By the time Charlotte is done with her rant, she has closed in on us; both Hurley and I have backed up to the edge of the porch steps. Charlotte’s rage is intimidating—and given what I’ve seen, I have a newfound respect for Donald Strommen. If he managed to hold out against this woman’s wrath, he had to have been a man of strong character and immeasurable patience.
I force myself to step forward, moving into Charlotte’s space. She looks surprised by my action; but before she can back away from me, I take one of her hands in mine.
“I’m sorry, Charlotte,” I say in my best calming voice. “It isn’t our intent to upset you. But we found some irregularities when we did Donald’s autopsy and they raise some questions. We’re here to try to find out the answers. We didn’t come with any preconceived notions about anything. We just want to get to the truth. If you have nothing to hide, then helping us will only make things easier for you.”
Charlotte’s angry expression relaxes a smidge, but not enough, so I deliver my coup de grâce.
“Please understand that we are simply trying to do our jobs here. And until we can come up with some sort of satisfactory explanation for the unanswered questions surrounding Donald’s death, we can’t complete a death certificate. And without a death certificate, any insurance settlements that are pending will be tied up for an indefinite amount of time.”
I’m not sure if this is true, but it sounds good, and has the desired effect on Charlotte. Her angry expression evaporates, and both her body and her face sag. “Fine,” she says in a defeated tone, turning back toward the house. She grabs the screen door, pulls it open, and waves her arm. “Go on in.”
We step inside and immediately I notice a small, pale face peering out at us from the kitchen. It’s Hannah Strommen and the poor child looks like death warmed over. Dark circles surround her eyes; her skin has the pasty, waxen look of a long-term shut-in; her hair is a tangled mess that looks like it hasn’t been combed in weeks. She’s dressed in a flannel nightgown under a worn cardigan and wearing a pair of old mukluks on her feet.
I turn and give Hurley a pointed look, gesturing ever so slightly toward Hannah as Charlotte shuts the front door. Hurley acknowledges my gesture with a slight nod of his own and moves in on Charlotte.
“Mrs. Strommen, I need to examine some of your husband’s things, and I’d like to start with his clothes.”
Charlotte looks from him to Hannah—who retreats into the kitchen—and then at me. I can tell she isn’t comfortable with the arrangement, but she doesn’t object. Seeming resigned to whatever fate awaits her, Charlotte says, “Follow me”; then she heads up the stairs.
Hurley falls in behind her, while I make a beeline for the kitchen. Hannah is seated at the table pushing a few soggy, flaccid cornflakes around in a tiny puddle of milk at the bottom of a cereal bowl.
“Good morning, Hannah,” I say, taking the chair across from her. “I’m Mattie Winston. I think you know my niece, Erika Colter?”
She doesn’t answer right away; and when she raises her eyes from the bowl to look at me, I’m shocked. Several years back, I took care of a guy in the ER who had been involved in a bombing over in Iraq that killed most of his fellow soldiers and left him deaf in one ear, missing one eye, and minus his left arm. Even worse was the invisible damage he incurred. He was suffering from PTSD and plagued with depression, insomnia, numerous somatic complaints, paranoia, and anxiety. There was a haunted, resigned, dead look in his eyes—the look of a mortally wounded animal that has lost its will to fight. I never saw that look again, until today. Hannah Strommen has the same haunted, dead-eyed expression.
“I take it your mom told you about your dad,” I say to her.
“Yeah, I guess you could say that,” she says with a sarcastic snort. She drops her gaze back to her bowl and pushes the cornflakes around some more.
“Where is your brother?”
Her hand freezes midstir and she looks up at me again—this time with a spark of life in those eyes. “What do you want with Peter?”
“I want to talk to him.”
“Why? He doesn’t know anything about this.”
“Your mom hasn’t told him yet?”
“Why would she do that?”
“Well, sooner or later, your brother’s going to need to know that your father is dead, isn’t he?”
I watch confusion play across Hannah’s face; and then, as if someone flipped a switch, the deadness returns.
“What aren’t you telling me, Hannah?”
She drops her spoon into the bowl and it clatters loudly. Then, without another word, she gets up and leaves the room. I hear her thumping her way up the stairs—even her gait sounds defeated—and then I hear a door slam closed above me.
Left alone, I decide to check out the kitchen, opening drawers and cupboards. Many of the shelves are bare; and the fridge, an older model with a tiny freezer that’s nearly closed due to ice buildup, yields similar results.
Next I head out into the living and dining area to scout around. In the dining room, there is an old credenza along one wall, with a large drawer in the middle. I open it and find a mini office supply catchall: a partially used notepad, some pens and pencils, a handful of rubber bands, a box of paper clips, stamps, envelopes, and a stapler. Just as I close the drawer, my cell phone rings.
“Hello?”
“Mattie? It’s Syph. I just wanted to let you know that I got that phone number for you.”
Great, the blind date. I briefly consider trying to beg off again, but I know Syph won’t let it go. Besides, sooner or later, I need to start dating again, and I suppose a pharmacist is a reasonable place to start. At least we’ll have something in common. “Hold on. Let me get a pen and some paper.” I reopen the credenza drawer and grab a pencil and the notepad. “Go ahead.”
She gives me the number and I write it down at the top of the page, along with his name, Mike. Then I rip the sheet off, fold it in half, and stick it in my purse. “Thanks,” I say, wondering if I mean it. “I’d love to chat, but I’m in the middle of something.”
“No problem. I’ll catch up with you later. Oh, and I should probably tell you that I also gave him your number. Good luck!”
Before I can gasp and cast several nasty curses on Syph’s soul, she disconnects the call. So I curse myself, instead, because I should have known she’d push the issue. When I worked with her years ago, she did more matchmaking than the hospital’s blood bank.
I slip my phone back in my purse and head upstairs, where I find Hurley in the master bedroom with Charlotte. She has made no effort to hide the boxes of clothing I saw when we were here before. I see Hurley gloved up and sorting through one of them.
He looks up at me and says, “Charlotte was explaining to me that her husband has always kept his clothes in boxes because they only have the one dresser and the closet is so small.”
“I see,” I say. As explanations go, it’s not a bad one, but I suspect Charlotte may have dreamed it up since the last time we were here, once she realized that I likely saw the boxes. After seeing and talking with Hannah, I’m more convinced than ever that not only is there something more to Donald’s death, but that Hannah knows something about it.
“I’m going to go check out the bathroom,” I say.
Charlotte shoots me an exasperated look. “Just what are you searching for?”
“Answers.”
“To what?”
“To how and where your husband died.”
Charlotte shakes her head in disgust, and plays with a strand of her hair. I see her make a quick, nervous glance toward the bed, and decide to postpone my search of the bathroom for a moment.
“Which side of the bed do you sleep on?” I ask Charlotte.
“Why? What difference does that make?”
I don’t answer; I just stare at her, instead.
With an irritated sigh, she points to the closest side of the bed. “I sleep on this side,” she snaps.
I walk a
round the foot of the bed past Hurley, who is still milling through the clothing boxes, and approach the far side of the bed closest to the window. My suspicion is confirmed when I see Charlotte watching me with an anxious expression, chewing on one side of her thumbnail. The bed is neatly made, with layers of blankets beneath the old quilt that serves as a bedspread. The mattress looks lumpy and there is a definite hump in the middle, a raised no-man’s-land.
I pull back the blankets and examine the sheets beneath. They are as threadbare and worn as everything else in the house. I pull the sheet off the mattress and look at its surface. No big stains to indicate anything nefarious happened on it. Next I lift the mattress and look at its underside. Nothing there, either.
I let the mattress fall back into place and make it up again. Then I leave Hurley to his boxes and head for the bathroom. My first stop is the medicine cabinet above the sink. Here I find two bottles of prescription medications—a sleeping pill for Charlotte and an antibiotic script for Donald, which has three pills left in it. The date on the antibiotic is from a year ago, telling me that Donald, like many others, decided to stop the medication once he felt better rather than finish it off. Charlotte’s sleeping-pill bottle is dated three months ago; when I count the contents, it is only one short of the quantity listed as dispensed on the front, making it unlikely that she used any of them to knock out her husband. The rest of the cabinet contains some shaving cream and razors, toothpaste, a can of cheap hair spray, and the usual over-the-counter medications found in most homes: laxatives, stool softeners, cough and cold medications, and a bottle each of the generic versions of acetaminophen and ibuprofen.
There is a small built-in cabinet containing washcloths and towels and a couple of bars of deodorant soap. Disappointed with my findings, I head out of the bathroom and glance toward the master bedroom to make sure Charlotte is still in there. I see her busily refolding clothes in one of the boxes Hurley has gone through, so I decide to venture a little farther. The door to Hannah’s room is closed and I hear the sound of a Britney Spears song playing, so I make my way to Peter’s room. His door is open and I find him inside, sitting on his bed, reading a library copy of a Harry Potter book.
“Hi, Peter,” I say. “I’m Mattie. I’m working with the police and we’re trying to figure out what happened to your dad. Can I ask you a couple of questions?”
He eyes me with curiosity over the top of his book. “He’s dead,” he says, his voice flat and dull.
“Yes, he died,” I say. “That must make you very sad. I’m sorry.”
He sets the book aside, tented open to the page where he left off. His eyes tear up and he folds his arms over his chest. “Harry Potter’s parents both died,” he says.
“Yes, they did. But that’s just a story, make-believe.”
His eyes well up even more and he looks away from me toward the window.
“You must miss your dad a lot.”
He sniffles, but he says nothing.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“What the hell are you doing?” says someone behind me. I whirl around to find Charlotte standing there, looking mad as hell. “I did not give you permission to talk to my son.” She shoves her way past me into the room, goes to the bed, sits next to her son, and gathers him to her. Peter buries his face in her chest and starts to sob. “I think it’s time for you to leave,” Charlotte says. Her eyes shift to something over my shoulder. “Both of you.”
I sense Hurley standing behind me, and a quick glance confirms it.
“Mrs. Strommen,” he says. “I’m sorry if we upset you, but—”
“But nothing,” she snaps. “If I understand things right, you can’t search my house without my permission, unless you have a warrant. Is that right?”
“It is,” Hurley says, “but in the spirit of cooperation—”
“And do you have such a warrant?” she demands.
Hurley hesitates before answering. “No, we don’t,” he admits.
“Then get out. Now.”
“Charlotte, please,” I try.
“I said, get out!”
Hurley takes my arm and tugs me out into the hallway. “Come on,” he says. “Let’s go.”
As we head down the stairs and out the front door, I can feel Charlotte’s glare burning into my back like a death ray.
Chapter 28
Hurley and I slog our way to his car through falling snow, which is coming down sideways. I wait until we are safely ensconced inside before I say anything.
“I’m sorry, Hurley. I should have waited before talking to Peter.”
“Yeah, you probably should have.”
Silence follows as Hurley negotiates the newly fallen snow, going down the driveway at a frightening speed. “Slow down,” I tell him. “The roads are slick.”
He pulls onto the main road and the rear end of the car fishtails dangerously before he manages to straighten it out.
“Hurley, please. One accident a week is enough, okay?”
He sighs and lets up on the gas, slowing the car to a more reasonable speed.
“What’s wrong?”
“Both of these cases are making me crazy,” he grumbles. “I feel like all I’m doing is spinning in circles.”
“We just have to keep plugging along the best we can,” I say. “If at first you don’t succeed—”
“You probably shouldn’t try skydiving.”
After a couple of beats, we both chuckle, providing some much needed relief to the tension inside the car. “If it’s meant to be, we’ll figure it out,” I say.
“I’m not that fatalistic. And I don’t like it when things don’t go the way I want them to.” He glances over at me with a pained expression, making me suspect he’s referring to more than the topic of our conversation. “It’s damn depressing.”
“Do I need to go to your house and hide all your bullets and razor blades?”
I’m rewarded for my question with a glimmer of a smile, but no answer. Instead, he says, “Did you have time to look in the bathroom?”
“I did, but I didn’t find anything of significance.”
“What about the daughter?”
“I’m pretty sure she knows something.” I relay my conversation with her, and then add, “It was obvious to me she was afraid we might tell Peter something other than the fact that his father is dead. I’d bet money that Hannah is hiding something. And based on her demeanor and the way she looks, it’s eating away at her. But she walked off mad before I could get anything out of her.”
“I’ll see if we can keep an officer on to watch the place tonight to make sure Charlotte doesn’t leave or try to dispose of any evidence. And, hopefully, by tomorrow, I can get a search warrant for both the house and the barn, though it’s not going to be easy with the holiday looming. People tend to take off early, and most places right now are staffed with skeleton crews.”
My cell phone rings and I answer it without looking at the caller ID, assuming it’s Izzy. “What’s up?”
“Is this Mattie Winston?” a strange male voice asks.
“It is. Who is this?”
“Michael Landon.”
“Is this a joke?”
“No, it’s not. I know, the ‘Michael Landon’ most people know is dead, but I’m not him. I just have the same name. I got your number from Phyllis Malone?”
“Oh, right,” I say, remembering the pharmacist Syph wanted to fix me up with. “Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. It happens a lot.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Anyway, I was wondering if you might be interested in having dinner with me tonight. I know it’s short notice, and New Year’s Eve. So if you already have plans, I understand. It’s just that I’m new in town and don’t know many folks, so . . .”
I can see Hurley eyeing me curiously, wondering who’s on the phone. I do a quick mental debate of my options, grateful that Michael was kind enough to give me an out, if I want one. But Hurley and
I have waded into some treacherous waters here recently, and maybe having a built-in buffer is a good idea.
“I do have plans,” I tell Michael, “but you’re welcome to join me, if you’d like. I’ve been invited to my boss’s house for dinner and a party, and I know he won’t mind me bringing a guest.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am.” Then, in the interests of full disclosure, I add, “Syph did tell you what I do for a living, didn’t she?”
“She did.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Okay, then, why don’t you plan on meeting me at my boss’s house at seven.” I give him the address; and when he asks, I tell him the dress is casual. “See you then,” I say, and hang up.
“What was that all about?” Hurley says, scowling.
“I have a date for tonight.”
“With whom?”
“Michael Landon.”
“Isn’t he dead?”
“He is, but given what I do for a living, my choices are kind of limited.”
“Very funny,” Hurley says in a tone that suggests otherwise. “What does this guy do for a living?”
“He sells drugs.”
“So you have a date with a dead drug dealer?”
“Sounds about right,” I say with a smile. “I think my social life is looking up, don’t you?”
Hurley doesn’t smile back. A few minutes later, he pulls up in front of my office. “Later,” he says without so much as a look my way.
Realizing I’m being dismissed, I get out of the car and head inside.
I find Izzy in his office reading something on his computer.
“Need any help?” I ask.
“No,” he says, spinning around in his chair to face me. “But I’m glad you’re here. I was just about to call you.”
“Why?”
“We got the tox screen back on Donald Strommen. It was negative for all of the usual drugs, but they did find traces of something unusual.” He smiles at me and waits, drawing out the suspense.
“And that would be . . . ?”
Lucky Stiff Page 24
