A Few Dead Men – A Chick Dick Mystery
by Nancy Lauzon
Copyright 2011 Nancy Lauzon
Cover by Lisa Desimini
Smashwords Edition
Discover other Chick Dick Mysteries by Nancy Lauzon at http://chickdickmysteries.com/
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Chapter One
Darcy MacDonald stared at the ceiling and thought about murder. There were lots of ways to kill someone. Poison, a bullet, the well-placed blow of any heavy object.
Her right hip ached, and she had a crick in her neck. She couldn’t shift onto her back or she’d fall off the couch, since Fergus took up most of it. It might be comfortable enough to have sex on, but there wasn’t enough room for two people to lie side by side. She ruffled Fergus’s silky, dark brown hair.
“Hey, wake up.”
When he didn’t make a move, she eased off the sofa, smoothing down her skirt as she glanced around for her panties.
“You can sleep later, Fergus. Right now you have an appointment. Something about a missing person.” Darcy tucked her breasts back in her bra and hooked the front clasp together. “You don’t want a client to catch you with your pants down. Bad for business.”
She scooped her white, cotton blouse off the floor. It was a wrinkled mess. Next time she’d buy polyester, something more suitable for a quickie at the office.
Fergus lay on his stomach, facing away from her; arms bent at the elbows and tucked in at his sides. A dragonfly tattoo adorned the lower half of his back. She could see the tail peeking out from underneath his unbuttoned shirt. There was something missing, but her mind couldn’t quite register what.
Then it hit her. The dragonfly wasn’t moving the way it usually did whenever Fergus slept.
In fact, it wasn’t moving at all. It was perfectly still, with no rise and fall.
Somewhere outside the high-pitched cry of a seagull split the air, twice. A cool gust of air rattled the dusty Venetian blinds and carried the smell of rain through the open window.
Darcy shivered. “Fergus?”
Tugging gently on his left shoulder, she leaned over to look at him. A string of drool hung from his sagging mouth, and his eyes were open, staring at nothing.
She jumped back.
Two sharp knocks hit the door, and a muffled voice, thick with boredom and a Russian accent, said, “Mr. Fergus? Your three o’clock is here.”
She bounded across the room and wrenched the door open.
Vaughn, the receptionist, eyed her up and down with open disapproval. “You want our clients to see you half dressed? You can’t put some clothes on?”
Hauling Vaughn into the room by the arm, Darcy shut the door. Her mouth worked, but her throat was too dry for words to come.
Vaughn’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
She pointed to Fergus. “He’s … there’s something wrong. He’s—”
“Half naked. Is not good, in a place of business—”
“He’s not breathing.” Panic bubbled up, and Darcy lurched for the phone on Fergus’s desk, knocking the handset out of its cradle in one frantic swipe.
“Not breathing? Why not?”
Vaughn’s ridiculous question seemed to come from the other end of a long, dark tunnel, and Darcy couldn’t answer. It took all her concentration to dial 9-1-1.
Everything shifted into slow motion, including the phone ringing in Darcy’s ear. One ring. A long pause. A longer ring, an even longer pause. Oh, shit, hurry up.
Vaughn moved to the couch to examine Fergus more closely. Finally Darcy heard a female voice at the other end of the line.
“Nine one one emergency—”
“My boss, he’s not breathing. I need an ambulance, now. Bloodhound Investigations.” She repeated the address twice.
“I’ll dispatch an ambulance right away, ma’am. Stay on the line, please.”
“He is dead,” Vaughn pronounced sadly. “Poor Mr. Fergus.”
“Is he choking?” asked the emergency operator.
“What? No.”
“Has anyone tried CPR?”
“CPR? Right. CPR.”
Darcy dropped the receiver and rushed back to the couch, adrenaline coursing through her. She grabbed Fergus by his shoulder and left thigh and twisted him around with such force that he rolled right off the couch, landing in a heap on the floor with a sickening thud.
“Omigod, omigod, omigod.” On hands and knees, she straightened out Fergus’s arms and legs and positioned him onto his back. “We have to do CPR. Damn, it’s been years since I took that course—”
“CPR won’t help him, is too late,” Vaughn said. “Look at his color. Gray.”
Darcy ignored her, and tilted Fergus’s head back. She blew into his mouth twice. His lips were cold and clammy. “Get down here and help me,” she ordered Vaughn. “It’s not too late—”
“Is too late,” Vaughn repeated, crossing her arms. “In St. Petersburg I work for my uncle at the city morgue. I know dead when I see it. What happened?”
Darcy pressed on Fergus’s chest with both hands. His skin felt like a slab of refrigerated meat. “One and two and …we were just … fooling around. And then he moaned and fell asleep. At least I thought he did.”
“He moaned?”
“Yes. I figured he was … satisfied, you know ….” Fergus must have had a heart attack or something, not an orgasm. She hadn’t been able to tell the difference. She was still getting used to what Fergus’s orgasms sounded like.
Something creamy oozed from Fergus’s mouth. Darcy stared in horror. “What is that? What is that? I’m hurting him.”
Vaughn crouched down and touched Darcy’s arm. “You can’t hurt him. He’s gone.”
A wave of dizziness hit, and Darcy sat back on her heels. “My God, he’s only thirty-nine years old. How can he be dead?”
“It was his time. He died happy, yes?” Vaughn sighed. “Mr. Fergus was a good man. He hired me when nobody else would.”
Darcy gulped back a sob. Sirens wailed from a distance, getting closer.
“He doesn’t deserve to be found like this.” Vaughn gestured to Fergus’s pants and boxers, still twisted around his knees. “Is undignified.” She tugged the boxers up to the tops of his thighs, then paused for a quick peek. “Hmm. He was a little too old for you, but now I see why you liked him so much.”
“Have some respect, for God’s sake.” Darcy helped Vaughn tug the boxers and pants back over Fergus’s hips. “Are you sure we’re supposed to be doing this?”
“I don’t care,” Vaughn said.
“But we could get in trouble.” Darcy was fairly certain paramedics frowned upon well-meaning by-standers tampering with victims. But they’d also wonder why Fergus had his pants down. There was only one reason a man took off his pants in the middle of a workday, in the middle of his office. To get off, either by himself or with someone else.
“Trouble, ha,” Vaughn scoffed. “Doesn’t matter. I’m thinking of Mr. Fergus.”
Darcy swallowed back the bitter taste of bile. In all of her twenty-nine years, she’d never even seen a dead person. She was going to be sick. Oh, Fergus.
The sirens got louder. As Darcy refastened Fergus’s belt, Vaughn looked at her. “You will give the ambulance driver a good show, yes?”
She looked down. Her breasts spilled out of her pink satin bra. She didn’t have the luxury of vomiting. She had to get dressed, first.
The screeching sirens grew loud enough to shatter glass, then stopped abruptly. As car doors slammed in the street below, Darcy reclaimed her wrinkled blouse and shrugged it on. “What do I tell them? That I just found him like this?”
“Let me talk,” Vaughn said with the confidence of someone who’d lied to authorities before. “You say nothing.”
It wouldn’t be hard to say nothing. Darcy could barely swallow over the lump of grief in her throat.
Vaughn went downstairs to greet the paramedics and Darcy made one last attempt to find her missing panties, but there was no time.
The paramedics appeared and hoisted Fergus onto a stretcher. Darcy grabbed her purse from her office and followed them down the stairs.
Please God, I know it doesn’t look good, but don’t let him be dead. I’ll do anything you ask. I’ll be a better person. I’ll go to church. I’ll even try to get along with my mother.
Outside the front entrance a small crowd had gathered on the sidewalk.
Darcy snatched her trench coat off the hook by the door and pulled it on, watching as they loaded poor Fergus into the waiting ambulance. “I’m going to the hospital.”
Vaughn wasn’t listening. She had her hands full with the three o’clock client.
“I had an appointment,” the woman argued, her voice getting shrill. “Burke. Betty Ann Burke.”
“You call tomorrow. Now is not good.” Vaughn ushered the woman toward the door. “You see the ambulance? Mr. Fergus is sick.”
“Look, I’m sorry about that, but surely there’s another detective who can take my case?”
“Mr. McCoy, but he is out of town.”
The woman looked at Darcy. “What about her?”
“She is just secretary,” Vaughn said.
“You don’t understand. This is important. It requires someone’s immediate attention.”
“Ti glypiy. Office is closed. Get out, you stupid bitch.”
The woman’s jaw dropped. Vaughn shut the door in her face and locked it.
Darcy slipped out the back way, got into her car and drove to the hospital emergency department. A nurse led her to a stuffy room to wait.
There was a poster on the wall, outlining the warning signals of heart attack and stroke. Darcy stared at it for a long time. Maybe if she’d known about the warning signals or had tried CPR sooner, she could have helped Fergus. Instead she’d spent ten minutes daydreaming about the stupid mystery novel she was trying to write, thinking up ways to kill off her heroine’s abusive boyfriend.
She paced the floor, the thin air in the room making her mind spin. Going to the window, she stared out at the grey, damp April day and caught her reflection in the glass. Her brown hair stuck out at all angles, so she combed it with her fingers and brushed the bangs out of her eyes.
What the hell was taking so long? She checked her left wrist, but her watch wasn’t there. She hadn’t been able to find it that morning.
Finally the door opened, and a somber-looking doctor came in. “You’re waiting about Fergus Ferguson?”
“Yes.” She knew what the doctor was going to say. The look on his face said it all.
“I’m very sorry. He’s gone. We did everything we could.”
Pain shot through Darcy’s heart, and she wondered if that’s how Fergus had felt at the end. She fumbled in her purse for a tissue and wiped away a tear.
“I understand Mr. Ferguson was a private detective, and your boss, is that correct?”
“Well actually, he … we … yes, my boss.”
“Did he have any significant heart problems, that you’re aware of?”
“I don’t think so. Was it his heart?”
“It’s an educated guess, an autopsy will tell us more,” the doctor said. “I’ll need the contact information for his next of kin.”
She tried to think, but a strange fog had crept into her head. “He’s divorced. He never mentioned any brothers or sisters. I’m pretty sure both his parents are dead. There’ll be something in his file at the office. Is an autopsy necessary?”
“The Medical Examiner will order one. They investigate all unexpected or unexplained deaths.”
The doctor asked her more questions, whether Fergus smoked—no. Or suffered from headaches or chest pain at work or had hit his head recently—no.
Darcy braced herself for the biggest question, and it finally came.
“The paramedics said you found him unresponsive. Do you have any idea what he was doing just before you found him? It would help us figure out what happened.”
She cleared her throat. “I was … we were …”
The doctor’s eyebrow lifted. “Yes?”
“Having sex … making love. We were—”
“I got it.”
“We’ve been seeing each other, you see. Three weeks, on Friday. I know doing it at work wasn’t the best idea, but we had an argument last night and Fergus was apologizing, and one thing led to another.” She twisted the damp tissue in her hands. “Are you going to write all this down? It’s not something I really want getting out, you know?”
“It’ll have to go into his medical record for the pathologist, but I can assure you, our conversation is confidential.” The doctor scribbled something. “There are old bruises visible around his rib cage. I’d say a few weeks old. Any idea where he got those?”
“No,” Darcy said. “I asked him about them, but he never told me.”
“Do you know if he was taking any medication?”
“Yes. For high blood pressure.”
“What kind of medication?”
“I have no idea.”
“Any street drugs?”
“You mean … like … cocaine or something?”
“Or something.”
“No. He wasn’t the type. He hardly even drank alcohol.”
Before the doctor left he placed a hand on Darcy’s shoulder. “This wasn’t your fault.”
~ * ~
“It’s my fault,” Darcy said when she got back to the office and filled Vaughn in on what the doctor had told her. “If Fergus and I hadn’t been fooling around, he’d still be alive.”
“Don’t be stupid. Is up to God, not you.” Vaughn shrugged on a leather jacket that looked expensive. “Two policemen came. They wanted to know what happened.”
“What did you say?”
“That you found Mr. Fergus not breathing on couch. They looked around his office, took his pills from desk and said there would be an autopsy.”
“That’s what the doctor said. It doesn’t bear thinking about. Poor Fergus.”
Vaughn eyed the clock on the wall. “It’s five after five. You should not have come back here. Go home.” She opened her genuine alligator clutch and took out a set of keys.
“I wanted to tell you what happened.”
“I know what happened.” Vaughn headed for the door.
Darcy followed her. “Did Fergus have any brothers or sisters?”
“No. He was only child.”
“So who is his next of kin?”
Vaughan gave her a blank look.
“His nearest blood relative.”
“A first cousin. Hospital called, I told them.” Vaughn shooed her out to the parking lot, turned and locked the door behind them.
So Fergus had a first cousin he’d never mentioned. Maybe he and his cousin weren’t very close. She and Fergus should have talked more, instead of jumping each other’s bones. “Who—”
“Not now. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
Darcy grabbed Vaughn’s sleeve. “Look, I know you and I haven’t always gotten along, but I want to thank you for today.”
“No trouble.” Vaughn pried her hand off the leather. “Careful, this is lambskin. Good night.”
“Wait … what about tomorrow? Should we close the office?”
Vaughn pointed the keyless entry remote at her Audi R8 sports car like she was waving a magic wand. The car greeted her with two soft beeps. She opened the driver’s side door. “I will come to work until somebody tells me not to.”
“Who’s going to do that? There’s only Kent.”
They looked at each other. Darcy and Vaughn had few things in common, but one of them was Kent McCoy. They both hated him.
“He is back tomorrow. We’ll ask him.”
Vaughn climbed into the car, started the powerful engine and left Darcy standing in a cloud of exhaust.
Either Vaughn earned triple what a receptionist usually made, or she had a rich sugar daddy stashed somewhere. Darcy hadn’t figured out which yet.
~ * ~
Darcy’s friend Giovanna didn’t look surprised when Darcy showed up at her apartment a half an hour later. Gio’s boyfriend was a cop, and word got around.
“I just heard.” Gio led Darcy inside. “Jack called. He got it from a friend in dispatch. Holy cow. Fergus wasn’t that old, was he? How are you holding up?”
“Can I use your bathroom?”
“Of course.”
Darcy shut the bathroom door in a hurry and threw up into Gio’s porcelain toilet. When it was over she rinsed her mouth with cool water and opened the door.
Gio was still there.
“Don’t worry, I flushed and wiped down the seat.”
“It’s a toilet. That’s what it’s for. Were you there when Fergus died?”
Darcy nodded.
“When Jack first started on the job he said it was rough, seeing a dead person … Darcy?”
The funny sounds coming from inside of her were sobs. “Sorry.”
Gio steered her toward a large, round Papasan chair, sat her down and disappeared briefly. She returned with a box of tissues and a glass. “This is Coke with a pinch of salt to take the fizz out. The Pescateli cure for nausea.”
“Coke with salt?”
“Do you know how old this recipe is? You think it’s been in my family for four generations because it doesn’t work?”
Darcy took a tentative sip, and didn’t gag. She should have known better than to second-guess Gio’s Italian heritage.
Gio sat on the coffee table. “Okay, what are you not telling me, Darce? Because you look shittier than a person who witnessed somebody dying should look, even if it was their first time. Spill.”
Darcy spilled.
“You mean to say that you and Fergus were—”
“Lovers.”
“And you were actually doing it when—”
“He died.”
“Just like that?”
“I thought he was in the throes of passion, not having a heart attack.”
“Come to think of it, it’s probably hard to tell the difference.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to have sex again.” Darcy shuddered. “Vaughn and I pulled his pants back up. We didn’t want the paramedics to see Fergus naked. Is that illegal?”
“I think so.”
“I was half out of my mind, Gio.”
“Clearly.”
“Don’t say anything to Jack. It’s all so horrifying.”
“I’ll add it to my list of things I don’t tell him.” Gio flipped open a thick book entitled, Encyclopedia of Dog Breeds and reached for the pack of cigarettes and lighter that were shoved into the hollowed out pages.
“You’re smoking again?”
Gio lit a cigarette. “You want one?”
Darcy shook her head. “Won’t Jack smell the smoke?”
“He’s on nights this week. I’ll light some scented candles.” Gio took a drag and blew the smoke out gently, like she was sorry to see it go. “So how come I haven’t heard about this until now?”
“It only happened this afternoon—”
“Not that. The fact that you were seeing someone. Three whole weeks and not a word. Must be a record.”
Darcy bit her lip. “I guess I thought I’d jinx myself, like so many other times. People would disapprove.”
“Of what?”
“Of the fact that Fergus was ten years older than me.”
“So what? You’re a grown woman.”
“He’s divorced, too.” Darcy took another drink of flat Coke. “He was divorced. I can’t believe I’ll never see him again.” Her bottom lip trembled, and her voice caught. “I really think I could have loved him, and I haven’t felt that way since Skyler. Fergus wasn’t perfect, but he was pretty good, you know?”
Gio’s eyes went dark with sympathy. “Oh, Darce, I’m so sorry.”
“We had a fight last night. Maybe if we hadn’t argued …” Darcy buried her head in her hands. “I feel so guilty.”
“You couldn’t have known.” Gio paused. “What did you fight about?”
Darcy took a breath and let it out. “He showed up at work with a black eye, said he bumped into a door. Well, I’m not stupid; I knew something was going on. He had bruises all over his ribs. He was obviously in a fight with someone, but wouldn’t talk about it. I accused him of not opening up to me. If we care enough about each other to make love, we should be able to talk about everything. We were making up and—well, you know the rest.”
“But how did this happen? You’ve been at Bloodhound for months now. One day you just made goo goo eyes at each other over the photo copy machine?”
“It started because of that Spy Institute course.”
“Spy Institute?”
“That online course I took. It’s a private investigator course, to help me with research for my mystery novel. Fergus was very supportive of my writing. We’d stay after work and he’d help me out. He taught me so much. He even let me do most of the backgrounding for his cases. He said I had a lot of potential.” Darcy nibbled on a fingernail. “At first it was all very innocent. Then we flirted and that took a while. He thought I wouldn’t be interested because he was my boss.”
Gio made an ashtray out of the foil from the cigarette package. “I only saw him from a distance a few times. I wish I’d met him. I always thought you should date someone older. That was the problem with your other boyfriends. They were too immature.”
“They were my age.”
“I’m talking about their mental age, Darce. I mean, look at Archie. Thirty-one and too lazy or too broke to fill his car with gas. He could never hold down a proper job.”
“He said he was screwed up by his dysfunctional family.”
“And you believed him?”
Darcy slumped back. “You’re right. My family’s dysfunctional, and I have a steady job.”
“And then he just disappeared, poof … back to his ex-girlfriend. He really hurt you.”
“Point taken.”
Gio took another drag from her cigarette. “So older men are okay in my book. Although obviously dating them has its drawbacks, if they can drop dead during sex.”
“Thirty-nine isn’t all that old.”
“True, but maybe Fergus lied about his age. Maybe he was older.” Gio met Darcy’s bleak stare, and backpedaled. “Sorry, I guess you didn’t need to hear that, not tonight.”
“I’m telling you, Fergus was different. One of the things I liked about him was his honesty. No bullshit. And he was a real gentleman. I know it sounds old fashioned, but I liked that. Guys my age don’t know how to act. They can be so full of themselves, especially if they’re hot. Except for Jack, of course.”
Gio turned her head and blasted smoke from the side of her mouth. “Of course.”
“They figure they don’t need to do anything but stand around and look hot. They can barely string three words together.” Darcy sunk further into the chair and let the soft cushion curl around her. “Maybe it’s not cool to want to get married, or at least have a committed relationship, but honestly, it sucks to be single. You’re lucky, Gio.”
“Lucky, that’s me.” Gio smashed her cigarette into her makeshift ashtray. “In addition to working full-time at the law office, I get to wash dirty socks, clean the apartment, make the meals, and be on my own most evenings, thanks to Jack’s schedule.”
“But you get to live with a guy who loves you, whereas I live alone.”
“Thanks for making me feel guilty about moving out of our duplex and taking half of the rent money with me.”
Darcy sat straighter. “I didn’t mean it like that. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
The stubborn set of Gio’s jaw told Darcy there was something, but wild horses couldn’t make her friend talk when she didn’t want to. She tried anyway. “You know, they say a problem shared is a problem halved.”
“Whoever ‘they’ are. Darcy, I’m fine.” Gio put away her cigarettes and cracked a smile. “You wanna stay over? We can watch a Colin Firth movie and keep each other company. I don’t think you should be alone, after the day you’ve had.”
Darcy agreed, but in the end staying over was a bad idea, since she barely slept. Lying beside a dead body was bound to give anyone insomnia, but Darcy could have lain awake in the comfort of her own bed. Gio’s heart was in the right place, but the lumps on her sofa bed definitely weren’t.
She finally drifted off around dawn, and when she woke there was an elephant sitting on her chest. At least, that’s what it felt like.
For a moment she had no idea where she was.
Then she remembered Fergus, and realized the weight settling on top of her must be sympathy pains. Or maybe she was having a heart attack. Chest heaviness was a classic sign of a heart attack, according to that hospital poster. If Fergus could die on the wrong side of his fortieth birthday, why couldn’t she?
Darcy thought about the other symptoms on the poster. Anxiety. Check. Nausea. Did that, last night. Numbness in the arms. She made a fist with her left hand. Her arm felt tingly, but maybe because she’d slept on it.
Gio invited her to stay for breakfast, but her emotions were dangerously close to the surface, and she needed to lock herself in a room and have a good cry.
She bumped into Gio’s boyfriend Jack in the hallway near the elevator. Even bleary eyed after a night shift, he had an angular jaw and dimpled chin that made him look more like a soap opera star, not a Halifax cop.
“Hey, Darce.”
“Hi, Jack. How are you?”
“Pretty good. Made Detective Constable, General Investigations.”
“Congratulations.” Darcy wondered what it was like to share a bed with a drop-dead gorgeous hunk day in and day out. At the rate she was going, she’d probably never find out.
“So you stayed over?”
“Yeah, I needed a pal last night.”
“I heard, sorry about what happened to your boss.”
“Thanks.” Her throat tightened, and she studied her shoes.
“They figure it was his heart, right?”
She nodded, fighting exhaustion, hoping Jack would sense that maybe she didn’t feel like talking, but he seemed content to hear the sound of his own voice.
“He looked to be in pretty good shape. I used to see him once in a while, at headquarters. The guy was buff. Kind of a shocker, if you ask me. How does a healthy guy just drop dead like that?”
Darcy shrugged and willed herself not to cry.
“Makes a person think,” Jack went on. “Maybe he had a pre-existing heart condition or something. I sure hope it wasn’t because he exercised too much, or had too much stress on the job. That would hit a little too close to home, you know?”
“Sorry, Jack, I have to go. I’ll be late for work.”
She escaped inside the elevator and took it to the ground floor, trudging through the early morning gloom of the parking lot to her brand new, second-hand Nissan that was eating money faster than she could make it now that she was covering the rent by herself.
The last thing she needed was to stand around listening to Jack’s curious, cop brain musing out loud about Fergus’s death. Darcy knew exactly why Fergus had died.
Because of her.
~ * ~
The minute Darcy got home she tore off her clothes and headed straight for the bathroom. A steaming shower was the ideal place to cry her heart out without disturbing the upstairs neighbor. Too late, she realized she’d just washed Fergus’s smell off her body. She cried harder.
Her laundry basket was overflowing, so she put on the only decent work outfit left, a teal green shirt and black polyester pants with a stain on the knee. She wiped the stain off with a damp towel and threw on her coat.
She stood on the front porch a moment to catch her breath. Her duplex sat halfway up a hill, affording her a glimpse of Bedford Basin between the buildings across the street. The day was overcast; the sky a low ceiling of pale gray that carried a chill. An ordinary day that Fergus would never see.
She wasn’t hungry but knew she should eat something to get through the next few hours. The line up of cars at the drive-thru took forever and by the time she picked up a coffee and a bagel, she was late for work.
Vaughn watched her from her desk. “You need more concealer under your eyes. You have dark circles.”
Darcy put her hand to her face. “Do I?”
“Don’t worry. I have some.” Vaughn rooted through her purse and produced a small round container. “Industrial strength.”
“Thanks.” Darcy stood in front of a mirror, dabbing it on. “I saw Kent’s car in the parking lot. Did you ask him about closing the office?”
Vaughn sniffed as though a bad smell had suddenly permeated the room. “Yes. He said no need to close office. Kozel. He’s a pig. All he does is complain about the workload now that poor Mr. Fergus is gone. He says nothing nice even though the man is dead.”
"I’ll see if I can get through to him.” She handed back the concealer. “This cousin you mentioned yesterday, Fergus’s next of kin—”
“Smith Brandon.”
“Smith Brandon? Are you sure it isn’t the other way around?”
“I am sure,” Vaughn said. “But there is no address, only phone number.” She handed Darcy a piece of paper. “You could ask Kent. I don’t want to talk to him.”
Darcy found Kent McCoy sitting in Fergus’s office, his feet up on the desk. His thick brown hair was tamed with too much gel, and his face glowed with a peculiar shade of orange. He’d been at the tanning beds again.
Kent held a cell phone in one hand, and her pink satin panties in the other.
“Ah, there you are.” Kent snapped the cell phone shut. “You’re late. Found these behind the couch. Thought you’d be missing them by now.”
Humiliation shot through her. “How do you know those are even mine?”
“Because Tsarina downstairs has a smaller butt. These would be too big for her.”
Darcy crossed her arms. “Charming. What are you doing in here, anyway? Searching your dead colleague’s office? That’s low, even for you.”
“I’ll tell you what’s low. Banging the boss to wrangle a job. No wonder he hired you. I was suspicious about all those late hours, but figured you were too frigid to spread your legs. I’ll bet it was nice having your own private dick.”
Darcy gaped at him. “I got the job of administrative assistant because of my qualifications and experience. What went on between Fergus and me is our personal business.”
“Here’s a newsflash. Him doing you at work makes it my business.” He swung his feet down, leaned across the desk and handed her the panties. “So now that I’m in charge, I’ve decided to take this office. It has a nice view of the harbour. Be a honey, empty out my desk and bring my things in here. And maybe later you can gimme some sugar. I’ll give you a big raise.” He winked.
“Don’t be disgusting.”
“Listen, I know you’re probably upset that your meal ticket popped off, but trust me, honey, you’re better off without him. When I have time I’ll tell you all about it.” He frowned. “All joking aside, what’s the deal with Fergus? Tsarina won’t tell me squat, and the hospital hasn’t been much help. Maybe his heart, they said.”
Darcy turned and walked to the door. “You’re the detective. Figure it out for yourself.”
She bolted across the hall to her office and tugged on the top drawer of her desk. She took out the personal items. A comb, some gum, a small package of tissues, her Avril Lavigne CD, her lipstick, a couple of romance novels. She checked the other two drawers. Nothing in there that belonged to her.
She needed a new job. Fergus was gone, and things just wouldn’t be the same. His ugly, green velour couch would haunt her every single day, and no way was she going to work for a sexist jerk like Kent. There was a carton under her desk containing a few notepads and boxes of elastic bands. She emptied it out and tossed her things in it. She plucked the philodendron from the window ledge and put that in too.
Then she remembered her new car, and the fact that it was almost the end of the month, and her rent was due next week. She also needed groceries. Her cupboards were bare.
Okay, so she couldn’t quit this instant. But she could sure as hell look for something else.
She sat at her keyboard and surfed employment websites. There was an opening for a clerical position at a local water heater manufacturing company. Boring, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. Hopefully nobody there made snide remarks about the personal lives of their coworkers. She grabbed a pencil to write down the particulars.
A little while later, Vaughn stuck her head in the doorway. She had a look Darcy had never seen before. Sympathy, maybe.
“There’s a woman downstairs,” Vaughn began.
“The lady from yesterday? Ms. Burke?”
“No. Her name is Roxanne Rudderham. She wants to see Kent.”
Darcy rolled away from her keyboard. “Why are you telling me?”
“It’s about Fergus. She is …” Vaughn stopped.
“She is … what?”
“His wife.”
“Fergus’s wife?”
“Yes.”
“You mean Fergus’s ex-wife.”
“Not ex.”
Chapter Two
For a brand new widow, Roxanne Rudderham Ferguson didn’t look particularly upset. She looked like an ordinary woman with not much on her mind. She was so ordinary, her pale brown hair was almost colorless.
She handed Vaughn her coat.
“You want coffee?” Vaughn offered reluctantly.
“Do you have herbal tea?” Roxanne asked in a barely audible voice.
“I’ll check.”
Darcy followed Vaughn into the storage room that doubled as a kitchenette. Let Roxanne find her own way to Kent’s office.
“How do you know she’s not his ex-wife?” Darcy whispered. “Maybe she just calls herself his wife.”
Vaughn rooted through the drawers. “I asked her. I said, ‘I thought Mr. Fergus was divorced.’ She looked annoyed and said, ‘No.’”
Darcy had to sit down. She picked at her thumbnail. “I slept with a married man.”
Vaughn found a lone teabag at the back of the cupboard and tossed it in a mug. “All men keep secrets. You are smart, you should know this.”
“He lied to me. He lied to everyone.”
“Doesn’t matter if he lied to me. I wasn’t sleeping with him.”
“If he was still married, why did he have his own apartment?”
Vaughn shrugged. “‘Ex’ is relative term. To a woman, ‘ex’ means ‘ex’. To a man, it means ‘the girl I’m doing when I’m not with you.’ Now you know, so don’t forget.”
“You don’t understand.” Darcy’s voice shook. “My father cheated on my mother with his secretary after thirty-one years of marriage. My mother was devastated. I’m the other woman, that’s what Fergus has made me. It’s not fair.”
“I am sorry for you.” Vaughn filled the mug with tepid tap water and held it out to Darcy. “Herbal tea for the wife.”
Darcy jumped up and paced the floor. “Don’t give that to me. I can’t deal with her. This is so humiliating.”
“Is not her fault husband is cheat. Is not your fault, either.”
No, nothing was her fault, but that didn’t alter the fact that a black cloud had rolled into her life and showed no signs of leaving.
When Darcy still didn’t take the mug, Vaughn sighed. “I will give to her.”
Darcy slunk back to her office, keeping one eye on Kent’s closed door, wondering what was going on. What were they talking about? When she finally heard the door open, she allowed herself a peek. Kent and Roxanne headed straight for Fergus’s office. Kent gestured for Roxanne to go ahead of him. He seemed to leer at her, and she smiled a smile that told Darcy they knew each other. Very well.
Before Kent could join Roxanne, Darcy rushed into the hall and reached for his sleeve. “Why are you going into Fergus’s office?”
“None of your business. Look, I know it’s a bummer, finding out the Fergster still has a wife, but get over it. You’re not the first chick to get screwed over by a married man, and you won’t be the last.”
“So you knew the whole time that Fergus wasn’t divorced?”
“Don’t feel bad. Everybody in town thought he was, and that’s the way he wanted it, I guess.”
“If Fergus and his wife weren’t living together, they must have been separated. She has no right to be in his office.”
“Wrong. She has every right. In fact, she stands to inherit the company, along with everything else. Which makes her your new boss. Now why don’t you be a good girl and go change the ink cartridge in your printer?” Kent slipped out of her grasp and closed the office door behind him.
“I can’t work here,” Darcy told Vaughn at lunch. “I can’t work for Kent, and I’m certainly not going to work for her. How awkward would that be?”
Vaughn scraped up the last of her vanilla yogurt. “She may inherit, but she will not work here.”
“How do you know?”
“She does not look like she has backbone for business.”
It gave Darcy some comfort that Vaughn’s first impression of Roxanne was the same as her own.
Darcy spent the afternoon updating her resume and trying to balance her checkbook. If she quit her job tomorrow, she had enough savings to cover her rent, credit card and car loan payments for one month, as long as she didn’t eat anything or drive anywhere during that time. Not a pretty picture.
As bad as things were at Bloodhound, she couldn’t quit until she found another job, first.
At four o’clock she couldn’t stand the place a minute longer. She packed up her desk and bumped into Kent on her way downstairs.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded.
“Home.”
Kent pointed to his watch. “No way, honey. You’ve got one hour left.”
“I’m not feeling well.” She gave a feeble cough, for effect. “I wouldn’t count on me being here tomorrow, either.”
“Not gonna happen, Darcy. I’m swamped with Fergus’s workload. With Jerry quitting last month we’re already short on investigators. What am I supposed to do with all these cases?”
“Why don’t you ask Mrs. Ferguson to help you?”
She continued down the stairs and stopped at Vaughn’s desk, Kent following behind her. “Have a nice weekend, Vaughn. See you Monday.”
Vaughn’s eyebrows shot up. “Monday?”
“Don’t think I won’t fire your ass, as nice as it is Darcy, because I will,” Kent said.
“Leave her alone,” Vaughan commanded. “She has had bad day.”
“Why don’t you mind your own business, Russki?”
“You should close office tomorrow,” Vaughn went on. “Show respect for Mr. Fergus.”
“Don’t you tell me what I can and can’t do. Fergus would want the place to stay open. Life goes on. And remember, I can just as easily fire your ass, too.”
“Chew me.”
Kent was momentarily distracted by the cell phone ringing in his pocket. He scowled and turned away to answer the call.
Darcy leaned toward Vaughn and gave her a grateful smile. “For future reference, the proper term is ‘bite me.’”
“He can do that too.”
~ * ~
Darcy went home. Her chest felt funny again, and her heart raced. Maybe she was dying. She took her pulse. She had one. That had to count for something.
She changed into a pair of sweat pants with Kiss My Axe splashed across the butt. She’d bought them at the campus store to support the Acadia Axemen, the sports teams of her alma mater. Her mother thought they were disgusting, but they were the most comfortable pair of pants she’d ever worn.
Moving to her bookcase, she took stock of her small but carefully cultivated library. At least her degree in English literature was good for something. Classics like Salinger and Lee kept company with Le Carre, Christie and Koontz. She ran her hand across the spines of the dog-eared, hardcover Nancy Drew Mysteries collection that had belonged to her mother, pulling out The Secret of the Old Clock. This is where her love of mysteries had begun so long ago, with this very book.
She tucked it in the crook of her elbow and continued to scan the shelves until she found the book she was looking for. Diagnosis for Dummies. Taking it out, she skimmed the pages to the definition she needed: ‘hy-po-chon-dri-a n. abnormal anxiety over one’s health, often with imaginary illnesses and severe melancholy.’
Now she knew what was wrong. She didn’t have heart trouble.
She was a lunatic.
Her laptop sat on the desk, calling to her. She sat down and opened her journal file. She poured out her heart about Fergus, the man she could have loved, the man who lied to her. Her fingers hammered the keys until they were sore. She finally sat back, feeling a little better.
After some hesitation, she opened the file containing her half-finished mystery novel and scrolled down the page to where she’d left off. Yes. Her heroine had just decided to kill her boyfriend, but couldn’t figure out how.
That’s what she’d been thinking about while lying beside Fergus’s corpse.
She stared at the half empty page, thinking about how powerful the human mind was. When she wrote stories, they seemed real, and the people in them seem real, even though they were only in her head.
The day Fergus died, all she’d thought about was murder. In fact, it was all she’d been thinking about for days. Writer’s block. She couldn’t move forward until she figured it out.
What if, somehow, Fergus had sensed her thoughts? What if in some weird, psychic way, she’d accidentally willed his death to happen?
She closed the file and got to her feet. Knock it off. Breathe.
A man couldn’t drop dead just because a woman willed him to. If that were possible, men everywhere would be dropping like flies. She might have a powerful imagination, but it wasn’t that powerful.
Not as powerful as the orgasm she’d given him that had stopped his heart.
Rummaging through her purse, she found the piece of paper with Smith Brandon’s phone number on it. The area code was local. She dialed, not even sure what to say when he answered. That she was a colleague, calling to give her condolences? A jilted girlfriend, looking for closure?
Nobody home. She hung up, her hand still on the receiver, and when it rang she almost jumped out of her skin.
“Hey,” said her sister, Isabel, calling from Toronto. “How’s it going?”
Not so well. My boyfriend, who also issues my paychecks, died suddenly yesterday, and I just found out he’s still married. Too much to say long distance. Darcy gave her sister the shorter, cleaner version. “My boss died yesterday.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Are you out of a job? When the owner of a company dies, it usually means the company dies too.”
“Thanks, Isabel. I needed something else to worry about.”
“I’m only stating the obvious. Listen, I need a favour.”
Darcy closed her eyes. Isabel’s favours were never simple. They usually involved complicated transactions of money, travel, and varying degrees of unpleasantness. “What kind of favour?”
“I need you to check up on Dad. I’m worried about him.”
This involved travel, since their father lived in Wolfville, an hour outside the city, and a degree of unpleasantness that was off the scale, since Darcy hadn’t spoken to him in four months, since the day her mother discovered him bonking a woman half his age.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Look, I know you have an issue with him, but isn’t it time you dealt with it? Mom and Dad will probably end up divorced. I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s not the end of the world. People get divorced all the time.”
“An ‘issue’? I hate that word. What you really mean is ‘problem’. Why don’t people say ‘problem’ anymore? I don’t have an ‘issue’ with Dad, I have a ‘problem’, Isabel, a huge problem. He broke our mother’s heart. He’s a cheating snake—”
“He’s still our father—”
“So? The fact that I’m related to him means I have to accept his bullshit?”
“You’re very good at rampaging about him on the phone to me, but you don’t have the guts to say it to his face. That’s your problem. If you could just tear a strip off him, I think you’d feel better. That’s what I did, and we’re fine.”
Yeah, you’re a lot like Dad. You barge into the lion’s den without a backward glance and to hell with the consequences.
On the rare occasion that Darcy ventured into the den, she agonized over it for days and her nerves were shot by the time it was over.
“It’s easier for you. It always was.”
“Just tell him what’s on your mind,” Isabel said. “He’s a big boy, he can take it. Anyway, I’ve seen you get angry. You can really let somebody have it when you’re mad enough.”
“This is Dad we’re talking about,” Darcy argued. “A man I’ve looked up to my whole life. It was icky enough thinking about him having sex with Mom, let alone with a woman young enough to be his daughter.” Her voice caught, and she swallowed hard. “He hurt this family so deeply, Izzy, he hurt Mom so badly. How I feel is not easy to put into words, okay?”
There was silence at the other end of the line before Isabel spoke. “How’s Mom doing, anyway? I talked to her last week, she sounded fine.”
“She’s okay, I guess.”
“She’s made it through the worst of it.”
“Except she stopped seeing her therapist. I told her it was too soon.”
“Well, you can’t force her to go. You know what she’s like.”
Darcy took a deep breath, and then another. But she couldn’t push enough air out, and the room began to spin.
“So anyways, about Dad,” Isabel went on. “I think there’s something wrong with him. He’s not himself. Darcy? Are you still there?”
Darcy put down the phone. Damn, she was hyperventilating. She hadn’t hyperventilated since the day Skyler had told her it was over.
She ran to the kitchen and rooted around until she found a paper bag beneath a pile of trashy Hollywood magazines. She shook it open, held it over her mouth, and breathed as slowly as she could. Almost instant relief. Thank God for paper bags.
She picked up the phone again. “Sorry.”
“What happened? I thought you’d fainted. What’s wrong?”
“I’m okay.”
“But—”
“What do you mean there’s something wrong with Dad? I’m sure he’s just fine now that he’s got a mistress.”
Isabel sighed. “He asked me to get him a price on some artwork from Walter’s gallery, which surprised me, since he’s not really into artwork, but I’d shown him a brochure at Christmas, and he was very impressed. He said he definitely wanted a painting.”
Isabel paused, like some kind of reply was needed, so Darcy said, “Yes, I see what you mean. Anybody who’d want to buy Wally’s stuff is definitely not right in the head.” Isabel’s boyfriend owned and operated a hoity-toity art gallery in Queen West, a funky Toronto neighborhood between University and Trinity Bellwoods Park. He and Isabel shared a one-bedroom loft above the gallery that cost more than a four-bedroom house in Halifax.
“Very funny. When I called Dad back with a price, he acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about. He said he’d never asked about Walter’s work, and want would he do with it anyway? Now, I know he’s always been the quintessential absent-minded professor, but he sounded strange, and he … he got angry with me.”
Darcy put down the paper bag. “He got angry and doesn’t want to buy Wally’s artwork. For this you want me to drive out to Wolfville and check on him? Are you serious?”
“Darce, I mean it, there’s something going on with him. He actually cursed. He dropped an ‘F’ bomb. He never does that, you know he doesn’t. It’s so out of character.”
“He cheats on Mom and you’re okay with it. He says ‘fuck’ and you call me long distance.”
“I am not okay that he cheated on Mom. I’m just more tuned in to the real world, that’s all.”
“What does that mean, Isabel?”
“Oh, come on Darcy. I love you, but you’re a little naïve. You want a world where people stay happily married forever, and that’s not the way real life works.”
“For somebody who’s looking for a favour, you’re treading on pretty thin ice.”
“I’m not trying to hurt your feelings, it’s just an observation. And I’d go check on Dad myself, but I can hardly do it from here, can I? He’s sixty-two, Darcy, and he lives all alone in that drafty old house. Could you please just go? For me. Please?”
Darcy rolled her eyes and could almost hear the violins. Isabel played the ‘I live too far away’ card whenever there was a family crisis. The day their father’s infidelity became news, it wasn’t Isabel who had to listen to their mother’s gut-wrenching sobs. It wasn’t Isabel who found Mom sitting on the bathroom floor a few days later, blood oozing from the gashes in her wrists.
I made a mess, Darcy. Such an awful mess.
“Okay, I’ll do it,” Darcy said finally. “But I’m not saying a word to him. I’ll make sure he’s walking and talking, that’s it.”
“But—”
“Take it or leave it, Isabel.”
“God, you don’t have to be so hostile about it. You know, you should talk to someone about your feelings. It’s not good to keep all that anger bottled up inside.”
“Thanks for the tip, Izzy.”
She hung up on her sister.
~ * ~
Friday dawned cool and damp, and it rained until mid-morning. Darcy woke up with a strange pain in her right calf. She turned on her laptop and logged on to her favorite medical website, Doctor Know dot com.
There were about fifty different reasons for calf pain, but she settled on the most likely one in her case. Deep vein thrombosis, a sinister clot in her leg that any moment could travel through the bloodstream to her heart or brain and cause a debilitating or even fatal stroke.
She pondered her demise while she slurped some coffee, then picked up the phone and called Gio at work. “What are you doing?”
“Working,” Gio said. “I see from the call display that you’re not. What are you doing home? Are you sick?”
Darcy gave her the pathetic details. About Kent finding her missing panties, about Fergus’s not-so-ex wife Roxanne, about needing another job. Gio responded with as much outrage as she could display while sitting in a cubicle surrounded by lawyers.
“Still married? Are you kidding me? Omigod, Darce, I’m so sorry.”
“I think I won’t be long for this world.”
“Don’t say that, not even in fun.”
“I’m not joking.”
Darcy heard Gio suck in a breath. “You’re going to kill yourself?”
“I won’t have to.” Darcy reviewed her symptoms: the elephant sitting on her chest, the numbness in her arm, the pain in her leg. “I’ve been reading that heart attacks don’t always happen suddenly, like with Fergus. Sometimes the symptoms are vague, especially for women, and they can go on for days before the end finally comes.”
“I think you’ve been reading too much. Look, you’ve had two bad shocks. First Fergus dying, then finding out he’s married. That’s enough to give anybody chest pain.”
“Maybe.”
“I’m coming by at lunch time. I have an hour so we’ll go get a bite to eat. You need to get out.”
Gio picked her up at twelve-thirty. The brooding sky wept a fine, cold mist that didn’t improve Darcy’s mood.
“Is Timmy Ho’s okay with you?” Gio asked when Darcy climbed into the car. “I’m in the mood for a ham and Swiss.”
“Whatever.”
“I have some news that might make you feel better.” Gio pulled away from the curb. “But swear to me you’ll keep it to yourself, because I’m not supposed to disclose things like this. If you tell anyone I told you, you won’t have to commit suicide because I’ll kill you myself … after I’m fired.”
“I feel better already. Okay, I swear, I won’t say anything.”
“Fergus’s cousin, Smith Brandon, is a silent partner of Bloodhound Investigations. One of the lawyers at our firm is handling the will, Dwayne Reed—”
“The same Dwayne who worships you from afar?”
“Don’t be stupid. Dwayne’s just a very friendly guy. Will you pay attention?”
“Sorry.” Darcy sat back. “I had no idea Fergus had a partner.”
“Nobody knew, but he’s left the company, lock, stock and barrel, to his cousin.”
“What you’re saying is, my dead boyfriend’s wife won’t be my new boss?”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“Thank God for small favours.”
“Feel better?”
Darcy wasn’t sure. It was the first piece of good news she’d had in days, and she wasn’t used to hearing good news. “I think I’ll wait for the other shoe to drop. It always does.”
“Don’t be such a pessimist.”
“I’m not a pessimist. I just know from past experience. Things go your way, and then boom, the other shoe drops.” She looked at Gio. “Have you met this Smith Brandon character?”
“No.”
“Vaughn gave me his number, and I tried calling him. There was no answer. Maybe he doesn’t exist. Maybe Fergus lied about having a first cousin, too.”
“He lives on Evangeline Beach. He’s executor of the will. Believe me, he exists.”
At the restaurant parking lot, Darcy gestured to the drive-thru. “Can we get our lunch to go? There’s something I need to do, and I want to do it before I lose my nerve.”
Gio pulled in behind the waiting line-up of cars and looked at her in disbelief. “It’s against the law to aid and abet suicide.”
“Maybe later. Right now I need to get my watch from Fergus’s apartment. I left it there the other night.”
“Your watch?”
“And my contact lenses.”
“Have you got a key?”
“No. We hadn’t reached that stage in our relationship.”
Gio frowned and tapped a fingernail on the steering wheel. “So you’re planning on breaking and entering? That’s against the law, too. I definitely couldn’t keep that from Jack.”
Darcy managed a smile. “The building has a super. I’m hoping she’ll recognize me.”
They munched on sandwiches as they drove across the city to the north end. Fergus’s ground floor apartment was situated in a square, three-storey building of red brick and beige siding. They parked, got out of the car, and crossed the street to the front entrance. Darcy pressed the button marked ‘superintendent’ and waited. A few moments later a voice crackled in the air.
“Yes?”
“Hi, I’m Darcy MacDonald, Mr. Ferguson’s girlfriend. I left something in his apartment, and I need to get in there.” Darcy paused, hoping to be buzzed in with no fuss, but Fergus being dead obviously warranted fuss, evidenced by the fact that a few moments later a tiny woman with white fluff for hair materialized on the other side of the glass lobby door. She was holding a small spray can with a key ring attached.
The woman opened the door and peered through, shaking her head. “Not another one.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’ll tell you the same thing I told the two women who already came by. I can’t let you into Mr. Ferguson’s apartment. It wouldn’t be right. He’s gone, God rest his soul.”
Darcy went cold. “Two women came by?”
“Yesterday. Miss Mouse in the morning, and later on the one with the spiky hair. She left in tears when I told her Mr. Ferguson was dead, but Miss Mouse insisted on being let in. I told her ‘no’, flat out. Then she says she’s entitled, as his wife. ‘His wife?’ I said. ‘Then how come I never seen your face before now? You won’t put a foot inside the apartment unless you can show me proof that you’re executrix of the will.’ Ooh, she was in a huff, I can tell you. She hadn’t figured on me having a lawyer for a brother and knowing the law.” The woman held up her spray can. “But she left pretty quick when I threatened her with my pepper spray. Works every time.”
“Oh.” Darcy didn’t know what else to say. Fergus’s wife hadn’t been a regular at his apartment, and that was good news.
That there was another woman in his life was definitely bad news.
The superintendent seemed to take pity on her, because her wrinkled face relaxed, and she eyed Darcy apologetically. “You look like a very nice girl. You’re the one I’d pick of the lot, if it were up to me. Tell you what. Leave me your name and phone number. When somebody shows up with their papers in order, I’ll tell them you came by the apartment to get your things, and want them back. What is it you’re missing?”
Answers. And a fairly large chunk of my pride.
Darcy described her watch and contact lens case, left her name and thanked the woman. They made their way back to the car.
“Are you okay?” Gio asked quietly.
“Peachy.”
“So I guess Miss Mouse is Roxanne.”
“Mrs. Mouse,” Darcy corrected darkly. “It’s Mrs.”
“But who is the spiky haired woman?”