Trudy, Madly, Deeply (Working Stiffs Mystery Series) (17 page)

He pressed his fingers around my left elbow. “Can you cool it for a minute?” he asked, his nose an inch from mine, his breath warm against my face.

“Hey! I bruise easily.”

“You can file a report later. Right now I need you to shut up.”

I glared at him while I sucked in oxygen as if I’d finished running a mile.

He loosened his grip and surveyed the dimly lit parking lot. “Where the hell did you park?”

“Down the street.”

“Do you have your keys? Where’s your bag?”

Standing under a flood light, I pointed to the blue canvas mini-bag that had been hugging my waistband all night. It was a perfect match to my espadrilles—not that I thought this would be the right time to discuss his powers of observation.

“Fine,” he said like it was anything but, leading me by the arm down the sidewalk bordering the parking lot.

“Will you stop acting like a cop for a minute?”

“Not gonna happen, Chow Mein.”

Once we weren’t shielded by the building, a wind gust whipped my skirt around his right leg. I grabbed a handful of blue gauze while I trotted by his side like I was on a very short leash. “But I want to tell you—”

“In the car,” Steve said, releasing my arm but not slowing his pace until we reached Gram’s Honda.

I unlocked the car and he slid into the passenger seat.

Since my overheated brain felt like it might blow its top and he kept putting a cork in it every time I opened my mouth, I rolled down my window for some cool air.

He pointed at the controls on the side panel. “Window up. If you need air, start the engine.”

“Sheesh, is all this cloak and dagger stuff really necessary?”

“You tell me.”

I started the engine, rolled up the window, and aimed two of the front vents at my burning cheeks. If Steve needed some air, he could fend for himself.

“So, I’m allowed to speak now?” I asked.

Steve folded his arms across his chest. “Let’s have it.”

I took a deep breath. “Okay, this is going to sound crazy, but I think Virginia Straitham is up to her eyeballs in this thing with her husband.”

“You’re right,” Steve deadpanned.

I pounded the steering wheel. “I knew it!”

“Not only does that sound crazy, it might qualify as the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Hey, you weren’t there.”

Backlit by a streetlight on the corner, his obsidian eyes bore into mine. “Okay, then tell me what I missed.”

“Virginia Straitham used to be the senior center director.”

“Yeah, so?”

“She took over the position around the same time that Jesse Elwood died.”

I waited for a reaction and got nothing but a grimace of irritation as he shifted in his seat and tried to stretch out his right leg.

“Don’t you see? It’s all connected to the senior center.”

Steve’s eyebrows arched for a split second, and that was enough for me.

“That’s why you were there,” I added to see if he’d deny it.

He blew out a sharp breath. “Stop fishing and get to the point.”

“Fine,” I said, letting him know that he wasn’t the only one experiencing a little irritation. “Virginia coached Nell’s new boyfriend on how to strike up a conversation with Nell so that he could work up the nerve to ask her out on a date.”

The crease between his brows deepened. “Is that it?”

It wasn’t a smoking gun, but what more did he want?

“Thomas and Nell,” I said slowly and clearly since he seemed to be having trouble recognizing the significance of what I was telling him, “are now shopping for wedding rings because of Virginia Straitham.”

“Because she made a little suggestion.”

“Yes! But that’s why no one would ever suspect her. She’s subtle while she’s pulling the strings like a puppet master at the senior center to bring these couples together.”

“A puppet master.”

I didn’t like his tone, but I was willing to overlook it if he’d hear me out.

“Yes! Think about it. First, she tells her husband to kill off Mr. Elwood and Rose and plants a few suggestions in Ernie’s ear,” I said, making the invisible marionettes hanging from my fingertips dance, “and voila! Jayne and Ernie, a Virginia Stratham love match. Same with Nell and her boyfriend, Thomas, and now Sylvia and Wally. And every one of them was there tonight. Okay, not Thomas but he has a sick mother.”

Steve shot me a humorless smile. “Well, I’ll give you this much. You came up with an
interesting
theory.”

“This is much more than a theory. It makes perfect sense.”

“Only if you believe Dr. Straitham’s killing his patients.”

“Yes,” I said with a shiver and shut off the ignition before my teeth started chattering.

“That’s where you have a little problem,” Steve stated as if he were helping me with my geometry homework, not a murder.

“But—”

“Number one, Trudy Bergeson’s death hasn’t been ruled a homicide.”

“But you think she was murdered or you wouldn’t have come tonight. Or last Tuesday,” I added to show that I was on to his sudden interest in dance lessons.

“You need to stop jumping to conclusions.”

“Are you going to deny it?”

“Char.” He turned to face me, the tic above his jaw line counting down the seconds of stony silence between us. “Watch and listen.”

“Okay.”

“Stop pushing.”

I cocked my head. “So what’s the problem, besides you being an obstinate cop who has to do everything by the book?”

His lips curled into a smile that died as quickly as it had appeared. “Unofficially speaking, if Trudy Bergeson’s death was suspicious as your whistleblower Cardinale suggests, and something happened early Monday morning …”

My heart pounded with anticipation, like we’d hit top speed in this roller coaster and were rocketing toward a hairpin turn.

“… the husband of your latest suspect didn’t do it.”

I knew that Steve believed what he’d just said, but that didn’t necessarily mean it was true. “How can you be so sure?”

“Just trust me,” he said softly.

I did to a point. But he hadn’t exactly been very forthcoming the past week.

“But she has motive, and he has opportunity.” What more did Steve want?

He reached for the door handle. “Nice work, Nancy Drew, but that’s where you have a problem.” He opened the passenger door and climbed out of the Honda.

“Wait a minute!” I scrambled out of my seat, staring at him over the hood of the car. “What’s the problem?”

“You said it yourself.”

I’d said a lot of stuff today, none of which he appeared to be taking seriously.

He cocked his head. “Your
big news
?”

“About Dr. Straitham having an affair?”

“Do I have to spell it out for you?”

I wished he would. “Uh …”

“Let’s just say he was playing doctor somewhere else at the time.”

Chapter Fifteen

On our drive home from the senior center, Gram chirped about how much she’d enjoyed our
date
while Steve’s revelation about Dr. Straitham reverberated in my brain, and my mood felt as flattened as the dead raccoon we’d passed back on 5th Street.

Within ten minutes of parking Gram in front of her TV, she was snoring. I could either hang around and listen to her snore while I waited for my mother to come home and play kissy-face with Barry Ferris on the front porch ….

Shoot me now.

Or, I could wrap my butt around a barstool at Eddie’s.

I left Gram a note, grabbed my car keys, and pulled into Eddie’s parking lot seven minutes later.

By the number of cars in the front lot, the usual weeknight bowling league crowd had assembled. I was a little disappointed that I didn’t see Steve’s pickup in the parking lot. It also wasn’t in his driveway, despite the fact that he’d left the senior center before me.

The image that Arlene planted in my head two hours earlier flooded back to me, only it wasn’t a bendy Suzy doing bedroom gymnastics. Another nimble blonde took center stage in my overheated imagination, bringing the picture of Heather working up a sweat with Steve into sharp focus.

I slapped my head to knock myself back to reality. “Stop it!” What did I care that he’d gone back to his skinny assed, former girlfriend with the perfect hair?

Good for them if they were getting counseling and working things out.

And having great sex in the process.

“Stop it!”

I slammed my car door and headed for the main entrance, the parking lot gravel crunching under my feet.

The side door leading to the kitchen opened, and Rox appeared holding a plastic garbage sack in her hand. She narrowed her eyes at me. “What’s your problem?”

“You don’t want to know.” Not about Heather and Steve. It was high school all over again, and I refused to rekindle any more residual angst than I already had.

Rox tossed the garbage bag into a scarred green dumpster and dropped the lid with a clang. “Come in and tell Roxie all about it.” She held the kitchen entrance open for me. A warm wave of yeast, onion, and garlic venting from the pizza oven rolled over me as I stepped through the door.

“You look cute.” Her big brown eyes widened. “Been on a date?”

“With my grandmother. It was Tango Tuesday at the senior center.”

“Oh. It’s Tequila Tuesday here.”

Sheesh, couldn’t it be just plain Tuesday in this town?

A cacophony of bowling balls scattering white pins in the adjoining building serenaded us as I followed Rox to my usual barstool.

“It’s a league playoff night so Eddie’s minding the lanes,” she said as she stepped behind the bar. “I make better margaritas than him, anyway. Want one?”

“Heck, yeah.”

Less than two minutes later, she served me a fishbowl-sized margarita along with a frown chaser. “Okay, so talk to me. What’s the problem?”

Where did I start? I had an unofficial murder and a former prime suspect with an official alibi, a mother with the hots for my biology teacher, and a best friend screwing with my head while he screwed around with his hard-bodied ex-girlfriend.

“It’s just been a rough night,” I said as I stirred the slushy margarita with a flamingo pink plastic straw.

“At the senior center?” Rox chuckled. “Yeah, that’s a rough crowd all right.”

“Maybe I’m not a tango kind of girl.”

Leaning on her elbows, she watched me sip my margarita. “Seems to be plenty in town who are, especially since Jake showed up there.”

“He’s very good.”

“That’s what I hear,” Rox said with a sly grin.

The sexual innuendo came through loud and clear. “You know something. Rumor mill or something more substantial?”

“Hey, this is a bar. Get a couple of drinks in some of the ladies on the senior circuit and—”

“What exactly have you heard?”

She eyed a couple of middle-aged men in matching bowling league shirts entering the bar. “You know, the usual younger man, older woman-type scuttlebutt.”

“Oh. You mean Suzy.”

Rox stared at me, wide-eyed. “Huh? Is he fooling around with her, too?”

Too? “I don’t know. Who are you talking about?”

“I don’t have any names.” She lowered her voice. “I’ve just heard some speculation about his
services
there at the center.”

“Like
full service
services?”

Rox shushed me. “From what they said about him satisfying his customers, I’d say so.”

Maybe that’s why Arlene had a burr up her butt. She knew Jake would be more than willing to remove it, for the right price.

So, in addition to dance classes and water aerobics, the senior center now offered matchmaking and escort services? What the hell? And where did Virginia Straitham’s involvement begin and end?

If she had her finger on the pulse of the goings on at the center like I believed she did, Virginia would be very aware of Jake’s extracurricular activities. From there, it wasn’t much of a leap to think that someone who could be bought might take on the occasional job of a more mercenary nature. Especially if that someone were ambitious and had a moral compass that didn’t point true.

I took a big gulp from my fishbowl to douse the fire of the Warren Straitham flambé I’d been cooking up the past week. It had seemed like a winning recipe. But flambés can be tricky. Apply heat to the wrong mix of ingredients and the fireball could singe your eyebrows.

Despite what Steve might think, I’d be the first to admit that I’d created a bit of a mess with Dr. Straitham. But I’d only been on the job for a week, so I cut myself a little slack.

Rox reached for a bar towel. “It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

Lately, everything in my life seemed to be making me wonder.

“I mean, really …” she glanced at me as she wiped away an invisible wet spot on the polished oak separating us. “Who’s in charge of this guy?”

I intended to find out.

“What do you actually know about Jake?” I asked.

“Not much. I think he’s from Port Townsend. Been living here since last year some time.”

If Jake wasn’t in town for the first murder, he would have been only a half hour away. Close enough. I made a mental check mark.

It wasn’t as if the hospital was locked down much tighter than the courthouse, so someone light on his feet could have danced right into Trudy Bergeson’s room, done the deed, then done the boogie before anyone was the wiser. I made another check mark.

Arlene had mentioned that Jake was ambitious. Ambition and success usually went hand in hand. But rarely a day went by when the evening news didn’t lead off with a story about how ambition had led someone to make a dangerous and often deadly choice.

Check, check, and check.

I had yet to see anything to indicate that Jake was dangerous, but I’d only seen him on the dance floor. Not exactly a danger zone—at least I hadn’t thought so before I tangoed with Steve.

“You have a funny look on your face,” Rox said, staring at me.

“Funny ha-ha or odd-looking?”

“Odd.” She sucked in a breath. “Oh, no! I forgot about your diet.”

“What diet?”

“Honey, I need to take those guys’ order, but did you eat tonight? I bet the tequila is going straight to your head.”

I leveled my gaze at her. “Do I look like I’ve missed a meal?”