Wendy Delaney - Working Stiffs 01 - Trudy, Madly, Deeply

by Wendy Delaney

  “It’s exactly like Rose. She seemed to be doing better, then the next day … bam!” Lucille slapped her palm on the table. “She’s gone.”

  “It wasn’t her time,” Alice agreed, slowly shaking her head, but I had a feeling it wasn’t Rose my great-aunt was referring to.

  “Damned straight it wasn’t her time.” Lucille wiped a tear from her cheek. “And now look what’s going on.”

  She lost me. “What?”

  Lucille wrinkled her nose. “Jayne Elwood and Ernie Kozarek, making eyes at one another like a couple of teenagers. I even heard that Ernie showed up at Clark’s Pharmacy with a prescription for Viagra.”

  That was so not the image of Jayne and Ernie that I wanted in my head.

  “Whatever. It’s been over a year since Mr. Elwood died.” Jesse Elwood had been my junior high school principal. There was no way I could call him anything other than Mr. Elwood. “And almost two years for Rose. It’s not like anyone is cheating on their spouse.”

  Lucille slapped the table top again. “Exactly my point. Damned convenient.”

  Alice stared at her rolling pin. For someone typically quick to shoot down Lucille’s conspiracy theories, she was too quiet.

  I touched her hand. “What do you think, Aunt Alice?”

  She blinked at me through her wire-rimmed trifocals as if she were having trouble focusing. “I think Trudy was supposed to come home today. I think she should be with Norm—a few more months, even a few more weeks.” She hung her head, slowly shaking it, her short reddish-gray tousled hair not budging a millimeter. “It wasn’t her time.”

  Despite the heat radiating from the oven, I shivered.

  “I’ll tell you what I think,” Lucille said, without waiting to be asked, as usual. “There’s something going on at that hospital.”

  If I hadn’t known that Kyle Cardinale shared that opinion, I would have reminded Lucille that she also believed that Elvis had faked his death and lived down the street from her sister in Fort Lauderdale.

  “And Norm and Ernie are on the same bowling team.” Lucille folded her arms under her ample chest. “Some people might call that a coincidence, but I don’t think so.”

  Huh? “Just because they’re on the same bowling team doesn’t mean—”

  “Then what do you call all this?” Lucille demanded.

  “It should be a good thing. Ernie’s just getting on with his life. So is Jayne.”

  “Bullshit!” Alice exclaimed.

  “Fine!” I clenched my teeth to keep from screaming in frustration. “Then what do you call it?”

  “Murder.”

  Chapter Five

  Murder? A bowling team connection? And the prime suspect was the doctor who brought me into this world? The butterflies churning in my stomach might be buying into this insanity, but since I didn’t want to fricassee my chances to reach day thirty of my thirty-day trial, I couldn’t just go with my gut.

  I needed more information, and I knew exactly where to find it.

  This called for backup, so I filled a large paper cup with coffee, threw a couple of glazed doughnuts into a white to-go bag, and hoofed it two blocks up Main to the Port Merritt Police Station.

  Wanda McCormick, sitting at a desk behind the front counter, poked her head out from behind her computer monitor. “Hey, Char.”

  Wanda had been the chief’s secretary for most of the last decade, and she ran the station like a mama bear protecting her cubs. Everyone knew that if you wanted to get past the lobby, you had to get past Wanda.

  A sign printed on a wrinkled sheet of plain white paper was taped to the scarred wooden counter. YOU ARE BEING VIDEO RECORDED. Undaunted, I flashed Wanda and the camera mounted in the corner the to-go bag and my best winning smile. “Is Steve in?”

  The roll at her waistline indicated that she had seen her fair share of Duke’s doughnuts. “I thought you were working for Frankie now.”

  News around here traveled fast.

  “I was in the neighborhood, so Duke asked me to make the delivery.” It was an easy lie to sell. It had plausibility, which was key, and since Duke sent food orders over to the station on a daily basis, I knew Wanda wouldn’t think twice about it.

  She pressed the button next to her desk that released the security door separating the public from the restricted domain of the fourteen-person police force.

  I entered the secure area and headed down the narrow hall to the open door stenciled with the words, Investigation Division. Inside the cramped office sat the one and only member of that division, Detective Steve Sixkiller.

  He had his telephone receiver to his ear so I gently knocked on his door. We locked gazes, his dark eyes impenetrable, but I could tell Steve wasn’t happy to see me.

  He pointed at a hardback chair across from his metal desk. Seconds later, he ended the call and leaned back in his black vinyl chair, facing me. “Shouldn’t you be at work?”

  “I’m on my lunch hour, so stop acting like a cop.” I held up the cup and to-go bag. “Especially when I come bearing gifts.”

  Steve set the paper cup on his desk, away from the short stack of paperwork in front of him. “Then you must want something.”

  He knew me too well.

  “I do have one teensy thing I’d like to ask you,” I said, pushing the white sack at him.

  Steve pulled out one of the doughnuts. “If you think this is a bribe, think again, Chow Mein.”

  I smiled at the nickname he gave me back in the third grade. “I just thought you might be hungry.”

  “You’re such a lousy liar,” he said with his mouth full.

  I was good enough to make my way past Wanda but now wasn’t the time to press the point.

  “You’ve heard about Trudy’s death.”

  “Yeah. Nice lady.” He took a sip of coffee.

  No visible reaction to the news about Trudy, much as I’d expected.

  “I was at the hospital this morning, talking to Dr. Cardinale.”

  Steve’s chocolate brown eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  “There appear to be some … concerns surrounding Trudy’s death, and Frankie wanted to get his statement,” I said, avoiding the particulars in order to comply with her earlier instructions instead of being my usual full-disclosure self.

  “And she sent you? It’s your first day for crissake.”

  “I’m perfectly capable of asking the man a few questions.”

  Steve’s lips curled in amusement. “Okay. So, you chatted with Dr. Cardinale.”

  I didn’t appreciate the sarcasm.

  “Don’t tell me, let me guess.” He dropped the rest of the doughnut into the bag. “You saw something.”

  “It wasn’t just that. Kyle Cardinale is pretty suspicious of the way Trudy died.” So much for avoiding particulars.

  Steve licked some sugary glaze from his thumb. “And your boss is ordering an autopsy, right?”

  There was no point in denying it, so I nodded.

  “Then your job is done, Deputy.”

  “How’d you know I was a—”

  “Half the staff in the Prosecutor’s office are deputy coroners. Welcome to county government on a shoestring budget.”

  Okay, I admit I felt a little less special about my new job title. At least he didn’t warn me to avoid getting the county sued.

  “But I’ve talked to some people who have good reason to think that Trudy could have been murdered,” I said, not wanting to mention names.

  “Uh huh. The Story Lady was murdered. And since when do you believe any of Lucille’s conspiracy theories?”

  I shrugged. Since my great-aunt agreed with her.

  I decided to cast out a line to see if he’d bite. “So you don’t think there’s anything to this, despite the fact that Bernadette Neary, Howard Jeppesen, and maybe even Rose Kozarek died the same way.”

  No answer. Not even a nibble of a reaction.

  “Char?” he finally said.

  I studied his face, watching, waiting. �
��Hmm?”

  He leaned closer as if he were daring me to a staring contest. “This conversation is over.”

  “Come on, Detective. Tell me that you don’t find Trudy’s death just a little suspicious.”

  His gaze sharpened, unamused. The tan, lean planes of his face had left hardly a trace of the neighbor boy I used to play with. Instead, a man wrapped in sinewy muscle inhabited the former Port Merritt High School football star’s body, and this guy knew how to intimidate. Fortunately, I was immune, more or less.

  After several silent seconds, he blew out a coffee-flavored breath. “Okay, that’s enough.”

  I feigned innocence. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Stop it.”

  “Stop what?”

  The hard edge to his eyes softened like a block of bittersweet chocolate over a low flame. “I hate it when you do that.”

  “No, you don’t.” We had played this game ever since we were kids. “Besides, you read people’s body language just as much as I do.”

  A fleeting curl of his tan lips answered before he did. “Yeah, but I get paid to do it.”

  “Now, so do I.”

  All traces of Steve’s smile disappeared. “And if you’re not careful, that could get you into a lot of trouble.”

  “Hey, I’m doing my job, just like you.”

  He chuckled. “Right. Just like me.”

  I might have been able to appreciate his finding some amusement in this situation if I hadn’t been the one he was laughing at.

  He pushed away from the desk and unfolded his long legs. “So, is there anything else I can help you with today?”

  I stood, taking the cue that it was time for me to leave. “Am I being dismissed?”

  He grinned, showcasing the high cheekbones he’d inherited from his Cherokee grandfather.

  I’d kill for those cheekbones. Gram once told me that I took after my mother in the bone structure department. Personally, I didn’t see it, but maybe if I lost thirty pounds and had the right lighting, I might be able to find me some cheekbones.

  Steve’s eyes scanned my face, making me wish that I’d applied a fresh coat of lip gloss and popped a breath mint before I left Duke’s.

  “You did your job.” Using his index finger, he brushed back a strand of hair that had escaped the tortoiseshell clip at the base of my neck.

  My traitorous pulse raced like I’d never been touched by a man before. Pathetic.

  “You interviewed the guy. Now, go type up your report and stop trying to make more of this than it is. If the autopsy results warrant an investigation, I’ll be all over it.”

  I took a step back, putting some distance between us. “When will the results be back?” A week? Two?

  “Lab results typically take four to six weeks.”

  “Four to six weeks! What do we do in the meantime?”

  “We wait.”

  Not a chance.

  * * *

  When I returned to the office, I went to my desk to test-drive my computer login and then spent the next hour trying to make Dr. Cardinale’s statement look like it hadn’t been written by a rookie who got a C in English Composition. After I emailed the statement to Karla and heard from Patsy that Frankie and Ben were in a meeting for the next hour, I figured I could keep myself busy by making a Trudy file for myself.

  I typed up everything I’d learned from Aunt Alice and Lucille, and then printed it out along with a copy of the Cardinale statement.

  The three pages read like a recipe for disaster. There was more rumor than fact from Aunt Alice and Lucille, but they shared one important truth with Dr. Cardinale—a suddenly dead Trudy.

  On the back of the last page I wrote the four names Trudy’s death had been linked to: Bernadette Neary, Howard Jeppesen, Rose Kozarek, and Jesse Elwood. I then asked Jan, a petite, curly-haired legal assistant who sat at the desk next to Karla’s, to show me how to search the county database so that I could go back to my computer and print out their death certificates for my file.

  Supporting what Kyle Cardinale had told me, Dr. Straitham was listed on the death certificate as the attending physician for both Bernadette Neary and Howard Jeppesen. He’d also certified their deaths. In fact, he’d certified all four.

  I compared birthdates and did the math. Bernadette Neary had been the youngest, passing at the age of seventy-six. The only other common factor was that they all had died at Chimacam Memorial Hospital between one and four-thirty in the morning. And, according to the death certificates, none of them had been autopsied. At least not yet.

  I saw no smoking gun in the database, not that I had really expected to find one.

  But if Jesse Elwood and Trudy really died just like Rose, someone at the hospital had to know about it. Someone with some suspicions of his own.

  Fortunately, I knew just the guy.

  * * *

  Six hours later, my eighty-year-old grandmother looked up at me from the kitchen stove as the back door clicked shut behind me. A stainless steel pot occupied every burner. She didn’t have to tell me what she’d cooked for dinner. The aroma of pot roast had my salivary glands on high alert the second I stepped into the kitchen.

  I come from a long line of women who believe in the power of braised beef to get through most of life’s emergencies. Personally, I think it works best with my grandmother’s buttermilk biscuits and lots and lots of gravy.

  “Perfect timing. Dinner’s ready,” Gram announced.

  Given the fact Trudy and my grandmother had been friends for almost seventy years, I hadn’t expected to be greeted with a cheery how was your first day at work? Since Gram wanted to put on the feedbag the second I stepped through the door, something felt out of whack.

  Gram cast a nervous glance in the direction of the staircase, and I had a bad feeling that the pot roast had very little to do with Trudy.

  I noticed the dining room table had been set for three and with the good china. “Do we have company?”

  “Not exactly,” she said, staring down at the gravy she was stirring and accentuating her double chin in the process.

  “How not exactly?”

  “I talked to your mother this morning, after I heard the news.”

  I closed my eyes, bracing myself.

  Gram pushed back a springy curl that had escaped from her helmet of peach-tinted cotton candy hair. “You know as well as I that she was very fond of Trudy.”

  No. No. NO. “Where is she?”

  “Upstairs.”

  There were only two rooms upstairs with beds. Gram’s and the guest room.

  I met my grandmother’s hazel-eyed gaze. “In my room.”

  “It’s only for a few days. Until after the funeral.” She bit the inside of her lip. “At the outside, a week.”

  “A week! Where am I supposed to sleep?”

  “I put your pillow and some linens on the hide-a-bed in your grandfather’s study.”

  Swell. That rack was older than I was. “I’ll need to move my clothes out of the closet.” And stock up on aspirin.

  “I already took care of everything. You don’t need to do anything except go up and say hello to your mother.”

  I rolled my eyes. It was like I’d entered a time portal and was thirteen again.

  Gram shot both barrels of her do-it-now look at me. “And tell her it’s time for dinner.”

  “Fine.”

  Crossing the foyer, I caught a glimpse of a stack of clothes in the study—my clothes, folded and neatly laid out on the cocoa brown Naugahyde sleeper sofa like I was packing for summer camp. And Gram’s fat tabby, Myron, was lying on top of the pile.

  Wonderful.

  At the top of the steps, I rapped on what had been my bedroom door for the last nine weeks.

  My actress mother turned and her cherry red lips stretched into a megawatt, chemically enhanced, white smile. “Chah-maine, sweetie!” she exclaimed, gliding toward me in bare feet. Since I rarely saw her out of high heels, she seemed even shorter
than her five foot four.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  She pulled me into her arms, enveloping me in musky jasmine. “It’s so wonderful to see you.”

  She took my hands in hers, and the wattage of her smile dimmed. “Ah just wish it were under happier circumstances,” Marietta Moreau added solemnly, acting like she was blinking back tears, which might have been very effective except for the fact that her green eyes were dry.

  In her heyday, the former Mary Jo Digby had been a working actress in Hollywood—just not a very good one. Not a very employed one since hitting the big four-oh, either. But she still looked like a show stopper in skin-tight white capris, a scooped neck red and white striped cotton sweater that accentuated her double D’s, a white patent leather belt cinched at her tiny waist, blood-red nails, cropped auburn hair, and flawless makeup.

  At fifty-six, she didn’t look that different from the fascinating beauty I used to watch on the big screen after I moved in with my grandparents. Once I’d realized that I had more in common with my dark-haired father, the sperm donor she’d only refer to as that pasty-faced, French bastard, and accepted the reality that I’d barely fill out a C cup, I lost any illusion of reaching anything resembling fascinating status. Which was okay. I couldn’t afford the upkeep.

  Marietta’s gaze swept over me, and despite her last Botox injection, a little wrinkle etched between her perfectly arched brows. “Oh, sugah,” she said, using the dripping-with-honey accent she’d acquired in her mid-twenties when she got cast in a southern-fried Charlie’s Angels ripoff. “Ah’ve been on that divorce diet, too. It’ll come off. Trust me.”

  She should know. She’d been divorced three times.

  I forced a smile.

  She squeezed my hand. “Ah hope I’m not inconveniencin’ you, takin’ over your room and all.”

  “Of course not,” I lied, but couldn’t bring myself to do it with much conviction.

  It didn’t matter because she instantly beamed, then we stared in silence at one another.

  Criminy, it couldn’t have been more than two minutes and we’d already run out of things to say to one another.

  She tilted her head and sniffed the air. “What’s that heavenly aroma?”