Honeymoon

Chapter 63

“WHAT HAVE YOU been up to, O’Hara?”

“Oh, this and that. You know me, I keep myself busy. How about our little test on the late Connor Brown?”

“Nothing… nada… zip,” said Susan, disappointed.

After two days of waiting at my temporary apartment, I got a call from her late in the afternoon. Connor Brown’s second autopsy report had just landed on her desk. Susan told me that the more comprehensive tests showed basically the same result. The guy died of cardiac arrest. No sign of foul play. Nothing. Nada. Zip.

“Was there anything this time around that the first autopsy didn’t show?” I asked.

“Only a pretty nasty ulcer,” she said. “Of course, with a guy working in finance who dies of a heart attack at forty, there’s no real big surprise there.”

“No, I suppose not. That was it, nothing else?”

“Oh, you mean, besides the abrasions from the body falling out of the coffin?”

“Shit, the kid from the pathology lab squealed, didn’t he?”

“No, actually it was the cop who’s still throwing up three days later, thanks to you.”

I found myself smiling at an old image in my memory file.

“It was a dirty job and somebody had to help do it.”

“Somebody besides you, naturally.”

“Hey, the guy didn’t laugh at my jokes.”

“Say no more.”

“So, I guess it’s time to give Nora a call.”

“I had a thought on that,” she said. “Maybe you should stall on the test results, see if she starts to get shaky.”

“Were it anybody else, I’d say yes. Not with Nora, though. The only thing she’d get is more suspicious. I’m afraid she’d pull back.”

“You sure about that?”

“Sure as I can be. I think if there’s a break to be had with her, it comes when she believes everything is hunky-dory.”

“As in, the money is on its way?”

“Right. Let her know for a fact she’s about to become one point nine million dollars richer.”

“That would make me feel hunky-dory.”

“You and me both.”

“This means you’re going to have to work faster,” Susan said. “As excuses go, ‘the check is in the mail’ buys you only so much time.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem. Craig Reynolds has built up a lot of goodwill with her. Even more so when I call with the good news.”

“Just remember one thing,” said Susan. There’s always “one thing” more with her.

“What’s that? Today’s ‘one thing more’?”

“While you’re working to get Nora to drop her guard, make sure you don’t drop yours.”