Dead of Winter Read online

  “I think we’re all leaning toward the idea that Dalrymple didn’t just fall from that catwalk,” I say. “And the makeup suggests that someone else was up there recently. I don’t see how we can prove it was at the same time, though.”

  “You should go and clue Hurley and Junior in on what you found and determine who in our group of suspects is wearing stage makeup,” Izzy says. “Before they have a chance to remove it.”

  “Got it, though I won’t be surprised to discover they’re all wearing it.” I remove a bunch of swabs from my scene kit. “First I need to go up there and get a swab sample. Who knows? Maybe we can get some DNA from it?”

  “Go for it. We have the body recovery under control,” Izzy says.

  I nod, gather some supplies, and don a fresh pair of gloves, then stuff some extras in my pocket. Then I go back up onto the catwalk. I get two swabs of the substance on the railing, just to be safe. After sealing and labeling them, I retrieve the snagged and torn piece of material and place it in an evidence bag. When I’m done, I climb back down, hand off my evidence to Izzy and Christopher, and head out to the front-stage area to find the others.

  All of the suspects, except Dom, are seated out in the audience area, with Junior pacing back and forth in front of them. The actors are purposely separated by enough seats to keep them from chatting with one another.

  “Where’s Hurley?” I ask Junior.

  “He’s talking to Dom out in the front lobby area. He said he’s going to talk to each person out there eventually. I’m babysitting.” He says this last with a grumbling tone and a pouty face.

  “How would you like to collect some evidence for me?”

  This appears to cheer Junior. “What do you need?” I haul him off several feet away from the others so I can hopefully speak to him out of their earshot. Realizing that the acoustics inside the theater may make this difficult, I decide to whisper into Junior’s ear and explain to him about the makeup. When I’m done, I look at him to see if he understood me.

  “Got it,” he says. I hand him the swabs and then leave him to it, while I head out to the foyer area to find Hurley and Dom. Dom is sitting on the floor, his back against the wall, looking up at Hurley, who is squatting in front of him. There is a poster of the upcoming play over Dom’s head, and it shows a knife dripping with blood pointing directly down at him.

  Hurley hears me and rises to his feet, meeting me halfway, while Dom pulls his knees up, crosses his arms over them, and buries his face. “What’s up?” Hurley asks.

  “Is Dom okay?”

  Hurley glances back at him. “He’s fine, or he will be. I’ve pretty much ruled him out at this point. He said he was in charge of buying some props this morning and wasn’t at the theater until he came in and found Helen and the others standing over Dalrymple’s body. I’m guessing the others will verify his story, plus he says there are some bags of stuff he bought that he left back there by Dalrymple’s body. He had the receipts in his wallet and showed them to me. I took pictures of them and bagged them for now.”

  Between the receipts and the time of death indicated by the broken watch, I realize we have a good, solid timeline for Dom, a good thing given the potential conflict-of-interest issues there are with him. “Why does Dom look so glum if you’ve cleared him?”

  “I think he’s just in shock over the whole thing. It’s one thing to live with someone who deals with death like this on a regular basis. It’s a whole other thing to experience it firsthand yourself.”

  I tell Hurley about the oily substance and the need to swab everyone. “I don’t see anything that looks like that substance on Dom,” I say. “But just to make sure we play fair and cover our butts, I should probably swab him. We don’t want a defense lawyer down the road saying we showed favoritism for the ME’s husband.” I hand him the video camera. “You should be using this.”

  Hurley nods, studying Dom’s forlorn form on the floor, and takes the camera. “Swab him, and then I’ll let him go. Do you want to listen in while I question the others, or do you have to go back to Izzy?”

  “Christopher is helping Izzy, so I get to stay with you.”

  “I like having you by my side,” Hurley says in a low voice laced with a hint of less-than-professional innuendo. He punctuates the comment with a wink and then reaches down and gives my butt a surreptitious squeeze. I frown at him and scoot away, walking over to Dom and squatting down in front of him.

  “Dom?” Off to the side, I see Hurley turn the camera on and start filming.

  Dom raises his head to look at me, and I see that his eyes are red-rimmed. “Oh, Mattie, this is such an awful mess,” he whines. “I can’t believe Roger is dead. And to think someone might have killed him?” His expression morphs into one of fear. “Have I been working side by side with a killer all this time?”

  “It kind of looks that way,” I say. “At least you’re in the clear, from what I hear. That’s good news.”

  Dom shakes his head. “I don’t know how you and Izzy deal with this kind of stuff day in and day out,” he says. “It’s so sad, and so . . . so . . . unnerving.”

  “It certainly can be,” I say. “Listen, Dom, I need to do something with you, some evidence collection kind of stuff. And as soon as I’m done, Hurley says you can leave.”

  Dom stares at me, confused. “Evidence collection? What kind of evidence? What are you saying? Are you suggesting that I might have had something to do with this?” His voice rises with each question, until he is on the verge of hysteria with this last question.

  “Dom!” I say in my best stern-mommy voice. It’s the one I use on Matthew when he does something worse than his usual menu of transgressions. “Listen to me.” I grab his arms near his elbows and hold them tight, making my shoulder stab yet again. “I need to swab your face and hands because we found something on the catwalk railing. I think it’s stage makeup. You don’t appear to be wearing anything like that.”

  “I’m not,” he says frantically. “I didn’t have time to do makeup yet.”

  “That’s great. But in order to make sure we do everything by the book, I need to swab you the same way we’re going to swab the others. We don’t want anyone suggesting that we showed you any favoritism.” I pause, squeeze his arms a little tighter, and give him a light shake. “Do you understand?” I say, moving my head closer to his and looking him straight in the eye. “No one thinks you had anything to do with Roger’s death.”

  Dom stares back at me, his breaths rapid and heaving at first, but then gradually slowing. Finally he nods. And then he smiles. “Sorry,” he says. “Izzy is always telling me I overreact to things. I guess he’s right.”

  “Well, in this case, I think your reaction is justified,” I tell him. He rewards me with a grateful smile. “Let’s get this over with so we can get you out of here, okay?”

  Five minutes later, I have Dom thoroughly swabbed, the specimens appropriately sealed and labeled, and both my and Hurley’s initials on the packages, just to be safe, since there is a potential conflict of interest here. It’s still not ideal, but it’s the best we can do for the moment, along with the video.

  I tell Dom he can go, and we let him leave through the front door, locking it behind him. I turn and look back at Hurley with a wan smile. “It’s going to be a long day.”

  “That it is,” he says. He walks over and gives me a light kiss on the tip of my nose. “Having you here with me makes it much more tolerable, though,” he says, his voice low and husky.

  “Ditto,” I say. We share a long look, our faces nearly touching; the heat between us is palpable and sizzling. But we both know this is the wrong place and time, a theme that seems to recur a lot in our lives. And then I completely kill the moment.

  CHAPTER 20

  “Hurley,” I say, a bit breathless, “has it occurred to you that we seem to get turned on by murder investigations?”

  He rears back, his dreamy-eyed expression morphing into one of bemusement. “What are you
talking about?”

  “Think about it. In our past, how many times have we shared moments like the one we just did at a crime scene, or during an investigation?”

  He gives me a look that tells me he finds the idea ludicrous, but I can see his wheels turning, and a moment later, he looks troubled. Then he looks off to the side, and I can tell he’s resurrecting past crime scenes in his mind.

  “Damn,” he says after a few seconds. He looks at me as if he’s begging me to tell him it’s not true. I arch my eyebrows at him. “It’s the adrenaline,” he says. “It’s normal to feel a little revved up physically, and that can easily manifest itself sexually, right?”

  “I suppose,” I say, unconvincingly. “Or maybe it’s just a need to reaffirm life . . . our lives . . . in the face of death.”

  “I’ll take that one,” Hurley says, still looking mildly disturbed. He takes a step away from me, as if he was just caught doing something naughty, or I was, and he’s trying to distance himself.

  “Who’s next on our list of suspects?” I say, thinking a quick change of subject is called for.

  Hurley bites on the bait like a starving fish. “I’m going to make that annoying Helen Niehls woman wait until last,” he says, suddenly all business. He consults a page in his notebook. “Let’s do Corey Ferguson next. Can you go and get him?”

  “I can if you tell me which one he is. I don’t know the names of any of those people other than the Niehls woman.”

  “Right, sorry,” Hurley says with an appropriately apologetic smile. “Ferguson is the kid made up to look like an older man, the tall, skinny fellow.”

  “Got it.” I head back into the main theater area, walk halfway down the aisle, and stop at Junior. “We’re going to talk to Mr. Ferguson next,” I say. “Have you swabbed him?”

  “I have,” Junior says.

  I turn around and say, “Mr. Ferguson, will you come with me, please?”

  Ferguson pops up from his seat, carrying his coat, and comes toward me with long, energetic strides, while the rest of the group frowns, grumbles, mumbles, and makes gestures of frustration. I see Junior briefly squeeze his eyes closed and then shake his head. I give him a sympathetic smile of understanding, and then turn to lead Ferguson out to the front lobby and Hurley.

  It’s obvious that Ferguson is wearing stage makeup, lots of it, in fact. It’s on his forehead, his neck, his cheeks, and his hands, which I notice have smudges of the makeup on them. I hope Junior swabbed all those areas.

  While I take over the video camera, Hurley steers Ferguson toward an office chair he has dug up from somewhere and does a preliminary introduction for the camera, stating the time, date, and who it is he’s talking to, and then starts questioning Ferguson about the events leading up to the discovery of Dalrymple’s body.

  “When did you first realize something had happened to Mr. Dalrymple?” Hurley asks.

  “When we heard Helen scream. It was real bloodcurdling,” Ferguson says with an expression that is somewhere between admiration and disgust. “Although I think it was a bit of acting on her part, since she didn’t seem all that upset when I got to her.”

  “Did Helen scream words, or just make a noise?” Hurley asks.

  “Just the scream,” Ferguson says.

  “And where were you when she screamed?”

  “I was in the prop room looking for a pipe.” Hurley’s eyebrows arch at this and Ferguson doesn’t miss it. “The kind of pipe you smoke,” Ferguson clarifies. “It wasn’t scripted for my character to have one, but I thought it would work and add a level of sophistication that Dalrymple might like. What do you think?”

  Based on Hurley’s expression, he thinks Ferguson is an idiot. He ignores the man’s question, and comes back with one of his own. “Where is this prop room?”

  “Stage-left area, or house right, depending on your perspective, over past the stairs that go up to the catwalk.”

  “Did you go up those stairs at all?” Hurley asks.

  Ferguson shakes his head. “I don’t like heights,” he says with a shiver. “And I can be a little clumsy at times. My feet are too big.” He screws up his face, looking pained. I have a pretty good idea of what he’s feeling, and the kind of past he’s had with his feet. Since I wear a size twelve—although ever since my pregnancy, it’s more like a twelve-and-a-half shoe—I can relate to the issues that go along with big feet. They do tend to make you clumsy. The world is organized and structured in patterns designed for normal-sized people and normal-sized feet, and I don’t meet either one of those definitions.

  “I try to avoid going up on the catwalk at all,” Ferguson says. “Don’t really have to, most of the time.”

  “Was anyone with you, or did anyone see you going into the prop room?” Hurley asks.

  Ferguson thinks for a second and shakes his head. “Nope, don’t recall anyone.”

  “Was anyone else with Helen when you got to her?”

  Ferguson shakes his head. “I got there first, but the others arrived within seconds of me. They all came from different directions: Rebecca from the front-stage area, Mickey from the stage-right area, and Brad from the back hallway.”

  “In that order?” Hurley asks, scribbling away in his notebook.

  “I think so, yes,” Ferguson says, squinting in thought.

  “And exactly where was Helen in relation to Dalrymple’s body?” Hurley asks without looking up from his notes.

  “Standing by his head. She didn’t look as upset as I thought she might, given the scream she’d let out. In fact, she looked . . . amused.”

  “Amused?” Hurley echoes, finally looking up.

  “I know,” Ferguson says with a grimace. “That sounds wrong in so many ways, but that’s the best description of her expression I can come up with.”

  Hurley switches gears and gets some more demographic information from Ferguson. Turns out he’s older than I thought, though not by much. Ferguson is twenty-one, works part-time as a bartender at a local pub, and lives with his parents. He is taking general, prerequisite classes at a local community college, with the idea of eventually getting a college degree in English or something equally as generic, assuming he can’t get into some sort of acting school.

  “I spend my summers down around the Chicago area doing summer stock,” he tells Hurley. “There are some big names that show up from time to time, like J. K. Simmons, or the Cusacks. You never know when you might get lucky.”

  Hurley eventually lets Corey Ferguson leave out the front door, providing us with a glimpse of the storm building outside. A gust of wind grabs the door when Hurley opens it, nearly ripping it off its hinges. And snow has begun to fall . . . wet, sloppy stuff.

  * * *

  Next on our list is Rebecca Haugen, the pretty, thirtysomething woman with the long black hair and killer figure, if you’ll pardon the expression. I go back into the theater and make sure Junior has swabbed her. Then I call her name and watch as she sashays her way up the aisle toward me, her coat draped over her shoulders. I feel an almost instant and puzzling dislike of her, for reasons I can’t pinpoint, though the simple fact that she is wearing corduroy pants is a good start. Only women who have thigh gap can wear corduroy pants without risk of humiliation and potential injury. The rest of us end up chafed and hot, thanks to the friction created by those wales rubbing together all the time. Whenever I try to wear them, I end up making a sound like the percussion section for a New Age band when I walk. Plus, corduroy isn’t exactly a slimming material. Putting on corduroy pants is like putting on ten pounds, a definite fashion don’t for girls built like me.

  Not only can Rebecca Haugen walk quietly while wearing corduroy pants, and do so without risk of starting a fire, she looks fantastic in them. My ego takes another hit when I glance at her perky, perfect-sized breasts—hard not to do, since they are practically waving hello beneath the thin T-shirt she is wearing, the tiny, blue, unbuttoned cardigan sweater she has on over it framing everything nicely. As soon
as we enter the lobby area, I see Hurley’s gaze briefly flit there—though, to his credit, his eyes don’t linger. I suppose I should feel a twinge of jealousy, but I don’t. It’s not like anyone could not look at Rebecca Haugen’s chest. Her nipples are standing up beneath the thin shirt material like flags atop mountain crests, as if someone has just staked out that desired territory and claimed it as his own.

  I straighten up and roll my shoulders back in an effort to lend my own chest a bit more perkiness, but I can feel the heavy weight of my double-D cups resisting the effort. I’m fighting a war with gravity, and doing about as well as Custer did at Little Bighorn.

  And if Rebecca isn’t making me feel insecure enough as it is, I fix on those cute little blue suede boots she’s wearing, on what I would guess are size-seven feet, fashionable footwear that I’m certain doesn’t come in a size twelve and a half. If they did, they’d look like a 1960s Volkswagen van parked at Woodstock. I look down at my own feet, encased in athletic shoes that I bought in the men’s department because I couldn’t find any in my size in women’s, and sigh.

  I shove my insecurities aside and focus on Rebecca’s face. That’s when I realize her eyes are two different colors. The right one is hazel green and the left one is brown. I stare at her corneas, looking for the telltale rim of contact lenses, but I don’t see any.

  “Yes, they are naturally that way,” Rebecca says, seeing my scrutiny. “The right one will darken some at times to more closely match my left eye, but for the most part they are distinctly different.”

  Hurley looks at her eyes, shrugs, flips a page in his notebook, and jots something down.

  I turn the camera on and watch as Hurley starts his questioning with the usual introductory information, and then asks Rebecca for her personal information. We learn that she works as a loan officer at the local branch of a statewide bank, is divorced, and lives in a house she bought on the east side of town two years ago with money from her divorce settlement. Rebecca’s version of events matches Ferguson’s closely. She says she heard Helen’s very loud and dramatic scream and came running from the main area of the theater, where she had gone to make a phone call on her cell.