Working Stiff

by Annelise Ryan

  As my brain starts scrambling to figure out a way to either fess up to, or dismiss the significance of the underwear, Hurley places a finger inside each end of the elastic waistband and pulls it taut, holding the panties out for all to see. “Look at the size of these bloomers,” he mutters, and from the look on his face, you’d think he was holding up the combined sails for the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. A couple of the cops in the room snigger.

  “I don’t think they belong to the victim,” Hurley continues, his brow wrinkling in puzzlement. “She’s smaller than this and the lingerie I found in her dresser is all fancy stuff. Like from Victoria’s Secret. These are kind of plain.”

  Maybe that’s what drew David to Karen, I think. She had better underwear. I hear more sniggers from the bleacher section and suddenly fear everyone in the room can read my mind.

  “And look how worn the elastic is,” Hurley goes on. He tugs the waistband a few times to show just how far it can stretch. “Izzy, did you see any evidence that the victim was sexually molested?”

  “Nothing obvious,” Izzy says. “But I’ll let you know for sure when I’ve completed her post.” He hands me a paper sack and says, “Go bag those.”

  I am only too happy to oblige. I walk over to Hurley and grab the panties from his hand, stuffing them into the bag.

  “Hey, careful with those,” Hurley says. “They’re evidence.”

  Yeah, evidence that I need to start a serious diet. I fold the top of the bag closed while I wonder what the penalty is for tampering with crime scene evidence. No way am I going to admit now that those panties are mine. And if I can figure out how to get away with it, this evidence is going to disappear.

  I’m pondering my dilemma and following the funeral home stretcher out the door when Hurley grabs me by the arm. He holds me a moment, giving me a quick scan from head to toe. “There’s something you’re not telling me,” he grumbles.

  Shit. He figured it out. Took a gander at the broad beam of my ass and made the connection.

  “What else do you know about Karen Owenby?” he asks, eyeing me suspiciously.

  Oh, that. Well, there’s the fact that she’s a husband-stealing, skin-flute playing, two-timing slut, but I figure I probably shouldn’t speak so unkindly of the dead. Frankly, I’m reluctant to speak at all, the scene I witnessed earlier between David and Karen still fresh in my mind. I’ve seen enough episodes of Murder She Wrote to know things aren’t looking particularly good for David right now. And while I currently consider him a lower life form than pond scum, I don’t think he’s capable of murder. I need some time to sort things out.

  Of course, all Hurley has to do is ask questions at the hospital and he’ll know everything anyway. Gossip spreads through that place at warp speed, and by now it’s likely even the dishwashers in the cafeteria know all the gory details, right down to the size and shape of the birthmark on David’s Mr. Winkie.

  “Well?” Hurley prompts.

  “I think she’s seeing my ex-husband,” I offer as nonchalantly as I can.

  Hurley’s eyes narrow. “Ex-husband? You’re divorced?”

  “Might as well be. It’s not final yet, but the papers have been filed. Well, sort of.”

  “Sort of?”

  “I haven’t actually filed them yet. But I’m going to.”

  Hurley scrutinizes my face for a moment and my ears start to feel really hot. “And you think this Owenby woman was seeing your husband?” he asks.

  Oh, she’s seen him all right. “I’m pretty sure they had a…relationship,” I mumble.

  “His name?”

  “Whose?”

  Hurley’s eyes fire tiny arrows at me. Man, he’s good.

  “Winston,” I tell him. “Dr. David Winston. He’s a surgeon.”

  I see Hurley’s mental wheels spinning and can practically smell the burning rubber. “How long you two been split up?” he asks.

  “Couple of months.”

  “And how long has he been seeing this Owenby woman?”

  “I’m not sure,” I say. This answer is an honest one. I have no idea how long, or even if, David was seeing Karen before that fateful night in the OR.

  Hurley cocks his head and gives me a funny look. It dawns on me that he might consider me a suspect—the woman scorned and all that—and I am about to act insulted when I remember that a murderous thought or two has crossed my mind in the past couple of months. One of the side perks of having a career where you’re saving lives all the time is that it gives you an endless source of ideas on how to end them. I’d mentally exercised some of my more devious ones on Karen countless times.

  Hurley whips a pen out of his shirt pocket and a little notepad out of his jeans pocket—mighty nice fitting jeans, I note—and scribbles something down. “What’s your phone number?”

  “I don’t have a phone.” The look he gives me suggests that I better not be lying.

  “Do you have an address? Or do you live in a refrigerator box?”

  I almost laugh at that one, but something tells me Hurley might take it the wrong way. So I give him my address—Izzy’s address, actually, since the little guest cottage doesn’t have one of its own. Then he asks for David’s address. When I give him that, his eyebrows shoot up.

  “You live next door to your ex?” he asks, askance.

  “Sort of.”

  “That’s a bit masochistic, don’t you think?”

  “Are you a detective or a shrink?”

  “A little of both, actually,” he says, flashing me a crooked grin.

  I’m about to come back with another witty retort but I’m rendered temporarily speechless when my mind conjures up a vision of a psychiatrist’s office with me stretched out on a couch and Hurley standing beside me. He bends down, his face moving closer to mine….

  “Anything else, Detective?” I ask, clearing my throat and putting my mental mini movie on pause. I’ll store it for now and play the rest of it out later.

  “Yeah. Given your, uh, proximity to this case, I think it would be best if you weren’t involved with the autopsy.”

  “Understood.” And fine with me. The thought of doing an autopsy on someone I know is discomfiting, to say the least. I may hate the woman, but that doesn’t mean I want to see her dressed like some hunter’s ten-point kill. Besides, I have places to go and things to do. At the top of the list is getting my underwear back.

  Chapter 6

  The sun is coming up as we leave Karen Owenby’s house. Izzy says he’ll drop me off at the cottage on his way to the morgue and suggests I come into work around ten, giving him plenty of time to finish the autopsy on Karen.

  I take advantage of the ride home to quiz him about my latest interest. “So what do you know about this Steve Hurley guy?”

  “Not much. He moved here a few months ago from Chicago for reasons no one quite knows. He was a homicide cop there, too, and rumor has it he pissed off someone higher up in his department and got blackballed out of the place.”

  “Pissed them off how?”

  “Who knows? I’m not even sure that’s the truth. It may just be speculation.”

  “Is he good? I mean, does he know what he’s doing?”

  “He seems quite good, actually,” Izzy says with a tone of respect. “I imagine he has a lot more experience than most of the other cops here given that he spent fifteen years on the force in Chicago, four of those as a homicide detective.”

  “So why here? Why Sorenson of all places?”

  “I have no idea. Maybe he got tired of the big city and wanted a taste of small-town life.”

  “Does he have a family?”

  Izzy shoots me an amused look. “Quit being so damned cagey, Mattie. I could tell you were practically drooling over the guy. Why don’t you just come out and ask if he’s married or dating? That’s what you really want to know, isn’t it?”

  “No,” I say, indignant. “I was just trying to make polite conversation. Excuse the hell out of me.”

/>   “Oh, okay.”

  “And I wasn’t drooling.”

  When we reach the house I unfold myself, climb out of the car, and spend a minute leaning on my door, shifting from one foot to the other as I wait for the feeling to return to my legs. Stalling. Hoping. But Izzy can always outlast me, damn him.

  “Fine,” I say eventually. “Give it up. Tell me what you know.”

  Izzy smirks. “He’s single.”

  “Is he seeing anyone that you know of?”

  “I haven’t heard anything definite, but word has it Alison Miller’s been sniffing around.”

  Like me, Alison is a Sorenson lifer. We went to school together. Now she does double duty as a reporter and photographer for the local paper, which comes out twice a week on Monday and Thursday mornings. I don’t consider her interest in Hurley as any real threat.

  “If I know Alison, she’s most likely just using Hurley,” I tell Izzy. “Hoping to get an inside scoop. Besides, I happen to know she has a thing for bald men.”

  I send Izzy on his way and, once inside the cottage, I waddle into the bathroom, turn on the water in the tub, and strip. I hesitate before climbing in, aware of the painful throb I can still feel between my legs. My nurse’s training tells me I should apply ice for a while to try to minimize the swelling, but the thought of sticking an ice pack down there gives a whole new meaning to the term frigid. In the end I give in to the soothing warmth of the tub.

  After half an hour of luxurious soaking, I climb out, dry off, wrap myself in a towel, and down another handful of aspirin. Then I collapse onto the couch and start digesting everything that’s happened.

  I wonder if anyone has told David about Karen yet. Glancing at my watch, I realize he should be in the OR soon if he has surgeries scheduled for the day. I figure if I pop over to the hospital, I can catch him before he starts and be the one to break the news. That way I’ll have a chance to see the expression on his face when he hears about Karen’s murder.

  But first I have to take care of the evidence from my nocturnal spy mission.

  I dress and head off through the woods, searching for my scarf along the way. When I near the clearing I freeze and mutter a curse under my breath. David’s car is gone, as I hoped, but another one is parked in its place. And beneath the same window where I was last night is Detective Hurley, standing beside the wheelbarrow, my scarf in his hand.

  I hide behind a tree watching his ponderous expression and trying to decide how the hell I’m going to lie my way out of this one. As soon as Hurley wanders around to the far side of the house, I tiptoe back through the woods, hop in my car, and lead-foot it out of there.

  I’m not too crazy about the idea of showing my face at the hospital, but I hope that if the Fates are with me, I’ll be able to slip in, do what I need, and slip back out again. Unfortunately, the OR is a limited-access area, and because I no longer work at the hospital, I won’t be able to get in there on my own. And I’m not sure I want to go in there alone anyway; some of my ex-coworkers will undoubtedly consider my presence as an open invitation to ask painful, probing questions under the guise of social duty. I need an escort who can not only get me in, but also effectively deter any attempts at chitchat. And I know the perfect person for the job: Nancy Molinaro, the director of nursing.

  Unfortunately, my plan goes awry as soon as I set foot in the hospital lobby. There, off to one side being interviewed by a news crew from one of the local network TV stations, is Gina Carrigan, wife of Sidney Carrigan, one of the surgeons at Mercy Hospital. Gina is a tiny, pretty woman with huge blue eyes, short blond hair, and the sort of camera-loving aura that drives paparazzi wild. She is well-known, well liked, and highly respected in Sorenson, in part because her husband, Sidney, comes from money—lots of it. The Carrigan family have been big shots in Sorenson for several generations.

  Sidney and Gina live in the family home, a beautiful old house that sits on a gazillion acres of land just outside of town. I’ve been there several times for parties and have often admired the understated but obvious wealth. Even with my limited knowledge of the art world, I know that the paintings they have hanging in one room alone are worth about ten times my yearly salary.

  Despite all that wealth, or perhaps because of it, Sidney is very generous. He’s a great philanthropist, donating money to several worthy causes within the community. Gina gives too, but of her time more than her money, leaving the checkbook in Sidney’s hands. She volunteers for all sorts of community projects, regularly heads up task forces designed to promote some worthy cause or another, and can always be counted on to take an active stance on any issue that affects Sorenson and its citizenry. Her efforts, combined with her movie star looks, have made her a media darling locally and have even segued into the national news a time or two. Wherever Gina goes, a newspaper reporter or TV camera often follows. The woman gets the sort of ink and airtime any politician would envy.

  Consequently, running into her now is like my worst nightmare. I lower my head and hurry across the lobby, hoping I can sneak by without being noticed. But Gina sees me and immediately hails me down, right in the middle of her on-camera speech.

  “Mattie! Yoo-hoo! Over here.”

  I see the camera swoop in my direction and want to duck my head and run. But I know the cameraman already has me in his sights and that my best bet at this point is to try to turn the moment into nothing more than a hideously boring social encounter.

  So I paste on my best smile and walk over. “Gina! How good to see you,” I say, giving her a hug. I hate hugging tiny women. It always makes me feel like some sort of genetic accident. “You look great as always,” I tell her. And it’s true. Gina always looks stunning no matter where she is or what she’s doing.

  “You look pretty good yourself,” Gina lies. “What brings you to the hospital today? Are you coming back to work?”

  “No,” I answer with a nervous laugh, keenly aware the camera is still running. “Not today anyway.” I turn to give the film guy a dirty look and he finally lowers the camera, though I notice he hasn’t bothered to turn it off.

  “I hope you’re not here because of any health problems,” Gina says, looking prettily stricken.

  “No, nothing so dramatic. I’m just here to…um…visit a friend. What are you up to?” I add quickly, eager to change the subject.

  “Well, it is breast cancer month, you know. So we’re doing a public service spot to remind women about the importance of regular self-exams and mammograms. You know the drill.”

  “Of course.”

  “Say,” Gina says, her eyes widening with excitement, “want to be on TV? We need to film someone having a mammogram. Would you be willing to volunteer?”

  Oh, yeah, that’s my idea of stardom. Getting my boobs squished between two plastic plates on network TV. “As fun as that sounds, Gina, I’m afraid I’ll have to pass. I’m in a bit of a rush.”

  “Okay,” she says with a pretty pout. “Another time then. It sure is great to see you, Mattie. Don’t be such a stranger. And take care of yourself.”

  “Thanks. You, too.” I make a hasty departure and manage to get to the nursing office without any further delays.

  When I enter the outer office, Celia Watson, the main secretary and Nancy Molinaro’s personal guard dog, is sitting behind her desk, typing at a stunning ten-word-a-minute rate. Celia is about as suited for her secretarial job as elephants are for flight. I once asked her to type up a memo for the OR that was to go to a public health department. The memo was less than a page long, yet it had taken Celia an entire eight-hour shift to type it. Then the thing had seven errors in it, including the phrase, “in the interests of pubic health,” something I would later discover Karen Owenby had a special interest in. We all figured the only way Celia had managed to keep her job for the past five years was that she had some sort of dirt on Molinaro.

  “Morning, Celia,” I say.

  “Mattie!” Celia’s face breaks into a beaming smile. “Never th
ought I’d see you around these parts again.”

  That made two of us. “Molinaro in?”

  “She is, but she’s on the phone. Is this an emergency? ’Cause if it’s an emergency, I can stick my head in there.”

  Part of Celia’s perceived job description is the spreading of whatever rumors might be circulating, embellishing whatever and whenever she can. The hotter the gossip, the more excited she gets, and I can tell she is bursting at the seams to deliver the news of my arrival. For Celia, the sight of me is like the scent of a fresh kill to a hyena.

  I’ve never really liked Celia so I decide to be spiteful just for the hell of it. “I’m in no hurry,” I lie, easing myself into one of the molded plastic chairs that line the wall. “I’ll just wait.”

  I grab a nursing magazine that’s four years out of date and start flipping through the pages as Celia watches me. After thirty seconds, she starts fidgeting in her chair, a tentative expression on her face. Beads of sweat pop out on her forehead and run into her eyes, dampening the twenty pounds of mascara she has on her lashes. Three blinks later she has a trail of tiny black dots below her lower lids, as if a bug has run through an inkwell and then across her face. After three minutes of her continuous squirming, I come to the realization that I’ve grossly underestimated my ability to be spiteful. She’s driving me crazy.

  “What is it, Celia?” I say finally, lowering the magazine and letting out a weight-of-the-world sigh. “I can tell you have something you want to say. Spit it out.”

  She giggles like a schoolgirl and says, “Sorry, but I just have to know. Is it true David has a heart-shaped birthmark on his whatsit?”

  I give her the evil eye but it’s a wasted effort. People like Celia are born with a force field in place.

  “’Cause if he does,” she sniggers, “then you could say he walks around with a heart-on all the time.” She slaps her thigh and barks out a laugh, obviously pleased with herself.