Frozen Stiff Read online

  “Or something,” I say irritably.

  “So you’re the one who got Steve Hurley stabbed.”

  I glare at him. “You make it sound like I stabbed him myself.”

  Richmond arches his brows at me as if to say, Well, did you?

  “He was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” I say. “That’s all.”

  “Great. That’s just great,” Richmond says with a hugely dramatic sigh. “No wonder Hurley handed you off to me. Am I going to have to be looking over my shoulder every few seconds to make sure someone isn’t coming after me with a deadly weapon?”

  “We can only hope,” I mutter under my breath. I turn my back to him and see that Izzy and the uniformed cops are hopping from one foot to the other, clapping their arms around themselves to try to keep warm. Richmond, who would be amply insulated if he was standing stark naked, appears immune to the cold. I’m pretty comfortable myself, mostly because I’m so hot under the collar.

  Izzy says, “Hey, Bob, is it okay if we wrap this one up and take her in?”

  Richmond doesn’t answer right away and I suspect it’s his passive-aggressive way of exerting his authority. “She was a looker, wasn’t she?” he observes. Everyone nods. “And nobody here recognizes her?” We all shake our heads. “So probably not from around here,” he concludes. “Yeah, go ahead and take her in. When are you planning to post her?”

  Izzy says, “Probably this afternoon. Depends on how cold she is.”

  “Too bad you don’t have a person-sized microwave,” Richmond says. “We could put her in on defrost mode.” He laughs while we stare at him, and when he realizes his joke has fallen flat he clears his throat and says, “Yeah, go ahead and load her up.”

  “Do you want to call for transport or should I?” Izzy asks.

  Richmond looks back toward the road with a puzzled expression and I groan, knowing what’s coming next. Because Izzy’s legs are half the length of mine and his car is an old, restored Impala with a bench front seat, every time I ride with him I feel like one of those giant pretzels you can buy in a mall kiosk. Today, to avoid the contortions, Izzy rode with me to the scene in my recently acquired car—a shiny, midnight blue, slightly used hearse.

  “The transport is here already,” Richmond says.

  “That’s not the transport,” I explain, hearing the cops snort behind me. “It’s my personal vehicle.”

  “What do you mean your personal vehicle?”

  “Just what I said. What part of it don’t you understand?” Richmond raises an eyebrow. “You’re telling me you drive a hearse? All the time?”

  “Yeah. You got a problem with that?”

  “It’s rather pathetic, don’t you think?”

  I feel like telling him that being large enough to require a backup beeper is pathetic, too, but I don’t.

  “If you’re going to drive around in a hearse, why not use it as one?” Richmond asks.

  “Don’t need to,” I toss out. “These days you can buy those little scented trees with the smell of decomp already in them.”

  We glare at one another for several seconds until Richmond mutters a “Hmph,” and waddles off, dialing a number into his cell phone.

  I’ve had the hearse for a few weeks now. After totaling my regular car—which was actually David’s car according to the insurance and financing paperwork—I was left looking for a new vehicle I could afford on my own. The hearse was the only thing I could find. Though I wasn’t too pleased with it initially, it’s kind of grown on me. And my dog, Hoover, loves it. It’s full of all kinds of interesting smells that can keep him occupied for hours.

  Izzy and I get back to the job at hand, wrapping the woman’s body in our sheet. The protruding knife makes the task a little challenging, though not as much as one might expect given the victim’s endowments. Then, with some help from the uniforms, we slide her into a body bag, again taking care not to dislodge the murder weapon.

  When we’re done, Izzy takes out his wallet, hands me some money, and says, “Drive to Gerhardt’s home improvement store, pick up some plastic buckets and trowels, and bring them back here. We’ll need to collect the surface snow from the trail, and from beneath and around her body so we can look for trace evidence. I’ll stay here and see that she gets to the morgue.”

  I nod and trudge my way back to the road, taking care to follow the same trail we made when we arrived on the scene. Since Richmond’s car is parked behind mine I have to walk past it to get to my hearse. He is standing behind his driver side door, which is open, leaning on it as he talks on his cell phone. I glance in at the car’s interior and see that the passenger side floor is littered nearly seat high with wrappers and fast-food bags.

  As I open the door to my hearse, Richmond ends his call, snapping his cell phone closed. “Funeral home will be here in fifteen,” he yells down to the group by the body. Then he turns his attention on me. “Hey, Mattie?”

  “What?”

  “Do you know what you’re doing with this job or do I have to stay here until you come back so I can watch you collect the evidence?”

  I don’t know if it’s his attitude that’s pissing me off or the fact that Hurley isn’t here, but whichever it is, I’m definitely not feeling the love. I sense that he’s eager to leave so I tell him, “I think you better stick around. I’ve never done snow evidence before.”

  He rolls his eyes and sighs. “Make it fast then,” he grumbles. “And bring me back something to eat, would you?”

  I scowl at him and try to think of a witty retort, but nothing comes to mind. Then, as I’m pulling away, an idea hits me. If I make a quick stop at home to let Hoover out for a break, maybe I can bring Richmond back a yellow Sno-Cone.

  Chapter 2

  As if the day hasn’t gotten off to a bad enough start, when I arrive at the home improvement store, I see my brother-in-law, Lucien Colter, browsing the aisle straight ahead of me. I’m not a big fan of Lucien’s. Though he seems to be a good husband to my sister, Desi, and a good father to their two kids, Ethan and Erika, he’s utterly lacking in class and about as subtle as a baboon’s ass. Lucien is a defense lawyer—and a highly successful one at that. I suspect his annoying persona and rumpled, unkempt look make a lot of people dismiss him, thinking he’s a doofus or an incompetent. But to do so is a mistake. Dismissing Lucien is like partnering up with Dick Cheney for a hunting trip.

  As far as I know, Lucien is faithful to my sister, but every conversation I have with him is heavily laden with crass sexual innuendo that leaves me feeling like I need a shower. So when I see him now, the first thing I do is look for a place to hide. I turn to my left and try to dart past a display of lightbulbs, only to have my foot slide on a melted pool of water from the snow I’ve tracked in. I grab the closest shelf to catch my balance and briefly think I’ve avoided disaster. Then the entire thing gives way, crashing down on top of the two shelves below it, clattering loudly as they collide. The tinkling sound of breaking glass fills the air as hundreds of lightbulbs are crushed beneath the shelves’ weight.

  Next thing I know, I’m sitting in the middle of an ocean of glass shards and tiny cardboard containers. I hear a huge collective gasp as everyone in the store within a mile radius of me turns to look to see what the commotion is about. One of the store clerks rushes toward me: a tall, skinny kid with a terminal case of acne.

  “Holy crap, lady!” the kid says, his eyes hugely round. A plastic name badge pinned to his red vest says his name is Daniel. “You took down the whole display. That’s going to cost you.”

  Since I expected the first words out of his mouth to be concern for my welfare, I’m momentarily stymied by this comment, enough so that I momentarily forget how I ended up in this predicament to begin with. Then I’m reminded when I hear Lucien’s voice holler out.

  “Mattiekins!”

  I look over my shoulder to find Lucien standing behind me, his blue eyes sparkling with barely contained amusement, his strawberry-blond hair slicked ba
ck with enough grease to lube a fleet of cars. He’s dressed in his usual worn and wrinkled suit—so threadbare it shines—and his pale blue shirt has a large mustard stain on the front of it. He helps me up, the two of us crunching bits of glass beneath our feet, and then he gives me a too-tight hug, his way of copping an easy feel. I squirm loose and push him away from me.

  “Hello, Lucien. Fancy meeting you here.”

  “I stopped by to pick up a new snowblower. The old one went tits up.”

  I hear a few more gasps in the crowd milling around us and I’m not sure if it’s disgust over Lucien’s crass language, or mourning cries for a dead snowblower—an extended family member if you want to live through a winter in Wisconsin.

  One of the men in the crowd yells out, “Hey, buddy, take my advice and get the Toro 1800. I cleared an entire acre of drive in one hour with that thing in the winter of oh-eight.”

  Another guy pipes up and says, “Hell, no, go with Craftsman. It threw that heavy wet snow we had last year a good twenty-five feet or more.”

  Within seconds, a rousing, chest-puffing debate ensues among the men in the group. Snowblowers are a measure of macho in Wisconsin and after any hefty snowfall you can find men on every block metaphorically unzipping and comparing blade size, horsepower, stages, and throw capacity. Any guy using a shovel is assumed to have gonads the size of a squirrel’s.

  The pimply-faced clerk is joined by another red-vested dweeb wearing a badge with the name Dick on it. “Jesus Christ, lady, what the hell is wrong with you?” Dick says, living up to his name. “You’re going have to pay for this, you know.”

  “Look, I’m sorry,” I tell him. “My foot slipped in some water and I—”

  “Clearly these shelves weren’t constructed safely,” Lucien jumps in.

  Dick shoots him a give-me-a-break look and rolls his eyes. Lucien quickly counters by whipping out a bent business card that still bears perforation marks along the edges, advertising the fact that it was printed on a personal computer. “This,” he says, waving one hand over the scene as he hands the card to Dick with the other, “is obvious negligence. Not to mention the fact that you don’t have any nonslip rugs in place. I’m a lawyer and my client here has been seriously traumatized by her injuries. Hell, her pain and suffering alone must be worth a good hundred thousand or so. Who’s in charge here?”

  Dick’s red face pales. “I . . . he . . . I’ll call the store manager,” he says, grabbing a walkie-talkie clipped to his belt.

  A heavyset woman off to my left drops to the floor and yells out, “Oh, no! The floor is wet here, too. I think I’ve twisted my knee. Can I have one of your cards?” she asks Lucien.

  As other people in the crowd start taking a closer look at the floor beneath them, Dick scurries off at a panicked clip toward the front desk.

  “Thanks, I think,” I tell Lucien.

  “Anything for you, Sweet Cheeks,” he says. “And I know just how you can pay me back,” he adds with a lecherous wink.

  My cell phone rings and I take it out, grateful I won’t have to hear the specifics of Lucien’s payment plan. He leans over and sneaks a peek at the face of the phone to see who is calling and smiles when Hurley’s name pops up.

  “Ooh, a call from that hot detective,” he says, wiggling his eyebrows. “Are you two bumping fuzzies yet?”

  “Hardly,” I say, still bristling over Hurley’s distant attitude of late. “I think I scared him off by using the “L” word back when I thought he might be dying.”

  “You told him you’re a lesbian?” Lucien says loud enough for everyone to hear. “Are you?” he adds, looking intrigued.

  Someone in the surrounding crowd yells out, “Hey, lawyer guy, can I have a card, too?” followed by a chorus of “Me too, me too, me too.” I’m saved from any further Lucien humiliations as a swarm of people close in and I gingerly pick my way out of the lightbulb debris pile to answer Hurley’s call.

  “Hey, what’s up, Hurley? Are you feeling better?”

  “I’m fine.”

  I glance back and see Lucien completely surrounded by potential clients looking to make a buck the good old American way—by suing someone. So I take advantage of his distraction and disappear down a nearby aisle. “Are you sure?” I say to Hurley. “You were looking pretty peaked the last time I saw you, like maybe you’re coming down with something. ’Tis the season, you know. Did you get a flu shot?”

  “My health is fine,” Hurley says. “Where are you?”

  I tell him where I am and why, leaving out the details about the lightbulb display.

  “I need to talk to you,” he says. “Can you come over to my place later?”

  An invite to the inner sanctum! My day is starting to look better. I’ve never been inside Hurley’s house, though I did some snooping a while back and found out where he lives. The fact that he hasn’t invited me over has left me wondering if he has something to hide, or if I was reading a little too much into the few full-body ogles and curl-my-toes kisses we’ve shared thus far.

  “Sure,” I tell him, trying not to sound as eager as I am. “I have to help Izzy post that body we found this morning, so it will probably be five or later before I can get there.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “Okay. I’ll see you then.”

  I end the call before he has a chance to change his mind. At first I’m pretty excited about the invite, hoping Hurley wants to talk about our future relationship. But then I recall the recent change in his attitude and wonder if I’m fooling myself. In my experience, most men’s understanding of commitment is limited to mental institutions and beer brand loyalty. Maybe Hurley’s planning to hit me with the let’s-just-be-friends discussion, or the oops-I-meant-to-tell-you-I’m-married discussion, or the I-thought-you-knew-I-was-gay discussion.

  My cell phone rings and when I see it’s Hurley calling me back, panic rears its ugly head. Damn, he’s changed his mind already.

  I wince as I answer, bracing myself for the blow. “Hello?”

  “I thought you might want my address,” Hurley says. “Unless you somehow know where I live already.”

  Busted!

  I consider trying to lie my way out of it by saying something like, Oh yeah, silly me. I guess that would help. But I don’t. “Hey, Hurley, it’s a small town. And you’re not the only one with investigative resources, you know.”

  “Good,” he says. “I plan to take full advantage of your resources.” Before I can respond to that he adds, “See you later,” and hangs up.

  I’m left standing next to the nuts and bolts display feeling edgy and oddly titillated. I can think of several “resources” I possess that I’d love to let Hurley take advantage of, but I’m pretty sure that isn’t what he meant. Whatever his meaning, my curiosity is definitely aroused. As are several other parts of my body.

  Chapter 3

  I make it out of the store without any further gropes from Lucien or attacks from the red-vested meanies, and arrive back at the body dump site about ten minutes later. Richmond is still there, wedged behind his steering wheel, his car showing a definite tilt toward the driver’s side. As I haul my buckets and trowels out of the back of the hearse, he rolls down his window and hollers out to me, “Did you get me something to eat?”

  “Sorry,” I say, flashing him a fake smile. “The closest thing they had to anything edible at the hardware store was a package of tulip bulbs.”

  “Shit,” I hear him mutter. The window goes back up and his door opens. I hear a series of grunts and groans as he tries to climb out of the car, and I consider offering him my jack to make it easier. Instead I leave him to his struggles and make my way back down to the body dump site. By the time I get there Richmond is standing by the snow berm above us, talking on his cell phone.

  The body has been removed and though Izzy and Junior are gone, Ron Colbert is still here, standing guard over the site and trying to stay warm—newbies always get the dreck work.

  I hand him a co
uple of buckets and a trowel. “I think all we need is the top, skim layer,” I tell him. “If you can start collecting the surface snow from here up to the berm along the killer’s trail, I’ll do the body site.”

  Colbert nods and the two of us go about collecting our samples like two kids at the beach digging for clams. Fortunately the snow is the light, powdery kind so it’s not difficult to collect, or very heavy once we do. By the time we’re done, we have eight buckets of snow to haul up to my car.

  As I grab two of them and slog my way along the circuitous trail back to the road, another car drives up. Richmond approaches the driver, hands over some money, and takes a pizza in return.

  “Are you kidding me?” I say as the car drives off. “You ordered a pizza to be delivered out here?”

  “Jealous?” he says, setting the box on the hood of his car and opening it.

  As the smells of melted mozzarella, pepperoni, and sausage waft my way, I find that I am. I haven’t had breakfast and it’s now almost lunchtime. And that pizza is making my mouth water.

  “A little,” I confess.

  “Then have a slice.”

  I consider his offer, arguing with myself that I should refuse simply to make a point. But it seems like biting off my nose to spite my face, or biting off some pizza to spite my hips. In the end, my stomach can’t resist the smell and I toss my buckets into the back of the hearse and head back to Richmond’s car. Colbert, who has deposited his buckets next to Richmond’s car for now, has already swiped a slice for himself without asking, a severe breach of rookie etiquette. If looks could kill, Colbert would be as dead as our victim, judging from the expression on Richmond’s face.

  “Find anything?” Richmond asks as I take my first bite, giving my taste buds a mini orgasm.

  Colbert and I both shake our heads. Once I’ve swallowed I say, “Nothing obvious, but once we get back to the lab, who knows?”

  “Wouldn’t count on it,” Richmond grumbles. “The frigging criminals are getting way too smart these days. They watch all those forensic shows on TV and it’s like giving ’em a primer on how to commit the perfect crime.”