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

by Wendy Delaney

  She heaved a sigh and squeaked away to tack Steve’s breakfast order on the aluminum wheel above the grill.

  I turned to Steve. “You told me Dr. Straitham had an alibi.”

  Staring straight ahead, he took a sip of coffee.

  I leaned on the counter to get a better view of his face. “How did you know that?”

  “Knock it off.”

  “It’s a reasonable question.”

  “Then ask it like a reasonable person, without the stare-down.”

  “Fine!” I glared at my bowl of congealed oatmeal. “How did you know that he was … indisposed?”

  “Your grandmother told me.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  I gaped at Steve’s profile as he calmly sipped his coffee. “My grandmother?”

  “She’s my snitch.”

  Big fat lie. “Your snitch, right.”

  “She and I prefer the term informant,” he quipped, the crinkles deepening at the corner of his right eye.

  “You are so full of shit.”

  His mouth twisted into an evil grin. “I had you going for a minute.”

  “Jerk.”

  Lucille squeaked up with a carafe and refilled our coffee mugs. She looked at me and then at Steve. “Okay, I give. What’s going on with you two?”

  Who knew? Last night we were practically dancing cheek to cheek, and this morning it was like we were back in the fifth grade and he was pulling my ponytail.

  “Nothing,” I said as I poured two creamers into my coffee. I was blowing my diet but that was the least of my problems.

  Ignoring Lucille who watched us like we were the tennis match on center court, I shifted my attention back to Steve. “I take it that means you’re not going to tell me?”

  “What do you think?” he asked, brushing my fingers as he reached for another creamer.

  I wiped my hands with the paper napkin in my lap. I knew I was overreacting to a little incidental contact, but I’d already experienced all the physical contact from Steve Sixkiller that I could handle in a twenty-four hour period.

  Lucille sucked in a sharp breath. “Is there new information about Trudy’s … ?”

  I shook my head while Mr. Won’t-Answer-Direct-Questions stirred his coffee.

  “Damn.” Scowling at Steve, she stabbed the air with her index finger. “You should be out there investigating, not in here dilly dallying.”

  Steve smiled politely. “May I eat my breakfast first?”

  “Order up!” Duke announced.

  Lucille turned to retrieve Steve’s bacon and eggs, then bounced the plate in front of him. “Eat fast.”

  “I’d do what she says if you want to come back tomorrow,” I said, swiveling out of my seat.

  Steve poked a runny yolk with the corner of his toast. “Sheesh, the women around here can make it hard on a guy.”

  “He’s just figuring that out now?” Duke muttered as I added my bowl to the plastic tub of dirty dishes under the counter.

  I was about to go back and check on Alice when I saw her limping with a pie in her hands. “Need any help with that?”

  “Nope,” she said, easing past me. “Just stay out of the way.”

  Since I could see four more pies cooling on the table, I carried them on a tray to the rotating pie display case by the cash register before Alice could snarl at me about helping her.

  “I could have done that,” she protested.

  I slid an apple pie onto the top shelf of the four-tier glass case. “Yeah, you could have agreed to go to the doctor, too.”

  She huffed as she limped around me. “Leave it alone.”

  “Do you need to go to the doctor, Alice?” Suzy asked, her pale blue eyes fixed in a piercing stare as she stood at the cash register.

  Alice turned toward the kitchen. “No. I just have some family members who like to meddle.”

  I forced a smile at Suzy. “I think that would be me.”

  “What’s the matter with her?” she whispered.

  I knew Alice didn’t want anyone else hovering over her, so I opted for an evasive answer. “Just having a bad day.” I cranked up the wattage of my smile. “That was a good turnout for your class last night.”

  “I was happy to see you there. You and Steve make good partners.”

  I shifted my gaze to the counter and saw Steve staring at us over the rim of his coffee cup. No doubt his male ego sensed we were talking about him.

  “Since I kept stepping on his toes, I think he preferred dancing with my grandmother.”

  Suzy’s lips curled in satisfaction. “I sincerely doubt that.”

  Between this chick’s fishing expedition regarding my relationship with Steve and his watchful eyes, I felt like I needed to set sail for calmer waters.

  “Speaking of dancing, where did you learn to tango?”

  “A dance class a few years ago. I thought it would be a good way to meet people.”

  “Is that where you met Jake?” I asked, pouncing on the chance to glean a bit of information from someone who appeared to have more than a casual relationship with the guy.

  “No, that was back when I lived in Portland.” Suzy smiled politely, serving me a skimpy appetizer of cold cuts when I wanted to sink my teeth into the main course of juicy beefsteak.

  “You’re quite good together. How long has he been your dancing partner?”

  She shrugged. “Not long. About a month.”

  I had expected to see some emotion in her reaction. Instead, Suzy glanced at the clock mounted above the big mouth bass as if I were boring her with news from my grandmother’s garden club meeting.

  “I have to admit I don’t know much about dancing, but he seems like a very good dancer.”

  “Oh, he is.”

  “Moves his body very well,” I said, charging the line with enough innuendo that she’d certainly have some reaction to it.

  She nodded. “He’s very graceful, very light on his feet.”

  That was it? We may as well have been talking about Ernie for all the heat this woman was generating.

  “Steve moves well, too.” Suzy’s gaze sharpened as she looked back at him.

  I didn’t doubt he had lots of moves, none of which I cared to witness.

  Her lips curled, her cheeks dimpling impishly. “I think he shows a lot of potential.”

  I was pretty sure she wasn’t referring to dancing, and we were rapidly getting nowhere I wanted to go, so I pointed at the clock. “Oh, look at the time. Certainly don’t want to be late after only one week on the new job.”

  “I need to get going, too, or I’ll be late for my eight o’clock class.” Suzy’s eyes widened at the collection of baked goodies on the shelves separating us. “Those are some big muffins.”

  “They’re practically fresh out of the oven,” I said as an enticement.

  She shook her head. “Oh, no, I couldn’t. Do you know how much fat is in just one of those muffins?”

  Yes, but since I had eaten one seconds after I’d popped it out of the oven, I really didn’t want to think about it.

  She wrinkled her nose. “Over twenty grams of fat!”

  “You don’t say.” And I wished she hadn’t because that forced me to admit that the first day of my new diet was officially screwed, and I hadn’t even had lunch yet.

  It was a good thing I planned to go to Jake’s aerobics class. I could do some damage control in more ways than one.

  * * *

  Forty-five minutes later, I carried a tall mug of freshly brewed coffee to Ben’s office and rapped on the open door. I needed information from someone who had worked on some criminal cases with Steve, and I hoped that Ben would be willing to barter.

  His gaze tracked the fix of caffeine in my hand so I didn’t wait for an invitation. “Good morning,” I said, placing the coffee mug on his desk.

  “Morning.” Ben’s eyes zeroed in on my scarf and the corners of his mouth drew back in a tight quirk of amusement.

  “What?” I glanced do
wn to see if I had a blob of oatmeal on my scarf.

  “The only thing missing is the pith helmet,” he deadpanned.

  “Sorry I asked.” I was never wearing khaki again.

  “As a young defense attorney, I was told never to ask a question I didn’t already know the answer to.”

  “Thanks for the advice.” Didn’t help me a bit since I had no answers and nothing but questions, including my most pressing one: How was I going to dig up more dirt on Virginia and Jake while stuck at the courthouse for most of the day?

  “Do you need me to sit in on any witness interviews today?”

  “No,” he said, rifling through a short stack of papers on his desk. He pulled out a white envelope and handed it to me. “But I do have a subpoena I need delivered.”

  I glanced at the Port Townsend address on the envelope and recalled Rox telling me that was where Jake was from. I saw a beneficial side trip in my immediate future. “No problem.”

  Ben took a sip of coffee. “How’s your mom?”

  “Huh? Oh ….” He’d heard about the doctor’s appointment. “She’s fine.”

  “I saw her last night having dinner with Barry Ferris. She looked real fine.”

  Like the fat grams in my muffin, there was a long list of things I’d rather not hear about, and any attraction Ben Santiago felt for my mother was somewhere near the top of the list.

  I squeezed out a smile. “Yeah, she’s doing much better.”

  To steer our conversation in the direction I wanted to go, I took a seat in the same black captain’s chair I’d sat in two weeks earlier. “Could I ask you a couple of questions?”

  He leaned back. “Shoot.”

  “You work closely with law enforcement when prosecuting cases, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So would it be fair to say that you’ve developed a close working relationship with Detective Sixkiller?”

  He grinned.

  Not the reaction I was hoping for. “Did I say something funny?”

  “No, you just sound like a lawyer.”

  “I’ve been paying attention.”

  Ben gave me a nod. “And where exactly are you going with this line of questioning?”

  “You know the Trudy Bergeson case that I’ve been working on …”

  “It’s not a—”

  “I know it’s not an official coroner case, but would you be surprised if you heard that Steve … Detective Sixkiller had launched a police investigation?”

  Ben’s dark eyes widened for an instant as all traces of his grin disappeared. “That would be unusual for him to do that.”

  That would be a yes.

  “But not unheard of,” I said, perched at the edge of my seat.

  Ben shrugged and took a sip of coffee. A non-answer that I took as another yes.

  “In your experience working with Detective Sixkiller, he wouldn’t do this unless he had good reason to believe that the person didn’t die from natural causes. Isn’t that fair to say?”

  Ben’s lips compressed as he took a deep breath and slowly released it, which told me he didn’t want to answer the question.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  That I’d just heard another yes.

  I sprung to my feet. “I think I have everything I need. Thanks!”

  He leaned back in his creaky chair. “Glad I could help.” Pointing at the envelope in my hand, he asked, “Will you be able to deliver that today?”

  “Absolutely.” Especially if the results of my trip to Port Townsend could make Steve want to work with me instead of keeping me on a short leash.

  * * *

  An hour later, Lisa Arbuckle, the assistant prosecutor I’d sat next to in court, stopped me on my way back from starting another pot of coffee.

  “Do you have a few minutes?”

  Since I had an hour and a half before I needed to leave for the senior center, I nodded.

  Lisa was around my age, at least five inches shorter, and sixty pounds lighter. I guessed that her charcoal designer suit, pearls, and pumps ensemble had been selected carefully to elicit confidence from a jury. To help in the stature department, too.

  I felt decidedly frumpy by comparison. After she eyed me from head to toe and shot me a fake smile, I didn’t feel any better.

  “Frankie suggested that I get your opinion on a witness.”

  That explained the fake smile. This wasn’t Lisa’s idea.

  As we walked toward the conference room, Lisa told me about the witness who claimed to have seen an attack on her boyfriend outside of a club at the south end of Old Town.

  “I’m having trouble believing her story,” Lisa said, reaching for the doorknob. “So, I’d like to know what you think.”

  Within a minute of observing Shea, a brassy blonde in her early twenties, tell her account of what happened, I could see why Lisa had her doubts about this witness.

  Shea’s dramatic palms up plea—the overt desperation to make us believe her felt like she was trying way too hard. Quickly it sealed her deal as a potential witness, at least for me. Something else had to be going on. Something with high enough stakes to wind her up and make her spin this yarn so emphatically.

  “What can I say to make you believe me?” she asked, tears cascading down her cheeks and spilling onto the front of her embroidered peasant shirt.

  Absolutely nothing.

  Shea wrapped her thin arms around her midsection and rocked back and forth as if that were all she had to buoy herself while she sat in the eye of a storm.

  I glanced at my watch. Thirteen minutes after eleven. I needed this interview to wrap up so I could change into my sweats and head over to Jake’s aerobics class, where I intended to be the one asking the questions.

  Folding my arms over my belt, I leaned forward to mirror her body language. “I want to believe you,” I said while Lisa sat to my left and tapped her pen against the yellow ruled pad she’d been scribbling on for the last half hour.

  Lisa set down her pen and handed Shea a small box of tissues. I got the clear impression from Lisa that it was more reflex than sympathy, probably from having witnessed too many crocodile tears in this conference room. But Shea’s lower lip wasn’t trembling as an accessory to her waterworks. She seemed truly afraid.

  “I think we have all the information we need from you, Shea, unless you have anything else you’d like to tell us,” Lisa said.

  Shea wiped her tear-stained cheeks. “If you don’t believe me, ask Jake.”

  My breath caught in my chest. My Jake? “Jake who?”

  “Jake Divine. He was there. He can tell you how that lying bitch came after Gabe and me with a knife.”

  Really.

  I scanned the contents of the manila folder at my elbow while Lisa politely thanked Shea for her time. According to the police report, the incident at the club had taken place just after midnight on the morning of May 19th—two hours before Howard Jeppesen’s death.

  “Well, that was a big waste of time,” Lisa said after she closed the conference room door behind Shea.

  Not for me. A witness had placed Jake Divine less than ten minutes away from the hospital near the time of a murder.

  * * *

  “Good morning!” Marietta chirped, sitting in her robe and sipping coffee at the kitchen table with Gram as I stepped through the back door at eleven forty-two. My mother’s puffy, mascara-smudged eyes told me she hadn’t been awake long.

  “Home a little early for lunch, aren’t you?” Gram asked me with a wary glint in her eyes.

  I slung my tote over the back of the empty kitchen chair between them. “I’ll do lunch later. Just came home to change.”

  “But you look just ….” My mother tucked her chin as her gaze landed on my pantsuit. “Oh, honey, I need to take you shopping, although that is a nice scarf.”

  “You gave it to me.” Sheesh, that’s why I was wearing it!

  She brightened like she was about to dangle a sparkling new engagement r
ing in front of my nose. Again. “And doesn’t it look lovely on you!” She waggled an index finger at my midsection. “I’d rethink the brown belt. It makes you look like you’re going on saf—”

  “I know!” I made a break for the stairs before Gram chimed in about my safari suit.

  After I changed into a sports bra and the baggy tank top and navy sweatpants I’d found in the bottom drawer in my old room, I laced up my Nikes and met my grandmother on the stairs.

  “Where the heck are you off to dressed like that?” she asked.

  “Aerobics at the senior center.”

  “You’re going there again? What’s going on with you?”

  “I’m getting healthier, haven’t you heard the news?”

  Her cheeks flushed. “Well … I might have heard a little something about that from Arlene.”

  Why was I not surprised?

  Since she was dressed in black sweatpants, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and white tennis shoes, I saw an opportunity staring me in the face. “You should come to the class with me.”

  Gram frowned. “Again? What’s in it for me?”

  “You’d get away from Mom for an hour, and I’ll buy you lunch afterward.”

  “I’ll get my purse.”

  The parking spots near the door of the senior center were crowded with cars, but I found one at the far end of the lot.

  “Now remember,” I said as I pulled the key from the Honda’s ignition, “I may want to stay after class for a few minutes to talk to Jake.”

  Gram unfastened her seatbelt. “No problem. If he’s wearing his tight spandex pants, I’ll be happy to hang around and watch.”

  “Gram!”

  “What? It doesn’t hurt to look.”

  “See that’s all that you do,” I muttered under my breath as I got out of the car.

  I followed my grandmother through the front door and into the activity room. No reception line this time. Fine by me. I wanted to keep my presence in this class as low profile as possible.

  “Oh, goody,” Gram said when she spotted Jake chatting with Peggy Como, one of the Gray Ladies, near the raised platform he and Suzy had stood on the night before. “Spandex!”

  “Goody,” I echoed with considerably less enthusiasm as he flashed his perfect white teeth at us.

  The activity room was packed with almost as many bodies as at last night’s tango class but with considerably more women. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the reason why. I was looking at him. Five seventy-something women sitting in folding chairs bordering the hardwood floor were staring at Jake like he was a Kahlua cream pie at a Weight Watchers meeting.