Lucky Stiff

by Annelise Ryan

  “What?” I snap, irritated. “Do you think Serena did it?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m not going to rule her out simply because she shed a real tear or two when we told her Allen was murdered. Those tears might have been triggered by something other than sadness,” he says, still with the condescending tone.

  “Like what?” I almost add “smarty-pants” to the question, but bite it back at the last second.

  “How about shock or fear, triggered by the realization that her attempts to make Allen’s murder look like an accident weren’t successful?”

  “No way. Those were sad tears.”

  “You might be right. Serena’s realization that she might not get away with the murder she just committed would be enough to make her sad.”

  I roll my eyes at him. “God, you are a stubborn man.”

  “Pot, kettle,” he says. “Which reminds me, I’m starving. We have an hour before our appointment with the nursing agency. Want to grab some lunch?”

  Despite having a handful of snickerdoodle cookies in my stomach, I am hungry, not that hunger is a prerequisite for eating for me. “Sure. What do you have in mind?”

  “How about Pesto Change-o? That way we can verify Catherine’s pizza story while we eat.”

  My stomach gurgles happily at the suggestion, making Hurley smirk. “Sounds good to me,” I say with stunning redundancy.

  Ten minutes later, we settle into a booth with red seats, which remind me of how a high-school classmate, Cindy Clarkson, once launched a “Save the Naugas” campaign after Jimmy Nelson and Mark Hol-stadt convinced her that the creatures were being slaughtered into near extinction for their hides. Apparently, the campaign was unsuccessful, because I know dozens of Naugas in a variety of colors that have been sacrificed for this place in the years since.

  In addition to their eat-in dining, Pesto Change-o does a thriving take-out and delivery business between the hours of eleven A.M. and midnight every day, except Christmas. I know this because I took advantage of their take-out service dozens of times in the months after I left David and moved into the cottage behind Izzy’s house. If I’d had phone service in the place, I’m sure all of Pesto’s delivery drivers would have had my address on autopilot after the first week.

  Opting for delivery from Pesto means that you miss out on the full experience of the place, however, and it’s worth the trip. The owner and founder, Georgio Conti, is not only an Italian immigrant and chef, he’s an amateur magician. Ever since opening the restaurant, he has combined his passions for cooking and magic, providing a truly unique and entertaining dining experience. Georgio performs two kinds of magic. The first is with the foods he prepares: sauces that burst in your mouth with the flavors of garlic and spices, pasta cooked to al dente perfection, and pizzas with cheese that will stretch across a room when you try to take a slice.

  The second kind of magic is the more traditional type. Each evening Georgio entertains his diners with a variety of illusions: everything from card tricks and vanishing coins to sawing waitresses in half.

  For our lunchtime meal, the show would be a bit more sedate than the evening performance, but Georgio never disappoints. As soon as we are seated, he magically produces a beautiful bouquet of paper flowers from out of thin air and places them in a vase on our table. Then he lights our candle with a flame that seems to alight from his fingers.

  Before Georgio can pull a rabbit out of his hat, Hurley halts the show with a question.

  “Georgio, I need you to help me out with an investigation, a murder investigation.”

  “Murdah!” Georgio says with his Italian accent. “What an awful ting.” He manages to look appalled and aghast, but I’m pretty sure I detect a bit of excitement in his voice. Hurley relays the specifics of the information we want, and Georgio provides an answer right away.

  “I remember this order for Mr. Allen,” he says. “I remember because he is a regular customer and usually orders himself, but the other night that new hussy staying with him ordered, instead. My driver say his tip from the hussy was only one dollar, and on Christmas Eve, too.” He shakes his head and clucks his tongue in dismay. “Mr. Allen, he always tip five or ten dollars.”

  Hearing that Catherine is a cheapskate doesn’t surprise me in the least.

  Hurley says, “Do you remember what the order was for, what time it was called in, and when it was delivered?”

  Georgio thinks a moment. “It was a pepperoni pizza, a large. I don’t know the exact time of the order or the delivery, but I can check if you like.”

  “I like,” says Hurley. “And I like even better if you can give me a copy of the slips with the times on them.”

  “That I can do,” Georgio says with a smile. “Now, may I suggest a grilled portabella mushroom stuffed with feta and spinach for an appetizer, followed by some antipasto?”

  I nod . . . vigorously.

  “And for today’s special, I fix fettuccini Parmesan with browned butter. Yes?”

  Hurley says, “Sounds good, make it two.” Then his cell phone rings.

  Georgio heads off to work his gastronomic magic and I sit back, watching Hurley’s face as he listens to whoever is on the phone. I wonder if antipasto and pasta work like antimatter and matter. Maybe if I eat both, they will cancel each other out.

  Aside from a grunt or two, and one “Hmm, isn’t that interesting,” Hurley doesn’t give me a clue as to who’s on the other end.

  When he’s done, he hangs up, leans back, and looks at me with a self-satisfied grin. “Guess who just called the Sorenson police station to inquire about a local resident?” he says, looking annoyingly smug.

  “Really? You’re going to make me play twenty questions?”

  “It was an immigration officer down in Texas. Want to guess who he was calling about?”

  “Pancho Villa?”

  “Very funny. It seems the officials down there pulled over a truck filled with illegals, and while several of them got away on foot, one of the ones they caught is a man by the name of Hector Vasquez. And Hector claims to be the husband of a legal immigrant by the name of Serena Vasquez. He gave the officials her address here in Sorenson.”

  I digest this info, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why Hurley is looking so pleased with himself. “So?” I say, shrugging.

  “Well, Hector also told the officials that he paid a coyote fifty grand to ensure his safe crossing and some papers once he got here. And he is insisting that he get them or get his money back. Want to guess where he says the money came from?”

  Now I see the light. “Serena Vasquez?” I offer, hoping it’s the wrong answer but knowing it isn’t.

  “Bingo,” Hurley says. “Now, where do you suppose a single mother and housekeeper like Serena gets fifty grand in cash to send to Mexico?”

  The damning info about Serena, coupled with Hurley’s grating attitude, might be enough to ruin some people’s appetites, but it doesn’t faze mine in the least. To be honest, I can’t think of much that has ever ruined my appetite—except for a bout or two of the stomach flu, and even that didn’t kill it for long. And since I can never remember if you’re supposed to feed a cold and starve a fever, or the other way around, I always just feed them both. Some people eat when they’re depressed; others eat when they’re happy. I eat for both. All my life, I’ve had this love-hate relationship with food.

  I blame it on genetics, though clearly I didn’t inherit my build from my mother, who is tiny in stature and has been fashionably thin all her life. No, I’m fairly certain my physique, along with my love of food, came from my father. He left us when I was five—something my mother never forgave him for. And if she has any pictures of him, she’s never shared them with me. She never talks about him, either. So my only knowledge of him comes from my memories: vague images of a large man with brown hair, blue eyes, a deep, rumbling voice, and the underlying scent of apple-flavored tobacco for his pipe.

  “What are you thinking about?” Hurley
asks.

  I shake off my nostalgia and focus on the here and now. “I was just musing about life in general, and how unpredictable it is.”

  “That’s what makes it interesting.”

  “I guess, though I can’t help but feel like the whole thing is a bit of a crapshoot. I mean, look at Jack Allen. I’m sure his life’s plan didn’t include ending up as a wheelchair-bound paraplegic, or a murder victim.”

  “He probably didn’t plan on winning close to half a mil at the casino, either,” Hurley muses aloud, with a shrug. “Maybe it’s some sort of karmic balance. Look at how many big lottery winners end up broke or plagued by tragedy after they win.”

  Georgio brings out our appetizer and antipasto, and Hurley and I dig in. After a few sumptuous bites, Hurley asks me, “What was your life plan when you were younger?”

  “Ironically, I was more or less on track before David did what he did. I always imagined myself living in a big house, with a successful, handsome husband, a nice car, and a career that earned me both money and respect.”

  “What about kids?”

  “Two, if I had a boy and a girl. Three, if the first two turned out to be the same sex. But I was definitely quitting at three.”

  “Wow, you really did plan it out.”

  I nod as I swallow a yummy bite of stuffed mushroom. “I was a victim of the ‘Barbie and Ken syndrome,’ so much so that I think I would have thought it perfectly normal if my husband had plastic hair and no genitals.”

  “Ah,” Hurley says, with an evil glint in his eye. “That helps me better understand how you ended up with David.”

  I snort a laugh and nearly choke on my food.

  Once Hurley is sure he won’t have to perform the Heimlich on me, he asks, “Did you always want to be a nurse?”

  “Hell no. Nursing wasn’t on my radar for a long time. I went through phases where I wanted to be an astronomer, a veterinarian, a marine biologist, and a forest ranger.”

  Hurley chuckles. “I went through a forest ranger phase, too.”

  “I think most kids do.”

  “So when and how did nursing come into the picture?”

  “I sort of fell into it because of certain . . . circumstances.”

  Hurley looks intrigued, and I can tell I’ve triggered his detecting radar. “What kind of circumstances?” he asks.

  “Stupid ones,” I say with a self-deprecating snort. “I was pretty idealistic in my late teens, and I had a crazy crush on this guy I knew in high school named Pete Nottingham. I was well into the throes of my ‘Barbie and Ken syndrome,’ and Pete actually looked a lot like a Ken doll, right down to his hair. He used some kind of cheap pomade product to try to tame it.

  “Anyway, when I learned that Pete had plans to go to medical school and become a doctor, I opted to do the same so I could stay near him. I envisioned this romantic future with the two of us struggling through medical school and our residencies, then kicking back and enjoying the fruits of our labors once we were done. I went for the whole fantasy: the big house, two-point-five kids in a private school, matching Benzes in the drive, evenings spent at social events hobnobbing with the medical elite, and then nights of hot, torrid, fantastic sex.”

  Hurley’s eyebrows rise.

  “But during our second year in college, Pete changed his mind. He dropped both school and me at the same time. He said he wanted some time to experience life first before he committed to such a time-consuming career and a permanent relationship. Turned out that was code for ‘I want to screw somebody else, but I don’t have the guts to tell you.’”

  “Ouch,” Hurley says with a grimace.

  “Yeah, ouch,” I concur. “It’s a pattern I seem destined to repeat. My second serious relationship ended the same way. I thought I’d broken the streak when I married David, but we both know how that turned out.”

  “I’m sorry your dream didn’t work out.”

  I shrug. “It was unrealistic and stupid. I was young, naïve, and in lust. I’m smarter now, though that wisdom came at a steep price.”

  “What happened to your plans to become a doctor?”

  “The same thing that happened to my plan to hide out for the rest of my life after David made a fool of me by schtupping Karen Owenby behind my back. I needed money. My school loans were mounting and I had rent to pay. I needed a career that would generate some quick income, so I switched to nursing. I found I liked it and was good at it. It turned out to be a good choice for me, one I’ve never regretted.”

  “For the record,” Hurley says, “the only person David made a fool of was himself.”

  “I’m not sure I agree with you, but thanks for the sentiment.”

  Georgio arrives with our main course. For the next several minutes, the only sounds at the table are Hurley and I slurping fettuccini noodles and moaning with delight. I realize about halfway through my plate that I’m sucking food in like my dog, Hoover, so I set down my fork to take a break and turn the tables on Hurley.

  “So what about you? What was your life plan? Did you always want to be a cop?”

  Hurley hesitates a moment so he can chew and swallow what he has in his mouth. “The cop thing, yeah,” he says, twirling another forkful of pasta. “I love what I do. And with the exception of my forest ranger phase, I’ve wanted to be a cop for as long as I can remember.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugs. “Because I like the uniforms?”

  “But you don’t wear one anymore.”

  He ponders a moment and then offers, “I like shooting things.”

  “Remind me not to piss you off too much.”

  “I also like the puzzle aspects of solving a crime, and the idea of bringing justice to the world.” He pops some pasta into his mouth and nearly chokes when I ask my next question.

  “Have you ever killed anyone?”

  He manages to chew and swallow while I wait for his answer. Finally he says, “I have. Once. I did a brief stint in vice when I was in Chicago and I got involved in a shoot-out during a drug raid.”

  “That had to have been scary.”

  “Yeah, it was.” There is a beat of silence and then he says, “Have you?”

  “Have I what? Killed someone?”

  Hurley nods.

  “God, no . . . at least not that I know of. And if I had, I sure as hell wouldn’t tell you. You’re a homicide detective, for cripes’ sake.”

  “Do you think you could, if you had to?”

  I consider this a moment and nod. “I suppose I could, under the right circumstances.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as if my life was threatened and it was a matter of self-defense. Or if the life of someone I love was threatened and the only way I could save them was to kill someone else.”

  I pick up my fork, unable to resist the smell any longer. As I’m twirling up some fettuccini, Hurley asks, “Would you kill someone to save me?”

  Talk about your not-so-subtle segues. Hurley’s baby blues are like laser beams, boring into my brain and heart. I shove my forkful of pasta in my mouth and stare back at him, chewing slowly to stall for time, carefully gauging my answer. I’m well aware that, based on my last statement, a “yes” answer will imply that I love him. Do I? I know that I lust after him, and I know that when I thought he might be dying a while back, my heart felt as if it had been cleaved in two. But such thoughts are dangerous—because no matter how I feel about him, I can’t have him.

  Given all that, I decide to go with a vague answer, one that will leave things open to interpretation but not require a true verbal commitment from me.

  “Of course, I would do whatever was necessary to save you, Hurley,” I say, once I swallow. I see the corners of his mouth twitch into an almost smile right before I deliver my coup de grâce. “Because if you were gone, I’d be stuck working with Bob Richmond all the time.”

  Georgio appears with our check, which he then makes disappear in a flash of flame. Just as I start to feel excited abo
ut getting a meal on the house, he produces the real check, along with a copy of the bill for the pizza delivered to Jack’s house on the night before the fire.

  Hurley looks at Jack’s receipt and says, “The pizza was delivered a little after seven. Assume an hour, give or take, for the actual dinner, then two hours for the movie, and so far the timeline Catherine gave us is holding up. We’ll need to pay a visit to the Sorenson Motel to see if she’ll let us search her room and to verify her check-in and checkout times.”

  “But even if she did check in or out when she said she did, it doesn’t mean she couldn’t have left the motel anytime in between those hours.”

  “True, but it’s a start, and it’s something we need to cross off our list.” He pauses, assumes a cocky grin, and winks at me. “So what do you say, Mattie? Want to hit up a motel with me?”

  Chapter 10

  While a visit to any motel with Hurley sounds wonderful, our plans change when both of our cell phones ring at the same time. I grab mine and see that it’s Izzy.

  “We have a call,” he says.

  “What and where?”

  “A farm out on Petersen Road. Apparently, the owners went out to fix a fence line along the river and they found a body near the shore. Their farm is just below the lake outlet, so I suspect it may be the fellow who went missing while fishing a few weeks ago.”

  Great. A floater. This will be a first for me, but I can’t imagine it will be any worse than the advanced case of decomp I had to deal with a while back, or the crispy critter Jack Allen turned into. I recall the news story about the missing fisherman who, according to his wife, went out on the lake in his boat the day after Thanksgiving and never came back. The boat was found adrift the following day, filled with fishing gear but lacking any persons. The presumption at the time was that the gentleman fell overboard and drowned.

  Izzy says, “All this melting with the warm weather likely created enough current to bring the body to the surface and carry it into the river. Odds are he drowned, but we’ll have to bring the body in and do a post to be sure.”

  I get the directions from Izzy and tell him I’ll meet him there in fifteen minutes. Hurley disconnects his call about the same time. “The floater?” I say, and he nods. “Drop me off back at my office so I can change and get my car,” I tell him. He does so, and I take a few minutes to run inside and change into a set of scrubs before getting into my car and heading out.