrance, turning up the light around the edges of the visible world and then multiplying that light and spreading it around the surrounding area.

Moira turned and looked at the entrance to the cemetery. It no longer appeared like the scene of countless ghost stories waiting to be told—or lived—just a place where people brought their loved ones so the latter could have a final resting place.

Moira regarded the cemetery thoughtfully.

Just what was the big deal in the cemetery at this hour of the morning, anyway? The duo that had run right over her certainly seemed as if they could belong to a cult, but that wasn’t true of the man who had helped her to her feet then taken off before she could thank him.

Could he have been the night watchman or maybe the groundskeeper?

Curious, Moira glanced at her watch. If she ran at her best top speed to her condo, she could make it in twelve minutes. That left her about five to investigate whatever had been going on in the cemetery—if there actually had been something going on.

She regarded the grounds beyond the arched entrance.

That was an awful lot of territory to cover in five minutes. Still, mysteries of any kind had always intrigued her. She couldn’t resist.

Running in and moving fast, Moira managed to take in close to a quarter of the area. Scanning it, nothing caught her attention.

Maybe the duo had been just kids dressed in black to blend into the night as they explored the cemetery. Maybe they were doing it on a dare.

A lot of stupid things were done in the name of a dare.

If the blond stranger was a security guard—or a groundskeeper—then he’d been chasing them off.

She turned to leave the cemetery when something caught her eye. Aware of the seconds ticking by, Moira still felt compelled to investigate. It was in her DNA, not just because she was a Cavanaugh, but because she was part of the police department’s understaffed robbery division.

Moving closer, she realized what it was that had set off her alarm.

One of the headstones in the vicinity looked as if it had been knocked over and then righted again—but not all that well. The stone was tilted.

Stepping even closer, Moira read the writing on the headstone. “‘Emily Jenkins, beloved wife of Hal Jenkins.’” It also gave the year of her birth and her death. Whoever Emily Jenkins was, she had been buried a couple of months more than twenty years.

Moira regarded the list of the headstone. Maybe it was just due to regular shifting of the earth. After all, this was California. Some areas moved more than others. If there had been regular minor tremors or just simple shifting, that could have made the headstone move and lean as if it had had one too many.

Reaching out, Moira touched the headstone. She immediately saw that it was not only listing, it was downright loose. That took effort.

Human effort.

Could the people who had knocked her down been grave robbers?

Grave robbers? Moira, this is Aurora. Nobody even touches a headstone if they can help it.

Yet what other explanation could there be? This needed further examination—but not at this moment, Moira sternly reminded herself. She had someplace to be.

Taking off from the cemetery to avoid being late to work, Moira made herself a promise to come back as soon as she could today to investigate the scene thoroughly.

Emily Jenkins had been violated—or at least her grave had.

What she needed to find out was why.

* * *

Moira made it back to her home in what amounted to a new record, at least for her. Her lungs were near bursting as she shed her clothes all the way to the shower, littering the floor with them.

Jumping into the glass enclosure, she turned on the water before she had even securely locked the shower door. Five very swift minutes later she was toweling herself dry, leaving tiny pools of water to mark her path to her closet.

She had no time for breakfast or the life-affirming coffee she usually swore by. Instead, dressed, Moira was back out on the pavement less than twelve minutes after she had first inserted her key into her condo’s front door.

She hoped she could find something edible and at least vaguely nutritious in the vending machines at the station. She had her doubts.

Pulling into the station’s rear parking lot, Moira could have sworn she saw someone who vaguely reminded her of the dark-blond stranger who had helped her to her feet.

At least, he resembled the man from the rear, which was the only view she had at the moment. Tall, dark blond and broad shoulders, he could have been the stranger from the cemetery.

Or, more likely, just another private citizen coming to the station to lodge a complaint or to respond to a call from one of the many police detectives inhabiting the building.

Her curiosity still on high alert, Moira quickened her pace in an attempt to catch up with the blond stranger.

He entered the building before she did. Moira stepped up her pace again.

As she got into the building, she discovered that not only should she have quickened her pace, she should have increased it to a sprint. The stranger she was trying so hard to get a better look at was nowhere to be seen.

“Must have caught an elevator,” she told herself under her breath.

It was either that or accept the explanation that the stranger had vanished into thin air. She preferred the elevator.

“You know, they say the mind’s the first to go for some police detectives. Of course, that’s assuming that they have a mind to lose, which, in your case, the jury is still out about.”

Moira didn’t have to turn around to know who was talking to her. But she’d learned a long time ago that ignoring her brother and pretending he wasn’t there didn’t make him go away. If anything, it just made Malloy up his ante.

With a sigh, she turned around to face him. “I see that someone woke up on the right side of the bed this morning.” The smile she forced to her lips looked deliberately phony by all accounts.

The grin on the tall, handsome detective’s face was, according to more than half the female population, incredibly enticing.

“Actually, little sister,” he told her with a wicked wink, “it was on the right side of the lovely Patricia Morgan, but why quibble over words?”

“Why indeed?” Moira asked crisply, striding toward the elevator quickly.

She knew there was no losing her brother, but for the sake of the game, she had to look as if she at least tried.