The Corpse Wore Stilettos Read online

  “This is a delicate situation, Miss”—he poked at my badge—“Katherine Waters. You see, I believe they brought my sister here tonight, and I hoped to spend one last private moment with her before she’s so violently cut open.”

  Burns McPhee had obviously sized me up as a naïve dimwit. He was about as related to that woman on the table as I was.

  “Oh, then you can be of some help to me, Mr. McPhee. Tell me about your sister. What’s her name? Do you know when she ate last, and did she have any particular personal effects with her that I should be looking for, like a necklace or watch?” I asked, hoping the barrage of questions would cause him to backtrack.

  He took another look at me, scanning every inch as if trying to figure out what he had missed. “Okay. Maybe she’s not really my sister. But I do need to see her.” He started moving to the back of the morgue, obviously familiar with where we kept the bodies.

  I stepped in front of him, holding out my hand to halt his momentum. “Why would I let you do that?”

  He stopped. “DC would let me if he were here.”

  “I don’t know that. We’re very close, and he’s never mentioned you before. And given that you just lied to me about being her brother, for all I know, you’ve never even met DC.”

  The corners of his mouth turned up into a small smile. “Hmm. Maybe you aren’t that close if he’s never mentioned me. I’ve found that it’s usually difficult to get DC to shut up.”

  That was true. DC was a talker. Maybe he did know him, but that didn’t mean I was going to let him peek at my Jane Doe. Before I could tell him that, he said, “He helps me with my kids.”

  “You have kids?” I asked, wondering if that meant he wasn’t single and questioning his intelligence since he was asking DC for help with children. I loved DC, but using him for childcare was like letting the animals run the zoo.

  “Not that kind of kids. One of my businesses takes care of Afghan and Iraqi orphans.”

  Oh. So this was the larger-than-life Army guy DC was always going on about. DC worked with local businesses to get supplies donated then shipped to the orphanages overseas. He and this guy had a history, but I never knew his name or what their story was.

  “Ah. Even so, Mr. McPhee, I still can’t let you near the body. Why do you want to see her, anyway? She came in as a Jane Doe. Did you know her?”

  He grew quiet again, those dark eyes of his trying to look through me. He seemed to struggle with how to answer the question. Finally, he sighed, slumping his shoulders, his eyes dropping to a spot on the floor.

  In a soft voice, he said, “I think her death is connected to the death of my best friend, but to be certain, I need to look at her wounds.”

  I looked at him, pondering whether I could trust him. He looked sincere, almost tragic, when he said it, but he had lied to me before. Maybe this was just another lie.

  “What’s taking so damn long, McPhee?” yelled a large, burly man as he barged through the door, entry pass in hand. The man looked nothing like McPhee. He was shorter yet looked substantial, like if someone ran into him, they would bounce off into space. His silhouette looked cartoonish, with great big muscles bulging on top and a skinny waist and legs. His straggly, sandy hair needed a cut, and he looked as if he’d slept in his clothes.

  McPhee jerked around to the man at the door and watched him move forward. “Flynn. I was... explaining to this lovely woman who is filling in for DC tonight why we would need to see the body that was put into her care.”

  “Oh,” Flynn said. He began slowly backing up, appearing to assess the situation. He moved strategically between McPhee’s left side and the door. I felt maneuvered across the room.

  Despite my self-defense training, I couldn’t have taken out either of them, given their well-built physiques and advantage in number. My only hope of keeping them away from the body was to convince them that I would not be alone for very long.

  “If by ‘explaining’ you mean trying to con me, I’d agree,” I said, moving into a frantic but confident speech pattern, even as my insides shook. “He started off by lying to me, then tried to play on my friendship with DC, and then went for a pity play. While I understand that you had a different expectation about how your trip here would go tonight, as you aptly pointed out when you barged into my lab, Mr. McPhee, old man Hawthorne will be here any moment.”

  Then I fell silent and stared at the door, holding my breath, as if my concentration could actually produce Dr. Hawthorne, and prayed they bought my act.

  Both of the men tensed as the quiet in the room grew heavy.

  “Well, she’s a tight ass, isn’t she,” Flynn finally said.

  A smile flashed into McPhee’s eyes as he started to speak, but before he could, we all jumped at the loud clang from the examination room.

  “Is that another one of your men, Mr. McPhee?” I asked, my nerves obviously showing. I had no idea who was in the next room.

  Neither did they, it seemed. Both McPhee and Flynn pulled guns from behind their backs and pushed me down and behind them. I gasped, wondering why they would bring guns to a hospital if they were just going to look at a murder victim.

  “Stay here. Stay safe,” McPhee said as he and Flynn began moving cautiously toward the room, in a flanking position.

  Safe? What in the world is going on here?

  Crouched on the floor and behind a cabinet, I saw the wheels of the gurney rolling into the sexavator. I stood up to get a better look. The man pushing the gurney caught a glimpse of me out of the corner of his eye and froze. He turned, his eyes fixated on mine with an eerie intensity.

  He was fairly ordinary—average height and build, sandy hair that reminded me of beige carpet. He was dressed all in black and seemed wired, his twitchy mannerisms resembling an animal that had been caged for too long. Finally, after what seemed like minutes but I’m sure was only seconds, he smiled at me. His was not a happy smile but an evil grin, making me shiver reflexively from the coldness.

  “He’s taking the body into the elevator,” I yelled to McPhee and Flynn.

  When my words registered, they bolted into the room just as the door to the sexavator slammed down.

  “Damn it all,” Flynn cursed.

  “Where does this elevator go?” McPhee asked.

  “It’s a transport elevator. It goes up to every floor,” I answered.

  They quickly backtracked to the lab door, me following. The three of us ran toward the stairs.

  “I’ll cover the floors. You hit the parking lot. It’s a guy with a body. He’ll be looking for a way out, and he won’t care how conspicuous he looks. Radio Neutron to pull the truck,” McPhee yelled to Flynn.

  Without question, Flynn changed his trajectory and disappeared.

  McPhee and I continued running, hitting the stairwell, and I thanked God for my recent diligence with my aerobics DVD. McPhee’s moves were swift, practiced, as if he knew how to make the most forward gains with his movements while expending the least amount of energy. At the top of the stairs, he threw the doors open wide, obviously aware of me still behind him.

  I ran through the stairwell after him, trying to evaluate everything happening. I asked myself why I should run with him at all. Five minutes earlier, McPhee and Flynn had eagerly tried to do the same thing as the man I was now chasing—get to my Jane Doe. Even if we successfully apprehended the man with the body, I would be in the exact same predicament as now, only I’d be chasing McPhee and Flynn instead. But no other options sprang to mind. So I ran.

  We jogged through the hallway, weaving around nurses’ carts and wheelchairs, until we arrived at the sexavator. It was shut, the floor indicator light showing it stopped on our floor. McPhee took out his gun again. Pointing it at the elevator, he signaled for me to push the button to open the door.

  “Maybe we should wait for security,” I said.

  “No time. If you want to see that body again, push the button.”

  I did. The door opened, and I momentarily
breathed relief only to quickly realize that, while the gurney was there, the body wasn’t. McPhee put his gun away and circled around.

  “Where are the other exits on this floor?” he asked.

  Before I could answer, a loud commotion erupted behind us. A nursing cart had flipped over, and supplies spilled to the ground. The man in black, struggling with the weight of Jane Doe over his shoulder, bounded down the hall and toward the exit door. Security was coming from the other way.

  McPhee and I ran after the man.

  “Stop him!” I yelled to the various bystanders as McPhee and I sprinted through the hall.

  The man took off through the exit door. As we passed through it, tires screeched ahead. A cargo van came roaring up. The door slid open. The man and the body disappeared inside. The door slid closed as the van screeched again and drove off.

  By the time I caught up with him, McPhee stood hunched over, trying to get his breath. In a whisper, he repeated the license plate number of the van over and over. As I approached him, a black hybrid Escalade whipped around the corner. McPhee sprinted for it, waving his hand above his head at me, yelling, “I’m sorrrryyyy” as he disappeared into the truck that took off following the cargo van.

  I stood at the front of the hospital entrance, stunned. Then the coroner’s vehicle drove up, and I knew my night was about to get even worse.

  Chapter 2

  Despite the common notion that an understanding of fashion was more likely to indicate frivolity than seriousness, I had learned that a person’s fashion choices were usually deliberate. If someone chose sensible shoes with tassels, they were telling the world that they were secretly hiding a party animal inside. A wild tattoo hidden in a less than obvious place tended to indicate the opposite—the partying conservative. When Vogue, Princess Di, and Sherlock Holmes all agreed on something, it was usually worth paying attention—a person’s fashion spoke volumes about them.

  I probably shouldn’t have expected someone dressed in a baby-blue button-down and khaki pants, most likely purchased from his local Sears while on a tool run, to have grasped that tip. Even if he was a detective.

  “So you believe the man who stole the body from the morgue was with the mob, more specifically the Russian mob, because of his shoes?” Detective Driscol asked me again, scribbling in his notebook.

  “Yes, as I’ve already said. If he were Italian Mafia, surely he would have been wearing Berlutis or Testonis, if he could find them. There’s a shortage.”

  In addition to his unremarkable apparel, Detective Driscol had short brown hair and a skinny build, and he wore a blue-striped tie. Because of my dad’s situation, I had recently spent my fair share of time with police detectives. They all owned that same ugly blue-striped tie. Maybe it was part of a departmental Christmas giveaway. Next year, they should use a personal shopper instead. I’d make a mental note to suggest that.

  I couldn’t quite understand the detective’s reaction. Sure, my family had had some recent unpleasantness with the police, but all of that was a misunderstanding. Right now, all I wanted was to help them recover that poor girl’s body. But they seemed completely skeptical about any information I shared.

  “Or maybe the Ferragamo Pythons if he were into snakeskin and looking for something a little more affordable. The man who ran off with the body clearly wore brown New & Lingwoods. I remember it distinctly because they didn’t match the rest of him, which was clad in black from head to ankle.” Detective Driscol continued to stare at me with a blank look. “New & Lingwoods are Russian calf shoes and the second most expensive men’s shoes on the planet. Who else would wear them to steal a body but the Russian mob?”

  I wondered how they could not understand this. These were the most legendary shoes on the planet, first made famous by Prince Charles and fashioned from reindeer leather found in a shipwreck, the markings distinctive.

  Maybell, my pet pig, snorted from the corner of the room and tried to stretch. Poor Maybell. The police had quickly stuffed us in the morgue’s conference room to await questioning. I had tried to make her comfortable by putting down her favorite pink cashmere blanket, but the cold, grimy floor seeped through, making her bones stiff.

  “Why do you have a pig with you?” Detective Lambert asked. Unlike Driscol, Lambert was slightly heavyset and muscular. She gave the impression she could break me in half if I provoked her. She wore a navy-blue pantsuit that tried to be stylish through the addition of fake crystal buttons. Her short black bob was a great choice to frame her pear-shaped face. Although I didn’t think Detective Driscol quite understood it, between the two of them, Detective Lambert was the badass cop.

  “My pig sitter was only scheduled to watch her until ten, and my grand is on a date with her boyfriend.” I had swapped a course in biker chic makeup with a lady in our building in exchange for the pig-sitting time. She was having issues with her makeup running under the humidity caused by her helmet. A few quick changes to her routine and she was all set.

  “It’s your pet?” Lambert shifted in her chair across the table from me and gazed at Maybell as if considering the idea.

  Maybell snorted at the offending comment and wandered over to get some much-deserved reassurance. I wondered why on earth they cared about my pig when there was a body to find. I supposed Maybell was unique, though, so maybe if we dealt with their curiosity, we could get on with more important matters.

  “First, Maybell is a ‘she,’ not an ‘it.’ As indicated by the rhinestone collar and pink tutu.” I bent down and lifted the front hoofs of the light-pink-and-black-spotted, potbellied Maybell onto the table so the detectives could see her better.

  She poked her snout at them.

  “Second, pigs are smarter than most average human three-year-olds, much smarter than a dog or cat.” I set her down, petting her as I did. “Third, Maybell is family.”

  Seeming satisfied, Maybell waddled back to her blanket.

  “Despite their reputation, they’re freakishly clean.” I folded my hands on the table.

  “Ms. Waters, may I call you Katherine?” Driscol asked.

  “Only if you’re related to my mother. Otherwise it’s Kat, please.” I took a drink of water from the small Styrofoam cup. After the sprint through the hospital, I felt parched, and the thought that I was sitting in yet another police interrogation made my throat go tight.

  “Okay, Kat, why don’t we start at the beginning? How long have you been working at the morgue?” Driscol asked.

  “About four months.”

  I told them how Grand’s boyfriend, Claude, had helped me get the job. He had connections on the hospital board.

  “If you don’t mind me saying, Ms. Waters, you don’t seem particularly suited to this line of work,” Lambert said.

  The fact that the morgue was not a dream career move for me was fairly obvious. However, I’d come to realize one could be good at something even if the job wasn’t an obvious match. The autopsies were actually fascinating once I tricked my brain into forgetting they were dead people. And the bodies all had a story to tell. I liked that I could help the people who loved them find some understanding in their loss. After all, with my situation these days, I’d had plenty of experience with loss.

  “Actually, Detective Lambert, with a minor in biology, and as a two-time Miss Missouri winner in the best makeup category, I think I have a unique skill set to offer the fine office of the St. Louis County coroner.” I smiled and flipped my ponytail in a well-practiced move usually reserved for the final-question round of a pageant.

  She sat expressionless, not looking convinced. “Why don’t you start from the top and take us through what happened?”

  If it meant helping to find the missing girl’s body, I wanted to be a good sport about all the endless questioning. I couldn’t help being nervous with everything else going on with my family. We didn’t need more police attention. Something must have been terribly misaligned with my karma for a body to go missing on my shift. The pleather con
ference room chair had ceased being comfortable almost the moment I sat in it.

  Sensing my upset, Maybell snorted in agreement and waddled over. I gave her some water from my cup as I took the officers through my afternoon.

  “And did you notice anything unusual about the victim during this process?” Lambert sat more upright in her chair, leaning in on the table, looking at me as if I finally might say something important.

  “I’m paid to be a keen observer, Detective. I noticed several things. First, she smelled.”

  Driscol smirked as if trying to hold in a laugh. “With due respect to your keen observation skills, Kat, dead bodies tend to smell.”

  He was being smug. I was beginning to develop a healthy respect for Lambert for managing not to punch Driscol in his smug face on a regular basis.

  Maybell began snorting. I patted her to settle her nerves. “It might surprise you to know that dead bodies don’t smell right away. That takes time. The bacteria that normally exist in the intestine had begun to decompose the body enough that she had a palpable smell, in a food-left-sitting-out-on-the-counter-overnight sort of way, indicating that this body had been dead longer than a few days.” I wrinkled my nose at the memory of the sticky-sweet smell that floated in the air.

  Driscol’s smile faded.

  “Isn’t it kind of cool the way nature takes care of itself?” I asked.

  This time, Lambert smiled, clearly pleased with my jab at her partner. “What else did you notice about the victim?”

  “She was pretty. I mean, despite the blood and bruises that dotted her beaten face.” I closed my eyes to remember her, trying to shut out Driscol and Lambert so I could feel my way past my sadness and better recall how her body had confused me when I first saw it. She had looked so delicate lying on the table. Everything about her seemed like a contradiction. “She had meticulously styled hair that made her look like she’d come straight from Ted Gibson’s salon. Despite the circumstances her body was found in, her hair appeared to have been well taken care of on an ongoing basis. And she had a beautiful manicure. Chipped nails, but the expensive French polish job was still apparent.” Before opening my eyes, I smiled, remembering the shimmering little butterflies on each finger, visible through the plastic bag. “That was no budget job. I heard some of the other policemen say they thought she was a prostitute, which seemed to match her clothing choice, but those clothes didn’t seem to fit the rest of her. Neither did the cheap plastic-coated glitter bracelets dangling from her wrist while an expensive gold cross hung from her neck.”