Chapter 30
B
jorn drops me off at the ME’s office after we return from Smithville and when I tell him he can go home for the night he frowns.
“What’s the matter?” I ask him. “You can handle your new bag okay, right?”
“I guess,” he says. “But hanging with you is kind of exciting. You get into all kinds of things. I don’t usually get this much excitement in a day.”
Or this much food, I think, suspecting that may be the bigger lure for him.
“Well, I don’t have anything exciting planned for the rest of the day,” I assure him.
“What about tomorrow?”
I hesitate. Much as I’ve grown fond of Bjorn, it’s time to get my own set of wheels. “Tomorrow I plan to just hang in the office,” I tell him, though truth is, I don’t know yet what I’ll be doing tomorrow. But I don’t want to commit to anything with Bjorn yet because once he latches on to me, I’m not sure I’ll be able to shake him. “And you need to make some real money, so why don’t you plan on running your cab as usual and if something comes up and I need you I’ll give you a call. Okay?”
He nods but looks crestfallen. For a moment I feel guilty but then figure that once the sun goes down, he’s unlikely to remember any of this anyway. Looking lonely and pathetic, he drives away.
I find Izzy sitting in his office working on a stack of files taller than he is. I pull up a chair and start filling him in on my day, starting with the conversation I had with Sally Hvam. He listens but keeps working on his charts, making notes, looking at lab results, and filling out paperwork.
“I don’t know what it is about Nelson,” I say once I’m done. “There’s something about him that bothers me. He’s a little too slick for my tastes.”
“Just because he’s a philanderer doesn’t mean he’s a killer,” Izzy cautions. “And from what I understand, he has a pretty solid alibi.”
“Speaking of alibis, I have a theory about Shannon that might change her time of death.”
Izzy stops what he’s writing and looks up at me. “Really?”
“I think so. Hear me out and tell me if I’m totally off base.”
He sets his pen aside and gives me his full attention.
“I noticed when we processed the crime scene that Shannon had an abrasion on the knuckles of one hand. But we didn’t find any foreign material there.”
Izzy nods but says nothing, so I continue.
“I also discovered she had a habit of eating a lot whenever she was working at Dairy Airs, and that she spent a lot of time in the bathroom. According to Erik and one of her coworkers, she claimed she had IBS, but when I looked through her medical records there was no mention of IBS, though there were several notes about her asking for diet pills. Then there are the contents of her medicine cabinet. There were several different kinds of laxatives in it. And Erik told me that Shannon was hoping to expand her modeling career but was always struggling with her weight.”
I pause, letting Izzy put the facts together on his own. “You think she was bulimic,” he says.
“I do,” I say, trying to contain my excitement.
He thinks for a few more seconds and I see a light spark in his eyes. “It fits,” he says, nodding slowly. “The knuckle abrasions could have been caused by her teeth scraping over them when she stuck her finger down her throat. It also explains the hiatal hernia she had—bulimics often develop one. And if she threw up her last meal, then you’re right. It would change all of our assumptions about the time of death.”
“And that might exonerate Erik.”
Izzy gives me a cautious look. “It might, but to be honest I think it may simply widen the window on the time of death, rather than shift or narrow it.”
“But if we don’t base the time of death on Shannon’s stomach contents, then couldn’t she have been killed much earlier than we originally thought?”
“Yes, but it’s just as possible that our original time frame is correct. The things we use to estimate the postmortem interval—the degree of rigor, body temperature, vitreous potassium levels—all have variances of several hours. So all this does is give us a broader window of time.”
It’s not the exoneration I was hoping for but at least it’s a bit of hope.
“If nothing else, at least it increases the pool of potential suspects,” Izzy says. “Have you shared any of this with Hurley?”
“Not yet. I wanted to run it by you first, to make sure my thinking was on target.”
“I’d say you’re spot on and we should let Hurley know ASAP.” With that, he picks up his cell phone and dials Hurley’s number. After listening for a few seconds, he says to me, “It’s flipping over to voice mail.” He then leaves a somewhat cryptic message, saying only that I have uncovered some critical new evidence in Shannon’s case.
“Kudos,” he says with a smile as he snaps his phone closed. “This should impress Hurley. It’s a brilliant bit of detective work.”
“Thanks,” I say, blushing and hoping he’s right. “In the meantime, I could use a favor. I need to get some new wheels. I have a little bit of cash saved, thanks to the generously low rent you charge me and what little I have left of my hospital severance pay. But it isn’t much so I’m going to have to get something used.” I pause and reflect on the paltry balance in my bank account. “
Really
used,” I clarify.
“I can front you a small loan, if that would help.”
I shake my head. “You’ve done enough for me already.”
“What about an advance against your wages? We can set up a payment plan so it’s deducted from your paycheck each week.”
I consider this idea, which would give me a little more money to play with while still saving some face, and agree. “Thanks,” I tell him.
“No problem. Will two thousand be enough?”
I have no idea but I nod anyway. I want to get up and kiss him but I know how much he’d hate it. Izzy isn’t a very demonstrative person.
“Consider it done,” he says.
“There’s one more thing,” I say. “I could use some help picking something out. I have no idea how to tell a good engine from a bad one.”
Izzy gives me an apologetic look. “Sorry, I don’t know my way around these modern engines any more than you do.”
“What about Dom?”
Izzy snorts. “He might be able to help you pick out a color and upholstery, but that’s about it. Tell you what I can do, though. I can give you the name of a reliable mechanic. That way, if you find something you like, you can have him go over it for you before you buy.”
“I guess I can do that if I have no other options but I’d rather not. Any money I spend on a mechanic is money I can’t spend on a car. Plus, if I pick a lemon on my first try, that means paying for at least two visits to a mechanic . . . and on from there. It could get expensive very fast.”
“I see your point. You need someone who won’t mind working on your engine for free before you commit.”
Behind me the door opens, and I hear Hurley’s voice. “Somebody call me?”
I turn and watch Hurley’s long legs stride into the room, admiring the way his jeans hug his thighs. Izzy’s last words hang in the air and suddenly they take on a whole new meaning as I imagine the many ways Hurley could work on my engine.
“Hi, Steve,” Izzy says. “Did you get my message?”
Hurley shakes his head. “I was already on my way here and was pulling into the garage when you called. So I figured I’d come in and talk to you in person. What’s up?”
“We have a few new things in the Tolliver case to tell you about,” I say.
Hurley settles into a chair, takes a notebook and pen from his shirt pocket, and starts writing as I tell him about my luncheon date and the scorned women who were romantically involved with Nelson. Izzy takes over when I’m done and fills Hurley in on my discovery of Shannon’s eating disorder and the potential impact it could have on the case. As Izzy is talking, Hurley turns sideways in his chair, stretching those long, blue-jeaned legs toward me. My eyes follow the line of his inseam until I reach a spot that makes my face feel like it’s about to burst into flames, and I force myself to turn away and focus on Izzy’s face instead, resisting the urge to fan myself.
When Izzy is done, Hurley closes his notebook, tucks it away, and says, “Nice work, Winston. Not only can’t we be certain of the time of death, we have a whole new list of suspects.”
I can’t tell if he’s being sincere with his praise or sarcastic, and though I’d like to ask, I’m reluctant to speak. As hot as my face and certain other regions of my body feel right now, I’m afraid I’ll turn into a fire-breathing dragon if I open my mouth.
Izzy, who always seems to be able to sense when I’m stymied by Hurley’s presence, saves the day. “Say, Steve,” he starts. “Do you know anything about car engines?”
Hurley shrugs. “I’m fairly handy,” he says. “I rebuilt an engine a few years back. Why do you ask?”
Izzy explains my car dilemma and five minutes later, Hurley and I are headed for Kohler’s Used Cars, which is located on the north edge of town. The first minute of our ride is in silence. Then Hurley breaks it with a loaded question.
“So what do you think of Aaron Heinrich?”
Trying not to smile, I simply say, “I like him. He seems to be the only one in that family—in either of those two families, for that matter—who has his head on straight.”
Hurley contemplates my answer for a second and then says, “He seems to like you.”
“Well, it’s mutual then.”
In the periphery of my vision I see Hurley shoot a worried glance in my direction. I maintain my beatific Mona Lisa smile and say nothing. The remainder of the ride, which is a blessedly short couple of minutes, is utterly quiet until we pull onto the car lot.
“Let’s take a look at what they have,” Hurley says. He drives around, checking out the inventory. Most of the cars are only a year or two old—no doubt a sign of the economic times—and they come with scary price tags that are way out of my league. After a run up and down each aisle, Hurley parks outside the office.
Bobby Keegan, a classmate from high school, is on sales duty and he rushes out the door of the building to greet us. Back in the day, Bobby was a star player on our high school football team and he still looks like a jock. He’s dressed very casually in jeans, a Polo knock-off shirt, and a letter jacket—probably the same one he wore in high school. If I look close I can see a couple of white hairs mixed in with his natural blond, but overall Bobby has aged well and looks much the same as he did nearly twenty years ago.
“Mattie Winston!” he says, greeting me with a big smile as I get out of the car. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
I’m not sure if Bobby actually remembers me from high school. I didn’t hang with him and the rest of the jocks-and-cheerleaders group, and wasn’t the memorable type in general. I probably would have been marked as a wallflower if not for my popularity at the slow dances.
I haven’t kept up with most of my high school acquaintances; heading off for college severed many a relationship and a lot of the kids moved on to bigger and better towns. But I do occasionally run into old classmates who stayed in Sorenson or who, like me, returned here after their college years. Bobby is a classic example. We crossed paths at the hospital a few months ago after his wife convinced him to get a vasectomy following the delivery of their fifth child. Knowing I’d be among the crew wielding a scalpel in the area of his love spuds allowed Bobby and me to reconnect in no time.
“I need a car,” I tell Bobby. “My other one was totaled and until I can get the insurance situation sorted out, I need some wheels to get me around, something cheap but reliable.”
“How cheap are you thinking?” Bobby asks.
“I have about three grand.”
“That’s a decent down payment,” he says, turning to scan the parking lot inventory. He starts to head for a nearby row of cars.
“It’s not a down payment,” I tell him, stopping him in his tracks. “That’s the total amount.”
I see Hurley turn to stare at me, but I avoid looking at him. Bobby looks back at me and laughs. “That’s a good one,” he says with a chuckle. “Seriously, how much are you looking to spend?”
“It isn’t a joke, Bobby. That’s all I have.”
Hurley says, “Christ, Winston, you can hardly buy a bicycle for that kind of money these days. Can’t Izzy front you some cash?”
“He already did,” I say irritably, shooting him a dirty look. I turn back to Bobby with my best pleading expression. “Look, Bobby, I’m in a tight spot. You know about my situation with David, don’t you?”
He nods even though it’s a rhetorical question. In a town this size, hot gossip is the one thing that disproves the theory of relativity by traveling faster than the speed of light. Plus, Alison plastered my private life all over the paper when she wrote up the article on Karen Owenby’s death and the other murders that followed.
“David and I don’t have any kind of official agreement between us yet so the whole money thing is a bit complicated for me right now. Plus, the insurance and title on my wrecked car are both in David’s name. So all I have is three grand. Do you have anything for me?”