LITMIR.BIZ

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      “And what is it that you want to run past me, Cavanaugh?” he asked wearily.

      Moira had long since decided not to take offense at the way Carver uttered her surname. There were Cavanaughs in every department of the precinct and, while most of the police personnel were on friendly terms with them, there were others who were not. The resentful ones believed that the Cavanaugh name instantly bought those who wore it a certain amount of leeway and gave them access to shortcuts that other officers and detectives were not privy to.

      Carver was on the fence when it came to buying into that philosophy.

      She could, however, detect the resentment in her lieutenant’s voice whenever he said her last name in a tone that sounded as if he was partially taunting her. Such as now.

      “When I was out for my run this morning—” Moira started.

      As she began to answer his question, Carver reached for a powdered-sugar-dusted cruller, one of two that he always picked up every morning on his way to the precinct. He paused for a moment, giving her a dark look as if she’d thrown the line in to mock him and the pear-like shape his body had taken on over the years.

      “Oh, yeah, I forgot. You’re big on health, aren’t you?”

      The look in Carver’s brown eyes challenged her as he bit into his cruller with a vengeance. Powdered sugar rained down on the page he’d been writing on, but he seemed not to notice.

      “It wakes me up,” Moira replied matter-of-factly. She wasn’t about to get sucked into a debate about the pros and cons of what she did in her private life. “Anyway, as I passed by St. Joseph’s Cemetery entrance—”

      Carver stopped eating. “You run past the cemetery?” he asked incredulously. “Maybe you should transfer to Homicide if you like dead people so much.”

      Moira had no idea how the man managed to make the leap from what she was telling him by way of background information to what he’d just said, but again, she detected the antagonistic note in his voice and didn’t rise to the bait.

      “I like being on this squad just fine, sir,” she replied. “Anyway, these two figures—”

      “Figures?” he questioned skeptically. “You mean, like, zombies?” It was clear that he was mocking her and not about to take anything she said seriously unless she forced him to acknowledge it in that light.

      “No. Like, robbers, sir,” Moira corrected matter-of-factly, doing her best to get to her point and not be sidetracked by his interjections. “They were dressed in black and wearing ski masks. One of them ran right into me and just kept going—”

      Carver dusted off his hands and reached for the crumpled napkin in the bag that contained the crullers. “I’m guessing there’s a point to this ghost story, Detective.”

      “There is, sir. I went into the cemetery to find out why the two figures were fleeing—”

      He eyed her impatiently. “Let me guess, Dracula was after them.”

      She hadn’t wanted to mention this until she’d gotten Carver to agree to let her investigate the tampered-with gravesite. “No, as a matter of fact, there was some blond guy running after them—”

      “Ah, the plot thickens,” Carver mocked. “Does this ‘blond guy’ have a name?”

      “I’m sure he does, sir, but he ran by too fast for me to ask him,” she said, now impatiently trying to get to her point.

      “Too bad, this sounded like it might have gotten interesting.” Carver looked wistfully at the second cruller but apparently decided to wait until he was alone again before having it. “Is there a point to this haunting little tale, Cavanaugh?”

      “I went into the cemetery and saw that one of the headstones had been disturbed. I think—as strange as it might sound—that they were trying to rob a grave.”

      Carver stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. Certainly she’d lost his interest, mild as it had been to begin with. “And you want to do what about that?”

      Moira squared her shoulders defensively a little bit as she said, “I’d like permission to investigate the site so I can see if they were trying to dig something up.”

      Carver’s frown deepened. To his way of thinking, he had likely indulged the detective way too long. It was obvious that he wanted her out of his office and out of his thinning hair. “In case it has escaped your attention, Cavanaugh, this is the robbery division.”

      “I know that, sir,” Moira answered evenly, painfully aware that shouting at the man would get her nowhere except reprimanded—if not suspended. “Grave robbing would fall under that heading.”

      “Grave robbing,” he repeated, clearly stunned.

      This wasn’t going well but Carver, despite all his foibles, was, at bottom, a decent detective, or had been before he’d assumed command of Robbery. That was the part of him she was attempting to reach.

      “Yes, sir.”

      His eyes narrowed as he pinned her in place. “Who complained?”

      Moira wasn’t sure what he was getting at. “Excuse me, sir?”

      “Who complained?” he repeated evenly before spelling it out for her. “In order to go out and investigate this so-called ‘headstone disturbance’ we need to have someone file a complaint.”

      The lieutenant was crossing his t’s and dotting his i’s. He only did that when it served his purpose—or he didn’t want to okay something. She knew for a fact the man bent rules when he wanted to.

      Playing along, she said, “Okay, I’ll file.”

      Carver sighed dramatically. “Didn’t anyone in that family of yours teach you anything, Cavanaugh? You can’t be the one to file a complaint. In this case, as you’ve laid it out, you’re a jogger, not an interested party.”

      “But I’m very interested,” she persisted, picking up on the word he’d used. “What if there’s a cult of grave robbers out there?”

      “In Aurora?” he mocked. Growing just the slightest bit serious, Carver added, “Then we would have heard about it.”

      “Maybe they’re just getting started,” Moira countered.

      Carver eyed her in moody silence for several seconds, weighing options. “You’re not going to drop this, are you?”

      Her first reaction was to say no but she squelched it. Knowing better than to go up against the lieutenant outright, Moira tried to approach the subject in a calm, logical manner. “I really think there’s something to this, Lieutenant.”

      “Of course you do.” Carver swallowed the curse that rose to his lips. He paused for a long moment, as if weighing the pros and cons of her request. “Okay. I’m a reasonable man,” he told her.

      The jury’s still out on that, Moira couldn’t help thinking.

      “Go and investigate your heart out—just you, not your partner,” he clarified, adding, “Warner’s got real police work to do.”

      Moira had always maintained that she could get along with anyone, even the devil, but there was something about Detective Alfred Warner that made her wish she had another partner instead of the older, by-the-book detective.

      Maybe it was because the man reminded her too much of Carver.

      Whatever the reason, she was more than happy to investigate whatever was going on at the cemetery on her own. She wondered if the man realized that.

      “Yes, sir,” she replied.

      “Talk to the cemetery caretaker,” Carver suggested. “Find out if he knows anything or has noticed anything funny going on. See if this has happened before. But if you can’t find anything—and I’m talking

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