Worked to Death (Working Stiff Mysteries Book 2) (15 page)

"I never liked that O'Hannigan fellow," Ms. Maimie said.

"He's probably the one who killed poor Mick," Ms. Lanier surmised.

"Why don't we let her tell us what happened?"

"You're the one who won't let her get a word in edgewise."

"Don't tell me what I'm doing. I'm fifty-nine years old, I think I know how to have a conversation," Ms. Maimie said, indignantly.

"Ha! You haven't been fifty-nine years old in almost twenty years," Ms. Lanier said and cackled.

"Shut up, old woman. I want to hear what happened next."

"Don't tell me to shut up. I'll shut you up." Ms. Lanier gave a cockeye, which is kind of the southern version of the evil eye.

"Would ya'll hush, and I'll tell you the rest of the story," I said, trying to referee the two old friends.

"What are ya'll yelling about?" Paget said from the doorway.

We all went silent.

"Nothing, sweetie. I'm just telling them about my day is all. Did you finish eating?" I asked.

My smile felt forced on my face, and she was studying me carefully. I hoped I was pulling off casual. I glanced over at the battling Hoots, and they were both smiling with huge, pasted-on grins as well. If I'd been Paget, this alone would have scared me to death.

"Can we go home now? Pickles says he's ready to go."

"I'm sure he is." I stood and walked into the den, looking down at Pickles who was snoring and drooling in sequence.

I looked back at the women, and they seemed poised to jump into the conversation but remained silent.

I wanted to tell them the rest of it—about Colin and Allyson and that mysterious Mr. Brown and the missing package—but I was exhausted, and I knew Paget was as well.

"We're going to head out now then." I shrugged at my audience, and Ms. Lanier nodded.

"No problem. We'll talk in the morning. I'll bring over some breakfast since you're off work, right?"

That was right. I didn't have work for three days. What was I going to do with my time?

They stood up and walked us to the door. Paget managed to summon Pickles and the two of them moseyed out onto the front porch.

I turned and whispered to the women, "Don't say anything to Devon or anyone about all this. There's something big going on here—something federal. I think Ty knows about it now. Let's just mind our own business."

"Ohh…"

"Hmmm…"

They responded with obvious interest. I blew them a kiss and closed the door behind me.

Paget and I made it two steps off the porch before I heard them going at it again inside. I wondered if the news of any of this would be all over town by morning.

We arrived home, and I pushed open the door. Pickles and Page raced inside and straight down the hall toward her room.

"Get dressed for bed, and I'll be there to check on you in a minute," I called after her but she'd disappeared from sight already.

I turned around to close the door and lock it for the night, but someone grabbed the handle and pushed it back open and into me.

I opened my mouth to scream…

*  *  *

It was Matty Thibault. I stifled the scream just in time.

She looked a little better than she had when I'd left her early that morning, but she still had dark circles under her eyes.

At least this time she was dressed in normal clothes—jeans and a Mann Dance Studio sweatshirt.

"Sorry if I scared you," she said as she pushed through the door and invited herself inside.

"Oh, the least of my scares today, I can assure you." I looked out the door but didn't see anyone else lurking, I wasn't sure how she'd snuck up on me.

She let out a little grunt of understanding but didn't inquire as to what I was referring to. She just wandered into the den and plopped down on the sofa.

She hadn't been here since I'd returned to town. I doubted she'd been here since I'd left town a decade before, but she'd been here many times before that.

"Do you have any coffee?" she asked and propped her feet up on the coffee table.

"Okay." I dragged my tired body into the kitchen and went about making her a cup with my Keurig. It was a gift to myself when I lived in my apartment in Birmingham. I'd been subletting it to another student, but he'd asked to take over the lease, and I'd finally relented. He'd packed up my stuff and shipped it down just a few weeks earlier.

This was my home now, and I might as well have all my things in one place, although, a lot of it was still in boxes and in the basement. I simply hadn't had time to unpack it, a project that I might take on this weekend.

In the meantime, I had to get Matty out of my house and get my butt to bed.

I brought her the steaming cup and offered her milk and sugar.

"No. Nothing. I need this strong. I'm really struggling to keep myself from drinking again tonight. I'm hurting from last night."

I nodded. I knew all about it. I was there.

"Sorry about that," she added after she took a small sip.

I waved it off. "You'd had a particularly bad day."

I'd had a bad day today, but the thought of hitting the booze made me feel sick. But to each its own.

"That's no excuse. I was a jerk, and I embarrassed myself and Mick's memory." Her voice strained out the last few words, and she gulped a little more coffee.

"Is there anything I can help you with?" I decided to push this forward. I wanted to get in my bed worse than I'd ever wanted to. And I'd done rounds at the hospital and been on call for days straight before, so that was saying something.

She cradled the warm mug in her hands and stared down into it. I sat on the rocker across from her and waited.

We sat like that for a few minutes until my eyelids began to droop.

"Mick had cancer." Her voice startled me.

I sat up straighter. "Oh, really?"

So, she knew about the disease. I wondered if anyone else did. Well, besides Dr. C. and me. I decided that I shouldn't reveal my knowledge of this to her yet. Just see where she was going with it.

"He didn't find out until it was too late to do anything about it." She sat back and rubbed her eyes with one hand. "At least that's what they told him. But they were willing to try a round or two of chemo to see if they could buy him some time."

I listened and waited.

"But he refused, and he didn't want anyone to know about it. We kept it a total secret. We tried to do all the things we'd always wanted to do. You know, his bucket list type of thing?" She let out a small smile, leaned forward, and set the cup down on the table.

"Mandy, we traveled around. Took weekend trips to all our favorite cities. Blew through our savings account like it was Christmas all year round. In the last six months since he found out, we finally started living. Our relationship was better than ever. I just… I don't know what happened."

Her eyes teared up, and her bottom lip quivered. I moved over to the sofa and sat next to her. I placed a hand on her back and rubbed up and down.

"Maybe he was just trying to live life too much," I offered as an explanation. "Perhaps he cheated as a sort of final rebellion or some such male crap."

"No." She shook her head. "He wouldn't do that. I just can't believe it."

I wasn't sure what else I could say. I wondered if she was here just to spill her emotions or if there was something else.

"Do you know who the other woman was?" I tried to prompt out some information, thinking about how unlikely it was that he'd had an affair with Ms. Jamison and fathered little Bitsy. It seemed too out of character for Mick.

"I have no idea." She turned to look at me. "I need you to help me find out."

I pulled my bottom lip into my mouth and gave it a munching. "Why me?"

I wasn't sure if I wanted to get involved in all this anymore than I already was, and I couldn't tell her that I had all this information about Randall Jamison because I'd sworn to keep that confidential. This put me in a no-win situation.

"Please, Mandy. You've always been a true friend. I know I can trust you." The look of desperation in her eyes almost won me over.

But, still…

"What does it matter, Matty? I mean, it won't bring Mick back, and it will haunt you if you know the person and have to see her in town. Have you thought of that?" I was trying to make her see reason.

She swallowed and rubbed her tears away with the sleeve of her sweatshirt.

"I know. I don't want vengeance or anything like that, if that's what you're thinking. I just…" She stood up and pressed her hands to the small of her back. "I just want to know why."

Why? When it came to relationships, that was often a question that was better left unanswered in my opinion. I thought back to the Honey Do note I'd seen in her trash can, the one where Mick had declared that he'd finally found true love and was leaving her, and then in another handwriting, the ominous words, "You must die." I also shuddered at the thought that Matty's bag of garbage, which contained that note, was still in Stella's trunk—wherever in the heck she was tonight. My kidnappers would get a heck of a surprise if they delved into that.

I'd assumed that she'd written it about Mick, but she certainly wasn't acting like someone who wanted him dead. Of course, she could be trying to throw me off her trail. But, why? Why would a woman who was losing her husband to cancer anyway risk killing him and ending up in prison?

I looked at the clock on the wall. It was after ten, and I was spent. But I decided that now was as good a time as any to try to find out more.

"Were you the only one who knew about his illness?" I decided to start with some good old-fashioned motive.

She looked up from where she'd been staring at the floor while I'd mused the situation over.

She seemed surprised. "Uh, yes. As far as I know. Well, me and the doctor's office."

"Didn't the note say that he'd found true love?" I tried to envision it in my mind.

"Yes," her voice was raspier now.

"Well, what if…what if he'd been seeing someone else or considering seeing someone else, and after he'd been diagnosed and started living life up with you—like you said—and then he was leaving her and the 'true love' was you all along?" I wasn't exactly sure where my theory had come from, but now that I'd said it—it sounded plausible.

She considered my words carefully but didn't respond.

"Maybe he wasn't leaving you for another woman—maybe he was just writing you a goodbye letter." I covered my mouth as I spoke the words out loud. Crap. I shouldn't have said that. Did I just tell this grieving woman that her husband might have been writing her his last goodbye?

Good job, Mandy.

She started pacing. I stood up as well.

"Oh my God, I'm so stupid." She said as she moved back and forth across the den rug.

"What?" I asked, trying to follow the conversation.

"I…I…the note was on his desk. It wasn't really left out for me per se. I mean, he didn't stick it on the fridge or anything. What if I hadn't even been supposed to find it? I just assumed he was leaving me—like leaving the marriage. He'd come home once smelling like someone else's perfume, and I'd just assumed. I jumped to conclusions. But…do you think? You don't think—do you think he committed suicide?" She stopped pacing and looked back down at her feet and then up at me.

"Wait. Wait. Where did you get that idea?" It wasn't totally off the mark, I thought. But I knew she'd written something on the note before she'd thrown it away. I tried to lead her to the truth. I had to know how she was involved in all this before I could agree to help her.

"I was so furious, Mandy. I didn't even stop and think. He wrote, 'Now I must leave you because I finally know what true love is all about.' Do you think he was just telling me goodbye—like forever goodbye?" She rushed over to me and grabbed my hands, holding them in between her cold palms. "I…I would never hurt Mick. You don't think I hurt Mick, do you?"

Her eyes bore into mine. I saw sadness, pain, and something else. Regret. But regret about what?

"I saw the note," I spit out the truth. I had to see her reaction.

"What? Where?" She looked truly puzzled.

"In the garbage. When I was cleaning up your kitchen," I pushed.

"Oh, I…" She paused and looked up at the ceiling. "I think I wrote something about, 'You must die' on it and threw it in the garbage. But I…I didn't mean him, of course. I meant
her
…whoever
she
is… I threw it away. I was furious. And well…you know what happened next."

Yes. One car into one pool equaled the start to my current predicament.

"Where were you going?" I'd not heard this part of her story before.

She shook her head and dropped my hands. The pacing started up again.

"I don't know. I was going to find him. I just knew he was with
her
. I wanted him to tell me that to my face. If he was going to end this marriage, he had to tell me in person. Not on some scrap of paper."