Lucky Stiff (2 page)

“I am. I’ve only had this job for a few months. Before that, I worked at Mercy Hospital as an RN.”

“Ah,” Kane says, and I see a glimmer of recognition on her face. “You’re that gal who was married to the surgeon—the doctor who was doing it with that OR nurse who ended up murdered.”

“Yep, that’s me.”

“And you also worked in the OR?”

I nod.

“Now I know why you look so familiar.” I’m thinking she’s going to mention some surgical procedure she had recently, but no such luck. “You were the one who was pictured on the front page of that tabloid, standing by the Heinrich car crash in your underwear.”

My face grows hot. “Yes, that was also me,” I say, my smile tight. Izzy and Hurley snort with laughter; I give them a threatening look as I silently curse my recent claim to fame. There are many perks to living in a small town like Sorenson. Unfortunately, anonymity isn’t one of them. Infamy comes cheap and lasts a long, long time.

“I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name,” Kane says.

“I’m Mattie Winston. Nice to meet you,” I lie.

“I’m Candy Kane. Today is my birthday and my parents had a warped sense of humor.”

“Happy birthday,” Hurley says with a smile that makes me want to step between him and Candy to block his view.

“Thanks,” Candy says, smiling back. “After I’m done here, I get to go home and open all those lovely happy-merry-birthday-Christmas presents. We holiday kids tend to get the short end of the stick when it comes to gifts.”

This seems only fair to me, since she clearly didn’t get the short end of the genetic stick.

I look back at the floor and try to make sense of the fact that the burnt corpse lying there might be Jack Allen. The body is lying on its side in a fetal position; the blackened arms are bent up like a boxer’s trying to block a punch. I know from my recent studies that this pugilistic positioning is characteristic of severe burn victims, caused by shortening of the muscles and tendons as they heat up. I can’t see the victim’s face because the head and shoulders are covered with a pile of debris—ceiling tiles and old vermiculite-type insulation. The only thing about the body that fits our tentative ID is the wheelchair that’s tipped on its side and positioned behind the body.

Candy says, “The neighbors say he was a smoker, as well as a drinker, though they fell short of describing him as an out-and-out drunk. One other interesting tidbit mentioned by the neighbors is the fact that our victim apparently won a very large jackpot at the North Woods Casino a few months ago.”

“How large is very large?” Hurley asks.

“Five hundred thousand and change,” Kane says.

Izzy lets out a low whistle.

“Sounds like motive to me,” Hurley says. “And it might help us narrow down the list of suspects. All we have to do is follow the money.”

“First we need to verify that this is Jack Allen,” Izzy says. He steps forward, reaches down, and lifts one corner of a ceiling tile that’s covering the victim’s head, exposing the face. I can only see one half of it, as the other half is against the floor, but the entire head is relatively untouched by the ravages of the fire. Izzy turns and gives me a questioning look.

“That’s Jack, all right.”

Izzy stares down at him. “Interesting how the debris protected his face from the flames.”

“It would,” Candy says. “That vermiculite insulation contains asbestos.”

“Asbestos?” I echo, looking concerned.

“Don’t worry,” Candy says. “Right now, everything is so saturated it would be nearly impossible for any fibers to become airborne. But it will require a special crew with the proper equipment to clean up the place.”

Izzy nods solemnly. “Well, at least we have a tentative ID. We can verify things later with his dental records.” He cocks his head to one side and stares at the body with a puzzled expression.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Look at the position of his head. His chin is tucked in close to his chest. If the head had been exposed to the fire, I might think it was because of tendon shrinkage from the heat. But the head was protected from the fire, and that makes me think it was forced into that position. The presence of the glass and the ashtray suggest there was a table of some sort here, like a coffee table.”

“There probably was,” Candy says. She points to several burnt pieces of wood that look like long, skinny cinders from a fireplace. “These look like the legs on a wooden structure of some sort.”

“If so,” Izzy says, “it’s possible Jack died from positional asphyxiation. If he fell out of his chair and his head became wedged between it and a table, it could have blocked off his airway. I’ll get a better idea of how feasible that theory is when I open him up.”

Candy looks at Hurley and says, “There’s one more thing I think you should see.” We follow her through the debris into what appears to be the dining room. She stops in front of a charred piece of furniture and points to the melted, twisted remains of a stereo on top of it. As I look closer at the burnt mess, I see what looks like a large stereo speaker, relatively intact despite evidence of intense heat and flames.

“There’s only one speaker,” Hurley says.

“And it didn’t burn,” I add.

“Good eye, both of you,” Candy says, though she directs her smile at Hurley. She points to some melted plastic and wires. “It looks like there was another speaker here, but it was destroyed in the fire. There’s a reason this one survived.” She reaches over and flicks her finger against the front of the intact speaker, eliciting a metallic ping. “This is a false front. It’s constructed out of metal and made to look like a speaker, but it’s actually a safe.” She pulls on the speaker front and it opens, revealing an empty metal box. “There’s a key lock on the back that operates a little spring device to open it.”

“Was there anything in there?” Hurley asks.

“Nope, it was unlocked and empty when we got to it, and no sign of the key. But we did find this.” Candy points down at the floor near the corner of the buffet and I see the edges of a hundred-dollar bill poking out from beneath some debris.

After snapping a picture, Hurley reaches down with his gloved hand and pulls the bill loose. Though its edges are singed, the main body of the bill is intact.

Candy says, “A lot of people don’t know that paper money isn’t really made out of paper. It’s made out of cloth—linen and cotton, to be precise. And that means it doesn’t burn so easily, especially if it’s wet.”

“You’re thinking there was more of this in there,” Hurley says, gesturing toward the safe.

Candy shrugs, but she gives us a knowing smile, which makes it clear she does think that.

Hurley sighs. “Well, if our casino winner was stashing wads of cash in his house, our list of suspects is going to be a hell of a lot bigger than I thought.”

“Sorry to make things more complicated for you,” Candy says with a cutesy little grin.

Hurley holds her gaze a bit longer than I like. “No need to apologize. You did some great investigative work here. I appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome. And if there’s anything else you need from me, don’t hesitate to ask.” She takes a card out of her pocket and hands it to him. “That’s my personal cell number on there. Call me anytime,” she says with a suggestive tone. Then she gives Hurley a flirtatious wink and adds, “If you’re nice to me, I just might give you a candy cane.”

I have a few suggestions for what she can do with her candy cane, but I keep them to myself.

“Ahem,” Izzy says, eyeing me with a worried expression. “I suppose we best get to securing the body so we can get it back to the morgue before all this water destroys our evidence. What do you guys say to doing this autopsy today?”

“Fine by me,” I say. After years of employment at the hospital, I’m used to working on the holidays. “You’ll be giving me the perfect excuse for avoiding the remainder of the celebration at my sister’s house. My mother was already having a conniption about all the germs that might be lurking in my sister’s live Christmas tree. When I left for this call, she was bleaching the tree ornaments.” My mother has a few mental quirks, not the least of which are her hypochondria and her OCD. I’m pretty certain that by day’s end she’ll be at home consulting her impressive medical library in search of tree-borne diseases, imagining symptoms to fit.

“I’m fine with it, too,” Hurley says. “I have no plans for the rest of the day and I’d like to get this wrapped up as quickly as possible.”

“Wrapped up?” I echo. “Interesting choice of words, given the holiday.”

Izzy rolls his eyes and heads back to the living room. I follow reluctantly, leaving Candy and Hurley alone in the dining room together. I force myself to focus on the immediate tasks at hand, but part of my mind imagines me holding a giant candy cane with the curved end looped around Hurley’s waist, dragging him away from Candy in vaudeville style.

Chapter 2

Izzy and I manage to scoop up the remains of Jack Allen’s body and get it back to the morgue some two hours later. We spend most of that time photographing and documenting the scene as the arson investigators collect their evidence.

Also documenting the scene outside is Alison Miller, Sorenson’s ace reporter and photographer. She is lurking about, snapping shots and talking to anyone who’s willing. I’ve known Alison for years. It was right after our high-school graduation that she went to work for our local paper, which comes out twice a week. I once considered her a friend, but our relationship these days is somewhere between animosity and outright loathing. That’s because she became my chief competition for Hurley’s affections not long ago, until Hurley made it clear he wasn’t interested. Alison didn’t take the rejection well and blamed it on me. I’m probably the only person from whom she won’t try to get a quote.

Candy, the person who seems to be my new competition, doesn’t stay long. While her absence relieves me a little, I can’t help but notice that Hurley still has her card tucked safely inside his jacket pocket. I remind myself that I have no right to be jealous of what—or whom—Hurley does, because we don’t have that kind of relationship. It’s not from a lack of desire, however. There is a definite attraction between us that became evident early on during cases we worked together. But my lingering ambivalence over my marriage—and the tiny fact that I was still married—put a bit of a kibosh on things.

The marriage thing has recently been resolved. After I rejected David’s repeated pleadings to give our marriage another chance, he finally got the message that I was done with him . . . right around the time he met up with Patty, the very attractive and single insurance agent who is handling the claim for our house fire. Now the two of them are an item. My divorce became final two days ago; and along with my freedom, I also received a tidy little settlement of nearly three hundred thousand bucks—my portion of the insurance claim on our house, minus the amount David gave me for the car I totaled some time ago that was in his name. The settlement wasn’t as much as I’d hoped, because David, who handled all our financials, apparently neglected to update our homeowner’s policy two years ago when we added on several hundred square feet of house in an addition off the back. While the house was once estimated to be worth close to a million bucks, in the current housing market, which stinks worse than what’s left of Jack’s house, that value has dropped to around seven hundred grand. And the insurance policy was for the original amount of the purchase, which was only five hundred grand, plus another hundred thousand for the contents. David had at one time offered to let me have a larger portion of the settlement in order to make up for the value of the land, which is now in his name only. However, after listening to him bitch about how much it was going to cost to rebuild and refurnish the place, I decided—in the spirit of idiocy—to settle for an even fifty-fifty split.

Still, my portion of the settlement has made for a nice early Christmas present; and for the first time in months, my bank account is flush while I try to decide how to invest the funds. David is using his half to rebuild the house, albeit a smaller, scaled-down version of the original.

Unfortunately, my newfound freedom doesn’t help my situation with Hurley. Thanks to cuts in the Wisconsin state budget, and a few shady dealings by some cops and evidence techs in Milwaukee, a lot of job titles and duties were eliminated, merged, and otherwise shuffled recently, mine included. Instead of being a deputy coroner, I now bear the hefty title of medicolegal death investigator. Though it sounds fancier, it’s basically the same job I was doing before, except now our office works more closely with the police department: both with the collection and processing of evidence, and with the overall investigation. We each provide oversight to the other. In a way, this is a good thing for me because it means I get to spend more time with Hurley and I can legitimately do what I’ve always done—be nosy and get into everyone else’s business. But because we’re basically serving as watchdogs for one another, it also means there can’t be any hints of fraternization or situations that might cause conflicts of interest. Bottom line, in order to keep my job, I can’t date Hurley. And despite my recent windfall, I want to keep my job. I enjoy it; I’m good at it; and the majority of my money from the divorce settlement needs to be earmarked for retirement.

While I can’t date Hurley, there’s nothing that says I can’t continue to place myself in strategic positions for observation whenever he has to bend over. And I do so as often as I can during our scene processing, admiring the long, lean lines of his back and a pair of buns that look like they could crack open an oyster.

I know these musings aren’t healthy and I’ll have to pick myself up, dust myself off, and get back into the dating scene at some point. It’s not something I look forward to. The one date I’ve had so far turned out to be an unmitigated disaster, and the man is now living and sleeping with my mother.

Speaking of dusting off, I feel and look like a chimneysweep by the time we get Jack’s body back to the morgue. I opt to take a quick shower before heading into the autopsy suite. Stripping down in the shower room, I make the mistake of glancing in the full-length mirror to check out my new tan lines.