“I’m fine,” Hurley says.
“Thank goodness for Joey,” I say. “Who knows what would have happened if he hadn’t shown up when he did?”
Hurley looks offended. “We were managing just fine on our own.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” I say, looking askance. “Those nut jobs were beating the crap out of you guys.”
“The hell they were,” Hurley sulks.
I look at him and break into a grin. “Well, well. Aren’t we the macho man? You can’t stand the fact that a bumbling superhero-wannabe saved your ass, can you?”
“He didn’t. We almost had them by the time Joey showed up,” Hurley argues. He looks over at Izzy. “Didn’t we?” It’s a rhetorical question. Hurley fully expects Izzy to agree with him, but instead Izzy just shakes his head.
“Crap,” Hurley says, looking crestfallen.
“It’s okay,” I say, patting him on the shoulder. “Cheer up. Nobody’s perfect. Now quit sulking, put on your big boy pants, and let’s get out of here.”
As I turn to leave the room I hear Hurley utter a parting shot behind me. “Women,” he huffs. “Can’t live with ’em, can’t get ’em to wear a leather bustier.”
Chapter 38
Oddly enough, Hurley’s parting quip gives me an idea. As soon as the Heinrich and Conklin clans are hauled off to jail, I make a phone call to Carla Andrusson and ask her if I can stop by again. She isn’t happy with yet another interruption in her dinner party preparations, but after promising to be quick, she relents.
I let Izzy know I’m heading out and make a beeline for Carla’s house before she has a chance to change her mind. When I tell her what I want her to do she is resistant at first, but after some reasoning and cajoling, she finally buys into my plan and we agree to implement it the following day.
From Carla’s house I head to the dry cleaner to pick up my gown and Hurley’s jacket. As I’m headed into the store my cell phone rings and, as I fumble for it, I run into someone who is coming out. I look up to apologize but the words freeze on my lips. Standing in front of me is Luke Nelson.
“Ah, so we meet again,” he says. He is smiling but it looks forced and the tone of his words is flat, tired, and exasperated sounding.
“Hello,” I say. I start to push by him but he stops me with a question.
“Anything new with Shannon’s case?”
I turn to look back at him, my hand on the door. “We’ve made a little progress,” I say vaguely, studying his facial expression. If my words worry him at all, he isn’t showing it.
“I hear they found the gun her husband owned.”
“Yes,” I say. “But we don’t have the ballistics report yet so we don’t know if it’s the murder weapon.” Then it hits me. “How did you hear about it already?”
“I have a few connections,” he says cryptically. His evasiveness annoys me but I can hardly complain since I’ve been that way myself. “I take it my alibi patients from the day in question have been cooperative?”
“Yes.”
“Good. So I can safely assume we won’t be having lunch again anytime soon?”
There is a hint of smugness in the way he says this that makes my hackles rise. I suspect he is deliberately taunting me. “You are safe from me,” I tell him, flashing him my best plastic smile. “At least for now.”
His eyes narrow ever so slightly when I utter this caveat and a muscle in his left cheek starts to twitch. For several intolerably long seconds we stand there staring at one another. I’m pretty certain he’s playing a game of intimidation with me so I stand my ground, refusing to break eye contact even though every nerve in my body is screaming at me to escape. It’s all I can do not to smile with relief when he finally says, “Good day,” and leaves.
Belatedly I remember the phone call I never answered. I take my cell out, look at the call history, and see it was Izzy. There is no message in my voice mail so I call him back.
“Hey, Izzy, what’s up?”
“Arnie says he’s found something of interest in the blood samples we collected from Shannon’s house. I thought you might want to be here when he tells us what it is.”
“Give me ten minutes and I’ll be there.”
I disconnect the call and head inside the cleaner’s, where the same lady is on duty behind the counter. She looks nervous when she sees me and I brace myself for some bad news. Which will it be? The gown or Hurley’s jacket?
“I have your stuff ready,” she says. She disappears into the back and returns a moment later with both items placed on hangers and covered in plastic. “That was one nasty jacket,” she says, wrinkling her nose. “We had to process it three times to get the smell out.” I nod, waiting for the kicker. “So your total comes to sixty bucks. I had to charge extra for the jacket treatment.”
I wince at the price and dig out my wallet. All I have is forty-two dollars. “I guess I’ll have to wait until payday to get both items,” I tell her. “How much was the dress?”
She chews her lip in thought for a moment, then says, “Tell you what. How about I give you a half-price deal?”
I raise my eyebrows in surprise. “You mean thirty bucks for both of them?”
She nods.
“That’s a deal,” I tell her. I pay her and walk out to the car feeling pretty chipper. Today must be my lucky day. But as I drive to the office, something about the whole transaction bothers me. It was easy, maybe too easy.
I take the dress into the office with me and give it back to Cass, thanking her for letting me borrow it. Then I head for Arnie’s lab.
Izzy is already there and he waves me in as soon as he sees me. “Come on in. You’re going to love this, I think.”
Arnie is sitting at his desk holding a small plastic plate about the size of a playing card. On top of the card are a series of circles, each one with a red dot in it. “Check it out,” he says, handing me the card. I look at it and see that it’s a blood typing test. “I’ve spent all week wading through those two-hundred-plus blood samples we collected from Shannon’s house,” he says. “And every one of them has tested out as Shannon’s blood type.”
“Okay,” I say slowly, confused as to why this news would interest me.
“Shannon’s blood type is A positive but that sample you have in your hand is B negative, which is a very rare type.”
“It’s not Shannon’s blood?”
Arnie grins and shakes his head.
“Where was it found?”
“I pulled it off of one of the glass shards we found in the kitchen.”
“So it’s most likely the killer’s blood?”
“Yep. And here’s the part you’re really going to like,” Arnie adds, his grin getting bigger. “Erik Tolliver’s blood type is O positive.”
My eyes grow wide.
“And since we can assume the owner of this blood was injured by the glass, it might rule Erik out even more if there were no cuts of any kind found on him when he was arrested.”
My heart is leaping with joy; this really is turning out to be my lucky day.
“Have you told anyone else about this yet?” I ask.
“Not yet,” Izzy says. “I was going to call Hurley but I thought you’d want to be here when I deliver the news.”
“Damn right I do,” I say, smiling and rubbing my hands together with glee. “One free dinner coming up, compliments of Hurley. I can hardly wait.”
“Don’t get too excited,” Izzy cautions. “It isn’t a full exoneration yet, just a lot of very reasonable doubt. Arnie is going to send the blood sample to Madison for a DNA test and that might give us even more ammunition.”
“Might?”
Arnie says, “Well, it was a small sample to begin with and there isn’t very much of it left so I’m not sure if they’ll be able to get a full profile.”