Lucky Stiff

by Annelise Ryan

  “Mattie?”

  Hurley is standing right behind me and I can feel his breath on the back of my neck when he speaks. “Yes?” My heart is pounding in my chest and I dare not turn to look at him.

  “You don’t have to sleep in here, if you don’t want to.”

  There it is, the line drawn in the proverbial sand. Do I cross it? I’ve given up so much to be able to do so. I turn to face him, looking up into those deep blue eyes. “Where else would I sleep?”

  “With me.” He reaches up and tucks a stray hair behind my ear.

  He takes my hand and leads me down the hall to the master bedroom. Hoover gets up to follow, but Hurley stops at the door of the bedroom and gently tells him to stay. We head for the bed; and when we reach it, Hurley turns to me, pulls me close, and kisses me. And from that moment on, I’m a goner.

  Later, Hurley and I are lying in his bed, mostly naked, side by side. Both of us are staring up at the ceiling, panting slightly, and wearing goofy grins. My brain struggles to wrap itself around what’s just happened, because the sensations Hurley awakened in me were mind-numbingly awesome. I’m also keenly aware of the line we just crossed. My mind-body argument is abruptly interrupted when I hear the ring of Hurley’s doorbell.

  Hurley scowls and glances at his watch. “It’s nearly eleven at night,” he says. “Who the hell could that be?”

  The doorbell rings again and Hurley sighs, clearly annoyed. He gets out of bed, pulls on his jeans, and heads toward the stairs, with Hoover on his heels. I reluctantly roll out of bed, pull on the shirt and sweatpants I was wearing earlier, and follow Hoover, stopping at the top of the stairs as Hurley opens the door below. Standing on the front stoop are a woman and a teenage girl.

  “Hi, Steve,” the woman says.

  Several beats pass before Hurley says, “Kate?”

  “Yep, it’s me. Quite the blast from the past, eh? You’re a hard man to find.”

  Apparently, not hard enough.

  “What are you doing here?” Hurley asks.

  “We need to talk. Can we come in?”

  Though he’s clearly annoyed, Hurley nods and waves them into the foyer. He sees me standing at the top of the stairs and does a perfunctory introduction.

  “Mattie, Kate. Kate is an old friend of mine.”

  “I’m a bit more than that,” Kate says as Hurley shuts the door. “I’m his wife.”

  For a moment, I think I’m delirious and hallucinating. My legs start to tremble and I sit down on the landing so I won’t fall down the steps.

  Hurley whirls on Kate and says, “You were my wife, many years ago. We’re divorced.”

  “Actually,” she says, looking apologetic, “we’re not.”

  “I signed the papers.”

  “I never filed them.”

  I squeeze my eyes closed as I feel my world crumble around me. Could this day possibly get any worse? Apparently, it can. Kate proves there is no end to my misery with her next words.

  “And this,” she says, putting an arm around the teenage girl who is with her, “is your daughter, Emily.”

  Chapter 40

  More than anything, I want to escape from Hurley’s home and return to my cottage. However, I don’t have a way to get there unless I walk, and I’m not about to head out at eleven at night in the bitter cold for an hour-plus stroll. Hoover and I stake out the living room, while Kate, Emily, and Hurley huddle in the kitchen. I can’t help but eavesdrop on the conversation.

  “I didn’t know where else to turn,” Kate says. “I lost my job, my house is in foreclosure, and we have nowhere to stay.”

  “What about your parents?” Hurley asks.

  “Dad passed away a couple of years ago after a heart attack. And Mom has early Alzheimer’s. I had to put her in a home last year.”

  “Your brother?” Hurley says.

  “I haven’t heard from him in years. Even if I knew where he was, I doubt he’d be much help. The last time I saw him, he was hooked on coke and hanging out with a seedy bunch. For all I know, he may be dead.”

  I hear Hurley sigh. “Why didn’t you go ahead with the divorce?”

  “I meant to, but right after you sent the papers back to me, I found out I was pregnant.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t want you to feel trapped. I thought I could do it on my own.” With that, Kate bursts into tears and I hear Emily consoling her.

  I hear a chair push back and then Hurley appears in the living room. He looks at me with this awful expression that says it all.

  “Mattie, I’m so sorry,” he says. “I can’t turn them out into the cold.”

  “I want to go home.”

  He looks crushed, but he nods and heads back to the kitchen.

  “I need to take Mattie home,” I hear him say. “The two of you can make yourselves at home here, for now. There’s a spare bedroom upstairs you can share.”

  I grab my coat, and Hoover and I are waiting by the door when he returns. We walk out to the car in silence.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about her?” I ask him, once we’re under way.

  “I didn’t think there was anything to tell.”

  “You didn’t think the fact that you were married—still are married, apparently—was worth mentioning?”

  “I didn’t know Kate never filed the divorce papers. And we were only married for a few months. We were young and stupid, and we both knew it was a mistake right after we did it. I’ll get it sorted out. Please just give me a little time.”

  “Take all the time you want,” I say irritably.

  “Look, you’re mad, and I get that,” Hurley says. “I’m none too happy about this, either. But it can be dealt with. It’s not the end of the world.”

  Not the end of your world, maybe, but mine is looking pretty grim at the moment.

  We pull up into the drive in front of my cottage and I get out with Hoover. As I’m about to shut the door, Hurley again says, “I’m sorry, Mattie.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Me too.”

  I head inside, with Hoover on my heels. When I close the door to the cottage, I can’t help but feel as if I’m also closing the door on a chapter of my life.

  The place is a mess. There’s dried blood on the floors and litter spread all over the bathroom. I set about cleaning it up, my mind numb. When I’m done, I drop into bed, exhausted, depressed, and spent. I make one final curse at the Fates, who seem determined to keep me and Hurley apart; and then, with Hoover curled up at my side, I cry myself to sleep.

  If you like the Mattie Winston mysteries,

  keep reading for a special preview of

  Murder on the Rocks,

  the first in the new Mack’s Bar Mysteries series

  by Allyson K. Abbott.

  Coming August 2013!

  Chapter 1

  Stumbling upon a dead body before I’ve finished my first cup of coffee is not my idea of a great way to start the day. Not that anyone would think it was, but the discovery was more complicated for me than it would be for most people.

  For one, I’m not and never have been a morning person, thanks to a biological clock dictated as much by nurture as nature. I own and run a bar in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which means I keep some odd hours. It takes a couple of cups of coffee every morning to wake me fully and get me thinking clearly. As a result, my senses are dulled and sluggish when I first get up. Turns out this is a good thing, because my senses aren’t always kind to me.

  The bar is called Mack’s, after my father. He bought it the year before I was born and hoped to have a namesake son who would take over the business someday. I came along, instead; and while I may not have had the right genital equipment, I did have my father’s red hair, fair complexion, and, it seemed, his gregarious nature. According to him, the nurses who cared for me after I was born were fascinated with me because they said I was more interactive than any other newborn they’d ever seen. In hindsight, it may have been my c
ondition that accounted for that, but no one could have known it at the time.

  Anyway, Dad was not a man easily deterred; and he managed to pass along his name by putting Mackenzie on my birth certificate and calling me “Mack” for as long as I can remember. Over time we became known as “Big Mack” and “Little Mack,” and Dad’s future plans for the bar moved along.

  My mother died right after I was born, so my father brought me to work with him every day, sharing my care with any number of patrons who came into the place. As a result, I now have a handful of “aunts” and “uncles” who have no claim to me other than the occasional diaper change or play session. I’ve lived my entire life in the bar. I took my first steps there, uttered my first words there, and did my first pee-pee in the big girl’s toilet there. I knew how to mix a martini before I knew how to spell my own name. During my school years, I spent every afternoon and evening doing my homework in the back office, and then helping Dad out front by washing glasses or preparing food in the kitchen. He always sent me to bed before the place closed . . . easy to do, since we lived in the apartment above, but the bar itself was the place that really felt like home to me.

  It has been my home for thirty-four years, thirty-three of them very good. Dad died eight months ago, so it’s just me here now. It’s been a struggle to go on without him, though he prepared me well by teaching me everything I’d need to know to take over running the bar. Everything, that is, except what to do with a dead body in the back alley.

  Milwaukee is no stranger to dead bodies turning up in unexpected places, but my neighborhood, which is located in a mixed commercial and residential area built up along the banks of the river that runs through downtown, isn’t a high-crime spot. Despite that, this isn’t the first time someone has died in the alley behind my bar. My father has that claim to fame after being mortally wounded by a gunshot just outside our back door this past January; though if you got right down to it, I couldn’t say for sure that anyone really died in the alley. My father’s death occurred in the hospital a short time after his attack, and I had no way of knowing where this second person died. All I knew for sure was that there was a body next to my Dumpster.

  It was a little after nine in the morning on a hot and humid August day, and I’d gone down the private back stairs to toss my personal trash before readying the bar for opening. Because it was pickup day, the Dumpster was overflowing and extremely ripe in the stifling heat. The smell hit me as soon as I opened the back door and I had to force myself to mouth breathe. As I drew closer to the Dumpster, the stench grew, becoming a palpable thing—something I not only smelled, but saw.

  The combination of the heat and the olfactory overload triggered a reaction that might seem strange to most people, but is all too familiar to me. My mouth filled with odd tastes and I heard a cacophony of sounds: chimes, bells, tinkles, and twangs . . . some melodious, some discordant. My field of vision filled with flashing lights, swirling colors, and dozens of floating shapes. I struggled to see past this kaleidoscope of images and that’s when I saw the arm—small and pale—sticking out from under a pile of torn-down boxes beside the Dumpster.

  My first thought was that it wasn’t real, that perhaps someone had tossed out a mannequin. After blinking several times in an effort to see past the weird stuff, I realized that thought was nothing more than blissful denial. The arm was real. Then it occurred to me that it might belong to someone who was sick or injured. It wouldn’t be the first time I found a drunk passed out somewhere outside my bar. Just in case the person was more than ill, I grabbed a plastic bag from my personal sack of trash and used it to raise a corner of the cardboard without actually touching it.

  I tried to see what lay beneath; but my visual kaleidoscope swelled into something so big and encompassing that it blinded me to all else, forcing me to drop the cardboard and stumble-feel my way back into the bar.

  Once I was inside with the door closed, the smell dissipated and the air cooled. The images, sounds, and tastes began to fade. I made my way down the hall, past the bathrooms to the main lounge area, where I normally would be getting things ready in preparation for opening the doors to my lunch crowd: my neighborhood regulars and the hard-core drinkers who provide a source of steady income for me at the expense of their own livers.

  I grabbed the bar phone, since my cell was still upstairs, and dialed 911.

  “Nine-one-one operator. Do you have an emergency?”

  I felt weak in the knees and leaned against the back bar. “There is a dead body in the alley behind my place,” I said. I relayed my name and address to the operator, who instructed me not to touch anything. Too late for that.

  “I’m dispatching officers there now,” the operator said, and then she started asking questions, some of which I couldn’t answer. “You said the body is outside?”

  “Yes, it’s on the ground beside the garbage Dumpster.”

  “Is it male or female?”

  I hesitated, struggling to interpret what I’d seen when I lifted the cardboard. I knew the arm was small and not muscular, and I thought I recalled a hint of femininity in the edge of a sleeve. “I think it might be female,” I told her.

  “But you’re not sure?”

  “No.”

  “Is the body mutilated?”

  “I don’t know. There’s cardboard piled on top of the body, so I couldn’t see the whole thing, just part of an arm.” This was a tiny lie; but with any luck, no one would know I’d lifted the cardboard.

  “I see,” said the operator in a tone that suggested otherwise. Realizing our conversation was likely to get more confusing if it continued, I prayed the cops would arrive soon.

  And just like that, my prayer was answered. Someone pounded on the front door and a male voice hollered, “Milwaukee police.”

  I hurried over and undid the locks, letting in two uniformed male officers. “The police are here,” I told the operator. I relocked the doors, disconnected the call—thus ending my inquisition, though there would be plenty more to come—and switched my attention to the officers.

  “You have a dead body here?” said the taller one, whose name pin read P. Cummings.

  I nodded. “It’s out back in the alley, by the garbage.”

  “Male or female?”

  “I’m not sure.” I repeated my covered-with-cardboard lie as I led both cops to the alley door. As soon as I stepped outside, I switched to mouth breathing to try to forestall another reaction. I stopped several feet from the Dumpster and pointed to the pile of cardboard, where that one pale arm protruded.

  Both officers were wearing gloves and Cummings’s partner, whose name pin read L. Johnson, walked over and lifted the cardboard. Instinctively, I clamped a hand over my mouth, a fatal mistake since it forced me to breathe through my nose.

  The smell hit me full force, triggering a cacophony of sound. The kaleidoscope of images blinded me again and some weird tastes followed. I found myself wishing for a drink as alcohol tends to minimize my reactions. And with the way things were going, this was starting to look like a four-martini day.

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

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  Copyright © 2013 by Beth Amos

  Excerpt from Murder on the Rocks © 2013 Beth Amos

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

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  ISBN: 978-0-7582-7275-1

 

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