Working Stiff

by Annelise Ryan

He looks at me then, his expression a mix of sadness and suspicion. “What do I know about it? Not much. Just what the cops told me.”

  “Which was…”

  “That someone killed her. Shot her. In her own home.”

  “Did you tell the cops that you’re sleeping with her?”

  “I’m not sleeping with her.”

  “That’s right, you were wide-awake and standing up as I recall.”

  David has the good grace to look embarrassed and his gaze shifts to his shoes. “I told the detective about that one incident,” he says sheepishly. He raises his head and looks at me in earnest. “Which is the last time anything happened between me and Karen, Mattie. I broke it off with her that night. After seeing the look on your face, I knew I’d made a terrible mistake. I wanted to take it all back, to make it go away. I never meant for it to happen. I never meant to hurt you.”

  I’m ready to hit him with another one of my snappy comebacks, but he sounds so sincere and looks so pathetic that I lose my enthusiasm for the kill. He’s rolling over and showing me his vulnerable underbelly, and a part of me wants to get up and go to him, to try to regain what we once had. Another part of me wants to take advantage of his foolish acquiescence and disembowel him. I do neither.

  “What else did you tell the cops?” I ask him.

  He shrugs. “Wasn’t much to tell.”

  “Really? Did you tell them that you and Karen had a heated argument at your house just hours before she was killed? A fight that had her so angry she slapped your face?”

  “No,” David says, his expression turning worried. “I didn’t think—” He stops and looks at me, a dawning awareness replacing the concern on his face. “How do you know about that?”

  “I saw it. I looked through the front window and saw the whole thing.”

  “You looked through the window,” he repeats, sounding momentarily dazed. Then the significance of it registers and his voice grows angrier. “The front window? Wait a minute, you were spying on me?”

  “I didn’t mean to,” I lie. “I needed to get some things from the house and when I saw another car parked in the driveway, I thought it might be prudent to find out who was there before I went in. So I looked in through the window. And I saw the whole thing.”

  David turns away; his jaw clenches, his eyes narrow, and the muscles in his cheeks jump and twitch. I watch him, trying to guess what is going on in his mind. I realize then that I am putting one hell of a lot of trust in my own judgment, banking on David’s innocence despite what I’ve seen. But what if I’m wrong? What if the man I’ve been married to all these years is a sociopath?

  “Did you tell the cops what you saw?” David asks.

  I debate my answer for a second, wondering if I should lie for the sake of insurance. But my gut still says David could not have done this. I want to believe that. For some reason, I need to believe that.

  “No, but only because they haven’t really questioned me yet. I saw Detective Hurley snooping around outside the house this morning and he found the wheelbarrow I was standing in still parked beneath the window. I think he might have guessed that I was there.”

  “So, lie. Don’t tell him you were there. Or if you want to tell him you were there, don’t tell him what you saw. Make something up.”

  “Make something up? Why? What are you hiding, David?”

  He looks me straight in the eye then. “Do you actually think I could have killed Karen?”

  I stare back at him, back at those eyes that can change from gray to blue in the flash of a second. And in them I see the blank page that is my future and the emptiness that is now our past.

  “No, I don’t,” I say finally. “But I do think you know something. Something you’re not telling me.”

  “Nothing important,” he says. “Believe me, if I thought I knew something that could shed some light on this tragedy, I’d say so.”

  “What were you and Karen arguing about that night?”

  He looks at me for a long second, then turns away. I know him well enough to know I’ve just been weighed, considered, and found lacking.

  “It was nothing really. She was just upset that I didn’t want to pursue a relationship with her.”

  He’s lying. I’m certain of it. But all those years of being married to him taught me that stubbornness is one of his strongest suits. I know I’ll never get him to budge.

  “Fine,” I say, feeling cross, hurt, and once again betrayed. I push out of his chair and head for the door, but he grabs my arm as I pass by.

  “Wait, Mattie. Tell me what you’re going to say to the police.”

  I gaze straight into his face, straight into his eyes. I see worry there—not surprising since I have proof he has lied to the police—but no malice.

  “I don’t know,” I tell him honestly. “I guess I’ll figure it out when the time comes.”

  Chapter 10

  As I pull into my driveway, I realize the time is here. Hurley is parked outside the cottage. I consider turning my car around and making an escape, but I know I’ll only be stalling the inevitable. So I park instead and watch as Hurley gets out of his car, trying to get a read on his face. It is utterly placid, giving away nothing, so I shift my gaze to his butt instead, watching as he leans back into the car to grab a cell phone from the front seat.

  I finally get out of my own car and walk over to greet him, flashing him my best smile. “Good to see you again, Detective.”

  “We need to talk.” So much for the niceties.

  “Sure,” I say with a shrug, hoping he won’t see how badly my hands are shaking. “Come on in.”

  I lead the way into the cottage, and as I step inside Hurley says, “Don’t you lock your door?”

  “At night I do,” I tell him, ignoring the fact that I’d forgotten to do so last night. “But I leave it open during the day. Izzy’s partner, Dom, is usually around to keep an eye on things, and besides, it’s not like I have a whole lot here that anyone would want.”

  “Did Karen Owenby have something that someone would want?”

  Good point. “Jewels?” I offer weakly.

  He shakes his head.

  “Stocks, bonds, securities?”

  Another shake.

  “Drugs?”

  His eyebrows rise at that. “Why did you mention drugs?”

  “She’s a nurse. She works in a hospital where she has access to lots of narcotics. It happens.”

  A strangled mewling sound emanates from the vicinity of the bedroom and Hurley spins around. “What the hell is that?” he asks.

  “A kitten. I rescued him from a garbage Dumpster this afternoon.”

  “I don’t like cats,” Hurley says, curling his lip in a way that makes me want to bite it.

  “He’s not a cat, he’s a kitten. Tiny. Harmless. Helpless. You know, the sort of thing those big, brave firemen rescue from trees.” I say this last part with just a hint of breathlessness and am amused to see Hurley straighten up and puff out his chest. Men are so easy.

  Hurley turns back to face me. “You told me earlier that your husband was seeing this Karen Owenby, yet he tells me he broke it off a couple of months ago, right after the…um…indiscretion you apparently witnessed.”

  Indiscretion? Is that the going term for it these days?

  “He’s my ex-husband,” I say, feeling churlish.

  “I thought you said the divorce isn’t final.”

  “Fine. Be picky. It’s not technically final. But it will be.” I whirl away from him and head for the bedroom. Rubbish is sitting on the floor near the edge of the bed and beside him are the mangled remains of a tampon, sans wrapper. I scoop Rubbish up with one hand and grab the tampon with the other, stuffing the latter into my pocket. Holding the kitten close to my chest, I stroke him until he starts to purr.

  Hurley has followed me, and when I turn and see him standing in the doorway to my bedroom—tall, straight, blue-eyed, and one fine specimen of testosterone-ridden flesh—my face flu
shes hot.

  “See?” I say, swallowing hard and grasping at conversational straws. I thrust the kitten toward him. “Not real ferocious.”

  “Just wait until it grows up,” Hurley says, backing up a step and frowning. “Cats are like the devil reincarnated.”

  I can see his fear is real, and find it both endearing and amusing. A smile teases my lips at the thought of this big burly guy being frightened by a tiny one-pound ball of vibrating fur.

  “So why did you tell me your husband…ex-husband…was still seeing Karen Owenby?” he asks, finally taking his eyes off the kitten and focusing them on me instead. “What made you think that?”

  “I assumed they were still seeing each other. Maybe I was wrong.” I enunciate each word carefully, keeping my tone neutral. I am keenly aware of the fact that we are standing in my bedroom with my unmade bed right behind me, and my hormones are flaring like a sunspot. I sense that Hurley is very aware of it as well. For a long second we share one of those innuendo-laden moments that has the lifespan of an eye blink, though at the time it seems to last forever.

  “I’m curious about something,” Hurley says. “This place…” He gestures about the room. “How did you come to be here?”

  “Izzy is a good friend of mine. He had the place, no one was staying here, so he let me move in. Why?”

  “It seems a bit, oh, I don’t know…masochistic. I mean, being this close to a beautiful home you once called your own, a husband I assume you once loved. Why so close?” He’s fishing. I know it, and I suspect he knows I know it.

  I give him a shrug. “It’s comfortable. It suits me. And since a lot of my stuff is still in the old house, I consider it conveniently located.”

  He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out my brown scarf. “Does this look familiar to you?”

  He is watching me very closely. I bend over to set the kitten on the floor, momentarily hiding my face in case my surprise at seeing the scarf shows. I pet Rubbish a few times, stalling so I can collect myself. When I feel certain my expression is sufficiently neutral, I straighten, walk over to him, and take the scarf in hand. My brain whirrs, clanks, clangs, and steams, weighing the consequences. Lie…truth…lie…truth. What to do, what to do.

  Finally, I look up at him with what I hope is angelic innocence.

  “It looks like one of mine,” I say, handing the scarf back to him. “Though I can’t be sure. Where’d you get it?”

  “Over in front of your hus—ex-husband’s house. Found it on the ground beneath a window, beside a wheelbarrow with some mulch in it.” He gives me a questioning arch of his brow. I come back at him with my best “Is there a point to this?” look and say nothing. For several seconds we stare at one another in silence, but there is no unspoken innuendo this time. It’s a pure contest of wills, one I sense I am about to lose. I know I’m not going to be able to gaze into the incredible blue of those eyes for very long before I start to either pant or drool…maybe both. Fortunately, Hurley gives way first, glancing down nervously at the kitten, which has chosen this moment to saunter over near his feet.

  Good kitty! I make myself a mental note to give Rubbish a treat as soon as Hurley leaves.

  “About this, uh, wheelbarrow,” Hurley goes on, doing a two-step away from the kitten. “It looks like it was placed beneath the window so someone could stand in it and look inside the house. I noticed there’s a small space at the bottom of the blinds where someone could look in.”

  I continue to stare at him, smiling and wearing the same cautiously bemused expression I used years ago on Ethan when he showed me his first collected bug.

  “If one so chose,” he adds pointedly.

  Look. Smile. Say nothing. Don’t react.

  “And it looks as if the wheelbarrow might have tipped over, because it was on its side with most of the mulch spilled out of it.” His gaze remains fixed on the floor, watching warily as the kitten flops, jumps, and pretends to attack something. When I see Hurley’s eyes widen, I look down myself, sucking in a breath of panic when I realize what the kitten is playing with—a piece of pine bark mulch.

  “Well, now. What do we have here?” Hurley bends over and makes a half-assed attempt to shoo the kitten away. But Rubbish thinks Hurley’s hand is a fun new toy and he leaps toward it, giving it a smack with one of his paws. Hurley snatches his hand back and moves away. I seize the moment by giving the mulch a quick flick with my foot, sending it under the bed.

  “Just some stuff I tracked in,” I say quickly. “All those leaves outside tend to stick to your shoes.”

  “Damn it, Mattie. That was no leaf,” Hurley grumbles. He watches the kitten chase its tail for a few seconds and then says, “Pick that thing up, would you?”

  I do so, letting forth with a hefty sigh of annoyance to let him know how put out I am by his request. Then I watch as he drops to his hands and knees next to my bed, exposing the long V-shaped line of his muscular back to me.

  Giddy-up.

  Two seconds later he rises to his feet, the piece of mulch in his hand. With it are two others, each one a pine-scented nail in my coffin.

  Hurley sniffs his findings. “Hmm…looks and smells like pine bark mulch. The same stuff that I found in and around that tipped wheelbarrow I was talking about. I wonder how it could have gotten in here. In your bedroom. Under your bed.”

  I know the jig is up. “Fine,” I say. “You got me. I used the wheelbarrow to climb up and look in the window.”

  “Last night?”

  “Yes, last night.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  He shoots me a look that suggests he might shove bamboo shoots under my nails if I continue to dodge his questions.

  “And I saw David.” I hesitate, hoping I might be able to stop at a partial truth, but Hurley’s eyes narrow down to icy slits that make me feel oddly heated. “With Karen Owenby. They were talking and then she left. That’s it.”

  “What time was this?”

  “Between nine and ten, I think.”

  “And did David leave the house after Ms. Owenby did?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not stalking him, or running a stakeout,” I tell him, offended. “I’ve never done it before and I certainly won’t do it again. I heard that a woman was visiting him and I wanted to know who it was. That’s all.”

  Surprisingly, Hurley’s expression softens. He stares at me until I feel compelled to turn away.

  “He really hurt you, didn’t he?” he says gently.

  Tears burn behind my eyes. Hurley’s brief moment of tenderness leaves me feeling dumb, labile, and dangerously hormone-ridden. Crying is a solitary, private thing for me. I hate doing it in front of anyone and I’ll be damned if I’m going do it in front of this man. So I use Rubbish as a stalling tactic once again, bending down slowly and setting him on the floor, hiding my water-rimmed eyes as I try to collect myself. I scramble for an image of something utterly distracting, something that will reverse my emotional poles, and a second later, the kitten—bless his wicked little claws—gives it to me. With one Herculean leap he launches himself upward and sinks his claws deep into Hurley’s jeans, landing mere inches from the Hurley family jewels.

  Hurley freezes, his baby blues bugging out of his head.

  “Get this…thing off me,” he hisses, barely moving his lips. He looks utterly ridiculous standing there with a pound or so of fur hanging between his legs and an expression of utter terror on his face. I am consumed by an overwhelming urge to laugh, but I manage to swallow it down. Instead, I walk over and kneel in front of Hurley.

  “Easy! Eeeaaaassssy!” he hisses as I wrap one hand around Rubbish. All the color has drained from Hurley’s face and I wonder if he might pass out…and if he does, what it would be like to give him mouth-to-mouth. I think of his lips and briefly imagine my own pressed against them.

  I give the kitten a few gentle tugs and, when that doesn’t work, I s
tart prying his claws loose one at a time. When I am finished, I look up and see that Hurley now has some color back, most of it a brilliant, blazing red.

  I rise, a sly smile on my face. “You okay?” I ask, holding Rubbish close to my chest.

  Hurley clears his throat nervously. His hand hovers in front of his crotch, where an unmistakable bulge is beginning to strain the denim. “Fine,” he mutters. “I’m fine. I just…I don’t like cats.”

  “So you say, but isn’t that a cat toy in your pocket? Or are you just happy to see me?”

  Hurley scowls and the red grows deeper. “It’s an automatic response to a physical stimulus,” he grumbles. “To that…that…creature.”

  “Rubbish.”

  “It is not,” he snarls. “It’s a simple physical reaction. It means nothing. You should know that if you’re a nurse.”

  “No, I mean the cat’s name is Rubbish. He’s not ‘that creature.’ His name is Rubbish.” I grin stupidly at him, relishing my upper hand. But my glee is short-lived. Hurley knows how to sober up a conversation real fast.

  “Your husband lied to me about seeing Karen Owenby the night she was killed. Any idea why?”

  “Maybe he doesn’t think it’s that important.”

  “You don’t think being with a murder victim mere hours before she’s killed is important?”

  “I didn’t say I don’t think it’s important. I said he doesn’t. Maybe he doesn’t. Oh, hell, I don’t know. But regardless, I don’t think he killed her.”

  “You seem awfully defensive,” Hurley says. “You still got feelings for this creep?”

  “I was married to him for seven years, you know. And he isn’t a creep,” I say angrily.

  Hurley holds his hands up to ward me off. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to hit a nerve. Just sounds to me like you’re not being totally objective here.”

  “Of course I’m not. I know things about the man that you couldn’t possibly know. I’ve watched him hold a sick child in his arms. I’ve seen him cry over the death of a ninety-eight-year-old man. I’ve lain at his side when he dragged his weary ass out of bed at three in the morning to go perform emergency surgery after spending a twelve-hour day in the OR. I’m sorry, but it’s hard for me to reconcile that man with one who’s a cold-blooded killer.”