Board Stiff (Mattie Winston Mysteries) (7 page)

Hurley closes the distance I created between us and pulls me to him. Before I can object or say another word, he kisses me. And then his hands start going places that turn my mind to mush. It’s only a matter of seconds before the universe starts playing a different tune.

“Still think we don’t belong together?” Hurley says as we lay side by side on my bed, stark naked, happily fulfilled, and utterly exhausted.

“That wasn’t a fair test.”

“I’d say it was a pretty good test.”

“Just because you know how to make me crazy doesn’t mean the universe wants us together. I can’t give up my job again, Hurley. And I hate to sound like a broken record, but technically you’re a married man.”

“It’s too late not to break that commandment if that’s your worry. Besides, it’s not like Kate and I had a viable marriage of any sort. Hell, I haven’t spoken to or seen her in nearly fifteen years. As for the job, let’s just keep this little tryst between you and me.”

“I’m not much into that ménage à trois stuff, anyway.” I say it in a half joking tone, because I’m seriously concerned about the future of my job and our relationship.

Hurley seems to sense this. “We can do this, Winston. We just need to be careful and avoid suspicion by not spending any time alone together in places where others will notice.”

“You mean like here, now?” As if my words prompted the Fates to screw with us, there is a knock at my door. Hurley and I fly out of bed and start rounding up our clothes, which look like debris from a laundry bomb. I holler out, “Just a second,” as I hop on one foot, my muscles screaming in agony as I try to get my pants back on. Hurley grabs all his clothes and dashes into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him. As soon as I have myself decently covered, I head for the door, though in the interest of time I forgo my bra and stuff it under a pillow. I smooth my hair before opening the door and paste a friendly smile on my face. The smile quickly disappears when I see who’s standing on the other side.

“L
ucien? What are you doing here?”

He steps inside, not bothering to wait for an invitation, and heads for the couch, plopping himself down like a ragdoll. “Mattie, you have to help me. I miss my family. I miss Desi. I need them back.”

“This isn’t the best time, Lucien,” I say, shooting a wary glance toward the bathroom door. What will Hurley do? I know he’s on the other side of the door listening. He has to know it won’t take Lucien long to figure out Hurley is here given that his car is parked outside. Lucien may be annoying, but he isn’t stupid.

“You have to help me, Mattie. I can’t go on.”

I’ve never seen Lucien like this. He’s always been confident and self-assured despite being irritating as hell. Now he looks like a man defeated, ready to give up. It makes my heart ache. If I have any doubts about how down he really is, they are eliminated when Hurley steps out of the bathroom and Lucien simply acknowledges him with a nod and a “Hey, Hurley.”

I’m really worried. The Lucien I know would never let a moment like this go by without making a crass remark. I close the door and go sit on the couch beside him; Hurley settles into a chair on Lucien’s other side.

“Shouldn’t you be with your clients?” I ask Lucien.

“Irene and Bjorn went home. They know not to talk to the cops unless I’m there.” He shoots a glance at Hurley. “No offense.”

“None taken.”

“Irene seems to think I need to represent all the patients in that place, but unless they contact me and ask for representation, they’re on their own. I don’t think any of them need a lawyer, anyway. It’s just as well if they don’t. I can’t seem to focus with all this stuff that’s going on between me and Desi.”

“What exactly is going on?” I ask.

“I screwed up,” Lucien says. “I’ve been working a lot, picking up any case I can get. It’s kept me at the office late and forced me to go in on the weekends. I haven’t been getting much sleep and then I forgot our anniversary. Desi might have forgiven me that one transgression, but then I missed Erika’s play, and Ethan got some award at school and I missed that, too. Hell, I don’t even know what the award was for.” He shakes his head in dismay, stares at the floor, and sighs.

I’m puzzled because based on what I know of my sister, none of this sounds like separation material.

Lucien clarifies things by adding, “Your sister thought I missed all those events because I was having an affair.”

“Were you? Are you?” I ask.

He scoffs. “Like I could ever love anyone else the way I love her.”

His words come across with surprising sincerity and I’m touched and a little envious.

Lucien raises his head and looks at me. There are tears forming in the corners of his eyes. “I know what everyone else thinks of me. That whole boorish act with the sleazy banter, and the offensive attitude, that’s my thing, my shtick. It keeps people on edge and off balance.”

He’s right about that.

“It distracts people from what I’m really up to and it enables me to move in for the kill before anyone even knows there’s a viable threat. It’s part of why I’m so successful. Desi has always been able to see through all that. She knows me deep down inside. She knows a part of me that no one else does. And that knowledge, that security of knowing I have Desi at home waiting for me every night is another key to my success. I can’t bear the thought of disappointing her and that’s why I’ve been working so much extra, and staying in the office late at night. That’s what had Desi thinking I might be stepping out on her, but I never have and never would do that to her.”

“Tell her that,” I say.

“I did. And I think she knows now that I’m not cheating on her. But it’s the other stuff. She’s just so angry with me. You have to help me, Mattie. Help her understand how much I need her and love her. I didn’t mean to hurt her.”

“Lucien, I’ll do what I can, but I’m still confused as to exactly what the problem is. And you have to understand that my allegiance will always be first and foremost to my sister.”

He nods. “I wouldn’t expect anything less of you, Mattie.”

“Is it all the hours you’re working that’s the problem ? Can you cut back some?”

“Cutting back isn’t an option right now, and anyway, it’s not the extra hours that have her upset.”

“Then what is it?” I ask, thoroughly confused.

Lucien gives me a sheepish look. “It’s embarrassing. I can’t believe I was so stupid.”

The possibilities are mind-boggling, knowing Lucien as I do. I use that fact to try to reassure him. “Lucien, I promise you that whatever you did, I am imagining things that are a whole lot worse.” I pray that this is true. “So just tell me.”

He considers this, looks from me to Hurley and back to me again, and then hangs his head. “It started a couple years ago. I was doing pretty well investing on my own in the stock market and when some of my clients found out about it, they asked me to invest some money for them, too. I agreed to do it, charged a nominal fee, made them a decent profit, and word spread. Before I knew it, I had a couple dozen people who were giving me money to invest and the sums were getting bigger and bigger. It was a nice little side business for a while. Then the stock market turned on me and I started losing.”

Hurley wrinkles his brow and scratches his head. “Well, aside from functioning as a financial investor without a license, which may or may not be a crime, what’s the problem? Lots of people lose money in the stock market.”

Lucien grimaces. “It wasn’t a lot at first and I felt pretty bad about betraying the trust of the people who had faith in me. So instead of telling them about the losses, I covered them.”

“Covered them with what?” I ask.

“Our savings.”

With that answer, I begin to see the light of Lucien’s darkness.

“I also put more of my own money into the market thinking that if I could just find the right mix, I’d be able to make up my clients’ losses as well as my own. Desi and I had quite a bit saved up so I figured we could afford it, and sooner or later I’d be able to replace it and then some, once I got a better handle on the current whims of the market. But it seemed like every strategy I tried was doomed and the losses just kept piling up. Eventually, they got so big I couldn’t tell my investors because I’d all but wiped them out. For some of those folks, it’s all they have. It’s money they’re counting on for their retirement.”

“How much of your own money did you spend, Lucien?” Hurley asks.

Lucien looks down at the floor and shakes his head again. “Between losing investments of my own and covering those of my clients . . . all of it,” he says, looking glum. “There’s nothing left. Plus my business hit a slump for a few months so there wasn’t much coming in and I fell behind on all the bills. Desi found out when she took Erika and some of her friends out for an afternoon at the movies and the car got repo’d right in front of them. After Desi got herself and all the kids home, she went to the bank and found out all our money was gone. She confronted me that night when I got home and I told her what happened. She threw me out of the house and she’s still so angry she won’t speak to me. Erika won’t either. She says I humiliated her in front of all her friends.”

“Well, hell, Lucien, can you blame them?” I ask him. “Why on earth didn’t you tell Desi what was going on in the beginning?”

Lucien slumps into a sad, pathetic ball of crushed human being. “I didn’t think I’d have to. I was sure the losses were temporary and that I’d be able to make them back. Desi has always trusted me with that stuff. She’s always admired my ability to make money, through work and through investing. I didn’t want to let her down.” He looks away from me and wipes at the tears welling in his eyes. “I didn’t think I could bear to see the disappointment on her face when she looked at me. And I was right.”

My heart squeezes in sympathy with Lucien’s pain. I now have a better understanding of just what it was my sister saw in Lucien all those years ago and likely still sees in him today. His love for her couldn’t be more obvious.

“Do your clients know?” Hurley’s tone is gentle. Much as he hates Lucien, even he can see the man is utterly defeated.

Lucien shakes his head. There follows a silence of perhaps twenty seconds’ duration, and Hurley and I are aware that on a normal day, Lucien would have managed to squeeze in at least two, maybe three crass remarks in that period of time. Instead, he is just sitting there staring forlornly at his feet.

The silence is finally broken by the buzz of Hurley’s phone.

“Give me some time and I’ll see what I can do,” I tell Lucien as Hurley takes out his phone. He doesn’t take the call, however.

“Will you talk to your sister?” Lucien pleads. “Tell her I’m lost without her? I love that woman more than anything in the world. I don’t know what I’ll do if she doesn’t take me back. I can’t eat, I can’t focus; I haven’t slept more than a wink in days. I just lay there night after night, staring at the ceiling.”

“Maybe you should try counting sheep,” Hurley offers.

I shoot him a look of horror and shake my head. Even with this toned-down version of Lucien, I don’t think the inclusion of farm animals in his bedtime rituals is a good idea.

“I’ll talk to Desi,” I tell Lucien. “But I can’t make any promises. Desi has always been her own person and she’s entitled to be extremely pissed off with you right now. I can’t guess how long it will take for her to get over it, assuming she ever does.”

“I know that,” Lucien says with a sniffle. Then he does a classic Lucien move by wiping his nose on his sleeve. “I just thank you for trying.”

“In the meantime, what’s the situation on your bills? I can help you out.”

I’m excited that I have the financial means to help my family, but I’m also cursing myself for my gambling fetish. I’ve managed to lose more than half of my divorce settlement. I realize my gambling problem isn’t any better than what Lucien did except that the only money I lost was my own. Still, I have my job back and close to two hundred grand still in the bank, which ought to be enough to buy Desi and Lucien some time.

Lucien stares at me blankly, and I’m not sure if he doesn’t know the answer to my question or if he just doesn’t want to say it. So I dig my checkbook out of my purse and write him out a check for twenty grand. “Will this be enough for you to get by on for now?” I ask him, tearing the check out and walking over to hand it to him.

He takes the check and stares at it for several long seconds. Then he lunges up from his seat and grabs me before I know what he’s doing. “Mattiekins, you are the best!” He gives me several pumping squeezes that I guess are meant to be hugs and kisses me on the cheek. It’s all I can do not to reach up and wipe it off with my hand. When Lucien finally releases me and dashes out the door, I give in to the urge and swipe a hand across my cheek.

I look over at Hurley. “Interesting.”

“Yes.”

“You don’t suppose he realized there was anything going on with us, do you?”

“I doubt it. He seemed pretty caught up in his own problems.”

“I hope so. We dodged a bullet here, Hurley. We can’t let that happen again.”

He rises from his chair and starts walking toward me. “No, we can’t.”

“We have to be careful not to let our hormones call the shots,” I say as he closes in.

“Yes, we do,” he agrees, so close that I can feel his breath warm on my face.

“So, no more hanky-panky, right?” I’m barely able to get the words out because I’m suddenly breathless.

“None at all.” Hurley bends forward and gives me a light kiss on the lips.

F
ifteen minutes later, we are again lying on my bed in a state of exhausted pleasure and dishabille. So much for convictions.

“What are we doing, Hurley?”

“Something that feels really, really good,” he says with a dumb-assed grin.

“You know what I mean.”

“Let’s not analyze it. I say we just put it behind us and move on. Deal?”

“Deal.”

I don’t think either one of us truly believes this. We reassemble our clothing and actually make it out of the house and into Hurley’s car. Our drive is made in silence, but it’s a comfortable one, reminiscent of the old days before our lives got so tangled.

Bernard Chase’s address is a few miles outside of town, five acres of land that was once part of a farm that was sold off in chunks, some of which became private property, and some of which became a new golf course. Bernard’s house is a pretentious spread with stone facades, solar panels, professional landscaping as far as the eye can see, and a hammered copper roof atop an out-of-place cupola perched on one corner of a humongous wraparound porch. There is an attached three-car garage and while I can see the upper part of a boat through the window of one bay, I can’t tell from the front drive if there is a car in either bay. Hurley parks us right in front of the mansion-style, crescent-shaped concrete stairs going up to the porch. As we get out of his car, an overweight hound dog whose ears drag on the ground comes waddling around the far right corner of the house. He lets out one baying woof that might be a warning or a greeting and then he stops to stare at us.

“Hey, pup,” Hurley says, extending a hand. With that, the dog wags his tail and waddles over to us.

As Hurley gives me a glimpse of his backside by bending down to pet the dog, I’m thinking I’ll be the next one in line to wag and waddle. Those thoughts are cut short when the front door to the house opens. I look and see a jeans and sweatshirt–clad woman with long, straight, dark hair standing there.

“Are you Mrs. Chase?” I ask.

“Who the hell are you?”

Ah, a friendly sort
. I let Hurley take it from here, figuring his manly attributes might make more headway with the woman than I can.

I hear a vibrating noise and Hurley straightens up from the dog and takes his phone out. He looks at the screen, frowns, and sticks the thing back in his pocket. The two of us climb the stairs, Hurley speaking as we go. “I’m Detective Steve Hurley from the Sorenson Police Department and this is Mattie Winston, a deputy coroner with the Medical Examiner’s Office.”

“So who died?” the woman snaps, clearly unimpressed and, one hopes, uninformed of our reason for being here.

Hurley, never one to mince words, says, “Your husband Bernard.”

There is the faintest hint of a flinch in her expression and then she smiles. “No, really, why are you here? Is this some practical joke my sister set up?”

“This is no joke, Mrs. Chase,” Hurley says. “Your husband Bernard was found dead this morning.”

The smile is gone, replaced with an expression of concern and confusion. Then she rapid-fires questions at us. “What happened? Did he have a heart attack? Was he in a car accident or something?”

“We won’t know exactly what the cause of death is until an autopsy is performed, but there are some suspicious circumstances surrounding his death. His body was found in one of the bathrooms at the Twilight Home, which I understand your husband owned and ran.”

Mrs. Chase nods slowly, her eyes gazing off in thought. Then she says, “A bathroom? Did he die on the toilet?”

“Not exactly,” I say, and she looks at me with such sudden sharpness, I suspect she hasn’t fully registered my presence until now.

“May we come in?” Hurley asks.

Mrs. Chase stares at him as if the words he uttered were some foreign language. After a few beats, she nods and steps aside, so Hurley and I head through the door. What I can see of the inside of the house is as ostentatious as the outside, but I’m starting to notice a trend. The floors are bamboo wood, and a good portion of the decor, including most of the furniture, is also made of natural objects such as stone, plant materials, and wood. The lighting at the moment is mostly natural sunlight streaming in through windows, skylights, and sun tubes, and the light fixtures I can see are all fitted with fluorescent bulbs.

“Your house looks to be very eco-friendly,” I say.

For a moment, Mrs. Chase’s demeanor changes. Her face lights up and breaks into a huge smile. “Yes, I do try to minimize my footprint on our planet.” She gazes around at the interior and sighs. “It’s a challenge given Bernie’s tastes. He could care less about saving the planet, but I try.” She seems to realize how inappropriate her tone is under the circumstances and looks away with a wince. “Anyway, please tell me what happened to Bernie. Did he suffer? What do I need to do?”

Her matter-of-fact tone and apparent lack of concern for the death of her husband confuses me at first. I can’t tell if she’s simply in shock or truly indifferent. But her next comment clarifies things.

“I suppose I’ll need an alibi as I’m certain to be a suspect, right?”

“Why do you say that?” Hurley asks.

“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? The spouse is always one of the first people you cops look at when someone is murdered. I watch enough TV to know that much.”

“No one said your husband was murdered,” I say.

She shoots me a look of impatience. “All right, if you want to play word games, we can do that. I believe you said it was suspicious circumstances. That sort of implies murder, doesn’t it? It won’t be a secret that Bernie and I weren’t on the best of terms with our marriage. We’ve been undergoing counseling and we divided the house up into separate suites for each of us months ago. The closest thing we’ve had to sex over the past year is when we occasionally meet at the coffeepot in the morning and one of us says, ‘screw you’ to the other.”

Hurley bites back a smile. “When’s the last time you saw your husband, Mrs. Chase?”

She gives him an annoyed look. “Don’t call me that. My name is Vonda Lincoln. Lincoln is my maiden name and I kept it. None of that traditional name-change bull crap for me, thank you very much. As to the last time I saw Bernie . . . to be honest, I’m not sure. I think it’s been several days. That gas hog of a BMW he drives was in the garage last night when I got back from my workout session and it was gone this morning when I went to the grocery store—which reminds me”—she turns and opens a drawer in a small table against the wall, removing paper and pen—“I need to write myself a note so I’ll remember to speak to the manager of the grocery store here. There isn’t enough organic stuff available. I spoke to him last year and he ordered some organic veggies for a while, but now it’s back to the same old crap. He never did get any of the other organic foods I asked for, or the organic cleaners I asked him to stock.”

“Wow, you’re quite dedicated to this stuff,” I say.

“I’m just being responsible. That’s the main reason Bernard and I are splitting up. He told me he was green when we met and started dating. He made an effort for a while, but it became clear to me once we were married that he’s just a resource-consuming hog like everyone else. I think he only pretended to be green to win me over. I mean, look at this house. Do you know how hard I had to fight to get the solar panels put in, and the special rain water collection system? But Bernard is all about the money. Screw the earth!! All that matters to him is his wallet and bottom line.

“I mean really, why can’t he change over from those plastic disposable diapers he buys for patients at the Twilight Home to cloth ones that are laundered? Do you have any idea how much room those diapers take up in the landfills? Or how long it takes for them to decompose?”

“Laundering the diapers uses resources, too,” I say, and I’m rewarded with another dirty look for my effort.

“Bernie doesn’t care about the environment at all,” Vonda goes on. “I tried to convince him to cut back on the lighting in that place, but he wouldn’t do it. Hell, so many of those old folks can’t see worth a damn even when the lighting is good, so why have everything lit up so brightly all the time? And don’t even get me started on the water consumption issue. I mean, come on, do those old folks really have to flush every single time they use a toilet? Some of them have bladders the size of a pea and they go twenty times a day.”

I realize I’m staring at Vonda with my mouth hanging open and I snap it shut. The woman is clearly on a roll; it’s as if someone flipped a switch and turned her on, like some Disneyland animatronic spokesperson for green living. She has grown so animated with her speech that small beads of sweat have broken out on her brow. I don’t know about Hurley, but I don’t have any idea what to say to this woman. Then, as I take in the designer jeans she’s wearing, I metaphorically perform a circus act by sticking my foot way into my mouth.

“Do you know that those jeans you’re wearing are made in China, a country with a
huge
carbon footprint, and that they have a formaldehyde coating on them when they’re first made?”

Hurley and Vonda stare at me like I’m the star attraction at the freak show. Vonda’s expression turns into something scary. It makes it easy for me to imagine her killing her husband and any costly or eco-unfriendly patients at the Twilight Home.

“I’m just saying that sometimes it’s easier to talk about living green than it is to actually do it,” I say, wincing at the nervous tremor I can hear in my voice.

Hurley’s phone buzzes again and after a quick glance at the screen, he hits the
IGNORE
button and returns the phone to his pocket. He turns his attention back to the Green Menace and breaks the silence. “Can you vouch for your whereabouts this morning?”

“I’m sure the folks at the grocery store will remember me,” Vonda says.

And not fondly,
I imagine.

“Other than that, I’ve been here at the house all morning. When did Bernie die?”

“I’m not at liberty to share that information at this time,” Hurley says, which I know is a dodge since we don’t really know yet. “When were you at the grocery store?”

Vonda’s mouth morphs into a sardonic grin that gives me a chill. “I’m not at liberty to share that information at this time.”

I’m impressed that Hurley’s expression doesn’t alter one whit. Still stone-faced he asks, “Do you mind if we take a look around?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.” Vonda tilts her head to the side and folds her arms over her chest. Her body language is clear.

I’m not sure at what point she decided we were the enemy, but that line has definitely been drawn. I suspect it happened when I turned fashion police on her, and as such, I’m going to hear it from Hurley later.

“Since Bernard didn’t die here and this is my home as well as his, I believe I have the right to refuse you entry without a search warrant, don’t I?”

“Yes, you do, for now,” Hurley says. “But I assure you I’ll return with one later. In the meantime, don’t leave town. Good day, Mrs. Chase.”

Hurley whirls around and leaves the house so fast it takes me a few seconds to realize I should be leaving with him. I’m tickled and smiling at the nasty little jibe he made by calling Vonda Mrs. Chase, but when I glance over at her and see her glaring at me, my smile evaporates. I make a hasty retreat, flinching and nearly falling down the stairs when I hear the front door of the house slam closed behind me. Hurley is already in his car with the engine running when I hop into the front seat. He revs the engine and tears out before I can get my seatbelt on, leaving a blue cloud of smoke behind us. I suspect this is no accident. Hurley’s cloud of smog is one last flip of the finger to Vonda.

His face is tight and he looks mad, but I’m not sure if it’s at me or Vonda. “Boy, she’s a piece of work, isn’t she?” I say, finally securing my seatbelt as he turns onto the county road and eases up to highway speed. He says nothing, so I try again. “I’m glad we got out of there when we did. If we’d stayed much longer, I suspect she would have had me rolling my own tampons.”

Hurley’s face twitches and then he breaks into a grin. He glances over at me and shakes his head.

“What?” I say.

“That’s one of the things I love about you, Winston. You can always make me laugh.”

“What’s your take?” Hurley asks.

“Do you think she killed him?” Hurley says.

Okay, he didn’t exactly say he loves
me
, but he did say he loves something about me. That still counts, doesn’t it? I wonder what Dr. Maggie’s take on it will be?

“Mattie?”

Back down to earth . . .
“Um, I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Maybe? Since when are you one to equivocate?”

“We should wait and see what the time of death turns out to be and then check out her alibi. No doubt the store manager will remember her if her story of taking him to task is true, so that part should be easy to check. Maybe that will rule her out. It’s too early to say, I think.”

Hurley shoots me a quizzical look, like he thinks maybe I’ve turned into a pod person.

“Do
you
think she did it?” I ask him.

“To be honest, no, I don’t, not that she couldn’t have, though. If the level of animosity she has toward Bernard is any indication, she’s got motive aplenty. She isn’t a large woman, but she is tall and solidly built and I think she could take the guy. They’re about the same height and while he outweighs her, he looked kind of soft, whereas it’s obvious she’s serious about working out; her arms are muscular, and those legs may be slender, but I’m betting they’re powerful.”