“I thought you might want my address,” Hurley says. “Unless you somehow know where I live already.”
Busted!
I consider trying to lie my way out of it by saying something like, Oh yeah, silly me. I guess that would help. But I don’t. “Hey, Hurley, it’s a small town. And you’re not the only one with investigative resources, you know.”
“Good,” he says. “I plan to take full advantage of your resources.” Before I can respond to that he adds, “See you later,” and hangs up.
I’m left standing next to the nuts and bolts display feeling edgy and oddly titillated. I can think of several “resources” I possess that I’d love to let Hurley take advantage of, but I’m pretty sure that isn’t what he meant. Whatever his meaning, my curiosity is definitely aroused. As are several other parts of my body.
Chapter 3
I make it out of the store without any further gropes from Lucien or attacks from the red-vested meanies, and arrive back at the body dump site about ten minutes later. Richmond is still there, wedged behind his steering wheel, his car showing a definite tilt toward the driver’s side. As I haul my buckets and trowels out of the back of the hearse, he rolls down his window and hollers out to me, “Did you get me something to eat?”
“Sorry,” I say, flashing him a fake smile. “The closest thing they had to anything edible at the hardware store was a package of tulip bulbs.”
“Shit,” I hear him mutter. The window goes back up and his door opens. I hear a series of grunts and groans as he tries to climb out of the car, and I consider offering him my jack to make it easier. Instead I leave him to his struggles and make my way back down to the body dump site. By the time I get there Richmond is standing by the snow berm above us, talking on his cell phone.
The body has been removed and though Izzy and Junior are gone, Ron Colbert is still here, standing guard over the site and trying to stay warm—newbies always get the dreck work.
I hand him a couple of buckets and a trowel. “I think all we need is the top, skim layer,” I tell him. “If you can start collecting the surface snow from here up to the berm along the killer’s trail, I’ll do the body site.”
Colbert nods and the two of us go about collecting our samples like two kids at the beach digging for clams. Fortunately the snow is the light, powdery kind so it’s not difficult to collect, or very heavy once we do. By the time we’re done, we have eight buckets of snow to haul up to my car.
As I grab two of them and slog my way along the circuitous trail back to the road, another car drives up. Richmond approaches the driver, hands over some money, and takes a pizza in return.
“Are you kidding me?” I say as the car drives off. “You ordered a pizza to be delivered out here?”
“Jealous?” he says, setting the box on the hood of his car and opening it.
As the smells of melted mozzarella, pepperoni, and sausage waft my way, I find that I am. I haven’t had breakfast and it’s now almost lunchtime. And that pizza is making my mouth water.
“A little,” I confess.
“Then have a slice.”
I consider his offer, arguing with myself that I should refuse simply to make a point. But it seems like biting off my nose to spite my face, or biting off some pizza to spite my hips. In the end, my stomach can’t resist the smell and I toss my buckets into the back of the hearse and head back to Richmond’s car. Colbert, who has deposited his buckets next to Richmond’s car for now, has already swiped a slice for himself without asking, a severe breach of rookie etiquette. If looks could kill, Colbert would be as dead as our victim, judging from the expression on Richmond’s face.
“Find anything?” Richmond asks as I take my first bite, giving my taste buds a mini orgasm.
Colbert and I both shake our heads. Once I’ve swallowed I say, “Nothing obvious, but once we get back to the lab, who knows?”
“Wouldn’t count on it,” Richmond grumbles. “The frigging criminals are getting way too smart these days. They watch all those forensic shows on TV and it’s like giving ’em a primer on how to commit the perfect crime.”
I finish scarfing down my slice of pizza ahead of Colbert and eye what’s left in the box. But Richmond has a go-ahead-make-my-day look on his face that tells me he’s shared all he’s going to.
“We have four more buckets of snow to bring up,” I tell him. “Want to give us a hand?”
He shoves a half-eaten slice of pizza in his mouth and lets it hang there while he claps his hands.
“Very funny,” I grumble.
He shrugs and takes the slice out of his mouth, tearing off a large bite as he does so. “I’m here in a supervisory capacity only,” he mumbles around a mouthful of pizza.
“Come on,” I urge. “The exercise will do you good.”
Judging from the look Richmond gives me, the word exercise is akin to the Antichrist. His smug laziness pisses me off, but rather than show it, I shrug to feign indifference and turn like I’m going back down to the crime scene. Then I accidentally on purpose nudge the pizza box, causing it to slide off the hood of the car. I make a half-assed attempt to catch it, ensuring that it tips upside down, dumping its contents onto the road.
“Oops,” I say. “Sorry about that.”
“Goddammittohell!” Richmond slurs past another mouthful of pizza. With a grunt and a groan he bends down and starts picking the slices up from the ground, placing them back in the box. If I think I’ve saved him from himself, I quickly realize otherwise as I watch him flick some gravel off one of the slices and then proceed to eat it.
Muttering to myself, I head back to the body site and trudge two more buckets up, passing Colbert along the way. I wait for him to bring the final two up and place them in the back of the hearse.
“Thanks, I appreciate the help,” I say loudly for Richmond’s benefit. I slam the tailgate door closed and glare at Richmond, who is still stone-picking his slices. “I’m ready to head back to the morgue,” I tell him.
“I’m not,” he says, shoving more pizza into his maw of a mouth.
“Guess I’ll see you back there then.”
He shakes his head at me and swallows down his food. “I should go with you, to ensure the chain of evidence.”
“As a deputy coroner, I can do that alone. But if you want to come with me, you better do it now because, ready or not, I’m leaving.” I climb in my car, start the engine, and have the satisfaction of seeing Richmond’s face flush nearly purple as he grabs his pizza box, throws it into the passenger seat of his car, and then dashes—if that lumbering gait can be called a dash—to the driver’s side of the car. As he squeezes in behind the steering wheel his car dips heavily to one side, and as I pull out I see him start his car with one hand as he shoves another piece of pizza into his mouth with the other.
Chapter 4
Richmond follows me back to the morgue, steering with one hand while he shovels food into his mouth with the other. I want to be disgusted by him, but truth is, I’m envious. My love affair with food rivals his, and his who-gives-a-shit attitude about his physique is one I wish I could adopt. Maintaining my weight has always been a battle, and lately it’s become more like a war. Just being within breathing distance of food makes me gain.
Plus I have a theory about weight ups and downs. I’m convinced there are set amounts of fat that exist in the universe, as well as within every little microcosm of society, be it a work group, or a family, or a set of friends. Like other forms of mass, fat can’t just disappear, and it tries to maintain a state of equilibrium. So if one person in a given microcosm loses weight, someone else in the same group has to gain. It’s the basic physics of fat and, unfortunately, my little niche of the universe seems to be populated with a bunch of persistent, consistent losers who keep trying to shift their share of the fat onto me. If I ever figure out who they are, I’m going to start spiking their meals with Ensure.