Lucky Stiff

by Annelise Ryan

  “That’s one reason,” I admit. “But not the only one. I need to do more things on my own. I need to learn to be on my own. I have this newfound independence and I want to enjoy it.”

  Hurley frowns but says nothing more.

  To fill the ensuing awkward silence, I say, “So what do you know about this aide we’re going to talk to?”

  “Her name is Lisa Warden. We did a background check on her and it came back clean.”

  “She doesn’t sound very promising as a suspect.”

  “Probably not,” Hurley agrees as we arrive at Lisa’s address. “But maybe she can shed light on some of the other people in Jack’s life, or on the timeline surrounding his death.”

  Lisa Warden lives in a small, one-bedroom apartment in an eight-unit building on the east side of town. It’s the spreading end of town, where strip malls and fast-food chains are cropping up and slowly expanding the town’s limits.

  Lisa herself is spreading a bit, too—something I can empathize with. She looks to be in her late twenties and has short hair, which is spiky on top, in a shade of red not found in nature. Dishwater blond roots and eyebrows give away her natural coloring. Her apartment is furnished with what looks like garage sale purchases—nothing matches anything else—and a bookshelf in one corner is made out of cinder blocks and varying lengths of boards.

  Lisa directs us to her couch, which is covered with a blanket. As I settle in, I can feel a spring poking me from somewhere below. She takes the only other seat in the room, a large overstuffed chair, which is also mostly hidden by a blanket. Parts of the underlying structure are visible and I can see that it’s covered in a hideous floral weave pattern, which looks shredded. The source of the shredding becomes apparent when a large black cat with white paws, and a white patch beneath his chin, strolls into the room. In true cat fashion, he sits, eyes Hurley and me with disdain, and then proceeds to lick himself as if he’s the only one in the room.

  “That’s my cat, ‘Tux,’ short for Tuxedo,” Lisa says when she sees us eyeing the creature. Apparently, she notices Hurley’s nervousness, because she then adds, “He’s very friendly.”

  “I’m not fond of cats,” Hurley says, inching closer to me and farther from Tux.

  Tux seems to sense he’s the focus of our attention, because he stops licking himself and eyes us again. Then he gets up and strolls straight over to Hurley, rubbing against his feet. I can practically feel the fear coming off Hurley—something that amuses me to no end. But in order to get things rolling, I figure I’ll have to intervene.

  “He really, really doesn’t like cats,” I say to Lisa. “Would you mind sticking Tux in another room until we’re done?”

  “Oh, sure. No problem.” Lisa gets up and scoops Tux into her arms. She walks him over to her bedroom, which is just off the living room, and tosses him inside. When she shuts the door, Hurley shoots me a grateful look. But when he takes a pen and a small notebook from his jacket pocket, he starts clicking the pen over and over again—a sign of nervousness, impatience, or both.

  “You said you wanted to talk about Jack Allen,” Lisa says, once the cat is secured. “What a horrible thing for him to die like that.” She plops back into her chair and rubs at her nose a couple of times, presumably to rid herself of errant cat hairs.

  “How long have you been working for Mr. Allen?” Hurley asks her.

  “A little over a year now. My agency assigned me to him last October.”

  “What, exactly, did you do for him?” Hurley asks.

  “I visit him five or six days a week to help him with his skin care, his baths, his wounds . . . that sort of stuff.”

  “Wounds?” Hurley asks.

  “He was prone to bedsores, as many paraplegics are. He had a large one on his coccyx that had to be surgically debrided last year. I’ve been working very hard on it for the past year, trying a variety of different salves and dressings. And I’m happy to say that it’s now only about as big as a dime, when it used to be nearly three inches wide.”

  She smiles with pride as she says this, but then her face falls. “Though I guess it doesn’t make much difference now, does it?” She rubs at her face again, and this time I’m not sure if it’s cat hair or tearful sniffles she’s trying to abate.

  As a momentary, awkward silence fills the room, the cat uses it to let us know he isn’t getting the attention he feels he deserves. The bedroom door starts to rattle; and when I look over at it, I see a black-and-white paw in the gap between it and the floor, curled around the door bottom, shaking it. I feel Hurley tense up beside me, as if the creature could somehow tear the door down and come after him.

  “Tux, knock it off!” Lisa yells. Amazingly, the door rattling stops.

  “I used to work in the OR at Mercy,” I say, hoping to draw Hurley’s attention back to the topic at hand. “I saw Jack’s decubitus when he came in last year. If your care got that monster healed down to dime size, you must be very good.”

  “Thanks,” she says, giving me a wan smile. Then she shudders and adds, “Please tell me he died in his sleep of smoke inhalation or something like that, rather than being trapped and burned in the flames.”

  Hurley hesitates before saying, “I take it you knew about Mr. Allen’s big win at the casino a few months ago.”

  Lisa frowns at his obvious avoidance, but she lets it go. “Most people knew. Personally, I think he should have been a bit more discreet, to keep all the greedy bastards at bay.”

  Hurley gives her a questioning look.

  “Oh, you know how it is,” she says. “When you come into a large chunk of money like that, suddenly everyone has a hand out. People were coming to him all the time, asking for help. And that Albright woman . . .” She rolls her eyes, letting us know what she thinks of Catherine.

  “I take it you don’t like her,” Hurley says.

  “Well, could she be any more transparent?” Lisa snorts. “I mean, she just happens to appear right around the time he won his money, and she’s all over him like he’s some kind of stud or something.” She winces, looking embarrassed. “I mean, it’s not like he was ugly or anything, and he was a truly nice person, but come on. The guy was paralyzed from the waist down and required a ton of care and help. If you ask me, Catherine Albright is nothing but a gold-digging vulture. She was always asking him for money, and hinting around that they should get married. I’m sure if he’d ever given in and done the deed, she would have found a way to bump him off.”

  Hurley and I exchange a look before Hurley asks, “How did Jack handle all the money requests?”

  “You mean from Catherine? Or all the others?”

  “Both.”

  She shrugs. “He was generous to a point. He was always giving that nephew of his money for something, and I think he gave one of his neighbors some money to help him out when he lost his job and fell behind on his mortgage. But I’m only there for a couple of hours each day, so I don’t know what went on when I wasn’t around.”

  “Do you know the name of this neighbor?”

  Lisa scrunches her face in thought. “I think it was George Smithers, or Smothers . . . something like that.”

  As Hurley scribbles the name in his little notebook, he asks, “When’s the last time you saw Mr. Allen?”

  “Christmas Day, the morning of the fire.” She hesitates, looking off to the side. “We got into an argument and I cut my visit short as a result. If only I’d stayed there a little longer, maybe . . .” Her eyes tear up and she rubs irritably at her face.

  “What time were you there that morning?”

  “I got there at eight-thirty and left about an hour later,” she says with a sniffle.

  “Was anyone else there?”

  “No.”

  “What did you argue about?” I ask.

  “Jack’s drinking. I kept telling him he needed to cut back, but he kept insisting that he only drank once in a while. I knew better, of course. I saw all the empties in his trash.” She pauses and sig
hs heavily. “I suppose I understand it, given everything that happened to him. Life certainly has dealt him a shitty hand lately, what with his paralysis and his sister’s death. The casino win seemed to be a turning point, but now I think it might have used up all the luck he had left.”

  Hurley says, “What made you think Catherine Albright would have tried to . . . How did you word it? Bump Jack off if he’d married her?”

  Lisa gives him a duh look. “It was obvious to me that she didn’t really care about him, only his money.”

  “Was their relationship sexual?”

  “Not in the conventional sense. Jack had no sensation in his genitals, and I’m pretty sure he was incapable of sustaining an erection.” She pauses and gives Hurley an irreverent arch of her eyebrow. “Of course, that doesn’t mean he couldn’t please a woman.”

  To my amusement—and Lisa’s, if her sly smile is any indication—Hurley looks away, clears his throat, and blushes along the tops of his ears before asking his next question.

  “Did you observe any behavior between Catherine and him that would suggest something like that was going on?”

  Lisa shakes her head. “Not when I was there. Catherine was all about spending as little time as possible with Jack himself, and as much as possible with his money.”

  “Speaking of money, how do you get paid? Did Jack pay you directly, or was it all handled through the company you work for?”

  Lisa looks momentarily taken aback by the question, and curious as to why Hurley has asked it. “My agency pays me. I assume they billed Jack for my services.”

  “Is there anyone else you know of who might have tried to harm Jack for his money?”

  She scrubs her face with her hands, hesitating before she answers. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean,” she says finally. “How would hurting Jack gain anyone any of his money? Other than the nephew, of course, since he’s likely to inherit. I mean, Catherine might have a claim if they were married, but I’m pretty sure they aren’t.” She pauses, and a look of enlightenment crosses her face. “Unless Jack left a will of some sort,” she adds.

  Hurley says, “We haven’t found evidence of a will at this point, but it appears Jack kept a large sum of cash money in his house. Anyone who knew that could have taken the money and burned the house down to hide the evidence.”

  Lisa looks shocked by this revelation. “Are you saying the fire wasn’t an accident?”

  “We are looking into all possible scenarios,” Hurley says vaguely.

  “How large of a sum of money are we talking?”

  “Big enough.”

  Lisa shrugs. “If he had a ton of cash lying around the house, I never saw it,” she says. “But it wouldn’t surprise me if he did.”

  “Why’s that?” Hurley asks.

  “The guy was very antiestablishment. You know the type, always harping on about the ineptitudes of the government and how big corporations are out to screw the little guys. I wouldn’t be surprised if he included banks in that group.”

  Hurley nods, closes his notebook, and stuffs it and his pen back into his pocket. “I guess that’s all we need for now,” he says, getting up.

  It’s my cue to do the same. But before we head out, my bladder prompts me to ask Lisa if I can use her bathroom.

  “Sure,” she says, gesturing toward the door.

  I scurry in, shut the door, and relieve myself. As I’m sitting on the toilet, I can’t help noticing how messy Lisa’s bathroom is. I’m no great housekeeper, but by Lisa’s standards, I figure I’m as much of a neat freak as my mother, who has a terrible case of OCD and whose house is more sterile than the OR where I used to work. The tub has a scum ring, which looks permanently etched into the fiberglass; there is mold growing on the shower curtain; the sink is littered with dried globs of toothpaste and myriad short, stubby black hairs. The grout in between the floor tiles is darkened with grime.

  After flushing, I use toilet paper to turn on the sink faucet and rinse my hands, forgoing the bar of soap, which has a couple of short, curly, dark hairs dried into it. I wipe my hands on my pants when I’m done, since the towel looks like it’s been hanging there for well over a year. I head back out to the living area.

  I find Hurley standing by the door, looking impatient and wary: Tux is door rattling again, and it’s clear Hurley wants to escape before the cat manages to claw down the door.

  “I’m ready,” I say, hurrying toward him.

  Hurley opens the door. But before he steps out, he turns to Lisa and asks one last question. “Can you account for your whereabouts after you left Jack’s house on the day of the fire?”

  At first, I’m confused by this question, since we already know Lisa’s schedule that day from our talk with Paul Fletcher. Then I realize Hurley is simply double-checking the information.

  Lisa looks insulted by the question, and the tone of her answer confirms this. “I had two other patients I had to see that morning,” she says, tight-lipped. “If you want specifics, you’ll have to check with my agency. I can’t share names with you because of the HIPAA laws.”

  As if to avenge his mistress’s reputation, Tux steps up his efforts on the door. Now even I think he might manage to escape. He rattles it with the ferocity of a tiger and lets out a howl that makes my hair stand on end. I turn to Hurley to say, “Let’s go,” but he’s already out the door in a half run to the car.

  Chapter 15

  “You ready to go talk to Jack’s neighbors?” Hurley asks, once we’re back on the road.

  “Sure, but I need a bite to eat and a little more caffeine first.”

  We head for the coffee shop and order sandwiches: some fancy thing on weird-looking bread, with turkey and a sun-dried tomato paste for me, and a basic tuna on a hard roll for Hurley. I check in with Izzy while we eat and tell him I’ll be back in the office sometime around three. He lets us know that the ID on Donald Strommen is still pending, but he hopes to hear from the dentist sometime in the next hour or two. Hurley calls the station and gets the proper name, address, and basic DMV information for Jack’s neighbor, George Smothers, and to see if there is any more information on the neighbor named Gatling who Serena had mentioned the day before.

  We leave the coffee shop with a sugar-free almond latte for me and a tall black coffee for Hurley. We also leave with two pieces of cinnamon coffee cake, an indulgence I justify by reminding myself of how good I did ordering the sugar-free flavoring in my latte. Since we don’t have far to go, we sit in the car in the parking lot for a few minutes, scarfing down our cake and sipping our drinks.

  When we turn onto the street for George Smothers’s house, my eyes are drawn to what’s left of Jack’s. Blackened studs rise up from the ground on one side, looking like the ribs of a carcass, and the remaining siding is scorched and melted in places. Plywood covers the holes where the windows used to be, a blue tarp serves as a temporary roof, and police tape surrounds what’s left of the building. There is a warning sign for asbestos posted near the front door.

  The rest of the street is lined with modest homes—most of which are still cheerfully decorated for the holiday, providing a stark contrast to Jack’s burnt-out shell. When we pull up in front of Smothers’s home, it’s apparent from the appearance of the place that the man has fallen on hard times. It’s a small Cape Cod with white wooden siding that’s badly in need of a paint job. The roof is missing a number of shingles, the front windows are cracked and have plastic sheeting stapled to the inside of them—the poor man’s insulation against the winter cold—and the detached single-car garage beside the house is leaning at a precarious angle.

  Mr. Smothers meets us at the door. After some quick introductions and a brief explanation of why we are here, he invites us in out of the cold. He is a small, balding man in his midforties, something I never would have guessed if we hadn’t learned it from his DMV record. Despite the season, Smothers’s skin is tanned into a dark, leathery state. That, combined with the rounded stoop of his s
houlders, makes him look much older. The inside of his house is neat and sparsely furnished with worn but comfortable-looking items. The wood floors are scratched and long ago lost any sheen they might have had; the walls all look in need of a paint job. In the living room is an older-model color TV—no fancy flat screens here.

  Smothers directs us to the kitchen, which, like the rest of the place, is old, worn, and cozy. A teakettle sits on the stove, with steam seeping out its spout.

  “I was about to have a cup of coffee,” Smothers says, pointing to a jar of instant granules on the counter next to a mug and a spoon. “Can I get either of you a cup, or some tea, or hot chocolate?”

  I left my half-finished latte in the car, knowing it will likely be cold by the time I get back to it. Smothers’s offer sounds good, but I loathe instant coffee. I’m also not much of a tea drinker. Yet, something about Smothers’s demeanor strikes a soft spot in my heart. I sense that accepting his hospitality would matter to him.

  “Hot chocolate sounds delicious,” I say, smiling. “And it will be a nice hedge against the cold. Thank you.”

  I’m rewarded with a huge smile from Smothers, who takes a package of instant hot cocoa out of a cupboard and dumps it into a mug. Hurley passes, so Smothers adds the hot water to his mug and mine and brings both to the kitchen table, where Hurley and I are already seated.

  As I stir my instant cocoa, Hurley starts the questioning. “Mr. Smothers, as I explained to you, we are talking to anyone who knew Jack Allen. What can you tell us?”

  Smothers wraps his hands around his coffee mug and scrutinizes us for a moment. “I’m his neighbor and a friend. I’ve known him for about ten years. It’s a shitty thing that happened to him—dying in a fire like that.” He pauses and takes a sip of his coffee, while Hurley and I exchange looks. Once Smothers has swallowed, he continues speaking. “I’m guessing the fire wasn’t an accident, or you two wouldn’t be looking into his death this way.”