Scared Stiff Read online

  “Of course.”

  He is a perfect gentleman, opening the car door for me and making sure I put my seat belt on. I note that his car is a Toyota Prius and my estimation of him, and his financial status, jumps up a notch. I’m starting to think I didn’t give the guy a fair shake when he climbs behind the wheel and says, “There’s some mouthwash in the glove box. Can you get it out for me?”

  I do so, then sit and watch, stunned, as he gargles and spits out his window. I half expect him to offer me a slug but realize that this sharing of germs is probably high on his list of phobias. Then I consider telling him I have a canker sore or some other infection, in hopes of warding off any attempts at a kiss.

  My house is less than a mile away so it takes only a minute or two to get there. Along the way William glances at himself in the rearview mirror several times—taming his comb-over with a lick of spit, examining his teeth, and looking up his nose once, presumably for stray hairs.

  He follows my directions and parks in front of my cottage. I climb out of the car quickly, not wanting to encourage the suitor scenario any more by waiting for him to open my door. Once we get inside he stops, looks around, and assumes an expression of obvious distaste.

  “You’re a bit of a clutterbug, aren’t you?” he says.

  “Sorry.” I take the envelope Hurley gave me out of my purse and toss it onto a nearby chair. “Neatness is not one of my strong suits.”

  William looks like he is about to say something else but sneezes instead. Then he does it again. Three more follow in succession, like rapid-fire gunshots. “Do you have a cat?” he sniffles, taking out his hankie and dabbing at his nose. “I’m allergic to cats.”

  Suddenly I see light at the end of the tunnel . . . a way out of all this without rejecting William outright. “I do. He’s a kitten, actually, about four months old, and his name is Rubbish because I found him in a garbage Dumpster.”

  William glances around the room with an utterly horrified expression and I half expect him to bolt for the door.

  “Don’t worry. He’s probably in hiding somewhere. He does that when I come home, like a game of hide-and-seek.” I gesture toward the couch. “Why don’t you have a seat and I’ll get us some wine.”

  He walks over to the couch and bends down to examine it carefully. When he starts brushing at the cushion, I head into the kitchen with my purse and grab the closest thing I have to wine-glasses: a couple of juice tumblers. As I hear William sneeze several more times, I dig in my purse, find a tube of lipstick, and put some on. Then I take both of the glasses and wrap my lips around their rims, one at a time. When I’m done, I examine the glasses carefully in the light and deem the lip prints satisfactory. Then I open a bottle of Chardonnay and fill both glasses.

  I return to the living room to find William sitting on the couch, red-eyed, sniffling, and tearing. He sneezes twice more as I approach and they are violent enough that his comb-over springs loose, standing up on one side of his head like a lopsided rooster comb.

  “You poor thing,” I tell him, handing him a glass of wine.

  He takes the glass and true to form, holds it up for inspection. Despite the fact that his eyes are swollen halfway shut, he manages to widen them to startling proportions when he spies the lipstick mark. “Did you wash this glass?” he asks nasally.

  I shrug. “I gave it a good rinse. Why? Is there a problem?”

  He sets the glass down, blows his nose, and then sneezes again. I notice movement behind him and realize Rubbish has finally appeared, climbing up the back of the couch to perch just behind William’s head.

  William leans back into the couch and dabs at his eyes and nose. He looks truly miserable and I feel a pang of pity for him. Then I notice that Rubbish has hunkered down, his furry little ass wiggling in the air, his pupils dilated like a meth addict’s. His eyes are focused on the flopping strands of William’s comb-over, and I realize with horror that he is about to make a kill.

  William retrieves his glass as I start forward in hopes of grabbing Rubbish before he can attack but I’m a step too late. The kitten launches himself forward, all claws out, and lands on top of William’s head. William shrieks and pushes himself off the couch, managing to spill wine all over his shirt and knock over the coffee table in the process. Rubbish loses his grip, slides down the side of William’s head, and then scampers into my bedroom.

  At least now I don’t have to worry about William trying to take me to bed.

  “Jesus Christ!” William yells, holding a protective hand over his scratched face. He sets his now-empty wineglass down and takes out a second folded, cloth hankie from his pants pocket, which he uses to dab at the blood.

  “I’m so sorry, William. Let me get something to clean up those scratches for you.” I grab a towel from the linen closet, and fetch some gauze, hydrogen peroxide, and antibiotic ointment from the medicine cabinet. As I return to the living room, I half expect to find William gone but to his credit he is still here, though he is standing much closer to the door. His eyes dart back and forth crazily and I’m not sure if he’s looking for Rubbish or planning a hasty escape.

  His shirt front is soaked with wine so he unbuttons it and uses the towel to dry off his chest. In the meantime I dab at his wounds, clean them the best I can, and apply some ointment to each of the scratches. His comb-over is still standing at attention but there is something oddly endearing about it so I leave it alone. When I’m done, I stand back and tell him, “There you go. Good as new.”

  “What if I get an infection?” he asks. “Cats are notoriously dirty animals, aren’t they?”

  His questions remind me of someone else’s recent comments and an idea begins to bloom in my brain. “Their bites are prone to infection,” I admit, “but the scratches less so. I think you’ll be fine.”

  He gives me a look that says he’s doubtful. Then his head rears back and shoots forward as he lets loose a rapid triple sneeze. Between the movement and the comb-over, he looks like one of those bobbing glass bird toys with the colored liquid inside.

  “It doesn’t look like things are going to work out with us, William,” I say, trying to sound disappointed.

  “Clearly not.” He blows his nose again.

  “Would you be open to dating an older woman?”

  He eyes me suspiciously. “Who did you have in mind?”

  “My mother.”

  He looks offended.

  “She’s only a few years older than you and a very attractive woman,” I add quickly. “Plus she’s very, very clean.” It’s true. My mother is more of a neat freak and germophobe than William ever dreamed of being. She’s also single, several years out from her fourth divorce, lonely, and a cat hater.

  He considers my offer a moment and then shrugs. “I’m game for anything at this point, I guess.”

  “Great! I think you two will be perfect for one another. I’ll give her a call and see if I can set something up, okay?”

  He dabs at a trickle of blood on his ear and sneezes again. I take it as a yes.

  “I think it would be best if I left,” he says.

  “I understand. And again, I’m sorry.” I lean over and give him a quick buss on the cheek which, thanks to my freshly applied lipstick, leaves a perfect kiss imprint behind. I consider wiping it off but then decide to let it stay.

  The kiss brightens his countenance considerably, and when he turns to leave he is wearing a silly-assed grin. I walk him to the door, flip on the outside spotlight, and watch as he gets into his car and drives away.

  Only after he’s gone do I realize I’m not alone. Standing at the back door to Izzy’s house are Izzy and Hurley, both of them staring slack-jawed at me. Izzy looks amused and surprised, Hurley looks like a thundercloud. I give them both a little finger wave before going back inside.

  Spying the envelope Hurley gave me earlier still sitting where I tossed it, I pick it up and settle in to read. It proves to be a depressing endeavor. Clearly Erik was both surprised and
devastated by Shannon’s desire to split, and their differing views about having children was at the heart of a good part of it. Erik wanted them and Shannon didn’t, but in later letters Erik made it clear he was willing to forgo the children if it would help save the marriage.

  Erik’s love for Shannon is evident in every letter. I can find no hints of craziness or angry desperation in his words, only heartache. He mentions Luke Nelson in a letter dated nearly a month ago, so he apparently knew about him for a while. But he also wrote that he was willing to move past this bump in their marital road if Shannon would give him a second chance.

  Basically, the letters support what my instincts are already telling me: that Erik loved his wife very much and was incapable of killing her. Granted, the separation paperwork Shannon hit him with might have been a finality he wasn’t willing to accept. But I still can’t make myself believe he would kill her over it.

  Somehow I have to prove it.

  Chapter 10

  The next morning I drop my costume gown off at the dry cleaner. The lady behind the desk looks at it with a puzzled expression.

  “Is this mud?” she asks.

  “No, blood.”

  Her eyebrows shoot up and she drops the part of the dress she’s holding like it’s a hot potato. “Real blood?”

  I nod. “Afraid so.”

  “It looks like a lot,” she says, her voice shaky. Since she’s eyeing me like she expects I’m about to go batshit crazy and hack her to death, I figure an explanation is in order.

  “Sorry about that. I work for the medical examiner so I’m afraid blood is something of an occupational hazard. Last night I got called out to the scene of a homicide while I was at a Halloween party. This”—I finger the dress—“was my costume.”

  Her shoulders relax and she smiles. Then she leans across the counter and lowers her voice. “I heard about that,” she says in her best conspirator’s voice. “Someone said it was that waitress over at Dairy Airs, the one who models from time to time.”

  Ah, the ubiquitous but mysterious “someone” and “they,” basic gossip fodder in any small town.

  “They said she was shot,” the woman goes on. “Is that true?”

  “I can’t say,” I tell her, smiling back. She frowns, but looks at me with a new level of respect.

  Though I enjoy a juicy bit of gossip as much as the next person and have partaken of fact swaps in the past, I’ve also been privy to knowledge on many occasions that I couldn’t and wouldn’t share. As a nurse, I always followed a strict code of confidentiality, even before the whole HIPAA thing started. With this job, I find myself once again bound to secrecy often as not. But that’s okay because I’ve discovered two things over the years. One is that not sharing what I know can be as satisfying as doling out a juicy tidbit. And that’s because of the other thing: status when it comes to gossip is less about what you actually know than it is about what people think you know. And my new job jumps me up to a whole new level because now people realize I’m a gatekeeper for some of the town’s juiciest tidbits ever.

  I leave the curious and frustrated dry cleaner behind and head for the office, arriving a little after eleven-thirty. Izzy is already there, sitting in the library with a cup of coffee and the Sunday paper.

  “Morning,” I tell him, pouring a cup of java and scrounging a cruller from a Dunkin’ Donuts box left over from yesterday. I drop a ten-dollar bill on the table in front of Izzy and then settle into a nearby chair. “Congratulations,” I tell him. “You won.”

  “Easy money,” he says, pocketing the bill. “I knew Hurley would be there. You forget how predictable we men can be.”

  “I’ll have to remember to tell that to my divorce lawyer.”

  “First you have to find one.”

  “I will. I just need some time.”

  “I thought last night’s events might prompt you to speed that process up,” he says, his voice laden with innuendo.

  I give him a puzzled look. “I don’t follow.”

  “Well, it looked like you and William hit it off pretty well. I told you he wasn’t that bad.”

  “Are you kidding? It was an unmitigated disaster.”

  “Oh, sure,” Izzy says with a smirk. “I saw him leave your place last night. Hurley and I both did. We saw the lip imprint on his cheek, the mussed-up hair, the unbuttoned shirt, and the big-assed grin on his face. Hell, you even scratched him, you wildcat you.”

  I stare at Izzy, blinking hard for a moment, before I realize what he’s inferring. “No, no, no,” I say, holding my hands out to ward off his evil thoughts. “You have it all wrong. William is allergic to cats, so his hair was all messed up because he sneezed a bazillion times. The scratches were from when Rubbish attacked his comb-over. The lip print—well, that was legit, but I only kissed him the one time on the cheek because he looked so miserable and I felt sorry for him.”

  I decide not to admit to the reason why my lipstick was so fresh.

  “The evening wasn’t a total loss, though,” I continue. “I’m going to fix William up with my mother. I think they’ll be perfect together.”

  “Well, if your intent was to make Hurley jealous, it worked. You should have seen the look on his face when he saw William leaving. He was fuming.”

  I smile, recalling Hurley’s thunderous expression and imagining the thoughts that might have been going through his mind. “What was he doing there anyway?”

  “He said he wanted to fill me in on some case facts but I’m pretty sure he was using that as an excuse to come by and check on you. He could have just called or waited until this morning.”

  As if on cue, I hear the door open behind me and see Izzy’s gaze shift over my head. “Good morning, Detective,” he says.

  I turn around and smile at Hurley. “Good morning, Detective,” I echo in the cheeriest voice I can muster.

  He scowls at me, mutters, “Morning,” and then shifts his attention to Izzy, effectively dismissing me. “Are we still on for noon?”

  “Ready anytime,” Izzy says, draining his coffee mug. “Let’s get to it.”

  That’s my cue so I scarf down my cruller, take one more swallow of my coffee, and head to the morgue.

  Arnie, who functions as our primary lab tech, sometime autopsy assistant, general gofer, and resident conspiracy theorist, had tucked Shannon’s body in the cold storage room last evening. It’s the only body in the room so it isn’t hard to find.

  I grab the clipboard at the end of the stretcher and examine the checklist of items on the top page—all the things that have to be done before the actual cutting part of the autopsy begins.

  A weight is obtained on each body, something that is relatively simple since the stretcher weights are known. Once a body arrives in our office and gets loaded onto a stretcher, the whole thing is wheeled onto a scale built into the floor. The scale automatically deducts the stretcher’s weight and flashes the remainder, which is the body’s weight, on a digital screen.

  We also obtain vitreous samples—a needle aspiration of the fluid inside the eyeballs. Whereas blood and other bodily fluids deteriorate rapidly once death occurs, a process that can affect certain lab values or the presence of residual drugs, the vitreous fluid remains more stable. It can also help narrow down the time of death as there is a somewhat predictable rise in the potassium level in the vitreous fluid after death. Each body is also X-rayed soon after arrival, before it is removed from its body bag.

  According to the checklist, Arnie did all of these things last night when the body arrived. I’m glad, not only because it makes my job that much easier this morning, but because I hate having to obtain the vitreous fluid. The process of pushing a needle into someone’s eyeball, even knowing they are dead, gives me the willies.

  I wheel the stretcher into the main autopsy room where Izzy and Hurley are already waiting. Izzy and I move Shannon’s body from the stretcher onto the autopsy table, then Izzy, who is already suited and gloved, opens the body bag and s
tarts taking photos while I don my own protective gear. Thirty minutes later we have photographed and examined her body and clothing for trace evidence, undressed her, scraped for evidence beneath her nails, and hosed her down. Izzy is posed over her upper chest with his scalpel, ready to make the first incision.

  Hurley is standing off to one side and has been quiet up to now, watching us with an intensity that makes my pulse quicken every time I look at him. This is my fourth autopsy with him and so far he’s followed a regular modus operandi: standing by quietly, observing, and occasionally asking a question or two about the significance of a particular finding. Today, however, he breaks with tradition just as Izzy is making the first cut. Taking out his notebook, he flips it open and begins a running commentary on his investigation thus far.

  “Turns out Erik Tolliver was at work both yesterday and the day before. He met with Shannon at Dairy Airs on the day he said he did and, according to the workers there, things ended on a fiery note when Erik threw the papers at Shannon, called her a bitch, and stormed out. His dinner alibi holds up for the day of the murder but after about six P.M. his whereabouts are unaccounted for.

  “Shannon was alive at three o’clock on the day she was murdered because that’s when she left work, but I haven’t found anyone who saw her after that. So that narrows down our time of death to sometime after three P.M. on the thirtieth. Yesterday’s mail was still in the mailbox, presumably delivered sometime after Shannon was killed. The box is out by the street and the mailman said he drove up at about ten in the morning, put the mail inside the box, and continued on. He didn’t pay particular attention to the yard display.

  “The only other information I have is that her coworkers said she ate lunch around twelve-thirty on the day she was killed: a roast beef sandwich, some cream of tomato soup, and an order of fried cheese curds.”

  Izzy says, “That might help us narrow down the time of death even more once I get a look at her stomach contents.”