Lucky Stiff (7 page)

Catherine shakes her head sadly. “I told Jack to give up those damned cancer sticks.”

“You’re British?” Hurley asks, sounding as surprised as I feel.

“Oh, yes. Born and raised in London.”

“What part of London?” I ask.

Her laced fingers start squirming. “Um, Notting Hill.”

“That’s a nice area,” I say. “What part were you in? Were you by the London Bridge or the Tower Bridge?”

“London Bridge,” she says without hesitation.

“And how long have you been here in America?”

“Nearly ten years. I came here because I fell in love with an American man, who had asked me to marry him. Sadly, he died six months later of a heart attack, but I fully embraced his country and my new life. I’m an American citizen now.”

Hurley and I exchange looks over the news that there is yet another dead husband in Catherine’s past.

Hurley asks her, “How long have you known Jack?”

“About three months. We kept bumping into one another at the coffee shop downtown, and over time we got to talking. Jack was fascinated with anything British. We would talk for hours while I told him about growing up in London.” She shifts her gaze from Hurley to me and says in her most haughty voice, “I used to lunch with royalty on a regular basis, you know.”

I’m pretty sure this is pure bullshit, but I say nothing. Instead, I just smile back, not willing to tip my hand yet.

“Were you and Jack living together?” Hurley asks.

As Catherine stares at my smiling, silent face, her arrogant expression collapses into a worried one just before she turns her attention back to Hurley. “We were living together for the most part, I suppose. I spent the majority of my nights at his place, but sometimes I preferred to be alone. When that happened, I stayed at the Sorenson Motel.”

“It sounds like your relationship progressed rather quickly.”

She smiles, revealing a set of teeth that are so perfect and white I figure they must be veneers. “We connected,” she says.

“Yes, I’ll bet you did,” Hurley retorts. “Did you sleep at Jack’s the night before the fire?”

Catherine shakes her head. “We had dinner together, a pepperoni pizza from Pesto Change-o.” She pauses and flashes a flirty smile at Hurley. “Not the sort of fare my delicate constitution is used to, you understand. But Jack absolutely loved those pizzas, so I indulged him whenever I could.” I glance over at Hurley, who looks utterly unsympathetic. Seeing that her feminine wiles aren’t having the desired effect, Catherine’s smile fades. “Anyway,” she continues, “after dinner we watched a movie and then I went to the motel.”

“What was the movie?” I ask.

“
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.
Jack said it’s one of his favorites and that he watches it during the holiday season every year.”

“What time did you leave?” Hurley asks.

Catherine scowls, tilts her head, and narrows her eyes at him. “What’s with the third degree, Detective? I thought you said the fire was an accident?”

“Did I?”

Catherine looks from him to me, and back again. “Are you saying it wasn’t?”

Hurley ignores the question and repeats his own, instead. “What time did you leave Jack’s place the night before the fire?”

Catherine engages in a short-lived attempt to stare Hurley down, but she’s no match for him. Finally she caves in with a shrug. “I think it was around ten or so, but I’m not sure. I’d have to ask the motel clerk what time I checked in.”

“No bother, I’ll do that for you,” Hurley says quickly. “Where were you yesterday morning between the hours of seven and eleven?”

She gazes toward the ceiling and furrows her brow. “Let’s see, I checked out of my room around eleven, and then I headed to the store to get some groceries for Jack. I planned to go to his place after that, but I couldn’t even get close to the house because of all the fire trucks.”

She looks back at Hurley and tries to assume an overwrought expression, though her efforts fall comically short. I’m disappointed; I expected better acting from such a practiced charlatan.

“The entire street was blocked off. I could see that it was Jack’s house that was on fire and I kept asking people if he was okay, but no one would tell me anything.” Her voice is escalating—no doubt trying to make up for her lack in expression. “Finally a woman firefighter named Kane talked with me. She told me they found a body in the house next to a wheelchair. She couldn’t verify who the victim was, but I knew it was Jack.”

I’m bummed to hear that Catherine talked to Candy. Hurley will need to verify Catherine’s story, and that means he now has an excuse to see Candy again.

“Did you shop for Jack often?” Hurley asks.

Catherine nods and dabs at her bone-dry eyes with a linen hanky she pulls from her coat pocket. “God love him, Jack tried to stay as independent as possible,” she says. “He used money from an insurance settlement to have his house remodeled to something more handicap-friendly, and he also got one of those wheelchair vans with the hand driving controls so he could get around. But he hated the way people stared at him whenever he went out in public. And he hated even more having to ask for help at the store when he needed stuff from the higher shelves. The minute he told me that, I knew I had to take over the grocery shopping for him. I’ve been doing it ever since.”

“How sweet of you,” Hurley says with no small amount of sarcasm. I suspect he’s wondering, like I am, how much stuff Catherine skimmed for herself during her shopping sprees. “How is it you ended up here in Sorenson, Catherine? My research shows you were living in Chicago not too long ago.”

“I was. But circumstance led to some hard times for me, and I had to leave. The cost of living there is outrageous.”

“Really?” Hurley says. “I would have thought you were pretty well off after you inherited your ex-husband’s estate. Are you saying all of that money is gone?”

Catherine blinks twice in rapid succession—the only sign that she’s surprised by Hurley’s knowledge of her past life. “I made some bad choices,” she says, avoiding a direct answer. She is clearly growing nervous and starting to squirm, so I decide the time is ripe to jump in and ratchet things up a bit.

“How often did you stay at the Sorenson Motel?” I ask.

Catherine turns to me, looking momentarily puzzled by the sudden shift in topic. “Once a week or so.”

“That must have pissed you off, having him kick you out that often.”

“He did not kick me out,” she snaps. She straightens up, her back rigid and her eyes spitting sparks of indignation at me. “It was my choice.”

“Really?” I respond.

Catherine opens her mouth to answer. Before she can get a syllable out, I ask, “Who paid for your room when you stayed at the motel?”

“I did.”

“With what, may I ask? Do you have a job, Catherine?”

“I don’t have any regular employment at the moment, if that’s what you mean,” she says, her voice tight.

“That’s exactly what I mean. I’m trying to figure out if you were supporting yourself at all, or if you were freeloading off Jack for everything.”

She narrows her eyes at me and shifts uncomfortably in her chair. “I resent your implication.”

“I’m not implying anything, Catherine. I’m stating facts. It seems you have a bit of a history for hooking up with wealthy men who later end up dead. And you can drop the phony British accent. You no more grew up in London than I did.”

Hurley turns sharply toward me. Catherine sputters for a few seconds and then says, “I most certainly did.”

“No, you did not,” I counter. “First of all, your accent is as phony as a three-dollar bill. One of my stepfathers was born and raised in London, so I’m pretty familiar with the way Brits talk. And, aside from your accent, which you lose when you get defensive, by the way, you possess none of the little dialectal idiosyncrasies someone raised in London would have. I know, because I’ve been there several times. When I was a teenager, my stepfather took us there once a year for five years running. That’s also how I know that Notting Hill isn’t anywhere near the London Bridge or the Tower Bridge—something that anyone who has ever been to London, much less someone who lived there, would know.”

Catherine’s lips constrict into a hard line and her stare turns flinty. She leans back, taking her hands from the table and dropping them into her lap. “Fine,” she says, her accent suddenly gone. “So I embellish my history a little to make myself seem more appealing. Where’s the crime in that?”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” I tell her.

“Jack and I were in love. We were planning to get married.”

“I’ll bet you were,” I quip. “It worked out so well for you the last time.”

Catherine’s eyes narrow and the two of us stare at one another, waiting to see who will blink first. I can almost see the steam coming from her ears. After a few seconds, she turns to Hurley, pouts prettily, and says, “I don’t like her.”

Hurley grins.

I start to bristle. Though I try to contain myself, I can’t. “I’m not here to be your friend, Catherine,” I say. “And when you lie to us about your past, try to dupe us with your fake accent, and try to impress us with your expensive manicures and fancy clothes, it makes me suspicious.”

“You’re just jealous,” Catherine fires back. “I can see why—what, with those chewed, ragged things you call nails. And I’ll bet you don’t have a single designer piece in your wardrobe, do you? Of course, you don’t, because they don’t make them in your size. And if you want to make that stuff you are wearing work better, take a little hint from me, honey. One word: Spanx.”

I know that saying nothing at this point will be taking the high road. However, Catherine has managed to hit one of my most sensitive buttons, so I go crawling in the mud, instead. “Your designer duds won’t do you much good in prison,” I snap. “There everyone wears the same thing, an orange jumpsuit. It’s a color that’s really going to clash with that ‘trailer park’ eye shadow you’re wearing.”

Catherine looks at Hurley and sighs heavily. “I really,
really
don’t like her.”

“She does have a way of getting under your skin, doesn’t she?” he says. And then, since Catherine’s patience is clearly wearing dangerously thin, Hurley tries to placate her. “I apologize for my partner’s impolite questioning. I’m sure she meant no offense.”

The hell I didn’t!

“And if you don’t mind, I just need to ask you a few more questions about Jack’s money.”

“Like what?” Catherine huffs with impatience.

“Like where it is,” Hurley says. “We know he won a large chunk of change at the casino a few months ago. But if he has any of it left, we can’t find it. There’s no money in his house, and the only bank account we can find has about twenty grand in it.”

Catherine’s expression of annoyance is replaced with one of confusion. “His money is gone?” she says. Her voice quavers.

Hurley nods grimly. “Gone, as in ‘missing’ rather than ‘spent’—at least as far as we can tell.”

Catherine looks genuinely stricken for the first time during our interview. She grabs her gloves up from the table and starts pulling at the fingers, as if she’s trying to milk them. After several long seconds of this figurative and literal hand-wringing, she fixes on Hurley and says, “I think I’m done here.” She stands, dons the gloves, and asks, “Am I free to go?”

Hurley sighs and nods.

“If you have any other questions for me, you can direct them to my lawyer.” With that, she struts from the room, slamming the door behind her.

Hurley and I sit there in silence for a moment before I say, “Interesting reaction.”

“Yes, it certainly was.”

“Sorry if I pissed you off by jumping in.”

He smiles. “I’m not pissed, not at all. In fact, I’m rather pleased. You played a perfect round of good cop/bad cop. And it was fun watching the two of you go at it. Nice job on the London thing, by the way.”

“Thanks.” I bask for a couple of seconds and then say, “She looked genuinely shocked by the knowledge that Jack’s money is missing.”

“Or angry.”

“Because we suspect she might have taken it?”

“Maybe,” Hurley says, his eyes narrowing thoughtfully. “Or she’s angry because someone else beat her to it.”

Chapter 6

Next up on our list of interviews is Jack’s housekeeper, Serena Vasquez. But thanks to Catherine’s abrupt departure, we have some time to kill since it’s just past eight-thirty and we don’t need to be at Serena’s until eleven. I call Izzy, and after filling him in on our aborted interview with Catherine, I ask if he needs me at the office. He informs me the morgue is thankfully empty of fresh bodies.

“I’m waiting on a few things from Arnie and catching up on some paperwork,” Izzy says. “You can come into the office and spend time studying, or you can stay there at the station and hang with Hurley if you want, watch what they do with their investigations.”

I’ve had plenty of opportunities to study lately. The office library has tons of tomes detailing the many ways people can die, and all the scientific ways we have of figuring it out. It’s intriguing stuff and I’ve learned a lot, but there’s only so much of it I can take. So the choice of being cooped up in the library or spending time with Hurley is a no-brainer.

“I think I’ll hang here for now,” I tell him. “I have that seminar coming up in a few days. I don’t want to OD.”

“No problem. I’ll call you if anything comes up.”

I’m about to hang up when I remember something. “Oh, wait. I forgot to tell you something we learned from Catherine that might help. She confirmed that Jack ordered a pizza from Pesto Change-o the night before his death.”

“Hmm,” Izzy says. In my mind, I can see his eyebrows drawing together the way they do when he’s puzzling out things. “What time did they eat?”

“We didn’t pin that down, but it shouldn’t be difficult to find out when the pizza was delivered. Catherine said she left Jack’s place around ten that night, after they watched an after-dinner movie. So if we can believe her statement, my guess would be that they ate somewhere around seven or eight.”

“Based on the condition of the food we found in Jack’s stomach, he couldn’t have died much more than an hour after he ate—two at the outside.”