Lucky Stiff (35 page)

“I do. And thanks for being so understanding about it.”

Izzy turns onto a residential street and I see a bunch of cop cars and an ambulance up ahead. As he pulls in behind the ambulance to park, I realize where we are. I start to get a sick feeling in my stomach. We get out and Izzy opens the trunk, handing me the camera while he grabs his site-processing kit. We then follow an officer’s directions inside to the victim’s apartment.

There are several cops standing around a couch in a huddle, and I see that Hurley is among them. He turns and sees us enter. From the look on his face, I know my worst fears are about to be realized. I hobble up closer to the couch and push my way through the moat of people there.

The victim is lying on her back; her open, dead eyes are staring at the ceiling; a froth of white foam is drying on her lips. She’s wearing a sweater, and the left sleeve is pushed up to above the elbow. Embedded in the crook of her arm, hanging there like some deformed, bloodsucking tick, is a needle and syringe.

“Well, this is one less search warrant I’ll need to hunt down in the morning,” Hurley says to no one in particular.

Looking confused, Izzy turns to me and asks, “What does he mean? Who is this?”

I raise my camera and snap off my first shot before I answer him. “It’s Lisa Warden, our prime suspect in the Jack Allen case.”

Chapter 33

I snap several pictures of Lisa’s body and then of the room in general. Izzy makes the cops move out of the way, gloves up, and gets closer to Lisa to do his exam. Carefully, using only two fingers, he removes the syringe and needle from her arm, dropping it into a plastic sharps container, which he then seals with evidence tape.

“We’ll dust that syringe for prints and I’ll do an analysis of the contents when we get back to the lab,” he says. “But based on my preliminary exam, I have to say that everything appears consistent with a narcotic overdose: the foaming of the mouth, the pinpoint pupils, and all these track marks on her arm.”

Hurley says, “I guess this answers the question of whether or not Lisa knew how to start an IV. If she was practiced at finding her own veins, I’m guessing it wouldn’t have been hard to find Jack’s.”

I rub at my nose again; and when I do, it triggers a memory. “Damn,” I say. “I should have picked up on that when we were here before.”

“Picked up on what?” Hurley asks.

“Lisa kept rubbing at her face all the time, the same way Candy did when we saw her in the ER, remember? It’s a classic sign of narcotic use. The histamine release triggered by the narcotic makes your face itch. I didn’t realize that’s what it was. I thought she was itching at cat hairs. Which reminds me, where is Tux?”

“The cops who got here first found him on top of Lisa’s body. They’ve got him locked in the bedroom for now,” Hurley says.

As if to confirm this fact, the bedroom door rattles and we all hear a plaintive meow. I look over and see one of Tux’s black-and-white feet poking out from beneath the door.

“I’m going to go check on him,” I say, heading for the bedroom.

“Don’t let it out,” Hurley says in a panicked rush. Everyone in the room turns to look at him, reacting to the tone in his voice. Seeming to realize that he’s revealed more than he meant to, he gives everyone a “What?” look and comes back with a quick cover-up. “Well, there might be evidence on him.”

“That’s true,” I say. “Do you want to check him out for that, or shall I?”

The room is perfectly still, waiting for Hurley’s answer. Torn between facing his fear and saving face, he vacillates a moment before caving in. “You can do it,” he says.

I snap a few more pictures of the living area, and then I head into the kitchen for a quick look. The sink is filled with dirty dishes; the refrigerator shelves are covered with various spills, but are otherwise pretty bare; the cupboards don’t contain much in the way of food or dishes. Other than that, I don’t see anything of significance; so after taking a few shots of the room, I head for the bedroom.

Before opening the door, I squat down in case Tux decides to make a run for it. But he patiently waits as I enter the room and shut the door behind me, and then he makes friends by rubbing up against my legs and weaving around my feet. I bend down and give him a little scratch under the chin and he starts to purr. Near the door is a large, enclosed litter box filled with fresh litter, and a bowl of food and water. It looks like the same one I saw in the bathroom on my last visit, albeit cleaner. Occupying the bulk of the room is a queen-sized bed, which is unmade. There is also a dresser in the corner. After snapping some pictures of the overall room, I head that way to search the drawers, Tux on my tail.

The dresser contains the usual suspects: an assortment of clothing, some belts, and a small box containing several pairs of cheap earring studs. I sift through the clothes, squeezing all the paired socks and feeling the folded items for anything that might be hidden. I also take each drawer out of the dresser and examine the back and undersides, but I come up empty. On top of the dresser is a music box. When I open it, a little ballerina pops up and starts to spin as the box spews out “Nadia’s Theme.” Tux jumps up on top of the dresser and bats at the ballerina, and then he mashes it down, causing a small hidden compartment in the bottom of the box to pop open. Inside I find an assortment of pills, some of which I recognize as hydrocodone and oxycodone. I wonder how Lisa got her hands on the pills and whether she stole them from the patients she was caring for.

I take photos of the pills and then move to the closet. Here I find a couple of men’s shirts and a man’s suit hanging with Lisa’s clothing. To be thorough, I look under the bed, where I find some prehistoric-sized dust bunnies, but nothing else. I give Tux a few more pets and then head back out to the main part of the apartment, keeping the cat locked away. I report on my findings and no one seems inclined to enter the bedroom to verify things, so I move on into the bathroom.

Fortunately, it’s been cleaned some since the last time I saw it. I recall the dark, short hairs that were in the sink the last time I was here. Given Lisa’s own lighter hair color, I figure they must have been a boyfriend’s. Based on that and the clothing in the closet, I’m guessing he and Lisa had some sleepovers. I proceed to take the usual general photos of the room and then head for the medicine cabinet. Here I find an assortment of over-the-counter meds and one prescription bottle with an antibiotic label on it. The pills inside aren’t antibiotics, however; they match those I found in the music box.

The only place left to search is a small built-in cabinet. I open it and find shelves of towels, washcloths, cosmetics, and personal-hygiene products. After taking a picture of it as is, I start searching through the items. It’s not until I look inside a large economy-sized box of tampons that I hit pay dirt. There, stashed among the handful of tampons left, are a dozen or so syringes.

After taking a picture, I carry the box out to the living room and show it to Hurley, along with the bottle of narcotic pills.

“I didn’t find any IV supplies, but they would have been easy enough to get rid of,” I tell him. “Given Lisa’s drug habit, and the fact that she had all these syringes, it certainly seems feasible to think she could have given Jack an IV.”

Hurley nods. “And that would close this case up with a tidy bow,” he says.

“Except for one thing,” I say, frowning.

He nods again and then, in perfect sync, we both say, “Where’s the money?”

Izzy decides to join in on our speculations. “If Lisa had a drug habit, she might have been using the money to buy whatever she was shooting up. Maybe she flashed too much green in front of the wrong persons and they decided to come back and help themselves. Maybe her overdose wasn’t an accident.” He looks at Hurley. “How did you guys come to find her?”

“We got a call from a neighbor, a woman named Tonya Collier, who found Lisa’s cat out loose. She knew Lisa never let the animal out, so she caught the cat and brought him back to Lisa’s apartment. When she went to knock on the door, she found it ajar and pushed it open. She saw Lisa on the couch and realized she was dead. After tossing the cat inside and shutting the apartment door, she called the police.”

“Was Lisa alone?” I ask.

One of the uniformed cops answers, “Yeah, why?”

“I’m pretty sure Lisa had a boyfriend who slept over from time to time.” I explain about the clothing and the hairs I saw when Hurley and I were here before. “So the boyfriend might have found and taken the money. Or maybe the neighbor?”

Hurley shrugs. “It’s possible, I suppose. Why don’t we go talk to her and see if she’ll let us search her place?”

I look over at Izzy, who says, “Go ahead. I’ll finish up here with the body and arrange to get it to the morgue. Let’s plan on doing her autopsy later in the day, say around noon?”

Hurley and I both nod. I give Izzy the camera and follow Hurley outside and across the stairwell to the apartment opposite Lisa’s. Hurley knocks and, a moment later, a woman answers. And not just any woman, either. Tonya Collier is a knockout. She’s tall and lithe, with a gorgeous mane of wavy red hair, crystal blue eyes, and porcelain skin.

“Yes?” she says, her voice sultry. She looks straight at Hurley, and it’s as if I’m not even there.

Hurley does the introductions and then says, “We’d like to talk with you about your neighbor. May we come in?”

“Of course.” She steps aside and waves us in, her gaze pinned on Hurley.

I follow him in, noting that Tonya’s apartment is a mirror image of Lisa’s in the general layout. Beyond that, it couldn’t be more different. The place is clean, neat, and tastefully decorated.

“May I get you something to drink?” she asks. “I can make coffee or, if you prefer, a bottled water?”

“No, thank you,” Hurley says. I shake my head, but it hardly seems necessary. Tonya and Hurley have an obvious connection and it’s as if the two of them are the only people in the room. We settle in on the leather couch Tonya indicates, and she perches on the edge of a matching chair across from us. Her legs, which are encased in snug skinny jeans, are demurely slanted to one side; and her top, a cowl-necked mohair sweater in shades of purple and blue, sets off her eyes beautifully. “What do you need to know, Detective?” she asks.

I’m annoyed by the way she is ignoring me, so I jump in and say, “Why is it you’re fully dressed at this time of night?”

Her eyes drift slowly my way. I suspect I’ve managed to make a tiny dent in that perfect façade, based on the way she narrows her eyes at me, but her smile remains firmly in place. “I just got home from work,” she says coolly. “I’m a bartender at the End Zone.”

The End Zone is the requisite sports bar in town, done up in Packer green and gold. I swear every town in Wisconsin has one. They do a thriving business year-round, but they’re particularly busy during football season. The typical customer tends to have more than his fair share of testosterone, and I’m betting Tonya does very well there, raking in the tips.

“How well did you know Lisa Warden?”

Tonya shrugs. “Not real well. We exchanged the usual pleasantries when we saw one another, but we weren’t friends or anything.” She turns toward Hurley, dismissing me. “I saw that syringe in her arm. I had no idea she was a drug user,” she says, pouting prettily. “She was a nurse or something like that, wasn’t she?”

“Something like that, yes,” Hurley says. “We have reason to believe she may have had some cash in her apartment, a lot of it. Did you see anything like that when you went in there?”

“No, not at all,” she says, her brow gently furrowed with concern. She claps a hand to her chest and I note her French manicure. “Do you think she was robbed?”

“Possibly,” Hurley says. “Did she have any regular visitors, or a boyfriend of any kind?”

“There was one guy that came by from time to time, but I don’t know his name.”

“What did he look like?”

“Dark hair, average height . . . I never got a very good look at him. Do you think he took this money?”

“We don’t know, but we’ll look into it. In the meantime, since you had access to Lisa’s apartment before any officials arrived, we’d like to do a search of your premises and your car to make sure the money isn’t here. We aren’t implying or accusing you of anything, just tidying up the loose ends. It’s an unfortunate but necessary step so we can rule you out.”

“Of course.” She gives him a dismissive wave of her hand. “You can look at anything I have, Detective,” she says flirtatiously. “Where would you like to start?”

The woman is a master of innuendo. Before she can snag Hurley and drag him into her lair, I speak up. “I’ll start with your bedroom,” I say. “Why don’t you show me the way?”

She turns and looks at me again with that narrowed-eye expression. “I’d be happy to,” she says in away that suggests otherwise. She looks back at Hurley and gives him a dazzling smile. “Would you care to join us, Detective?”

Like someone under a spell, Hurley smiles back at her, all glazy-eyed, and says, “Sure.”

Tonya gets up; and when her back is to Hurley, she flashes me a smug look. “Right this way,” she says, and we follow her into her bedroom.

Like the main room, the bedroom is neat and perfectly organized. Unlike my own bedroom, there isn’t an article of clothing out of place; the bed is neatly made and absent of pet hairs; the air is scented with the subtle smell of just-laundered sheets. Since I’m not about to let Hurley go through her drawers and handle her underwear, which I’m betting comes from the hooker section of Victoria’s Secret, I make a beeline for the dresser. My suspicions are confirmed with the first drawer I open, and I sift through the lacy, skimpy underthings, feeling both annoyed and envious. The second drawer reveals neatly folded nightwear: slinky, skimpy gowns, lustrous loungewear, and a pair of long underwear made out of satin. I flash on my own collection of flannel nighties and cotton tights and make a mental note to do a wardrobe upgrade as soon as possible.

Hurley and Tonya are at the closet, and I pause between drawers to look over and check out the contents. The closet is like everything else here: organized, neat, and chic. On the floor are a couple of dozen pairs of shoes, everything from fashionable pumps and high-heeled, sling-backed sandals, to designer running shoes and stylish flats. This display makes me even more envious. With my size-12 feet and my six-foot height, I not only shy away from heels, my choices are often limited to shoes that require license plates.