LITMIR.BIZ

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am only too happy to oblige. I walk over to Hurley and grab the panties from his hand, stuffing them into the bag.

      “Hey, careful with those,” Hurley says. “They’re evidence.”

      Yeah, evidence that I need to start a serious diet. I fold the top of the bag closed while I wonder what the penalty is for tampering with crime scene evidence. No way am I going to admit now that those panties are mine. And if I can figure out how to get away with it, this evidence is going to disappear.

      I’m pondering my dilemma and following the funeral home stretcher out the door when Hurley grabs me by the arm. He holds me a moment, giving me a quick scan from head to toe. “There’s something you’re not telling me,” he grumbles.

      Shit. He figured it out. Took a gander at the broad beam of my ass and made the connection.

      “What else do you know about Karen Owenby?” he asks, eyeing me suspiciously.

      Oh, that. Well, there’s the fact that she’s a husband-stealing, skin-flute playing, two-timing slut, but I figure I probably shouldn’t speak so unkindly of the dead. Frankly, I’m reluctant to speak at all, the scene I witnessed earlier between David and Karen still fresh in my mind. I’ve seen enough episodes of Murder She Wrote to know things aren’t looking particularly good for David right now. And while I currently consider him a lower life form than pond scum, I don’t think he’s capable of murder. I need some time to sort things out.

      Of course, all Hurley has to do is ask questions at the hospital and he’ll know everything anyway. Gossip spreads through that place at warp speed, and by now it’s likely even the dishwashers in the cafeteria know all the gory details, right down to the size and shape of the birthmark on David’s Mr. Winkie.

      “Well?” Hurley prompts.

      “I think she’s seeing my ex-husband,” I offer as nonchalantly as I can.

      Hurley’s eyes narrow. “Ex-husband? You’re divorced?”

      “Might as well be. It’s not final yet, but the papers have been filed. Well, sort of.”

      “Sort of?”

      “I haven’t actually filed them yet. But I’m going to.”

      Hurley scrutinizes my face for a moment and my ears start to feel really hot. “And you think this Owenby woman was seeing your husband?” he asks.

      Oh, she’s seen him all right. “I’m pretty sure they had a…relationship,” I mumble.

      “His name?”

      “Whose?”

      Hurley’s eyes fire tiny arrows at me. Man, he’s good.

      “Winston,” I tell him. “Dr. David Winston. He’s a surgeon.”

      I see Hurley’s mental wheels spinning and can practically smell the burning rubber. “How long you two been split up?” he asks.

      “Couple of months.”

      “And how long has he been seeing this Owenby woman?”

      “I’m not sure,” I say. This answer is an honest one. I have no idea how long, or even if, David was seeing Karen before that fateful night in the OR.

      Hurley cocks his head and gives me a funny look. It dawns on me that he might consider me a suspect—the woman scorned and all that—and I am about to act insulted when I remember that a murderous thought or two has crossed my mind in the past couple of months. One of the side perks of having a career where you’re saving lives all the time is that it gives you an endless source of ideas on how to end them. I’d mentally exercised some of my more devious ones on Karen countless times.

      Hurley whips a pen out of his shirt pocket and a little notepad out of his jeans pocket—mighty nice fitting jeans, I note—and scribbles something down. “What’s your phone number?”

      “I don’t have a phone.” The look he gives me suggests that I better not be lying.

      “Do you have an address? Or do you live in a refrigerator box?”

      I almost laugh at that one, but something tells me Hurley might take it the wrong way. So I give him my address—Izzy’s address, actually, since the little guest cottage doesn’t have one of its own. Then he asks for David’s address. When I give him that, his eyebrows shoot up.

      “You live next door to your ex?” he asks, askance.

      “Sort of.”

      “That’s a bit masochistic, don’t you think?”

      “Are you a detective or a shrink?”

      “A little of both, actually,” he says, flashing me a crooked grin.

      I’m about to come back with another witty retort but I’m rendered temporarily speechless when my mind conjures up a vision of a psychiatrist’s office with me stretched out on a couch and Hurley standing beside me. He bends down, his face moving closer to mine….

      “Anything else, Detective?” I ask, clearing my throat and putting my mental mini movie on pause. I’ll store it for now and play the rest of it out later.

      “Yeah. Given your, uh, proximity to this case, I think it would be best if you weren’t involved with the autopsy.”

      “Understood.” And fine with me. The thought of doing an autopsy on someone I know is discomfiting, to say the least. I may hate the woman, but that doesn’t mean I want to see her dressed like some hunter’s ten-point kill. Besides, I have places to go and things to do. At the top of the list is getting my underwear back.

      Chapter 6

      The sun is coming up as we leave Karen Owenby’s house. Izzy says he’ll drop me off at the cottage on his way to the morgue and suggests I come into work around ten, giving him plenty of time to finish the autopsy on Karen.

      I take advantage of the ride home to quiz him about my latest interest. “So what do you know about this Steve Hurley guy?”

      “Not much. He moved here a few months ago from Chicago for reasons no one quite knows. He was a homicide cop there, too, and rumor has it he pissed off someone higher up in his department and got blackballed out of the place.”

      “Pissed them off how?”

      “Who knows? I’m not even sure that’s the truth. It may just be speculation.”

      “Is he good? I mean, does he know what he’s doing?”

      “He seems quite good, actually,” Izzy says with a tone of respect. “I imagine he has a lot more experience than most of the other cops here given that he spent fifteen years on the force in Chicago, four of those as a homicide detective.”

      “So why here? Why Sorenson of all places?”

      “I have no idea. Maybe he got tired of the big city and wanted a taste of small-town life.”

      “Does he have a family?”

      Izzy shoots me an amused look. “Quit being so damned cagey, Mattie. I could tell you were practically drooling over the guy. Why don’t you just come out and ask if he’s married or dating? That’s what you really want to know, isn’t it?”

      “No,” I say, indignant. “I was just trying to make polite conversation. Excuse the hell out of me.”

      “Oh, okay.”

      “And I wasn’t drooling.”

      When we reach the house I unfold myself, climb out of the car, and spend a minute leaning on my door, shifting from one foot to the other as I wait for the feeling to return to my legs. Stalling. Hoping. But Izzy can always outlast me, damn him.

      “Fine,” I say eventually. “Give it up. Tell me what you know.”

      Izzy

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