“It’s a long story,” I tell Richmond, hoping he’ll take the hint. But judging from the bemused expression on his face, all I’ve done is pique his interest.
“Aren’t you married to a surgeon or something like that?” Richmond asks.
“Sort of,” I say vaguely.
“Sort of?” he snorts. “You’re sort of married? Isn’t that like being a little bit pregnant?”
“We’re separated,” I tell him, trying to color my comment with an as if it’s any of your business tone. “I’m filing for divorce.”
“Is that right?” The curious tone of his voice tells me he’s clearly unimpressed with my attempt to shut him down. “That’s a darned shame. What went wrong?”
I find it hard to believe Richmond doesn’t already know. Gossip in our town flows faster than an arterial bleed, and the fallout from the breakup of my marriage was some of the biggest news to hit in a long time, given that it was reminiscent of the Lewinsky-Clinton debacle and tied to a couple of murders.
“Where the hell have you been, Richmond?” I ask irritably. “Living in a cave?”
“Wait,” he says, his eyes narrowing. “Are you the one who was involved with that nurse who was murdered? Wasn’t she boffing your husband or something?”
“Or something,” I say irritably.
“So you’re the one who got Steve Hurley stabbed.”
I glare at him. “You make it sound like I stabbed him myself.”
Richmond arches his brows at me as if to say, Well, did you?
“He was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” I say. “That’s all.”
“Great. That’s just great,” Richmond says with a hugely dramatic sigh. “No wonder Hurley handed you off to me. Am I going to have to be looking over my shoulder every few seconds to make sure someone isn’t coming after me with a deadly weapon?”
“We can only hope,” I mutter under my breath. I turn my back to him and see that Izzy and the uniformed cops are hopping from one foot to the other, clapping their arms around themselves to try to keep warm. Richmond, who would be amply insulated if he was standing stark naked, appears immune to the cold. I’m pretty comfortable myself, mostly because I’m so hot under the collar.
Izzy says, “Hey, Bob, is it okay if we wrap this one up and take her in?”
Richmond doesn’t answer right away and I suspect it’s his passive-aggressive way of exerting his authority. “She was a looker, wasn’t she?” he observes. Everyone nods. “And nobody here recognizes her?” We all shake our heads. “So probably not from around here,” he concludes. “Yeah, go ahead and take her in. When are you planning to post her?”
Izzy says, “Probably this afternoon. Depends on how cold she is.”
“Too bad you don’t have a person-sized microwave,” Richmond says. “We could put her in on defrost mode.” He laughs while we stare at him, and when he realizes his joke has fallen flat he clears his throat and says, “Yeah, go ahead and load her up.”
“Do you want to call for transport or should I?” Izzy asks.
Richmond looks back toward the road with a puzzled expression and I groan, knowing what’s coming next. Because Izzy’s legs are half the length of mine and his car is an old, restored Impala with a bench front seat, every time I ride with him I feel like one of those giant pretzels you can buy in a mall kiosk. Today, to avoid the contortions, Izzy rode with me to the scene in my recently acquired car—a shiny, midnight blue, slightly used hearse.
“The transport is here already,” Richmond says.
“That’s not the transport,” I explain, hearing the cops snort behind me. “It’s my personal vehicle.”
“What do you mean your personal vehicle?”
“Just what I said. What part of it don’t you understand?” Richmond raises an eyebrow. “You’re telling me you drive a hearse? All the time?”
“Yeah. You got a problem with that?”
“It’s rather pathetic, don’t you think?”
I feel like telling him that being large enough to require a backup beeper is pathetic, too, but I don’t.
“If you’re going to drive around in a hearse, why not use it as one?” Richmond asks.
“Don’t need to,” I toss out. “These days you can buy those little scented trees with the smell of decomp already in them.”
We glare at one another for several seconds until Richmond mutters a “Hmph,” and waddles off, dialing a number into his cell phone.
I’ve had the hearse for a few weeks now. After totaling my regular car—which was actually David’s car according to the insurance and financing paperwork—I was left looking for a new vehicle I could afford on my own. The hearse was the only thing I could find. Though I wasn’t too pleased with it initially, it’s kind of grown on me. And my dog, Hoover, loves it. It’s full of all kinds of interesting smells that can keep him occupied for hours.
Izzy and I get back to the job at hand, wrapping the woman’s body in our sheet. The protruding knife makes the task a little challenging, though not as much as one might expect given the victim’s endowments. Then, with some help from the uniforms, we slide her into a body bag, again taking care not to dislodge the murder weapon.
When we’re done, Izzy takes out his wallet, hands me some money, and says, “Drive to Gerhardt’s home improvement store, pick up some plastic buckets and trowels, and bring them back here. We’ll need to collect the surface snow from the trail, and from beneath and around her body so we can look for trace evidence. I’ll stay here and see that she gets to the morgue.”
I nod and trudge my way back to the road, taking care to follow the same trail we made when we arrived on the scene. Since Richmond’s car is parked behind mine I have to walk past it to get to my hearse. He is standing behind his driver side door, which is open, leaning on it as he talks on his cell phone. I glance in at the car’s interior and see that the passenger side floor is littered nearly seat high with wrappers and fast-food bags.
As I open the door to my hearse, Richmond ends his call, snapping his cell phone closed. “Funeral home will be here in fifteen,” he yells down to the group by the body. Then he turns his attention on me. “Hey, Mattie?”
“What?”
“Do you know what you’re doing with this job or do I have to stay here until you come back so I can watch you collect the evidence?”
I don’t know if it’s his attitude that’s pissing me off or the fact that Hurley isn’t here, but whichever it is, I’m definitely not feeling the love. I sense that he’s eager to leave so I tell him, “I think you better stick around. I’ve never done snow evidence before.”
He rolls his eyes and sighs. “Make it fast then,” he grumbles. “And bring me back something to eat, would you?”
I scowl at him and try to think of a witty retort, but nothing comes to mind. Then, as I’m pulling away, an idea hits me. If I make a quick stop at home to let Hoover out for a break, maybe I can bring Richmond back a yellow Sno-Cone.
Chapter 2
As if the day hasn’t gotten off to a bad enough start, when I arrive at the home improvement store, I see my brother-in-law, Lucien Colter, browsing the aisle straight ahead of me. I’m not a big fan of Lucien’s. Though he seems to be a good husband to my sister, Desi, and a good father to their two kids, Ethan and Erika, he’s utterly lacking in class and about as subtle as a baboon’s ass. Lucien is a defense lawyer—and a highly successful one at that. I suspect his annoying persona and rumpled, unkempt look make a lot of people dismiss him, thinking he’s a doofus or an incompetent. But to do so is a mistake. Dismissing Lucien is like partnering up with Dick Cheney for a hunting trip.