Worked to Death (Working Stiff Mysteries Book 2) (5 page)

"Thanks so much. You always think of her and know what makes her happy." I expressed my gratitude. She knew, as anyone close to Paget did, that counting and sorting were her favorite things to do. If anything would bring Page out of her current funk, it was this box of Q-tips. Simple but effective.

Ms. Quick quietly filed some papers in the institution grey metal cabinet behind her while Paget occupied her chair. As she moved, I caught a whiff of her perfume—it smelled like blackberry tea. A sort of warm, dark scent that took me back to being wrapped in a huge hug by my Aunt Patty. Ms. Quick wore an expansive, puffy sweater with a large cat embroidered on the front. Her grey hair was twisted up into a bun and a few, soft tendrils fell around her face. Her glasses hung from a gold chain around her neck.

She looked more like a librarian than a secretary in the police department. But she worked for Ty, and she kept his head on straight. He'd lost his mother as a teen, and she'd been the only sort of mother figure he'd known since then. When he'd taken over as Captain in the fall, he'd asked her to work here at the station. He thought her presence would bring order and calm to the otherwise man-filled building.

I thought it was a brilliant idea, and I couldn't help but wonder what she would think of the nudie pics on Ty's phone.

"Ahem…" Ty's gravelly voice startled me out of my wandering thoughts. "Ready to give that statement now?"

I nodded and then followed him into his nearby office.

"Can I get you anything? Water? Tea? A Subway sandwich?" He offered.

I thought seriously about the sandwich for a moment but declined. I'd downed my Rodeo burger in the car before I'd come in. Thankfully I'd had a box of Altoids in my purse and had chased my burger with about ten of those or else I'd reek of onion breath right about now.

"No. Let's just get this done. I have to be at B Positive by two, and I still need to get Paget over to the Owens' house. Hopefully she won't put up much of a fuss."

"Oh, I doubt she'll fuss about hanging out with Adam."

We smiled at each other. Adam Owens was a local high school senior and football star. He was also the object of my sister's affection. He was kind and sincere, and I believed that he thought of her like the little sister he'd once had. She'd been lost in a terrible accident years ago. But whether he cared about Paget the same way she swooned over him wasn't really clear. The only thing I knew was that he watched out for her, and his family had become another support system for her. I couldn't refuse anything or anyone who loved my sister.

"You're probably right. But she's on edge now."

"I know. I'll talk to Keith when he gets back. He has had some
issues
in his past that he's working through. I'm sorry that you and Paget have had to experience them in this way."

"Really? What kind of issues?" I was suddenly very interested in getting the backstory on Devon Keith.

He turned his head and gave me a you-know-better look. "Why don't we focus on your morning and the events that transpired before you hauled a dead body across town."

"Do we have to?" Thinking about another dead body and just to whom it might belong was enough to make my stomach roil. Despite the fact that I used to work on donated corpses in the anatomy lab on a daily basis up at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, somehow—seeing local people meeting their untimely demises was a whole different can of worms.

I was finding that death was harder to swallow than a can of mushrooms—which were about the only food on this earth that I didn't like.

"Mandy, you may be more involved in this investigation than you'd care to be." Ty's voice was bordering on sympathetic.

I shook my head and dropped my chin to my chest. I mumbled my response, feeling my jaw working against my chest bone. "I don't wanna."

Ty sniffed. "Mandy, look at me. Let's get this over with. C'mon."

"Oh, all right. All right. I've got to get to work anyway."

"Good, then start at the beginning of your day when you got the call to go and retrieve the car from the Thibaults' home." He leaned back in his chair, notepad in hand—ready to take investigative notes like a real detective.

I leaned back in my chair and crossed my sweat-shirted arms over my chest. I propped my booted feet on the edge of Ty's desk but dropped them almost immediately after he gave them a stern look of displeasure.

My stomach gurgled. Ty raised his eyebrows.

"Well…before I get started… What exact type of Subway sandwiches do you have available anyway?"

"I love you more than sweet tea." —Things We Say in the South

One truthful tall tale, six inches of a meatball sub, and fifteen minutes later I was done making my official statement.

Ty placed his pad and pen down on the desktop and leaned forward, elbows resting on his large desk calendar. I wiped the marinara sauce from my mouth with a napkin and rubbed my stomach with my other hand.

Maybe I shouldn't have wolfed down that six-inch sub after all. I felt a little overfull, and I was afraid that my nerves had once again written a check my digestive system couldn't cash.

"You okay?" Ty asked, mistaking my indigestion for an emotional reaction.

"Yes. I think." I nodded with more confidence than I felt.

"Now, Mandy…did Matty seem at all…suspicious?"

I stared at him.

"You'll have to be more specific, Ty. I mean, it happened just like I said. She told me that she'd accidentally driven her car into the pool in a fit of emotion after finding a note from Mick on the Honey Do note pad. What else can I say about it?"

"Well, did she seem upset or angry or…what emotions did you read emanating from the susp—I mean, from her…"

"The suspect? Is that what you were going to say? Is Matty a suspect?"

It kind of made sense. I mean, the dead body was found in her trunk. But I just couldn't see my friend, the radio talk show host, killing someone, putting them in her trunk, and then not even being smart enough to remove the body before calling for a tow.

"You know I can't reveal the details of our investigation." Ty spoke the company line, but he didn't look all that confident in his words.

"Seems lame." I followed up with my own astute comment. "But, I guess it all depends on the identity of the dead body? Did it have something to do with the other woman? Now that would make a little more sense. Matty killed the hussy who stole her husband. I guess I could see where you were going with that. But I still don't see her as a killer."

Ty let out a pent-up breath. We made eye contact and held it there for an uncomfortable moment before he broke it and scrubbed his hand across his clean-shaven jawline.

"Who am I kidding? It's probably all over the county by now anyway," he admitted, standing and placing his hands on his hips.

My eyes trailed a path up his lean body. The khaki slacks and navy blue, collared, button down shirt. A gold patch was sewn on the left side of his chest just above his heart. It depicted the Millbrook Police Department badge emblem. His gun and phone were clipped to the side of his belt. His official captain's badge clipped to the front. My eyes stopped when I reached his face and saw him biting the inside of his cheek as if trying to think things through.

"Mandy, the body we found in Matty's trunk was…her husband…Mick Thibault."

My face burned hot and the sub sandwich began making surface bubbles in my stomach. I pressed the fingers of my left hand into my sternum and swallowed hard.

"Mick is dead, and you think Matty killed him."

It was a statement…not a question. And Ty and I stared into each other's eyes for what seemed like ages. We didn't have to speak any words. We'd been a couple briefly once upon a time, and it was at the same time that Mick and Matty had fallen in love. Now, we were looking at some of our best friends in a completely different light.

It hurt. And it shocked. The room was suddenly draped in sadness and strain.

He took a step toward me and reached out to touch me. I suddenly felt awkward and trapped. I stood and took a step backward toward the door.

"I guess this means the radio show is canceled?" I said as I bit my lip against my own ill-timed humor.

*  *  *

After I'd collected Paget and her Q-tips from Ms. Quick's desk and promised to sign my official statement whenever Ms. Quick had it all typed up, I zoomed down the road and away from the awkward, emotional scene in Ty's office.

I just couldn't believe that Mick was dead. Sure, I hadn't seen him in ten years and knew nothing about the man he'd become. But I did know him once upon a time, and he'd been the true class clown in our senior year. He'd always had a joke or stunt or smile to share. He'd been fun and loving and the most attentive boyfriend a girl could want.

There'd been a time when I'd been so filled with envy for what he and Matty shared that I'd almost found it difficult to be around them. I'd been somehow relieved when Matty had turned down her own music scholarship to the university to stay and attend the nearby community college. She'd wanted to be closer to Mick, and I'd been glad that I wouldn't have to watch them together for another four years.

That might sound selfish to some, but for me it meant that I'd be the only one in my small senior class to attend the University of Alabama, and with the two-and-a-half-hour drive distance—I'd be able to put some real mileage between myself and all the high school drama I'd endured my last year.

Now, it still seemed beyond belief that Mick was dead and that worse yet, Matty might have killed him in some jealous rage.

I hoped it wasn't true, but I feared the worst.

The only thing I couldn't figure out was why she'd be so unconcerned as to kill him, put his body in the trunk, drive it into her own pool, and then call for a casual tow like it was no big deal. It just didn't make sense. Of course, killing your husband didn't make a lot of sense either. So perhaps I was trying too hard to understand this.

Emotions were a tricky thing, and there was never any telling what a woman would do to keep the man she loved—even if it meant killing him. I cringed at the thought that my old friend might be a liar and a murderer.

Then, I stuck my tongue out at myself as I remembered the non-truths I'd told in an attempt to keep Ty once upon a time ago. I was eighteen and considerably less mature than I was now at almost thirty, but still…

"You have a good day at Ms. Denise's house today, okay?" I said as I walked Paget to the door of Denise Owens.

Paget shrugged. She'd been quiet since we'd left the station.

I reached up to knock on the door, and Paget grabbed my hand before it connected with the door.

"What? What is it Page?" I watched her face as she seemed to be thinking of the right words.

"Why does it have to be so hard?"

"What, honey? What's hard?"

She looked up at me. Her eyes blue and huge. Her face questioning and yet—older and more mature in some way that I hadn't noticed before.

"Life."

Her answer sent a pang of longing through me. A certain longing for a different life for both of us. One in which our parents hadn't died so young. One in which our only living relative, our Aunt Patty, hadn't passed just last year—leaving us alone. One in which she didn't have her condition and I had been able to become the doctor I longed to be.

"I don't know, baby. I don't know." I pulled her into my arms—risking an episode from her. She felt rigid and frozen at first, but then seemed to melt into my arms, her face nuzzled into my neck.

We stood like that for a few moments until the front door opened suddenly, scaring us apart as Paget jumped and nervously jammed her hands into her jeans pockets.

I wanted to tell her that it was okay. That touching someone and needing someone was okay, but the moment had been interrupted by one studly high school senior named Adam Owens—the current object of my sister's affections.

"Oh, hey Paget, I didn't know you were here." His voice was deep, belying the end to his puberty. But he spoke with a soft tone that seemed to soothe my sister in a way that didn't come easy to most.

Her face tinted pink, and she stared down at the ground in response.

"Hey Adam. We're late. Is your mother ready for us?" I broke in.

"Oh sure. Moooom!" He turned and yelled behind him.

Paget giggled.

Geez.

"I'm heading out to basketball practice, but I'll be back in about an hour. Wanna help me name the kittens when I get back, Paget?"

At the mention of kittens, Paget's head shot up, and she leaned in to peer around Adam's sizable frame. "You have kittens?" Her tentative voice was filled with hope.

"Yep, Kitty Fantastico had eight kittens last night. Can you believe it? Eight kittens to count," he said, watching Paget's face light up.

Adam and I smiled at each other as his mother approached from behind.

"Oh hey, Mandy. Are ya'll all right? I heard there was a scene at the diner earlier."

How this information had already circled out and around to the Owens' home, I had no clue, but I nodded.

Taking the cue from his mother, Adam pointed behind him with an outstretched thumb. "Let me show you where we have the kittens stashed."

Paget followed him willingly, and they disappeared into the warm interior.

"Yeah, everything is okay, but she seems a little emotional now." I filled Denise in on the events of the day, and she stood there shaking her head.

As the former police chief's wife, Denise had seen and heard it all. And now that her husband was set to run for the highest seat in the state, chances were that she'd see and hear much more. I didn't envy her there.

"Okay, we'll take things easy today. You don't worry yourself. But if she's up to it, I wanted to ask if she could spend the night?"

I raised my eyebrows. "A sleepover? Here?" My motherly instinct kicked in. I doubted my Aunt Patty would have approved of our Paget sleeping over with a teenage boy.

She grinned at me. "Adam won't be here. He and his Dad are going up to Birmingham for an election rally. I told him that I just couldn't make one more rally this month. I need a break. After the holidays and all—I'm wiped out."

"I know how you feel," I commiserated. This holiday season had been exhausting. What with my two jobs and my reign as Glitter Queen of Millbrook—the town's official judge of all things Christmas decoration-wise, I was still recovering myself.

"So, I thought I'd give you a night off. Paget can keep me and the kittens company, and we can have a little girls' night. I'll work with her on some things, and we'll just stay in. You go out—have some fun for a change."

I didn't know what to say. I was blown away by her generous offer. And a flash of Officer Keith and our "set up" date tickled my memory. Yeah, I had to make plans for myself. I had to get out there and have some fun and not sit at home and feel sorry for myself—or for poor Mick Thibault.

"Okay, Denise. If you insist." We shared a smile. "Thanks."

"Hey, it's tough being a working mom. I know." She winked at me.

"Yeah, speaking of which, I need some motherly advice when we have a few minutes to chat."

"Oh…well…I'll look forward to it then," she replied.

I took a moment to confirm that she hadn't been allowing Paget to watch too much of the premium cable channels. We said our goodbyes, and I was back in the warm car a few minutes later.

It was time to become a vampire for a few hours. Drawing blood and running lab tests was my next duty of the day.

As I drove away, I couldn't help but wonder what made a good marriage go bad? It seemed like Denise and Andy Owens had a great marriage. And I imagined that being married to a cop turned politician couldn't be easy. Still Denise was a career woman of her own—a successful nurse—and a grounded mother. They seemed to have it all, and I remembered that she'd once told me they'd been married for twenty years. That was a long time to have one person in your life and to raise a family together.

But then, Mick and Matty had appeared like a successful marriage to all around them. They'd been together for a dozen years and hosted a radio talk show together, too. What made a person stray from that sort of love and was that enough to lead to murder?