Marie Ferrarella - Cavanaugh Or Death

Moira put up her hand to stop his flow of words for a second. “You might have to wait until the stars stop swirling around my head,” she quipped.

If she meant the remark to loosen him up a little, it didn’t. Gilroy didn’t crack a smile or even seem to hear her.

“I’ll help you investigate whatever’s going on at the cemetery, but I’m not going to continue being on the receiving end of your idea of Twenty Questions,” he snapped.

“How about if we both play?” she suggested with a wide smile. “You answer my questions and I’ll answer yours.” It seemed only fair to her.

“I don’t have any questions,” he informed her tersely. The less he knew about her, the easier it would be to walk away when the forty-eight hours were finally up.

Moira stared at him. “You’re serious?” she asked incredulously. Had she stumbled across the one man in the state who had absolutely no curiosity?

The detective’s expression remained immobile. “Totally.”

She just couldn’t get herself to believe him. “You have no questions for me?”

“None,” he replied flatly.

Moira shook her head in complete disbelief. He really was a robot.

“Then you’d be the first,” she told him.

She glanced down the hall and saw the open door that had Major Crimes written across the opaque glass in black block letters. “This must be the place,” she declared cheerfully. Moira braced herself inwardly. Time to beard the lion in his den. “What did you say your captain’s name was?”

“I didn’t.”

Just when she assumed he was leaving it up to her to find out, Gilroy said, “Ryan. His name is Captain Ryan.”

She nodded, taking the information in. Walking inside the squad room, she immediately noted that the layout was the same as it was on the third floor. And, like her lieutenant, the superior officer here had a small, glass-enclosed space—whimsically called an office—to call his own.

From the look of it, Captain Ryan was currently in, and he was on the phone.

“Give me ten minutes,” she told Davis.

He gave her a skeptical look as she started to walk toward the other end of the room. “You don’t want me in there with you?”

“I wouldn’t dream of intruding on your space, Gilroy. Wait here,” she told him, nodding at the squad room. “If I find myself needing you for backup, I’ll wave at you,” she told him just before she proceeded to quickly stride toward the captain’s office.

Unlike Lieutenant Carver, the man who oversaw Major Crimes had his door open despite the fact that he was still on the phone.

It was like watching an accident waiting to happen, Davis thought, perched on the corner of his desk as he looked across the room and observed her.

He fully expected to hear Ryan’s voice come booming across the office once the almost annoyingly perky blonde began to state her case to ask for him on loan for the surreal purpose of looking into a case of possible grave robbery.

But five, then ten minutes went by and the walls did not shake, nor did Ryan’s door rattle.

Davis continued to watch his temporary partner in mounting fascination.

Twelve minutes after she entered Ryan’s inner sanctum, she came out again, an even wider smile—if possible—on her lips.

“Well?” he asked her somewhat skeptically once she reached him.

“Well, you’ve got a very nice captain,” she told him, a glint of mischief in her diamond-blue eyes. “Oh, and you’re mine for the next forty-eight hours,” she added as if that bit of information amounted to just an afterthought instead of the crux of her visit.

Mike Manetti, one of the oldest detectives in the Major Crimes squad—and some felt way overdue to embrace retirement—grinned broadly at him as he and his very temporary partner passed by his less than tidy desk.

“Lucky so-and-so,” Manetti quipped, keeping his assessment clean because of the woman with the notoriously taciturn detective.

Moira smiled at the white-haired, older detective. “I doubt he thinks so,” she said as if confiding in Manetti.

“Then Gilroy’s a slower learner than I gave him credit for,” Manetti told her with a pronounced wink. “Make the most of this, boy. Make the most of this,” Manetti advised, raising his voice so that it followed both of them out into the hall.

Davis deliberately ignored what Manetti had just said. Instead, he thought of his captain and the cheerful expression on the other man’s face.

“What the hell did you say to Ryan?” Davis asked.

He’d been fairly convinced that the captain, in the final analysis, would turn down her request, which would have admittedly put him back to square one, investigating whatever was going on at the cemetery alone. All in all, that was not exactly an unwelcome scenario even though he had already admitted to her that two heads were usually better than one.

“That my lieutenant would appreciate his cooperation in lending out one of his best detectives for this rather unique and hush-hush investigation into some unorthodox dealings at St. Joseph’s Cemetery. I mentioned that some of Aurora’s most prominent citizens had loved ones who were buried there and that they wanted this looked into and taken care of quickly and quietly.” And then that damnable grin of hers returned to momentarily sidetrack his attention. “Oh, and I might have also mentioned that my great-uncle sent his best.”

Davis looked at her suspiciously. Here it was; the crux of it. “Great-uncle?”

Moira didn’t even try to suppress the smile that spread across her face. “Yes. Brian Cavanaugh. He’s the Chief of—”

“Ds, yes, I know,” he all but snapped, saving her the trouble of making what he assumed was an announcement. His suspicions heightened. “I thought that you Cavanaughs made this big deal about climbing up through the ranks strictly on your own merits without relying on the Cavanaugh name or connections.”

“We do,” she informed him openly and surprisingly artlessly.

She was totally blowing his mind. Didn’t she hear the contradiction?

“Then what was that all about?” he asked, nodding back in the general direction of his captain’s office.

“That was using leverage to get you on the case. I’m already on it, remember?” she replied innocently.

“Okay.” He didn’t really accept that, but for now, he let it drop. “And what makes you think I’m one of Ryan’s ‘best’ detectives?” he asked, using the same term she had used earlier. Did she think she was endearing herself with this baseless flattery?

“You’d have to be,” she pointed out without an iota of guile. “With that wounded-bear attitude of yours, if you weren’t one of his best, you would have gotten yourself tossed out on your ear a long time ago.” She flashed a quick, spasmodic smile at him, adding, “That’s called deductive reasoning.”

His eyes narrowed as he glared at her. “That’s called hot air,” Davis pointed out.

“Potato, potato,” she countered. “By the way,” she told him, completely devoid of fanfare or ego, “I’m primary on this.” It was best to lay down the ground rules right from the start.

Moira fully expected the detective to balk at that and was surprised when he merely shrugged.

“Figured you would be,” he commented.

Moira congratulated herself on containing her surprise. “Oh, and why’s that?”

“You brought the case to me, not the other way around.”

“I’ve got a hunch you don’t bring anything to anybody,” she couldn’t help saying. The man definitely wasn’t one of those kids whose report card read, “Works and plays well with others.”

Still, she had to admit that he intrigued her. Maybe even more than just a little.