Dead Calm

by Annelise Ryan

  “She has a car,” I say, recalling the nondescript sedan I saw in Pamela’s driveway on the day we were at the house.

  Cook chuckles. “Yeah, I’m not a total bastard, despite what Penny says about me. I own several dealerships, so I’m able to provide her with wheels. I give her the beat-up trade-ins that I likely wouldn’t be able to sell anyway. I have my mechanics tune them up so they run decent.” He pauses and shrugs. “I just gave her a new one the other day, in fact.”

  I perk up. “What day, exactly? And why did you give her a new one?”

  Cook thinks a moment, pulling at his chin. “I’m pretty sure it was on Thursday. She said the one she had was backfiring and not starting for her all the time.” He shrugs again. “I had one of my mechanics take a look at it, and it seemed to be running fine, but sometimes cars can be temperamental, just like women.” He glances over at Hurley and winks. “Right?”

  “Indeed,” Hurley says, wearing a smile.

  “Mr. Cook,” I say, eager to break up the bromance, “we are here for more than just our investigation. We’re also in the market for a car for our daughter.”

  “Really? That’s great!” He pops up from the couch and heads for his office door. “What sort of vehicle did you have in mind? Used or new? Sedan or SUV? You probably want to consider four-wheel drive, given the winters we have here. That’s much safer for your daughter. To be honest, if you want the safest vehicle, you should probably buy new. They’ve got so many great safety features now with the side airbags and hands-free Bluetooth phone and messaging capabilities.”

  He pauses in the doorway, realizing that we haven’t popped up from our chairs and followed him. He arches his eyebrows expectantly, smiling at us.

  Hurley and I get up from our seats and head for the door. “I think we’d like to start by looking at the car your wife traded in the other day,” I say.

  Cook frowns at this and shakes his head. “You wouldn’t want that for . . .” He trails off then, realization dawning on his face. “You’re not interested in buying that particular car, are you?” he says, tapping the side of his head. “You want to look at it for your investigation. You never did answer my question about Penny. What the hell has she gone and done now?”

  We still don’t answer his question, but he doesn’t seem bothered by this fact. Cook leads us downstairs and out onto his lot, heading for a back section where there is a collection of used cars. He takes us to a 1995 Ford Escort that looks like the car I saw the other day. I’m surprised at its age because it has a surprisingly good-looking exterior for a Wisconsin car. The salt and sand on our roads in the winter tend to be hard on car finishes. Cook unlocks the door and opens it. The front seats are cloth-covered, and the inside of the car has a funky smell.

  Cook sees me sniffing and wrinkling my nose. “Yeah, I think Penny might have spilled something in here, or maybe something crawled into the ventilation system and died. It smells funny, and it didn’t when I gave it to her. I suspect that’s the real reason she traded it in.”

  I pull my head out and look at Hurley. “It’s stale urine. Sadly, I’d know that smell anywhere.” I then point to the passenger seat. “It looks like there’s a stain on that seat. And there’s also a big wrinkle in the cloth material. Remind you of anything?”

  Hurley looks at the seat, then at me. “A line that might leave a mark on someone’s legs,” he says.

  I nod. “And if that someone was . . .” I hesitate, glancing at Cook. “If that someone was not fully in control of their bodily functions . . .”

  Hurley nods. He gets my drift. Both Craig and Meredith had leaked urine onto their clothes and the bed in the motel, a common thing that happens when people die. Their sphincters relax and things are released. Since we know Craig Knowlton was dead before he got to the motel, odds are pretty good that he had leaked some urine before getting there, too.

  “Gotcha,” I say to Hurley with a smile.

  He smiles back at me and then turns to Cook. “I need to seize this car as evidence in a homicide,” he says. “I need you to lock it back up and give me the key. I’ll call and arrange to have a tow truck come and get it and take it to our evidence garage.”

  “Homicide?” Cook says, his eyes big. Then he narrows them. “Wait, are you guys for real? You never showed me any kind of badges. Are you trying to scam me? Did Penny put you up to this?”

  Hurley takes out his badge and assures Cook that he is legit. “I’ll give you a receipt for the car,” he says. “And whenever we’re done with it, you can have it back.” This seems to placate Cook, who may not realize that if he ever does get the car back, the interior will likely have been dismantled.

  To distract him, I ask him a personal question. “When you had your affair, Mr. Cook, where did you typically go for your rendezvous?”

  “That motel out on Morals Road, the one with the bear. I thought it would be far enough away to be safe, but Penny was more suspicious than I realized. She followed me out there once and caught me with Rita. We had a bit of a . . . confrontation. That was what precipitated the divorce.”

  Hurley and I share a look, and when he and Cook head inside to make the necessary arrangements, I meander through the lot and do some browsing. One of the salesmen who accosted us when we first entered the showroom pops outside and comes running up to me again.

  “Hello, Ms. . . . ?” He words it as a question, waiting for me to fill in the blank. When I don’t, he continues on, barely missing a beat, and apparently not remembering that he already tried to pick me up for a sale inside the showroom. “I’m Pete. What can I interest you in today? We have some really nice Jeep Grand Cherokees that we just got in. They’re fully loaded.”

  Since fully loaded to me is generally a reference to my order of potato skins or nachos, I’m not sure what it means in car speak. “I’m looking for something for our teenage daughter, hopefully something safe, with hands-free technology.”

  “Are you looking to buy used or new?”

  “Depends on the price and how old and used a used car might be,” I say.

  “May I ask what you’re currently driving?” Pete asks. “You might consider getting yourself a new car and letting your daughter have yours.”

  I shake my head. “We’ve ruled that out already.” This is true, but the decision didn’t come easily. I ruled it out because I’ve come to love the hearse and all the quirkiness that goes with it. Hurley, on the other hand, liked the idea of Emily inheriting the hearse. This is mainly because he had the thing pimped out like the Popemobile two years ago when I was pregnant and being stalked by a crazed killer. He added steel reinforcements to the door panels, run-flat tires, and bulletproof glass, so he thinks of it as the ultimate safe vehicle. But it doesn’t have side airbags, or Bluetooth anything, or four-wheel drive. And to me, all of those things are more important, particularly for a cell-phone-crazy teenager. Hurley has finally come to see my side of things in the matter.

  “Are you sure?” Pete says. “Let me make you an offer on your current vehicle. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

  I’m about to say no again, but Pete’s determined look changes my mind. I suspect he won’t give up on this matter unless I can find a way to convince him.

  “Okay, Pete, it’s that car over there, the midnight blue one parked by the cherry red F-150. It’s got very low mileage.”

  Pete stares where I’m pointing, looking like the cat that just ate the canary. Two seconds later, his expression falters, and he gives me a sidelong glance. “You’re not talking about the hearse, are you?”

  “I most certainly am,” I say with great enthusiasm. “It’s quite roomy with seating for six. Seven if you count the coffin space. And like I said, it’s got relatively low mileage. I won’t say it’s been driven by a little old lady its entire life, although it has hauled a lot of little old ladies. But it has been driven gently for the most part. And it has some fun add-ons you might be interested in.”

  Pete’s s
houlders sag, and he gives me an irritated look. “You’ve just been messing with me this whole time?”

  “No. I really do want to buy a car for my daughter. But I don’t want to be upsold, I don’t want to be pressured, I do know my numbers, and I’m a close acquaintance of your boss, Mr. Cook. So can we keep all that in mind while we’re looking?”

  Pete looks appropriately kowtowed. “Got it,” he says, his lips pinched. “Why don’t you tell me what price range we’re looking at?”

  “Now we’re talking, Pete,” I say. “Here’s what I’m thinking.”

  CHAPTER 31

  By the time Hurley and I leave the car lot, we are running late for my sister’s party. Hurley agrees to go by the house and pick Emily up while I run out to a store to buy a birthday card and try to find a gift. My sister isn’t an easy person to buy gifts for, and trying to do so at the last minute isn’t helping the situation any.

  Kitchen gadgets are a safe bet because Desi loves to cook, and in a somewhat selfish move that I hope will steer her future cooking efforts in a certain direction, I settle on a pasta-making machine, along with a nifty little rubber tube made for peeling garlic cloves with a simple roll of your hand. I wait while the store wraps the items for me, pacing as I watch time slipping by.

  By the time I arrive at my sister’s house, I am more than an hour late. The inside is decorated with balloons, banners, and a festive table complete with confetti, a birthday cake Desi probably made and decorated herself, ribbons, a punchbowl filled with some sort of pink drink, and several wrapped gifts. I wonder if Desi did all of the prep and decorating herself, or if her kids helped. I can’t imagine her husband, Lucien, assisting since I’ve never seen him lift a hand to do stuff around the house, and Ethan is a loner whose only talent and interest lies in his bug collection. If anyone helped Desi, it was Erika.

  Desi looks happy and totally in her element. Her smile is broad and warm as she walks around, greeting and chatting with her guests. Not surprisingly, given my late arrival, there are a number of people at the party already. In addition to Desi and Lucien, there are a handful of Desi’s neighbors, Hurley, Emily, some acquaintances from about town whom Desi and I both know from growing up here in Sorenson, Izzy, Dom, Sylvie, and my mother’s live-in boyfriend, William (or William-not-Bill, as those of us in the family call him, thanks to his constant reminders of this fact).

  My mother is noticeably absent, and I doubt she’ll come. She’s become the geriatric sector’s version of the Bubble Boy, rarely leaving her immaculate, air-filtered house for the dreaded outdoors, doing so only when she absolutely has to and then with a mask and sometimes other protective gear in place. My mother has been a hypochondriac and has had OCD for as long as I’ve known her. I got used to her quirks growing up, though I spent most of my formative years alternating between trying to decide which friends Desi and I would go to live with when my mother died (which she declared she was doing on a regular basis) and weaving a fantasy existence a la The Chronicles of Narnia wherein Desi and I went to live in a foster home that had a magic portal hidden in a closet.

  My mother’s OCD, specifically her germaphobia, has worsened over the years. Now that I know the truth about my father’s disappearance thirty-plus years ago, I wonder if those events had something to do with the start of her disorder. I’m fairly certain all the failed marriages she’s had since then helped to nurture it. Her relationship with William has also nurtured it because he’s a germaphobe, too, making them a perfect pair and their house the cleanest one in town, maybe in the whole state of Wisconsin.

  I gravitate toward William first, wanting to ask him how my mother is doing. Ever since the return of my father and our discovery of my mother’s past secrets, she has been on a cleaning frenzy unlike any I’ve seen before. William said she scrubbed the floors so vigorously that she wore holes through her gloves and scraped her knuckles raw. The raw knuckles triggered an episode of hypochondria in which my mother was convinced she had leukemia and was on the verge of becoming septic. When the knuckles healed just fine on their own, my mother went back to her maniacal scrubbing and developed some muscle aches in her back and shoulders, as well as fatigue, all of which she immediately assumed was caused by the spread of the leukemia she didn’t really have.

  After nearly two weeks of scrubbing, she donned one of her many elaborate nightdresses and took to her bed, informing William yet again of where her will was, where her funeral plan was, and what type of service and burial she wanted. These reminders were unnecessary since she gave him this information regularly, every time she came down with an imaginary illness. But William, bless him, has been infinitely patient with my mother’s quirks. In fact, I think he loves her all the more for them.

  “Hey, William,” I say, giving him a hug. I have a genuine affection for the man, part of which stems from the fact that I met him on a blind date, a disastrous event that led to me fixing him up with my mother. “How is Mom doing?”

  “She’s still terminal,” he says in a blasé tone. “Although she has started talking about the need to dust the valances in the living room, and move the stove and fridge out so we can kill the dust bunnies living under there.”

  “As if any self-respecting dust bunny would dare try to survive in my mother’s house,” I scoff. William smiles. “The cleaning fixation is always a good sign,” I tell him, though I suspect he’s managed to figure this out on his own over the past three years. “It means she’s ready to give up on her current terminal illness and prepare herself for the next one.”

  William nods, still smiling. But then the smile fades, and he gives me a concerned look.

  “What?” I say. “What’s wrong?”

  William sighs and chews his lower lip. “Your father came by last week.”

  My eyebrows shoot up. “Really? Did Mom talk to him?”

  He shakes his head. “She claimed she was too ill, dying any minute, and she didn’t want to waste her last seconds on earth on a cheating, lying con artist.”

  “Ouch,” I say, wincing. “How did my father take it?”

  William shrugs. “Okay, I suppose. I invited him in, and we chatted for a bit.”

  “Really? What about?”

  “Mostly about you, and Desi, and how much he regretted not being a bigger part of your lives when you were growing up.” William frowns and looks down at his feet. “He also talked about how much he cared for your mom back then.”

  “That must have been difficult for you,” I say, silently cursing my father for his lack of tact.

  “It wasn’t that bad,” William says. “Despite what he said, I could tell that that part of his life was behind him. In fact, I think he’s angry with your mother, not only for refusing to come with him all those years ago when he entered witness protection, but for not telling him she was pregnant with their second child and then lying about Desi’s paternity.”

  “It was rather thoughtless of her to do that,” I say, “although I can kind of understand why she did it, given the circumstances.”

  “I suppose,” William says in a doubtful tone. “Whatever the history, this current state of affairs seems to have triggered a whole new level of intensity in her behaviors. I’m a little worried about her.”

  “Anything I can do to help?”

  He shakes his head. “No, but thanks for the offer.”

  I give his arm a squeeze and then leave him to go talk to my sister. She is playing the perfect hostess, replenishing the drinks of her guests from the punch bowl. I sidle up to her and wait for her to finish charming Nathan, the elderly man who lives next door.

  Once Nathan has been topped off and has wandered away, I nudge Desi with my elbow. “What is that?” I ask, nodding toward the punch bowl.

  She grabs a glass—plastic champagne glasses with HAPPY BIRTHDAY written on them—and ladles me a drink. “Try it,” she says, handing me the glass. “It’s a raspberry lemonade mix with club soda and a hint of rosemary in it.”

  I si
p the drink, which has a sparkling, fruity flavor. “Very good,” I say, meaning it. I take another, bigger taste. “Did you do all this yourself?” I ask her after I’ve swallowed.

  “I did,” she says, her eyes sparkling nearly as much as my drink. “Does it look okay?”

  “It looks fantastic,” I say. “But you shouldn’t have had to do it all yourself.”

  She gives me a dismissive wave of her hand. “Oh, I don’t mind. I was in the mood for a party, so why not?”

  I look around and see that we are relatively alone for the moment. “So tell me about your visit with Dad,” I say in a low voice.

  “It was interesting,” she says. “He’s really pissed at Mom for hiding me from him, and I have to admit I’m a little annoyed about the whole thing myself. I confronted my father—well, the man I always thought was my father—right after you told me. He admitted that he knew the truth, but loved Mom and wanted to make sure she was safe. So he went along with her plan. He apologized for duping me, and said he genuinely cares for me and considers me his daughter.” She scoffs. “Of course, there are the three kids he has in his new family, too.” Desi gives me a sad look and shakes her head. “What a web of lies.”

  “I know. It’s a big mess. And I don’t know what to think about Dad. I spent all those years thinking he was a selfish, conniving, thieving con artist, when in reality he left us because he wanted us to be safe. Of course, he was—and probably still is—a con man, and if not for that none of this would have been necessary.”

  “I know,” Desi says, nodding. “My feelings are mixed, too.”

  “It’s certainly more understandable in your case, given that you only just found out the truth. Does Lucien know? The kids?”

  Desi nods. “They all know. In fact, they all met him when he came by.”

  “How did that go?”

  “Lucien was a bit cold, and Erika kind of followed his lead. Ethan, however, hit it off with him right away. In fact, it’s the most socially animated I’ve ever seen Ethan.”