Dead Ringer

by Annelise Ryan

  “That’s a new one.”

  “Isn’t this your block of days off?” Hurley says.

  “It is, but this case won’t let go of me. In fact, I was wondering if you could arrange for me to talk to the parents of our . . . victim tomorrow.” I lower my voice so little ears don’t hear. “I’d like to find out more about Lacy’s movements before she showed up in this area. If you’re too busy to come with me, maybe Junior or Bob Richmond could come along? I’d like to take Todd with me, too.”

  Hurley shrugs loose of my hold and I straighten and take a step back as he turns to face me. “Todd?” he says, raising his eyebrows. “Are we talking Eau Claire–and–forensic conference Todd?”

  I watch as Hurley’s eyes narrow ever so slightly. Something in the air feels off, a little dangerous. “Yes, that Todd,” I say. “He came down to help us with the case.”

  “Who invited him?”

  “No one,” I say, giving him a puzzled look. “Do you have a problem with him helping out?”

  Hurley looks at me and I try to read his expression. But he has his detective face on and it’s as placid and unreadable as the surface of still water. His gaze drifts down, and I see his nose wrinkle.

  “Have you been drinking?” he asks.

  “No,” I say automatically. Then I remember the two sips of wine I had. “Well, not really. Just two sips of wine.”

  Hurley reaches for my blouse and points to a dark stain above my left breast, a near twin to the one above my right breast, his eyebrows arched in question. But before he can say anything more, his cell phone rings. His eyes break away as he takes the phone from his shirt pocket, answers the call, and picks up his spoon again, turning his back to me.

  I move away from him and settle in on one of the island stools. There is a fruit bowl in front of me and I grab a handful of red grapes and munch on them as I study Hurley’s face and try to eavesdrop on his words. This last part is difficult, mainly because he isn’t saying much. I get a grunt, one “I see,” and an “interesting,” before he thanks the caller and asks to be kept posted. He disconnects the call and puts the phone back in his pocket.

  “Who was that?” I ask, trying to sound casual, even though my nerves are at full alert. I tell myself it’s nothing more than residual nervousness left over from the terse ambiguity created when he found me back with Maggie this morning. Yet it feels like much more.

  “One of the guys at work,” Hurley says, adding some salt to the pot.

  I wait for him to elaborate on the call, to tell me who specifically it was, or what it was about, but he doesn’t. I feel certain he’s still angry with me and decide to let this sleeping dog lie for now and tackle it later, after dinner, after the kids are either in bed or otherwise occupied. I slip off my stool and join Emily and Matthew in the breakfast nook, where I help Matthew color his picture.

  We eat at the dining-room table and the meal goes off without a hitch. The goulash is a big hit with everyone, even Matthew, who eats it exactly as it’s served—something that rarely happens with his food. Our conversations are typical, and while they don’t feel strained, the interplay between Hurley and me feels forced, like we’re actors playing the role of a happy family when, in fact, we aren’t one. Emily offers to clean up and do the dishes, and Matthew jumps in to help. The boy has been on his best behavior this evening, eating his food without playing with it and doing what he’s told without objection or tantrums. Maybe the Pod People got ahold of him and switched him out.

  Hurley gets up from the table as Emily and Matthew are clearing it and says, “I’m going up to the office. I have some reports I need to finish.”

  I consider following him and trying to talk to him in the office, but I decide to wait until after Matthew has gone to bed. Instead, I spend some time watching TV with my son before taking him upstairs and getting him ready for bed. I manage to find an old Bugs Bunny cartoon with Yosemite Sam in it, and it reminds me of Cory Llewellyn and his vociferous protests about our investigation. I make a mental note to pick Todd’s brain tomorrow for more information on the man.

  Once I have Matthew tucked into bed and have kissed him good night, I go to the home office and tell Hurley that Matthew is waiting for his good-night kiss from Daddy. Hurley’s only acknowledgment of what I’ve said, of my presence even, is that he gets up and heads for Matthew’s room. I’m hoping he’ll come to our room when he’s done with Matthew, so I plop down on the bed and flip on the TV. An hour goes by, and I know Hurley must have gone back into the office. I get up and go into the bathroom to get myself ready for bed; then I return to my TV watching, waiting patiently for Hurley’s arrival. I sit through several reruns of one of the CSI shows, fighting the growing heaviness in my eyelids, and groaning at times over the farfetched plots and unrealistic scientific abilities. It proves to be a losing battle, and sometime after eleven, I fall asleep, not knowing or caring who killed the annoying news anchor on the TV show.

  * * *

  When I awaken the next morning, Hurley’s side of the bed is empty. The covers are disturbed enough that I can tell he was here at some point, but I have no recollection of him coming to bed or being there at any time during the night. A glance at the clock tells me it’s six thirty-five, and I realize that if Hurley is up already, he couldn’t have gotten much sleep. I roll over to see if the light is on in the bathroom, but it’s dark. Tossing back the covers, I get up and head for the bathroom myself. After using the toilet, brushing my teeth, and running a comb through my hair, I grab my robe off the hook on the back of the door and head down the upstairs hallway. The door to Matthew’s room is open and I glance inside as I pass, seeing that he, too, is already up. More surprisingly, Emily’s room is also empty. Apparently, I’m the slugabed this morning.

  I hear voices in the kitchen and find Emily and Matthew in the breakfast nook, eating bowls of Cheerios: Emily’s are done up the traditional way with milk, whereas Matthew has his with apple juice.

  A quick glance around the kitchen tells me Hurley isn’t here. “Where’s your father?” I ask Emily.

  “Gone to work. He left about half an hour ago.”

  “Did he say anything before he left? About me and work, I mean. Or did he leave a note?” I look around the kitchen area and see nothing.

  “No, sorry,” Emily says with a shrug.

  “No, sorry,” Matthew echoes with his own shrug. He loves to mimic his older sister.

  My spirits take a dive. Hurley’s early departure and his lack of a response to my requests for follow-up on the case are telling. Clearly, the two of us need to sit down and talk things out soon, before this standoff gets any worse.

  I pour a cup of coffee—a short one, the critter in my belly on my mind—and join the kids at the table. Matthew finishes his cereal and grabs the coloring book and crayons that are still on the table from yesterday. Emily talks about a project she is doing in her art class with clay and how she wants to try and sculpt a face, but her teacher keeps making her do other objects. I encourage her to be patient, and she sighs and rolls her eyes. At seven-fifteen, she gets up, puts on her jacket, and heads for the garage to drive herself to school.

  Left alone with my son, I look over at him, sitting between me and the window. “Looks like it’s just the two of us, partner,” I say.

  He doesn’t respond. He is completely and utterly focused on the picture he is coloring, his tongue sticking out, the green crayon he has fisted in his hand moving back and forth across the page. It’s a scenic picture of a barn with a cow and a horse standing outside. There is a lot of ground in front of the barn, which would be the perfect place for Matthew to exercise his green scribbles. He, however, is coloring the sky green instead.

  I give him a couple more minutes to finish with the green while I sip my coffee and ponder the state of my marriage. When Matthew finally sets the green crayon aside, having created an eerie, alien-looking skyscape, I say, “It’s time to get dressed, kiddo. You’re going to Dom’s today.”<
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  It’s a testament to Dom and his natural ability with kids that my son says, “Goody!” and abandons his art project without a second thought. He loves his Unca Dom. I try to convince myself that Matthew’s eagerness to be with someone other than me is a good thing.

  For once, the dressing and other prep go off without a hitch and the two of us are climbing into the hearse by seven-fifty. I’m singing the alphabet song with Matthew as I drive, smiling at him in the rearview mirror, when I notice a black SUV behind me. It’s far enough back that I can’t see the driver or the license plate. As a test, I slow down, expecting the black SUV to come up on my back bumper and then pass me. But it slows down, too, and a seed of fear begins to bloom in my chest.

  “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you,” I mutter to myself in a low voice. Apparently, I’m not low enough, however.

  “ ‘Out to getcha,’ ” Matthew says from the backseat. And then he starts a repetitive ditty: “Gonna getcha, gonna getcha, gonna getcha.”

  I give myself a mental slap for not being more careful about what I say around Matthew, and I think, not for the first time, that someone should take away my parent card. I go back to singing the alphabet song in hopes of redirecting him. It works, but my eyes stay on the black SUV behind us until I turn into the driveway at Izzy’s house. At that point, it suddenly picks up speed and passes me by. The side windows on the car are tinted, so I can’t see who’s driving it, and my angle is wrong for getting a plate number.

  The drop-off at Dom’s is quick and easy. I would love to linger and talk about the black SUV or the state of my marriage with either Dom or Izzy, who is off today and, according to Dom, sleeping in. But I refrain for now, wanting to get to the office in time to meet Todd at eight.

  Despite my efforts, I’m five minutes late. I park in my usual spot in the underground garage, get out, and summon the elevator, which arrives a moment later. I step in, and just before the door closes, I see a black SUV out on the street, stopped right in front of the gate to the garage, its engine idling. I grab the elevator door to open it again and get a better look, but as soon as I do, the engine guns and the car disappears.

  Had that been Todd? I’d told him to park on the street, since you need a badge to access the garage, but maybe he’d seen my car and followed me, thinking he could sneak in under my badge access. Or maybe it wasn’t Todd at all.

  The bloom of fear in my chest, which I’ve been trying to contain, grows bigger. My gut tells me I’m being followed and watched by someone, but who? And why? I’ve been followed before, and when it happened that time, it was someone who wanted to kill me. Was that incident making me overly paranoid? Or should I trust my gut? Either way, I know I need to mention it to Hurley. Even if he’s angrier than he’s ever been at me, he’ll do something about it.

  When I walk into the library, Christopher is there at his desk, but there is no sign of Todd. “Good morning,” I say.

  “Back at ya,” Christopher says with a smile. “Todd called and said he would be a little bit late.”

  “Okay, thanks.” Maybe that had been Todd in the black SUV at the garage gate. On the heels of this thought, the door to the library opens and I look, expecting Todd. But it’s Doc Morton, and, as usual, he has arrived for the day bearing a box of goodies that he sets down on the end of the big conference table.

  “Welcome back,” I say to him, since I didn’t get a chance yesterday. “It’s good to have you back, and not just because you keep trying to bribe us into liking you with the sweets.”

  “Thanks,” he says. “And admit it, the bribery works. You like me, don’t you?”

  “I do,” I say with a smile and a sniff of the box he’s holding.

  “ ‘You like me, you really like me,’ ” he says in one of the worst Sally Field imitations I’ve ever seen. The fact that Otto looks like Santa Claus makes it even more of a stretch.

  “You know,” Christopher says, “that isn’t what Sally Field actually said, though the distorted version has been repeated so many times, it’s even more iconic than Sally’s original words.”

  Otto looks at Christopher and says, “Apple fritters this morning, killjoy.” Then he leaves the room.

  My salivary glands go into overdrive and my stomach rumbles loudly as I open the box.

  “Did I commit a faux pas?” Christopher says.

  “Maybe a little one,” I say. “Don’t worry about it.”

  His response is a long, loud release of gas that tells me he’s not only worrying about it, but will likely fret on it most of the day. And I know from experience that fretting and worrying make Christopher gassier than normal. That makes me more determined than ever to get out of this building and do some investigating far away.

  The library door opens yet again and this time it’s Todd. “Good morning,” he greets. “Sorry I’m late. There was an incident at the motel involving a chicken,” he says. Both his expression and the tone of his voice suggest that he’s having trouble believing his own story.

  “Oh, yeah,” I say, nodding. “I know that chicken. Let me guess. She knocked on your door, and when you opened it, she ran in the room, flapping her wings and squawking like crazy, while dropping feathers and bird poop everywhere she went.”

  Todd looks at me with surprise. “How did you know?”

  “She lives on a nearby farm and she’s been terrorizing the motel for years now. Her name is Lolita and she did the same thing to me when I was staying there three years ago. I think she’s got some mental health issues.”

  Todd chuckles.

  I gesture toward the fritter box and show him what I have in my hand. “Help yourself,” I tell him. “Doc Morton is trying to fatten us up. I think he’s related to that witch that got Hansel and Gretel. Other than the chicken attack, how did you sleep?”

  “Quite well. Cheap wine is a wonderful sleep aid.”

  His mention of the wine reminds me of the awkwardness last night. I push it aside and busy myself logging onto my computer. Christopher chats with Todd for a bit about old Joseph and his many idiosyncrasies, taking some of the pressure off me, but I catch Todd watching me several times and my uneasiness grows. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to spend the entire day working with him if I can’t find a way to let go of this discomfort.

  Hoping to pay a visit to Lacy’s parents, I place a call to Hurley and get his voice mail. I leave a message stating what I want and asking him to call me back. My phone rings a few minutes later and I sigh with relief, until I see that it isn’t Hurley calling. It’s Junior Feller.

  “Hi, Junior,” I say when I answer. “What’s up?”

  “Hurley asked me to call you and tell you that you need to wait on visiting Lacy’s parents,” he says. His voice is strained, and I can guess why. “He says we need to wait on the DNA results before going there and that the local cops have already spoken with them and gotten as much info as they could.”

  “Okay,” I say hesitantly, wondering why Hurley had Junior call me with this info rather than calling, or even texting me himself. Based on the level of discomfort I hear in Junior’s voice, I gather that he’s wondering the same thing. “Thanks, Junior.”

  I disconnect the call, angry at Hurley for his behavior. If he’s still mad at me about the incident at Maggie’s office, he’s holding this grudge much too long.

  I don’t like being told I can’t do things, and I’m tempted to go visit Lacy’s parents anyway. But I’ve been listening to Christopher and Todd talking about the case, and several times they’ve mentioned how Caroline Helgeson is the key if we work off the assumption that Ulrich is innocent because she doesn’t fit the mold of the other killings. The only way Caroline Helgeson’s death makes sense is if Ulrich is guilty.

  Or if someone was trying to frame Ulrich.

  Suddenly Lacy’s parents don’t seem as important. Dissecting Caroline Helgeson’s life is.

  Todd casts another look my way and gives me a tenta
tive smile, but there are worry wrinkles in that tanned forehead of his. That squirmy worm of discomfort makes itself known again and that helps me decide what to do. I excuse myself from the room, mumbling something about having to go to the bathroom, and I head for the locker room. Once there, I take my cell out of my pocket and dial the home number for Brenda Joiner, one of the local police officers and Christopher’s current paramour. She is also a good friend of mine ever since she did some private protection duty for me back when I had my stalker and ended up saving my life.

  She answers on the third ring, her voice laced with sleepiness. “Um, hello?”

  “Brenda, it’s Mattie. Did I wake you?”

  “Nah,” she lies. “I was awake, just lounging. What’s up?”

  “Sorry I woke you. I’m wondering if you might be interested in taking a little road trip with me today. I heard Christopher mention that you’re off for the next couple of days.”

  “What do you have in mind?” She sounds much more awake now, an indication of how much I’ve piqued her interest. I explain what I want to do, and before I’ve finished, she says, “I’m in. When do you want to leave?”

  “The sooner, the better,” I say.

  “Give me half an hour to get dressed and caffeined up. Your car or mine?”

  “Let’s do yours,” I say, thinking about the black SUVs. “I’ll stop by your place in half an hour.”

  I disconnect the call and head back to my office. The boys are still working on the case and they’ve been joined by Arnie.

  “Morning, Mattie,” Arnie says. He has a smug smile on his face, which I recognize all too well.

  “You’ve got something, don’t you?” I say.

  “I do, though I’m not sure how much use it will be. You know that gold fiber you found on Lacy?”

  I nod.

  “It’s a type of gold thread that’s typically used in things like uniform insignias or decorative emblems on hats, shirts, jackets, and other clothing, that type of thing.”

  “Interesting,” I say. “It might prove useful if we can narrow down on a suspect and show he has such a thing.”