Food doesn’t sound very good to me at the moment—a highly rare event. Hoping Dom is right, I push myself up from the couch and head for the bathroom.
One hot shower, a thorough teeth scrubbing, four ibuprofens, three glasses of water, and a huge cup of coffee later, I emerge feeling at least half human, though my stomach is still threatening to stage a major coup.
Dom makes me sit and he shoves a plate with some kind of omelet on it in front of me. “Eat.” I force myself to obey with one tiny forkful, then another. I repeat the process a few more times and realize my stomach is surrendering. Gradually I finish the entire thing. When I’m done, I feel tons better.
“Thanks, Dom,” I say. “You are truly a lifesaver.”
“You’re welcome. Now, if I were you, I’d take it easy for the rest of the day.”
“I can’t. I have to go to the office, if for no other reason than just to see what progress Hurley has made.”
“Can’t you do that over the phone?”
“I could,” I admit. “But I have some apologies to issue, too, and I want to do those in person.”
Dom nods solemnly, making it clear how badly those apologies are needed. “Okay, but promise me you’ll drink lots of water and take plenty of ibuprofen.”
“I will. Thanks.” Bracing myself for some humility and humiliation, I give Dom a kiss on the cheek, thank him again, and head out to my car.
Even driving as slowly as possible to postpone the inevitable for as long as I can, it only takes me five minutes to drive to the office. Fortunately, my car doesn’t smell of barf. However, I do get a hint of just how wasted I was last night when I pick up on a strong tinge of alcohol in the air, enough to overwhelm the ever-present smell of formaldehyde that seems to cling to the hearse’s interior. Something about that lingering odor bothers me, but my brain is still too murky to figure out why.
I find Izzy in his office. He’s working on his computer, which sits on a credenza behind his desk. Since his back is to me, I knock on the door frame to announce my arrival. He spins around in his chair and stares at me for several seconds before he speaks.
“I didn’t expect to see you here today,” he says. “Didn’t Dom tell you I gave you the day off?”
“He did,” I say, struggling to gauge Izzy’s tone. While he doesn’t sound pissed exactly, his demeanor is definitely strained. He looks wary, almost wounded, and I feel a surge of guilt over being the likely cause of those emotions. Izzy is not only my boss, he’s also my best friend. I can’t believe I did something so stupid, jeopardizing our relationship like this. “I came in anyway because I’m supposed to be here,” I tell him. “I’ll stay late tonight to make up for the hours I missed.”
Izzy leans back in his chair and eyes me for a moment, as if weighing the sincerity of my words. “There’s no need to do that,” he says finally. “Your position is salaried and you’ve put in lots of extra hours without any extra pay lately, so you have plenty of comp time coming. And you’re entitled to a day off now and then. Besides, things are quiet here at the moment. I’m almost caught up with all my paperwork and there aren’t any autopsies pending. So even if you did stay, I don’t know what you’d do. And I’m sure you have stuff to do to get ready for your trip. What time is your flight?”
“We’re taking a ten-thirty red-eye out of Milwaukee. Hurley and I are heading for the airport around eight.”
Izzy nods.
“Do you have the Strommen file in here?” I ask, trying to shift the focus off me and back onto the work.
Izzy picks up a folder and hands it to me. “What do you want with it?”
“I want to make a copy of something.” I leave with the folder and head for the library, where I make the copy I need, fold it up, and stuff it in my purse. I return the original to the folder and then return the file to Izzy. His back is to me again when I enter his office, so I make a great deal of noise to announce my presence and drop the file loudly onto his desk. My efforts are for naught; Izzy doesn’t acknowledge my presence in any way.
Clearing my throat, which is strangling me with emotion, I say, “Since there’s nothing going on here, I’ll check in with Hurley and see how things are going with the investigations.”
“It’s up to you,” he says over his shoulder.
Even though he’s trying to hide it, I can tell he’s disappointed in me. His calm dismissal of me is crystal clear, and wrenchingly painful. I’d rather have him yell at me, or fire me, or do anything other than turn his back on me. Tears burn at my eyes as my emotions tighten their stranglehold on my throat.
“Izzy, please believe me when I tell you how sorry I am,” I choke out. “What I did last night was stupid and reckless.”
He turns back to me finally; and though his initial expression is stern, when he sees the tears in my eyes, his face softens. “Yes, it was,” he says quietly. “And not just because you drank yourself into oblivion. Hurley said you gambled away fifteen thousand dollars last night. I know you got some money from your divorce settlement, but that doesn’t mean you can afford to be frivolous with it.”
I nod. “I know. You’re right. It won’t happen again.”
“See to it.”
Finally, with these last three words, I detect a hint of emotion in his voice: a touch of anger tinged with disappointment and betrayal. And while it makes me feel like a child who is being chastised by a parent, it also gladdens me, in an odd way.
“I will,” I tell him, swiping at the tears tracking down my cheeks. “I promise.” I start to turn away from him, but he calls me back.
“Mattie, there’s one more thing.”
I look back at him, bracing myself.
“The tanning booth really isn’t working for you. You should use an artificial tanner, instead. You know what horizontal stripes can do to your figure.”
I burst out laughing; and to my delight, Izzy chuckles as well. I give him a salute and say, “Point taken”; then I head out.
My spirits are definitely buoyed by the return of the normal, no-holds-barred repartee that Izzy and I have always shared. However, my joy is tempered by the knowledge that my next stop is Hurley, where I expect the repartee to be a bit more humiliating.
Chapter 20
I detour to the library and pick up the original of Jack Allen’s chart before heading out. I find Hurley in the police station break room with a bunch of papers in front of him. He is writing something on a notepad as I enter. When he looks up to see who has come into the room, I can tell from his expression that he is surprised.
“Didn’t expect to see you here today,” he says, confirming my thoughts. He leans back in his seat and studies me, wagging the pen in his hand. “You don’t look too much the worse for wear.”
“How I look and how I feel are two different things,” I say with a wan smile.
“I’ll bet.”
“I understand I owe you both thanks and an apology for last night. So thank you, and I’m sorry.”
“How much do you remember?”
“Everything up to my decision to call it a night. After that, not so much.”
Hurley’s mouth tightens, his eyes narrow, and he cocks his head to one side.
“Was I a complete idiot?”
“Not complete, no. But on a scale of one to ten, I’d give you a nine. Not only did you gamble away somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen grand, you puked all over my car.”
“So I heard,” I say, wincing. “Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?”
He starts tapping the pen against his lips and looks skyward, deep in thought. “Actually, yes, there is. You can drive me up to the casino to get my car, since I had to leave it in their parking lot. And you can clean it out for me once we get there, since you were the one who messed it up.”
It’s a reasonable request—all things considered—though the thought of cleaning vomit out of his car after it’s been sitting all night and half the day makes my stomach roil threateningly.
>
“Fair enough,” I say. “When do you want to go?”
He glances at his watch and gestures toward the stack of papers. “I had Whitehorse send me a sheet on every employee at the casino. Our fax machine ran nonstop for nearly two hours and we went through two reams of paper. I figure I need another hour or two to finish. So what do you say to one o’clock?”
“Sounds good.” I drop Jack’s chart on the table. “I made a copy of this and looked through it all, but I didn’t find anything unusual. I thought I’d let you look it over before I return it.”
“Thanks, I’ll have someone deliver it back to the agency when I’m done with it.”
“Okay, see you at one.”
I head out, intending to hit up a store to buy cleaning supplies. When I’m halfway there, it dawns on me that there is a much better place to get the kind of cleaning supplies I need. So, instead, I do a U-turn and head for the hospital.
The swish of automatic doors announces my arrival in the ER waiting area. Stepping inside is like a trip in a time machine. There’s a saying that once you’re an ER nurse, you’re always an ER nurse. I think it’s true. Of all the nursing jobs I’ve held, the ER was always my favorite. I loved the variety, the camaraderie, the way the workload could go from zero to sixty in a matter of seconds, and the humor of the people who work there. This last trait is one I’ve come to believe is necessary for survival in a place where you may be witness to some of life’s worst tragedies.
At the moment, the place is calm; the waiting room is empty. When I ask the registrar if I can sneak into the back for a visit, she says, “Please do. It’s been unnaturally quiet today and they need something new to distract them back there. Last time I looked, they were playing bedpan shuffleboard.”
I find most of the staff inside the nurses’ station. While the patient flow might be quiet, the noise level in the department isn’t. There are only two patients—a middle-aged gentleman with the sniffles, and a toddler with a leg wound—but they are both making themselves known. The man is coughing, moaning, and groaning loudly, and the kid, who is getting sutured, is screaming as if his leg is being cut off without the benefits of anesthesia.
One of my old nursing pals, Phyllis “Syph” Malone, is on duty, a definite coup for me. Since I’m basically here to steal supplies, having someone I know and trust—and who knows and likes me—is necessary. It’s been more than seven years since I worked in the ER and the staff has seen a lot of changeover since then. Amongst those on duty today are two new faces I don’t recognize.
“Hey, ‘Mets,’” Syph greets. “What brings you in here?”
“Thought I’d pop in and see how things were shaking, say hi to everyone.”
Syph, who knows me well enough to know I’m here for more than a casual “hi” visit, cocks her head to one side and smiles. She watches me do a meet-and-greet with the rest of the staff; after which, she shares a retelling of my infamous nipple incident for the benefit of the two new gals. When one of the newbies asks about our use of nicknames, Syph fills them in on that, too. She explains how they were born out of boredom one evening years ago when a bunch of us nurses were making fun of the way we tend to refer to our patients by a diagnosis and room number rather than a name. We decided to give ourselves nicknames that resembled our real names and were also a disease or disorder. Clearly, Phyllis fared less well than the rest of us, and my nickname, a term often used to refer to metastases or the spread of cancer, isn’t nearly as colorful. But the names have stuck, as has the habit, which is why the current patients are known as “The Man Flu in Room Eight” and “The Demon Spawn in Room Six.”
When Syph is finished with her storytelling, she gets up and heads toward the back of the ER. “Hey, Mets, come on and I’ll buy you a cup of our rotgut coffee.”
As soon as we’re ensconced inside the relative privacy of the ER break room, Syph says, “So what’s up?”
“I need to borrow a few cleaning supplies, the strong biohazard stuff.”
“Let me guess, you finally killed David and now you need to eliminate the evidence?”
I laugh. “No, nothing quite that serious. I’ve moved on from my homicidal rage to quiet acceptance.”
“Ah, I see. You got your settlement.”
“Bingo.”
“Nothing like an infusion of cold, hard cash to cure the lovelorn,” she says with a smile. “I hope you took the bastard to the cleaners.”
“The settlement was a reasonable one. I’m satisfied.”
“Good, though I have to tell you, no one here would blame you if you had killed him. I mean, it was bad enough that he was schtupping one of the nurses, but to do it right here in the OR? That was pretty low.”
“Yes, it was. But I’ve moved on. I’ve decided David is a slinky.”
“A slinky?”
“Yep, he isn’t good for much, but it makes me smile when I think about pushing him down the stairs.”
Syph chuckles and says, “So how’s your love life going otherwise? Have you hooked up with that hunky detective yet?”
“No, our relationship is strictly a professional one.”
“That’s too bad.”
That it is.
“And there’s no one else?”
I shake my head. “Nope. Right now I’m enjoying my singlehood.”
“Right,” Syph scoffs.
“Being single has its perks.”
“Yeah, like having no one to kiss at midnight on New Year’s Eve.”
“But I don’t have to clean whisker hairs out of the bathroom sink,” I counter. Something niggles at the back of my mind when I say that, but I’m too busy trying to defend myself to give it much thought.
“What about having someone to snuggle up to on these cold winter nights?”
“Two words: electric blanket. Plus I get the bed all to myself, and there’s no one snoring next to me, keeping me awake. If I feel like I need a warm body, my dog, Hoover, does just fine.”
Syph thinks for a few seconds and then says, “Okay, what about having someone to go out with, to the movies or dinner?”
I shrug. “No competition for the remote, so I can watch chick flicks all day long without having to suffer through football play-offs. And I can do it while eating ice cream for dinner, if I want.”
“You have to sit at the singles table at weddings.”
“As long as I get cake, I don’t care. And speaking of sitting, I don’t have to worry about whether the toilet seat is up or down,” I say in my best smug “take that!” tone.
“What about sex?”
Damn it, she’s got me there. I could always put on a disguise and head for the Garden of Eden, an isolated specialty shop a few miles outside of town that sells sex toys. But even if I buy a gas-powered, vibrating dildo with fifty attachments, I know it won’t be the same.
“Fine, you win,” I say, sulking. “If you’re done pointing out how miserable and lonely my life is, I’d like to get my cleaning supplies.”
“I’ll do better than that,” Syph says with a sly grin. “I’ll give you cleaning supplies and a phone number.”
“A phone number? For what? 1-800-GIGOLO?”
“No, for this guy I know. His name is Mike. He’s single, your age, and good-looking.”
“Divorced?”
“Nope, never been married.”
“So what’s the catch? No, wait, let me guess. He lives with his mother and has a secret fetish involving WD-40, his sister’s panty hose, and a weed whacker?”
“No,” Syph says, laughing. Then she stops and looks seriously thoughtful for a moment. “Actually, I think he does live with his mother, but it’s only temporary because he’s new in town and looking for a house to buy. He seems like a really nice guy. Plus he drives a Beemer.”
“I don’t think so, Syph. The last blind date I had ended up sleeping with my mother.”
“Oh, come on. Give it a chance. Put yourself out there. What have you got to lose?”
&nbs
p; “You mean, besides my dignity, my sanity, or maybe even my life?”
She shoots me a give-me-a-break look.
“Fine,” I say with a sigh of resignation. “How do you know him?”
“Al’s been working with him to find a house,” she says, referring to her Realtor husband.
“What does he do for a living?”
“He’s a pharmacist at the drugstore downtown.”
Resigned, I agree to let Syph give me the number, but when she calls her husband to get it, she goes straight to voice mail.
“I’ll call you with the number when Al gets back to me,” she says.
“Fine, but wait a few days. I’m heading to Florida tonight for a conference, so I won’t be back until the thirty-first. And I’m not promising anything.”
“Aw, come on, give the guy a shot.”
“Why? Does he have an STD?”
“Very funny, but I’m serious. This could turn out to be fun. You know what they say about pharmacists.”
Against my better judgment, I bite. “No, what do they say?”
With a sly wink, she tells me. “They like to do it over the counter.”
Chapter 21
Five minutes later, as I’m stuffing my cleaning supplies into the back of the hearse, my phone rings. I half-expect it to be the pharmacist, but instead it’s Hurley.
“Hey,” I say into the phone. “Did you change your mind about the time?”
“Nope, we’re still on for one, but I have some news. Guess what I just found out?”
“What?”
“The Strommens are in serious financial trouble. The bank started foreclosure proceedings on both the farm and the house, and the Strommens were using credit cards for their day-to-day living. They are up to their necks in debt and facing bankruptcy. Donald sold off all their livestock last year and has been selling off equipment, here and there, to try to keep them afloat. With the economy being what it is, well . . .”
“Ooookay,” I say slowly, wondering why he sounds so excited about this information. “That’s a very sad story and all, but what does it have to do with his death?”
Lucky Stiff Page 18