Crazy, Stupid, Dead

by Wendy Delaney

  “About that. I sold it tonight.”

  Gram’s mouth gaped open. “To whom?”

  “George Jr.” I skipped the part about not making any money on the deal.

  “Then you’re obviously keeping the Subaru.”

  “I haven’t figured out the details yet.”

  “What’s to figure out? You need a car, and there’s a perfectly good one right outside.”

  “I can’t just let her fix me up with a car like some sort of fairy godmother.” Much as I could use a sprinkle of pixie dust to make getting through life a little easier.

  “Then return it and buy one yourself. Really, I think you’re making this too complicated.”

  Probably. But the complication was not being able to afford a new car right now.

  “I will.” Maybe. “After I’m done with—” I clamped my mouth shut before Naomi’s name spilled out.

  Gram removed her steaming kettle from the burner with more force than necessary. “Don’t tell me.”

  “Okay.” Fine with me, since she’d most certainly blab to Steve.

  “You’re still trying to prove that Naomi’s death wasn’t an accident.”

  “Uh …”

  Gram waggled a finger at me. “Don’t bother denying what you’ve been up to.”

  My heart skipped a beat as my mind raced to figure out how much she knew.

  “Alice told me how you and Lucille were coming up with some outlandish theories about Robin being the one responsible for her mother’s death.”

  “It was more Lucille’s theory than mine, but it wasn’t completely—”

  “Charmaine Digby, you cannot seriously suspect that girl of harming her own mother.”

  Not by herself I didn’t. Plus, given what I’d found out about the Carpp brothers, I wasn’t inclined to totally align myself with Lucille. “I don’t know what to think beyond what we talked about last week. Even you and Alice agree that the way Mrs. Easley died was just plain weird.”

  “That doesn’t mean that you should be out there playing detective.”

  My grandmother had definitely been spending way too much time with Steve.

  “I’m not. I’m just doing the basic fact-finding that as a deputy coroner I would do with any unusual death in the county.”

  As creative fibbing went, I thought that was pretty good until I saw Gram plant her hands on her hips.

  “Fact-finding with Lucille’s help?” She rolled her eyes. “Facts are typically optional with that one.”

  “Lucille just happened to offer up an opinion about how she thought that night might have played out.”

  “I bet she did,” Gram said, filling her cup.

  “Okay. To play out how that conversation went with her, what do you think led to Naomi Easley being found dead in that bathtub?”

  Gram folded her arms while her tea steeped. “I have no idea.”

  “If you knew that Robin was responsible for her mom’s accident at the house two years ago, would you be a little more inclined to think that Lucille wasn’t just talking out of her ass?”

  “Charmaine!”

  “Excuse me, her bottom if you prefer.”

  “Either way, you don’t know the story behind that fall Naomi took.”

  “Not every detail of the story.” I locked onto Gram’s gaze to let her fill in the rest of the blanks.

  She sharply inhaled. “No. You don’t mean—”

  “Afraid so. Robin practically admitted it.”

  “To you?”

  I nodded.

  Gram furrowed her brow. “But that doesn’t mean that she was trying to kill her mother, does it?”

  “No, but there was obviously some tension there that helps to explain why Naomi kept away from the house after the accident.”

  “Certainly Stevie had all this information at the time of his investigation.”

  I doubted that he spent as much time trying to get Robin to open up as I had. “I don’t know. We don’t talk about that kind of stuff.”

  “Well, I think you should assume that he would have talked to all the family members, especially Hailey. She’s always been very close to her mom.” Gram turned to sugar her tea. “I know she’s one of the first people I would’ve wanted to have a chat with.”

  I couldn’t agree more, especially on that last point.

  Maybe a ferry ride into Seattle could be arranged for tomorrow.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  DRIVING ONTO A Seattle-bound ferry on a sunny Friday afternoon was challenging enough because of the typically long lines of vehicles waiting in the queue.

  Today, I hadn’t been able find anyone in the county prosecutor’s office who could provide me with a legitimate reason to make myself scarce for a few hours, so it had proven to be next to impossible.

  Then I remembered the boat captain that I had been researching for Assistant Prosecutor Lisa Arbuckle to call as a witness in a vehicular assault case, and I trotted down to her office because he conveniently lived on the east side of Seattle.

  Fortunately, Lisa’s door was open, so I gave it a knock.

  “Yes?” she answered without sparing me a glance as she clicked away on her computer keyboard.

  “Now that I’ve completed the background checks that you requested, would you like me to start getting some statements?” I scanned the crowded surface of her metal desk and spotted the manila file folder with the case number I had written on the front. It didn’t appear to have moved much in the last three days. Considering that she had spent most of this week in court, I hoped her busy schedule could work in my favor.

  She finally looked up and huffed in annoyance. “What’s that again?”

  “I have some time if you’d like me to help with the witness statements.”

  “Sure.” Lisa plucked the folder from her desk and handed it to me like an automaton. “Thanks.”

  “I could probably line up a couple this afternoon,” I said while she frowned at her monitor and made several mouse-clicks.

  She waved me away. “Fine. Whenever you can fit them in.”

  “I can fit in at least one of them just fine today,” I muttered, almost running back to my desk.

  Less than a minute later, Patsy’s steely eyes narrowed as I zipped by her desk. “Heading out somewhere, Charmaine?”

  “Witness interviews for Lisa. I should be gone the rest of the day.”

  Patsy grunted her displeasure, and I didn’t care.

  “Thank you, Lisa,” I thought, bounding down the marble steps while the sheriff’s deputy working security focused his attention on me as if I were making a jailbreak. Probably because it looked like I was, especially when I hopped into a new car that didn’t technically belong to me.

  Fortunately, I only had a thirty-minute wait in line to catch the two-twenty sailing. That gave me plenty of time to leave Eddie a message that I might be a couple of hours late. I regretted leaving him short-handed on what was sure to be a busy Friday night, but there was no way I was going to be able to get back before seven. Not with the wretched traffic that I found myself stuck in the minute I pulled away from the Seattle ferry dock.

  It wasn’t that I hadn’t expected the traffic to be bad after three o’clock on a sunny, getaway Friday–type of afternoon. But it was also unseasonably warm and there was some sort of accident up ahead at the entrance of the Interstate 90 freeway, causing me to roll to a stop behind a black diesel pickup.

  In my ex-husband’s Jaguar with its broken air-conditioning, this was where I’d be faced with a dilemma if I didn’t want to start sticking to the leather upholstery. Turn on the fan and suck in asphyxiating diesel fumes, or open the windows to get some air moving and be overcome by fumes.

  It took me a second to figure out how to turn on the A/C, but once I felt that cool air hit my face, I smiled and patted the Subaru’s steering wheel as if I were giving my dog some love. Not because my mother had been right about
how much better I’d feel once I parted ways with the last holdover from my marriage, but because it struck me that I wasn’t getting asphyxiated by that truck.

  “Yep, much better,” I announced, turning up one of my favorite Fleetwood Mac songs on the radio.

  But then once I started singing along and the lyrics “You can go your own way” came out of my mouth, it also hit me that I was enjoying driving this new car a little too much.

  I tightened my grip on the steering wheel as I finally merged onto the freeway. “Slow your roll. You’re not keeping it,” I reminded myself.

  By the time I crossed Lake Washington and crawled through Bellevue traffic on my way north to the Woodinville residence listed in the file next to me, I had gone so doggone slow it was after four. If I wanted to have a prayer of catching the six-fifteen ferry back to Port Merritt, I needed to cross the boat captain’s interview off of today’s list of things to do and focus on the one that might help solve a murder. That required a slight detour and another fifty bumper-to-bumper minutes around the north shore of Lake Washington, where Hailey Kranick Moynahan lived in nearby Lake Forest Park.

  Parking the Subaru in front of the pickle-green rambler that the GPS on my phone had led me to, I climbed out and noticed a big, tattooed guy who could have been Little Dog’s older brother watching me from the driveway.

  But unlike Little Dog, this guy didn’t look the least bit happy to see me, especially when he slammed the hood of the vintage Jeep he had been standing behind. “Can I help you?”

  I pasted a smile on my face and hoped that the gray pantsuit I’d worn for the interview to project professionalism would also help me in the confidence department. Because judging by the gravel in this guy’s tone, he ate rocks for breakfast.

  “Is Hailey here?” I asked, pressing my tote to my side like a shield.

  He eyeballed my cheap suit as if he could tell I’d found it on a discount rack. “What’s this about?”

  I figured I had better respond with something that sounded like it was worth Hailey’s time if I wanted to be invited inside the house. “The death of her grandmother.”

  After a second of consideration, he grunted. “She won’t be home until six-thirty. Our daughter has gymnastics tonight.”

  So much for me catching that ferry. Unless he knew anything that could help me fit some pieces together.

  I flashed my badge. “I’m with the Chimacam County coroner’s office. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

  “About my wife’s grandma?”

  “I’m mainly looking for background information so that we can properly file the death certificate. Could we talk inside?”

  Hailey’s husband nodded as if my big fat lie had sounded perfectly reasonable. “Sure,” he said, leading the way through the garage to a back door.

  Rounding a corner into a family room, where a twelve- or thirteen-year-old boy was lying on a sofa watching some old cartoon, the guy took a wide stance in front of the kid. “Aren’t you supposed to be doing your homework?”

  The kid grabbed the remote and clicked off the TV. “I was just going to do that.”

  “Uh-huh.” The second we had the room to ourselves, the guy pointed at the sofa for me to sit. “You sure you don’t want to wait for Hailey? She’s the one you should be talking to.”

  But she wasn’t here.

  I parked on the cushion closest to the recliner he had eased himself into and took out my notebook to clue him in about my answer. “It’s always good to get other points of view.”

  I got another grunt, which I took as my cue to proceed. “May I have your name?”

  “Nick Moynahan.”

  “Would you say that you knew Naomi Easley pretty well?”

  Nick’s shoulder twitched under the charcoal T-shirt that coordinated perfectly with the eagle spreading its dark wings over his forearm. “Well enough, I guess.”

  “Your wife was living at her grandmother’s house when you met, I assume?”

  He knit his furry auburn eyebrows, reminding me of Georgie when he wanted me to get to the point. “Yeah.”

  “Along with her mother?”

  Nick nodded.

  “It seemed that something happened two years ago that caused Mrs. Easley to feel it was unsafe to stay in the house.”

  I waited to let him tell me what to ask next by the level of discomfort in his reaction.

  Nick clasped his hands, his knuckles white, while his jaw clenched as if he were weighing his options. “You should probably talk to my wife about that.”

  Undoubtedly, but she wasn’t around and he definitely knew something he didn’t want to say about it.

  “I’ll do that. But when this fall happened …” I gave him a little nod of assurance that he wouldn’t be divulging any information that I didn’t already know. “That’s what was in the medic’s report, that it was a fall, correct?”

  “Yeah,” he said after a second of hesitation.

  So far, so good. “Did you or your wife get the impression that Mrs. Easley had been drinking that night?”

  “She probably had a glass of wine with dinner, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Maybe more than one?”

  Nick scowled at me. “I wouldn’t know.”

  Okay. “I imagine Hailey was called that night. Maybe by her mother?”

  “Yeah. We got on the next ferry.”

  “After you got there and had a chance to talk to Hailey’s mom, what did you think happened to make Mrs. Easley take that fall?”

  He aimed that scowl at me again. “What’s this got to do with her death certificate?”

  Absolutely nothing, unless the tumble that Naomi took down those stairs was no accident. “I’m just trying to understand what was going on prior to her death.”

  “You really should be talking to Hailey,” Nick said, checking the watch on his thick wrist as if he wished she’d hurry up.

  “Yes, but you were there. Did your mother-in-law describe how the accident happened?”

  “Not in any detail. I just thought Naomi tripped.”

  “So no argument that night. Nothing to support a report of an altercation.”

  Nick clamped his mouth shut for a couple of seconds while his shoulder almost shrugged its way out of its socket. “I don’t know.”

  No, you know stuff you don’t want to admit to.

  “I assume that’s one of the reasons why your wife kind of had to take over all the things that her grandmother had been doing,” I said, trying to look understanding. “Probably just made things easier between those two.”

  “I guess.”

  Which answered the question about why Hailey had been making monthly treks to her mom’s house for the last two years.

  “She was in Port Merritt the night her grandmother died, right?”

  He nodded.

  “Did she call to tell you what happened?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How’d she seem on the phone?”

  “Upset,” Nick said, raising his gruff voice. “How do you think?”

  “I know it’s uncomfortable to talk about.” Especially for me with the guy sitting five feet away looking like he was itching to toss me out of his house. “But I have a hard time understanding how Mrs. Easley could have drowned. What’s the family’s take on what happened?”

  “That she took way too many pain pills and must’ve passed out.”

  Since Nick hadn’t given me any reason to doubt his truthfulness, I decided to see what he could tell me about the meeting with the Carpp brothers. “Someone mentioned something about an offer on the house. Do you know if Hailey and her mom went to the condo to talk about that?”

  “That wouldn’t happen.”

  “Because your mother-in-law didn’t want to discuss that possibility?” Which Robin had made crystal clear to me.

  “No, I mean Robin had never been to the condo.”

  “Ever?”r />
  Nick shook his head. “Hailey thought she was just being stubborn. You know. Mother and daughter crap.”

  Yeah, I knew all about that particular brand of crap.

  “My mother-in-law doesn’t leave the house much. Period. But she downright refused to go to Naomi’s place.”

  That blew Lucille’s theory out of the water. At least as far as Robin was concerned.

  I snapped my notebook shut with the hope that Nick would think that everything else he happened to mention would be off the record. “What’s Hailey think about the offer on the house? That big house has got to be worth some money.”

  “I don’t know.” He scratched his unshaven cheek. “More than anything, I think she just wishes she could convince Robin to move somewhere closer.”

  “I’m sure it’s tough on her to be the one her mom relies on. Being an hour away by ferry and all.”

  “Yeah, she talked to a friend in real estate to try to get the ball rolling last month.”

  I scooted to the edge of my seat. “When was this?”

  “The weekend her grandma died. It seemed like a decision had been made, then … Well, everything changed.”

  I wanted to be sure I understood him. “You mean Robin had made a decision to move?” Because if that was the case, what happened to the arrangement she kept clinging to?

  “No. Hailey and I will probably have to drag her mom out of there kicking and screaming.”

  “I’m sorry, then I don’t understand. What changed?”

  Shaking his head, a sardonic chuckle escaped Nick’s lips. “The old lady changed her mind. Announced she wasn’t selling. Pretty much told everyone who kept asking her about it to back off.”

  I had a feeling that one of them didn’t want to take no for an answer.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  AFTER I GOT home and fed Fozzie, I changed into my bartender’s uniform of black jeans and a slightly tight Eddie’s Place T-shirt, touched up my makeup, and then dashed over to my Friday night fill-in gig.

  “Holy smokes,” I muttered while pulling into the one and only parking spot in the crowded lot behind the bowling alley. “What the heck is going on tonight?”