Scared Stiff Page 3

  From the front of the house, where Al and the baby-faced uniform cop are standing guard over Shannon’s body, we hear loud voices and the sounds of a scuffle. Careful not to tromp on any of the blood evidence, Hurley turns tail and heads back to the porch. I fall into step behind him, managing to nudge Alison out of the way just long enough to take over the lead.

  Out front we find Al and his partner restraining a man who is staring at Shannon’s wrapped body with an expression of disbelief and horror. His face is the color of my dress.

  “Oh my God,” the man mutters, his voice cracking. “What the hell happened to my wife?”

  Chapter 4

  “Erik?” I say gently. I work my way around the blood pool and move to his side. He allows me to take his arm and turn him around so his back is to the horrific scene on the stairs. He blinks hard several times and then looks at me as if he has no idea who I am.

  “Erik, it’s me. Mattie.”

  He nods slowly before stealing a glance over his shoulder. I feel a shudder rip through his body as he quickly looks away, moaning.

  Hurley steps up in front of us. “Mr. Tolliver?”

  Erik nods.

  “Let’s talk,” Hurley says. He takes Erik’s other arm and steers him across the yard toward one of the police cars. I follow along, not only because I want to hear what is said, but because I’m not sure Erik will make the trip without collapsing if there isn’t someone on either side of him. Plus, there’s the whole being-with-Hurley thing.

  Hurley opens the front door to a cop car and between the two of us we manage to ease Erik down onto the passenger seat. He glances about the yard and the look of horror on his face deepens so I step in front of him to block his view.

  “Mr. Tolliver!” Hurley barks sternly, and it works. Erik shifts his focus back to us. “I understand you and Mrs. Tolliver are separated. Is that right?”

  Erik, looking as miserable as any human being can, nods. He leans forward and buries his face in his hands. “Why?” he groans. “Why did it happen?”

  At first I’m not sure if he’s referring to his and Shannon’s separation, or her death. But then he adds, “Why would anyone want to kill her?”

  Hurley ignores the question and asks one of his own. “When is the last time you saw your wife?”

  Erik looks up at him and his face screws up in thought for a moment. “The day before yesterday,” he says, “around three in the afternoon. I went to Dairy Airs to talk to her about . . .” He hesitates, looking sheepish. “About some personal stuff,” he concludes.

  Hurley isn’t about to let him off the hook that easy. “Such as?”

  A cloud passes over Erik’s face and he sighs. “She sent me some separation papers to sign and I wanted to talk to her about them.”

  I see Hurley’s eyebrows shoot up and can tell he has picked up a scent. “How did the meeting go?” he asks.

  “I tried to talk her out of it. The separation was her idea, not mine.”

  “Did you sign the papers?” Hurley asks.

  Erik shakes his head and looks away for a second. “No. I . . . um . . . left them there.”

  I sense he is hiding something and can tell Hurley thinks so, too.

  Erik leans back and braces himself with his hands on his knees. “Do I need a lawyer?” he asks.

  Hurley shrugs. “I don’t know. Do you?”

  Erik stares at him for a couple of beats as a long, uncomfortable silence fills the void. Then Erik looks away and asks, “What happened to her?”

  “She was shot,” I tell him, and from the corner of my eye I see Hurley give me an irritated look.

  Erik winces and says, “Is this someone’s idea of a Halloween prank? Ring the doorbell and then shoot whoever answers? What kind of sick, depraved bastard would do something like that?”

  I start to explain that Shannon wasn’t shot on the porch but Hurley shuts me up with another look. Then he asks Erik, “Can you give me an overview of your whereabouts yesterday?”

  Erik, who was an honor roll student throughout high school, is smart enough to understand the implication behind the question. His expression turns angry and he glares at Hurley. “I was at work at the hospital during the day, from seven in the morning until three-thirty in the afternoon. After work I went to the bank, then I stopped in at Duke’s for dinner with a friend.”

  “Can I have the name of this friend, please?” Hurley asks.

  Erik’s cheek muscles twitch and I can tell he’s on the verge of blowing but he manages to contain his ire and provide the name. “Jacob Darner.”

  “Continue,” Hurley says once he has the information written down.

  Erik sucks in a deep breath and blows it out very slowly before going on. “I left there around six and went home.”

  “Alone?” Hurley asks.

  “Yes,” Erik snaps. “Alone.”

  “And where might home be these days?” Hurley asks, scribbling away in his notebook.

  Erik rattles off the address, an apartment on the other side of town.

  “Did you go anywhere else?”

  “Not until this morning when I went to work,” Erik says tightly, his hands coiled into fists at his side. “Same hours as yesterday.”

  “Is there anyone who can verify that you were at home yesterday evening?”

  “No.”

  “Nobody? No phone calls in or out, no visitors, no deliveries?”

  “No,” Erik repeats, his voice even tighter. Then he rises and steps out of the car so abruptly that Hurley and I both take an involuntary step back. “I’m done answering questions until I talk to a lawyer.”

  The two men indulge in a ten-second stare-down until Hurley says, “Fine. You’re free to go for now but don’t go far.”

  The muscles in Erik’s cheeks twitch violently; his face is suffused with anger and indignation. I can tell he wants to say something more but after a few seconds he simply turns away and heads for his car.

  “One other quick question, if you don’t mind?” Hurley yells after him.

  Erik pauses but doesn’t look back.

  “Do you own a gun?” Hurley asks.

  I see the muscles in Erik’s back tighten before he answers. “I’ve got nothing more to say until I talk to a lawyer.” He continues to his car, gets in, starts it up, and peels out.

  As we eat his dust, Hurley looks over at me with a thoughtful expression and says, “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  Chapter 5

  I can hardly bring myself to consider the possibility of Erik doing such a brutal thing to his wife, but I know people often hide their true selves from the rest of us. How much can we really know about any one person? Even those closest to us, the ones we live with and love, are capable of amazing dishonesty and dark, desperate secrets. That’s a lesson I’ve learned the hard way of late, after being on the fool’s end of my husband’s deception and learning that others in the community were not who I thought they were. What terrible secrets might Erik be hiding? What secrets had Shannon been hiding? And had those secrets ultimately led to her demise?

  I know the answers lie in the evidence. With my curiosity roused, I follow Hurley back to the house. As he heads for the kitchen again, I take a slight detour and find the room I think is most likely to hold evidence of secrets: Shannon’s bedroom.

  The décor is a bit shocking. Either Shannon wasted no time in erasing all evidence of Erik from her life or Erik had quietly tolerated Shannon’s extreme feminine tastes. The bed is neatly made and covered with a white comforter fringed with lacy tatting, echoing the frilly lace trim on the curtains. The walls are rosy pink, a shade that is repeated in the striped cushions of a wicker chair, the accent pillows on the bed, and the giant rose pattern in the rug. I feel like I’m trapped inside a bottle of Pepto-Bismol.

  I move to the closet and pull open the bifold doors. Every square inch of the space is filled with clothes, all of them feminine. If Erik ever had a corner to call his own, there is no trace of it left
now. Dozens of pairs of shoes are neatly arranged on the floor. I take a moment to envy the variety of styles and imagine what it must be like to be a woman of normal size. I wear a size-twelve shoe and choices are pretty limited when you get into this Sasquatch range, so there’s no Imelda Marcos thing going on in my closet. Plus there’s the whole height thing, which makes me reluctant to wear any kind of heel. I’ve been told I should embrace my height and wear it proudly. But I’m a bit self-conscious thanks to years of being asked how the weather is “up there,” and dodging “green” jokes (as in jolly giants, not environmental issues).

  With one last, longing look at the shoes, I shift the focus of my pity party to the upper parts of the closet. Two overhead shelves hold purses, jeans, T-shirts, and a couple of basic granny nightgowns. These I can relate to. But the stuff hanging on the rack is another story.

  I finger through the assortment, marveling at the petite styles and fashionable lines. Given that I’m six feet tall and weigh anywhere from one-seventy to none-of-your-freaking business, the clothes in Shannon’s closet are utterly foreign to me. I remember that she had a small side career as a local model and wonder if any of these clothes were acquired as perks of the job.

  As I work my way down the rack, I notice all the clothes at the right end are loose-fitting styles in sizes ten and twelve. The ones in the center are size eights and of a more form-fitting style, and to the far left are some sexy sixes. This variety of sizes doesn’t surprise me. I have my own collections, though my sizes tend to range from not-so-fat, to Rubenesque, to Hindenburg. Apparently Shannon has had similar struggles with her weight, though on a much smaller scale . . . in every sense of the word.

  I leave the closet and head for the dressers, taking care when I open the drawers in case there might be valuable fingerprint evidence there. One drawer is filled with pieces of sexy lingerie, some with the price tags still attached. No doubt these are for the new boyfriend. I did a similar upgrade myself a few weeks ago. It was easy to embrace the comfort of plain cotton, stretched-out elastic, and flannel granny gowns when I was seven years into my marriage, but now that I’ve been thrust back into the singles market, I need better window dressing.

  Next I move to the bedside stands. The one on the right is empty and I guess that’s the side of the bed that used to be Erik’s. The bottom drawer of the stand on the left holds some body lotions and a night mask, but the top drawer is crammed full of letters. A quick sampling shows me that most of them are from Erik and bear postmarks dating back no more than three months ago.

  I grab one of the envelopes and carefully remove the letter inside. It’s a single sheet of paper with a tidy scrawl on it, two paragraphs of writing. A quick scan of the contents reveals that Erik was utterly blindsided by Shannon’s request for a separation and still very much in love with her. His note pleads with her to reconsider and not waste all the years they’ve spent together and reminds her of how happy they’d once been. The next to the last sentence reads: “Remember the vows we took ten years ago.” The closing is sweet and desperate in its simplicity, but also chilling given the night’s events: “’Til death do us part. Love, Erik.”

  “What are you doing?”

  The sound of Hurley’s voice behind me makes me jump. I spin around, knowing I look guilty but trying not to. “I was curious about Shannon’s life and thought I might find something in here that could offer up some clues.”

  “And did you?”

  “Maybe.” I’m none too eager to show the letter to Hurley, knowing it will only convince him more of Erik’s guilt. But I have no choice so I hand it over. He reads it, looks at the stack still in the drawer, and says, “Interesting. Did you read any of the others?”

  I shake my head. He looks at me with his eyes narrowed and I’m expecting him to chastise me for snooping but he surprises me by instead asking, “So what’s your take on Erik? Do you think he did it?”

  I want to blurt out an immediate denial but hold it back. “I don’t know,” I say finally, truthfully. “But I’m leaning toward no.”

  “Why is that?”

  “He just doesn’t strike me as the type. He’s always been a very sweet, kind, gentle guy.”

  Hurley considers this a moment, then nods. “I guess we’ll see.”

  “You think he’s guilty.”

  “I’m leaning that way.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugs. “Just a gut feeling.”

  “But you’re not sure.”

  “Not yet.”

  “You’ll keep an open mind?”

  He looks miffed. “I always follow the evidence. Let’s see what it turns up.” He moves closer to the stand and scoops up all the letters from the drawer. Then he turns to me and says, “In order to follow the evidence, we have to collect it.” He arches an eyebrow at me and I get the hint along with a hot body flush.

  “All right,” I say with a melodramatic sigh. “I’ll go collect blood samples. But I have to tell you, snooping and reading letters is way more fun.”

  “Well, if you’re nice to me,” he says, a hint of suggestion in his voice, “I’ll let you read the rest of them.”

  While I’m generally a pretty straightforward person, I’m not against using my feminine wiles if I think it will get me what I want. Plus, Hurley tends to bring out the vamp in me. So I flash my best coquettish smile at him and say, “Nice? I can do nice.”

  “Yes,” Hurley says, his voice huskier. The blue in his eyes darkens and I’m suddenly very aware of the bed beside us. “I’ll bet you can.”

  Chapter 6

  All of the cops on site help with the evidence collection, so it takes just over two hours to swab, seal, and label what we need. Arnie offers to stay with the body to await transport—a service provided by one of two local funeral homes—and I’m more than happy to help Izzy take the evidence packs back to the office, where I keep a change of clothes.

  By the time we finish loading everything into Izzy’s car, I note there is a growing crowd of bystanders lurking on the edges of the property and cars parked down the side of the road as far as I can see. Despite the fact that there is police tape strung up around the perimeter of Shannon’s yard, the onlookers have been difficult to keep out. Because it’s Halloween, everyone seems to think the goings-on are some kind of holiday performance art. As a result, three extra police officers have been called in to help patrol the yard and keep the lookie-loos out. The cops performing this duty don’t appear very happy; no doubt they’ve been called in on their day off. Not that that’s unusual. In a town this small there are only two or three cops on duty at any given time, and whenever reinforcements are needed, it generally means calling in the off-duty crew. Normally they don’t mind, but I know most of them would feel better about giving up their free time if they could at least get close to the crime scene instead of being forced to play sheepdog to the nosy herd.

  Hurley gives Alison permission to shoot a few pictures of the nosy brigade, knowing it’s possible the killer might be in the crowd, but caveats it by saying that he wants to see all the shots she takes and approve any that might be used in the paper. A couple of times I catch her aiming her camera at stuff other than what Hurley instructed but I can’t tell if she’s shooting surreptitious shots of the scene or not. I do know that if any unauthorized photos appear in the paper, Hurley will be royally pissed off. It’s almost enough to make me encourage Alison to misbehave.

  As we are about to leave, Hurley walks over to Izzy and me and says, “You’re not going to post her tonight, are you?”

  Izzy glances at his watch—it’s going on eleven o’clock—and shakes his head. “How does noon tomorrow sound? Sunday is my one day to sleep in if I can.”

  “That works for me,” Hurley says. “That will give me some time to do a little legwork to see what I can turn up.”

  “What kind of legwork?” I ask.

  Hurley smiles and eyes me with a look that makes me imagine a very specific type of legwork—
in bed and intertwined. “Why?” he asks. “Are you looking for a date?”

  “No, thanks, I’ve already had one of those tonight.”

  His smile fades. “You were on a date?” His voice goes all huffy as he zips back into detective mode. “You didn’t tell me you had a date tonight.”

  “I didn’t know I was supposed to. Do I need an alibi or something?”

  “It’s hard to know with you, given past experience.”

  As comebacks go, it’s a pretty good one. Better than I expected.

  “So just in case,” he goes on, taking out his little notebook and his pen, “why don’t you tell me who it was.”

  “William,” I say, being purposefully evasive. I glance at my watch, then turn to Izzy and add, “And if we hurry and get this stuff back to the office I might be able to join him for a late-night drink to salvage some of our evening.”

  Izzy blinks hard several times and stares at me. I can tell he’s confused so I take his arm and steer him toward the car, effectively dismissing Hurley’s nosy inquiry and escaping before Izzy can blow my story.

  As we pull away from the house, I see Hurley standing there watching us, a scowl on his face, notebook and pen in hand. I can’t help but grin.

  “A late-night drink?” Izzy says as we turn the corner. “You’re not really going to—”

  “Of course not,” I shoot back. “But Hurley doesn’t have to know the guy is as exciting as a blank wall. That’s what he gets for agreeing to go out with Alison.”

  “Whose clutches you left him in,” Izzy points out.

  I frown, realizing I haven’t thought things through all the way. “You don’t think they’ll actually stay together, do you? It sounded to me like Hurley planned to spend the rest of the night doing investigative work.”

  “And Alison is an investigative reporter.”

  “Damn,” I mutter.

  Izzy shakes his head and sighs. “You really are rusty when it comes to this flirting stuff.”