“Damn right,” Izzy says. He looks at Alison and continues his story. “So Joey was driving by Mattie’s house that night when he saw her pull out of her driveway. He followed her, and when she pulled in at the Carrigans’, he drove by, parked a ways down the road, and walked back. He saw Mattie and Brian go into the house and then he saw Gina show up. He heard a shot and moved in closer, saw that the front door was open, and saw Brian bleeding and unconscious in the hallway.”
“How is Brian?” I ask.
“He’s okay,” Hurley says. “The bullet didn’t hit any major organs. It will be a while before he’s back to work, but he’s damned lucky to be alive.”
Alison scowls again and looks at Hurley. “So how did you end up at the Carrigan house?” she asks, her voice tinged with suspicion.
“Well, after following Mattie home, I came here and ordered some stuff to go. I was worried that Mattie hadn’t eaten anything.” Alison’s scowl deepens and I can’t resist a smile. “But by the time I got back to Mattie’s place, she was gone. Then Brian called me on his cell phone to tell me that Mattie was out at the Carrigans’, so I headed out there to see what kind of trouble she was getting into.”
“I was just doing my job,” I say defensively.
“Almost getting yourself killed in the process,” Hurley grumbles. “Going back out there was a stupid thing to do. We would have found that gun cache soon enough.”
“But Mattie figured it out first,” Dom says proudly.
“It was the rug that did it,” I tell them. “That and Rubbish.” I explain how watching the cat play with the rug tipped me to the changed position of both the rug and the chair in Sid’s den. “I didn’t know why the chair had been moved,” I told them, “but I felt certain it had been and that Gina was trying to hide something. And then I remembered that the second hair we found on Karen Owenby’s body was short and bleached blond—just like Gina’s hair. That’s when I knew I had to get back out to the house and look under that rug.”
“You should have called me,” Hurley grumbles.
“I realize that now. Sorry.”
“Apology accepted.”
“I want to know how you came to be at the house, Alison,” I say, shifting to face her.
She looks a little embarrassed. “I was, um, hoping to get some pictures. For the paper.”
I don’t believe her for a second. I suspect she was following Hurley, possibly in hopes of getting a news scoop, but more likely because she was worried about Hurley’s interest in me.
“There’s still one other matter I’d like to clear up,” Hurley says.
“What’s that?” Alison says, looking relieved that the subject matter has shifted from her own escapades.
A wicked smile flits across Hurley’s face and he leans across the table, locking eyes with me. “What’s this nipple incident I keep hearing about?”
Izzy snorts and says, “You don’t want to know.”
I stare at Hurley, hesitating, and he stares right back, waiting. The energy between us sparks and snaps. Alison glares at us both for a second and then leans toward me, trying to get in the way of our eye contact.
A chirping sound breaks the tension and Hurley reaches into his pocket for his cell phone. He flips it open, listens a minute, and then says, “Be right there.”
I smile sweetly at Hurley. “Darn,” I say. “No time to explain now.”
“There’s time,” Hurley says, snapping his phone closed and looking smug. “You and Izzy are coming with me. Better get your food to go because we have an appointment with another dead body.”
Halloween night in Sorenson, Wisconsin, usually resembles any other small town: trick-or-treaters, costume parties, and lots of cheerfully scary decorations. But Deputy Coroner Mattie Winston is finding this year a little different, because among all the fake carnage is a very real, very dead body…
When Mattie and her boss/best friend, Izzy, are called to the home of waitress and part-time model Shannon Tolliver, they find the ghoulish decorations just a bit too authentic. For among the fake blood and skeletons is the corpse of Shannon herself—and the evidence screams murder.
Since the whole town knows Shannon recently had a very public argument with her estranged husband, Erik, he’s suspect #1 for homicide detective Steve Hurley. Tall, dark, and blissfully blue-eyed detective Steve Hurley, that is…. But Mattie happens to know Erik truly loved his wife, and is simply incapable of the brutal act—even though he owns the exact same caliber handgun as the murder weapon…
Determined to unearth the truth—and maybe spend a little quality time with Detective Hunky—Mattie puts her scalpel-sharp medical skills to work, and digs a little deeper. What she uncovers is stranger than anyone could have imagined…
It seems Shannon’s murder is just the tip of a very fatal iceberg. Now, in order to solve a case that’s getting more dangerous by the minute—and to save Erik from the slammer—Mattie will have to risk everything to catch a killer who’s capable of doing anything once he’s cornered. And this time, it’s not just Mattie’s life that’s on the line…
Turn the page for an exclusive sneak peek at Scared Stiff, the new Mattie Winston mystery by Annelise Ryan.
Available in hardcover in September 2010.
Chapter 1
Despite the fact that I hang around dead bodies a lot these days, I find the scene before me very disturbing. The backdrop is ordinary enough: a well-maintained, ranch-style suburban home set on a generous plot of land near the edge of town. But any sense of normalcy ends with the front yard, which is littered with dead bodies. Fortunately, only one of the bodies is real, though I suppose it’s not so fortunate for the victim in question, who I’ve been told has been murdered.
As if the body farm isn’t surreal enough, my clothing adds to the absurdity: I’m wearing a full-skirted, white ballroom dress with puffy sleeves that make my shoulders look wider than a linebacker’s. Clipped to the bodice is my ID badge, which bears my name, Mattie Winston, and my title, deputy coroner. Though I’m still kind of new at this dead body stuff, I’m pretty sure my outfit isn’t the sort of couture one would normally wear to a crime scene. But then, who knows? I don’t think there’s a designer who has tackled this particular niche. I can see possibilities though: shirts and pants with chalk outlines drawn on them, sexy, peek-a-boo blouses with strategically placed bullet holes and knife tears, and, of course, lots of blood-red colored material.
In spite of the macabre scene and thoughts, in a perverse sort of way I’m happy to be here. Five minutes ago I was at a Halloween costume party being bored to tears by “William-not-Bill,” an obsessive-compulsive accountant in a Dracula costume. He is a date my friend, Izzy, fixed me up with, making me wonder what horrible thing I’ve done to Izzy to earn such retribution. After less than an hour in William-not-Bill’s company, I was trying desperately to come up with a plausible plan of escape when my beeper chirped and saved me. My relief was countered by a smidgen of guilt when I remembered that work for me meant someone else was dead, but probably not as dead as the date I was on. It was stone-cold, bones-only, well-beyond-the-putrid-stage dead.
I tried not to look too relieved at my reprieve as I snatched my beeper up from the table and gave William-not-Bill an apologetic smile. “Duty calls,” I said, feigning disappointment. “I’m afraid we’ll have to make it an early night.”
William-not-Bill frowned and said, “Darn it. Are you sure you need to go?”