Working Stiff

by Annelise Ryan

  “I was just doing my job,” I say defensively.

  “Almost getting yourself killed in the process,” Hurley grumbles. “Going back out there was a stupid thing to do. We would have found that gun cache soon enough.”

  “But Mattie figured it out first,” Dom says proudly.

  “It was the rug that did it,” I tell them. “That and Rubbish.” I explain how watching the cat play with the rug tipped me to the changed position of both the rug and the chair in Sid’s den. “I didn’t know why the chair had been moved,” I told them, “but I felt certain it had been and that Gina was trying to hide something. And then I remembered that the second hair we found on Karen Owenby’s body was short and bleached blond—just like Gina’s hair. That’s when I knew I had to get back out to the house and look under that rug.”

  “You should have called me,” Hurley grumbles.

  “I realize that now. Sorry.”

  “Apology accepted.”

  “I want to know how you came to be at the house, Alison,” I say, shifting to face her.

  She looks a little embarrassed. “I was, um, hoping to get some pictures. For the paper.”

  I don’t believe her for a second. I suspect she was following Hurley, possibly in hopes of getting a news scoop, but more likely because she was worried about Hurley’s interest in me.

  “There’s still one other matter I’d like to clear up,” Hurley says.

  “What’s that?” Alison says, looking relieved that the subject matter has shifted from her own escapades.

  A wicked smile flits across Hurley’s face and he leans across the table, locking eyes with me. “What’s this nipple incident I keep hearing about?”

  Izzy snorts and says, “You don’t want to know.”

  I stare at Hurley, hesitating, and he stares right back, waiting. The energy between us sparks and snaps. Alison glares at us both for a second and then leans toward me, trying to get in the way of our eye contact.

  A chirping sound breaks the tension and Hurley reaches into his pocket for his cell phone. He flips it open, listens a minute, and then says, “Be right there.”

  I smile sweetly at Hurley. “Darn,” I say. “No time to explain now.”

  “There’s time,” Hurley says, snapping his phone closed and looking smug. “You and Izzy are coming with me. Better get your food to go because we have an appointment with another dead body.”

  Halloween night in Sorenson, Wisconsin, usually resembles any other small town: trick-or-treaters, costume parties, and lots of cheerfully scary decorations. But Deputy Coroner Mattie Winston is finding this year a little different, because among all the fake carnage is a very real, very dead body…

  When Mattie and her boss/best friend, Izzy, are called to the home of waitress and part-time model Shannon Tolliver, they find the ghoulish decorations just a bit too authentic. For among the fake blood and skeletons is the corpse of Shannon herself—and the evidence screams murder.

  Since the whole town knows Shannon recently had a very public argument with her estranged husband, Erik, he’s suspect #1 for homicide detective Steve Hurley. Tall, dark, and blissfully blue-eyed detective Steve Hurley, that is…. But Mattie happens to know Erik truly loved his wife, and is simply incapable of the brutal act—even though he owns the exact same caliber handgun as the murder weapon…

  Determined to unearth the truth—and maybe spend a little quality time with Detective Hunky—Mattie puts her scalpel-sharp medical skills to work, and digs a little deeper. What she uncovers is stranger than anyone could have imagined…

  It seems Shannon’s murder is just the tip of a very fatal iceberg. Now, in order to solve a case that’s getting more dangerous by the minute—and to save Erik from the slammer—Mattie will have to risk everything to catch a killer who’s capable of doing anything once he’s cornered. And this time, it’s not just Mattie’s life that’s on the line…

  Turn the page for an exclusive sneak peek at Scared Stiff, the new Mattie Winston mystery by Annelise Ryan.

  Available in hardcover in September 2010.

  Chapter 1

  Despite the fact that I hang around dead bodies a lot these days, I find the scene before me very disturbing. The backdrop is ordinary enough: a well-maintained, ranch-style suburban home set on a generous plot of land near the edge of town. But any sense of normalcy ends with the front yard, which is littered with dead bodies. Fortunately, only one of the bodies is real, though I suppose it’s not so fortunate for the victim in question, who I’ve been told has been murdered.

  As if the body farm isn’t surreal enough, my clothing adds to the absurdity: I’m wearing a full-skirted, white ballroom dress with puffy sleeves that make my shoulders look wider than a linebacker’s. Clipped to the bodice is my ID badge, which bears my name, Mattie Winston, and my title, deputy coroner. Though I’m still kind of new at this dead body stuff, I’m pretty sure my outfit isn’t the sort of couture one would normally wear to a crime scene. But then, who knows? I don’t think there’s a designer who has tackled this particular niche. I can see possibilities though: shirts and pants with chalk outlines drawn on them, sexy, peek-a-boo blouses with strategically placed bullet holes and knife tears, and, of course, lots of blood-red colored material.

  In spite of the macabre scene and thoughts, in a perverse sort of way I’m happy to be here. Five minutes ago I was at a Halloween costume party being bored to tears by “William-not-Bill,” an obsessive-compulsive accountant in a Dracula costume. He is a date my friend, Izzy, fixed me up with, making me wonder what horrible thing I’ve done to Izzy to earn such retribution. After less than an hour in William-not-Bill’s company, I was trying desperately to come up with a plausible plan of escape when my beeper chirped and saved me. My relief was countered by a smidgen of guilt when I remembered that work for me meant someone else was dead, but probably not as dead as the date I was on. It was stone-cold, bones-only, well-beyond-the-putrid-stage dead.

  I tried not to look too relieved at my reprieve as I snatched my beeper up from the table and gave William-not-Bill an apologetic smile. “Duty calls,” I said, feigning disappointment. “I’m afraid we’ll have to make it an early night.”

  William-not-Bill frowned and said, “Darn it. Are you sure you need to go?”

  I’d never been so sure of anything in my entire life. “I’m afraid so,” I told him.

  “I’d really like to see you again. Can I give you a call sometime?”

  I would have rather stabbed myself blind with a dull fork and was tempted to say so when Izzy, who is only five feet tall and dressed tonight as the Keebler Elf, tapped me on the shoulder.

  Aside from being my date rescue, Izzy is my neighbor, my landlord, and my boss. He is also the anti-me: dark where I’m light, short where I’m tall, and male to my female. We do have three things in common however: fat-hoarding metabolisms, fondness for men, and jobs that require the removal of human organs. Izzy removes organs because he’s the county’s Medical Examiner. I used to remove organs, or at least assist in the process, inside a hospital operating room, which is where my soon-to-be-ex-husband, David, works as a surgeon. But after catching a coworker named Karen Owenby playing with a certain private organ on David, I ditched both him and the job. Now I work with Izzy in the M. E.’s office and while I still assist with organ removal, the goods aren’t as fresh as they used to be.

  “Mattie? You ready?” Izzy asked as William-not-Bill pouted like a child.

  “Absolutely.” I got up from the table and beat a hasty exit—not an easy task given the wide girth of my gown, the two-foot wand I was carrying, and the crown that kept sliding off my head. I left Izzy, whose legs are only a third the length of mine, behind in my wake, along with several broken drink glasses my skirt knocked from tables as I passed. By the time Izzy caught up to me I was standing next to his car in the parking lot, tapping my foot impatiently.

  “What’s the rush?” he asked. “Afraid a house might drop on you?”


  “I’m Glinda, the good witch,” I reminded him. “Houses don’t fall on Glinda.”

  “Then why the big hurry? I haven’t seen you run that fast for anything other than ice cream in a long time.”

  “Very funny,” I said, giving him a dirty look. “I didn’t want to give Dracula a chance to ask for my number again. Though I have to admit his costume was perfect. He spent the last two hours sucking the life out of me.” I shook my head woefully. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into dating that bozo. He has a comb-over for Christ’s sake. His only saving grace is that he’s tall.” This is actually an important asset for me. I hit the six-foot mark at the age of sixteen, which made me a good foot taller than all of the boys for most of my high school years. That, combined with my ample bosom, made me very popular during the slow songs at school dances.

  Izzy opened his door, got in the car, and reached over to unlock my side. The car is a fully restored Impala from the sixties. No such thing as automatic locks. Unfortunately, there are no bucket seats either, which means I have to pretzel six feet of me into the same amount of space Izzy uses.

  I ripped the crown from my head and threw it and my wand into the back seat. Then I tried unsuccessfully to stuff the skirt of my gown down around me. As we pulled out of the parking lot, I imagined it must look like a giant puff ball was sitting in the passenger seat.

  “Give William a break,” Izzy said as I spat taffeta. “So he’s got a touch of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. What’s the big deal? It’s his attention to detail that makes him such an ace accountant.”

  “A touch of OCD? I’ll have you know he shot his cuffs at least fifty times, straightened the tablecloth a dozen times, and counted how many people were at the party every ten minutes. I can’t guess how many times he cleaned all the silverware at the table. And don’t even get me started on the fangs.”

  Izzy conceded with a sigh. “Okay, maybe he’s a little anal retentive.”

  “Doubt it,” I snapped back. “He’s got his head so far up his ass there isn’t room there for anything else. And just how old is he, anyway?”

  “Late forties, maybe early fifties.”

  “That’s a bit of a spread, don’t you think? He’s got to be at least fifteen years older than me.”

  “I’m twelve years older than Dom.”

  “That’s different. You’re gay.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?” Izzy laughed. “Besides, it’s not like you were looking for a serious date. You just wanted someone to tote along to make Hurley jealous.”

  This was true. Steve Hurley is a tall, dark, and blissfully blue-eyed homicide detective that I’ve known for all of three weeks, ever since I became Izzy’s assistant. For me it was lust at first sight, which unfortunately occurred over Karen Owenby’s freshly murdered body. Things kind of went downhill from there, particularly after I became a suspect in the case.

  “Clearly it was a wasted effort,” I pouted.

  “Hey, it’s not my fault Hurley didn’t show up at the party.”

  With that one sentence, Izzy shot straight to the heart of my misery. I sulked for the remainder of the journey, which was all of three minutes since Sorenson isn’t a very big town. When we arrived at our destination, I unfolded myself from Izzy’s car like a performer in Cirque du Soleil and stood a moment to let the blood flow back into my legs. Then I reached into the back seat and took out my processing kit.

  That’s how I ended up here on the edges of suburbia, surrounded by bodies on a Saturday night, dressed like a white witch carrying a large tackle box.

  Chapter 2

  Izzy and I pause long enough to don gloves and shoe covers. With that done, he grabs his camera while I take out the digital recorder he gave me a couple of weeks ago for documenting scene observations. I turn the recorder on and put it in voice activation mode. After trying to find a place on my outfit to clip it, I settle for sticking it down inside my cleavage, or what a boy in my high school geography class once dubbed the “hot-and-gentle divide.”

  Despite the darkness outside, the yard is brightly lit thanks to Halloween spotlights and the flashing bars atop the cop cars parked in the driveway. At the foot of a huge oak tree off to my right, a man sits strapped into a large wooden chair. On his head is something that looks like an old-fashioned electrocution helmet. Nailed to the tree a foot above his head is a large board that has the words ON and OFF painted on it with a fork-shaped lever clearly placed in the ON position. Wires are running from the lever to the helmet and the clothes on the man appear to be singed.

  On closer inspection I see that the helmet is actually a metal mixing bowl turned upside down and the handle on the board is made out of tin foil, but the effect is realistic enough to make me shiver.

  On the opposite side of the tree is another body, this one hanging from a thick rope, its face painted a ghastly blue color, the body swinging slightly in the night breeze. A third body is half buried in a makeshift grave, its hands and feet protruding from the freshly-turned soil. At its head is a gravestone that bears the inscription: Who turned out the lights?

  Four more bodies are strewn about, all of them wearing blood-soaked clothes: one has a large butcher knife protruding from its chest; another has its head lying a conspicuous distance from its body. The third one is missing its arms and legs, though they are lying nearby, and the fourth one is splayed halfway down the steps of the front porch, a glistening trail of blood marking its journey from the front door.

  This last body is the one I zero in on since there is a trio of police officers—two in uniform, one in plainclothes—grouped around it. I know most of the cops in town either because they’re Sorenson lifers like me, or because we became acquainted years ago when I worked in the ER. I even dated one of them briefly, a sweet guy named Larry Johnson who is the plainclothes officer in tonight’s group. I never felt any reciprocal attraction to Larry, but if I had it would have died some time ago when he came into the hospital for hemorrhoid surgery. I was the scrub nurse on the case and the sight of Larry’s jingleberries hanging above his dingleberries would have put a definite damper on future intimacies.

  One of the uniforms in tonight’s group is a guy named Al who I’ve known for a decade or so, but the second uniform is new to me, and he looks like he’s twelve. The one face conspicuously absent from the group is Steve Hurley’s.

  “Hey, where are Sleepy, Sneezy, and Dopey?” Larry yells as Izzy and I approach. Al and the new guy snigger. I realize they have misinterpreted our costumes, mistaking me for Snow White and Izzy for one of my dwarfs.

  “I don’t know,” I say, setting down my scene kit and glancing around the yard. “Where are the real cops?”

  “Ouch,” says Larry as the other two groan. “Okay, truce.”

  I turn my attention to the body on the stairs and wrinkle my nose. There is a faint odor in the air, one that tells me this body has been here a while. The weather over the past week or so has been uncharacteristically warm for late October in Wisconsin, with temperatures in the high seventies during the day and the low sixties at night. Normally we’d expect highs in the fifties with frost or snow warnings at night, but this year October decided to go out on a high note. This last gasp of summer proved a delightful treat here in a state where snow blowers are considered a necessity five months out of the year, but it also allowed putrefaction to set in a little sooner than it otherwise would have.

  “Do you know who she is?” Izzy asks, using his camera to shoot pictures and video of both the body and our immediate surroundings.

  “We’re pretty certain it’s Shannon Tolliver,” Larry says.

  One of the advantages of living in a small town is that eventually you get to know almost everyone, if not by name, than at least by face. Here the six degrees of separation are often narrowed down to one or two. I’m at a slight disadvantage because of my last job. Even though working as a nurse in the operating room of the town’s hospital allowed me to cross paths with a lot of
people, most of them were draped, gowned, bonneted, and drugged into oblivion. As a result, I’m quicker to recognize some people by their navels or knees as opposed to their faces.

  Tonight’s victim is someone I do know by face, though it’s hard to be sure it’s her. The body is lying on its back with the feet at the top of the stairs and the head at the bottom. Gravity has done its job. What little blood is left in the body has settled in the head and face, causing gross discoloration and swelling.

  “Who found her?” I ask.

  Al says, “A couple of trick-or-treaters who got the scare of their lives when their parents drove them to this house. The parents rounded the kids up and then called it in on a cell phone.”

  I grimace. Kids traipsing near our corpse and running hell-bent through the yard means contamination of our scene.

  I note two holes in Shannon’s torso that appear to be bullet entry wounds, both of them surrounded by the blood-soaked cloth of her blouse. Years of working as a nurse have gifted me with the rather dubious talent of being able to estimate blood loss with a reasonable degree of accuracy. A quick estimate of the dried pool beneath Shannon’s body and the trail leading back from it to the house tells me there’s a good chance she bled to death.

  Squealing wheels sound behind us and, as I turn to see a familiar black car pull up, my heart quickens and a different kind of shiver goes through me.

  Hurley.

  He parks right behind one of the spotlights, forcing me to squint as I search eagerly for his long-legged stride. But something is wrong. The silhouette I see has two heads and way too many arms. For a second I think it must be Hurley’s Halloween costume but it turns out to be something much scarier. It’s Hurley walking side by side with Alison Miller.