∗ ∗ ∗
Shaking his head, Cameron Windom stared down at the floor much like he had most of the last seven minutes we’d shared in his father’s office. With his fingers interlocked, his elbows propped against the armrests of the chair next to me, Cameron gave the appearance of praying, only his lips weren’t moving. Instead, they were clamped shut, making him look a lot like my ex-husband—a man afraid of digging himself into an inescapable hole after I caught him kissing our sous chef in the walk-in freezer.
After several seconds of stony silence, Cameron blew out a breath, his feet inching toward the door like he wanted to bolt. “Really, I don’t know what more I can tell you. Like I said, I ate everything that he did, so I don’t know why he got so sick.”
You could tell me the whole truth. Which would be especially useful since the information he was withholding was making him too twitchy to get an accurate reading.
I decided to take a different approach. “Okay, then tell me about when you found out that Marty McCutcheon was your father.”
He searched my gaze. “How did…. Does Jeremy know? I wasn’t supposed to say anything until after—”
“Victoria told me, and I haven’t said anything about this to Jeremy, but it will be included in my report to the Coroner.”
Cameron swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he nodded. “Maybe it doesn’t matter now.”
I leaned toward him both to see and hear him more clearly. “What doesn’t matter?”
“Without Marty here…” He shook his head. “There’s no reason to make the McCutcheons’ lives any more complicated than they already are.”
Somehow his line felt rehearsed. Maybe the brothers were more alike than I’d given them credit for.
One corner of his mouth lifted. “Too bad. I kinda liked this job.”
“Are you saying you’re leaving?”
He stared at the floor with such intensity he could have burned a hole in the carpeting with his corneas. “Jeremy doesn’t want me here. He’s made that pretty clear.”
Oh, yeah? “How?”
Cameron shrugged. “He rides me pretty hard when Marty’s not around. And now that he’s gone, I don’t have to put up with Jeremy’s management style.” Another lopsided smile crossed his lips. “It’s not like I’m going to be invited to any more family gatherings. No big deal,” he said, his eyes reddening with unshed tears as he lied to the both of us. “I don’t need any of this shit.”
The last part of his statement might have been true, but as a member of yesterday’s gathering he was smack-dab in the middle of it.
He turned to me. “Are we done?”
“In a minute.” Now that we didn’t need to skirt around his relationship to Marty, I wanted to revisit Cameron’s account of yesterday’s dinner party. “When you said that you ate the same food as Marty, what exactly did you eat last night?”
Cameron angled a glare at me. “You want to know every single thing I ate?”
“Yep.”
“Chips, dip, a bunch of jalapeno pepper things wrapped in bacon, some sort of enchilada casserole, taco salad, sour cream, more chips. I guess that’s pretty much it. Oh, and a beer.”
He had packed away that much food, and he was this skinny? Man, I’d love to trade metabolisms with this guy.
I compared the list to everything Victoria had told me that Marty had eaten and spotted one glaring omission. “Did you have any of the hot sauce?”
He shook his head. “I thought about it when Marty dared me to try it, but when Victoria pointed out the flames on the label I decided not to tempt fate.”
“Fate?”
“Hot and spicy food can give me some pretty bad heartburn. In fact, that’s what I thought was happening with Marty at first.”
“When he started getting sick?”
“Right. He grabbed his water glass like his throat was on fire. After he finished his water he drank Victoria’s.”
It seemed odd to me that she hadn’t mentioned this.
“Then he started to sweat,” Cameron said.
She hadn’t mentioned that either.
He wrinkled his nose. “A few minutes later I could hear him throwing up in the bathroom.”
“Cameron, did you or anyone else suggest calling nine-one-one?”
He stared down at his scuffed sneakers. “Sure, but Marty kept saying that he’d be okay—to give him a few minutes.” Cameron shook his head. “I think waiting all that time was a big mistake.”
Based on everything I’d heard, I couldn’t have agreed with him more.
∗ ∗ ∗
Back in the sixth grade Heather Beckett called me a psycho-bitch-freak in front of the entire class. Okay, I freely admit that my competitive nature had gotten the best of me during a game of Truth or Dare, and I shouldn’t have outed Heather as a liar at her own slumber party. It never occurred to eleven-year-old me that there would be retribution, that my classmates would tell their parents about what had happened, and I would never again be invited inside their homes.
Being the bastard of a B-list actress infamous for her nude photo spread in a men’s magazine had branded me as something of a local curiosity. But once the psycho-bitch-freak label was added it were as if Heather had doused me with kerosene and struck a match. The next morning, did I rise from the ashes a new creation? Not by choice, but I had a metamorphosis just the same. Suddenly, it seemed that I was no longer just my mother’s bastard.
I had become one scary bastard.
And I knew I was scaring the crap out of Phyllis Bozeman, who was squirming in the seat that Cameron had vacated five minutes earlier.
At least she had stopped crying, which was a good news/bad news thing since she was sitting wide-eyed, staring at me like I was some sort of voodoo princess capable of bending her to my will.
I wished. It would certainly make my job easier, especially today.
“How’s Aubrey doing?” I asked, painting an easy smile on my face.
Aubrey Bozeman had been tight with Heather’s cheerleader crowd and had treated me like a social pariah all through high school. I had no interest in the latest Aubrey news, but if some polite chitchat helped her mother breathe a little easier, I could fake it.
Unblinking, Phyllis swallowed. “Fine.”
“Good to hear.” Relax. Blink! “I heard she had another baby. Boy or girl?”
“Another boy,” she said after several seconds of hesitation, as if too much information about her grandchildren might put them in danger.
“Good for her.” I leaned a little closer. “And how is Grandma doing?”
She finally blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I’m sure this has been a difficult day.”
Averting her gaze, Phyllis’s pale lips thinned, her puffy eyes starting to pool with a fresh round of tears.
I passed her the mini-packet of tissues I kept in my tote for tearful interview subjects. “I’m sorry. I know you lost someone you were close to.”
She eyed the packet as if I’d asked her to hold the snake we’d be sacrificing after the interview.
“I’m fine,” she stated, handing it back to me.
Sure you are. “Then may I ask you a few questions?”
She pushed back a curl that had escaped her helmet of dyed black hair and nodded.
“Did you happen to see Marty yesterday afternoon?”
“We had a little birthday celebration around one. You know, we all gathered around to wish him a happy birthday and have some cake.”
“How’d he seem?”
“Fine.” A sad smile pulled at the network of fine lines around her dark eyes. “Happy.”
“No indication of any health issues?”
She shook her head. “Absolutely none.”
“Nothing that seemed out of the ordinary?”
“No.”
I wrote seemed fine in my notebook. “How would you characterize your relationship with Marty?”
“My relationship?”
She blinked, sending a tear down her cheek. “We’re friends.”
“I understand that you and Marty used to be more than friends.”
Sniffing, she looked like she wanted to sic that snake on me. “That was a long time ago.”
Not that long ago. “And Marty broke it off shortly after he met Victoria.”
“It was a mutual decision,” she said, taking a swipe at another tear.
I didn’t believe her for a minute, but nothing she’d told me had waved any red flags. At least not yet.
I passed her the tissues. “And that probably led to another decision to avoid spending much time with Marty after work.”
With no resistance Phyllis reached into the mini-pack and dabbed her eyes. “I may be getting old, but I’m no fool.”
“Tell me, considering that your relationship with Marty had cooled, I’m curious why you bought him a birthday present.”
That same sad smile blanketed her face. “It seemed petty not to. Just because we’re not…. It doesn’t mean we can’t do something nice for one another.”
“What did you get him?”
“Salsa from a little shop we discovered on a trip to Arizona a few years back. We both loved the stuff, so I set it up to get a delivery every year—one for him for his birthday and one for me.”
“So this gift wasn’t a surprise.”
Phyllis narrowed her eyes at me as if she had just realized that I wasn’t so scary. I was just frighteningly slow on the uptake. “Hardly, not after three years.”
“Did you have the salsa shipped to your house?” I asked.
“No, I’ve had a problem with things disappearing from my front porch, so I had it shipped here. Arrived late last week.”
Where someone could have had easy access to it—someone who knew that a bottle of Marty’s favorite salsa would be arriving in time for his birthday, just like it had last year and the year before that.
Chapter Five
Twenty minutes later, I was sitting on a bench at the marina munching on Duke’s takeout, when Detective Steve Sixkiller pulled up in his unmarked Port Merritt Police cruiser.
“What is this—a late lunch?” he asked, shading his eyes from the sun as he closed the distance between us. “You said in your text that it was an emergency.”
“It is.” Since I could eat my way through any emergency this guy obviously didn’t know me as well as I’d thought he did.
When the object of my first schoolgirl crush sat down next to me, I passed him the grease-stained takeout bag. “Want some fries?”
Crossing his long legs, he reached into the bag and pulled out a couple of lukewarm french fries. “I have a meeting in a few minutes so what I want is for you to give me the short version of this emergency.”
“Fine. If you’ve been anywhere near Duke’s today I’m sure you heard about Marty McCutcheon.”
“Yeah, that he had a heart attack,” Steve said, chewing.
“Technically, it was cardiac arrest, but based on what his family members have told me I wouldn’t be so cavalier about what caused his heart to stop.”
He turned to me, a tic above his jawline keeping pace with the seconds of stony silence between us. “Seriously? Frankie asked you to speak with the family?”
“It was to placate his ex because she was making some accusations about Marty being poisoned.”
Steve blew out a weary breath. “Poisoned.”
“That’s starting to look like a possibility.”
He wiped his fingers on one of the napkins I’d stuffed into the takeout bag. “In your educated opinion as an experienced death investigator.”
“Okay, I know I’m not—”
“Where did he die?”
“At the hospital.”
“I assume that someone from your office talked with the attending?”
“Frankie spoke with the doctor who treated Marty in the ER.”
“And?”
“He told her that Marty had a bad heart and a history of cardiovascular disease, and that led to his cardiac arrest.”
Standing, Steve tossed the remnants of my lunch into a nearby trash can. “I think this conversation is over.”
“But I have two witnesses who were there at dinner when Marty got sick, and they both think he was poisoned.”
“Dinner at his house out in Clatska?”
I nodded.
“Outside of my jurisdiction, so I can’t help you, Chow Mein,” Steve said, using the nickname he’d given me back in the third grade. He glanced at his wristwatch. “And I need to go.”
I tried to keep up with his long strides as he headed for the parking lot. “But what if they’re right?”
“People around here don’t die from being poisoned.”
“There’s always a first time.”
“I repeat—not likely, but if he ate something that killed him it should show up during the autopsy, and then Frankie will hand this case over to the Sheriff.”
“There’s not going to be an autopsy.”
Standing in front of his car, Steve met my gaze. “Because Marty died at the hospital after he went into cardiac arrest. That’s what the doctor said, and that’s good enough for Frankie, right?”
Especially since she didn’t want to bust the county’s budget by calling in a forensic pathologist for an unnecessary autopsy.
“Pretty much.”
“Then I’d say your work should be about done, Deputy.” He tweaked my nose like we were siblings instead of lovers who had been sharing a bed most of the last month. “See you later. Wear something sexy,” he said with a wink.
Despite the mixed messages, he left me feeling like the gooey s’mores we used to make as kids. But as I watched Steve drive away a cold reality washed over me, dousing the sexual fire he had ignited. One, because other than a pair of four-inch stilettos I had nothing in my closet that qualified as vixen attire—at least nothing that I could squeeze my bloated carcass into. That meant I was going to have to do some emergency shopping. And two, since I was pressed for time with few local options, that shopping would have to take place at the Valu-Mart south of town, where I’d heard that Austin Reidy worked.
I sucked in a breath, girded my loins, and popped an antacid for good measure. “Austin Reidy,” I said as I walked toward my car, “ready or not, here I come.”
∗ ∗ ∗
A half hour later, after finding a swingy black wrap dress with a plunging neckline that hugged me in all the right places, I handed my purchase to the cashier. “Do you know if Austin Reidy still works here?”
“Austin? Oh, he’s dat guy in sporting goods,” she said in a Slavic accent. “Rear of store.”
The sporting goods guy. That seemed somehow appropriate for the former jock, I thought as I ran my credit card through the scanner.
What didn’t seem appropriate was me showing up where he worked without first letting him know I was coming. Of course, I didn’t have any problem with dropping by McCutcheon Floors & More unannounced. Then again, I didn’t have a history of throwing up on any of their shoes.
After the cashier handed me my receipt, I walked past the beauty product aisles and several rows of home decor and took a left, where I spotted a guy in a navy blue polo and khaki pants, demonstrating a treadmill to a customer. I looked around for other males outfitted in navy and khaki, but the jogger with his back to me appeared to be the only one working in Sporting Goods. This had to be Austin.
Hopping off the treadmill and onto a nearby elliptical, Austin looked like he’d kept himself in great shape, like he could still push a basketball up and down a court while barely breaking a sweat. Unlike me. Beads of sweat were popping out on my upper lip in anticipation of having to face Austin Reidy for the first time in almost twenty years.
“Sheesh, cool it,” I told myself when I ducked into a row of automotive accessories and fixed my face in the nearest mirror. It wasn’t like I was back in high school and wanted a date to the prom. Thank God. I was just going
to ask him a few questions, then I was out of here.
“May I help you?” a male voice said behind me.
“No…I…” I didn’t recognize the dark, fleshy circles under his gray eyes or the paunchy beer gut hanging over his waistband, but the tiny mole on the salesman’s left cheek was unforgettable.
I pasted a happy smile on my face. “Oh, my gosh! Hi, Austin!”
“Hi.” His greeting sounded more like a question, like who the heck are you?
Okay, he wasn’t the only one who had put on a little weight since high school. “It’s Charmaine.”
After an awkward moment of silence he cracked a smile as he reached out to shake my hand. “Nice to see you again.”
I bet it is.
“What good luck,” I said. “I needed to talk to you, but I also needed to do a little shopping on my lunch hour, and now, here you are.”
The smile slipped from his face. “Talk to me? Why?”
“Sorry, I should have mentioned that I’m with the coroner’s office.”
He grimaced.
Not the first time I’d received that kind of reaction. No one liked talking about death and dying. “Maybe Nicole told you that I might be stopping by?”
He gave his head a little shake. “I haven’t talked to her since last night.”
Curious. She’d obviously spent the night at her mother’s, but if I had been Nicole and had just lost my father, I would have expected a call from my husband at the very least.
“Then you don’t know that the Coroner has asked for a statement from everyone who was at your father-in-law’s birthday party. Is there someplace we could talk?”
“Now?”
“If you don’t mind.”
Austin blew out a breath that reeked of wine. From his bloodshot eyes and the sheen of sweat on his forehead, I guessed a lot of wine. “I do mind. I’m working,” he said.
“It will only take a few moments. Could you take a break?”
His gaze tightened as he looked down his nose at me. “I already took my break. We can just talk back here if it’s only going to be a few minutes.”
“Fine.” I followed him to a rack of barbells hung opposite a display of reflective apparel for joggers, an area of the store my flabby thighs could attest I’d never seen before.
There's Something About Marty (A Working Stiffs Mystery Book 3) Page 4
