There's Something About Marty (A Working Stiffs Mystery Book 3)
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Authors: Wendy Delaney
THERE’S SOMETHING
ABOUT MARTY
A Working Stiffs Mystery
Book 3
Wendy Delaney
Table of Contents
The last thing I’d expected to hear this morning was Patsy Faraday chirping a greeting like a songbird.
The plus-sized, self-appointed hall monitor sitting outside the Chimacam County Prosecutor’s office hadn’t once offered me a snark-free morning pleasantry in my seven weeks of sharing a boss with her.
As the low man on the office totem pole, I’d become the designated delivery girl of the department’s Friday morning doughnut order. Since those doughnuts came from my great-uncle’s cafe and I couldn’t just pick up and run without a bit of conversation, I was more than my usual five minutes late to work. But Patsy hadn’t spared a glance at the clock ticking next to her computer monitor to serve me her usual version of a tardy slip.
I stopped in my tracks. Something felt very off, as in
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
off. I looked around to make sure she was talking to me and saw two assistants down the hall clicking on their keyboards, but there was no one else within earshot. “Good morning.”
Not that I’m any more suspicious than the next person, but when something stinks I’m not one to pretend that it passes my sniff test, so I held the bakery box filled with assorted doughnuts in front of me like a peace offering. “Want one of the apple fritters before they all disappear?”
Much like the finger-licking good pastry I’d devoured on my way to the courthouse, it was no mystery why they disappeared. My great-uncle Duke made the best apple fritters in Port Merritt, maybe even in the entire state of Washington. I should know. He’d been satisfying my sweet tooth ever since my grandmother first took me to breakfast at Duke’s Cafe. My thirty-year love affair with his danged apple fritters was one of the many reasons I had yet to lose the eighteen pounds I’d packed on since my divorce earlier in the year.
With fritter love as one of the few things Patsy and I had in common, I’d hoped to tempt her with one as a sugar-glazed conversation starter.
She sharpened her gaze on the pink cardboard box in my hands. “I’m on a low-carb diet. Lost ten pounds in two weeks, so no.”
Ten pounds! I’d probably gained a pound in the last hour thanks to that apple fritter and the two slices of bacon I’d sneaked while I got caught up on the local gossip. And sadly, the scoop du jour featured the sudden death of Marty McCutcheon, a Duke’s regular and the owner of a flooring shop three blocks down on Main Street.
“Good for you,” I said, making an effort to keep the envy out of my voice.
With a smile tugging at her lips like she had a secret, Patsy pushed out of her chair, a note of Chanel rising with her. Patsy’s plaited hair, tawny without its usual telltale gray roots, swept over her shoulder as she snatched the bakery box out of my hands. “I’ll take this to the breakroom for you. Frankie wants to see you.”
Ten pounds, expensive perfume, a new dye job,
and
Patsy was being nice to me? She had a secret all right. If I was reading the clues correctly, it was a new man in her life. Either that or this bird was chirping because I was about to be fired for being late one time too many.
Since I was still paying off my divorce lawyer and needed to keep my job, I wanted to believe in the transformative power of new love. But I also had a sinking feeling that trouble waited for me inside Frankie’s office.
Swallowing the lump in my throat, I knocked on the door to my right, and my boss waved me in.
Sixty-year-old Francine “Frankie” Rickard had recently been reelected to a third term as the Chimacam County Prosecutor. Because the uninhabited acres of timber-rich forest in the county outnumbered her constituency, she also served as County Coroner.
Based on the color of the file folder open in front of her—blue, the color used in the office to distinguish coroner’s cases from criminal cases—I hoped that I’d been summoned to her office not as an administrative assistant in need of a reprimand but as one of her deputy coroners.
Frankie leaned back in her chair. “Good morning, Charmaine,” she said with a quick smile. Since it seemed to be forced and the coffee mug next to her was empty, I guessed that her work day had started hours earlier than mine. And because of the presence of that blue folder, not by choice.
“Morning. You wanted to see me?”
She pointed at one of the two gold-patterned brocade high back chairs facing her, and I took a seat. “I received a call from Darlene McCutcheon early this morning.”
Since Frankie wanted to talk coroner business, I breathed a sigh of relief. But that didn’t reduce the palpable tension in the room. Probably because that call from Marty’s ex-wife couldn’t have been a pleasant one.
“I heard about Marty,” I said, thinking that it was strange that Darlene would be the one calling Frankie when there was a new Mrs. McCutcheon in the family.
Frankie pursed her peony pink mouth, creating tiny puckers out of the fine lines surrounding it. “News travels fast around here.”
Especially when hospital staffers stopped in for an after-shift breakfast at Duke’s, where the waitresses were always eager to exchange some daily dish.
I glanced down at the blue folder with Marty McCutcheon’s name on the tab. “I thought he’d died from a heart attack.”
“Actually, cardiac arrest. Given Marty’s history, most likely from cardiovascular disease according to Dr. Cardinale.”
I knew Kyle Cardinale. Hunky ER doctor. Great hair. He might be an impossible flirt, but I trusted his judgment. “You think there may be more to it?”
She leveled a gaze at me over her wireframe bifocals. “I highly doubt it, but Marty’s ex seems to think that his new wife is responsible for his death. She was quite insistent that something happened at Marty’s birthday dinner last night.” Frankie pushed the folder toward me. “So, if you can make some time this morning, get her statement.”
Of all the deputy coroners on Frankie’s staff—and because of budget constraints that included almost everyone with a desk on the third floor of the courthouse—I was typically the one who went into the field to interview witnesses and gather statements. As a deception detection specialist it was next to impossible to pull the wool over my eyes, and since a lot of the locals knew of my reputation as a
human lie detector
, I had an advantage my coworkers didn’t: people were often afraid to lie to me.
It certainly made my job easier—something I expected to be the case when I interviewed Darlene McCutcheon, an old friend of my grandmother’s.
“No problem. I can make time.” Especially since the criminal prosecutor I assisted was at an offsite meeting, and other than keeping his staffers caffeinated with fresh pots of coffee, the only work waiting for me would be the usual end-of-the-week filing.
Frankie nodded. “Talk to everyone who was at that dinner. I’ll send his fluids to the crime lab. Then maybe Darlene will settle into some level of acceptance about what happened.”
“I’m sure time will help.” If the state crime lab was as backed up as it typically was, that amount of time would be a minimum of six weeks.
I scanned Frankie’s handwritten notes for a list of who had attended that dinner and cringed when I read Austin Reidy’s name.
Crap.
After managing to avoid him for the last eighteen years I was going to have to schedule some face-time with the boy who gave me my first kiss.
Right before I threw up on his shoes.
Just as I remembered from past drives to Gram’s favorite yarn supplier, once I passed the turnoff for the tiny town of Clatska and crossed the old stone bridge spanning Whisky Creek, a carved wooden sign pointed the way to Mystique Meadows, the alpaca farm owned by Darlene McCutcheon. What I didn’t remember was all the kidney-bruising potholes in her dirt driveway, and I immediately regretted driving my Jaguar into farm country instead of Gram’s SUV.
I know. What was I doing driving a Jag? A most impractical car for a girl on a budget, but I had needed a set of wheels to move back to my hometown of Port Merritt, so my ex-husband’s shiny silver XJ6 had been awarded to me as part of the divorce settlement. It leaked oil like a sieve and half of last week’s paycheck went into keeping it purring, but at least the temperamental minx had been getting me where I’d needed to go for the last four months.
Based on the scraping noise I’d heard when the Jag bottomed out in a deep rut, I only hoped I wasn’t leaving a trail of auto parts that I was going to need for the thirty-seven mile drive back to the courthouse.
As I pulled in front of the side yard of the rustic red farm house and parked in the shade of two big leaf maples shimmering in autumn coppers and golds, I had the distinct feeling I was being watched. When I climbed out of my car I saw the crowd gathering twenty feet away—a dozen inquisitive alpacas behind the twin Great Pyrenees barking at me through the chain link fence separating us.
“Jake! Elwood! That’s enough,” said the sixtyish woman as she stepped out of her house, her salt and pepper curls bouncing against her broad shoulders.
A little shorter than my five foot six with rounded hips and a thick roll over the waistband of her blue jeans that her purple University of Washington sweatshirt didn’t disguise, Darlene outweighed me by at least thirty pounds.
Shielding her eyes from the midmorning sun, Marty McCutcheon’s ex-wife stood next to her Ford Bronco and aimed a frown at me as I approached. “Charmaine? If you’re here for your granny’s yarn order, now’s not a good time.”
“I’m not.” I fished out a business card from my tote bag and handed it to her. “I work for the County Coroner. I think she told you someone would be coming to get your statement.”
Still frowning, Darlene looked down at the card in her hand like she didn’t want that someone to be me. “Well, Charmaine Digby, Special Assistant to the Prosecutor/Coroner, aren’t you coming up in the world. Last I heard you were bussing dishes for Duke.”
I didn’t like the edge to her voice. I knew I should cut her some slack because her family had suffered a devastating loss, but it seemed like she needed a target for her bitterness, and I was the lucky sap who had just appeared in her crosshairs.
“I helped out at Duke’s for a couple of months while one of the waitresses was on maternity leave.” I felt like mentioning that her ex-husband had eaten at Duke’s fairly regularly, had been a great tipper, and had been much more pleasant to be around than she typically was, but instead I clamped my mouth shut.
She continued to study my card. “I see you went back to using your maiden name.”
“I wanted a clean start after the divorce.” And absolutely nothing to do with my ex aside from the use of his car.
“I thought about using my maiden name after Marty and I divorced. My two kids were grown by then, but still…I didn’t want to separate myself from the rest of the family.” She swiped at a tear trickling down her cheek. “Damn. I thought I was done crying, but after forty years with someone in your life…it leaves a hole.” She pulled a tissue from her jeans pocket and wiped her eyes. “A big one.”
“Maybe we could talk inside.” We were getting nowhere in her driveway, and her dogs were staring at me like they saw a couple of meaty bones under my khakis. I took a step toward the house with the hope that she’d follow my lead.
“Sure.” Darlene blew out a breath. “Might as well get this over with.”
I followed her up a staircase to a long and narrow kitchen that had changed little in the last few decades with the exception of the new refrigerator/freezer hugging a dingy creamsicle wall.
She pointed at the oak claw-footed kitchen table in front of a large picture window. “Have a seat. I was about to have some coffee. Can I pour you a cup?”
I never turned down free coffee. “Yes, please.”
Taking the chair facing the kitchen, I grabbed a pen and a notebook from my bag.
Seconds later, Darlene placed a steaming cup on the coaster in front of me. “I’m lactose intolerant, but I can offer you almond milk if you don’t take it black.”
“Black’s fine.” I reached for the dark blue mug and read the bold white lettering inches from my nose:
Thank God It’s Friday
. Those four words pretty much represented how I had felt when I woke up this morning, when I was about twelve hours away from a dinner date with Steve, one of my oldest pals and my current…
Actually, I wasn’t sure about the current state of our relationship. He was the friend and neighbor I’d been doing a lot more than pal around with for the last month, but we had yet to have a
real
date, so I had been eagerly anticipating this particular Friday.
I didn’t need to be able to read Darlene’s body language to see that she hadn’t been eager to face any of the events of today.
Easing into a seat at the table as if her grief were weighing her down, she looked past me. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry. Did we wake you?”
I turned to see Nicole McCutcheon Reidy emerge from one of the rooms behind me. The last time I’d seen the pretty golden-haired girl who had been a year ahead of me at Port Merritt High, she had been at Duke’s, smiling across the table at her dad. This morning there would be no smiles, and her dark eyes were almost swollen shut. No doubt from a long, tearful night. From her icy stare I knew she didn’t want me intruding upon her misery.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said on her way to the coffee pot.
“I took the last of it, but you can have it.” Darlene pushed her cup toward the empty seat between us as Nicole shuffled toward the table. “Honestly, I’ve probably had enough caffeine to keep me awake for the next week.”
Since she looked as dead on her feet as her daughter I didn’t believe that for a minute.
I set my cup in front of her. “I know I have, so I think I’ll pass on the coffee. Thanks anyway.”
Nicole sat to my left and wrapped her hands around the coffee mug like she needed the warmth. “What’s going on?”
Fidgeting with the
Thank God It’s Friday
mug, her mother cleared her throat. “You remember Charmaine Digby, don’t you, honey?”
“Of course I remember her,” Nicole said, sitting very still as if every word hurt. “Why is she here?”
Darlene leaned toward her daughter. “I called the Coroner about your dad.”
Nicole stared into the inky depths of her coffee mug. “You mean about Victoria.”
Frankie’s notes had listed the former Victoria Pierce as the second Mrs. McCutcheon and Darlene’s primary suspect as the one responsible for her ex-husband’s death.
“Charmaine’s here to get my statement.” Darlene patted her daughter’s hand. “Probably just a formality. There will be an investigation into his death, right, Charmaine?”
“Uh…” Not unless the report I submitted after all these interviews contained something that resembled a smoking gun. “That’s a definite possibility.”
Nicole narrowed her glassy eyes at me. “A possibility? That woman killed my father.”
If I’d learned one thing in my seven weeks on the job, it was that every stakeholder had someone to blame. And based on the venom stirring in Nicole I wasn’t surprised to hear her make the accusation against her stepmother.
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
Her gaze tightened. “Are you kidding? Victoria’s had three husbands in the last seventeen years. All of them had money and each one died very suddenly.”
That didn’t mean that she had killed them, but I could see how this looked from Nicole’s point of view. I captured her words in my notebook.
Darlene nodded. “I knew from the first moment I met Victoria that she’d be trouble.”
I didn’t doubt for a minute that Darlene believed what she was saying, but it sounded to me like the anguish over her ex-husband’s death was what was bolstering the conviction in her statement.
“But I never expected her to be a black widow,” she added.
Seriously?
Considering that I’d served Marty McCutcheon some of the double beef cheeseburgers and chocolate shakes that probably contributed to his heart ailments, I thought calling her successor a
black widow
bordered on the melodramatic. But since Darlene and her daughter were dragging me down this improbable path I had no choice but to keep up. “Uh-huh, and when did Mr. McCutcheon marry Victoria?”
“Last September. Right before Dad’s sixty-third birthday.” A flicker of a smile passed over Nicole’s lips. “He didn’t want the announcement in the
Gazette
to say that he was twenty years older than Victoria.” She dabbed a napkin at the tears pooling in her eyes. “Like an age difference of nineteen years sounded so much better.”
Darlene pursed her mouth. “The damned fool. Never thinking with the right head.”
Nicole cringed. “Mom!”
“Sorry, but you don’t know your father the way I knew him. He was a man with needs, and I bet Victoria didn’t mind filling them—for a price.”
Nicole hung her head. “I don’t want to hear this right now.”
I did. “What price?”
“The house, the store, all the stocks and bonds, plus everything he inherited from his father earlier in the year.” Darlene turned to her daughter. “You told me yourself that your dad changed his will to leave her almost everything.”
“You’re overstating it. It’s half the store. Jeremy and I split the other half.”
Darlene’s unpainted lips tightened into a sneer. “Whatever. The fact remains the same—she’s getting quite the windfall for her twelve months of service.”
I could practically taste her sour grapes. Not that Nicole would be any less biased, but I wanted to hear what she had to say on this subject. “Do you agree with your mom that Victoria was after your father’s wealth?”
Shoulders slumped, she shook her head. “Maybe. All I know is that he used to joke that he was more worried about her poisoning him than having another heart attack. That she was trying to slowly kill him.”
I leaned forward so that I could get a better angle on her face. “How?”
“She created a special tea blend that was supposed to help with his joint pain. He’d been drinking it for the last few months. Said it tasted nasty.”
“Cutting back on the cheeseburgers and losing fifty pounds would have helped more,” Darlene muttered as if reading my mind. “He might even still be alive.”
Nicole swiped at a tear running down her cheek. “It never occurred to me that there might be something in that tea that could actually hurt my dad. But after hearing him retching in the bathroom…” Her breath hitched. “He was so sick.”
Nothing in her expression made me doubt she was telling the truth. Quite the opposite in fact, my eyes burning with unshed tears as I observed Nicole.
“Did he have some of that special tea last night?” I asked, trying to rein in my emotions.
She nodded. “At least I think it was tea. One of the guys had bought him a bottle of scotch for his birthday, so he might have been having a drink to celebrate.”
I made a note about the drinks. If there were anything in them to make Marty McCutcheon sick it should show up in the crime lab’s toxicology report. “Did your dad eat anything special that you noticed? Anything that you didn’t eat?”
“Victoria made his favorite cheese enchilada casserole. I don’t do cheese and didn’t touch it.”
“I don’t imagine Jeremy did either,” Darlene said. “My kids take after me—no dairy.”
“Dad spread some sort of extra hot green chili sauce on it—something that someone in the office gave him for his birthday. I didn’t have any of that either.”
“Who gave him the hot sauce?” I asked in case I needed to speak with the person.
Nicole’s puffy eyes welled up with more tears. “Phyllis. She and my dad were
close
.”
Darlene snorted. “That’s one way to put it. She was an old girlfriend of Marty’s. Compared to Victoria put some emphasis on
old
.”
It sounded like good ol’ Marty got around a little bit more than I would have imagined, but I found it difficult to believe that a former girlfriend would intentionally try to hurt him. Assuming, of course, that there had been no recent attempts to rekindle that relationship.
I locked gazes with Nicole. “Anything else that your father ate or drank last night that you didn’t?”
“Maybe something from the taco salad bar that Victoria set up.” She wiped her eyes. “Honestly, at the time I wasn’t paying that much attention.”
Ordinarily, any sentence beginning with
honestly
would set off my
liedar
, but since the emotion behind her words was real, I believed her.