He considers my offer a moment and then shrugs. “I’m game for anything at this point, I guess.”
“Great! I think you two will be perfect for one another. I’ll give her a call and see if I can set something up, okay?”
He dabs at a trickle of blood on his ear and sneezes again. I take it as a yes.
“I think it would be best if I left,” he says.
“I understand. And again, I’m sorry.” I lean over and give him a quick buss on the cheek which, thanks to my freshly applied lipstick, leaves a perfect kiss imprint behind. I consider wiping it off but then decide to let it stay.
The kiss brightens his countenance considerably, and when he turns to leave he is wearing a silly-assed grin. I walk him to the door, flip on the outside spotlight, and watch as he gets into his car and drives away.
Only after he’s gone do I realize I’m not alone. Standing at the back door to Izzy’s house are Izzy and Hurley, both of them staring slack-jawed at me. Izzy looks amused and surprised, Hurley looks like a thundercloud. I give them both a little finger wave before going back inside.
Spying the envelope Hurley gave me earlier still sitting where I tossed it, I pick it up and settle in to read. It proves to be a depressing endeavor. Clearly Erik was both surprised and devastated by Shannon’s desire to split, and their differing views about having children was at the heart of a good part of it. Erik wanted them and Shannon didn’t, but in later letters Erik made it clear he was willing to forgo the children if it would help save the marriage.
Erik’s love for Shannon is evident in every letter. I can find no hints of craziness or angry desperation in his words, only heartache. He mentions Luke Nelson in a letter dated nearly a month ago, so he apparently knew about him for a while. But he also wrote that he was willing to move past this bump in their marital road if Shannon would give him a second chance.
Basically, the letters support what my instincts are already telling me: that Erik loved his wife very much and was incapable of killing her. Granted, the separation paperwork Shannon hit him with might have been a finality he wasn’t willing to accept. But I still can’t make myself believe he would kill her over it.
Somehow I have to prove it.
Chapter 10
The next morning I drop my costume gown off at the dry cleaner. The lady behind the desk looks at it with a puzzled expression.
“Is this mud?” she asks.
“No, blood.”
Her eyebrows shoot up and she drops the part of the dress she’s holding like it’s a hot potato. “Real blood?”
I nod. “Afraid so.”
“It looks like a lot,” she says, her voice shaky. Since she’s eyeing me like she expects I’m about to go batshit crazy and hack her to death, I figure an explanation is in order.
“Sorry about that. I work for the medical examiner so I’m afraid blood is something of an occupational hazard. Last night I got called out to the scene of a homicide while I was at a Halloween party. This”—I finger the dress—“was my costume.”
Her shoulders relax and she smiles. Then she leans across the counter and lowers her voice. “I heard about that,” she says in her best conspirator’s voice. “Someone said it was that waitress over at Dairy Airs, the one who models from time to time.”
Ah, the ubiquitous but mysterious “someone” and “they,” basic gossip fodder in any small town.
“They said she was shot,” the woman goes on. “Is that true?”
“I can’t say,” I tell her, smiling back. She frowns, but looks at me with a new level of respect.
Though I enjoy a juicy bit of gossip as much as the next person and have partaken of fact swaps in the past, I’ve also been privy to knowledge on many occasions that I couldn’t and wouldn’t share. As a nurse, I always followed a strict code of confidentiality, even before the whole HIPAA thing started. With this job, I find myself once again bound to secrecy often as not. But that’s okay because I’ve discovered two things over the years. One is that not sharing what I know can be as satisfying as doling out a juicy tidbit. And that’s because of the other thing: status when it comes to gossip is less about what you actually know than it is about what people think you know. And my new job jumps me up to a whole new level because now people realize I’m a gatekeeper for some of the town’s juiciest tidbits ever.
I leave the curious and frustrated dry cleaner behind and head for the office, arriving a little after eleven-thirty. Izzy is already there, sitting in the library with a cup of coffee and the Sunday paper.
“Morning,” I tell him, pouring a cup of java and scrounging a cruller from a Dunkin’ Donuts box left over from yesterday. I drop a ten-dollar bill on the table in front of Izzy and then settle into a nearby chair. “Congratulations,” I tell him. “You won.”
“Easy money,” he says, pocketing the bill. “I knew Hurley would be there. You forget how predictable we men can be.”
“I’ll have to remember to tell that to my divorce lawyer.”
“First you have to find one.”
“I will. I just need some time.”
“I thought last night’s events might prompt you to speed that process up,” he says, his voice laden with innuendo.
I give him a puzzled look. “I don’t follow.”
“Well, it looked like you and William hit it off pretty well. I told you he wasn’t that bad.”
“Are you kidding? It was an unmitigated disaster.”
“Oh, sure,” Izzy says with a smirk. “I saw him leave your place last night. Hurley and I both did. We saw the lip imprint on his cheek, the mussed-up hair, the unbuttoned shirt, and the big-assed grin on his face. Hell, you even scratched him, you wildcat you.”
I stare at Izzy, blinking hard for a moment, before I realize what he’s inferring. “No, no, no,” I say, holding my hands out to ward off his evil thoughts. “You have it all wrong. William is allergic to cats, so his hair was all messed up because he sneezed a bazillion times. The scratches were from when Rubbish attacked his comb-over. The lip print—well, that was legit, but I only kissed him the one time on the cheek because he looked so miserable and I felt sorry for him.”
I decide not to admit to the reason why my lipstick was so fresh.
“The evening wasn’t a total loss, though,” I continue. “I’m going to fix William up with my mother. I think they’ll be perfect together.”
“Well, if your intent was to make Hurley jealous, it worked. You should have seen the look on his face when he saw William leaving. He was fuming.”
I smile, recalling Hurley’s thunderous expression and imagining the thoughts that might have been going through his mind. “What was he doing there anyway?”
“He said he wanted to fill me in on some case facts but I’m pretty sure he was using that as an excuse to come by and check on you. He could have just called or waited until this morning.”
As if on cue, I hear the door open behind me and see Izzy’s gaze shift over my head. “Good morning, Detective,” he says.
I turn around and smile at Hurley. “Good morning, Detective,” I echo in the cheeriest voice I can muster.
He scowls at me, mutters, “Morning,” and then shifts his attention to Izzy, effectively dismissing me. “Are we still on for noon?”
“Ready anytime,” Izzy says, draining his coffee mug. “Let’s get to it.”
That’s my cue so I scarf down my cruller, take one more swallow of my coffee, and head to the morgue.