Stiff Competition

by Annelise Ryan

  Hurley shoots me a horrified look. “Are you suggesting that we wait three years before we can be together on a regular basis?”

  “Of course I’m not suggesting it. I was being facetious . . . somewhat, anyway. But let’s face it; Emily is a problem right now. She’s a huge obstacle. And until we can get past that . . .” I leave the rest for him to fill in.

  Hurley looks morose and depressed, and I’m mirroring his feelings. The Fates certainly haven’t been working to our advantage lately, and I’m starting to wonder if we’re doomed as a couple. “Let’s keep up with the counseling,” I say in a tone that I hope sounds more hopeful than I feel. “Give it a little more time.”

  Hurley sighs and grips the steering wheel tightly. “I don’t want to give it more time, Mattie. I want to be with you and Matthew now. I want to be a normal family.”

  “Well, that option is out,” I say with a laugh. “We will never be anyone’s definition of normal, even if we are together.”

  “I’ve been tossing an idea around in my head,” Hurley says. “I was thinking about Emily and how she behaves great when she thinks I’m going about my normal daily work, but has a meltdown whenever she thinks I’m spending time with you and Matthew outside of work. What if I tell her I’m going into work early a couple of days during the week and instead come over to your place and get Matthew up for you? That way I’d get to spend some more time with both him and you, and you can get a little extra rest.”

  I consider the idea and at first blush it sounds like a reasonable, solid plan . . . heavenly, even. But the more I think about it, the less I like it. “This is a small town, Hurley. Things that are secret rarely stay that way. And Emily isn’t stupid. She’s bound to be suspicious, and she has that gnarly new boyfriend with the driver’s license, so it wouldn’t be all that hard for her to cruise by my place to check up on us and see if your car is here. If she finds out we lied to her, or tried to dupe her, it’s going to set things back and undermine any progress we may have made.”

  Hurley scowls. “I told her she’s not allowed to ride anywhere with the boyfriend.”

  “And we both know she does everything you tell her to, right?” I say with skepticism.

  Emily’s new boyfriend is Johnny Chester, son of Kevin Chester, one of my old high school classmates. Kevin was saddled with the nickname Chester the Molester in my day, and it stemmed from more than the obvious rhyming taunt. He had been—and for all I know still is—a very good-looking but not very bright fellow, with sticky fingers and a talent for misbehaving. Kevin’s father, Leo, had been blessed with the same good looks, lack of common sense, and penchant for trouble. When Kevin was born, Leo was in jail. He made it out for Kevin’s fifth and fourteenth birthdays, but other than that, Leo’s permanent mailing address since the late eighties has been the Columbia Correctional Institution. Kevin didn’t fare much better. He got locked up during our junior year in high school for robbing the local ice cream parlor. Had it not been for the trail of molten ice cream drops with multicolored sprinkles that led from the scene straight to Kevin’s house, he might have gotten away with it. He did a year in juvie and never did finish high school. I heard he got his GED during his second lockup, this time in his father’s alma mater, for stealing a car. A third stint came after he was caught shoplifting, and a fourth when he stole a gun from a friend’s house, a gun he later used to shoot out the tires on the car of some guy who’d pissed him off. At this point, I suspect the Chester family probably has a wing named after them at the prison.

  Kevin’s wife, Lila, managed to kick out a trio of kids in between lockups. My feelings regarding Lila are mixed. She was one of those kids in high school who got picked on a lot because her family was poor. She dressed in old, worn clothes that were woefully out of date, she often smelled funny, and she walked around with a morose expression all the time. While these off-putting traits made her a target with a lot of the girls, she had no lack of suitors because word got around that Lila put out, which just goes to show how non-discriminative high school boys can be when it comes to sex.

  That Emily chose one of the progeny of the Lila-Kevin union as her main guy hasn’t sat well with Hurley, though I suspect he wouldn’t be happy with anyone Emily tried to date. Concerned myself, I did pry a little by quizzing my niece, Erika, about Johnny Chester. Surprisingly, she said he seems like a straight arrow and a nice guy. He tells people he’s a practitioner of Wicca, but given the practices his forbearers partook in, a little witch worship seems like a mild transgression. And Erika said that even though Johnny likes to act and talk tough around other guys, when he’s away from certain people he’s a sweet, friendly kid. Even more surprising is the fact that he’s an honor roll student. Either Lila had some smarts that she hid well, or Johnny won the gene pool lottery.

  In response to my skeptical question, Hurley’s scowl deepens and he shakes his head slowly. He says nothing. He doesn’t need to. We both know that Emily, like most teenagers, is rebellious enough to do something simply because she was told not to.

  “What does Dr. Naggy have to say about your idea of pretending to go to work and sneaking over to my place instead?” I ask Hurley.

  “I haven’t run that specific idea by her,” Hurley admits. “But we discussed the general topic of Matthew and Emily, and trying to find a way to make her more comfortable with this new family dynamic. She keeps telling me to give it more time.” Hurley sighs in frustration. “How much more time can I give it?”

  “As much as we need to. And I do mean we. This is a joint effort, Hurley. I’m in this with you.” I reach over and touch his arm. “Right now you have the brunt of the issues with Emily to deal with, but that doesn’t mean I’m not with you in thought, even if I can’t be with you in deed.”

  Hurley refuses to be placated. His face tightens and his eyes narrow. “I want to spend more time with my son,” he says, his jaw tight. “I want to spend more time with you.”

  There is a melancholy tone in his voice that makes my heart clutch. I love this man so much it makes me want to cry. I want the same things he does, but the raw facts of our situation are that Emily is a member of his family as much as Matthew and I are. And until we can resolve the issues that are keeping us apart, this is the way it will have to be.

  “Put yourself in Emily’s shoes,” I say. “She has lost all the family she knew and finds herself the outsider in this new family unit she’s been forced to live in. She’s no doubt scared . . . scared of being abandoned and alone. And because of that, she’s testing you. She’s testing us. If she gives us a hard enough time and we take it all without giving up on her, maybe she’ll start to believe we really are her family and she’ll come to trust us. It would be painfully easy to hand her over to the foster system and say we can’t deal with her, and she knows that. So she’s keeping her emotions locked down, trying to minimize the hurt she fears is coming. Whatever we do, we can’t give up on her.”

  Hurley looks over at me and smiles. “That’s one of the things I love about you, Winston. You have a kind heart.”

  “Mitigated by some really evil thoughts,” I say, remembering my actions earlier with Izzy.

  Hurley arches his brows at me. “Such as?”

  “It doesn’t matter, as long as my good side wins out over my evil side most of the time.”

  “You don’t have an evil side,” he says.

  I wink at him and give him a sly smile. “Oh, but I do. There are things about me you don’t know, Hurley. Things that might give you pause the next time you suggest we should live together.”

  His smile morphs into a worried frown, but it doesn’t last long. He dismisses my claim with a harrumph. “I don’t care how evil you think you can be, Winston. I just want to be with you and my son more than I am now. Somehow we have to find a way to get past this hide-and-seek game we’re playing and establish some semblance of normalcy. I feel like things are getting worse instead of better.”

  He has a point. We’ve bee
n creative in finding ways to be together over the past two months, stealing minutes whenever and wherever we could—during his lunch breaks, on his way back from an investigation, on his way to the grocery store, on my way back from a doctor’s appointment—brief interludes where we pretend that we’re a normal couple, a normal family. It was easy at first because Matthew and I were more or less at his beck and call. Now that I’m back to work, finding those niches in time is bound to get more challenging.

  “Try to be patient,” I say. “I know it isn’t easy, and I understand how frustrated you are. But we owe it to ourselves, to Emily, and to Matthew to work this thing out, no matter how long it takes.”

  Hurley makes no comment because we have arrived at our destination, forcing us to table the topic for now. I make a mental note to drop by Maggie’s office and have a chat with her sometime soon. Maybe she can give me some insight to help my relationship with Emily move forward a little faster. Or maybe she’ll tell me it’s time to give it up and move on. The idea of the latter outcome makes my heart ache.

  Chapter 5

  Lars Sanderson’s home is a town house in a relatively new area of development on the west end. Like many of the newly developed sections bordering the outskirts of Sorenson, the land where the town houses now stand was once farm property. Hurley parks in the lot in front of the unit that belongs to Lars, next to a squad car. Inside the car is Patrick Devonshire, one of the uniformed cops for Sorenson.

  Hurley rolls down his window and Patrick does the same. “Anything to tell me?” Hurley asks.

  Patrick shakes his head. “I went up and knocked on the door when I got here a little over an hour ago and no one answered. A neighbor was out and she said as far as she knows, Lars lives alone. There is another entrance in back and I checked it to make sure it was locked. I’ve been sitting here ever since and no one has so much as approached the place.”

  “Thanks, Patrick. You can go and I’ll take it from here. Thanks for sitting on it for me.”

  “No problem.” Patrick starts up his squad car, backs out of his space, and leaves.

  Hurley and I sit for a moment, looking around at the surrounding buildings. The development is one of those hastily constructed things with little thought given to appearances. The structures are covered with vinyl siding, four units to a building, two stories—or perhaps three if there’s a basement—to a unit. Lars owns one of the end units, which are typically a bit pricier than the middle ones because they have a private wall and more windows to allow for light. I see that the middle units at least have skylights in the roof to try to make up for the lack of natural light, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn they are more trouble than they’re worth. Even I can tell that the construction on the place is subpar and I’m betting that if those skylights don’t leak yet, they soon will. The whole development is only four years old, yet I can see windows with fog between the double panes, shingles missing from the roof, and cracks in the siding. The railings on the porches are vinyl, too, and half of them are bent, torn, or otherwise broken. The concrete stairs are filled with chips and cracks. It’s the sort of place Lars is known for developing, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it’s one of his projects. Even if it is, I wonder why Lars would live here. Was his financial situation a tight one? Or was he perhaps hoping to imply that the project is better built than it is? Living in one of the units would certainly send that message.

  Hurley finally grabs his camera and gets out of the car. I grab my scene kit, which also contains a camera, though mine is only for stills and short videos, and we head for Lars’s end unit. “How are you going to get in?” I ask.

  From his coat pocket, Hurley removes an evidence bag that contains the key ring we removed from Lars’s pocket earlier, though I notice that the car key that was on it before is now gone. “I had Jonas dust these for prints right away and the only ones that came up were the victim’s. I’m hoping one of these keys is to the front door, but if not, I’ll call the manager.”

  “Speaking of keys, have you looked at Lars’s car yet?”

  “I gave it a cursory inspection but I’m leaving it for Jonas to go over with a fine-tooth comb.”

  “I take it you didn’t find anything of interest in it?”

  Hurley shakes his head. “What was interesting is what wasn’t in it. There was no hunting gear of any kind. So whatever he was doing out there in the woods, it wasn’t hunting.”

  We climb the stairs to the front door, and Hurley strikes gold with the second key on the ring. We set down the items we are carrying just inside the door and don gloves. Then we take a moment to survey what we can see of the place.

  The small foyer we enter opens onto the living room, which is a sight to behold. It is furnished with large, velveteen, mismatched pieces in shades of bloodred, royal purple, and coal black. There is a huge, stuffed, round settee in red, a black chaise lounge, a couple of purple overstuffed chairs, and a black, faux leather couch in case someone doesn’t want to sit on something fuzzy. The walls are painted a pale blue with gilded trim and moldings, and the carpet is gold-colored shag. Over in one corner is a metal stand on wheels, the top of it covered with liquor bottles and drinking glasses. The room is garish to the extreme; I feel like I just stepped inside an Austin Powers movie.

  The shades are all closed—probably a good thing in this case since it darkens the interior—so Hurley reaches over and flips a switch on the wall. There is a gas fireplace on the front wall of the room and mounted above it is a huge TV. Flanking the bottom of the TV on the mantel are two lava lamps, one in red and the other in purple. On either side of the fireplace are built-in shelves. The ones on the right are filled with DVDs, and a quick scan of the titles reveals a few with ratings near the end of the alphabet. The shelves on the left contain a music system and an assortment of CDs that suggest Lars had eclectic musical tastes.

  There is a coffee table in front of the couch—wood with a glass insert on the top and two drawers built into the bottom beneath a shelf. An assortment of magazines on the under shelf suggest Lars had quite the varied reading interests, too. I can see issues of Playboy and Hustler as well as Reader’s Digest and National Geographic.

  Hurley does a quick pan of the room with his video camera while I shoot a bunch of still pictures, hoping my camera doesn’t die of embarrassment and humiliation.

  There is a small attached dining room, and while it’s not as bad as the living room, it will never make it into the pages of House Beautiful. The table and chairs look like something out of a knight’s castle—dark heavy wood with thick legs and feet on the table, high wood backs on the chairs, and fake rivets in all of it. The wallpaper on one wall is red with gold veins running through it; the other three walls have some kind of textured gold-colored paper. In contrast to the heavy furnishings, a china cabinet in one corner displays a set of delicate bone china in a floral pattern. The contrast is puzzling.

  We move on to the kitchen, which is refreshingly ordinary with plain oak cabinets, a double-sided stainless steel sink, and basic white appliances. After snapping a few shots, I sneak a peek inside the fridge where I’m not surprised to find three partially empty wine bottles, an assortment of microbrews, and some cheap, knock-off brands of soda. Foodwise, there isn’t much: some cheeses, basic condiments, an outdated half gallon of milk that is still half-full, and an assortment of takeout containers. One of the containers holds a pasta dish of some sort and the others are all Chinese food from the Peking Palace. I hold the containers open while Hurley films the contents, then I grab all the wine and food items that are open and bag and tag them for later scrutiny. I doubt they will have much evidentiary value, but I’ve learned that even the smallest, seemingly most insignificant thing can sometimes prove to be a case solver.

  I close the fridge when I’m done and survey the rest of the room. Next to the sink are two wineglasses, one empty, one with a little bit of red wine still in the bottom. The partially filled glass has the faint remn
ants of smeared, berry-colored lip prints around its edge, and after pointing this out to Hurley and both of us filming it, I pour the dredges of wine into a container, cap it, and label it. Then I place both glasses into paper evidence bags, and label and seal those.

  Next to the kitchen is a laundry room—also refreshingly ordinary—and from there we move on to a washroom that is as garish as the living room. The walls are painted bloodred and the sink and toilet are gleaming black. White shag carpet finishes it off. Aside from being one of the ugliest bathrooms I’ve ever seen, it offers up little in the way of interest.

  The last room on the main floor is an office area, which could also double as a bedroom if one so chose. Entering it is like walking into another dimension. Behind the closed door we find gleaming hardwood floors, tasteful beige walls, a polished oak desk and oak bookcase. We also find someone standing behind the desk: an attractive woman, nicely dressed, blond hair, blue eyes, mid- to late forties.

  I recognize her right away—it’s not hard to do since her picture can be seen around town—as Kirsten Donaldson, a local real estate broker who worked for one of the chain realty companies up until five years ago. Then, after divorcing her wealthy husband, she started her own realty business. Though her face is familiar, finding her standing here in Sanderson’s home office is a shock that unnerves both me and Hurley. Judging from the hand the woman claps over her chest, she is as startled as we are.

  “Who the hell are you?” Hurley snaps.

  “I’m Kirsten Donaldson. Who the hell are you?” she fires back.

  “I’m Detective Steve Hurley with the Sorenson Police Department. And this is Mattie Winston. What are you doing in here? We understood that this was the residence of Lars Sanderson.”

  “It is.”

  “And that he lived alone,” Hurley adds.

  “He does.”

  “Then I ask again,” Hurley says, his patience clearly growing thin. “What are you doing in here? And how did you get in?”