Frozen Stiff (18 page)

“He’ll be fine,” I tell the nurse. “Besides, he’s too stubborn to die.” I turn and glare at David. “I’m glad you’re feeling better. See ya around.”

I turn and storm from his room, fuming over his insistent denial. But he manages to get the last word in.

“Yes, you will,” he yells after me. “I’ll see you at your mother’s for Thanksgiving dinner.”

Chapter 26

I
drive by the cottage to drop Hoover off and to change into some sweats and a T-shirt. At this point I’m glad I let Richmond talk me into going to the gym with him. After dealing with David, I have a ton of pent-up energy to let loose.

I dig the charger Hurley gave me for the throwaway phone out of my purse, plug it in, and put the phone on it. Then, since I have about fifteen minutes to spare, I hobble out to the woods to look for my other phone. The stink of burned everything is still hanging in the air and the smell gives me an instant throbbing headache. As I get closer to the site, I can see just how devastating the fire actually was. The entire front of the house is burned down to the foundation. At the rear, the kitchen—or what’s left of it—is fully exposed, though a good portion of the back wall is still standing. Most of the stairs I climbed last night are gone. Only the top four remain, hanging in midair, a giant pile of burned rubble beneath them. Everything is covered in water, ash, and soot—a soggy, blackened mess.

I thought I’d made my peace with the loss of the house when I moved out, and I truly didn’t think the fire would make that loss any worse. Now I’m not so sure.

A ruined, blackened hull is all that is left of what I’ve come to think of as the years BC—Before Cheating. I’ve been trying to think of the years
AD
—After David—as a new beginning, but seeing the total destruction of the house this way makes everything seem so utterly, irrevocably final.

I feel wetness on my cheek and for a second I think it has started to rain. Then I realize I’m crying. I swipe at the tears, turn my back on the house, and try to focus on the task at hand. After several minutes of scouring the grounds beneath the trees, I finally find my cell phone. Remarkably it is still intact, though it’s as dead as the throwaway phone. Praying that the battery is the reason, I carry it back to the house and put it on its charger. The tiny yellow light that comes on cheers me to a surprising degree. Maybe there is some hope left after all.

When I arrive at the health club, which is called Slim’s Gym, I see a guy behind the door who looks like a giant muscle on steroids. There is a look of horror on his face and at first I think it’s because of how out of shape I am. But that makes no sense because I remember seeing Richmond’s car in the lot and surely I can’t be viewed as any more of a challenge than he is. Can I? Or have I been totally deluding myself?

The reason behind Muscle Guy’s horrified look becomes clear as soon as I walk through the door. “Do you work at a funeral home or something?” he asks, efficiently bypassing any normal greeting. I notice he’s staring over my shoulder toward the parking lot.

“No,” I sigh. “That’s my personal vehicle.”

“Are you serious?”

“As a heart attack,” I say, smiling. He doesn’t smile back.

“Do you think you could park it around back? Having a hearse in our lot doesn’t give the type of first impression I’d like.”

“Fine,” I say in a way that lets him know how put out I am. I do an about-face, get back in the hearse, and drive it around to the back of the building, pulling onto a tiny, concrete pad that borders on a big cornfield. The space I have to park in is barely big enough for two cars.

When I head back inside, Muscle Guy is waiting for me. “Sorry about that,” he says. “But we do have an image to uphold here.”

Whatever
.

“My name is Slim, as in Slim’s Gym. Get it?”

He says it like I’m five years old, and I’m tempted to fire back with a comment about how just because I’m overweight, it doesn’t mean I’m stupid. But instead I smile and say, “Cute.”

“Well, welcome. You’re new here, yes?”

“Obviously,” I say, figuring my physique should make that clear, given that a glance at the other patrons reveals people who are frighteningly fit and slender. I don’t see Richmond, however, and I wonder if they’ve managed to kill him already. Maybe that’s why they wanted me to park in the rear, so they could load Richmond’s body into my car without anyone seeing.

“Bob Richmond invited me as his guest,” I tell him.

“Oh, okay,” Muscle Guy says, nodding knowingly, as if this somehow explains everything. “Come into the office and we’ll get you started. First we’ll go over a questionnaire about your health and exercise habits, and then we’ll discuss your goals. Once that’s done, we’ll put together a routine of circuit training designed to help you meet those goals and then orient you on how to use the equipment. We assign everyone a personal trainer for the first week or so, until we think you’ve got the routines down pat. After that it will depend on your motivation. Your trainer will be Helga. She’s very good.”

I follow Slim into a cubicle where he hands me a piece of paper with about a hundred questions and check boxes on it. It takes me a few minutes to fill out the first side, and by the time I’m done I’m feeling pretty good given that I don’t have any major illnesses, don’t smoke or drink regularly, and don’t have to answer a question about weekly ice cream consumption. I do mention the broken toes, however. Then I flip it over. On the back side are places to fill in my weight, height, and a variety of body measurements, and below that there’s a drawn body that looks like a chalk outline at a murder scene. I hope it’s not a sign of things to come.

“Don’t fill in the weight and height section,” Slim says. “We’ll measure you in just a bit.”

Gulp
.

“For now just circle the areas on the body outline that you want to focus on improving.”

I draw one big circle around the entire body and hand him the form.

He smiles and says, “Okay, come with me.”

I follow him out into the main part of the gym, which smells like old blood and sweaty socks. He leads me past several rows of machines that look like torture devices from a dungeon, to a closed room near the far end of the facility. When we enter the room, I finally see Richmond. He’s standing in front of a tall, slender woman who has a measuring tape wrapped around his ample girth.

Richmond glances over at me and smiles, but he looks terrified. The woman with the tape lets it go and then writes something on a piece of paper. “Okay, Bob,” she says. “That’s all we need for now. If you’ll go with Slim here, he’ll take you out and introduce you to the exercise machines.”

Slim hands my papers over to the woman and says, “This is Helga. Helga, this is Mattie.”

Helga, who is dressed in tight-fitting shorts and a sports bra, looks like a blond goddess. Judging from the six-pack on her abdomen and the size of her deltoid and trapezius muscles, I’m guessing she’s a body builder. We eye one another and acknowledge the introductions with a polite nod, but I’m not fooled. There is a distinct air of disdain in the arch of her left eyebrow and the pinched line of her lips.

Slim beckons Richmond to follow him out to the main floor area and Richmond does so, looking like he’s headed for his execution. He’s already sweating profusely and I can’t help but worry that he might flood the place once he’s actually done something.

Helga examines the paperwork I filled out, points to the scale, and says, “Step on.”

I brace myself for the bad news. I don’t have a scale in the cottage and haven’t weighed myself in several stressful months, and food is my primary coping mechanism for stress. First Helga uses the height bar, which measures me at six feet even. Next she slides the big weight on the scale to the one-fifty notch, and then starts nudging the smaller weight. When the bar fails to tip, she sighs, moves the big weight to the two-hundred mark, and then goes back to the small weight. I close my eyes, not wanting to see where it ends up. I listen as the little weight slides along the bar, praying it will stop soon.

“Well,” Helga says, and I detect a hint of a German accent in the way she applies a faint v sound to her w. “It looks like we have some work to do. Your BMI is firmly in the overweight category. In fact, you are just shy of obese.”

“I’m large boned,” I say, knowing it sounds pathetic. “And these clothes are heavy.”

Helga, to her credit, says nothing. Instead she takes a tape measure and wraps it around my bosom. When she reads the number her eyebrows rise, but she makes no comment. After writing the number down, she does the same with my waist and hips. Then she measures my arms, thighs, and calves.

“How did you break your toes?” she asks, glancing at my health questionnaire.

I’m tempted to tell her I kicked the crap out of the last person who told me I was on the borderline of being classified as obese, but I don’t. “I tripped over a tree root when I was running.” I figure wording it this way might shine me in a better light with her since it makes it sound like running is something I do every day for exercise, as opposed to something I do only when my house is on fire.

“Okay,” she says. “We’ll have to modify your workout for now to accommodate the foot injury but there’s plenty here for us to work on.” Her eyes grow big as she gives me a quick head-to-toe scan, as if she’s wondering if I’m more challenge than she can handle. “Let’s head out to the main exercise area.”

I follow her out to the floor, where I spy Richmond sitting on a machine rigged with weights and pulleys, doing repetitive arm pulls with a bar. His face is beet red and he’s already sweating buckets, creating a huge dark stain on his T-shirt.

Helga leads me to a different section and directs me to a similar-looking machine, though this one has some kind of widespread leg thingies on it. “Have a seat and put your legs inside these,” she says, pointing to the leg thingies.

I do so, feeling painfully awkward and exposed when I end up semireclined and with my legs spread-eagled. “I generally only get into this position once a year and then I’m naked for it,” I say with a laugh to disguise my discomfort. A woman two machines over shoots me a disgusted look and I fire one back at her.
Skinny bitch.

Helga finagles the weights behind me and then says, “Okay, now bring your thighs together and then let them fall apart. Keep doing that for ten repetitions.”

I do as she says and the first four reps are a breeze, made easier by the fact that my legs meet in the middle faster than most. I’ve always been afraid to wear corduroy pants, fearful that the friction created by my thighs rubbing together might get hot enough to start a fire.

Just as I’m starting to think this exercise thing is a piece of cake, the reps get harder and my muscles start to balk. By the time I reach number ten, my thighs feel like someone has set them on fire—and that’s without the benefit of corduroy.

Helga looks pleased. “Very good,” she says. “Now let’s do some upper body strengthening.”

Forty minutes later, Helga, who I’m now convinced is a semiretired B&D/S&M mistress, hands me some papers containing information about a proper diet for weight loss and then takes me to the locker room. I limp along behind her on legs that feel like they’re made out of gelatin—and not the sturdy green hospital kind, either. She gives me a tour of the showers, which I vow to never, ever use after watching two extremely slender, well manicured women sporting genital topiary—one has pubic hair that looks like a tiny landing strip, the other has pubes in the shape of a lightning bolt—parade around stark naked. There is also a hot tub, which I would love to use if I didn’t have to get undressed, because my entire body is throbbing like a toothache. I thank Helga and promise to come tomorrow for my second round of torture. It’s a promise I’m not sure I’ll keep.

Richmond, whose torture I suspect rivaled mine considering that his face looked like it was about to explode the entire time, meets me by the door. He hasn’t showered either and I’m pretty sure it’s for the same reason I didn’t. While I can sympathize with his embarrassment, I’m glad we’re not going to be riding home in the same car. He smells like wet towels that have been tossed in the corner for a week.

“So how’d it go?” I ask him.

“That Slim guy tried to kill me. Hell, he might have succeeded and my heart is just too stunned to know it yet. I’m going to drop dead five steps into the parking lot, like Bill did in the movie
Kill Bill,
after Uma used that Five Finger Exploding Heart move on him.”

“Are you going to come back?”

He hesitates and I can tell he doesn’t want to. “I will if you will,” he says with a sigh of resignation.

Damn
. “Okay, let’s give it a few more times. How about we meet here again tomorrow, say around four in the afternoon?”

“Yeah, okay.” He sounds disappointed that I’ve agreed.

“You better not stand me up, Richmond, because if you don’t give Slim another chance to kill you, I’ll do the deed myself.”

“Fine,” he grumbles. “But I’m going to spend my time until then thinking up ways to torture him for revenge.”

As I watch Richmond waddle to his car, I breathe a sigh of relief when he passes the five step mark. My neck and shoulder muscles feel tight, so I roll my head to try to get them to relax. I hobble out to my car, my leg muscles protesting with every step. I suspect Richmond and I will both be paying dearly for this tomorrow, and oddly enough, this gives me an idea.

Chapter 27

T
hough I’m eager to hop into the shower and wash the gym stink from my body, I first retrieve the printout Steph gave me at the police station—which is still in my pants pocket—and then I check the cell phones. The throwaway has more of a charge on it than my regular phone so I take it off the charger. First I call information to get the number of the car rental office by O’Hare Airport. The person who answers sounds young, bored, and robotic as he recites the name of the place and asks if he can help me.

“Hi. My name is Rebecca Taylor,” I tell him, resurrecting my alter ego. “I’m working for the Worldwide Insurance Company and I’m investigating a personal injury claim involving someone who says they were driving one of your cars. I suspect the guy is trying to file a fraudulent claim and I’m wondering if I can get some information from you.”

“What information?”

“Well, I’d like to know if there was any evidence of damage to the vehicle in question. If I give you the license plate number of the car, can you tell me if it was returned with any dings or dents?”

“Yeah, I guess,” he says.

I read off the make and model of the car from the note Steph gave me and the license plate number. He tells me to hold on a second and I hear the tapping of computer keys in the background.

“That car was rented for a week and hasn’t been returned yet,” the guy says finally. “So I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“Really? That’s odd, because the guy said he returned the car two days ago. You rented it out to a David Winston, right?”

“Nope,” the guys says. “The name on the contract is Leon Lindquist.”

Bingo!

“Hmm, that’s odd,” I say. “I guess I better go back and check on a few things. Sorry I bothered you and thanks for your time.” I hang up before he has a chance to ask any more questions. Then I try to call Hurley, but once again it flips over to his voice mail. I leave a message telling him I might have a lead for him and ask him to call as soon as he can.

Seconds after hanging up, my regular cell phone rings and I snatch it up from the charger and answer it without looking at the caller ID, assuming it’s Hurley. “It’s about time you called,” I say.

“Were you waiting on me?” says a male voice that is not Hurley.

“David?”

“Were you expecting someone else?” He sounds suspicious and it irks me—he’s lost the right to be proprietary with me.

“Yes, as a matter of fact I was,” I tell him. I leave it at that; let him think what he wants. “How did you get my cell phone number?” I know I never gave it to him so I’m wondering who did.

“Some gal in your office,” he says, and I give myself a mental slap for never telling Cass to withhold the information. “Though you should have given it to me yourself,” he adds, sounding sulky.

“What do you want, David?”

“There’s someone here who wants to talk to you.”

Frowning, I hear him hand off the phone and then a whispery voice comes on the line. “Mattie?”

“Yes?”

“This is Nancy Molinaro.”

Uh-oh. This can’t be good.

“I’m calling to ask a favor of you.”

“Okay,” I say hesitantly.

“Your husband has been approved for discharge from the ICU but his doctors don’t feel comfortable sending him home alone. Not to mention the fact that he doesn’t have a home to go to at this point. And he is refusing to stay on the medical floor. So I’m wondering if you would be willing to let him stay with you for a day or two, to watch over him.”

I’m stymied. I can’t believe David has sunk so low as to pull Molinaro into this. Though I must admit it’s quite brilliant of him since he knows how much I fear the woman. “I don’t know if I can,” I say, knowing Molinaro might be mentally fitting me for a pair of cement overshoes already. “I have my job and other obligations.”

“What obligation can be more important than family?” she counters. It’s a question loaded with double entendre when I consider that it’s coming from a rumored ex mob boss. “Besides, your office already informed us that you are off duty for the next few days.”

Damn Cass!
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll be there to get him in an hour. But he can only stay for a day or so. Then he has to find somewhere else to go.”

“Tell him that, not me,” she says. And then the line goes dead. I throw the phone onto the couch in anger, making Hoover scuttle off to the other side of the room. Then I head across the drive and knock on Izzy’s back door. Dom answers a few minutes later.

“Uh-oh,” he says, eyeing me warily. “What got your panties in a wad?”

“It’s my frigging ex,” I grumble. “They’re releasing him from the hospital and I’ve been coerced into letting him stay with me for a day or two, like I need that complication in my life right now.”

“How can I help?”

“Do you have an extra set of sheets I can borrow? I want to make up the couch as his bed so it’s crystal clear to him what kind of favor this is I’m doing for him.”

“Sure, hold on a sec.” I wait a minute or so until Dom returns carrying a stack of linens and a pillow. He hands them to me and says, “If you need to escape, you know we’re here.”

“Thanks.” I head back to the cottage, move my cell phone to the end table, and pile the linens on one end of the couch. I grab the pillow and start stuffing it into the case when my phone rings. I start to grab my cell from the end table, but when I hear it ring again I realize it isn’t my main phone, it’s the throwaway. I walk over, snatch it out of the charger, and flip it open.

“Hello?”

“Mattie?”

It’s Hurley, and I breathe a sigh of relief. “Where are you?” I ask, sounding more irritated than I mean to. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”

“It’s probably best if you don’t know for now.”

“Has Richmond talked to you yet?”

“He called me and ran the whole lawsuit thing with Minniver by me. I told him I’d already decided to move the fence to placate the old man.”

“Is that true?”

“No, but with Minniver gone there isn’t anyone to contradict me. It will placate Richmond for a while, but once he gets the fingerprints off that gas can and finds out about the altercation David and I had, I’m sure he’ll come back to me.”

“So where do we go from here?”

“Just stick as close to Richmond and the investigation as you can.” Great, I think. Now I have even less of an excuse to escape further gym tortures from Helga. “And keep me posted on any new developments. I’m going to stay off the radar for now. I left my cell phone at home in case anyone tries to trace it so I’m calling you from a throwaway cell. For now I’d like us to communicate using the throwaways only. Did the number I called from show up on your caller ID?”

“Hold on,” I say, taking the phone from my ear and looking at the display. “No number,” I tell him. “It just says out of area.”

“Good. Get a pen and I’ll give you the number. You can store it in the caller ID but give it a phony name of some sort.”

“Okay, hold on again.” I rummage around in my purse until I find the pen and notebook Hurley had me bring along for our trip to Chicago. “Go ahead,” I say when I’m ready. He gives me the number and I scribble it down.

“Anything new you can tell me?” he asks when I’m done.

“Yes, as a matter of fact.” I fill him in on Helen’s story about the car and the name of the person who rented it.

“Very clever,” Hurley says when I reiterate my conversation with the car rental employee.

“Does the name Leon Lindquist mean anything to you?”

“No, but that doesn’t surprise me. You’d be surprised how easy it is to come up with a fake ID and credit card. Anything else?”

“No.”

“Okay, I’ll give you a call tomorrow to see if anything else has come up.”

I start to agree, but then remember my deal with David. “Um, why don’t you let me call you instead?”

There’s a pause and then he says, “Why? What’s going on?”

I don’t want to tell him, but I don’t see any way around it. “David’s going to be staying with me for a few days.”

My pronouncement is met with silence.

“It’s only for a day or two, just to keep an eye on him while he recovers.”

“I see.”

“I’m making up the couch for him to sleep on.”

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”

He’s right, I don’t. So why do I feel compelled to do so?

“Call me when you can,” he says. And then he disconnects.