Stiff Competition
PRAISE FOR ANNELISE RYAN AND THE MATTIE WINSTON MYSTERIES
BOARD STIFF
“Great dialogue and characters enhance this cozy mystery. Starting with the first scene, the book is laugh-out-loud funny and the strong humor continues throughout.”
—RT Book Reviews, Top Pick
LUCKY STIFF
“Annelise Ryan has done it again! Her heroine Mattie Winston has a way with a crime scene that will keep you reading, laughing and wondering just what can possibly happen next in this entertaining romp. Wisconsin’s engaging assistant coroner brings readers another winning mystery!”
—Leann Sweeney, author of the Cats in Trouble Mysteries
“Lucky Stiff is a roller coaster ride of stomach clenching action, sizzling attraction, belly laughs, and a puzzler of a mystery. Annelise Ryan has created a smart and saucy heroine in Mattie Winston, who you just can’t help but like especially as she endures what is possibly the worst road trip ever. What a thrill ride!”
—Jenn McKinlay, author of the Cupcake Bakery Mysteries and the Library Lover’s 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.”
—RT 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.” —RT Book Reviews
—RT Book .RgfMtM
“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
WORKING STIFF
SCARED STIFF
FROZEN STIFF
LUCKY STIFF
BOARD STIFF
STIFF PENALTY
STIFF COMPETITION
Published by Kensington Publishing Corp.
Stiff Competition
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
Also by
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
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
Teaser chapter
Teaser chapter
Copyright Page
For Doug
Acknowledgments
So many people are involved in the writing of my books. There are the friends and coworkers who brainstorm with me, and let me steal their witty bon mots, and tell their friends about the books, and provide me with endless observations and traits that I then roll into my characters. Have fun finding bits of yourselves in the text! There is my editor, Peter Senftleben, who is insightful, smart, and a delight to work with. There is my agent, Adam Chromy, who believes in me more than I believe in myself at times. There is Morgan Elwell, whose ongoing efforts to publicize and market my books is appreciated more than she knows. And there are all those folks behind the scenes at Kensington Books whose hard work goes into making my books a success. It is a pleasure and an honor to work with all of you. Thank you.
Of course the most important people are the readers. Without you, none of this would be possible. So thank you from the bottom of my heart. Happy reading!
Chapter 1
Death is sometimes referred to as eternal sleep. It’s a nice euphemism, one that brings to mind a far more pleasant picture than the grim realities. At the moment, those grim realities are staring me in the face: waxy, lifeless, bloody, the eyes wide open. It doesn’t resemble normal sleep at all, not that I’d recognize normal sleep if it jumped up, slapped me in the face, and yelled at me. Sleep is something I haven’t seen much of lately.
My name is Mattie Winston and I work for the medical examiner’s office in my hometown of Sorenson, Wisconsin. I’m also a new mother, and for all intents and purposes, a single one. Motherhood is something I’d always planned on, but the path I took to get here has been a circuitous, twisted mess with lots of detours, hazards, and side trips along the way. Still, my son, Matthew Hurley, is my greatest accomplishment in life thus far. I adore his soft, black hair and his big blue eyes, which he gets from his dad, and his round face and chubby thighs, which he gets from me. His smile, which is slightly crooked and has the ability to melt my heart, is uniquely his. I love everything about him, but I wish he would sleep a little more.
It’s been eight weeks since he was born, and yesterday was my first official day back on the job. Fortunately it was an easy one because death took a holiday. But that guy with the scythe is a relentless pursuer, and today he came knocking again. I’m standing beside his latest victim: a man dressed in the same blaze orange acco
utrements that I and the people who are with me are wearing.
It’s deer hunting season, an occasion that is as much of a holiday for many in Wisconsin as is Christmas, or Thanksgiving, which is right around the corner. Even as we stand here in a wooded copse with bright morning sunlight beaming down on us, the sounds of gunshots can be heard echoing through the air. It’s a bit unnerving knowing there are hordes of men (and the occasional woman) wandering around out here armed with tons of alcohol, a desire to kill something, and the guns to do it. Given that, it’s not hard to imagine that some of the hunters, as well as some of the hunted, end up dead as a result. Most years there is a human victim or two, and the vast majority of them have something to do with stupidity. Hunting season casualties always reinforce my belief in Darwinism.
Despite all the gunshots, the man lying on the ground at our feet wasn’t killed by a gun of any sort. His end came with much more stealth judging from the arrow sticking out both sides of his throat.
A crashing sound in the trees behind us makes everyone look that way. A doe bounds into our small clearing and then stops short to stare at us with wide, frightened eyes, steam rising from her flared nostrils. After a few seconds her hindquarters quiver and in a blink she bounds back the way she came, disappearing from view.
“These poor deer don’t know which way to run,” I say.
“Apparently our victim didn’t either,” Izzy says, and everyone’s focus shifts back to the body on the ground.
Izzy is my neighbor, my boss, and my best friend. I live in a cottage behind his house, a cottage that just happens to be right next door to the house I used to share with my ex-husband, David Winston—though technically I’ve never lived in the house that currently stands on that property. The first house burned to the ground, nearly taking David’s life in the process. He has since rebuilt and is now sharing it with his fiancée, Patty Volker, the insurance rep who at one time sold us the coverage that made the rebuild possible. I received a share of the proceeds as part of my divorce settlement, a chunk of money I considered fair at the time. But David is a surgeon at our local hospital, and he makes a lot of money. His original plan to build a more modest home to replace the mini mansion we once shared apparently fell by the wayside. The new house is as big, if not bigger, than the one we had. It makes me wonder if David was hiding some money when our divorce settlement was being sorted out.
My cottage is tiny in comparison: a one-bedroom, one-bathroom affair that is all of nine hundred square feet. Izzy had it built for his mother, Sylvie, who lived in it for a year when her health was failing, and then moved out when her recovery proved nothing short of amazing. She might have stayed in it even then if not for her son’s lifestyle, something she has made clear she doesn’t like. Izzy is gay and has been living with his partner, Dom, for nearly a decade now. Sylvie tells everyone it’s just a phase her son is going through, and that she’s sure he’ll come to his senses any day now and settle down with a nice young woman.
Standing in the woods with Izzy and me are two uniformed cops: Brenda Joiner and a new guy named Karl Young, who has already been saddled with the nickname KY, which inevitably leads to conversational segues laced with sexual innuendo. Being paired up with Brenda doesn’t help since her initials lend themselves to similar insinuations. Also present are Jonas Kriedeman, the evidence technician for the Sorenson Police Department, Charlotte “Charlie” Finnegan, the PD’s videography specialist, and Steve Hurley, a detective with the Sorenson PD, the love of my life, and the father of my child.
“Anyone know who he is?” Hurley asks, staring down at the dead man.
“Hard to say since we can’t see much of his face,” I say. Our victim is lying on the ground, face up, his sightless eyes open and staring at the sky. But aside from the fact that his eyes are blue, it’s hard to tell anything else about him because his face is covered with partially dried blood.
Izzy reaches into the man’s front pants pockets, pulls a cell phone out of one and a set of keys from the other, and hands them to Jonas. Then he goes into the back pockets, finds a wallet, and hands it to Hurley, who opens it and removes a driver’s license.
“Assuming this is his license, it seems our dead man is one Lars Sanderson,” Hurley says, looking from the license to the man on the ground and back to the license again. He then shows us the picture.
“Looks like it could be a match,” KY says.
Izzy frowns. “It does bear a resemblance, but we’ll get a better idea once we clean his face off. Let’s not jump to any conclusions yet.” Izzy is extremely cautious when it comes to identifying our victims, in part because he’s very professional and thorough when it comes to his job, but also because of an embarrassing debacle that occurred fifteen years ago, early on during his career here in Sorenson. A wallet found on a man killed in a horrific auto crash was used by the local cops to identify the victim despite caution from Izzy. The name on the driver’s license matched that on the car’s registration and it seemed pretty clear who the victim was. Hair color, size, and weight matched the driver’s license info, but the injuries were severe enough that any facial recognition was impossible. Still, the identity seemed obvious and the cops notified the man’s wife of her husband’s death.
As it turned out, her husband was alive, though barely, after being beaten by the man who stole his wallet and car. The husband, who had lain unconscious in a field for several hours, finally came to in the middle of the night and was able to stagger his way home. He didn’t have his keys, and both the front and back doors were locked, so he entered through a bedroom window that he and his wife typically left open at night. His wife, who had been amply dosed with sedatives after receiving the shocking news of her husband’s death, awoke in something of a haze to find a man standing in her bedroom. She screamed, assumed it was an intruder, and in her muddled haze she managed to open the drawer of the bedside table and take out the gun that was kept there. Then she shot her husband. The wound proved fatal, though not immediately. He lived long enough to explain what had happened and to tell his wife he forgave her. She, however, was not so magnanimous and she filed a lawsuit against the police department and the city. It ended up getting settled a year later, but not before both of the cops involved in the presumptuous death notification moved on to other cities and jobs.
“Izzy is right that we need to be careful in jumping to conclusions,” I say, mindful of the past incident, “but it does look like Lars. He has a distinctive hook nose and a mole on his left cheek.”
“You know this Lars guy?” Hurley asks, then before I can answer he says, “Dumb question. Of course you do. I swear you know everyone in Sorenson.”
“Not everyone, but I did grow up here, and Sorenson isn’t a very big town. I didn’t know Lars personally, but I met him once at a hospital function. And he’s pretty recognizable in these parts because his picture has been in the local paper a number of times.”
“Why?” Hurley asks.
“He’s a real estate developer who came to town a few years ago and made a big splash. Not everybody has been happy about getting wet. Some of his projects have been rather controversial.”
“Great,” Hurley mutters. “Why can’t we ever get victims who are mostly liked by everyone? It would make the investigations a lot easier.”
“Maybe because people don’t tend to kill people they like?” I suggest with more than a hint of sarcasm.
Hurley smiles at me and then looks over at Izzy. “Any chance this was a hunting accident?”
Izzy does a half wince as he stares down at the dead man. “Can’t say for sure until I get him back to the morgue, but I’m leaning toward no. Look at the angle of the arrow. It enters the left side of his neck just above the collar bone and comes out on the right side just below his jaw line, close to a forty-five-degree angle. If the arrow was shot from a distance away, it would have had a downward trajectory, or a level one, but not an upward one. For the arrow to have gone the direction it did, he h
ad to have been shot by someone who was standing below him.” Izzy pauses and looks up at the trees around us. “I don’t see a tree stand anywhere nearby so I don’t think it happened that way. And these woods are dense, so I’m thinking that whoever shot him had to have been close. In fact, I’d wager they were here in this small clearing with our victim. It isn’t easy to hit a person with an arrow from any distance.”
Hurley, who is squatting beside the body, looks up at Izzy and says, “What if the shooter was kneeling, squatting, or sitting, and Lars was standing?”
Izzy contemplates this a moment. “I suppose it’s possible,” he says. “But there are problems with that scenario. It would be hard to pull sufficiently and get a decent aim with a regular bow in a squatting, sitting, or kneeling position.... Not impossible, but definitely awkward.”
Hurley looks up at me and mimes shooting at me with a bow and arrow. Then he looks back down at Lars. “Think the arrow came from a crossbow?”
Izzy shakes his head. “It’s the wrong kind of arrow. Crossbows use a bolt. This looks like it came from a compound bow, or perhaps an old-fashioned bow and arrow, though you don’t see many of those out here these days. Besides, if the arrow came from a crossbow and it was fired close by, the force behind it would have sent it clear through the victim’s neck and out the other side. The fact that it’s still embedded suggests that the arrow didn’t have that kind of momentum behind it.”