Cavanaugh on Duty - By Marie Ferrarella Page 0,21

fourth ring was fading, clearing a path for the robotic voice that was about to ask her to “please leave a message at the tone,” Kari heard the cell being picked up on the other end.

And then a deep voice announced, “Crime lab, Cavanaugh.”

Her father had taken to his new/old name like a duck to water, she thought. All those years of feeling as if he wasn’t quite in sync with the rest of his family finally made sense now. They, the Cavellis, really hadn’t been the rest of his family.

At least, not in total.

He was a Cavanaugh no matter what his birth certificate had initially stated. She was just glad for his sake that the error had finally come to light, giving him the opportunity to claim his birthright if he wanted it.

“Hi, Dad,” she said without bothering to announce herself. “I’m in need of your stunningly focused expertise.”

There wasn’t even a second’s hesitation on the other end of the call. A hearty laugh was immediately followed by, “Ah, Kari, my most perceptive offspring. You have a crime scene for me.”

It wasn’t a guess but a statement of fact. With rare insight, Sean Cavanaugh knew each of his children inside out.

“All but gift-wrapped,” she told him. “My new partner and I found a dead body wrapped up in what looks like an old Persian rug. Rug and body are currently stashed in a storage facility on Edinger and East Yale Loop. I need you and your team of roving experts to process the crime scene for me so I can get on with the case.”

“Address?” he asked. She rattled it off for him, having already committed it to memory. “All right, Kari, the team and I will be there as soon as I finish up here,” he promised.

So, he’d already scored another crime scene. There was a time, according to the stories her father had told them, that the only crime in Aurora revolved around littering.

“Busy morning?” she murmured.

“Too busy,” he answered. But he wasn’t one to go on about his work, so he said, “Be there as soon as we can,” and then terminated the call.

“How long?” Esteban wanted to know the moment Kari returned her cell phone to her pocket and headed back to him.

Sugarcoating it got her no extra points and she knew it. So she went with the truth.

“Not sure,” she confessed.

Esteban was already growing impatient, and they were still within their first fifteen minutes at the crime scene.

“And we’re just supposed to stand here, staring off into space until they get here?” he groused.

“You can handle the staring part if you want,” she told him glibly. “I’m going to go and see what I can get out of that manager guy. He struck me as someone who liked sticking his nose into everyone’s business. Maybe we can get that to work for us,” she said as she walked out of the storage unit.

The second she did, her eyes stopped stinging. She wondered how big a job it was to disinfect an entire storage unit. Jennings was not going to be a happy camper, she couldn’t help thinking.

The all but silent footfall behind her meant that her partner had opted to leave the storage unit, as well. It came as no surprise.

Obviously, Mr. Macho’s had enough of this smell, too, she thought, amused.

Chapter 6

When she and Esteban strolled into the small office where the manager of the storage facility spent most of his time, Jennings was already at his desk, hunched over his computer.

The staccato sound of keys being struck in less than a rhythmic fashion told her that the poor typist was either busy spreading the word that his storage facility had been the scene of a gruesome murder, or he was searching through old records to see if he could uncover anything about the poor old sap who had been renting the unit. Jennings suddenly looked up, startled, when the sound of the door slamming shut—thanks to a gust of wind—reverberated through the dust-laden office.

Surprise swiftly turned into annoyance. “You’re still here,” he complained.

“Yes, we are,” Kari acknowledged, deliberately sounding cheerful. She could tell that irritated him, which seemed only fair since Jennings’s noncompliant attitude irritated her. “I see you’ve had a chance to look up the deceased’s name.”

Kari actually couldn’t “see” anything of the kind, but she surmised that it would have been the manager’s first order of business the second he got back into his cubbyhole of an office. The flushed