Free Cavanaugh on Duty by Marie Ferrarella

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
    W hen 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 expression on his face told her she’d guessed right.
    “What is it?” she asked him, her eyes all but nailing him to his chair.
    Jennings squirmed uncomfortably. He evidently didn’t like being read like a book. “William Reynolds,” he answered, not without a trace of reluctance.
    “And what’s the late Mr. Reynolds’s address?” she wanted to know.
    A nervously defiant look came over his face. “That’s confidential,” Jennings informed her. “I can’t go around giving out our customers’ addresses.”
    Esteban leaned over the thin, gouged beige counter that separated the man’s office from the small space in front of the outer door.
    “We’re not asking for ‘addresses,’ we’re asking for an address,” he told the manager, “and the information’s not ‘confidential’ unless you’re a priest and it was given to you while taking Reynolds’s confession.” Esteban spoke softly, but each word he uttered carried weight and, strung together, they came very close to sounding as if there was a threat waiting in the wings.
    Beginning to sweat, Jennings sucked in his breath and then hit a series of keys on the keyboard.
    “There!” he declared, gesturing at the screen. “Satisfied?” His derisive question was intended for both of the detectives who’d so vexingly invaded his minor domain.
    Kari raised her cell phone and took a quick picture of the information on the monitor. She caught the quizzical look on her partner’s face.
    “It beats writing,” she told him. “Besides, I’ve got pretty terrible handwriting,” she added.
    It was the kind that, unless she actually remembered what it was that she’d jotted down earlier, she had difficulty deciphering.
    “You should work on that,” Esteban commented.
    Maybe she liked him better when he didn’t talk, she thought, not quite sure if he was being serious or sarcastic. In either case, she didn’t welcome the unsolicited advice.
    Turning her attention back to the less than cooperative storage-facility manager, she asked one final question. “Is there anything you can tell us about the deceased?”
    Jennings was still guarded. “Like what?” he replied.
    She couldn’t decide if the man was hiding something or was just uncooperative with the law