Lucky Stiff (12 page)

“What are you thinking about?” Hurley asks.

I shake off my nostalgia and focus on the here and now. “I was just musing about life in general, and how unpredictable it is.”

“That’s what makes it interesting.”

“I guess, though I can’t help but feel like the whole thing is a bit of a crapshoot. I mean, look at Jack Allen. I’m sure his life’s plan didn’t include ending up as a wheelchair-bound paraplegic, or a murder victim.”

“He probably didn’t plan on winning close to half a mil at the casino, either,” Hurley muses aloud, with a shrug. “Maybe it’s some sort of karmic balance. Look at how many big lottery winners end up broke or plagued by tragedy after they win.”

Georgio brings out our appetizer and antipasto, and Hurley and I dig in. After a few sumptuous bites, Hurley asks me, “What was your life plan when you were younger?”

“Ironically, I was more or less on track before David did what he did. I always imagined myself living in a big house, with a successful, handsome husband, a nice car, and a career that earned me both money and respect.”

“What about kids?”

“Two, if I had a boy and a girl. Three, if the first two turned out to be the same sex. But I was definitely quitting at three.”

“Wow, you really did plan it out.”

I nod as I swallow a yummy bite of stuffed mushroom. “I was a victim of the ‘Barbie and Ken syndrome,’ so much so that I think I would have thought it perfectly normal if my husband had plastic hair and no genitals.”

“Ah,” Hurley says, with an evil glint in his eye. “That helps me better understand how you ended up with David.”

I snort a laugh and nearly choke on my food.

Once Hurley is sure he won’t have to perform the Heimlich on me, he asks, “Did you always want to be a nurse?”

“Hell no. Nursing wasn’t on my radar for a long time. I went through phases where I wanted to be an astronomer, a veterinarian, a marine biologist, and a forest ranger.”

Hurley chuckles. “I went through a forest ranger phase, too.”

“I think most kids do.”

“So when and how did nursing come into the picture?”

“I sort of fell into it because of certain . . . circumstances.”

Hurley looks intrigued, and I can tell I’ve triggered his detecting radar. “What kind of circumstances?” he asks.

“Stupid ones,” I say with a self-deprecating snort. “I was pretty idealistic in my late teens, and I had a crazy crush on this guy I knew in high school named Pete Nottingham. I was well into the throes of my ‘Barbie and Ken syndrome,’ and Pete actually looked a lot like a Ken doll, right down to his hair. He used some kind of cheap pomade product to try to tame it.

“Anyway, when I learned that Pete had plans to go to medical school and become a doctor, I opted to do the same so I could stay near him. I envisioned this romantic future with the two of us struggling through medical school and our residencies, then kicking back and enjoying the fruits of our labors once we were done. I went for the whole fantasy: the big house, two-point-five kids in a private school, matching Benzes in the drive, evenings spent at social events hobnobbing with the medical elite, and then nights of hot, torrid, fantastic sex.”

Hurley’s eyebrows rise.

“But during our second year in college, Pete changed his mind. He dropped both school and me at the same time. He said he wanted some time to experience life first before he committed to such a time-consuming career and a permanent relationship. Turned out that was code for ‘I want to screw somebody else, but I don’t have the guts to tell you.’”

“Ouch,” Hurley says with a grimace.

“Yeah, ouch,” I concur. “It’s a pattern I seem destined to repeat. My second serious relationship ended the same way. I thought I’d broken the streak when I married David, but we both know how that turned out.”

“I’m sorry your dream didn’t work out.”

I shrug. “It was unrealistic and stupid. I was young, naïve, and in lust. I’m smarter now, though that wisdom came at a steep price.”

“What happened to your plans to become a doctor?”

“The same thing that happened to my plan to hide out for the rest of my life after David made a fool of me by schtupping Karen Owenby behind my back. I needed money. My school loans were mounting and I had rent to pay. I needed a career that would generate some quick income, so I switched to nursing. I found I liked it and was good at it. It turned out to be a good choice for me, one I’ve never regretted.”

“For the record,” Hurley says, “the only person David made a fool of was himself.”

“I’m not sure I agree with you, but thanks for the sentiment.”

Georgio arrives with our main course. For the next several minutes, the only sounds at the table are Hurley and I slurping fettuccini noodles and moaning with delight. I realize about halfway through my plate that I’m sucking food in like my dog, Hoover, so I set down my fork to take a break and turn the tables on Hurley.

“So what about you? What was your life plan? Did you always want to be a cop?”

Hurley hesitates a moment so he can chew and swallow what he has in his mouth. “The cop thing, yeah,” he says, twirling another forkful of pasta. “I love what I do. And with the exception of my forest ranger phase, I’ve wanted to be a cop for as long as I can remember.”

“Why?”

He shrugs. “Because I like the uniforms?”

“But you don’t wear one anymore.”

He ponders a moment and then offers, “I like shooting things.”

“Remind me not to piss you off too much.”

“I also like the puzzle aspects of solving a crime, and the idea of bringing justice to the world.” He pops some pasta into his mouth and nearly chokes when I ask my next question.

“Have you ever killed anyone?”

He manages to chew and swallow while I wait for his answer. Finally he says, “I have. Once. I did a brief stint in vice when I was in Chicago and I got involved in a shoot-out during a drug raid.”

“That had to have been scary.”

“Yeah, it was.” There is a beat of silence and then he says, “Have you?”

“Have I what? Killed someone?”

Hurley nods.

“God, no . . . at least not that I know of. And if I had, I sure as hell wouldn’t tell you. You’re a homicide detective, for cripes’ sake.”

“Do you think you could, if you had to?”

I consider this a moment and nod. “I suppose I could, under the right circumstances.”

“Such as?”

“Such as if my life was threatened and it was a matter of self-defense. Or if the life of someone I love was threatened and the only way I could save them was to kill someone else.”

I pick up my fork, unable to resist the smell any longer. As I’m twirling up some fettuccini, Hurley asks, “Would you kill someone to save me?”

Talk about your not-so-subtle segues. Hurley’s baby blues are like laser beams, boring into my brain and heart. I shove my forkful of pasta in my mouth and stare back at him, chewing slowly to stall for time, carefully gauging my answer. I’m well aware that, based on my last statement, a “yes” answer will imply that I love him. Do I? I know that I lust after him, and I know that when I thought he might be dying a while back, my heart felt as if it had been cleaved in two. But such thoughts are dangerous—because no matter how I feel about him, I can’t have him.

Given all that, I decide to go with a vague answer, one that will leave things open to interpretation but not require a true verbal commitment from me.

“Of course, I would do whatever was necessary to save you, Hurley,” I say, once I swallow. I see the corners of his mouth twitch into an almost smile right before I deliver my coup de grâce. “Because if you were gone, I’d be stuck working with Bob Richmond all the time.”

Georgio appears with our check, which he then makes disappear in a flash of flame. Just as I start to feel excited about getting a meal on the house, he produces the real check, along with a copy of the bill for the pizza delivered to Jack’s house on the night before the fire.

Hurley looks at Jack’s receipt and says, “The pizza was delivered a little after seven. Assume an hour, give or take, for the actual dinner, then two hours for the movie, and so far the timeline Catherine gave us is holding up. We’ll need to pay a visit to the Sorenson Motel to see if she’ll let us search her room and to verify her check-in and checkout times.”

“But even if she did check in or out when she said she did, it doesn’t mean she couldn’t have left the motel anytime in between those hours.”

“True, but it’s a start, and it’s something we need to cross off our list.” He pauses, assumes a cocky grin, and winks at me. “So what do you say, Mattie? Want to hit up a motel with me?”

Chapter 10

While a visit to any motel with Hurley sounds wonderful, our plans change when both of our cell phones ring at the same time. I grab mine and see that it’s Izzy.

“We have a call,” he says.

“What and where?”

“A farm out on Petersen Road. Apparently, the owners went out to fix a fence line along the river and they found a body near the shore. Their farm is just below the lake outlet, so I suspect it may be the fellow who went missing while fishing a few weeks ago.”

Great. A floater.
This will be a first for me, but I can’t imagine it will be any worse than the advanced case of decomp I had to deal with a while back, or the crispy critter Jack Allen turned into. I recall the news story about the missing fisherman who, according to his wife, went out on the lake in his boat the day after Thanksgiving and never came back. The boat was found adrift the following day, filled with fishing gear but lacking any persons. The presumption at the time was that the gentleman fell overboard and drowned.

Izzy says, “All this melting with the warm weather likely created enough current to bring the body to the surface and carry it into the river. Odds are he drowned, but we’ll have to bring the body in and do a post to be sure.”

I get the directions from Izzy and tell him I’ll meet him there in fifteen minutes. Hurley disconnects his call about the same time. “The floater?” I say, and he nods. “Drop me off back at my office so I can change and get my car,” I tell him. He does so, and I take a few minutes to run inside and change into a set of scrubs before getting into my car and heading out.

By the time I arrive at the farm, I see a couple of cop cars, along with our evidence van, parked by the barn. Izzy, Hurley, a couple of unis, and two other people I don’t know are all standing beside the barn in front of a large fenced-in corral, which contains eight horses. The animals are staring wide-eyed at the humans. Their ears prick back and forth; their nostrils flare; their tails swish nervously as if they sense something is up. I wonder if they can smell the body, and that makes me wonder if I can. As I get out of my car, I pull a big breath in through my nose, testing the air. I smell mud, manure, hay, and a warm, sweaty scent that may be the horses’ fears, but not much else.

“This is my assistant, Mattie Winston,” Izzy says to the duo I don’t recognize. “This is Troy Littleton and his wife, Jan, the owners of this farm.”

We exchange murmured greetings, and then I turn my focus to my surroundings, looking for the river, where the body supposedly washed up. Izzy reads my mind and says, “The river runs along a field out behind the corral, about a mile or so. There isn’t any road to access it, and they said the body is close to shore in a small inlet that would make using a boat awkward. We’re going to take Troy’s Gator to get there.”

I look over at the ATV parked nearby, which has been customized with lights at the top and an extra-long bed at the rear, bordered by six-inch-high panels. The front portion has two seats inside a metal frame, topped off with a roll bar and a retractable plastic windshield.

“Either that, or I can saddle up the horses for you,” Troy says.

Hurley, who has been quiet up until now, says, “Actually, I don’t see how we can fit all of the people and the equipment we need, not to mention the body, on the Gator. It will mean taking multiple trips. So if saddling up a couple of horses isn’t too much trouble, it might not be a bad idea.”

“Not a problem at all,” Troy says. “How many?”

“I’ll take the Gator,” Izzy says quickly.

Hurley nods toward the horses and says, “I’d love the chance to ride one of those beauties.”

Jan Littleton looks at me and says, “How about you, Mattie? Are you up for it? It’s every girl’s dream, isn’t it? The sun warming your face, muscled flesh between your thighs, riding the wind like no one cares.”

I swallow hard, wondering if she is talking about horses or if she’s able to read some of the more lascivious thoughts in my mind. I’m guessing Hurley’s thoughts are running along similar lines because he looks over at me with a grin and wiggles his eyebrows. Izzy coughs nervously and tries unsuccessfully to suppress a smile.

The pressure is on. I’m a little leery of riding out to the river on horseback. I’ve ridden before; in fact, I took lessons for a summer when I was eight or nine. But I haven’t been on a horse since, and back then the horse was confined to a fenced-in arena. With a wide-open field to play in, I’m worried. Yet, there is something to what Jan Littleton just said. I remember the exhilarating sense of freedom and adventure I felt when I took hold of those reins so many years ago. I had that little-girl dream she spoke of, and the memory pulls at me now.

“I’m game for riding a horse out to the site,” I announce. “But please make sure it’s a well-behaved one. It’s been a very long time since I rode.”

“No problem,” Jan says. “You can have Ellie, the chestnut over there by the gate. She’s a sweetheart.”

The uniformed guys both opt for horses, too. While we’re waiting for the animals to get saddled up, Izzy and I load our gear onto the Gator. We’re about ten minutes into this when we hear a car approaching. I turn to see Alison Miller pulling up in her SUV. She climbs out of her car, her ubiquitous camera hanging around her neck.

“I heard you found a body out here by the river,” she says, looking around for some sign of the waterway.

I lean over and speak to Izzy, sotto voce. “How the hell does she always find out about this stuff?”