Rest in Pieces (4 page)

He practically leapt over Esther to get to me. “Mustang, it’s so good to see you.”

As you might have guessed, there are no good nicknames for Mustang. Musty, Tangy, Mustangy, even the annoying Tang—they’ve all been tried and failed miserably.

“Ben, I brought cupcakes. Do you have a minute?” I threw Esther a snotty look and stepped around her desk.

“Sure.” He took the cupcake box from me. Then, like we were long lost college roommates, he wrapped his arms around me in a hug. Holy hard pecs, Batman. Ben had been working out. The last time we met, he hadn’t hugged me so much as tackled me. This time was much better.

With his hand at the small of my back, he ushered me into his office, set the cupcakes down on his messy desk and gestured to the chair closest to him. He dropped his hand and stepped back just a bit. Instead of sitting in his desk chair, he leaned on the desk edge near me. He was so close that his knee bumped my thigh, and his crotch met me at eye level. It was hard not to look, it being two feet away and all.

Struggling a bit to move my eyes upward, I forced myself to focus on his face.

“What can I do for you?” Interest sparkled in his eyes, and I wondered if he’d caught me checking him out.

“I was hoping you could help me with something.” Did I just jump in and ask for the Molly Miars file, or did I try to finesse it out of him?

“Cupcake?” I leaned over and opened the box. Finesse it was. I grabbed the biggest one. True, they were meant to ply Ben for information, but I was hungry. I was also the product of two older brothers who lived by the law that whoever got there first got the biggest cupcake.

I unwrapped the cupcake and took a huge bite. Tart, cream cheese icing and blood–red–dyed dark chocolate cake swirled inside my mouth. My taste buds high–fived each other, and I took a moment to enjoy myself.

“Can’t, I’m low carb.” He patted his trim stomach. “Watching my weight.”

That made me feel bad…sort of. I knew I should go low carb, but I have a loyalty problem. Carbs are my friends and have gotten me through some really tough times. I feel that I need to support them in this cruel, low–carb world we live in. It’s the least I can do for my best buddy red velvet.

I chewed the world’s biggest bite and wondered if it would be rude to take the cupcakes and lattes with me when I left. I didn’t want them to go to waste and he didn’t want them.

After the eternity it took for me to chew and swallow, I got right to it. Finesse was overrated. “I want to talk to you about Molly Miars.”

His smile drooped around the edges. “I don’t understand.”

“She was my friend.” And I wondered why we only buried her head. “She didn’t seem the type to … you know … overdose. Max adored her.”

Was it too soon to ask to see her file?

“I don’t know what I can tell you.” He shrugged. “As I heard it, she was found at her house. She’d been dead for a couple of days.”

“Who found her?” And did they find all of her?

“Chief Stanford got the call. Someone from the school called wanting us to do a welfare check, because she hadn’t shown up for work in two days, and they hadn’t heard from her.”

Dennis Stanford had the body of a professional wrestler and the good sense God gave Cool Whip. Last Christmas, I heard that he’d reported his car stolen because he’d forgotten where he parked it. Two weeks later, he got a call from the Target store manager asking him to please come pick up his car. And that wasn’t the first time. The man obviously had a memory problem. The only reason he won the sheriff’s spot was because he’d run unopposed, and the good citizens of Lakeside could count on him to do as he was told.

Ben crossed his arms. “What’s with all the questions?”

“She was my friend, and I can’t quite reconcile the facts. She didn’t do drugs, so the idea of her overdosing is, well …” I took a sip of my mocha latte, “hard to take.”

His eyes softened. Pity wasn’t my favorite emotion to inspire. The last time I’d seen him, he had the same look in his eyes.

“Any chance I can look at her file?” I smiled sweetly.

He looked around like he was afraid of being overheard and then leaned close to me. “Stay away from this case, Mustang. It’s all wrong. Stanford threw procedure out the window. He handled everything himself and he isn’t talking.” He whispered close to her ear. “No one’s talking about it.”

In a small town, the only thing more dangerous than gossip was the lack of it. If Ben was right and something bad had happened to Molly and no one was talking about it—it must be really bad. Gossip was bread and butter in small towns—unless people were scared, and then their bread and butter stuck to the roof of their mouths.

“Was Molly … you know …” I tried to use my hands to gesture whole, but I kept pantomiming a ball and didn’t know why so I linked my fingers and rested them in my lap. “You know, um…intact. Did they find all of her?”

His look went from concerned to skeptical—like he was humoring crazy Aunt Laverne who’d had one too many eggnogs and was now convinced that Tom Cruise had stolen her reading glasses.

“I’m pretty sure her body was in one piece.” He nodded and smiled like yep, I was a nut job. “Oh … wait.” He sat back. “There was something strange. I overheard the Chief say something about her dog.” He thought about it for a minute. “Oh yeah, he said that the dog must have been loyal because he’d found it dead right by her side.”

“He found Molly and her dog dead?” That was odd. Did her dog overdose, too? Or maybe he’d died first and she was so heartbroken that she pulled out the heroin she just happened to have lying around and injected it? Or was it a murder suicide—she killed the dog first and then herself?

“Was the heroin found near her body? For that matter, how do you know it was heroin?” Since I couldn’t look for needle tracks on plastic arms, I was interested to find out how exactly they knew about the heroin.

“I don’t know.” He crossed his arms and looked like he was humoring me. “Look, we don’t determine cause of death, the city coroner does. So regardless of what was found at the scene, we don’t have anything to do with cause of death.”

“Oh.” I guess that made sense.

“Is there anything else you can tell me about the case?” I hated to keep pressing, but I needed the info.

“Leave it alone. She died of an overdose.” He shook his head. “There really wasn’t much of a case. She was found dead and the toxicology came back positive for heroin. Open and shut.”

Au contraire. This case was anything but open and shut. Nothing made sense. And the more questions I asked, the weirder things got.

“So, how’s Max?” Ben tucked his thumbs into his belt on either side of his belt buckle as if to point out the stunning array of gadgets on his belt.

“He’s good. Loves soccer and swimming.” I sat forward, preparing to stand. Ben had always played with Max when the department had gotten together at my house for barbecues and parties.

“Maybe I could come by sometime, kick the ball around with him?” Ben smiled. Again with the pity.

“Sure.” I tried to sound enthusiastic. Max needed a father figure around, but pity wasn’t the basis for any kind of relationship. I analyzed his face, and realized I saw more than pity in his eyes: there was guilt.

It hit me like a ton of bricks; he’d known about David’s affair. Good Lord, who else knew? I sighed and shook my head. Everyone … except me. Wasn’t the wife always the last to know?

I made a big show of checking my watch. “I really need to go. I only have fifteen minutes left on my lunch break.”

Thank God Lakeside Hospital was only five minutes away.

“Sure, I understand.” He rose. “It was good to see you.”

I stood too. “You bet, and thanks for your help.”

Not that he’d been all that much help—well, except for the dog. I nodded to myself, thinking. As a hospital employee, I had access to all kinds of medical information. Getting Molly’s medical records was just a phone call away. I was starting to perk back up. If I was a villain in an old movie, I’d stroke my mustache in anticipation, but I don’t have a mustache, and today I wasn’t the villain, so I just grabbed the cupcakes, my mocha latte, and headed to the door.

“How about dinner tonight?” Ben called after me.

I turned back to him. “Look, you don’t need to feel guilty. It doesn’t matter about David and the bimbo. It’s over and done. It’s obvious that you knew, but I don’t care.”

And I kind of didn’t. If I was being honest, I hadn’t loved David in a very long time, but the embarrassment of being the victim of a cheating husband lived on forever. At least the whispering behind my back had stopped. Or I was pretty sure it had, but then I tend to ignore people, so it was hard to tell.

“So we’re on for dinner?” Was it my imagination, or did his smile brighten a couple of degrees? “I’ll pick up food after work and head over to your place.”

“You know where I live?” Of course I’d had to sell my house and find something I could afford on my salary. Unfortunately, the only thing I’d been able to find that would keep Max at the same school was the guesthouse of Lakeside’s most eccentric resident.

Astrid Petrie was in her sixties, worth hundreds of millions, and spoke to the dead. She was equal parts Austen’s Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Hogwarts Divination Professor Trelawney. My rent was cheap, but I did have to attend the regularly scheduled Monday evening séance.

“Astrid’s my aunt. She’s um …” Ben hunched his shoulders. “Well, let’s just say she makes the family Thanksgiving way more fun than it should be.”

I’d forgotten that Ben was a trust fund baby who worked because he wanted to and not because he needed the money. It wasn’t his fault that he’d been born into a family full of oil billionaires.

“I can see that about her.” I smiled and nodded. “Okay, dinner it is.”

In two strides, he was at my side. “I’ll walk you out.”

With his hand at the small of my back, he led me through the front office where I glared at Esther, and then we were out in the sunshine.

“I’ve thought about you a lot these last six months.” He was so close that I could smell his aftershave, something exotic and woodsy. “I’ve almost called you so many times.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him why, but I just nodded. We reached my crappy Ford van—another tragedy of divorce, as I could no longer make the payments on my Ford Fusion. I went to open the door, but he opened it for me. My van didn’t lock, which was fine because I didn’t have anything anyone would want to steal.

“I’ll see you tonight.” I was about to slide behind the wheel when he pulled me into a tight hug.

“I can’t wait.” He finally let me go and stepped back. “See you soon.”

I climbed into the driver’s seat, closed the door and waved goodbye.

I turned the screwdriver sticking out of the ignition keyhole and started Bessie, my brown 1997 Ford Aerostar van. It had come with a screwdriver instead of a key and for the five hundred bucks I’d paid for her, I hadn’t asked any questions. It got me from point A to point B and with no car payment, who was I to complain?

As I pulled out of the parking lot and onto Lakeside Drive, I glanced in the rear view mirror and saw Ben standing right where I’d left him, hands in his pockets, watching my car.

It had been a long time since a man had flirted with me. As men went, Ben was pretty to look at, but I had Max to consider. Ben turned around and I caught a glimpse of his backside. Nice. Okay, there were worse things than a handsome man bringing me dinner.

Damn, I forgot about the carbs. While he was hot, the carb–free thing could be a deal breaker.

What did I love more, sex or pasta?

That was a tough one.

Chapter 4

“I’m not taking no for an answer.” Haley’s voice was high–pitched and bossy. I rolled my eyes. I had Monica and Haley conferenced in on my way back to work. If only I could drive and Facetime them, they would feel the full force of my eye roll.

“Both of you need to know how to handle yourselves. I’m taking you to the shooting range.” Haley was in mom mode and when she got like this, there was no shutting her down.

I’d filled them in on what little I’d learned from Ben.

“How about this afternoon?” Monica yawned. “Sorry, I was up late last night researching Molly Miars. I found almost nothing. I think she’s the only person in the world who doesn’t have an online presence.”

“I can’t tonight. Ben’s bringing dinner over.” I yawned too. Yawning really is contagious, even over the phone.

“Somebody has a date.” Monica sing–songed.

“Yeah, but he’s low carb, so I don’t see this going anywhere.” Which pretty much summed up my dating life. I go on a lot of first dates, but second dates? Ehhh, my chances of winning the lottery seem to be better.

I pulled into my parking space at Lakeside Regional Hospital with seven whole minutes to spare.

“Cougar alert. Ladies, we have a cougar alert.” Monica sipped something. “He’s hot. No denying that.”

“He’s only two years younger than me.” The last time I’d dated someone younger than me, I felt like I was babysitting, only I wasn’t getting paid.

Haley shuffled some papers. “What about tomorrow for the range? I’ll call D. and see if we can come around ten. It’s Saturday though, so he may not be around.”

“Ten works for me. I can have my mom take all the kids to the park. I’ll even pack them a picnic lunch.” Monica liked to cook.

We weren’t exactly polar opposites, but we definitely weren’t polar sames. I laughed at my own joke and there was a silence across the phone line. Look, if I didn’t laugh at my own jokes, who would? Trouble was, I tended to laugh at jokes that I hadn’t said out loud. It tended to confuse people.

“After I talk with D., I’ll text you his address.” Haley sounded like she was making a note to self.

“His address? I don’t understand. I thought we were going to the gun range?” I opened my door, grabbed my purse and headed out of the parking garage. While technically I was salaried and could take a longer lunch if I wanted, I liked to set a good example for the three whole employees I managed.

“He has an indoor gun range at his house. It’s the only place to go shooting in Lakeside.” Haley said. “And his butler is a gunsmith.”