The Reluctant Coroner

by Paul Austin Ardoin

  THE

  RELUCTANT

  CORONER

  A FENWAY STEVENSON MYSTERY

  PAUL AUSTIN ARDOIN

  THE RELUCTANT CORONER

  Copyright © 2018 Paul Austin Ardoin

  All rights reserved.

  No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Under no circumstances may any part of this book be photocopied for resale.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead, is unintentional and coincidental.

  ISBN 978-1-949082-00-5

  Cover design by Ziad Ezzat

  Author photo by Monica Toohey-Krause of Studio KYK

  Edited by Britt Graves

  Information about the author can be found at http://www.paulaustinardoin.com

  For Stacie

  Chapter One

  She passed the sign that said Estancia 10 Miles, and arched her back, stretching as much as she could. The rental truck wasn’t a smooth ride, and the steering wheel pulled to the right, making for an irritating ride from Seattle. After passing the sign, a slight but steady incline in the coast highway took her up to the top of the crest of the hill. She looked to her left, and a huge industrial complex rose to meet her field of vision. Ablaze with warm orange lights, the mazes of pipes and small towers extended into the sky, steam rising into the air. Suddenly, she was four years old again, in her father’s Range Rover, seeing the complex lit up in the darkness for the first time.

  “Gotham City!” she had screamed from the back seat, pointing delightedly.

  “No, Fenway,” her father had said, never taking his eyes off the road. “That’s daddy’s refinery.”

  “You’re Batman,” she said definitively.

  “I’m not Batman,” he said, laughing. “But maybe I’m Bruce Wayne. And Mrs. Wayne expects us home soon. It’s already past your bedtime.”

  Fenway shook her head and came back to the present. She remembered that the Ferris Energy refinery was an ugly monstrosity in the daylight, spewing fumes into the air—quite the contrast with the quaint seaside town ten miles down the coast highway. But at night, the orange lights and the steam and the shadows from the pipes and antennae and towers created a lovely, haunting image that had stuck in her memory.

  Only three weeks before, Fenway had sold her mother’s house. With her mother gone, and with the bills from grad school and nursing school, she couldn’t make ends meet. When her father called two weeks ago, she was getting desperate. She hadn’t found an apartment she could afford, not with all her loans; her job at the clinic simply didn’t pay enough.

  They started to talk on the phone, tentatively at first. Her father offered his condolences, and the subject quickly turned to what Fenway would do now that her mother was gone. She put on a brave, but unconvincing, front.

  Her father offered to give her a break on the rent on a one-bedroom that just opened up in one of his apartment complexes. Fenway didn’t want to move from Seattle—and the last twenty years of her life—but she couldn’t see a way around it. Estancia, even though it was an oceanside town on California’s central coast, was still cheaper than Seattle—especially with the monthly rent her father was offering.

  That’s how she found herself driving to her childhood hometown after two days of driving. Fighting with the pull of the steering wheel, the lights of Estancia came into view before her. She couldn’t see much of the town in the dark, but bits and pieces started coming together in her memory: the beach down the road from her father’s mansion, the Spanish-style architecture of the outdoor mall.

  Fenway looked down at her gas gauge. It was just above the red line. She thought she’d probably make it.

  She turned up the radio. It was a Prince song with crashing beats that she hoped would wake her up before she arrived at the apartment complex and saw her father.

  She was running late. There had been an accident on the road connecting the interstate to the coast highway, and she had sat in the truck, not moving for about twenty minutes, and then crawling along for another twenty. She had called her father from the Windkettle rest stop just before seven-thirty telling him that she would be late, but it had gone to voicemail. She figured he might have still been at work. She had looked at her phone—the battery was only at thirty percent and wasn’t charging. After jiggling the car plug for her phone charger, she realized it wasn’t seating properly. After committing the rest of the directions to memory—she hoped—she had turned her cell phone off to conserve the battery.

  Traffic had improved once she was on the coast highway, and the speedometer sat at a steady seventy-five. She knew that wasn’t great for gas mileage, but since her father was already getting her out of a tight financial situation, she didn’t feel like testing his patience by being any later than she already was.

  The low fuel light came on. She cursed quietly.

  This would be the first time Fenway and her father would see each other in two years, and she was nervous. She ran through a few lines of what she would say when she saw him—hoping it would be just him, and not both him and his new wife. Well, she still thought of Charlotte as her father’s new wife, even though they had been married almost ten years.

  She passed a large green exit sign—Broadway was only another mile farther. She glanced at the low fuel light again. She would have easily made it in her old Sentra—especially downhill—but in the big, unfamiliar rental truck, she wasn’t quite sure. She took her foot off the gas and slowed to sixty.

  She took the Broadway exit, then turned onto Estancia Canyon Road. She powered up her phone as she made a right at the Coffee Bean on the next corner. She saw the apartment complex two blocks further down, pulled into the driveway, and stopped the truck.

  Fenway saw that she had a new voicemail. But it wasn’t from her father, it was from an unfamiliar number. She hit Play and held the phone to her ear.

  “Hi, Fenway,” the voice said. “This is Robert Stotsky. I work for your dad, and I also oversee his apartment complexes. Your dad had a meeting with Japanese investors at the last minute, and he’s asked me to meet you and get you settled in. Just come to the leasing office when you get here. Hope you’re having a good trip, and I’ll see you soon.”

  Fenway sighed. She shook her head; of course her father wasn’t here. She had been foolish to think otherwise.

  There was a honk behind her; an SUV was trying to get into the driveway. She shifted into gear and turned right into a row with covered parking on each side. The SUV turned the opposite way, and Fenway pulled into an uncovered visitor space on the end of the row.

  She killed the engine, turned the light on in the truck cab. and looked in the mirror. The day of driving had been a bit unkind; her loose curls were getting frizzy, and her large, dark brown eyes looked tired. She opened the door, swung her legs out, and hoisted herself out the cab, landing on the ground in her sneakers.

  She walked to the front driveway and saw the Leasing Office sign on a unit with the porch light blazing. She went up and knocked.

  She heard rustling, the sound of a television turning off. She waited a few more seconds before the door opened.

  A large whi
te man stood in the doorway. He looked to be in his late forties or early fifties. He was a huge hulk of a man, at least six foot five, and almost three hundred pounds. Fenway was five-ten, but the man towered over her. He looked like he was built of mostly muscle, though he might have been going a little soft around the middle.

  “Can I help you?” he said. His voice was kind enough, although there was an edge of suspicion to it.

  “Hi,” she said. “I’m supposed to be meeting, um, Robert? He’s the building manager, I think.”

  “Oh, you’re Fenway Ferris?” The large man caught his surprise, but too late. Fenway grimaced inwardly. Obviously, the man hadn’t been prepared for Ferris’s daughter to be black.

  “Uh, Fenway Stevenson, actually. You’re Robert?”

  The man nodded. “Yes, Rob Stotsky.”

  Fenway shook Stotsky’s hand; he had a firm grip. “I’m really sorry you had to waste your evening coming out to meet me,” she said. “I got your voice mail just as I was pulling in.”

  Stotsky smiled. “Don’t worry about it. Your dad and I go way back. He’d do the same for my daughter, I’m sure. Is Stevenson your married name or something?”

  “My mother’s name, actually.”

  “Of course. Sorry, I don’t mean to pry.”

  “Not a problem. Usually I get a joke about the Boston Red Sox.”

  “Sorry to disappoint.” He laughed. “Well, it sounds like you made good time. I wasn’t expecting you until eight o’clock.”

  Fenway smiled uneasily. “I’m late actually—it’s eight-thirty. I called my dad from the rest stop in Windkettle, but I guess he didn’t give you the message.”

  Stotsky looked at his watch. “Ah, man,” he said. “Don’t know where my head’s at tonight.” Stotsky went to a small cabinet and picked a keychain off a hook. “Okay, Miss Ferris—sorry, Miss Stevenson. Here we go. I’ll show you the way.”

  “Thanks,” she said, “I’ll get my stuff.”

  Stotsky followed Fenway out, turning the lights out and locking the door behind him.

  Fenway walked down to the parking lot and unlocked the truck cab. She looked to the floor of the passenger side, grabbed her sleeping bag and little suitcase. Stotsky took the case from Fenway without being asked, lifting it up like it was nothing. She got out of the truck, shut the door and locked it.

  “Thanks for your help,” she said.

  “That everything?” he asked.

  Fenway stifled a yawn. “For tonight. I’m so tired, I don’t think I’ll need much else.”

  “All right. Follow me, I’ll show you which apartment is yours.”

  They walked past the first building, right in front of the main driveway, and turned the corner a little.

  Fenway thought that the complex seemed okay; not gated, and not ritzy, but pretty well-lit, and it looked like the paint and landscaping were pretty well-maintained. In the dim light, she couldn’t tell if the neutral color of the stucco was beige or grey, but she could tell that the color was chosen to be as inoffensive as possible.

  “So, does my father work this late on most nights?” she asked.

  “Sometimes,” Stotsky said. “It depends on what the oil futures are doing. Oh—before I forget,” Stotsky said, “the sheriff came by earlier, looking for you.”

  Fenway paused and turned back. “The sheriff?”

  “You know him?”

  Her eyebrows knitted. “No. I don’t know who the sheriff is. The Estancia sheriff?”

  “The Dominguez County sheriff. I don’t see how you could have done anything wrong, though. You just barely got here.” Stotsky laughed, but it was an uneasy laugh.

  “Anything wrong? What do you mean?”

  Stotsky coughed. “Nothing. I mean, usually when I have the sheriff asking about a tenant, it’s because of a domestic violence complaint, or unpaid parking tickets.”

  “Huh.” Her tone was wary. “I can pretty much assure you I don’t have anything like that.”

  “Right. I’d be really surprised if any daughter of Nathaniel Ferris was in trouble with the law. Anyway, he said he’d be by tomorrow. So keep an eye out for him.”

  He turned and led Fenway up an open-air staircase, then led her in front of the third door on the left. “Here we go. Number 214.” He turned the key in the lock, pushed the door open, and the small light in the entry shone weakly on Stotsky’s face. “This is it.” He handed the small suitcase over to Fenway.

  “Thanks.” She stepped inside, then turned back to the large man.

  Stotsky handed Fenway a business card for the complex. “Free Wi-Fi in all the apartments, by the way. Password is on the back of the card. I’m not usually onsite, but you call me direct if you have any issues with the apartment.”

  “Hey,” she said, “do you happen to know if my father is still sending some people over to help me with the apartment tomorrow morning?”

  “I haven’t heard any different,” Stotsky said.

  She nodded her thanks, and Stotsky shut the door, leaving Fenway alone in the apartment.

  Fenway stared at the empty space. She sighed. She looked at the beige carpets and cheap-looking linoleum floors. She thought of her new life: no job, no friends, and a father who couldn’t even meet his daughter after two years of not seeing her.

  Fenway stood still and looked up at the overhead light shining weakly on her. She suddenly felt that all the freedom she had gained in twenty years—all of the work her mother had done to get distance and freedom from her father—all of it was gone.

  Fenway sighed, a deep but unsatisfying sigh, and picked up her suitcase and toiletries, and got ready for bed. She nestled herself in her sleeping bag on the new carpet in the bedroom, in a strange apartment, in a town she knew but didn’t remember.

  Chapter Two

  Fenway didn’t have trouble falling asleep, even with the worry and the sadness she had felt since leaving Seattle. She was exhausted from the drive, and she passed into sleep quickly, but she didn’t sleep particularly well; she kept drifting in and out. Several times during the night she slipped into half-wakefulness, wondering where she was, or feeling too hot in the sleeping bag, or worrying what she was going to say to her father.

  She woke up completely when the morning light was filtering through the heavy mist outside. There were no window coverings, and the light was strong enough at about half past six for her to stop pretending she could get back to sleep. She sat up and yawned, stretching her hands over her head and halfheartedly kicking at the sleeping bag to untangle herself.

  Fenway knew it was too early to move the truck; the beeping noise when backing up the moving truck would wake everyone up. She was glad that she wouldn’t be carrying furniture upstairs by herself; for all her trepidation about seeing her father again, she was glad he had offered to have some people come by later in the morning to help her out. She hoped his offer still stood.

  Fenway yawned again. She needed coffee.

  She remembered passing a Coffee Bean the night before, on the corner just a couple of blocks away.

  She pulled on some sweats and running shoes, and put on a black headband. Her hair didn’t quite come to her shoulders and even though the headband wasn’t very flattering, it kept her hair out of her face. She set off to find the Coffee Bean. It was where she remembered, down two blocks to the corner of Estancia Canyon Road, but in the gray morning light—typical central California coast weather for early May—she didn’t recognize the things she had driven past the night before: the wooden sign for the complex, the pink house on the first corner. She looked around. The neighborhood was a little quirky, much different than the mansion overlooking the ocean that where she had spent her first eight years.

  A few bicyclists with bold, skintight outfits passed her. Fenway watched them go past the “Not a Through Street” sign and wondered where they were going.

  She got to the Coffee Bean in under ten minutes. There were three people ahead of her in line, but nowhere near the nu
mber she expected for a Wednesday morning just before the commute started.

  “Large latte, please,” she said to the cashier, who nodded and asked her name.

  “Joanne.” She had abandoned giving her real name to baristas years before.

  Fenway looked around the coffee shop and finally settled on an overstuffed chair with a tiny round table next to it. The barista had to call Joanne twice before Fenway got up to get her latte.

  She thought about buying a paper but decided against it. Sitting back in the chair, she sipped her latte and listened to snippets of different conversations around her.

  “I don’t know, he promised me he’d take Ethan to his game, but when I woke up, he’d already left for the golf course...”

  “Well, it was on sale, and honestly, it just pulls the whole room together…”

  “Have you heard about the rumors at Ferris Energy? That accident might mean layoffs, and Allan might be out of a job…”

  And there it was.

  It hit Fenway pretty hard that her father was still the most powerful man in town—in the county, in fact—where his eponymous oil company employed so many people and drove so much of Estancia’s economy.

  Fenway had planned on drinking her latte slowly, getting a refill and maybe a muffin; after all, she had nowhere to be for a couple of hours. At the first mention of Nathaniel Ferris, though, she was on her feet and out the door.

  Getting spooked at the first mention of her father’s name wasn’t part of the plan. As Fenway left the coffee shop, her latte still half-full, she remembered that she had promised herself—she promised her mother’s memory—that she would be strong. Her mother had worked hard to ensure that Fenway wouldn’t let her strained relationship with her father define her. But it was her first morning in Estancia, and the thought of having to sit there while listening to how Nathaniel Ferris ran the town was unconscionable.

  So Fenway decided to walk around instead. She had been sitting in that truck cab for most of the last two days; she needed the exercise. Fenway walked back toward the complex, and then remembered the bicyclists. She walked past the “Not a Through Street” sign. The road didn’t fan out into a cul-de-sac, like she thought it might; it was a true dead end, with a short wooden fence made out of big four-by-fours and wide planks the width of the road, painted white with reflectors. To the right of the fence, a well-worn dirt path led off into the trees. Fenway could see fresh marks from bicycle tires.