Frozen Stiff (9 page)

Chapter 13

I
find Bob Richmond in the break room of the police station finishing off the remains of a sub sandwich. Apparently he’s changed his shirt because the stained white one has been replaced with a light blue one that looks a bit worn but is at least clean.

“You need to give me your cell number,” I tell him. He does so, rattling the number off between bites. After I enter it into my cell phone, I say, “You ready to go?”

He nods, shoves the last of his sandwich in his mouth, and groans as he pushes himself away from the table and out of his chair. He moves like a man in his eighties.

“You know, if you keep eating like that you’re going to keel over of a heart attack before you hit fifty,” I tell him.

He swallows what he has in his mouth and shoots me a dirty look. I brace myself for what’s coming, cursing my inability to turn off the nurse in me, but to my surprise, Richmond’s expression softens.

“For your information, I’m fifty-three,” he says. Then he shakes his head woefully. “Look, I know my weight is unhealthy and I know the only way to control it is by not eating, but damned if I can help myself. No matter how much I eat, I never feel full. I’ve been fat my entire life and I’m too old to change now.”

“You’re never too old to change,” I say, feeling a sudden and unexpected empathy for him. I know exactly how he feels. “You just need someone to help you come up with a rigidly controlled diet and a regular exercise program.” I say this with great authority, knowing I don’t practice what I preach. As far as I’m concerned, the basic four food groups are ice cream, chocolate, fried foods, and sweets. And when it comes to any type of regular exercise program, forget it. I get all ambitious when I gain a pound or twenty and start dieting and exercising with total devotion. But it never lasts. As soon as I shed the weight, or at least most of it—I seem to regain a few pounds every year and my weight has been slowly but steadily creeping upward—I go right back to my slothful, fattening habits. And the older I get, the harder it is to shed those extra pounds. I used to be able to do it with a couple of weeks of serious dieting and exercise. Now it takes a couple of
months
of near starvation and exercise, and frankly, I often don’t have the stick-to-itiveness to get through it.

Bob says, “I joined that exercise place over on Houghton Street last month but I only went once. Everyone in there is all fit and skinny and shit. I hate it.”

“You just need a buddy to go with you, someone else who isn’t perfect, so you don’t feel alone.”

He considers this, eyes me up and down, and says, “Would you go with me?”

“Me?” I squeak, both appalled and a bit offended at the idea that I’m the first person he would think of for an imperfect partner.

“I’d pay for your membership.”

“Thanks, Bob, but I don’t think so.”

“See, you’re embarrassed to be seen with me. Admit it.”

“No, that’s not it at all,” I say, wondering if it’s true. “I’m just not very good at keeping a regular schedule.”

Richmond shrugs. “I’m basically retired so I’m pretty flexible. We can fit the workouts into your schedule.”

I open my mouth to protest but hesitate because I’m not sure what other excuses I have. Plus, I don’t want to alienate Richmond too much right now because I need him to share his findings with me.

Richmond gives me a look of disgust. “So all that crap you just handed me about being healthy and eating healthy . . . that was just talk?” He shakes his head, looking disappointed. “I had you pegged as a stand-up person, someone with integrity. Clearly I was wrong. You’re as judgmental as the rest of them.”

“I’m not judging you; I’m just giving you my opinion as a nurse.”

“Bull. You’re just like everyone else. Admit it. The only reason you won’t go with me is because you’re embarrassed to be seen with me.”

“I am not.”

He gives me a disbelieving look. “Okay, you just keep telling yourself that.”

“Fine,” I snap. “I’ll go with you to the stupid gym for a while. But you’re paying for my membership.”

“I already told you I would.” He smiles and I think I see a hint of smugness there. I suspect I’ve just been played and played well, and I mentally kick myself. “We can talk about it some more later on,” he adds. “Let’s get this other nasty business out of the way first.”

He heads for the parking lot and I follow, listening to him whistle.
Smug bastard
. When we get to his car, I go around to the passenger side and open the door. That’s when I remember that Richmond has the contents of a small garbage Dumpster on the floor of his front seat.

“Oh, sorry about that,” he says. “Hold on a sec and I’ll clean it out.” He comes around and starts grabbing handfuls of empty fast-food containers, but with no trash bags or garbage cans anywhere close by, he has nowhere to put them. So he tosses them into the backseat.

“If we’re seriously going to do this gym thing, that shit’s going to stop right now,” I say, nodding toward the empty containers. “No more of that greasy fast-food stuff.”

For a second Richmond gives me a woeful expression, as if he just lost a very close friend.

“I mean it, Bob. If you’re going to keep eating like that, there’s no point to all of this.”

“Fine,” he says with a resigned sigh. He finishes tossing the trash into the back and brushes a few crumbs off the front seat before gesturing for me to get in.

The inside of the car smells like a mall food court and my stomach growls hungrily. I momentarily fantasize about eating a Sbarro’s pepperoni and cheese Stromboli followed by a Cinnabon classic bun smothered with extra cream cheese frosting. I can practically taste the food and it’s all I can do not to tell Richmond we should head for the nearest mall and go crazy one last time. But I contain myself, force the images away, and focus on the task at hand.

I decide to take advantage of our recent bonding by pumping Richmond for information along the way to Patricia Nottingham’s house. But I have to be quick since Nottingham’s house is only a couple of minutes away.

“Anything new on the Callie Dunkirk case?” I ask as soon as we’re under way.

“I talked with Dunkirk’s mother and sister over the phone to deliver the bad news but they didn’t have much insight to offer. I may have some guys down in Chicago take another run at them in a day or two, after they’ve had a little more time to grieve. I also talked to some of her coworkers at the TV station to see if she was working on anything that might have been dangerous, but I got nothing there, either. Apparently our Miss Dunkirk wasn’t a very sharing person. She liked to keep things to herself.

“So at this point we got nothing. We don’t know where she was killed, we don’t know why she was up here or where her car is, and we don’t have so much as a guess as to who killed her, or why.” He sighs and shakes his head. “I hate investigations like this.”

Hearing the frustration in his voice, I can’t help but wonder how angry he would be if he knew what I was keeping from him, and how quickly he’d be on Hurley as a result. Though I typically revel in being the keeper of secrets, at the moment I’m not relishing my position at all. It makes me feel like I’m walking on glass shards, gingerly taking a step at a time, knowing that a single misstep might lead to painful, irreparable damage.

As we pull onto Patricia Nottingham’s street, it’s obvious she is not only expecting us, but anxious for our arrival because she has the front door open when Richmond parks at the curb. She watches us closely as we get out of the car, no doubt searching for clues.

I smile at her as we climb the porch stairs. “Hi, Patricia. This is Detective Bob Richmond.” She acknowledges the introduction with a nod. “Here is your key back,” I say, handing it to her. “Thank you for letting me borrow it.”

She takes it and stuffs it inside her pants pocket. “Did you do the autopsy?”

“Let’s go inside and talk,” Richmond says.

Patricia waves us through the door and points to the left toward the living room. Richmond eyes the two delicate, antique chairs in the room and wisely takes a seat on the couch. I settle into one of the chairs, and Patricia takes the other one.

“You found something, didn’t you?” she asks, leaning forward eagerly, her eyes bouncing back and forth between me and Richmond before they finally settle on me.

“We did,” I say. I glance over at Richmond, unsure how much he wants me to reveal this soon, and he gives me a subtle nod. “It appears your father may have been poisoned.”

Patricia rears back, looking confused. “Poisoned? You mean like food poisoning?”

“Not exactly, no,” I say, shooting another glance Richmond’s way. He is studying Patricia intently and when he does nothing to interrupt or stop me, I continue. “It appears he was poisoned with cyanide.”

“Cyanide? How on earth could that happen?”

“Most likely someone slipped it into his food or drink,” Richmond says.

Patricia turns and looks at him, her expression horrified and even more befuddled. If she is in any way involved with this, she’s putting on a damned good show. “Why would anyone want to poison him?” she asks.

Richmond says, “You tell me.”

Patricia narrows her eyes at him. “Are you suggesting that
I
poisoned him?” The fierce look on her face makes that seem more possible than it did a moment ago. “I loved my father,” she says, her eyes welling with tears. “Yes, he was a cantankerous old coot at times, and yes, he could be as stubborn as a mule, but he is . . . was my father. He’s the only family I have left. And now he’s gone.”

She squeezes her eyes closed and tears course down her face. Richmond and I exchange looks and he shrugs.

“What sort of financial situation was your father in?” Richmond asks. I can tell Patricia is rankled by the question even though Richmond’s tone is less accusatory than before. “Did he have life insurance? A retirement plan? And who is his beneficiary?”

I wince, knowing this line of questioning is only going to incense Patricia even more. There is a spark in her eye, and I brace myself for the storm to come. But her next words are surprisingly calm and measured.

“Yes, I am my father’s sole beneficiary. As I just told you, I’m his only surviving family member. He has—had a small pension. I’m not sure how much it is, but it’s been enough for him to live on because his house is paid off. He was hardly wealthy and as far as life insurance goes, he had one policy that I know of, a small one for twenty-five thousand dollars that he said he got to cover his burial expenses.”

She pauses, gets up and grabs a tissue from a box on an end table, and blows her nose. Then she looks at Richmond and says, “I am a widow. My husband died a little over five years ago but when he was younger he developed a software company that he sold for a very tidy sum. I am quite well off, thank you, and have no need for my father’s money, or anyone else’s. Anything else you’d like to know?”

The question comes out with an underlying tone of bitterness. She and Richmond engage in a twenty second stare-off before Richmond says, “Yes, there is. Can you think of anyone who had a grudge or problem with your father? Anyone who would benefit from his death? Anyone who might want revenge for some reason?”

She thinks a moment, starts to shake her head, and then stops. “Well, there was one thing but it was kind of silly really,” she says, looking sheepish. “My father had a property dispute going on with one of his neighbors and was planning to take him to court.”

I hold my breath and utter a silent prayer that she won’t continue, but she does.

“And since this neighbor is a cop, Dad was convinced the guy would get special treatment because he’d have an in with the courts. Dad kept ranting on about how he’d never get a fair trial, how it was all part of some bigger conspiracy to stomp on the little guys, and how the city’s bourgeois government was just some secret cabal determined to screw him over.” She pauses, shrugs, and gives us an embarrassed smile. “Dad could be pretty blunt and vocal at times. I know he and this neighbor were involved in a couple of shouting matches, so who knows?”

I feel my stomach knot up. When I look over at Richmond, I’m hoping to see indifference on his face and a quick dismissal of Patricia’s idea. But instead I see keen interest.

“Do you know this neighbor’s name?” Richmond asks.

Patricia nods and with a flash of frightening clarity, I know what’s coming next. “I believe his name is Hurley,” she says. “Steve Hurley.”

Chapter 14

T
hough I expect Bob Richmond to discuss Patricia’s revelations during our short ride back to the station, he doesn’t get a chance. His cell phone rings and after answering the call and grunting a couple of times, he says, “Okay, be right there,” and hangs up.

He looks over at me and says, “They found Callie Dunkirk’s car.”

“Where?”

“It was left parked on a side street, ironically not far from where this Minniver guy lived. I’m heading over to check it out now and my guys have called Izzy to meet us there since the car might also be the murder site. Want to come along?”

I swallow hard, realizing that if Callie’s car is near Minniver’s house, it’s also near Hurley’s. “Sure,” I say.

A few minutes later we pull up on the scene, which is on a side street a couple of blocks down from Minniver’s house. There are two cop cars on site, one behind a silver sedan parked against the curb, and the other idling with its lights flashing in the traffic lane beside it. A police evidence tech, a guy named Jonas, is standing beside the silver sedan, waiting. Also standing nearby are two uniformed cops: Ron Colbert and Alan Nielsen.

Richmond slides his car in front of the lit-up cruiser and shifts it into park. He opens his door to get out but it takes several attempts and a lot of groaning before he makes it.

“Is it locked?” he asks the cops as we approach.

Colbert and Nielsen both nod and then Nielsen raises his hand, which is holding a Slim Jim. “We’re ready to open it whenever you say so. Looks like the keys are in it, along with her purse.”

Thank goodness we live in a small town where most of the people are honest. In a large city, I doubt a parked car containing visible keys and a purse would last very long.

“Did you dust the handles yet?” Richmond asks.

“Yep, looks like they were all wiped clean,” Jonas says.

“Okay, then, go ahead and open her up.”

Nielsen deftly slides the Slim Jim down inside the driver side door and after a few seconds of finagling, he pops the lock. Jonas hands around a box of gloves and I take a pair and put them on. Richmond pulls out a pair, too, but when he tries to pull one on over his huge hand, it tears. “Cheap crap,” he mutters, ripping the tattered glove off. He walks over to his own car, unlocks the trunk, and grabs some gloves from a box he has stashed inside.

I hear the rumble of a familiar car engine behind me and when I look I see Izzy’s Impala turn the corner. He pulls in along the curb behind the parked cruiser and gets out, carrying his scene kit.

“You’re just in time, Doc,” Richmond says.

Izzy walks up and sets his kit down on the street beside the just-unlocked door. He dons some gloves and then carefully opens the driver side door. We all peer inside, looking for signs of blood pools, drops, or splatter, anything that might indicate that this is where Callie Dunkirk was killed. But the car appears to be clean.

“I don’t see any evidence to indicate she was stabbed in here,” Izzy says. We all take a step back as Izzy removes his gloves, stuffs them in his pocket, and picks up his scene kit. “I’ll leave the rest to you fellows,” he says.

Jonas moves in with a small, battery-operated, hand-held vacuum and starts running it over the driver’s seat and floor.

Izzy looks over at Richmond and me. “How did it go with Minniver’s daughter?”

“Okay,” I say with a shrug. “She took it well, considering.”

“Did she have any ideas on who might have wanted to poison her father?”

Richmond snorts. “Yeah, she thinks it might have been Steve Hurley.” He says this with obvious derision, making it clear what he thinks of the idea.

“Hurley?” Izzy echoes. “Where did that come from?”

“Apparently Hurley is a neighbor,” I explain, “and there was some kind of property line dispute between him and this Minniver guy. Frankly, the whole idea of a cop or anyone, for that matter, killing someone over something so petty seems pretty absurd to me.”

“Yeah, I have to agree,” Richmond says. “Though Hurley is kind of an unknown quantity in these parts. He’s still pretty new here.”

“I’ve worked a few cases with him and he seems like a pretty straight-up guy to me,” I say.

Richmond snorts. “Yeah, like you’re an objective judge.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, come on, Mattie. Everyone knows there’s something going on between you two. Even I’ve heard the rumors, and I’m hardly in the regular loop.”

“There is nothing going on between me and Hurley.” I try to look offended by the suggestion but I can tell from Richmond’s amused expression that he isn’t buying it. Can’t say I blame him. But while my denial isn’t exactly the truth, it isn’t an all-out lie, either. Sure, Hurley and I have had a kiss or two, but that’s as far as things have gone.

“That’s not what I’ve heard,” Richmond says. “Rumor has it your attraction to Hurley couldn’t be more obvious if you were humping his leg every time you’re together.”

Great. The last thing I need is to be the topic of more rumors in this town. It’s not bad enough that I’m already the object of pity, thanks to David’s indiscretions. Now I’m being labeled as the town hound dog as well. And given my current situation with Hurley, it couldn’t have come at a worse time.

“I don’t give a hoot what you’ve heard,” I tell Richmond. “I swear there is nothing going on between me and Hurley.”

“Whatever,” he says with a dismissive shrug. “Like I said, I don’t see this property line dispute as much of a motive anyway. I need to dig a little deeper into Minniver’s life, see what other motives and suspects pop up.”

Jonas turns off his vacuum, sets it aside, and dons some shoe covers. Then he gets his fingerprint kit and settles into the front seat of Callie’s car. He sits there a moment, frowning, and then he calls Richmond over.

“Do me a favor,” he says, offering Richmond the fingerprint powder and brush. “Check the seat lever down there for prints. I need to move the seat back but I don’t want to smudge anything that might be there and I can’t quite reach it from here.”

Richmond takes the kit, and when he bends over to brush the powder on the lever, his shirt rides up along his back, exposing a wide expanse of derriere and a butt crack that rivals the Grand Canyon.

Izzy, who is watching along with me, quickly turns away and says, “That’s my cue to leave. Need a ride back to your car?”

“Sure. Thanks.”

As soon as Izzy drops me off, I take out my cell phone and call Hurley to give him a heads-up. He doesn’t answer, so I leave a message letting him know about the car and what Patricia told us. Knowing I have a long drive ahead of me tomorrow, I stop off on my way home and top off my gas tank at the Kwik-E-Mart, which just happens to be located right next to the strip mall that serves as home to Mancini’s Pizzeria.

Ten minutes later, I’m sitting at home eating my takeout pizza and wondering if Richmond is being equally bad. In an effort to mitigate my sin, I drop the end crusts onto the floor so Hoover can do the thing that earned him his name. After sucking up every last crumb, he goes to the door and whines to be let out. That’s when it hits me. Tomorrow’s trip to Chicago is likely to be an all-day event. And Hoover, though he has done remarkably well thus far, hasn’t had his bladder tested for more than an eight-hour span.

The responsibilities of dog ownership weren’t uppermost in my mind when I found him, especially since I wasn’t sure I’d be keeping him. I ran a lost-and-found ad in the local paper, but got no response. I’ve had him for nearly a month now and with each passing day he steals a little more of my heart. Even Rubbish adores him. It’s easy to see why, because as companions go, Hoover is damned near perfect. He senses when my mood needs lifting, listens patiently to everything I say, keeps me warm in bed at night, and shares my taste in ice cream. If only I could find all those traits in a man.

While I’m overjoyed to have Hoover, his presence does leave me with certain scheduling issues I didn’t have before. As I let him outside and watch him wander about sniffing until he finds the perfect place to piddle, I consider taking him along tomorrow. But we’ll be riding in Hurley’s car to who knows where and for how long, so I quickly dismiss that idea. I then think about asking Izzy and Dom to take care of him but I’m hesitant to impose on Izzy any more than I already have, and besides, the less I have to face Izzy while I’m withholding information from him, the better.

I would ask my sister, Desi, but she, Lucien, and the kids all left town early this morning to drive to Arizona to spend Thanksgiving with Lucien’s parents.

That leaves my mother. The obvious problem with this idea is that my mother is a serious germaphobe and I suspect a puppy will look like a giant agar plate to her. But she is also a hypochondriac, and that aspect of her personality gives me an idea.

“Come on, Hoover,” I say. “Let’s go for a ride.”

Thanks to today’s rising temperature, a good deal of the snow that fell Thursday night has melted. As a result, a lot of what was white and pristine yesterday is now gray and slushy, turning Hoover’s tootsies into mud magnets. I’m not too worried about him muddying up the back of the hearse. I was told when I bought it that the rear carpeting was some industrial-strength commercial stuff that would resist the most insistent of stains. Given the cargo that was typically carried back there before I bought it, I shudder to think what tests the carpet company ran to be able to make that claim. But because my mother would probably go screaming in terror at the site of mud-caked paws, I grab an old towel from the house and clean off Hoover’s feet the best I can.

There’s no need to call ahead to see if Mother will be home because the woman rarely ventures out of the house. According to her, the outside world is full of horrible threats: germs, radiation, cancer-inducing sun rays, skin-wrinkling poisons, secondhand smoke, airborne pesticides . . . and that’s before she starts thinking up the more bizarre dangers, like getting your head split open by “turdites”—her word for those frozen, blue meteorites that are created when crap gets jettisoned from airliner toilets. I’ve always thought Mother could score big in Hollywood—the makers of disaster movies could learn a thing or two from her when it comes to thinking up ways for people to be annihilated.

Mother’s long-term paranoia and hypochondria have definitely shaped my psyche and may have been why I chose to be a nurse. As a young child I kept expecting her to turn up dead any time, either from one her many supposed ailments, or some uncanny and unfortunate accident. As a result, I was always choosing alternative caregivers from among my friends’ parents and imagining what a more normal life might be like. Over the years Mom dragged me along with her to hundreds of doctor appointments, an experience that always proved terrifying. But my fright didn’t stem from a fear of Mom’s illnesses or possible death—by the age of ten I began to suspect that her only real sickness was a mental one. Instead I was scared to death of being mortified by her behavior.

Because of her fear of germs and her belief that doctors’ offices are giant petri dishes, incubating all the horrific diseases of every patient ever seen there—a fear that unfortunately has some foundation in truth—she would always refuse to sit in the waiting room. Instead she would insist on being taken back to an exam room immediately upon her arrival. If she wasn’t, she would raise a fuss until she got her way, something that typically happened pretty quickly since the front desk people were always anxious to shut her up and get her in the back so she would quit scaring the other patients.

Unfortunately, getting past the waiting room was only half the battle. Once Mom got to an exam room, she would make the nurses go through a rigorous cleaning procedure that she had to personally supervise, an exhausting process that often took fifteen minutes or more and plucked the last nerve on the most patient of nurses.

As a result of all these idiosyncrasies, Mom knows every generalist and specialist in town because she has seen and made herself persona non grata with most of them. Nowadays she travels nearly an hour to see her doctor and she has toned down her behavior quite a bit. I think she finally realized she was running out of options and would soon be forced to weigh her fear of flying against her fear of death because the only doctors left who would be willing to see her would be too far away to drive to.

My marrying a doctor certainly helped things, and in my mother’s eyes it’s the one thing in life I did right. When I started dating David, she was ecstatic; when we became engaged, she nearly had an orgasm. She can’t understand why I now want to divorce him over something as mundane as infidelity. I have to admit that David, despite his many faults, has always been a veritable font of patience when it comes to my mother. And she definitely pushes the limits, calling him often and at all hours of the day and night. If I had a dollar for every house call David ever made to my mother, I’d be pulling into her driveway right now in something a whole lot nicer than a hearse.

Today there is another car in Mom’s drive and it’s one I recognize. It belongs to William-not-Bill Hanover, a nerdy, germaphobic accountant with a bad case of OCD and an even worse comb-over. William was my blind date for a Halloween party a few weeks ago and the results were nothing short of catastrophic. However, he proved to be a perfect, albeit younger match for my mother. Apparently the sharing of a common mental illness is a powerful aphrodisiac.

I leash Hoover and head for the front door, trying to sidestep the slush piles to keep his paws as clean as possible. Apparently Mother either saw or heard me pull up because the door whips open before I reach the porch. She looks at Hoover with a horrified expression and claps a hand to her chest. Her normally pale skin is whiter than usual; she looks like one of those pale, see-through creatures you might see on a
National Geographic
special about the denizens of the Mariana Trench.

“What is
that?
” she says, pointing at Hoover and curling her lip in repugnance.