Cavanaugh Strong

by Marie Ferrarella

  Brian nodded as if conferring with some inner voice. “Nice catch. I like my detectives to be on their toes and not restricted by tunnel vision. I had Marvin put a rush on the autopsy,” he told them, referring to Lewis Marvin, the medical examiner. “He promised to have the results on both our desks before noon today. If this turns out to become unwieldy and you need a task force, all you need to do is ask,” he informed them, looking from Duncan to Noelle. His expression told them he was serious, that the words he’d just uttered were not without weight.

  “Yes, sir. We’ll keep that in mind,” Noelle promised with enthusiasm.

  Brian tried to remember if he had ever been this young and eager, even when he had been O’Banyon’s age. He had a feeling the answer was no. But it was enthusiasm such as hers that brought cases to closure, that solved the grisly puzzles they were presented with every day.

  He rose then, signaling that the interview was over and they were free to leave. “I’ll like to be kept apprised of your progress and also if something else comes up,” he told them.

  “Yes, sir,” Noelle responded without a second’s hesitation.

  “Of course, sir,” Duncan replied with a little less enthusiasm than his partner was displaying. Turning, he followed Noelle out the door.

  “Is it me, or does the chief of d’s seem somehow bigger-looking in that office,” Noelle asked her partner as soon as they were clear of the chief’s assistant’s desk.

  “Not enough room for him and his shadow, I guess,” Duncan speculated, then pointed out, “he is about six-four or so.”

  “He looked taller,” Noelle said.

  Duncan laughed. He knew exactly what she meant. He’d felt the same way the first time he’d stopped by the chief’s office.

  “He does have that effect on people,” Duncan said.

  They went back to the squad room and Duncan disappeared. When he returned, it was with a crime board that was mounted on wheels. He’d borrowed it from another department.

  “I thought if we had everything up in front of us, maybe we could get to the bottom of this faster,” he explained to Noelle as he parked the mobile board against the wall closest to them.

  She liked the idea. “I’m willing to try anything.”

  * * *

  Within half an hour, they had photographs of the four victims they were currently dealing with. Even as she tacked up the eight-by-ten pictures, Noelle had the uneasy feeling that there were probably more out there.

  The other side of the coin was that she could be completely wrong about this, wrong that the deaths had been engineered for profit and were just horrible incidents.

  “We’re basing this all on a hunch, you know,” Noelle told her partner quietly. “Right now, we don’t even know if Sally and Henry were actually victims, or if this is all just some terrible coincidence and nothing more.”

  “Beginning to doubt yourself?” Duncan asked her. She couldn’t read anything into his expression. Was he challenging her—or agreeing with her vacillation?

  “No,” she denied with feeling, then, because she wasn’t 100 percent certain, she backtracked. “Maybe.”

  “You don’t believe in coincidences, remember?” he told her. And then Duncan sighed, dragging a hand through his unruly dark hair. “Maybe we’re going about this the wrong way.”

  “What way would you like to go about this?” she asked.

  “How about if we go at it from the life insurance policy angle?” Duncan suggested. “We find out what company or companies issued these policies, what agent or broker sold them, exactly how the monies were paid out and where the checks were sent. Not to mention just who’s running these so-called charitable foundations that Lucy’s friends named as their beneficiaries.” These were all questions that he’d hoped Brenda would find the answers to; but since she’d gotten sick, they were still unanswered. That had to change.

  Noelle blew out a breath. “Sounds like a really tall order.”

  “You have any better ideas?” he asked her.

  Noelle shook her head. “Not a single one, better or not,” she admitted.

  “Okay, then for the time being,” Duncan said, “let’s start looking into these so-called life insurance policies that all these dead people were talked into getting.”

  “No offense, but offhand, I’d say that we need someone who’s a lot more tech savvy than you or I are, and since Brenda’s out, there’s nobody in her department we can turn to. They’re all swamped right now, trying to pick up her slack,” Noelle pointed out.

  “None taken,” Duncan responded. “And you’re right,” he agreed with a sigh. And then he brightened as a solution occurred to him. “Valri.”

  “Who?” Oh, please God, don’t let that be the name of another victim, she silently prayed.

  “My sister Valri,” Duncan told her. “You met her at the wedding. She’s a uniform cop but I’m pretty sure we can temporarily get her reassigned to us and use her to track down the policies for us. Granted, she’s not Brenda, but Valri’s better than anyone else I know. With some more experience, she could turn into another Brenda.”

  “Valri,” Noelle repeated. Duncan nodded. “Your sister.” It wasn’t a question but he nodded a second time anyway. She vaguely remembered being introduced but right now, she couldn’t have picked Valri Cavanaugh out of a lineup. “Just how many sisters do you have, Cavanaugh?” she asked, feeling as if there were relatives coming out of the woodwork.

  “Three,” he replied. “And if you’re counting, I’ve also got three brothers. Why do you ask?”

  “No reason. Just feeling a little overwhelmed by the numbers, that’s all.”

  “You’re overwhelmed?” he laughed, leaning a hip against the side of his desk. “Try seeing it from my side. There always seemed to be a crowd whenever I looked around me.”

  At this point, she was still trying to get the names of his siblings—never mind about the cousins—straight. But the idea of there always being someone around when you felt like talking or sharing something deeply personal sounded wonderful to her. Growing up, as much as she loved Lucy, there were things she wanted to share with someone closer to her own age.

  “You’ll forgive me if I don’t shed any tears over your plight,” Noelle told him. “It must be a phenomenal feeling, having a support system like that any time you needed someone in your corner.”

  “Yeah, there was that,” Duncan readily agreed. “But the flip side of that is that there was always someone that was being held up as an example—someone you weren’t measuring up to.”

  “I didn’t think of that,” Noelle admitted—but she also doubted that it happened very often. Otherwise, Duncan wouldn’t be as close to his siblings as she could see that he was.

  Duncan shrugged, conceding the point to her since she didn’t put up an argument. To be honest, he could understand why she seemed to envy him. His siblings could drive him crazy—but he couldn’t think of anyone he would rather have in his corner.

  “Like every situation,” he mused, “this has its pluses and its minuses.”

  “Well, I’d put up with those minuses just to get a few of those pluses,” she told him.

  He grinned at her. “Yeah, just between you and me—me, too. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go find out who I have to bribe in order to get Valri temporarily reassigned to us.”

  She glanced over her shoulder toward the lieutenant’s office. “Maybe you’d better start with Jamieson, just to cover your bases. If he can help, problem’s solved, if he can’t, at least he’ll know that you didn’t go over his head without first consulting him—and then you can go back to the chief of d’s. He did say to get back to him if we needed extra help.”

  Duncan nodded his approval of her suggestion. “You’re learning, O’Banyon,” he said as he headed toward the lieut
enant’s office. “You’re learning.”

  She watched him as he walked away, thinking of their night together. “More than you’ll ever know, Cavanaugh. More than you’ll ever know,” she whispered under her breath.

  Chapter 16

  “What’s the catch?” Valri asked suspiciously. As blond as he was dark, Duncan’s youngest sister narrowed her blue eyes to look more closely at him and the woman with him. Shorter than her brother by a good ten inches, she still had a sturdy, capable air about her despite the fact that she had never weighed more than 105 pounds in her life.

  They were riding up the elevator to the squad room after he and Noelle had gone to her, saying that her sergeant had okayed her being temporarily loaned out to Vice.

  “No catch,” Duncan told her. “We’ve got something to track down in cyberspace and we thought you might be able to help us using that magic that you do with computers.”

  Valri had gotten a reputation as being the go-to person in the family when it came to anything computer-related, but that was strictly on a personal level.

  The elevator reached their floor and the doors parted. “Isn’t the chief’s daughter-in-law in charge of that?” she asked as they got off.

  “Officially, yes, but right now, she’s out sick,” Noelle answered.

  “But she’s got assistants,” Valri pointed out.

  “They’re not as good as you are,” Duncan said. “And right now they’re swamped, trying to catch up since Brenda got sick.”

  Or, at least that was what he assumed. The truth of it was that he didn’t have a working relationship with any of them. Getting Valri up here as part of their team meant that he could have her attention focused exclusively on unearthing the pieces of the puzzle they needed to help them find the person or persons responsible for four murders—and possibly more.

  “Now you really have me worried,” Valri said. “If the sergeant hadn’t okayed this right in front of me, I’d swear that you were trying to mess with me and get me into some kind of trouble.”

  “How can you say that?” Duncan asked, putting his hands over his heart as if his sister’s words had just fatally wounded him.

  “Maybe because I know you so well,” she countered.

  “This is it, Valri,” Noelle said, walking into the squad room ahead of Duncan’s sister and gesturing around the area. “I can’t tell you how much we really need your help.”

  Valri looked from her brother’s partner to her brother. She caught Duncan’s unguarded glance directed at Noelle. The next second it was gone, but she’d seen it nonetheless.

  “Then again, maybe I don’t know you as well as I think I do after all,” Valri murmured under her breath.

  Duncan had heard the sound of her voice but not the words. “What?”

  “Nothing.” Valri was quick to wave away her words. “Just trying to get comfortable with my surroundings.”

  “Good,” Noelle said, “because the sooner you get comfortable, the sooner you’ll be able to come up with as much information as you can find. Maybe it’ll help piece together exactly what is going on for us.”

  They’d stopped before the bulletin board he had borrowed from another department to facilitate their hunt for the killer. “Why don’t you fill my sister in on the background of the case?” he suggested to Noelle. Before she could ask him why he didn’t want to do that himself, he added, “I was never much good at explaining things when it came to Valri.”

  “World’s worst math tutor, bar none,” Valri declared with feeling in what she pretended was a stage whisper.

  Duncan had started to walk to his desk. “I heard that,” he spoke up.

  “You were supposed to,” Valri informed him.

  “Let’s get started,” Noelle said, ushering Duncan’s sister over toward the front of the bulletin board and photographs of the first two victims.

  * * *

  They found an empty desk for Valri for the duration of her stay in Vice.

  “As long as we wrap this case up in under two weeks,” Duncan said loftily, “because that’s when Anderson’s coming back from his honeymoon.” He placed a laptop in front of his sister that had initially been requisitioned by Brenda.

  “No pressure, right?” Valri eyed the dormant computer “And who does the laptop belong to?” she asked.

  “We managed to ‘borrow’ it from IT. One of Brenda’s assistants said it’s yours for as long as you need it,” he informed his sister. “The assistant also sent his thanks.”

  “Why is he thanking me?” Valri asked.

  Noelle fielded the question before her partner could. “Because this way, your brother’s not down there, badgering them for their help. So anything you can do to keep their load from increasing, they probably view as a personal favor.”

  “Who knows, kid?” Duncan chimed in. “Play your cards right and there might be a place for you downstairs in IT when the allure of patrolling the streets of this fair city starts to wane.”

  Valri frowned and turned her chair in Noelle’s direction, facing away from her brother. “Does he talk like that all the time when he’s up here?” she asked.

  “Not really,” Noelle confided, adding, “I think the performance is strictly for you.”

  Duncan looked from his partner to his sister. “You know, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, having you brought up here. I’m beginning to really feel outnumbered.”

  Coming around to his side, Noelle patted his face and smiled at him. “That’s because you are, Cavanaugh.”

  “Well, I still outrank you,” Duncan informed his sister. “And I have seniority over you,” he said, turning toward Noelle.

  Noelle held up a finger before he could retreat to his desk. “Yes, but the lieutenant made me lead on the case, remember?”

  Valri slanted a glance at her brother and then looked back at his partner. A very pleased smile spread across her face. “Looks like you met your match, Duncan.”

  “Never mind that. You just get all the information you can on those policies for us,” he instructed, pointing at the laptop.

  “Yes, sir,” Valri responded, executing a smart salute directed at her brother.

  “Better,” he said, nodding his approval at the display of obedience.

  “You Detective O’Banyon?”

  Noelle turned around to find a very young uniformed police officer standing behind her. He had the look of a lost puppy about him.

  “Yes.” That was when she saw the manila envelope in his hand. Noelle raised her eyes to the police officer’s. “Is that for me?”

  “Yes, ma’am, um, I mean, sir...I mean, um—” The police officer clearly appeared at a loss as to how to refer to her.

  “Detective will do fine, Officer,” she assured him, putting her hand out for the envelope.

  For half a second, the young officer looked slightly bewildered. “Oh, right,” he said belatedly as if remembering the nature of his errand. He placed the envelope in her hand. “The M.E. said you were in a hurry for this.”

  “That we are,” she cried, excited. “Tell him we’re all very grateful he was able to get this to us so quickly,” she instructed as she pulled the pages out of the envelope.

  Duncan had circled behind her in an instant, reading the report over her shoulder. “What’s it say?” he asked her even as he began to read.

  Noelle had already skimmed over enough of the report to find out what she wanted. “That Lucy was right,” she told him. “Her friend should still be alive—the preliminary tox findings are that he was injected with a drug that made it look as if he’d had a heart attack,” she said. “Just like Teasdale.”

  So it was murder. But that still didn’t answer the most glaring question. “But why kill him?” Duncan asked.

  “Logical answer is
for the insurance money,” Noelle said.

  “Except that the money is supposedly going to some charitable foundation,” he reminded her.

  Her mind went into hyperdrive as she considered the different possibilities at that end. “Maybe the money is being diverted. Wouldn’t be the first time that people were caught embezzling funds from some lofty charity or a trust fund. We really need to find out who runs the foundation,” she said, looking over toward Valri.

  “Foundations,” Duncan corrected her. “Lucy said that she suspected it was likely both her friends were leaving money to different organizations.”

  “Maybe they’re really the same foundation,” she theorized. “We need to find out if Alfie and Walt left their death benefits to charitable foundations, as well.” Turning around again to look at Duncan’s sister, she said, “Valri—”

  “Already on it,” Valri assured her brother’s partner, her fingers flying across the keyboard.

  “She is good,” Noelle said to her partner with no small appreciation.

  Duncan inclined his head in silent agreement, then cautioned, “I’d keep that to myself if I were you, she’s already got a swelled head.”

  “I heard that,” Valri piped up.

  “You were supposed to,” Duncan replied, echoing the words she had said to him just a few minutes ago.

  * * *

  “They were different,” Valri spoke up sometime later. The sound of clicking keys had been nonstop as she’d conducted her hunt. Her tone was serious as she reported her findings thus far. “The organizations that the last two victims named in their life insurance polices were different from each other and different from the first two charitable organizations. Here are all four names. One supposedly is striving to find cures for something called ‘orphan diseases,’ another is dedicated to protecting an endangered species. There’s one to promote bringing fresh water to impoverished countries in Africa and the last one claims its goal is to help bring about world peace.” Valri paused for a moment as she scrolled back up on her screen. “What’re orphan diseases? Is that something unique to orphans?”