The Incumbent Coroner
THE
INCUMBENT
CORONER
A FENWAY STEVENSON MYSTERY
NUMBER TWO
PAUL AUSTIN ARDOIN
THE INCUMBENT CORONER
Copyright © 2018 Paul Austin Ardoin
All rights reserved.
No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Under no circumstances may any part of this book be photocopied for resale.
This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead, is unintentional and coincidental.
ISBN 978-1-949082-02-9
Cover design by Ziad Ezzat
Author photo by Monica Toohey-Krause of Studio KYK
Information about the author can be found at http://www.paulaustinardoin.com
Table of Contents
PART I: THE WEEK BEFORE
Chapter One
PART II: SATURDAY
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
PART III: SUNDAY
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
PART IV: MONDAY
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
PART V: TUESDAY
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
PART VI: WEDNESDAY
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
PART VII: THURSDAY
Chapter Twenty-Seven
UPCOMING RELEASES
PART I
THE WEEK BEFORE
Chapter One
Fenway Stevenson sat on the couch in her apartment. She didn’t know what she was going to do for dinner, but she didn’t care. The morning had been spent on an overdose victim in the foothills, the afternoon on the mountain of paperwork that threatened to take over her desk, and she was tired. This was the first night in a week she had left the office by eight o’clock. She picked up the remote and plopped her feet on the coffee table.
The doorbell rang.
Fenway blinked a couple of times before getting up. She opened the door.
Dez stood there, still in her black Dominguez County Sheriff’s Department uniform, holding a six-pack of beer.
“Hey,” Dez said. “I know I didn’t call first, but I was in the neighborhood.”
“We just saw each other at work an hour ago, Dez. This can’t wait till tomorrow?”
“I guess it could have,” Dez said, stepping inside. “But I wanted to let you know in person. The paperwork came back in right after you left. HR approved your vacation for next week.”
“Oh.” Fenway hadn’t counted on that—she had requested the time off at the last minute, and she hadn’t yet been coroner for the requisite ninety days to be guaranteed vacation time.
“I know,” Dez said, reading her face. “You must live right. It’s like you’ve got a rich daddy or something.” She chuckled as Fenway shut the door behind her. “I’m going to put these in your fridge. You want one?”
“What is that? Querido Falls Brewing?”
“Yep. Their Hefeweizen. Hope that’s okay.”
Fenway nodded. She hadn’t had their Hefeweizen, but she liked their pale ale. “But I thought you were all meeting at Winfrey’s for happy hour.”
Dez shrugged as she disappeared into the kitchen. “Bunch of sticks in the mud. After you said you weren’t coming, Mark cancelled because Randy needed help running lines for his audition. Migs and Piper got tickets to some concert down in Santa Barbara.”
“I’m glad they’re finally together.”
“Hah. Sure. If you don’t mind disgusting public displays of affection.”
Fenway heard the sound of two beers being opened and the caps swirling to a stop on the counter.
“And Rachel said she had too much work to do.”
“P.R. work seems to agree with her.”
Dez came back into the living room holding two of the beers. “You know she’s just keeping busy to keep her mind off her father’s trial.” She handed a beer to Fenway.
Fenway wanted to pour it in one of her nice beer mugs back in the kitchen—but her exhaustion won out and she stayed put. “Plus, it’s hard being a widow at twenty-four.”
“Can you name a better age?”
“Ninety-five.”
Dez tilted her head, nodded, and raised her bottle. “Cheers.”
Fenway and Dez both had a swig of their beers.
“Thanks for the beer, Dez.”
“Don’t mention it. I didn’t feel like going home and this six-pack cost about as much as a decent vodka tonic at Winfrey’s.” She had a second swig and set the beer on the coffee table. “You mind hanging out with an old lady like me on a Tuesday night?”
“Oh, please, Dez. Don’t be giving me that ‘old lady’ crap. I think I have more gray hair than you do.” It was true; Dez’s short black curls didn’t have a trace of gray. “And I’m exhausted. This week already feels like I’ve worked a hundred hours.”
“Oh, it’s so nice for you young’uns to make me feel spry.” Dez shook her head. “Fifty’s right around the corner.”
Fenway waved her hand. “Stop whining, Dez. You’ve got a few more years. And besides, fifty is the new thirty.”
“Spoken like someone who hasn’t seen the wrong side of thirty yet.” Dez smiled. “Okay, speaking of old ladies, my bladder seems to shrink with each passing year. Be right back. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” She went into the bathroom off the hallway, closed the door, and turned on the modesty fan.
Fenway shook her head and put a coaster under Dez’s beer. Her phone rang in her purse on the kitchen table. She walked in and dug it out; the incoming caller read Nathaniel Ferris. She sighed and answered it.
“Hi, Dad.”
“Fenway! Glad I caught you.”
“This isn’t a great time.” She walked back into the living room and took another drink of her beer.
“It’ll just take a minute. Listen—you haven’t changed your mind about running for coroner in November, have you? You know you’re doing a hell of a job since you’ve taken over.”
“No, Dad. I’m a nurse, not a politician, and you know my boards are next month.”
Ferris sighed. “Dr. Klein is going to run.”
“I figured. He’s announcing on Monday, right?”
“That’s what I hear. News travels fast.”
“And I also heard you have some pharmaceutical executive you’re going to support.”
Dez came back into the living room, sat on the sofa, and picked up her beer.
“That’s right,” Ferris said. “Everett Michaels. But only i
f you’re not running, Fenway. You’re my daughter. I’m not going to promote another candidate over you.”
Fenway hit mute. “Sorry,” she whispered to Dez.
Dez nodded.
Fenway unmuted. “When I accepted the appointment,” she reminded Ferris, “it was strictly babysitting the position until November. You promised me that.”
“Okay,” he said, “I just wanted to make sure before I ask you to introduce him when he announces his candidacy.”
“Introduce Everett Michaels?”
“Right. I’d like to you introduce him—and give him your endorsement.”
“But I don’t know anything about him.”
He chuckled. “You know enough, Fenway. You know he’s the VP of development at Carpetti Pharma, you know he’s got a great medical research background, and you know he’s a lot better for the county than Barry Klein. What else do you need to know?”
“For one thing, I’ve never even met the guy.”
“We can fix that. It would really help Everett’s campaign if you would endorse him,” her father said. “Or, if you don’t want to go that far yet, you don’t have to be partisan for this—just say it’s your pleasure to introduce him.”
Fenway’s mind raced to figure out how to decline politely. “That puts me in an awkward position, Dad. I’ve still got to work with the whole board of supervisors until I’m replaced—and that includes Klein. And besides, won’t it look better for the press coming from Nathaniel Ferris? You know how much half this town loves you.” The half you own, she thought.
“And you know better than anyone how the other half of this town hates me.” She thought she detected a note of pleading in his voice. “But many, many people like you, Fenway. The people who like me like you because you’re my daughter. And the people who don’t like me like you because you arrested my right-hand man for murder.”
“I think you’ve got that backwards,” Fenway said, fighting to keep the anger out of her voice. “The half that don’t like you don’t like me either. And the half that do like you think I’m some sort of traitor for catching Stotsky.”
“Look, if there’s one thing I know, it’s how to read a crowd. Your endorsement would be a huge boost.”
“I think my endorsement would probably hurt more than it would help.”
“Not according to our latest poll.”
“Poll?” The idea that her father already spent his own money to conduct polling on this, she realized, shouldn’t have been a surprise to her. And yet it never ceased to amaze her how Nathaniel Ferris had no clue how to behave like a normal father.
“You’ve got an eighty-one percent positive rating,” he said.
“You ran a poll? You do realize this isn’t a national election, right?”
“There are dozens of companies who do this for smaller campaigns, Fenway. It’s not a big deal. And if you introduced Everett on Monday, we’d have a sure thing in November.”
“Oh, Monday’s no good,” she said, trying to sound as disappointed as she could. “I have to drive up to Seattle this weekend, and I won’t be back.”
“Drive to Seattle? Why in the world would you do that?”
“I’m getting some of Mom’s paintings out of storage. My favorite painting of hers, in fact.”
“Which one is that?”
“The one of the ocean and the cypress tree growing out of the rock, the one right by the butterfly waystation.”
Ferris sighed audibly. “Isn’t that only a mile from your house? Don’t you jog there every morning? Can’t you see the real thing any time you want?”
Fenway gritted her teeth. “Coming from the man who fell in love with her because of a painting? That’s pretty rich, Dad.”
“I suppose,” Ferris said. He didn’t speak for a few seconds, then cleared his throat. “Can’t you just fly?”
“Nope. The paintings are too big to take on the plane.”
Her father paused. Fenway could hear him turning everything over in his head.
“You sure you won’t be back by Monday morning?”
“No, I won’t be back till at least Tuesday or Wednesday. Maybe even later.”
“Well, why don’t you take my plane? You’d be back in plenty of time.”
“I’m not taking your plane to Seattle, Dad.”
“Why not?”
“Because it costs you something like twenty-five grand whenever you take off and land.”
“Having you speak at Everett’s announcement is worth twenty-five thousand dollars to me, Fenway.”
She wanted to scream at him. She still had ninety-five thousand dollars in college loans to pay back, which he had never even acknowledged. He barely acknowledged that he hadn’t given Fenway or her mother a cent in alimony or child support. But he threw around a fifty-thousand-dollar weekend trip to Seattle like he could pay for it with the change he found under the sofa cushions.
“Oh, there’s the doorbell, Dad,” Fenway lied. “I’ve gotta go. Talk to you later.” And she hung up before he could protest further.
She looked at Dez, who took another drink of the Hefeweizen.
“Nathaniel Ferris, I take it,” Dez said.
“You should be a detective.”
Dez cackled. “You may just be the only person in this county who won’t give him what he wants.”
“I may just be the only person in the county he doesn’t own,” Fenway said.
“So, you’re going to drive up and get your mom’s painting?”
“Yep. I leave Friday morning. I should get there on Saturday.”
“I’ll be interested to see the painting. You sure talked about it enough. I hope it lives up to the hype.”
“Well, if it doesn’t, take a happy pill and pretend it’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. That’s one time I won’t need your disturbingly accurate candor.”
Dez smirked. “So where are you staying up there? Some fancy hotel?”
“I’m staying with a friend.”
“A friend?” Dez looked sideways at Fenway. “That’s suspiciously vague.”
Fenway blushed.
“Oh, girl, you’re hooking up.”
“I wouldn’t call it a hookup,” Fenway said. “He’s an ex-boyfriend.”
“An ex-boyfriend?” Dez narrowed her eyes. “Is this Akeel?”
Fenway’s mouth fell open. “How do you know about Akeel?”
Dez laughed. “Rachel tells me more than she should, I guess.” She lowered her voice. “Is he still hot?”
“I don’t know if I think he’s that hot.”
“Rachel said you talked about his abs and shoulders and eyes for ten minutes. I stopped paying attention, but I got enough to know you think he’s hot.”
Fenway paused. “Okay, fine. I’m going to try to hook up with him.” She lowered her voice, although no one else was in the apartment. “Look, you know and I know that sleeping with McVie a couple months ago was a bad idea, but I, uh, I haven’t really been able to get him out of my head. But I have to work with him, and I don’t want to screw that up just because I’ve got a big schoolgirl crush on him.”
“Plus, he’s trying to make it work with his wife,” Dez said pointedly.
“Right,” Fenway agreed quickly. “So I thought maybe it would help me get over him to spend a night with Akeel.”
“Or three or four nights,” Dez said.
Fenway couldn’t help the grin that spread over her face.
“He’s that good, huh?”
“Oh, Lord, Dez, we were only together for about six weeks two years ago, but damn, we couldn’t get enough of each other. Seattle had a heat wave that summer, and we barely left his apartment. I lived with my mom and she called me a couple times to see if I was okay.” She rubbed the sides of her mouth to get herself to stop grinning, but to no avail. “Hoo boy, I was more than okay.”
Dez rolled her eyes and made a face. “You know I d
idn’t need that level of detail.”
“Oh, please, Dez,” Fenway said. “I didn’t go into any detail at all.”
“And yet, somehow, I still need to wash out my ears with soap.”
Fenway laughed. Dez, the one person in Estancia who didn’t expect anything from Fenway, never tried to put a claim on her. She was just there for advice and support—like how her mom had been in Seattle, before the cancer.
“But just six weeks?” Dez asked. “Did he ship out or something?”
Fenway stopped laughing. “No. It just, uh, didn’t go anywhere. We had this heat between us, but once we actually hung out together, we didn’t really click.”
“What needs to click?”
“For one thing,” Fenway said, “he didn’t have any books in his apartment.”
“None? Not even The Da Vinci Code or Tom Clancy or something?”
“Nope. He didn’t like reading.”
“Huh. I guess that would be a problem.” Dez glanced at Fenway’s overstuffed bookshelves.
“And when I met his friends,” Fenway started, and then shuddered.
“Oh,” Dez said.
“Yeah. I mean, I know Akeel and I had a physical relationship, but when I met his friends, they looked at me like—I don’t know. Some sort of trophy. One of them said Akeel only liked me because I acted like a white girl.”
“A white girl, huh.” Dez’s mouth became a thin line.
“I know. Some crack about the color of my skin, too.”
“The color of your skin?”
“I wasn’t black enough for them, apparently.”
Dez paused. “Did Akeel know your father’s white?”
“What does that matter?”
Dez shrugged. “It doesn’t really, I guess.”
“I mean, I liked the fact that Akeel was so attracted to me, but he didn’t say anything to his friends. Never defended me, just let me take it. They only said a few things, but it bugged me. We started spending a couple nights apart and then we just sort of stopped seeing each other.”