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  Praise for Annelise Ryan and the Mattie Winston Mysteries

  FROZEN STIFF

  “Ryan mixes science and great storytelling in this cozy series . . . The forensic details ring true and add substance to this fast-paced and funny mystery. Good plotting and relationship drama keep the mystery rolling, while Mattie’s humorous take on life provides many comedic moments.”

  —Romantic Times Book Reviews

  “[Mattie’s] competence as a former ER nurse, plus a quirky supporting cast, makes the series intriguing. Ryan has a good eye for forensic and medical detail, and Mattie gets to be the woman of the hour in her third outing.”

  —Library Journal

  “Absorbing . . . Ryan smoothly blends humor, distinctive characters, and authentic forensic detail.”

  —Publisher’s Weekly

  SCARED STIFF

  “An appealing series on multiple fronts: the forensic details will interest Patricia Cornwell readers, though the tone here is lighter, while the often slapstick humor and the blossoming romance between Mattie and Hurley will draw Evanovich fans who don’t object to the cozier mood.”

  —Booklist

  “Ryan’s sharp second mystery . . . shows growing skill at mixing humor with CSI-style crime.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  WORKING STIFF

  “Sassy, sexy, and suspenseful, Annelise Ryan knocks ’em dead in her wry and original Working Stiff.”

  —Carolyn Hart, author of Dare to Die

  “Move over, Stephanie Plum. Make way for Mattie Winston, the funniest deputy coroner to cut up a corpse since, well, ever. I loved every minute I spent with her in this sharp and sassy debut mystery.”

  —Laura Levine, author of Killer Cruise

  “Mattie Winston, RN, wasn’t looking for excitement when she became a morgue assistant—quite the contrary—but she got plenty and so will readers who won’t be able to put this book down.”

  —Leslie Meier, author of Mother’s Day Murder

  “Working Stiff has it all: suspense, laughter, a spicy dash of romance—and a heroine who’s guaranteed to walk off with your heart. Mattie Winston is an unforgettable character who has me begging for a sequel. Annelise Ryan, are you listening?”

  —Tess Gerritsen, New York Times bestselling author of The Keepsake

  “Mattie is klutzy and endearing, and there are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments . . . her foibles are still fun and entertaining.”

  —RomanticTimes Book Reviews

  “Ryan, the pseudonym of a Wisconsin emergency nurse, brings her professional expertise to her crisp debut . . . Mattie wisecracks her way through an increasingly complex plot.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Books by Annelise Ryan

  SCARED STIFF

  WORKING STIFF

  FROZEN STIFF

  LUCKY STIFF

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  Lucky Stiff

  Annelise Ryan

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Praise for Annelise Ryan and the Mattie Winston Mysteries

  Books by Annelise Ryan

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Teaser chapter

  Copyright Page

  This one is dedicated with much love to my sisters:

  Cathy, Laurie, and Amy.

  Chapter 1

  There are few things in life that smell as bad as a burnt human body. You’d think with all that flesh, which is really just another form of meat, it might smell like a pig roasting on a spit. But you’d be wrong. Your average roasting pig doesn’t have hair, intact organs, and vessels filled with blood. Unfortunately, the person whose death I now have to investigate comes with all those things, and the stench is nauseating.

  Adding to the biological odors are the various household items that have burned: plastics, Styrofoam, building materials, and a variety of fabrics. This is a smell I know well, because I’ve been living next to another burnt-down building for the past couple of weeks: the house I used to share with my ex-husband, David Winston. The only person who was in my old house when the fire struck was my ex. Despite the fact that I’ve imagined him being tortured or dying in hideous ways many times over the past few months, he escaped from the fire unharmed. Unlike the person before me, who is burned so badly I can’t tell if the body is that of a man or a women, David is alive and healthy. And if his recent behavior is any indication, he’s also well into “manopause.”

  My ex is a surgeon. He cuts people open in an effort to better or save their lives. My name is Mattie Winston. I’m a nurse, and I used to do the same thing, working side by side with David in our local hospital’s OR. But after catching David using his pocket rocket as a tongue depressor on one of my coworkers, I left my job, my home, and my marriage rather abruptly. Fortunately, my best friend and neighbor, Izzy, threw me a lifesaver by offering me both a job and the mother-in-law cottage behind his house. Since Izzy is the county medical examiner, my new job as a death investigator still involves cutting people open, but with two significant differences: all of my patients are a certain distance past their freshness dates, and rather than trying to save their lives, I’m trying to figure out how they lost them.

  The ME’s office is located in the small Wisconsin town of Sorenson, where we cover deaths for a countywide area. I grew up in Sorenson, and that makes my job very difficult at times, since I know most of the people I have to autopsy. Today the death I’m investigating is right here in town—a body discovered in a home that is now little more than a burnt-out shell. As a result, I’m not sure yet if our victim is someone I know. Adding to the tragedy is the fact that it’s Christmas Day, as evidenced by the empty tree stand and a dozen or so broken glass ornaments in one corner.

  Very little in the room I’m standing in is recognizable. Heat from the flames melted the foot or so of snow that was on the roof. The melt-off, combined with the fire damage and all the water from the fire hoses, brought down most of the modest ranch’s upper structure, leaving the scene a soggy, exposed, piled-up mess. An early-afternoon sun is shining down on us, and the outside temperature is already 48 degrees—very atypical for December here in Wisconsin. Fortunately, there was plenty of snow on the ground before today, allowing us some semblance of a white Christmas.

  Izzy is beside me as we carefully pick our way through the charred remains, which are still smoking in places, despite the heroic efforts of the fire department. It’s a bit easier for me to maneuver than it is for Izzy, because I’m six feet tall and have very long legs. Izzy, on the other hand
, stands right around five feet tall; his legs aren’t much longer in their entirety than my shinbones.

  Several of the firefighters are still working on-site, spot-quenching little flare-ups and guiding us through the debris field. They were the ones who called us when they found the body. Also here are several cops, including Steve Hurley, the tall, dark-haired, blissfully blue-eyed homicide detective I lust after, but can’t have.

  “Are you guys sure this is arson?” Hurley asks a woman firefighter standing nearby.

  “Positive,” she says. She is a cute blonde, with a large, fluorescent name label across the back of her fire coat that says: KANE. Her cheeks are flushed and there are smudges of ash on her face, but they’re not enough to hide her prettiness. If anything, they enhance it, giving her an impish, pixie look. Even with all her fire gear on, it’s easy to tell she has a trim, petite figure. I want to hate her on sight, especially when I see Hurley give her the once-over . . . twice. My figure has never been petite, not even in the womb. My mother once described giving birth to me as akin to crapping out bowling balls for twenty hours straight. I have what Izzy’s life partner, Dom, calls a Rubenesque figure—a comment that makes me both want to hate Dom and ask him to make me a Reuben sandwich. Dom is a killer cook.

  Speaking of cooking, Kane points over toward the couch and says, “There’s a pour pattern over there. If you look at the alligator pattern on the wall above it, you can tell that’s where the fire started, even though someone tried to make it look like it started here by our victim. There’s this other, smaller pour pattern next to the body leading from this overturned drink glass. Judging from the empty vodka bottles we found in the trash, and the ashtray beside this glass, I’m guessing someone wanted us to think the victim caused the fire by reaching for a drink, spilling it, and tipping over in the wheelchair while holding a cigarette.”

  “Any idea who our victim is?” Hurley asks.

  “For now, we’re assuming it’s the man who lives here, a thirty-eight-year-old paraplegic by the name of Jack Allen.”

  “Oh, no,” I mutter, looking aghast at the blackened mass.

  “You know him?” Izzy asks.

  “I do. I’ve taken care of him at the hospital several times. In fact, I took care of him when he had the car accident that paralyzed him. It was back when I was working in the ER, about seven, maybe eight years ago. I also saw him when we took his gallbladder out last year, and again more recently when he came in to have a bedsore debrided.”

  Kane cocks her head to one side. “I’m sorry, I thought you were with the ME’s office,” she says, eyeing me with a puzzled expression.

  “I am. I’ve only had this job for a few months. Before that, I worked at Mercy Hospital as an RN.”

  “Ah,” Kane says, and I see a glimmer of recognition on her face. “You’re that gal who was married to the surgeon—the doctor who was doing it with that OR nurse who ended up murdered.”

  “Yep, that’s me.”

  “And you also worked in the OR?”

  I nod.

  “Now I know why you look so familiar.” I’m thinking she’s going to mention some surgical procedure she had recently, but no such luck. “You were the one who was pictured on the front page of that tabloid, standing by the Heinrich car crash in your underwear.”

  My face grows hot. “Yes, that was also me,” I say, my smile tight. Izzy and Hurley snort with laughter; I give them a threatening look as I silently curse my recent claim to fame. There are many perks to living in a small town like Sorenson. Unfortunately, anonymity isn’t one of them. Infamy comes cheap and lasts a long, long time.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name,” Kane says.

  “I’m Mattie Winston. Nice to meet you,” I lie.

  “I’m Candy Kane. Today is my birthday and my parents had a warped sense of humor.”

  “Happy birthday,” Hurley says with a smile that makes me want to step between him and Candy to block his view.

  “Thanks,” Candy says, smiling back. “After I’m done here, I get to go home and open all those lovely happy-merry-birthday-Christmas presents. We holiday kids tend to get the short end of the stick when it comes to gifts.”

  This seems only fair to me, since she clearly didn’t get the short end of the genetic stick.

  I look back at the floor and try to make sense of the fact that the burnt corpse lying there might be Jack Allen. The body is lying on its side in a fetal position; the blackened arms are bent up like a boxer’s trying to block a punch. I know from my recent studies that this pugilistic positioning is characteristic of severe burn victims, caused by shortening of the muscles and tendons as they heat up. I can’t see the victim’s face because the head and shoulders are covered with a pile of debris—ceiling tiles and old vermiculite-type insulation. The only thing about the body that fits our tentative ID is the wheelchair that’s tipped on its side and positioned behind the body.

  Candy says, “The neighbors say he was a smoker, as well as a drinker, though they fell short of describing him as an out-and-out drunk. One other interesting tidbit mentioned by the neighbors is the fact that our victim apparently won a very large jackpot at the North Woods Casino a few months ago.”

  “How large is very large?” Hurley asks.

  “Five hundred thousand and change,” Kane says.

  Izzy lets out a low whistle.

  “Sounds like motive to me,” Hurley says. “And it might help us narrow down the list of suspects. All we have to do is follow the money.”

  “First we need to verify that this is Jack Allen,” Izzy says. He steps forward, reaches down, and lifts one corner of a ceiling tile that’s covering the victim’s head, exposing the face. I can only see one half of it, as the other half is against the floor, but the entire head is relatively untouched by the ravages of the fire. Izzy turns and gives me a questioning look.

  “That’s Jack, all right.”

  Izzy stares down at him. “Interesting how the debris protected his face from the flames.”

  “It would,” Candy says. “That vermiculite insulation contains asbestos.”

  “Asbestos?” I echo, looking concerned.

  “Don’t worry,” Candy says. “Right now, everything is so saturated it would be nearly impossible for any fibers to become airborne. But it will require a special crew with the proper equipment to clean up the place.”

  Izzy nods solemnly. “Well, at least we have a tentative ID. We can verify things later with his dental records.” He cocks his head to one side and stares at the body with a puzzled expression.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “Look at the position of his head. His chin is tucked in close to his chest. If the head had been exposed to the fire, I might think it was because of tendon shrinkage from the heat. But the head was protected from the fire, and that makes me think it was forced into that position. The presence of the glass and the ashtray suggest there was a table of some sort here, like a coffee table.”

  “There probably was,” Candy says. She points to several burnt pieces of wood that look like long, skinny cinders from a fireplace. “These look like the legs on a wooden structure of some sort.”

  “If so,” Izzy says, “it’s possible Jack died from positional asphyxiation. If he fell out of his chair and his head became wedged between it and a table, it could have blocked off his airway. I’ll get a better idea of how feasible that theory is when I open him up.”

  Candy looks at Hurley and says, “There’s one more thing I think you should see.” We follow her through the debris into what appears to be the dining room. She stops in front of a charred piece of furniture and points to the melted, twisted remains of a stereo on top of it. As I look closer at the burnt mess, I see what looks like a large stereo speaker, relatively intact despite evidence of intense heat and flames.

  “There’s only one speaker,” Hurley says.

  “And it didn’t burn,” I add.

  “Good eye, both of you,” Cand
y says, though she directs her smile at Hurley. She points to some melted plastic and wires. “It looks like there was another speaker here, but it was destroyed in the fire. There’s a reason this one survived.” She reaches over and flicks her finger against the front of the intact speaker, eliciting a metallic ping. “This is a false front. It’s constructed out of metal and made to look like a speaker, but it’s actually a safe.” She pulls on the speaker front and it opens, revealing an empty metal box. “There’s a key lock on the back that operates a little spring device to open it.”

  “Was there anything in there?” Hurley asks.

  “Nope, it was unlocked and empty when we got to it, and no sign of the key. But we did find this.” Candy points down at the floor near the corner of the buffet and I see the edges of a hundred-dollar bill poking out from beneath some debris.

  After snapping a picture, Hurley reaches down with his gloved hand and pulls the bill loose. Though its edges are singed, the main body of the bill is intact.

  Candy says, “A lot of people don’t know that paper money isn’t really made out of paper. It’s made out of cloth—linen and cotton, to be precise. And that means it doesn’t burn so easily, especially if it’s wet.”

  “You’re thinking there was more of this in there,” Hurley says, gesturing toward the safe.

  Candy shrugs, but she gives us a knowing smile, which makes it clear she does think that.

  Hurley sighs. “Well, if our casino winner was stashing wads of cash in his house, our list of suspects is going to be a hell of a lot bigger than I thought.”

  “Sorry to make things more complicated for you,” Candy says with a cutesy little grin.