Lucky Stiff

by Annelise Ryan

  I also remember from reading Jack’s chart that he received a lot of enemas lately, and Lisa wasn’t the one who gave them. Paul Fletcher was. That realization leads me to another. It’s not Tux that Fletcher wants; it’s the litter box.

  I look at it again. It’s a large, bulky thing with two halves that clamp together, and the bottom half has a plastic bag liner in it, making it easier to change. I glance over my shoulder to see if Fletcher is watching me; and to my chagrin, he is. I smile at him. “Just cleaning it out for you,” I say, waving the scooper. I turn back to the box and stick the scooper in again, even though there is nothing left to remove. I dig around through the litter, poking the scooper as deep as it will go. It doesn’t go far. Despite the fact that the bottom half of the box is about ten inches deep, the litter inside it is only a couple of inches thick. Either the box has a false bottom in it, or there is something beneath the liner. I’m pretty sure it’s the latter.

  I make a show of scooping something more into the toilet, leaning to block Fletcher’s view so he can’t see that the scooper is actually empty. My mind is reeling, trying to think of a way to stall Fletcher, when he speaks right behind me. I hadn’t heard him approach.

  “What are you doing?” he says. I jump and look up at him as my heart pounds in my chest.

  “I was just cleaning out the box for you.”

  “You seem nervous. Why is that?”

  “You startled me, is all.”

  The muscles in his cheeks are twitching and his eyes narrow at me. I can tell he’s weighing the truth of my statement. I see blood oozing from the scratch on his hand, and, thinking fast, I say, “Cat scratches are notorious for causing infections. I have some antiseptic in the medicine cabinet. Let me clean that wound up for you before you go.”

  I stand and take a couple of steps toward the medicine cabinet over the sink, thankful the door will swing open toward Fletcher. I know I have a pair of sharp scissors in there; and if he can’t see inside it right away, I might have time to grab them. But just as I’m about to open the door, Fletcher stops me by splaying his hand on the mirrored front.

  “You know, don’t you?” he says.

  “Know what?” I say, trying to prolong the charade, even though I’m pretty sure my goose is cooked.

  “The money,” he says. “You know about the money.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Clearly, my denial isn’t fooling him. He drops his hand from the medicine cabinet, reaches into his pocket, and pulls out a scalpel, retracting the protective cover on the blade. He points it at me and says, “Take the lid off that litter box.”

  I do as he says, unclamping the top and lifting the lid, which I set aside. “You killed Jack, didn’t you?” I say, knowing any further pretense is useless.

  “I didn’t mean to,” he says. “It was an accident. He got drunker than I expected, and I guess he tipped his chair over reaching for another piece of pizza. His head got wedged between the chair and the coffee table, and either he passed out or he didn’t have the strength to move. I didn’t hear him fall, because I had turned up the volume on the Christmas music he had playing to cover up the sounds of me opening the safe. By the time I found him, he was already dead from asphyxia.”

  “You got him drunk with the enemas,” I say.

  He smiles at me. “I’m impressed. How did you figure that out?”

  “There was no alcohol in his stomach. If he’d drunk himself into oblivion, it should have been full of it.”

  “A miscalculation on my part,” he says, with a shrug. “I just wanted some of that money he was hoarding. I wasn’t going to take it all, just enough to keep the agency going and give me a little boost. Lisa told me she saw him with a big wad of cash once, and he had this key that he wore around his neck all the time. So I started snooping around and found that fake speaker safe. One day when I was there to give him an enema, I had just come from the liquor store and I decided to put some alcohol in the enema to see what happened. Within an hour, he passed out in his chair, so I took the key and opened the safe. He had wads of money in there, and I only took a few hundreds that first time. The next day, he was confused about what had happened, and I blamed it on a new med he was taking.

  “I only meant to do it that one time, but my agency hasn’t been doing too well lately because the insurance payments we get are ridiculous. So I went back for more a few times. I never wrote those visits up, and I always parked over on the next block and came through Jack’s backyard to avoid being seen. But it all went wrong that last time. I was just going to take the money and leave; but I figured if someone found Jack dead, with a butt full of alcohol, it would look suspicious. So I set the fire to destroy the evidence and make it look like it was an accident.”

  “What about Lisa? Was she in on it? Did she know what you did to Jack?”

  “Not at first. But she started asking questions about why Jack was so drunk some of the time because she didn’t see any evidence of him drinking that much. I knew the guy across the street was an alcoholic and that he checked himself into some fancy out-of-state rehab facility a couple of weeks ago, so I raided his trash cans and stashed the empties in Jack’s trash.”

  Ah, the mysterious missing Mr. Gatling.

  “After you guys showed up at my office the other day, I was afraid you’d come to my house next. Once you went and talked to Lisa, I figured her place was safe, so I took the money there. I told her what happened to Jack and how I decided to take the money. I offered to give her some to pay for her habit if she let me stash it at her place temporarily. She’s been hooked on narcs for a long time now. As long as I supplied her, which is easy enough to do, since I can steal a couple pills here and there from my home care patients, she did anything I wanted.”

  “Why not just take the money and run?”

  “Because if I disappeared, I knew I’d be suspect number one. I didn’t want to be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life. I planned to wait things out for a few weeks and then quietly close up shop and disappear. But Lisa hid the money and told me I had to take her with me when I left or she wouldn’t tell me where it was. Apparently, she was under the misconception that there was something romantic going on between us just because we had sex a few times.”

  “So you overdosed her?”

  He shrugs again. “I have a couple of hospice patients who are on morphine pumps and it’s pretty easy to siphon off a little here and a little there. She was doing heroin anyway, and I couldn’t very well have her going to the police, could I? But that stupid cat of hers screwed me. I searched her apartment; and when I didn’t find the money, I got her car keys and went to look in it. That damn cat ran out when I opened the door, not that I cared, but then that neighbor came home, saw the cat, and took it to Lisa’s apartment. I hid across the street and watched her call on her cell after she tossed the cat inside. And I stayed and watched when the cops showed up. That’s how I knew you had the cat. I heard you talking about taking him home. At first, I figured Lisa had stuck the money in a safe-deposit box or something; and when the cops found it, they’d figure she was the one who took it. But I never found a key for a safe-deposit box; and when I saw you walk out with that litter box, I realized that was the one place I hadn’t looked. So I followed you.”

  He chuckles and shakes his head. “I gotta give the girl credit. It was a brilliant hiding place. She knew I hated that damn cat and its nasty, smelly litter box. Speaking of which . . .” He gestures toward the litter box. “How about taking that liner out of there?”

  The scalpel blade catches the light and glimmers menacingly. I swallow hard, bend down, grab the sides of the liner, and lift. It’s surprisingly light, considering what the box weighed. And in the next second, I see why. Underneath it, neatly stacked in several rows, are bundles of hundred-dollar bills.

  I stand there, holding the bag of litter and watching Fletcher. His eyes grow wide at the sight of the money; a little smile
breaks out on his face. Then he looks back at me and the smile fades.

  “Just take the money and go,” I tell him. “I won’t do anything, and I won’t tell anyone.”

  “Do I look that stupid?” he says. “Look, I’m sorry this all got so out of hand. It wasn’t what I wanted. I didn’t want to hurt anyone.”

  “Then don’t.”

  “It’s too late. I’ll try to make it as painless as I can for you.” He lifts the scalpel and looks at it. “One quick cut on the carotid and you’ll be unconscious in a minute or two. I’ve heard it’s not a bad way to go.”

  “Really? And just who was it who told you that?”

  He sighs and says, “I’m sorry.”

  I’m not about to wait for him to come slashing at me with that scalpel, so I make my move. I toss the bag of litter at his head and score a direct hit. Half the litter flies out of the liner and hits his face full on. The rest of the bag hits him in the neck, and it’s enough to knock him off balance. I leap forward and shove him, making a mad dash past him and out of the bathroom. His arm flails out and a hot burn rips along my neck, making me holler out in both terror and pain, but I keep on going, heading for the door.

  Hoover appears in front of me, growling and baring his teeth. I know he’s there to protect me, but my momentum is too great to stop or sidestep him and I run into him, instead. My feet tangle with his and I fall forward onto the floor. Behind me I hear Hoover growling and snapping and I try to get up. There is a pool of blood on the floor beneath me and on my hand. Panicked, I reach up and feel my neck, wondering if I’m already pumping blood from the wound Fletcher inflicted. But some distant part of my mind, the nursing part that I’ve trained to stay rational and calm in the direst of circumstances, tells me it’s okay. There isn’t enough blood on the floor, or any arterial spray. I hear Fletcher yell; I hear Hoover growl; then I feel a cold wind on me. I look toward the source of the cold and see Hurley standing in the doorway, his gun drawn. I hear Hoover yelp behind me and watch as Hurley charges across the room toward the bathroom.

  I hear Hurley yell, “Hoover! Down!” Then it’s followed by “Drop it or I’ll shoot you where you stand!”

  I manage to get to my knees and stand, but I feel woozy. I stumble over to the couch and drop into it. I see Hurley in the bathroom doorway, his gun pointed into the room. “Mattie, are you okay?” he asks over his shoulder.

  My fingers probe the wound on my neck. It’s long, but not deep, and the blood is oozing, not pumping. “I’m cut, but I’m okay,” I tell him.

  He moves to one side, still keeping his gun aimed, and Hoover comes limping past him. There is blood dripping from his face and one of his front legs.

  “Oh, no, Hoover!” I push myself off the couch, my wooziness forgotten, and hurry over to my dog. He, too, is cut, in two different places: one on his foot and the other on his cheek. The one on his cheek is nearly two inches long. The one on his foot is between his toes and it’s nearly half an inch deep.

  Hurley takes out his cell phone and calls 911, requesting both police backup and an ambulance.

  I head for the kitchen, with Hoover limping along behind me, and grab a towel. Then I set about cleaning Hoover’s wounds.

  The first cop shows up in a minute or two, and soon the place is swarming with cops and EMTs. Hurley hands Fletcher off and comes into the kitchen to hover over Hoover and me. The EMTs quickly determine that I’ll need stitches; and while it isn’t an emergent problem, they offer to take me to the ER.

  “I won’t go, unless my dog comes with me,” I tell them. “He saved my life.”

  “I’m sorry, Mattie,” one of the EMTs says. “We can’t take a dog in the rig. You know that.”

  Hurley says, “That’s okay. I’ll take her.”

  He loads Hoover and me into his car, leaving the other cops to haul Fletcher off to jail. Along the way, I fill him in on my visit from Fletcher, and the details I now know. “Thank goodness you showed up when you did,” I tell him as all three of us get out of his car and walk into the ER. “Why did you come by?”

  “Izzy called me after he talked with you on the phone. He was worried about you. He told me that you quit your job and then asked for it back.”

  “He already offered my position to Jonas. I thought I had a job here at the hospital, but Molinaro called me tonight and told me she wouldn’t hire me back because David said it would be too awkward.”

  Hurley mutters a few colorful adjectives for David.

  “So now I’m unemployed,” I finish.

  We’re at the doors to the ER and I’m about to go in when Hurley stops me. He places a hand on either shoulder and turns me to face him. “Izzy also told me why you quit,” he says.

  I smile awkwardly. “Yeah, well, sorry about that. I was stupid.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know it’s too late, Hurley. I came over to your house tonight, to tell you about the job and all, and I saw Tonya there. And I saw the two of you head out for dinner at the Peking Palace.”

  “Tonya called me. And I only agreed to see her because you said the two of us could never be. I drove her back to her car and dropped her off as soon as Izzy called me. Why didn’t you tell me you were thinking about quitting your job?”

  “I didn’t want to say anything to you until I had a chance to talk to Izzy. And I only told him this afternoon.”

  Hurley’s eyes rove over my face and hair. One hand comes up and touches the bandage the EMTs put on my neck. “I nearly lost you again tonight, Winston. And that scared the crap out of me.”

  Hoover chooses that moment to whimper at our feet, reminding us that we’re not alone. Hurley’s hands drop to his sides, but then he takes one of mine in his and opens the ER door. “Come on,” he says, holding my hand tight. “Let’s get the two of you fixed up, and then you and I are going to talk some more.”

  Chapter 39

  Nearly two hours later, both Hoover and I are patched up and ready to head out. The doctor on duty, Allan Connor, kindly agreed to stitch Hoover’s wounds, along with mine. Knowing it might get him and others on staff in trouble if we took Hoover into the ER proper, Connor set up a sterile field in the ambulance bay and stitched Hoover up there.

  Not long after we arrived at the hospital, Izzy called Hurley on his cell phone, panicked because he and Dom came home and found a bunch of cops in my cottage and a bunch of blood on the floors. Hurley filled him in on what happened, assured him he would take care of me for the night, and promised to update him in the morning.

  After thanking Dr. Connor and the ER staff for their help, Hurley, Hoover, and I head back out to Hurley’s car. As Hurley pulls out of the lot, I look over at him and say, “What am I going to do for a job?”

  “You have the money from your divorce settlement,” he says, making me wince. “That should hold you for a while.”

  I debate telling him that I’ve lost a big chunk of my settlement money at the casino, but decide not to. There’s still enough to hold me for a little while; but sooner or later, I’m going to have to find another job.

  “Don’t worry about it tonight,” Hurley says. “You can start fresh in the morning.”

  I decide he’s right. There’s nothing I can do about it tonight anyway. So I sit back and try to relax. That’s when I notice the route we’re taking.

  “Where are we going?” I ask him.

  “My place. You and Hoover are spending the night with me so I can keep an eye on the two of you. If you go back to your place, I’m afraid you’ll be haunted by what happened there and you’ll never get any rest. Besides, your place is a mess. Tomorrow I’ll take you over there and help you clean it up.”

  “But I have to go back. Tux is stuck inside that cat carrier. I can’t leave him there all night like that. And what about Rubbish? He’s probably all freaked out by what happened.”

  “When I spoke to Izzy earlier, he said he and Dom had both of the cats at their place. They’ll be fine.”

&nb
sp; Hurley pulls into his driveway and shuts off the car. We get out and head inside, where I see two empty beer bottles sitting on the coffee table, a reminder of Hurley’s earlier guest. He sees them, too, and quickly grabs them up and tosses them in the kitchen trash. “Do you want something to eat?” he asks. “I can fix you up a sandwich.”

  “Sure.” I settle in at the table and Hoover makes himself at home by curling up on the rug in front of the sink. Hurley tosses him some slices of ham while he’s preparing the food and then sets two sandwiches on the table. He goes over to a cabinet, takes out a couple of wineglasses, and then grabs a bottle of Chardonnay from the fridge.

  “It will take the edge off things for you,” he says, filling both glasses.

  The sandwich tastes wonderful; and as we eat, we discuss the night’s events some more. Somewhere in that process, my wineglass gets emptied and refilled twice. After I drain it for the third time, Hurley says, “Come on upstairs and I’ll get you something to sleep in so you can get out of those bloody clothes. You’re welcome to take a shower, if you want.”

  “Thanks. I think I will.” I get up from my chair and follow Hurley upstairs. He digs out a baggy old T-shirt and some sweatpants, and then he fetches me a towel from a hall linen closet.

  The shower feels wonderful; I emerge tired but feeling renewed. The issue of my job keeps trying to take the lead in my thoughts, but I act like Scarlett O’Hara and push it back, thinking tomorrow is soon enough to worry about it.

  When I come out of the bathroom, Hurley and Hoover are both waiting for me in the upstairs hallway.

  “Feel better?” Hurley asks.

  “I do.”

  “I’ve made up the guest bedroom for you.” He turns and heads down the hallway and I follow him to the first door on the right. He stops just outside and extends his arm through the doorway. I step into a simple bedroom with a double bed, a nightstand, a dresser, a closet, and a large color picture on the wall of the Chicago skyline at night. A lamp on the bedside stand warms the room with a cozy glow.