Wendy Delaney - Working Stiffs 02 - Sex, Lies, and Snickerdoodles

by Wendy Delaney

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  Dear Reader,

  I love September in the Pacific Northwest. The turning leaves, the warmth of the day playing tag with the chill on the evening breeze, rows of pumpkins growing in local pumpkin patches much to the delight of October’s trick-or-treaters.

  September tends to signal the last gasp of summer—a clear sign to the locals that we should enjoy our time in the sun because change is coming. And if you know anything about the soggy Pacific Northwest, that means a lot of drizzle is in our future.

  In Sex, Lies, and Snickerdoodles you’ll find that it’s a great time of year to enjoy picnics at the park, a sail on the bay, a steak on a backyard grill. But there’s definitely something chilling in the air, especially after the body of one of Port Merritt’s more notorious residents is discovered.

  No matter the time of year that you read Sex, Lies, and Snickerdoodles, I hope you enjoy your visit in picturesque Port Merritt with Charmaine Digby and the gang of characters I introduced in Trudy, Madly, Deeply, the first book of the Working Stiffs Mystery series.

  For those of you who have already “met” Char and her pals, thank you for returning for more fun in Port Merritt. If you’re new to the series, welcome!

  Enjoy!

  www.wendydelaney.com

  For the other Wendy. Thanks for the pleasure of your company on this journey.

  Chapter One

  I could use one hand to count the number of guys who had seen me naked. For better or worse, that included the cop aiming the Clint Eastwood squint at me from the picnic table at Hot Shots Espresso, a block from the Port Merritt waterfront.

  “You’re late,” Detective Steve Sixkiller said in a clipped tone as I approached.

  Our breakfast date wasn’t getting off to a good start. “Somehow you seemed happier to see me last night.”

  “You were naked under a raincoat.”

  With the mid-morning sun beaming at our backs, I sat on the bench seat next to him and claimed the tall mocha latte he offered me. “Well, there was that.”

  At least I’d known exactly what to wear for a fun Friday evening in with my new sex buddy. I didn’t have a clue what to wear to breakfast and had changed my clothes three times because it looked like I was trying too hard to impress one of my oldest friends on our first official date.

  This dating stuff had seemed easier back when I was in my twenties and had yet to eat my way through a divorce. The eighteen pounds I’d packed on in the last year caused the girls to strain against the buttons of the linen camp shirt that I finally settled upon. Not that Steve would mind the peepshow if my top button were to launch itself into orbit as long as I didn’t take out one of his eyes in the process.

  He leaned into me. “Never thought I’d see you do that.”

  That made two of us. “It was sort of a mood of the moment thing.” Something that I’d always wanted to do with my ex and had never worked up the nerve.

  He leveled his chocolate brown gaze at me. “You’ll have to get into that mood again.”

  My stomach growled, reminding me of the task at hand for this morning—a normal date, something I had yet to experience with Steve. “Breakfast first.”

  “Party pooper.”

  Pushing away from the picnic table, he took my hand and we ambled toward his Ford pickup parked at the corner.

  “You know, we could have had breakfast at my place.” His chiseled lips curled into an easy smile. “I would have brought it to you in bed … if you’d stayed.”

  My self-esteem had only recently crawled out of the hole it had been hiding in since my ex won a top chef competition and promptly carved me out of his life. Was I ready for Steve to roll over and see me up close and personal first thing in the morning? And then after breakfast nonchalantly stroll across the street to my grandmother’s house in my raincoat and face her parental gaze as I opened the door? Not a chance.

  Do you fully understand what you’re doing?

  Gram had every right to ask the question, especially since I was the one who had spent almost twenty years insisting that Steve and I were just good friends.

  As long as Steve and I were strictly friends with benefits, the answer to that question was yes.

  Or old friends meeting up on a gloriously bright Saturday morning for breakfast—still a yes.

  Childhood chums out in public with the intention of spending a lazy summer day together, who would end up in his king-sized bed doing things I’d only dreamed of before? Nope, that was where understanding and I parted ways—pretty much the land where I’d been living ever since the object of my first schoolgirl crush tilted my world by crossing over the friendship line and kissing me senseless two weeks ago.

  To avoid raising eyebrows, I’d suggested we have breakfast in Port Townsend, a laid-back, artsy community located a convenient thirty-two miles north of the local gossip circuit.

  I pushed back the locks of hair that a crisp breeze off Merritt Bay blew into my face. So much for spending a few extra minutes to tame my overgrown brown mop. “I’ve seen what passes for breakfast at your house. Sorry, I’m not tempted by your poopy peanut butter and spirulina smoothie.”

  Since this former pastry chef had baked him his favorite bacon and cheese-stuffed croissants last weekend, I didn’t think that was half-bad as an evasive answer until Steve shot me a lopsided grin. “Maybe I could tempt you with something else.”

  Were we still talking about breakfast?

  He slipped his arm around my shoulder. “I may not have the culinary school credentials that you do, but I can cook, you know.”

  “I’m sure you do a lot of things well.”

  Steve stopped next to his sterling gray F150 and looked down at me, his lips so close I could almost taste his coffee. “Charmaine Digby, you have no idea how right you are.”

  Yes, I did. I was also well aware of Kelsey Donovan emerging from her gift shop on the opposite corner with a cell phone to her ear. And Gloria, the County Clerk who worked downstairs from me at the courthouse, staring at us as she rounded the corner in her Volkswagen Beetle.

  Pasting a smile on my face, I raised my cup to Gloria. Nothing to mention to any of my coworkers in the Prosecutor’s office. Just two friends getting coffee. Move along.

  When Gloria disappeared from view I shifted my attention to Kelsey, my lab partner in Mr. Ferris’ biology class eighteen years ago. Maybe I didn’t need to be concerned about her speed dialing our mutual friends because she seemed oblivious to Steve and me as she stared down the length of Bay Street.

  “Russell, I’m going to kill you if you don’t show up!” she yelled into the phone.

  I wasn’t aware of Kelsey dating anyone named Russell, but that meant nothing since I was standing next to a guy she didn’t know I hadn’t been officially dating.

  At least I had been standing next to him before Steve set his cup on the hood of his pickup and jaywalked across the street.

  “How’re you doing, Kelsey?” he asked in an easy manner as I scampered behind him. It was the same easy manner I’d witnessed in Detective Sixkiller countless times in the three months since I moved back to Port Merritt, Washington. Combine it with the winning smile of a charmer and I’d bet there wasn’t a female in my hometown of five thousand and fifty-three residents who wouldn’t welcome the former high school football captain into her hom
e with open arms.

  Kelsey pursed her mouth. “I’d be doing better if certain men would do what they said they were going to do, when they said they were going to do it!”

  Russell was in deep doo-doo.

  Kelsey stabbed her sterling silver adorned index finger in the direction of a sign on the display window of her shop, the Feathered Nest. “Do you see where it says to come and meet local artist, Lance Greenwood, September 7th? As in tonight?”

  I sure did. Nice sign. No doubt Kelsey had spent more than a few bucks to have it printed.

  “Russell Falco was supposed to be here over an hour ago to install track lighting in the back room and help me set up.” She dramatically tossed her head back, her dark blue eyes blinking back tears. “How could he be a no show when he knew how important tonight was to me?”

  According to Lucille, the senior gossip wrangler waitressing at Duke’s Cafe, my great-uncle’s greasy spoon, Russell Falco had no shortage of ladies vying for his attention. Now that I knew we were talking about that Russell, it wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d received a more enticing offer.

  The summer I was fifteen and filling in as a short-order cook at Duke’s, Russell came in after working on his dad’s charter boat with his brothers. He was twenty-three, a raven-haired hunk and a half, and a shameless flirt. Despite the fact that we rarely saw him sober, all the waitresses were crazy about him.

  “He’s trouble with a capital T,” Uncle Duke had proclaimed after Russell got his nose broken for sniffing around the wrong woman. Shortly after that, he dropped out of sight. Lucille had said that he fell in with a motorcycle gang and served some prison time in California.

  For Russell’s and Kelsey’s sakes, I hoped that history wasn’t repeating itself.

  “Do you already have the light fixtures that need to be installed?” Steve asked her.

  Kelsey nodded, her fine honey-blonde hair spilling over her shoulders. “Everything’s inside the shop. The lights, all the hardware, Lance’s paintings. Last night, we emptied out the back room to set everything up like a real gallery. All I need now are Russell and his tools.”

  Given Russell’s bad boy reputation and the tension bleeding through Kelsey’s brittle smile, I sensed that wasn’t the full extent of what Kelsey needed from him.

  “Russell isn’t the only guy around here with tools.” Steve turned to me. “Looks like I’m going to owe you brunch instead of breakfast.”

  Fine with me because either way some crispy bacon would be in my future. “And you just got a helper to ensure that you make good on that debt.”

  Two hours later, the Feathered Nest’s new track lighting had been installed, and Steve and I were hanging the last of the garish oil paintings Kelsey kept raving about when she wasn’t tending to a customer.

  I tilted my head at a landscape with red and orange streaks invading muddy violet globs of paint that looked like chocolate raspberry mousse blended with Steve’s poopy smoothie. “What do you think this is supposed to be?” I reached for the artist’s business card listing the name of the painting as Olympic Sunset and sucked in a breath when I read the fifteen hundred dollar asking price.

  Steve slid his hammer onto his tool belt. “I call it over-priced crap.”

  I shushed him but couldn’t help but admire the way the tool belt hung low on his hips like a gunslinger’s holster. All he needed was the black cowboy hat to accompany the steely-eyed glare he was directing toward Lance Greenwood’s handiwork.

  “Don’t you just love what he does with color?” Kelsey gushed from the doorway.

  “Yeah,” Steve muttered unenthusiastically as I tacked the business card eye level with the artist’s Dante’s Inferno interpretation of the sun setting behind Washington’s Olympic mountain range.

  She stepped between us and started folding the brown paper wrapper that had covered Olympic Sunset a few minutes earlier. “Okay, so it’s not your cup of tea, but I’ll have you know that he’s an up and coming artist, known throughout North America. It’s quite an honor to host tonight’s event for him.”

  If he was such a big deal in the art world, it was curious that he had agreed to show his work in the tight confines of the Feathered Nest instead of one of the galleries in Port Townsend.

  My grandmother had already announced that she wanted to attend tonight’s soiree, which translated into me accompanying her as her date for the evening. Personally, I suspected she wanted to see what all the fuss surrounding Lance Greenwood was about. From the gloppy examples of the man’s talent hanging on Kelsey’s walls, I wondered the same thing.

  “I’m sure it is,” I said. Clearly, with the way Kelsey was beaming, a prouder hostess couldn’t be found.

  “It looks like you’re about ready for show time.” Steve unhooked his tool belt as he inched toward the door. “And I owe someone breakfast while they’re still serving, so Char and I should get going.”

  Since my stomach had been growling for the last hour, he got no argument from me.

  Steve’s cell phone rang and he stopped and pulled it from his pocket. “Hey, Captain.” His gaze sharpened, then he turned his back to me.

  Steve had kidded me about being a human lie detector ever since I participated in a university study as a favor to my former sister-in-law, the clinical psychologist. Even before my perceptive abilities had been documented, he’d made a point of sheltering his face when he didn’t want me to read his body language. But since the Port Merritt PD captain was calling his one and only detective on his day off, anyone in the room should have been able to see that something very bad had happened.

  “Tell him not to touch anything,” he said. “I’ll be there in ten.”

  “What’s happened?” I asked the second Steve disconnected, my voice a squeaky blend of breath and apprehension.

  He pocketed his cell phone. “Russell Falco has been found.”

  Chapter Two

  It was almost one o’clock when I walked to the end of Dock A at the Port Merritt marina, where a Chimacam County Sheriff’s deputy had towed Russell’s twin engine fishing boat, a mostly unvarnished wooden hulk named the Lucky Charm. Like Russell Falco, whose body had been discovered snagged on a bush on the rocky shore, whatever luck the Lucky Charm had once possessed had definitely run out.

  Since I could honestly say that I’d come to the marina on official business as a Special Assistant to the Chimacam County Prosecutor/Coroner, I ducked under the yellow caution tape stretched between two pilings.

  Steve glared down at me from the Lucky Charm’s stern. “Do I need to remind you what Do not cross means?”

  I held up a grease-stained Duke’s Cafe takeout bag containing a double beef cheeseburger and a side of fries. “I come bearing gifts and news, so you should really be nicer to me.”

  He pointed at the tape. “Stay on the other side. I don’t need anyone suggesting that we contaminated the scene.”

  Since he was the one wearing latex gloves and blue cotton booties, and my job was typically restricted to interviewing witnesses and delivering subpoenas, I didn’t have to guess that we meant me—the one who had yet to make it through her thirty-day probation period.

  “What do you think?” I asked the one-man CSI team when he stepped onto the pier.

  He snapped off the gloves and dropped them and the cotton booties into the plastic kit slung over his shoulder. “That boat needs a lot of work.”

  Tell me something I didn’t know. “Besides that. Did you find anything?”

  Steve bent his six-foot frame under the caution tape. “Not much other than a toolbox, a bag of nails, and some dirty clothes. It looks like he might have picked up some work in addition to helping out at Kelsey’s.”

  “Doesn’t that seem a little strange to you?” Finding a toolbox in the back of Russell’s beater pickup truck would have made more sense, especially since Kelsey had been expecting him at her shop.

  “There’s lots of water around here, Chow Mein. And lots of docks in need of r
epair.”

  I couldn’t help but smile at the nickname he gave me back in the third grade. “I guess.” Considering the reason the boat had to be towed to the marina, the handy man equipment still seemed strange.

  Steve’s attention zeroed in on the bag in my hand. “Is that for me?”

  “All yours.” With the exception of the few french fries that I’d stolen back in the car.

  “Good, I’m starved.”

  We sat on a concrete bench centered in the patch of grass between Dock B and the parking lot, and I watched him attack the bag.

  “I ran into Ben at Duke’s.” More like I followed Criminal Prosecutor Ben Santiago into the diner, but since I happened to know that he was the deputy coroner on call this weekend, I figured he’d be the one with the most up-to-date information on Russell. I could also count on getting a grilled cheese sandwich compliments of my great-uncle while I was there.

  “Yeah?” Steve said with his mouth full. “And?”

  “He said it didn’t look like Russell had been in the water for very long before he washed up on shore.” I left out the part about his flesh not suffering any apparent fish or animal bites since Steve was chowing down on his burger. “Ben wants me to get a statement from Fred Wixey.”

  “I already talked to Fred. He was walking his dog, saw the body, called it in. Not much else there.”

  I shrugged. “We need a statement for the coroner’s report.”

  The corner of Steve’s mouth twitched, amusement dancing in his dark eyes. “We?”

  I was pretty much the low man on the totem pole at the courthouse, where I worked for Prosecutor Frankie Rickard, who also served as the Coroner of Chimacam County. Dairy cows and chickens easily outnumbered the registered voters, who had recently reelected her to a third term, but I was still one of Frankie’s badge-carrying deputies and that gave me the right to say we.

  “Yes, we, smart ass. And Ben asked me to call Dr. Zuniga to schedule an autopsy.”

  Chimacam County operated on a shoestring budget, so it contracted with Dr. Henry Zuniga, a semi-retired forensic pathologist from Seattle, an hour away by ferry.